Susan's Scribblings the Blog

Cruise ship ads feature couples and families, but some lines now want to cater to singles, too.  One problem, though:  no windows.

Royal Caribbean recently announced that it is overhauling one of its 22 vessels to include three “inside” cabins for singles, with no view of the scenery.  So pairs and families get balconies and panoramic views, but for those traveling (cue the dramatic music) alone, it’s a different experience.  Maybe the folks at Royal Caribbean want the singles to spend more time outside on the Lido Deck or something.

I’ve never been on a cruise, but I know people who have.  It’s an expensive and very socially geared way to take a vacation, with all the meals and shows and stops at exotic ports, all manned by skilled onboard hosts with degrees in hospitality and tolerance for any situation that may come up, like a lonely single traveler.

Of course, activities like shuffleboard have been replaced with rock climbing walls, surfing pools and kids’ animated feature themed package deals.  Disney has a huge presence in the party vessel movement, and for those folks who like a helping of Mickey and Goofy with their ports of call, I’m sure it’s all very nice.  I guess they’re not thinking of  Disney, “Love Boat” or Shrek when planning these single occupancy cabins.

Where are they finding room on an iron-clad vessel to squeeze in some ventless living spaces?  Do some  higher-priced suites lose their hot tub rooms or something?  When I first heard the news, the image of a twin bed and a TV tray came to mind.  And remember, they have to add a bathroom.

Maybe the cruise line will offer a channel on the television (which they also have to squeeze into that room) on which the single guest, trapped in their cabin pod, can watch the passing view from a camera mounted on the Lido Deck.

What do Anchor Hocking, Anna Sui, Indian Motorcycles and Slinky have in common?  They’re still made here, in America, by workers who want to make things here.  I don’t know how many things I’ve shopped for lately that don’t say “Made in USA,” but there are too many out there for my comfort.

I wanted to get a ceramic cup to hold my cup of tea at work.  I couldn’t find one that wasn’t made in China.  My favorite sweaters are made in China.  So many clothes are assembled overseas, you’d think nobody knew how to sew in the U.S. nowadays.  What ever happened to home economics in school?

I do (and have for years) wear shoes made in America:  SAS.  They come from Texas.  The factory had a fire a few years ago, but instead of going overseas they rebuilt.  If you go to www.sasshoes.com, click on the factory tour and watch a great video about making shoes the old-fashioned way:  by hand with skills carefully honed by experience and attention to detail.  That might be a talent most Americans seem to be lacking in an electronic age.  Folks overseas, though, get their hands dirty, and they do it for a lower paycheck and a simpler lifestyle.

Living in New Jersey means we should have garden ripe produce. but everything in the store seems to be shipped from someplace else.  I even wonder about the tomatoes.  When you can’t find a “Joisey Tomat,” you know some things about being American have gone to pot (but not one from American made Anchor Hocking).

It’s hard to get people to get back to me.  This week alone I’ve waited in vain for four emails and an important phone call.  A fifth email came back to arrange an appointment for my car’s regular maintenance check, and the sender referred to me as “Karen.”  That’s not my name, so it doesn’t count.

Last Sunday I dropped off an old roll of film–yes, some folks still have rolls in their cameras–at a new camera shop just outside of town.  The young man taking my information was nice enough, but it was easy to see that he didn’t feel comfortable filling out forms in pen using–heaven forbid–carbon paper!  He said the processing would take a few days:  by digital instant gratification standards that’s an eternity.  I haven’t gotten a call to say my film is ready and the pictures came out great or that nothing came out.  I don’t feel I should have to chase a business to get the full advantage of my in-person experience.  Besides, when dealing with men we all know that they tend not to call when they say they will.

When I call tech support at the office, sometimes they don’t call back for days or weeks.  They do tend to get inundated with requests for password resetting, error messages and the occasional Blue Screen of Death event requiring an ambulance for the computer and its owner, but would it hurt to at least type a quick reply like, “I got your question and I’ll get back to you this afternoon” so I know how long to wait?  I always ask for a “read receipt” so I know somebody opened my email, but it still involves waiting to get the receipt.

