November 21, 2009
All For the Good
There will be button pushing in pondring's very near future, as I adapt the right-hand column to the style of me.
The content is fine, but overall it's just too incongruent. Distracting. In an unpleasant way.
Posted by Angela Tanner at 10:04 AM | Comments (0)
July 15, 2009
I'm Also Really Good at Math
I’m a Libra. I have hope on one side of the scale, and cynicism on the other.
Hope, of course, has a density between platinum and osmium.
Cynicism, as you may recall from high school, is man-made, not at all noble, and has a bulk density just below feathers.
Hope. That he’s out there.
Cynicism. Do you want it alphabetically? Chronologically? And how much time do you have?
So the scales balance. As they should.
Posted by Angela Tanner at 08:47 AM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2009
Mom and Pop Shops
A week or more ago I took some earrings to the jeweler to have them reset. I took them to the same jeweler that reset them the first time.
When I bought the earrings they were on yellow gold, screw-back posts. I had them set in bezel-cut hoops. The jeweler I took them to has been around forever; a non-chain, and when possible I prefer the little guys get my business.
It was easier for me to hand over two carats to the local guy than to a large chain. Shrug.
So I had them reset probably seven or eight years ago, and a few months ago one of them bent when I got my comb caught on it. Not the first time it's happened. In fact it's happened so much that I took the earrings out. I had been thinking about having them reset again, and that seemed like a good time.
So I took them to the jeweler. I'm guessing it was Mom, of the Mom and Pop part, that wrote the order. Personally, I didn't understand the shorthand she put on the little envelope, but she's been doing this for 100 years and I have not, so I didn't question anything.
Yesterday afternoon while teaching my class (via a Centra session), my cell phone rang.
It was the jeweler himself. (My request was to have the diamonds reset into 4-prong white gold screw backs.) The jeweler said he didn't understand the instructions - he was about to cut off the hoop part and remount the yellow gold bezel setting onto a white gold post. He said that didn't make any sense, so that's why he called.
I simply said again what I wanted, 4-prong white gold with large screw backs. He said he didn't get the screw-back part either from the instructions written down.
So I'm glad he called. Cause otherwise those would have been some ugly earrings that wouldn't stay in my ears.
As it is, I'm looking forward to getting them back, because my earlobes feel naked.
Posted by Angela Tanner at 06:51 AM | Comments (0)
February 14, 2009
Eight is a Lucky Number
So I should be feeling really fortunate that I have 888 emails in my work inbox.
Somehow, I'm not feeling the luck. I try to keep it less than 600 but I've been in a non-going-through-email-inbox funk for, oh, two weeks and thus the scary statistic.
Working for a big company means that I get a lot of system-generated messages. I could probably get the number down quite a bit if I tackled those first.
Two deleted.
Next one tells me my time sheet is late. Unfortunately the code I need to get it done is buried somewhere in the remaining 886 messages. That just doesn't seem right.
Also unfortunate is that the two emails after that one are just begging to be deleted, causing me to skip the one I really need to address just to get the number down to 884.
(This could take a while and be quite painful.)
I have taken to the Twitter thing as well. And if I didn't have so many emails to go through, I'd consider trying to figure out how to get the (are they called tweets or twits?) linked up here. That way my sister will know that I have not fallen off the face of the earth.
(I've thought about it, but unless I can come up with a way to overcome the gravity aspect, it's probably not going to happen.)
And it wouldn't be me if there were any other outcome to the cute guy I met in Japan story. We sent emails, then graduated to a phone call that was, I will admit, pretty pleasant.
Which of course just meant that in the next email he'd ask me whether it was hard to get a green card, and a comment that he needed employment, it didn't really matter doing what, and how is the market here where I live.
Cue Queen.
Right on time.
In other news, I bought John Grisham's new book Monday morning at the airport, and finished it before bed Monday night. I had two other books with me. I finished Code to Zero right as I landed home last night, and started The Hour I First Believed last night before bed.
(Loved that he apologized to his mom for the use of the four-letter words.)
I was talking to my mom earlier in the week and, for the first time I think in my life, used the word fucking in a sentence with her. In context, the phrase was "fucking delusional" but I'm not going to get into the rest of the story. I didn't miss a beat, she didn't react, and we continued the conversation.
