Summertime

So it's summer, at least in the hot, humid tundra of the Philly area.  And since it's summer, everyone's fancy turns to line dancing.

Yes, line dancing.

How do I know?  Because I got an email at work, stating that we could welcome summer with some line dancing.

Don't look at me that way..... doesn't your company welcome summer with line dancing?  What kind of company do you work for?  Doesn't your Chief Line Dancing Officer send the company missives about line dancing in summer? Winter? Weekly?

The email goes on to say that Josh Weinstein was coming in to teach us all line dancing in two days.  Now how can anyone possibly prepare themself for glory that is line dancing in only two days?  It's simply not fair and way beyond expectations.  And it's killing me because I already took that day off.  Had I known about summer and line dancing, I would never have taken that day off, not to mention using the entire previous week to properly prepare myself for the Big Event.

Summarizing thus far, we have a black Chief Line Dancing Officer informing us that the Jewish line dancing instructor will be coming by to teach some line dancing to the entire corporation (brave enough to attend).

Did I mention that this Great Happening will be Happening during working hours?

You see, I work in the Twilight Zone, where the duck pond meets the yellow brick road.  And I am not making any of this up. Only the names were changed to avoid unnecessary embarrassment, not to mention wanton adulation.

Searching your vast database of line dancing (and we all have at one time or another), how many black people do you recall seeing?  And how many Jews do you remember teaching?  If you think about it, how many of us feel that Jews should be teaching anything at all that requires rhythm?

Before you start sending me Nastygrams<tm> about anti-semitism, I speak from experience.  Way back when I was young and full of misplaced enthusiasm, I owned a recording studio.  My singer had a bunch of his (Jewish) friends over to clap along with a song we were recording.  It looked like a very bad cartoon, with us having to instruct the friends to clap ON the beat, as opposed to AROUND the beat, NEAR the beat and mostly, AROUND THE CORNER from the beat.  As much as we wanted to send his friends around the corner, we all tried diligently.  And we failed diligently.  There was less rhythm ability in this crowd than Catholic priests who don't like little boys.  Stereotypes have to come from somewhere, you know.

So at least we have that going for us.

I'm trying to decide if there's any way I can jettison my out-of-town company and somehow get to work for this very important line dancing event.  I guess if I were smart (a pretty far walk), I would bring the out-of-towners to the very important line dancing event.  After all, they're from the South, which we all know is Line Dancing Central.  Not only don't they have Jewish instructors, they don't have Jews.  As Woody Allen said, 'I asked where the Jews hang out. They pointed to a tree.'

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Neato Job Tips #1:  When you're on a webinar with your coworker and their screen is being shared with a salesperson, do not send them obscene instant messages or messages making fun of the salesperson.  They will show up on the screen and everybody can read them.

Don't ask me how I know.

The Neighbor and World War Four

What a lovely day.  Not a sun in the sky, not a chance of sun for days and there's this old dude in the parking lot, loading animals into a big boat.  Don't ask me - I just report stuff.

I got a call at work a few days back from the wife.  This in itself is not odd; my wife only calls when it's important (or when it's twenty minutes past the last time she called).  It turns out this was nearly significant, though.  We got another visit from those nice folks from the township.

For those not following along, the last visit from the township was due to an anonymous complaint about our front yard being a mess.

Now when they say anonymous, they mean The Crazy Lady next door.  Crazy Lady is four-hundred thirty seven years old and steadfastly refuses to die.  Whether it's cancer or repeated replacement body parts, she simply stares it down and will not succumb.  One time she fell off her broom and broke her hip.  It was replaced within three days and she was worse than new.

The Crazy Lady seems to have two hobbies: gardening and calling the township on us.  It must be nice to have that kind of focus.  One time she claimed our bees bit her.

What makes things doubly confusing is that Crazy Lady has two personalities - Ok and Completely F*ing Nuts.  She'll leave fresh tomatoes from her garden on our steps, then call the township because we haven't raked the leaves to her specifications.

So Visit Number One from the township involved the messy front yard.  The nice fellow from the township seemed somewhat confused, as there was no mess in the front yard.  I explained The Crazy Lady to him and he got the picture straight away.  He shared an anectote of his own with me: somebody (guess who?) called the township because another neighbor had too many birdhouses on their property.  I suspect she has a red phone in her cave that dials the township and nowhere else.

Which brings us to Visit Number Two from our friends at the township.  This complaint was from yet another anonymous complainant (guess who?) about standing water in our yard.

Now I don't want y'all to think I just randomly blame people for stuff without any proof or that I think I'm psychic. The small bit of evidence that holds this theory together had something to do with a voicemail my wife received from The Crazy Lady, complaining about standing water.

Donning my Sherlock Holmes hat, Mrs. Watson and I connected the dots.

The fellow from the township and my wife were both a little confused, until she escorted him to the back yard to find the culprit: the standing water was the dog's little plastic pool, which gets refilled every other day so it doesn't turn green.

Everyone (except The Crazy Lady) was in agreement that there was no standing water on the premesis. When we mentioned that we knew who made the complaint, he said the call was anonymous and he couldn't tell us. Uh-huh.

Our grass, however, turned out to be a problem.  Why?  Because it was a little tall.  Not a foot tall, mind you, but tall.

How tall?  Nobody knows.  But the nice man from the township assured her that they had standards, even though he didn't bother to tell her what they were.  I suggested we paint a ruler on the inside of the fence, so we would always know how tall the grass was.  If the township said the grass can't be any taller than six inches, I'd adjust the mower to cut it down to five inches, then wait til it hit six inches again to cut it.  We could have them come out to measure it on a bi-weekly basis.

You may have detected that I have a problem with the township and you'd be right if you said that.  First of all, the weather here has basically two states: rainy and sunny.  It's rainy at least five days per week (in fact, we may be the new rainforest) and sunny rarely.  How anyone can mow with this disgusting display of wet weather is beyond me.  And did I mention that mowing ranks slightly above dental work on my preferred list of things to do?

The guy from the township claimed to understand all about priorities (my working three jobs and my wife physically unable to push the mower).  I get the impression he didn't understand priorities at all, as he said he'd be back to check.

I wonder if he'll bring a ruler or if his retina is calibrated in inches.

Who Was That Masked Woman?

As summer starts to heat up here in the humidity capital of the east coast, one's fancy naturally turns to sleep.

And sleep was what I was trying to do the other night.  Sleep was somewhat impaired by the sound of heavy construction equipment being operated by my wife.  Most people refer to this as snoring.

Normally it takes me a few rounds of poking and prodding to get the Snoring Follies to stop.  This night was no different.  I thought the task would be a little easier because of the warm body pressed against my back, so I shook, trying to jar her out of her snoring frenzy.  No luck.

Again I shook, nay, jerked.  And again, the snoring continued unabated.

So I turned to the warm body, intent on making my point more pointedly, only to notice that the warm body belonged to the dog.  The wife was snoring, all the way over on her seventy-five percent of the bed.

When we rescued Marshall, no one warned me that he liked to spoon.