My college still hasn’t gotten back to me to verify my status.  Maybe they assume that I’ll just show up in a cap and gown on a date sent to me by psychic vibes.

I have a new idea for an app that could solve the whole callback problem:  when you send a message and expect a return call, you can program their phone to load a countdown  which, when it reaches zero and they have not responded, will ignore any vibrate or silent modes and launch into a full rendition of 1812 Overture which won’t stop unless the phone is answered.  That would change the course of callbacks for good.

Attending college can be fun, but it also involves a lot of waiting.  Whether you order books online or stand in the queue at the campus bookstore, pop into Starbucks for a coffee or the student office to update your ID card, there is always a wait for something.

For me, the wait is for the final word on whether or not I am finished with college.  It has taken an awfully long time to get one little degree, but I guess I can wait a day or two more.  At least I’m not standing in line.

Back in 1977, my guidance counselor told me, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t college material.   I applied to evening classes at the local Ivy League college anyway, and when I told the counselor that I had been accepted, I actually got a congratulatory reply.  Go figure people sometimes.

Ever since then I have gone to college whenever I had the opportunity.  Obviously there have been a few breaks, and it has taken me two Ivy League institutions and a county college to do it, but the end is in sight at last.  The results lie in the hands of my overworked (and often under-appreciated) advisers.  These people handle thousands of students every semester, and somehow manage to stick to a solid program of determining who has completed the necessary courses and waited in enough lines to get a diploma.  I’m on that short list.  I submitted my form last October and waited in cyber-queue for a response.  The line is moving up. . . .

I decided to start the year with writing just for the heck of it.  It may not be all that palatable, but first drafts are always a bit bizarre.

Once there were three pigs, brothers from the same litter, who set off in the world to find their individual purposes and identities.  Because they had grown up in the agricultural industry, they were familiar with animals and food recycling (what the farmers called slop), but they were also fascinated with building.  They had seen barns, homesteads and silos while growing up in the wallow, and they decided to each try their hands at the construction industry.

The first pig was the eldest, and he built his sample home from bricks.  The second pig used lumber to construct a log cabin style home.  The third pig kept ecologically sound building materials in mind and used straw and biodegradable materials for his home.

The head of the licensing board, B. B. Wolf, was a money- and power-hungry deviant with anti-pig issues.  When he arrived at the third pig’s home, he produced a jackhammer and punched a hole into the straw house, accused the pig of several EPA violations, and ate him.

At the second pig’s home, Wolf brought along a summons from a lawyer friend of his, accusing the pig of ethics violations because the notion of having people live as Abraham Lincoln did in the old South  might leave the impression of a recidivist pre-civil rights mindset in the housing industry.  When the pig came out to receive the summons, he was also eaten.

When Wolf reached the home of the last pig, he was impressed with the excellent quality of the workmanship he saw in the sample home, but his attitude wasn’t swayed one bit.

As he looked in the window and saw that the pig kept a pot of water boiling  in the fireplace, he set up an elaborate scheme against the pig.  He went to the wolf morgue and stole some remains, brought them back to the pig’s house and sneakily sent them down the chimney into the pot, then called the police to report a murder.  The pig was taken away for questioning while the forensics team tried to decipher the evidence.  Eventually the pig was sentenced to ten years in the pigpen, and the plans for the brick house were outsourced overseas.

Unfortunately B. B. Wolf never saw a penny of his ill-gotten brick home plans.  A diet of too much raw pork killed him within 18  months, and a building conglomerate took over the plans to build new brick homes in underdeveloped pigsties.

There is no moral to this story, but I wonder what boiled wolf would be like, don’t you?

2010 may not have been the best year for everybody.  For some people it has meant disaster and ruin.  However, time keeps marching, and life changes constantly for all of us.

