Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: November 2010

• 2B Or Not 2B?

  Posted at 3:06 am by kayewer, on November 28, 2010

  That is the question.  Whether ’tis nobler to suffer the high carbohydrates of the bag of cookies on the second row, second slot from the left in the vending machine, or to select 7G with its delightfully healthy power bar with little flavor and, by denying junk food, end my stomach pangs?

  The famous speech from Hamlet has been on my mind a lot lately, because my Shakespeare class is spending two weeks on it.  But honestly, a trip to that unforgiving row of pre-selected snack fare is not for the faint of heart.  There isn’t much to eat from a vending machine that is good for you.  Even the water has uncertain origins, no matter who makes it.  The rule is that if it looks good, it isn’t good for you.

  The vending company designates the healthiest choices with a little eco green leaf by the selection number.  Normally it’s something you’d rather use in your kid’s science project to build a brick wall than put in your mouth.

  I won’t even go into detail about those corkscrew devices that hold the products in the slots.  It’s like a bad Vegas gamble every time you put in your coins and hit the button, hoping the item you chose won’t get stuck in the coil and dangle in mid-air mockingly while you remain starving and out of spare change.  In case you’re wondering, I usually employ the hip bump method to dislodge stuck products, but these machines are set into the wall and have no exposed sides.  Darn!

  I travel between two offices every so often, and the other office has an ice cream vending machine.  The diet demon might as well settle in and watch  the fun as I try to avoid it but wind up getting a Blue Bunny Champ Cone anyway.  If you’ve eaten Blue Bunny ice cream, you know it’s the most necessary guilty pleasure ever.  The Champ Cone is a little more substantial than those other nutty cone novelties, and one cone can be a meal in itself calorie wise if you’re determined to cut down to one meal a day.

  Every bite of food from a machine  is bliss on the tongue, and a new building block of fat to the gut, but without some pleasure in life, those vending machine companies would be out of business.  The guilt is worth it when the gut stops grumbling mid-afternoon.  Pass the Champ Cone, please.

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• The Autumn Leaves

  Posted at 3:04 am by kayewer, on November 21, 2010

  Our neighbor was kind enough to spend several minutes with his blower the other day to shift the leaves from the lawn to the curb.  It was very nice of him.  The second town collection of the year was due, so it was also just in time.  Did you ever notice that the first time the leaf collection is done, there are hardly any leaves?  This week the wind gusts had conveniently knocked the trees bare, so it was just a matter of getting them off the lawn to where the super duper leaf sucking truck could get them.

  I do wonder, though, when in history it became unsightly to have leaves on the lawn.

  In forests worldwide (those that haven’t gone condo), leaves have fallen, composted and regenerated the earth’s surface for centuries.  Once houses spring up, however, leaves suddenly become an eyesore.

  There are many great unwritten rules about life, and leaves on the lawn is one of them.  The law reads something like this:  the first person to rake their leaves is considered the most diligent neighbor on the block while, at the same time, becomes the most abhorred because the act of clearing one’s lawn mandates that the rest of the block must follow suit immediately.

  So the rakes and blowers come out at 7 in the morning and 9 at night, and parking on the street becomes impossible without running the risk of a car exhaust igniting dry leaves.  The piles never match the size of the trees around them, usually because the wind blows one trees’ leaves onto a treeless lawn like Murphy’s Law of Leaf Placement.  The houses without trees normally don’t own rakes but, if there is a man in the house, there is inevitably a blower.  Men must have their toys with high-powered engines on them, you know.  In the absence of a motorcycle,  it’ll be a blower.

  Leaves have fallen out of favor (excuse the pun) in the digital age.  Sure there are “leaf peepers” who drive miles to see fall foliage, but when was the last time you saw a youngster collecting leaves to press between two sheets of waxed paper?  In the digital world, such as Second Life, fortunately there are virtual leaves (really).  Nobody minds if they fall all over everything.  At least in some places other than forests, leaves matter.  Besides, if somebody turned on a blower in a forest, would it make a sound?

