Captivity - Day 76 Motel Hell

So we're minding our businesses, as we always do, in partial silence, and I'm working from home, enjoying the partial silence. Then I hear LOUD winds and rain. Then several huge BOOMS. Apparently is was raining. Well, too.

The BOOMS must have had something to do with all the neighbors, standing outside, with their masks and color-coded umbrellas. I think all the trees decided to go on vacation. They went down the block and embedded themselves  in the convenience store. It looked like a porcupine or that stupid Covid graphic.

Called Power company - all lines busy. Uh-oh.
It's all over the city and suburbs. They said it would be 24 hours for a fix. Impressive.
The guy who works at the provider said DAYS.
Ummmm.....

Mrs lefty said NO.
I can't work with no power (I'm powerless), so we found a hotel that was dog-friendly. Mrs lefty was absolutely in heaven because I had to register and she didn't have to listen to my extended grumbling about having to wear a *$#*ing mask. At least the room had a bed.

The dog was impressed too. She barked. At ridiculous times. For no reason. And when she barks, she won't stop, no matter what you do. So I went into action and slammed my finger in the heavy metal door. It was a good night.

You can't find or buy food in the area. Our power outage caught most of the restaurants (that weren't closed). We actually got voicemail at a pizza place. No convenience stores. Most traffic lights out. Even the vending machines were empty. It's 2020, people.....  Why did this happen? Some bizarre weather event we're not even supposed to get: a derecho.

While I'm at a virtual meeting, the dog starts barking again. I run to stop her, with my usual lack of success. Her mommy is taking her back home, but she has to change her clothes first (mommy, not the dog). I'm standing there, dog barking, missing my meeting, open-mouthed, because a change of clothes is needed. I was worried the car would start to fly and the hotel would turn upside down, cuz I wasn't dealing with reality - just watching it.

We're living in the Twilight Zone. More accurately, the Twilight Zone Hotel.
We were lucky... power was back early. All color-coded umbrella neighbors happy, and most of the trees removed from the convenience store. Dunkin was open, so frozen hot chocolates for breakfast and a thank you for staying open during the Flying AIDS crisis.


To recap, we have the Flying AIDS, looting, massive power outages, and the cicadas are ready to come out. The favorite tv show in America features furries, we can buy candles with the scent of Gwyneth Paltrow's vagina, Black Lives Matter has split with Looting Your Stuff Matters, and police are learning how to dance on a neck. The president came in with a long list of people he wanted to piss off and by God, he's nearing the end. His opposition fondles little girls and can't remember doing it (or much of anything else).  Maybe them there televangeelists have a pernt. Will there be beer in heaven? Will there be beer for those of us staying here?


So how's your day?





George Floyd, RIP, was contacted by a spiritual medium today. Asked what he wanted people to do in his memory, he said, "Well, peacefully protest. And loot. Definitely loot. Peacefully protest AND loot at the same time."  Asked what he wanted at his funeral, he said, "Oh God..noooooo.....not Al Sharpton!! He'll just make things worse! He didn't bring Jesse Jackson, did he?" Asked about racism, he said, "Sometimes it ain't about race. People see racism everywhere."


Idiot Governor says PA will move from red to yellow tomorrow. For those of you following along at home, he means PA will officially allow things Pennsylvanians have been doing anyway.  I remind you again: I didn't vote for this half-governor. We're being TOLD what we're ALLOWED to do. Not what our founding fathers had in mind.

Vote libertarian- you won't get this crap.

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.

It's About Physics

Apparently a member of British royalty is about to have a baby.  I'm going to get in trouble for this from my singular British reader but I completely fail to get the fuss.  It's like no one in England has ever had a baby before.  They're lined up outside the palace and Twitter is on alert.

Of course, some of these are female people who would wear entire horses on their heads, given half a chance.  That probably explains a lot of this.

I watched people at work congratulating a coworker on his wife being pregnant.  Now to the best of my knowledge, it was a fairly common, straighforward process.  People were essentially congratulating the good fellow for inseminating his wife.

