Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Monthly Archives: June 2011

• Another Year in Your Ear

  Posted at 2:42 am by kayewer, on June 26, 2011

  People always talk about the inevitability of death and taxes, and birthdays just hammer the point home that we’re one step closer to leaping the mortality line in the sand and landing in a place not like life as we’ve known it.  No matter how many birthdays we may celebrate, it seems there is always at least one that stands out as “remember the year when you were this age and that happened?”

  A coworker who just had a milestone birthday reminded me that chalking up another 365 days by your personal calendar isn’t all joy and candle blowing.  Out of respect for her privacy, I won’t go into detail, but when she had finished the story I was glad to have had a sedate night at home on my birthday:  after what she described as her natal hell day, it puts the strangeness of everyday life into focus.

  Sometimes we wake up on our birthday and life just goes haywire from there.  Maybe it’s the significance of a birthday, that one can anticipate well in advance, that sets us up for some tough times.  Since we usually have family and friends involved, it rubs off on them, too.  Whatever the cause, we spend 24 hours dealing with remembering how old we are, and ultimately somebody or something will get into the mix and muddle the whole thing up.

  I have my own story.  One year, we picked up my cake at the local bakery, only to find that they had given us a leftover holiday cake, at least ten days old,  that was dry inside and on the verge of being a science project as it had been frozen.  Luckily the cake was just for family, and we did get our money back.  Compared to some stories I’ve heard, though, that one is a clunker in the bad birthday hall of fame.

  The list I’ve heard includes delayed flights, conked out cars miles from anywhere, and a cruise ship that didn’t get to port until the last day of what would have been a six-day birthday vacation.  I’ve heard of injured pets, kids with boo-boos requiring hospitalization, and somebody’s spouse whose leg was mistakenly pummeled by a weed whacker.  There have been boozed up brothers, deodorant challenged in-laws and absentee teenagers who went out partying until the next day, having forgotten what date it was.  Folks celebrating birthdays have gotten re-gifted former Christmas presents, melted chocolates (especially in August), burst bottles of bubbly left in a hot trunk too long and last-minute what-were-they-thinking gifts that would leave Dr. Phil scratching his head.

  Other than Christmas, when else do we set ourselves up for such insanity?  In the quest to have a perfect day, we often get shortchanged.  Sometimes it might be a good idea to just let that day go and hold something private a day or so later, with just a few close people at your side in case a weed whacker seeks revenge.

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• While On Watch

  Posted at 2:56 am by kayewer, on June 19, 2011

  Something is happening to the simple wristwatch.  Some folks don’t bother to wear one, choosing to depend on their handheld devices’ clocks to be right.  Others buy $10 cheapies and pitch them when they conk out.  I have a collection.

  Sure, they’re just middle-of-the-road Timexes at about $20 a pop, but I like to switch watches to suit the day, outfit and conditions.  The water resistant ones come out when it’s rainy outside, the slim one for work, the big backlit one for a night at the theatre.

  The problem with watches is that the batteries die.  In the middle of one’s day, it’s not good to have a battery breathe its last.  The whole watch suddenly loses meaning.  If you take it off, though, you’re left with a pale mark from that spot on your wrist that gets no sun.

  The other thing that breaks on watches is the band.  Until a few years ago, watches came in dependable sizes for which there was always a replacement band.  You could get one put on by a happy customer service person at the jewelry counter.  Nowadays, places like Boscov’s, who are easygoing with just about anything else they sell like other department stores, won’t replace a band on a watch they didn’t sell.  I have a Timex that’s a good 20 years old or more, but Boscov’s won’t sell me a band for it.  Yeah, I bought it at a K-Mart long defunct, but that’s beside the point.

  Also, I needed a longer band for this watch.  I visited one of those small kiosks that specialize in watches, situated in the middle of the mall, to ask about a band.  “Long ones’ll cost you extra,” the bored to tears fellow pontificated, not nicely.  I left, since that was the way he felt about it.

  One band I actually have to send away for, because it is not the usual “one hole and a pole” type.  The folks at Timex recommend I send just the band, but I can’t seem to get it separated from the watch, and none of the jewelers will do it if they can’t sell me a new band.

  I refuse to part with the watch.  It’s a nice watch.  It runs.  Of course I’ll find a compromise eventually, if I have to send the whole timepiece away by insured mail.  Naturally, by the time I manage to get a new band, it will probably need a new battery.

