Tag: Carol

Jingle Award: The E-Ticket

I recognize the library as the remedy to all of life’s problems.


Jingle gave me an award, and the rules of the award say – they ALWAYS say – you’re supposed to tell seven things about yourself. Well, OK, but I’m going to cheat and tell a story, with the items thus revealed.

The Wife, at my encouragement, went to see Bill T. Jones at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center a week ago, on Thursday night while I stayed home with the daughter.

1. I appreciate dance, but don’t go out of my way to see it.

I heard about this particular dance about Abraham Lincoln from watching Bill Moyers Journal on PBS.

2. I miss watching Bill Moyers.

My wife went online to order the tickets on Wednesday, but you’re supposed to print your ticket or tickets, which basically is a bar code or a bunch of bar codes. We experienced the same thing when we went to see Cats at Proctors recently.

3. I hate the cost-saving measure (on their part) of having the customer have to print the ticket.

Oh, and not incidentally, these tickets, almost invariably, are UGLY. I have tickets to shows I went to years or even decades ago that I’ve kept; these are NOT keepers.

Well, our desktop computer was being cranky – again – and the Wife ordered the tickets on the laptop, from which we had never printed.

I suggested rehooking the Internet connection doohickey –

4. I am not particularly technologically savvy, except in the eyes of those who are even less so

to the desktop, see if it worked again, and try to print from there.

Thursday night, I get home from work, and the Wife said she didn’t print the ticket yet. Yikes – had she called me, I would have printed the ticket at work and brought it home.

5. I HATE dealing with things at the last minute when it is avoidable; sometimes, it’s not avoidable, but…

She said that I said that I could just take the printer cable to the laptop and print that way. I said that’s NOT what I said. I said to take the Internet cable and reconnect it to the desktop and try to print from there.

6. I HATE it when people say that I said things I didn’t say.

So I made the switch, but unfortunately, the desktop was dormant for so long that I was going to have to reboot it – WHICH TAKES FOREVER – and it’s now 6:30 pm for an 8:00 show that’s a half-hour away.

I said, “You should go to the library and print your ticket from there.”

7. I recognize the library as the remedy to all of life’s problems.

And so she did, successfully, print her ticket at our neighborhood library – YAY, neighborhood libraries! – went to the show and had an enjoyable time.

And after she left, I DID try to link the printer to the laptop, but the laptop required software for which I did not immediately know the location.
***
And I’m supposed to bestow this award on others. If you are reading this, and I’ve never bestowed anything on you before, consider yourself bestowed.

In the “Who moved my cheese?” department

What did we do on Monday from 3:52 p.m. to 5:48 p.m.? We, that is to say I, stood in line so that my wife and I could renew our passports…

It’s my wife’s birthday today – happy birthday, Carol! – and we have been chuckling lately over something that started off as annoying.

She’s a deacon in our church. A few weeks ago, she substituted for another deacon in preparing a snack for after the service. She had bought, with her own money, a block of cheese, had cut it up, put it on a plastic plate, covered it up with a plastic wrap, and brought it to church at 9:30 a.m., at which point she went to Bible study.

At 10:30, she went to transfer said cheese onto a nicer plate, but she could not find the cheese. She looked around for a time, finally finding the plate of cheese in the garbage. There were other snacks, but she was understandably annoyed, actually, less about the waste of money and more about the waste of time preparing said cheese, then looking for it.

There is a policy – these are Presbyterians, so naturally, there’s a policy – that food in the refrigerator need be labeled and dated, but Carol never thought that the food she brought could be dumped in an hour. (By contrast, when they cleaned out the refrigerators at my workplace on July 9, we got a week’s e-mail notice, with large notices also on the fridges.)

Carol tells the deacon for whom she substituted about the situation, so she could be alerted when next that deacon served snacks the following week. Then the fun began, with that deacon forwarding Carol’s note, to Carol’s chagrin, to all the other deacons and the pastors. Suddenly, there was a flurry of e-mails going back and forth, some citing policy, others complaining about the waste of food, still others suggesting it be discussed at a committee meeting, and/or that better signs be made. A huge cause celebre.

The custodian had noted that someone else had been eating the cheese that morning, and was possibly the one who rewrapped it poorly. The member of the committee who tossed the cheese had thrown out the cheese because she was afraid it had been there too long; it wasn’t wrapped well, probably by the snacker, but then, to Carol’s embarrassment, she gave her money, to compensate for her loss.

I, on the other hand, thought it was all terribly funny, and labeled it The “Who moved my cheese?” incident. Then it felt more like absurdist theater, and we laughed about it regularly.

Quite coincidentally, there is a unit in my building at work that was downsizing, and they were getting rid of some books. I picked up a few business books for our work library, including the Spencer Johnson book, “Who Moved My Cheese?” I mean, I just HAD to.
***
So what did we do on Monday from 3:52 p.m. to 5:48 p.m.? We, that is to say, I, stood in line so that my wife and I could renew our passports and so that our daughter could get her first one. There were two families ahead of ours. And we hit the line just minutes before the 4 p.m. deadline. The rush was based on a TV story we heard that the rates were going up on Tuesday.