For me, 2009 ended well, but this has been a terrible year.  I haven’t received much positive feedback on anything I have done right, and my mistakes might as well have caused the end of the world.  All my life I have tried to find a balance in which I could exist, and in return I’ve been met with ignorance, prejudice, avarice and cruelty.  I’m entering 2011 up to my hair follicles in all the interpersonal mind games people play with each other.  The man with the million dollars dies the same as the street urchin with a penny, but nobody seems to be able to stop the habit of trying to get more than they really need.  The big goal I had this year–finishing my novel, which would have cost nothing to do–I had to set aside, and the things for which I set it aside have amounted to nothing in return in spite of the expenses involved.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t see a bigger picture, but I know I won’t really be a part of it.  The world keeps turning anyway, so here are my wishes for everybody for 2011.

I hope that 2011 brings an end to the one-in-ten unemployment and more people find a job or a decent place to live that won’t empty their wallets.  I hope that some people outside the United States who have religious grievances against us realize that killing Americans doesn’t make them (the killers) better off:  in fact, the only way to prove a point is to let it exist in spite of those who don’t agree.  Every rule ever made in the world is only as strong as its exception.  We need to remind ourselves of that every once in awhile.

I hope that the American work ethic returns to America.  I loath having to buy products made cheaply elsewhere when we have able-bodied people here who could make them.

I hope that somebody designs a television guide that actually tells the truth about what channels the cable networks are on the converter box and what is actually on.  I also want it in hard copy:  I don’t want to scroll through 200 screens.  I’ve seen two guide magazines and subscribe to one, and neither of them is really useful.

I hope people stop picking on the elected officials and start putting two and two together to realize that we allowed them to be who they are, bad or good.  If the officials are cheating and nobody has the power to depose them, it’s our own damn fault for giving such power away in the first place.

I hope that newspapers and books don’t go away.  We need libraries and bookstores and tangible evidence of our history and life.  The electronic world is too easily eradicated or altered.

Last, I hope, as I have for about 45 years, that there are answers out there that will save me.  If I find them, I will save somebody else with them, too.

2010 is almost over.  It’s ending on somewhat of a high note for me because I got a B-Plus on my essay (see last week).  I like B grades:  they can actually mean a lot more than an A.  Sometimes an A means you didn’t need to take the course because you already knew what it was about, or you went as far as the instructor could take you, or it was just an easy challenge to tackle.  People cheat for an A and get it, and folks who sacrifice their health by not sleeping and cramming for exams over vats of coffee and energy drinks earn the A but spend a lot of time in poor condition as an added physiological interest payment more expensive than any student loan.  A grade of B can mean that you learned a lot and can learn some more.  I’m happy with that, especially at my age and considering the schedule I keep to go to college in the first place.

I shared the road with two drivers from Florida this past week.  After the toll plaza on the bridge I take to work, the merge lanes are so cramped, there is bound to be some jockeying for position.  In this case, the driver was well behind me because I got out of the toll lane first, but (s)he sped up and cut me off.  I sure hope they got to that fire.  The second Florida driver was in the right lane and realized that they had to be in the left to make the correct exit.  I never mind giving way when somebody has to change lanes, but this driver–not knowing he was making up for the other guy from his sunny state–slowed down to merge behind me while there was traffic coming.  I waved my hand in wild horizontal sweeps (the universal symbol for “come on into the lane”) but the car didn’t get in until the last minute.  Given a choice between the two, I’ll take the second one.  Mergers who hesitate tend to live longer than the faster,  jerkier ones.

On Thursday we had a surprise snow shower that dumped about an inch on our area.  Somehow the traffic grew threefold during that time, and all of them seemed to have had a simultaneous attack of brain damage, because the accidents and delays were horrendous for such a small weather event.  After weeks of unrelenting blizzards earlier in the year, one inch of snow shouldn’t faze anybody from the Northeast.  A drive that normally takes me one hour took two, and then I had to leave the main interstate and take a side road because the overhead signs warned of 90-minute delays into my usual exit.  I didn’t want to get home at 8:00 or later, but the exit I used made me rather nervous with its traffic circle and lots of–you guessed it–merging traffic.  I was certain I would at least ding a fender, but nothing happened and I did finally get home.

