It’s always fun to go into a new restaurant and see what the bathrooms are like. Some are very nice, some are small and rather “quaint” and some barely qualify as up to code.
I was in a hotel that had black mold on the shower tile and that one still qualifies as the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at.
There’s a business I get to a few times per year and the mens bathroom there has had a broken fluorescent light fixture leaning in the corner for several years and one urinal has had a bag over it just as long. And I have no idea what the womens bathroom is like. Not even sure where it is to be honest; it’s not right next to the mens anyway. I keep thinking there must be a nicer bathroom for employees someplace. Or maybe that’s just a ploy by the owner to be sure no one spends too much time in there.
I had to take pictures. Here are the signs on the four stalls:
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And the fun didn’t stop there:
Oh my….
Our townhall still has an outhouse. It’s insured for $500.00. Mens and womens side. Two hole-er on each! But no lights… plan accordingly.
First day back at work after a week and a half of stay-cation. By 3 p.m. I felt like I needed a nap. In my pajamas by 5:30 p.m. Hopefully tomorrow will be a little less consuming.
When have you needed a vacation after your vacation?
With humble gratitude for Meredith Wilson’s en-chant-ing opening to The Music Man.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Plastic for the orders.
Plastic for the downloads.
PROGRAMMER 2:
Visa for online.
Visa on the phone.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Credit for the software.
Credit for the hardware.
PROGRAMMER 2:
Credit for the needs, and the wants, and the bibelots.
PROGRAMMER 3:
Amazon for the hogs feet, cakes and longjohns.
Amazon for the crackers, and the pickles, and the computer paper.
PROGRAMMER 4:
Look, what do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
PROGRAMMER 5:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
PROGRAMMER 2:
You can script, you can program, you can script,
You can chat. You can twitter, twitter, twitter, you can chat.
You can chat. You can chat, chat, chat, chat, twitter, twitter, twitter.
You can twitter all you wanna, but it’s different than it was.
ANALYST:
No it ain’t, no it ain’t, but you gotta know the database!
PROGRAMMER 3:
Well, it’s Jeff Bezos made the trouble,
Made the people wanna buy, wanna get, wanna get, wanna get it in a box.
7,8,9,10,12,14, 22, 23 orders to the front porch.
PROGRAMMER 1:
Yes, sir, yes, sir!
PROGRAMMER 3:
Who’s gonna patronize a big box store anymore?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
NEWSPAPER READER 1:
Where do you get it?
ANALYST:
It’s not Amazon alone.
Take a gander at big box stores,
At the postmodern store,
At the out-of-date store
At the passe, postmodern,
Departmentalized big box store.
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
CONSULTANT:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 4:
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
What do you twitter?
CONSULTANT:
Where do you get it?
PROGRAMMER 1:
You can chat, you can twitter.
You can chat, you can twitter.
You can twitter, twitter, twitter
You can chat, chat, chat.
You can twitter all you wanna,
But it’s different than it was.
ANALYST:
No, it ain’t, but you gotta know the database.
PROGRAMMER 3:
Why, it’s I-need-it-easy thinking
Made the trouble
Need it easy, need it easy.
Put the order in a box, in a box,
What I-need-easy
In a box with a smile
Made the big box store obsolete.
ANALYST:
Obsolete, obsolete, obsolete
SALESMAN 4:
Malls out the window.
The smiling box
Takes the job of the sales clerk.
Closing all the stores.
ANALYST:
Who’s gonna patronize the big box store any more?
PROGRAMMER 3:
Gone, Gone
PROGRAMMER 1:
Gone with the mall and the outlet and the discount store.
Gone with the chain and the retail store with clothes on a rack.
ALL
Who’s gonna patronize a bog box store any more.
Big box store.
What are the long-term implications for America and the world, assuming I dare worry about the world?
I missed the “biggest shopping event ever”. Not only did I miss it, I didn’t even realize I was missing it. I’m talking about Prime Day on Amazon. Turns out that it’s a great big sale for those who are signed up for Prime. I noticed a story about it the day after it was over – the first I’d heard of it.
Turns out that 100 million products were sold with the FireTV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote leading the way as the number one seller. I don’t even know what a FireTV Stick is. The Echo Dot came in second. I don’t know what that is either. Apparently another big selling item was the Instant Pot multicooker. I DO know what that is. In fact, if I had been a Prime member and if I’d known about the sale, I might have been interested. But I don’t spend enough on Amazon in a year to justify the cost of Prime and getting a glorified pressure cooker isn’t a big enough incentive to change that.