(I'm 41. I don't think she's going to come at me with a bar of soap.)
I used to buy books all the time. And I kept the books I bought, whether there was any chance I'd read them again or not. Now I try not to buy so many books, unless they are First Editions. But I read too much, and go to the library too little. At least I've taken to giving the books away instead of hoarding them. Primarily because I don't have enough room on my bookshelf to keep them all. I don't want any more furniture, and I can't abide stacks of shit (sorry Mom) around my house.
Apparently stacks of emails pose me no serious problems.
(There is a reason I have a whole category for random musings.)
Posted by Angela Tanner at 09:55 AM | Comments (0)
October 25, 2008
Maybe Your Bag Has a Better Attitude
Low visibility at the Atlanta airport yesterday had air traffic backed up quite a bit.
I was delayed a couple of hours out of St. Louis; missed my connection home, and so had a lengthy wait for the last boat out of Atlanta.
It happens.
It also happens that I didn't have my noise cancelling headphones on me. This means I eavesdropped.
Really, I'm not sure it is considered eavesdropping if the folks are talking so loud it's impossible NOT to hear them. I'd head out to dictionary.com but believe the definition to be incidental to the story.
One loud lady had missed her connection and been rebooked on a flight that was supposed to leave at 10:30 PM out of B11.
When they called for boarding at B11, she got in line, and then was denied boarding. She was told she wasn't on THAT flight.
She then started demanding answers from the gate agent and was going to stand there until she got them.
(Not the best strategy.)
(The simple sign the woman had overlooked was the flight number. They were boarding one flight, she was on another. The time, gate, and destination were coincidental, and a result of backed-up flights.)
She said that she had to throw away a two-dollar cup of Starbucks coffee at her departure airport because "customs" wouldn't let her bring it on the plane. She said she couldn't understand why the airlines didn't allow a hot beverage on the plane.
(Since she was coming from El Paso, I did the math lightening fast in my head and figured that she was simply unaware that one couldn't take drinks through security. The leap she made to that meaning one couldn't take hot beverages on a plane was congruent with the rest of her logic.)
(But it didn't make it any less cringe-inducing to hear.)
She continued.
Since the rental car counter at her destination (by now I know it's the same as my destination) obviously would close at midnight, she didn't know how she was going to get where she needed to be.
(In reality, the rental car places stay open until the last flight comes in.)
When the woman finally hangs up the phone, she tries to engage me and another woman seated nearby in conversation by saying she's going to write a letter to Delta.
I don't bite. The other lady does.
They loudly banter their frustrations. And woe at their delays. And angst at the agents unable to increase visibility to greater than quarter of a mile and thus get them home on time.
I smile and pretend I don't understand English.
Then see two pilots sitting a few seats away. One of them looks like a famous actor. I picked up my bag and walked over to him and smiled and said excuse me and asked him if people tell him all the time he looks like anyone in particular.
"Yes."
I smiled again, said I thought so, begged forgiveness for interrupting, and started to walk away.
"Wait," he says. "Who?"
Half hour later, we're still chatting. In English. He's a million miles away, conversationally speaking, from the two women across the way.
(To mention male, and really attractive could possibly be redundant.)
He saw my new tattoo, commented on it, then showed me one of his, which involved pulling aside his shirt collar, so I showed him my first one, which also involved pulling aside my shirt collar, thus causing him to ask what it means, I tell him it's October in Japanese, he says he always wanted something like that but was afraid he'd walk out with something that was really offensive, and not know it.
"I took a dictionary with me."
"Smart woman."
The conversation led to him telling me he was 43 years old, and my telling him I'm 41.
He said I look amazing for 41.
It was all I could do to not quote Austin Powers out loud. (Your stock is rising number one.)
The man was funny, gregarious, and upbeat.
Libra wins. He balanced the previous half hour.
He had to get to work, and I needed to get to my gate.
Where there is one harried gate agent, and a not-yet-opened flight.
I take a seat and wait. And watch. And listen.
To the guy standing behind me saying it's all bullshit.
And to the two guys in line at the podium who missed their connections and demand to know if they will have seats on this flight.