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• Stupid Balls

  Posted at 1:46 am by kayewer, on June 12, 2011

  The ball is such a simple thing:  perfectly round, it rolls, bounces or rotates on a display.  We roll balls to each other, throw them, kick them or try to keep them from escaping on an incline.  So why do we do silly things with them to confuse the simplicity of it all?  I have seen some strange things passing for balls these days.

  In the Walgreen’s the other day, I saw an oversized hand-held play ball with large round tumor-like growths on it.  Fine for keeping it in one place and slowing it down if it gets away, but not really any more ergonomic than the original for holding.  Also, it was too large to use as a sports ball of any kind.  It seemed a waste of an idea.

  The football stands out as something of an oxymoron.    One can play soccer, which uses a ball, but the ball is a soccer ball or, in some countries, a football.  The American football is not specifically designed for kicking, but for passing and carrying, too.  If a ball is described as round, this oval object defies that concept.  A lumbering player, burdened by fifty pounds of padding and a medically designed helmet to cushion the brain (but make the head sweat like a damp sponge) can wrap one huge paw around a football, and its aerodynamics ensure an awesome amount of air time as it’s passed across the field.  However, it lands on the ground and bounces chaotically and, as Murphy’s law would have it, in the opposite direction to its designated catcher.

  I never did understand why a ping-pong ball is called a ping-pong ball.  It makes the same sound when it hits a paddle or a table, so call it either a ping ball or a pong ball.  It apparently took only one ball to make the eyes of the original Muppet, Kermit (along with the fabric from an old green coat).  If Jim Henson can make two eyes out of one ball, we can give it a simpler one syllable name.

  Finally, I read in the Reader’s Digest that the cosmetic overachievers in our world have decided the family dog should not have to look sexually crippled after neutering.  Neuticles(R) (they have a website) are artificial testicles that can be implanted to help Fido retain self-esteem and a false sense of definitive masculinity at the local fire hydrant.  They cost around $200 a pair.  And no, they aren’t symmetrically round, either, judging from the sample photos of the product.

  Science tells us the planets are not perfect balls, either.  I guess it stands to reason that we, in interacting with balls, are also just short of perfect symmetry.

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• To E Or Not to E

  Posted at 2:13 am by kayewer, on June 5, 2011

  That is the question.  Whether ’tis nobler in the world of commerce to reduce my reading to a slab of electronic components, or take up piles of paperbacks from the local brick-and-mortar stores and, by collecting, keep them open for business?

  There are so many electronic reading gizmos on the market right now, that I’m reminded of the video VHS/Beta Wars, the Blue Ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD Battle, the skirmish between film and digital cameras, all of which happened in my lifetime and have left mountainous piles of cyber waste in their wake.  Tablets and e-readers will come and go over the next year or so before the dust clears and winners emerge.

  Now that books are being challenged by the e-reader, a thin miniature computer which seizes whole texts from cyberspace and puts them on a screen for viewing anytime you wish, sales are as high as a library bookshelf.  The format is still young; users can actually “turn pages” by pressing a button.  With so many versions out there, only one or two are bound to survive.  Fortunately two are holding the lead right now.

  The Amazon Kindle is the one which has become its own verb  (folks in the publishing industry refer to Kindling new reading products).  The next commonly found one is Barnes and Noble’s Nook, which comes with a color screen.  I haven’t heard anybody talking about Nooking a book, but when I think of Kindling, I think of building a fire (the temperature of which must be 451 degrees to burn a regular book, so I’m told).

  I like having a shelf full of books.  I’ve known many folks who have vast libraries of books, and I can’t imagine life without them.  Electronics can be shut off, but books can be dried off when wet, taped when ripped and picked up without so much as a gasp if they are dropped.  Try doing that with a $300 Kindle.  The worst that can happen with a book is a dirty, wet or kinked page or two, keeping in mind that books have an equal chance of landing pages down or landing fully shut (thereby losing your place for you).

  I’m on the fence about buying a slab to store my books.  If books become targets of cyber crime, nobody would have to hold a match to them; they could just enter some code and my storehouse could disappear in a blip.  However, the convenience of having reading material in half the space and at a fraction of the weight (think of eliminating school backpacks) makes it tempting to cave.  Since I’m in no hurry, I’ll watch and wait, hiding behind my current paperback.

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