But it makes me worry that not only did I now know that this event was happening, I also don’t even know what the top selling items were. Am I out of step with my own culture? Is the world speeding up while I’m slowing down?
I just don’t like meetings very much. If you have information to impart, just send me an email. I’m particularly bad at brainstorming meetings – you know, where you write down all your outrageous idea on post-it notes, or on huge sheets of paper stuck up on the wall. The moderator ALWAYS starts out with “every idea is valuable” and warns everyone not to bring up negatives.
This is hard for me. I’m a problem solver and when presented with a problem and possible solutions, my brain immediately starts working through each solution to see if it’s viable, if it could solve the problem. Of course, most of the ideas that get thrown out at brainstorming meetings are ridiculous and can easily be ruled out as good solutions – but only if you’re allowed to rule them out. As I’ve never been able to stop my mind from looking for the logistics in brainstorming meetings, I tend to sit quietly, taking notes. Luckily my boss knows this about me and she rarely asked me to take part in these kinds of sessions.
But boy, Build-a-Bear could have used someone like me in the meeting where they decided to run a “Pay Your Age” promotion one day last week. If you brought in your child, you could get a bear for your child’s age… and even if you were getting the bear for yourself, the cap on the price was $29. Here’s one of the many news stories from Thursday:
“Pay Your Age” could only have come up during a brainstorming meeting in which everybody had been exhorted to listen to all ideas fairly and not comment. It’s hard to imagine a lot of experienced business people not being able to think through the problems with this marketing ploy unless they were cowed into silence. How could they not know there would be an immediate and huge response to them basically giving the bears away? How could they not figure out that a few employees in the stores would not be able to handle the crush of customers? And how could they not think about the natural reactions of people with their kids standing in line for hours, being jostled by the strangers in front and behind them?
Obviously my observations are in hindsight, but I’m pretty sure if I’d been in that brainstorming meeting, my brain would have come up with a lot of reasons why this wouldn’t work – at least in the way it was rolled out. But would I have said anything or just taken a bunch of notes about how stupid meetings are?
It went pretty well; no serious mechanical issues and, once I finally got going, wasn’t delayed by the weather for more than a day or two.
I planted oats on May 6 and 7th. Then it rained for a few days but that’s OK because I was dealing with commencement at the college anyway.
Then I did anhydrous fertilizer on the 17th. Had college events the 18th and 19th. Started to plant corn on the 20th and finished on the 23rd. (Well, really the 24th, but the field I planted on the 24th is at the neighbors and it’s for the deer so it doesn’t really count).
Started soybeans on the 24th, did get rained out for a day and finished on the 28th. Now all that’s left is cleaning up machinery and putting it away until next spring.
Picture from trailcam of me applying anhydrous with the 8200
A view while planting corn
A view while doing fieldwork. From the “big” tractor, the 8200
m the 6410 tractor with planter, sunset and fields
Me in the 8200 with the mulch finisher, enjoying my work
That nasty anhydrous toolbar (applicator) and tank at the scene of the incident
There was the one incident with the valve on an anhydrous tank but it was pretty minor. Spilled really very little. No one was in danger and no property was harmed.
There were 3 fire trucks, our local ‘CAT’ (Chemical Assessment Team) the Incident Command Vehicle, two sheriff deputies, Gold Cross Ambulance, The “Incident Commander” and his car, a call to the State Department of Agriculture, another call to the state Duty Officer, a visit from the local anhydrous dealer, six fully clad firemen, and, a few days later, an inspector from the State Department of Agriculture.
Everyone was very nice and very professional and the firemen gave me a Gatorade when it was over.
But really. It was just a little vapor from a valve that hadn’t sealed.
And no breeze so I couldn’t manage to get ‘up wind’ and just enough leakage that I wasn’t comfortable trying to get back up there and try to tighten the valve myself.
I thought if I could just get 1 guy with a respirator, they could close the valve tighter. It wasn’t supposed to turn into a big deal.
But anhydrous is dangerous and can’t be taken lightly. Just today I talked with a guy whose brother got a burst of anhydrous and inhaled just a little. He’s got a couple small, minor burns (freeze burns) and was hospitalized for a couple days because of issues with his throat from inhaling that bit. He’s lucky too.