The downside of waiting is that I did not bring any reading material. The upside is that, by the time we actually got to the front, I could cite, almost verbatim, the policies put forth by our fine postal employee. “The passports will take four to six weeks. It has been taking four weeks, but because of the recent influx, it might take a little longer.”

We hadn’t planned on waiting until almost literally the last minute. We were near the post office earlier in the day, but the daughter was having a stomachache. Later, we got an unexpected 71-minute phone call from an old friend, then I went bike riding with the daughter while the wife napped. (We’d gotten up very early to take a relative from Oneonta to the Albany airport that morning.)

In the end, we saved nearly $100, and I got a lesson in passport policy.
***
It’s also Linda Ronstadt’s birthday, so maybe she should sing with Muppets.

 

The Anniversary Meme


Photo by Lydia Green

SamuraiFrog used this on Valentine’s Day. Thought I’d wheel it out for Carol’s & my our 11th anniversary.

Where did the two of you meet?
At church in 1992. I was in the choir, she was in the congregation.

What was the first thought that went through your head when you first met her?
Well, first, since the average demographic of the church was older than I was then, that she was so relatively young. And tall.

Do you remember what she was wearing?
Goodness, no.

Where did you go for your first date?
Well, it wasn’t until a couple years later. It was to the movies to see the movie Speed.

Where was the first time you kissed?
At her house.

When was the first time you realized you liked her?
Do you mean “like” or “like-like” her? I liked her right away as a person. We became pretty good friends I didn’t realize I was interested in her romantically until some time later, when my then-relationship was falling off the tracks.

How long did you know her before you became a couple?
Maybe 2.5 years. Then we broke up after a year and a half. Then we were off and on (mostly off) for a couple years. Finally, I made one massively concerted effort to find out whether we were going to be a couple or not – tricky because her job kept her out of town a lot. Finally, in mid-November, 1998, it was clear we were a couple again.

How was the proposal?
After talking for a few weeks, it was obvious to both of us that we had procrastinated long enough and that we should just get married. But her brother Mark had gotten engaged to his girlfriend Leanne and had set a January 1, 1999 wedding date. So we didn’t want to upstage them, even in our own minds. So we went to a restaurant in Albany called Justin’s in mid-January 1999 (the 16th or 17th). I proposed, she knew I was going to propose, I knew she was going to say yes.

Do you have kids together?
Well, we decided we wanted to have a kid about the beginning of 2000, but for reasons we never quite ascertained, it just wasn’t happening. Then in March 2004, we did, though the methodology hadn’t changed.

Have you ever broken the law together?
I seriously doubt it.

Do you trust her?
Implicitly. More than I trust myself, I think. She s FAR more rational and level-headed than I, she’s better with money, she’s almost painfully honest.

Do you see her as your partner in your future?
Assuming she can put up with me.

What is the best gift she gave you?
Giving me the Beatles’ mono box set for Christmas 2009. It was expensive, and therefore out of her comfort zone, but i had a pretty short list. It wasn’t so much the music, it was that she DID get out of her comfort zone, and I appreciated that.

What is one thing she does that gets on your nerves?
She STILL can’t load the dishwasher correctly – she even saw a segment on CBS Sunday Morning once – but to her credit, she lets me redo it. Sometimes she’s totally oblivious to what’s going on in the world – I’m not talking a one-day story, I’m talking an ongoing issue – and I’m talking to her about it, and she has no idea what I’m saying. Still, this happens WAY less than it did when we first went out AND it bothers me WAY less than it used to.

Where do you see each other 15 years from now?
Theoretically, I’ll retire and she will do so soon after so we can travel.

What causes the most arguments?
Seriously, I can’t remember the last argument. It used to be over money, and even those weren’t real arguments, but even those are gone.

How long have you been together?
See above. September 1994-March 1996 then November 1998-now.

Holding our youngest wedding guest, the daughter of friends.
***
Honey, Do You Have to … ?

“For Better”: The science of marital unhappiness

Mother’s Day 2010

I saw, with my wife and daughter, my mother last month. This is a good thing; she lives in North Carolina, so it is a sometimes thing. The previous time was June 2009, with the Daughter, not my favorite visit, let’s say.

She is doing reasonably well. All her vital signs are good. Her cholesterol is in a good range, and we wonder if she still needs her medications.

She’s losing weight, about 9 or 10 pounds, and she can afford to do so, per the Body Weight Index, but it makes her look a little gaunt to me. She’s a little dehydrated, common among people of her vintage. She was 5’7″ when I was growing up, but she looks about 5’5″ now. It’s strange.


I must say that Carol is a very good mother to Lydia. These are pictures I took on the first day of school back in September. As I probably mentioned, Lydia felt ill-prepared for kindergarten, even after having been in daycare for three years. This was a self-imposed pressure, and Carol handled the situation well.

I hear some children try to pit one parent against another, and perhaps Lydia tried that when she was about four. but we’re old/WISE enough to present a united front on most issues.

Happy Mother’s Day to my mom, Lydia’s mom, Carol’s mom, Rebecca’s mom, Alex’s mom (the latter two would be my sisters) and all the moms out there.

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