Have A Nice Day

Yesterday morning I discovered that it's possible to be an idiot in at least 3 different ways, and all before 9:00 AM.

Way # 1: I congratulated myself for getting out of bed as soon as the alarm went off at 6:45, and spent an hour on the treadmill; and when I went back upstairs at 8:00, hubby said, "Weren't you supposed to meet Ida for breakfast at 7:45?"

Oops. I spent 10 frantic minutes trying to get in touch with Ida, without success, since I don't have her cell phone number.*

*Later I called Ida to apologize for being an idiot, and she said, "That's OK, I'm an idiot too- I wasn't there either, I overslept."

Way # 2: When leaving for work at 8:40, I stepped out into the lovely, powdery, unblemished snow that had fallen during the night--and promptly slipped and fell all the way down the steps and landed on my butt at the bottom. I was holding my car keys, three matted 11 x 14 photographs, and a bulletin board. The prints got full of snow, the bulletin board broke into pieces, and my keys went flying. It took several minutes to find them.

Way #3: Since I was late by the time I got to work, due to the falling incident, all of the spaces in the parking lot were full, so I had to park on the street. Remarkably, there was a space right across the street from the building. I backed into the space--but before I was all the way in, the car got stuck in a frozen, rutted, gray mess of ice and snow, which isn't surprising since the City of Chicago does not believe in plowing the side streets. Now the front of my car was sticking out into the street, and I couldn't move it forwards or backwards. I went into the building and asked the maintenance man for a shovel, and he (and another large man who was passing by) spent half an hour getting my car out. I found another, cleaner, spot in the next block, and finally got into my office, with fingers and toes frozen and boots wet and filthy.

Fortunately, the rest of the day passed uneventfully--when the day starts out like that, it can only get better!

New York Times

When I took a copy of today's Sunday New York Times off the rack and took it to the checkout counter, the clerk scanned the bar code three times, staring doubtfully at her screen each time. "It should be $5.00," I told her--the cost of the National Edition here in Chicago.
"Wow, that seems like a lot of money for just a newspaper," she commented. "Why is it so much?"
I was momentarily speechless. How to explain to this gum-chewing, twenty-something convenience-store clerk the value of the Sunday Times? It would require explaining a whole world of culture--history, literature, music, philosophy--and even though Chicago isn't exactly a hick town, I quickly realized we weren't going to bridge that gap in the next ten seconds.
"It lasts all week," I finally said. An insufficient explanation, to be sure--but perhaps enough to pique her curiosity and induce her to glance at the front page between customers--and opening her eyes to world she didn't know even existed.
Thank you, New York Times.

9 below in Chicago

Strange but true: when it's 9 below zero outside, if you throw boiling water into the air, it freezes before it hits the ground. I saw this demonstrated on the news tonight, by someone from the Museum of Science and Industry, and then we tried it ourselves.

I have no idea why this works. We tried it first with cold water, because one would think that cold water would freeze more quickly. But it didn't work. (Physics teachers, or anyone else who paid more attention during high school science class than I did, feel free to explain.)

I want that job

The weather forecast for today, from last night's 10 PM newscast:

Blizzard warning: near-zero temperatures; 2-5 inches of snow; 35-mph winds; whiteout conditions due to blowing snow.

The actual weather conditions outside my window at 8 AM today:

Less than 1 inch of new snow; 20 degrees; light winds; good visibility.

I want that job.

Seriously--what other job is there in which the expectations for accuracy are so low? All you have to do is show up and look presentable on TV, and as long as you don't predict anything extremely unlikely, like snow in July, no one will hold you accountable.

This is what I imagine the job description might look like:

Position avialable: Weather Forecaster

Responsibilities:

• Prepare daily creative fiction segments for 5-minute spots on local news broadcasts

Qualifications:

• Must have suitable business attire and no obvious unpleasant facial deformities.
• Fluent vocabulary of words which the general public does not understand, i.e. "dew point," "cold front," and "heat index." (Being able to explain or even understand the meaning of these terms is not required.)
• Blatant disregard for facts, and the ability to deny and/or cover up obvious mistakes and gross errors of judgement, are a definite plus

Note: Former staffers of the Bush White House are strongly encouraged to apply

Customer Service

When I shop at Jewel, I almost always use the self-checkout. I hate waiting in lines, and except for the clueless and technically challenged shoppers who always seem to be in front of me in line, and cannot figure out for the life of them how to scan their first item--and except for the endless-loop malfunctions: "Please place item in bagging area," followed by, "Unexpected item in bagging area. Please remove item before continuing" -- it's usually faster, or at least it feels faster, which is just as good.