Maybe it's because I'm not a parent (unless you count Marshall and Ren, to whom we did not give birth).

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Speaking of work, the Twilight Zone<tm>, where the law of gravity is merely a suggestion, is back to its former glory.  Since it's summer, the Philly area is dealing with its fourth heat wave, full of ninety degree plus days with outrageous humidity.  Historically, my office does not cool well (aside from all of us being full of hot air).

Finally we got the building manager to make a rare stop and evaluate the situation.  We figured he might be somewhat alarmed by the eighty degree temperatures oppressing the staff and perhaps he could come up with somewhat of a solution.

This is precisely why I hate optimists.

Our little Miracle Man jumped up with a solution: he was going to put in a few more fans.  You know, fans, to blow the hot air around a bit.  He swore that was the correct solution to our problem.

Undaunted, my boss suggested perhaps some air conditioners were in order.  We used to have some of those huge room air conditioners that looked like the robot from Lost in Space ("DANGER, Will Robinson").

Alas, no.  Building Man swore up and down that he was going to put some thermostats in the room to prove to us that air conditioners weren't going to cool the place down.  Thermostats.

Had my department told people they were wrong, we are right and let us do what's best for you, we'd all be out, in near one hundred degree weather, looking for jobs.


Oddly enough, this morning I arrived to air conditioners.  And no thermostats.

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But wait... not only do you get British Babies and Tales of Distant Air Conditioners, you also get The Great Coffee Cup Dance!

We have some decent coffee machines at work.  They grind the beans before serving you, which is pretty neat.   This week we got new coffee cups too.

The cups are a strange form of paper.  Most importantly, the cups are too small.  When you push the BREW button, it fills up the cup, then overfills it.  When you go to pick it up, you get the strong feel of incredibly hot, fresh-brewed coffee, burning your hand.

I let out a few choice obscenities.

I suspect our next corporate purchase will be water-soluble drinking cups (which dissolve when you put liquid in them).

The Continuing Saga of Tuna in the Home

Tuna has taken on important aspects in the leftystrat household; affecting both the bipeds and the quadrupeds.

One of the tasty ways to cut down on red meat is with fish.  We're all getting into tuna in both forms: canned and filets.  Filets are great because you can spice the hell out of them and cook them in a non-stick pan with no added fat.  And yes, it tastes great.

The serious furor in the household, however, surrounds tuna of the canned variety.  This is used for all sorts of things, like tuna salad (no, really?).  Another main use is to put it on salad to make it more interesting.  And let's face it - there's little one can do to make salad less interesting.

And when I say salad, I mean salad as [insert deity] intended it: mainly iceburg lettuce that comes from a bag.   By all means, add in some high-calorie, high-fat dressing while you're at it.  My wife prefers this horrible-tasting, very pretty salad (arrest that woman for attempted salad!), which I refer to as looking like someone mugged a flower garden.

So thus far we have learned that both salad and tuna come from the same place: the grocery store.

But wait - there's more!   For reasons I probably prefer not to remember, we drain the water from the tuna and put it in the cat's bowl with some dry food.  He eats it in less time than it took to pour into the bowl.

The dog, however, is loath to miss out on anything his sibling gets.  He still wishes he was an only child.  As soon as he discovered tuna water, he went insane.  Yes, some would say the disorder preceeded the water but let's not quibble, ok?  Marshall's favorite thing in the world is cat food.  In fact, he was given an American Indian name when he was little (Smells Like Cat Food).  The theory here is that tuna smells like cat food, so that's why he's ok with it.  Now we pour it over his food too.

This is all well and good but you have no idea what it's like around the old homestead involving the simple but important device known to all as the can opener.  Animals don't do too well with the abstract so they have no idea that when they hear the can opener, it could be opening something that is not tuna.  As soon as the familiar noise starts, both of them fly into the kitchen, in record time, to stand around the magic can opener, as someone is obviously opening some tuna for them.