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• The Pre- Pre- Pre-Holiday Blues

  Posted at 2:14 am by kayewer, on November 14, 2010

  Before we know it, Black Friday will be held the week after Good Friday each year.  What’s with the retailers that we can’t get through at least two weeks of November before they start bombarding us with holiday early sales pitches?

  They’re downright brazen about it, too.  Get all your holiday shopping done now, they trumpet.  Best prices of the season, they promise.  So what will they do with the weeks to go before the actual holidays, call off the sales?  Not on your charge card, my friends.

  I do admit that I shopped early.  The annual “winter celebration” office parties have been set up, so I grabbed a gift exchange present three weeks ago.  But I only did it because I know that when office parties get planned eight weeks in advance, the best gifts to meet the pre-approved spending limit will be sold out seven weeks in advance  if they’re not scooped up immediately.  Besides, I know that most folks get more expensive items for gift exchanges by getting them on sale for the spending limit price.  That $15 heated ice scraper is only worth about $5 anyway, right?

  Can we really trust holiday food gift tins that were assembled in a hot factory in mid-July?  If we buy them now, how much worse will they be by the holidays?  They may be on sale, but I think I’ll pass.

  Do we really need to buy all new stuff to throw about our homes just to impress people who only stop by for five minutes?  Take those specially scented candles that you can’t use on December 26 because they look Christmas-y (and you’re too pooped to light them anyway).

  Traditionally–at least when I was a kid back in the stone age–Black Friday was the day when the department stores unveiled their holiday trimmings.  Putting them up in advance was inconsiderate and lacked class.  Santa used to climb into the window of the department store after the Thanksgiving parade to “prepare Toyland” for the kids.  The store had a display window that opened on Black Friday:  they didn’t put out a sales circular that took out a forest tree (not to mention the back of whomever had to deliver the daily paper with it tucked inside with 2,000 other ads).

  When I was a kid, Black Friday started the countdown to Christmas.  Of course, there wasn’t mention of other religious celebrations, which was not particularly indicative of America’s tolerance agenda, but I don’t think we should discuss that subject now:  that’s for another column in which I may well get myself in trouble for telling another side of the story.  When I do, though, I hope those other forgotten December celebrants will be happy I mentioned them.  The stores won’t care:  they don’t set up pre- other holiday specials, do they?

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• Money or Food

  Posted at 1:44 am by kayewer, on November 7, 2010

  Do you work for a company that gives you stuff?  This year my company gave out two tee shirts within weeks of each other.  The problem with tee shirts is that you usually can’t wear them in the office after you get them.  Even in a casual dress environment, tee shirts are out of the question.  Besides, it was winter and too cold for tee shirts.

  Sometimes companies give out mouse pads.  People with carpal tunnel syndrome often stack them to improve their pointing and clicking angles.

  When the workload gets heavy, the company feeds us lunch (pizza) or brings in coffee.  Unfortunately I don’t drink coffee, but pizza is an essential fifth food group, and sometimes we get donuts with the coffee.  Pass a cruller, please.

  Many jobs in America these days involve prolonged sitting.  Two weeks ago we received free pedometers with instructions to take a one week “baseline” measurement of how far we walk, then try to increase our steps weekly.  For those of us who sit for eight hours a day, it can be depressing to look at the readout and realize that we take more steps between the living room couch and the bathroom at home than at work going from the cubicle to the car.

  Sure, companies mean well when they give us free stuff, but in a health conscious society we could use something besides pizza and pedometers.  They cancel each other out anyway.  Give us a $10 gift card during the holidays when parents struggle to make their kids happy, or thank us with a coupon for some extra time off or something.  Heck, if I spend that extra time walking the mall and don’t visit a single store, my pedometer would look a whole lot better for the extra steps taken.

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