Mary the gate agent tells them they need to go to customer service to get boarding passes. The flight isn't open yet and she can't help them.
They think it's bullshit now too. But they do go off and get their boarding passes. Their places in line are now taken by a single woman who has also missed her connection and is demanding to know whether she has a seat on this flight.
Mary tells her the same thing, but the woman doesn't take her advice. Instead she storms around the gate area also claiming bullshit.
And pretty soon here comes the lady from earlier in the evening.
And the two angry men come back with boarding passes and loudly try to convince the single woman storming around the gate area to really, go down to customer service, they will give her a boarding pass.
The guy standing right behind me tries to engage me in conversation by saying he doesn't understand why they cleared standbys on the previous flight and he didn't get a seat.
I smiled and shrugged slightly.
(Because they probably had, as the sign says, more current day travel interruptions, a higher ticket value, or higher priority status.)
He turns to the guy to his left and that guy bites. They both bitch until the boarding door opens. Neither of them know where their checked baggage is. They both had been told it may not make it on this flight.
Libra steps in, I get upgraded, and sit beside a man content to quietly sip his double scotch on the rocks.
When we finally land home, I claimed my bag, and heard the man that had been bitching beside me in the gate area say he KNEW that his bag had made the earlier flight and again questioned why he himself, did not.
I pondered out loud that perhaps his bag has a better attitude than he did. The man didn't hear me, but the lady grabbing her luggage right beside me laughed and said, "no kidding." (The man had bitched loudly the entire flight home.)
***
I am absolutely loving my new tattoo.
***
I met two men this week that had been in accidents severe enough they needed facial reconstructive surgery.
***
One of the students in my class this week, a former teacher himself, said he had never seen someone with such passion for their work who could keep such consistent intensity and pace for eight or more hours a day for an entire week.
(Earlier he had asked me whether I was exhausted at the end of the day. I said nope.)
***
So, Fenway. Game four of the series, second home game. When everything aligned, I sent a message to my cousin who lives outside of Boston. I'd buy the tickets if he'd go with me.
Well, duh.
So we went.
Time of my life.
(I'll mention this because it was a first for me. While waiting near the park for my cousin, a stranger asked me whether I was American Indian.)
(People routinely guess Italian, and then less specifically Asian.)
So my cousin arrives.
Funny enough, he's wearing his red Minnesota Twins ball cap, and I'm wearing my red Minnesota sweatshirt.
There wasn't a question that we were going to stop for a beer before the game. The question was where, and he gave me my choice - hopping and loud, or empty and quiet.
Empty and quiet.
He knows just the place.
So we walk a short way to a beautiful old building, go inside, get Shipyard Pumpkin beer (very good, I might add), then go through the bar, through a heavy wooden door and out onto a beautiful private patio. Including us, there were two people out there.
It was empty and quiet. And an utterly beautiful night, weather-wise, in Boston.
We talked and drank and then walked to the ball park. Where, seated behind the pesky pole, we talked and drank some more.
(Of course it was an awesome thing to pass through the turnstile. I put my arm through my cousins's arm and he capably steered me through the crowds as I watched, not at all, where I was going and instead read every sign and looked at every brick and kiosk and face and shirt and thing I could take in.)
(Including where the bathroom was.)
(We put a substantial hurt on the city's supply of Guinness.)
(My cousin has his company's car service on speed dial, so I was chauffeured back to my hotel before they drove him home.)
(My rental car spent the night in Boston and was none the worse for wear when I picked it up the next day.)
***
I regularly read dooce.
Doing so recently reminded me why I don't feel compelled to deal with comments here on pondring.
To be offhand (as opposed to Off hand, which if you look up are two different things) it's because I really don't care what people would write.
To the good, or to the bad, your opinions are yours and you are entitled to them. Thanks if you like it, go some place else if you don't.
It's not hard.
***
So a friend I met some years ago, but haven't heard from in a while recently joined some social networking site. I received an email, not from him, but on his behalf from the site saying that he had put me on a list and I had to click a button or he would think I didn't want to be his friend.
A day or two later I got a reminder email from the site saying I still had not clicked. And my friend "was waiting."
Another day or two later I got another reminder email.
Torass.
***
Posted by Angela Tanner at 11:17 AM | Comments (0)