Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Author Archives: kayewer

• We Will Weather

  Posted at 6:20 am by kayewer, on July 2, 2017

  I normally post early on Saturday, but I had to race a thunderstorm. With the wonderful weather devices we have today, combined with a meteorological world which seems to be more volatile than ever, a storm is not a surprise, but a threatening entity honing in on us as its prey. Once I had word that the storm was coming, I got away from my usual posting place and headed home before disaster struck. And it has, a few times.

  A few years ago, my neighbor’s tree came down and took out a garage; one week ago a severe system sent a tree through a window of a house blocks away, and took out power lines as well as shut down a major road.

  Rain has once again become something to fear.

  Some storms have been so severe that entire towns have gone days without electricity. I needed to be home, at my post, in case something happened in the driving rain. Fortunately nothing happened to us this time, but unfortunately we shall see more of nature’s wrath and might as our planet changes and evolves. The winters become colder,  summers hotter, the winds try to sweep away our ecological transgressions.

  The next generation may see quiet weather like we saw in childhood. Meanwhile, we will keep seeing the threats on Doppler radar and try to keep safe from their natural wrath.

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• No Sale?

  Posted at 3:08 am by kayewer, on June 25, 2017

  I think there is a plot out there to destroy brick and mortar retail stores. Either that, or I have a “Don’t Serve Me” sign stuck to my back. Nobody helps me in a store, but an invisible source on a website takes my money easily (well, somewhat). Which all goes back to my comments awhile ago that we, as human beings, can’t stand each other anymore. Either that, or we have suddenly become Planet Stepford (if you are scratching your head, look it up: a movie called the Stepford Wives from 1975), and I’ve suddenly realized that I’m not one of them.

  I have spent over two weeks trying to buy a cell phone. Model one was very low-tech, so I felt inclined to buy the more expensive model two, but that model was out of stock. The sales associate (their gender neutral title these days) said that his girlfriend’s friend happened to work at the one store that still had one in stock, but they would get it for me. Days passed and I heard nothing, so I played phone tag; the associate called me back to say that a new model was coming in which would be better and easy to get because he was expecting it the next day. Of course it cost half again what I intended to pay for model two. Fine, I said. He’ll call me, he said.

  Yes, I’m still waiting for that call, as I hold on to my Luddite model which is not supported anymore and could die at any moment. No, I am not going to buy an IPhone, which apparently is well stocked because they buy them.

  I have found that the sales associates in Best Buy follow a Murphy’s law of customer service: whatever department I’m in, that’s the one where nobody is working.

  I was at Wegman’s to buy some healthy vegetables and happened to spot a Pepperidge Farm layer cake on sale. The self-serve lines were jammed, so the staffer there (another gender neutral job title) sent me to Customer Service to have my purchases handled. The associate loaded the box into a plastic bag upside down; fortunately the icing inside was frozen enough that no residue was left on the roof of the box. I guess that was their way of scolding me for ruining my wonder vegetarian grocery shopping experience with a cake that’s bad for you.

  My online purchases this week, however, went without a hitch. One of these days I’ll have to click on the chat feature and see how interacting with a live person is when we don’t have to stand a few feet from each other. I just hope they’re not one of them.

   

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• The Graduate

  Posted at 3:22 am by kayewer, on June 18, 2017

  Plenty of commencement ceremonies happened at high schools this past week. It’s not like it used to be, when high school graduation meant something. Now little children graduate from day care, kindergarten, elementary or middle school. Completing life as a high school senior is about as exciting as a glass of iced tea with melted cubes; you probably already had a sip or two, and the rest is just flat and doesn’t really matter.

  I don’t know to what standards schools hold their graduating seniors these days, but at work they have a hard time finding people who can do tasks which were minimally basic ten years ago. The job market is hurting for qualified people, and I just read a survey in USA Today indicating that many graduates from college are working at jobs which don’t require the degree they received.

  So a cap and gown is no longer a badge of honor, a degree has been downgraded to an expensive piece of paper, and for those students with time to go before they graduate, they have all summer to forget everything.