The next week will consist of last-minute preparations for the holidays and the end of the year.  Some folks feel it won’t come fast enough.  I just hope that 2011, even though it’s an odd year, won’t be. . . .well, an odd year like 2010 was.  At least folks might resolve to learn how to merge in traffic.

I finished my final paper for my Shakespeare class.  It was one of the most intense papers I’ve ever had the honor of tackling.  It took weeks of pulling research, preparing an annotated bibliography, suffering through YouTube(R) clips of actors good and bad recreating the Bard’s work, giving up on my goal of writing enough of my own fiction to meet the requirements of NaNoWriMo and (most important) losing sleep.  When I look at the copy on my computer, I still don’t know what I wrote.  I just hope the instructor likes it.

I had epiphanies at two in the morning that kept me awake long enough to grab a pen and try to jot down the inspiration without turning on a light.  Unfortunately if I had turned on the light, I would have realized that my pen was out of ink, and in the morning all I had was some scratches on a blank paper.

Sometimes an idea would come along while driving on the freeway.  That’s not the best place to be inspired, and at my age ideas that spring to mind one minute are gone the next, so they didn’t help.

The entire time I was writing the paper, I was besieged by the doubt gremlins.  I’m not a real writer.  I can’t get any useful information out of an online resource.  I won’t get 14 pages done on time.  The instructor will hate it.  All familiar bedtime companions, those gremlins.

I wanted to put some new spin on old ideas (really old when it comes to Shakespeare), maybe say something different that millions of high school and college paper writers on Shakespeare haven’t said.  In the end I worried that my “Pelican Brief” looked more like Ralphie’s composition in A Christmas Story.   Instead of a compass in the stock and a sundial (the “thing which tells time”) accessorizing that young man’s much desired BB gun, I was dealing with a handkerchief and a Moor.

I found out in class that everybody loved Othello, so my gremlins spent the rest of the week laughing in my ear because the poor instructor will likely be reviewing 20 or more papers on Othello, with mine either first to go and be criticized more, or last on the pile and subject to hopeful scrutiny based on how well or poorly the others wrote before me.  If they wrote too much fluff, I’m doomed, because mine will surely “put out the light.”

As a writer I always worry about the slush pile, that netherworld where many manuscripts go but few return.  Term papers are the ultimate test of what your writing says about you.  I’ve gotten good grades before, so I’m not overly concerned about A’s or B’s, but ultimately it’s the acceptance of what you’ve done, rather than the grade, that makes the writer sigh with relief.

It will take awhile for the grades to come in.  In the meantime, I’m going back to my fiction world and the promise of a completed story.  At least that’s the plan once the reality that the semester is over kicks in.

Sometime between last Friday and last week, a virus stole into our office and felled our staff.  After I went into the office on Black Friday, it took 72 hours for the sniffling and dripping to start, followed immediately by the scratchy throat and general cold symptoms that bring linebackers to their knees.

Amazing how such a simple thing can be such a pain.

Some folks in the office have bronchitis, while others claim the flu.  Whatever it is, it has managed to bring activity to a halt and make the folks at Puffs(R) and Kleenex(R) very happy.

Going to the cold aisle for relief doesn’t help anymore.  The good stuff (the non pseudo- cold remedy)  is hidden behind the counter at the pharmacy while the condoms are on display in aisle 3 along with the other “family planning” items.  Does everybody else feel strange going to the pharmacist to ask for Sudafed (R)?

The cough medicines are hard to decipher.  There’s one for dry cough, one for wet cough, one for phlegm, one for wet cough with phlegm, one lasts for 12 hours, one lasts for eight hours and helps you sleep.  They all have distinctive flavors, too.  Ever try cherry and honey lemon cough syrup in the same day?  If you run out of one, and the drug store only has the other, is mixing and matching flavors okay (especially if you can’t taste either one of them anyway)?

I wonder why nobody has come up with a nose blowing band.  I recently saw an article about a group that literally makes musical instruments out of vegetables.  Listening to people toot their noses across the musical scale, there should be a use for that somewhere.  Maybe I can look it up on YouTube. . . .nope, not there yet.

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.