Last Friday, I stopped at Jewel on my way home from work, and since it was only two hours before Shabbos, I was in a hurry. I grabbed my receipt and my groceries and dashed out to the car, only realizing a few minutes later that I had left my gloves sitting next to the self-checkout. As I went back into the store to get the gloves, it occurred to me that it would be helpful to many shoppers if, in addition to the self-check computerized voice saying "Please take your change," "Please take your receipt," and "Please take your items," it would be really helpful if the voice would continue, "Please take your gloves."

I'd like to suggest a few other helpful phrases:
"Please take your wallet."
"Please pick up the pen you dropped on the floor when you opened your purse to take out your wallet."
"Please pick up that used tissue that fell out of your pocket."
"Please take any and all small children you broughtwith you into the store."

Now that would be customer service!

Why I Hate Winter

At least this isn't my car

Reading is FUNdamental

I don’t sleep well under the best of circumstances. I’m a perfect example of the joke in which a man is asked, “How did you sleep last night?” and in reply, exclaims: “I slept like a baby! I woke up at midnight, two o’clock, four o’clock…” I like to think that this is a positive attribute—a manifestation of my keen mothering instinct, causing me to sleep lightly, one eye open, always vigilant to the possibility of harm coming to my sleeping children. Never mind the fact that none of said children actually sleeps in my house on a regular basis (the baby is almost 23, recently graduated from college, and has a job and lives in an apartment New York.)

But more likely it’s a combination of age, hot flashes, anxiety, and my husband’s snoring. It’s a rare night indeed that I sleep blissfully and soundly; so unusual, in fact, that if I awaken and it’s already light outside and I realize that I’ve somehow slept straight through for as many as six hours, my immediate gut reaction is terror, as if I’ve slept through a disaster that could have been prevented, had I only been paying attention. That hypothetical tornado never would have torn the roof off the garage, had I been lying awake in the dark and listening intently for a subtle shift of the wind. And surely when those imaginary burglars crept up on the back porch, they would have somehow sensed an aura of wakefulness surrounding the house, and would have carefully and soundlessly backed away and gone to break into my neighbor’s house instead. (I acknowledge that the motion-activated flood light my husband installed above the back door could also be a factor, but I know in my bones that it’s really my vigilance that averts catastrophe. “Yes, officer, I heard footsteps outside, and when I looked out the window, I saw the driver get out and place the bomb underneath the car.”) The first thing I do upon awakening every morning is to go downstairs and walk through the house, just to reassure myself that everything is as it should be—no broken windows, no small airplanes smashed to pieces in the yard, no dead bodies lying in the middle of the kitchen floor, leaking blood onto the linoleum. When I go back upstairs, my husband says, “Why do you do that?” I honestly don’t know.

This tendency towards insomnia is particularly acute when I am away from home. Hotels are a problem; uncomfortable beds, unfamiliar sounds, and the heightened anxiety of being away from home guarantee that I will have trouble falling asleep, and even more trouble staying asleep. I routinely travel with no fewer than two mini-clip-on reading lights, since when you’re in a hotel in an unfamiliar city and it’s 3 AM and your spouse is sleeping soundly in the other bed, you can’t turn on the light or the TV without disturbing him, and you can’t just go downstairs to the kitchen and make yourself a cup of herbal tea, and you certainly can’t go outside for a walk outside in an unfamiliar city in the middle of the night, especially because you haven’t brought the dog with you. And even if you had, it’s highly likely that the hotel is located on or near a busy highway and there are no sidewalks. So the only thing to do is to clip the mini-clip-on reading light to the edge of a book, and read. Thank heavens for books.

When I prepare for a trip, books have a status in my packing hierarchy just below my wallet. I pack reading material the way other people pack their toothbrushes: it’s an essential item, but if you forget to pack it, the first thing you do when you get there is buy another one. I’ve spent enough sleepless nights in enough unfamiliar beds to know that reading is the only way I’m going to get through the night, so that there is a certain amount of anxiety associated with leaving the house without sufficient reading material.

This obsession-- Um, I mean "coping mechanism"--is reasonable enough for overnight journeys, but lately it’s begun to get out of hand, spilling over into just local trips. My husband and I can be leaving the house on an errand, and just as he’s locking the door, I realize in panic that I have nothing to read, and I say, “Wait, I forgot something,” and he unlocks the door and I dash inside and return a moment later with a paperback book or, if it’s Sunday, the New York Times Magazine. My husband will look at me incredulously. “We’re only going to the mall,” he’ll point out. (The mall is, roughly, a 4-minute drive from the house.) But what if there’s construction, and we have to sit in traffic for 2 or 3 whole minutes? What if my husband decides to stop at the bank, or worse, Home Depot? If there will be any sort of waiting involved, I’ll need something to read.