  I’m a proponent of all-year school with increased breaks and a tiered summer vacation system to allow the older students time to get jobs and keep the younger ones absorbing as much as they can while their brains are ready to receive it.

  I also find some of the graduation stuff a bit degrading. A class ring that nobody wears, a yearbook that doesn’t show how students really are, a ranking system that is never accurate, and all for some short-sighted bragging for a few hours, often followed by over-eating and drinking and moving away to new places and forgetting what you had just done for the past thirteen years.

  When I graduated, I started a job the next day, and I’ve been working ever since. The yearbook is a bit dusty, the diploma is locked away and replaced by new ones. Next year is another reunion year, and it seems most of us are not in touch anymore. But the ritual of it all goes on annually. Life should mean more than this.

   

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• If Time Manipulation Were Real

  Posted at 3:17 am by kayewer, on June 11, 2017

  The recent Marvel hit Doctor Strange delved into how to alter time. The title character’s life was one of privilege as a neurosurgeon. He collected expensive watches, but he ended up with just one, and it got broken. Time didn’t stop, though; he went on to become a mystical superhero who could manipulate time. I’d like to do that.

  Raise your hands if you would like to go back to (for example) November 8, 2016 and do something different. Or if you could go back to just one moment in time and change it. What would you do with that “do-over?”

  The idea of time stopping, like when you are enjoying a delicious meal, or just before a drink spills on your expensive dress, sounds tempting. In the aforementioned movie, Strange experiments with time by causing an apple, from which he had taken a bite, to return to its uneaten state and then progress to turning brown and rotten.

  These days we use the remote and rewind favorite scenes in movies.

  No moment in time is the same as the next. That is what makes it possible for us to reshape what happens next by living in the present. That does mean taking one’s eyes off the cell phone and taking in what is happening in the real here and now.

  The next moment is coming. What will we each be doing with it?

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• Absolutely Marvelous

  Posted at 3:08 am by kayewer, on June 4, 2017

  In the second Godfather movie, Michael Corleone said something like, “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!” I have been pulled back into the comics universe, and it’s happening right in the middle of a cinematic battle between the two titans, Marvel and DC. Sure I read comics in my younger days, and I even enjoyed Blade when it came to the movies, but I had no idea this was going to happen.

  I went to the movies to see Wonder Woman last night, which is a DC offering. Previously I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Doctor Strange,  both Marvel productions. I don’t know if being an adrenaline  junkie helps you lose weight, but I’m on a steady diet of it right now.

  The best thing to happen to movies was CGI. Now anything we read about in the comics forty years ago can be brought to the big screen. On the other hand, that’s all that’s being brought to the big screen. All the trailers I saw in the theater were for action movies. Most are about other worlds or clashes between Earth and alternate universes, conflicts which need a ragtag group of outcasts to resolve, and enough one-liners to fill a guidebook. You know your world has gotten a little odd when you contact your IT guy and say, “I am Groot,” and they know you mean “I could use your help.” You also know you’re in deep when, instead of getting a sense of deja vu, you find yourself saying, “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain.”

  And if you don’t know what I mean, please do look it up. You’re going to be seeing these things for a while.

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• Under Construction

  Posted at 3:07 am by kayewer, on May 28, 2017

  I’ve decided to refresh the blog. See you soon with a new look (but the same writer).

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• Made-Up Holiday?

  Posted at 3:49 am by kayewer, on May 21, 2017

  I’m taking today off. It’s not a holiday or anything, so I’ll make one up: National Just a Saturday Day. Everybody who wants to can take off (unless you’re in the middle of complex neurosurgery or something). I’ll be back next week.

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• Top Negative News Stories

  Posted at 2:38 am by kayewer, on May 14, 2017

  I thought I had just one topic about which to blog this week, but suddenly I was overwhelmed by possible topics, and none of them were pleasant.