I pushed my luck a couple times this year. And I wasn’t even trying! But that’s a story for another day.
The news out of Poland last week included an item about a tanker truck that crashed and dumped its contents all over the highway. Its contents? Liquid chocolate.
Luckily it happened pretty early in the morning and no one was injured in the accident. But that wasn’t really the end of the story. The fire brigade sent to clean it up needed to bring in hot water because the chocolate was solidifying too fast to be able to scrap it up easily. And then the story went viral, hitting so many news feeds that people began to think it was a hoax. It’s even listed (and verified) on Snopes.com.
It’s straw bale time at my house – I’m doing the conditioning of the bales right now, which means I need to add fertilizer to the bales twice a day for six days. This morning I used the last of the bag of fertilizer so needed to stop at Bachman’s on the way home.
Just one bag of fertilizer. The first cashier was clearly just starting out and got hosed up trying to enter my “frequent buyer” number, so enter cashier #2. When I handed her my Bachman’s charge card (yes, that’s what I said), she looked at it a bit and then swiped it. The register clearly didn’t like that and I commented (nicely) that for the Bachman’s charge, they don’t swipe it. This didn’t help so she called over a third cashier who took the card. I mentioned again that it doesn’t get swiped, but he swiped it several more times but this time pushed some other buttons and got a completely different error message.
All of this was combined with profuse apologies from all three, who appeared to be high school students. Finally they called someone on a walkie talkie. An older woman came over and immediately said “Oh, with the Bachman’s charge, you enter this here and this here… you don’t swipe the card.” More profuse apologies. I was not in a hurry and wasn’t really bothered by the wait and the confusion, although it was really hard not to smirk and say “I told you so” about the swiping of the card.
My daughter is attracted by Name Brands. She would almost always prefer a Name Brand if possible. I’m not sure how this happened as I’m the opposite (although having just typed these words, I may have answered my own question!) With very few exceptions, I go with generic and cheap. I do buy Prell shampoo because I love the smell and Birkenstocks because how can you argue with sandals that you wear constantly and after 10 years, they are still OK. But that’s about it.
Except Kitchenaid. I had one of the earlier Kitchenaid stand mixers – the ones made back in the day when the company was still an offshoot of Hobart, the big commercial baking mixer company. Because I loved this mixer and never had a moment’s trouble with it, I bought several other Kitchenaid products over the years – all because of the name.
I think most of you have heard my sad story about my old Kitchenaid finally giving up the ghost and the new Kitchenaid not being as durable. I did eventually talk Kitchenaid into sending me a check for half of the amount that I spent on the repair, but considering the initial expense of the machine and the expense of the repair (not to mention my angst), I would not call myself satisfied. Not satisfied as to the durability of the machine, the length of the warranty on such an expensive appliance, the way my complaint was initially handled and the difficulty of finding someone to repair the machine.
So now I have to say that my love affair with Kitchenaid is over. No more appliances in my house based solely on the Kitchenaid name. And unfortunately I no longer believe that the new stand mixer will be the last one I own (something I thought at the time I purchased it). What this means is that my next stand mixer won’t be a Kitchenaid.
My father had a coffee shop and gas station where all the local working guys and sheriff’s deputies came for lunch. He also had a car wash that took up a lot of his time cleaning and maintaining. We had buckets of quarters from the car wash proceeds that my mom dutifully counted and rolled up preparatory to taking them to the bank. This was before the days of automatic coin counters.
My dad was pretty fussy about how his business looked, but he rarely, if ever, washed any of our vehicles. It was fine with him if I took a notion to wash the car ( I remember a brown Olds Cutlass) and polish it in the driveway, but it never at our own car wash. It was a waste of our money, in his mind. It was fine, and probably expected, that other people should wash their cars in his car wash, but not us. My dad had funny ideas about spending money.
I resist going to our local car washes until the dirt on our vehicles reaches critical mass. Husband likes to keep his truck clean. I could care less. I think I still hear my dad’s voice in my head saying “Car washes are for rubes. Don’t waste your money”. Like him, I am prone to fuss over small charges and not blink at larger expenditures.
What parental spending habits have you retained or rejected in your own adult life?
Trail Baboon 