The cat is quietly annoying, rubbing against me, trying to trip me, and ramming his nineteen pounds repeatedly into my leg, as if I'm going to forget him or something.  The dog it attempting to sit quietly and failing miserably.  He's so excited that his little stub of a tail is vibrating and he appears to actually be sitting above the floor, having levitated himself an inch or so.  He also makes little excited noises, which is greatly preferrable to ramming his forty pounds into my leg.

At this point there is simply no way to explain to the non-human speakers that this might not be tuna.  Or cat food.  Or even that rad cranberry sauce with the lines around it.  So they get tuna water.  Sometimes I have to open two cans.  Happier pets you have never seen.

Last night it was salad, naturally with tuna.  They did their little dance, got some tuna water and remained completely attentive for about an hour after.  Perhaps they were working on perfecting Tuna Telekinesis, whereby the tuna on my salad lifted itself up and flew into their mouths.  You simply never know with non-human speakers.

Half a can of tuna remained.  Looking at it in retrospect, this was my big mistake (there's that foreshadowing thingy again!).

Tonight I decided to make use of the remaining tuna.  Naturally it was nowhere to be found.  This is because of the unique combination of my innate inability to locate anything and my wife's innate ability to never put things in the same place twice.  So I broke down and asked if she had seen the errant tuna.

I knew I wasn't going to like the answer when she told me, "You're not going to like the answer."

It turns out that even before anyone had a chance to stow the spare tuna, the somewhat furrier of the house's occupants decided they had better uses for it.  I am led to believe that it took the form of what can only be referred to as Tuna Hockey.

The cat was up on the counter, nose-deep in tuna.  When my wife yelled and reached, he passed to the floor and the dog, who quickly and efficiently nosed the tuna tin across the floor while simultaneously emptying it of what he must see as Cat Food of the Gods.  By the time my wife caught him, the can was totally devoid of tuna.  Over in the corner sat two happy pets, busily licking their lips and paws.

Ha ha.

Screw me - I had to open more tuna for my dinner.  Which pretty much set the whole game into play a second time.



NEWS FROM THE TWILIGHT ZONE

The place in which I toil tends to make bad decisions.  In fact, if they could get paid for bad decisions, they'd be the most successful non-profit in history.

One of our extremely bad decisions was around copier/printers.  The hardware to which I refer shall not be mentioned by name (but rhymes with Dannon).  Combine slimy salesmen, clueless techs, and bad hardware and there we were.

Being one of the people who had to work with both the salesmen and my own people, I was in a good position to see how the machines worked out.  And by worked out, I mean didn't work.

I made my frustrations known up the line, figuring the people who make the decisions might benefit from some input.  By that time it didn't come as a surprise when I discovered we had signed a six year contract for these bloody machines.

We suffered through the entire contract.  Email went around every day about which units not to use because they were broken.  The copier technicians must feel the same way Windows technicians feel (they always have a job).

I know I shouldn't have been surprised last week when a whole slate of new machines showed up without notice.  It definitely didn't surprise anyone when the delivery folks didn't have the printer drivers and didn't know how to operate the machinery.

And no one said a thing when it was discovered we signed a new six-year contract.

Put That Blowdart Gun DOWN

That's what she said.

No, really, that's what she said when she walked through the door.  It was a lot more funny because she walked back with someone from a remote office.

Anywhere else it would not have made a lot of sense or not been funny at very least. But here in the Twilight Zone, where the Yellow Brick Road meets the Duck Pond, it was just another day.

We just got done getting blamed for all sorts of issues that weren't ours and were a bit edgy.  Someone had the foresight to charge up the radio-controlled helicopters so they were first in the air; the regular one followed by the dual rotor model.

After watching them crash a few times, as they tend to do, it became time to find objects that would interfere with their flight.  A long blue back-scratcher found its way into the flight path of helo one.  It was like the rocket-propelled grenade from hell.  The next flight got picked off by a clever shot of a pencil.

The guy with the blowdart gun (the longer one) was getting warmed up and ready to fire when in walked the lady....

"Put that blowdart gun DOWN!" she said, shielding the visitor from the remote office.


At this point, you're probably asking yourself where the department head is while all this tomfoolery is happening.....

He's the guy flying the first chopper.