  I was ready to play devil’s advocate for Steve Harvey, the king of TV show hosting whose recent attempts to gain some privacy by sending out a memo about when and how to approach him became tabloid fodder. Hey, being a celebrity does not mean you sacrifice the locks to the bathroom stall doors; the man does need some space. I think if the folks read between the lines, he really meant that people should knock first; who really needs to make an appointment to ask in-the-moment questions when a show is taping and you’re on the clock? He had obviously had enough of asking politely because people just didn’t listen.

  http://www.etonline.com/tv/217372_steve_harvey_tearful_after_leaked_memo_did_not_attend_wrap_party_sources_say/

  I was ready to grieve with a parent of an eight-year-old boy who committed suicide following a school bathroom incident in which he lay unconscious on the floor for a while and was poked and kicked and avoided by fellow students.

  http://nypost.com/2017/05/12/video-shows-brutal-bullying-at-school-days-before-8-year-olds-suicide/

  Then along came a ten-year-old who provided a note with a list of bullies who had driven him past his endurance, and he also hanged himself. I had still been working on notes from the first one, which isn’t easy because I, too, was bullied (and repressed by the faculty), so I had to step back as a writer and work hard to be informative without going off on a tear and become morbid or hateful. The topic will have to wait a bit longer.

  http://6abc.com/news/mom-says-bullying-led-to-10-year-old-sons-death/1986682/

  Then there was the follow-up story about a parent whose son he named Adolf Hitler, who ran into a problem with a bakery that would not put the name on a birthday cake. It seems the dad has adapted the Hitler name for himself.

  http://www.dw.com/en/father-who-named-children-adolf-hitler-and-eva-braun-changes-own-name-to-hitler/a-38792953

  Then there was a story about a woman with overactive bladder who, while flying, was forced by the airline crew to find relief in a cup, then had to carry the cup in a walk of shame down the corridor to the restroom while the attendant said aloud that her seat would have to be cleaned by a hazmat crew.

  https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/05/10/woman-forced-to-pee-in-cup-on-united-airlines-flight/22080007/

  While I’m sorting all of this out, Mother’s Day is tomorrow. I hope all mothers out there reflect on the good things tomorrow. Maybe Monday we won’t have as bad a week of news as this past one.

   

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• That Light Bulb

  Posted at 3:21 am by kayewer, on May 7, 2017

  How many human beings does it take to change a light bulb? Or to put it into the context of my recent situation, how many does it take to process an online order for in-store pickup? At least five, but probably about eight to ten.

  I ordered a product online. Delivery was expected in a week. The day before the product was to be sent to the store, I got a text from my ever-vigilant credit card asking, “Is this charge yours?” At the same time, I got a phone call asking the same question. I was in a situation where I couldn’t answer either. Bad idea. Automation doesn’t care about what human tasks you are engaged in. The charge didn’t go through. So when I could get online I tried to run it through again through the vendor’s site. No luck.

  The next morning, I called the store’s customer service. After navigating the phone menu (which is designed to route calls but is not always a good match for how people communicate what they want), I got a nice person who, after a few minutes on hold, told me my item was in the store, and simply go and pay for it there.

  At the store, I went to the pick-up counter and provided my order number. The sales associate went to the racks of pick-up items and found nothing. The situation started turning into the famous “Gas Cooker Sketch” from Monty Python.

  She went to another associate to find out where the item was; he thought it would not have been shipped without an approval code. A third thought it might be in stock, in which case my original order could be cancelled and a purchase done with the in-stock item. After a fourth and fifth person chimed in, one of them actually went back to the stock room and found the item. It still had to be charged as a separate sale, and my original order cancelled. Who knows why.

  So there was the person who processed the original online order, a stock locator, a packer, a shipper, the transportation people, the stock staffers at the store, the credit card processor, the person who sent the phone message, the person who sent the text, and the five in the store.

  One item.

  No wonder prices are ridiculous.

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• First of May

  Posted at 1:27 am by kayewer, on May 1, 2017

  Tomorrow is the first day of May, also known as May Day. The term is known both as the date on the calendar and a distress call, but one has a history behind it.  Legend has it that in 1923 Frederick Mockford, a British radio operator, took the french term M’aidez, meaning “Help me,” and anglicized it into the term we know today.

  Of course, for those of us who work in places where the first of the month is a real pain in the neck, we will be calling for help quite a bit tomorrow.

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