Fun and Games Dept

Our friends (and I use this term with as much implied sarcasm as possible) at The Weather Channel® have continued the tradition they started last year of naming any sort of random weather event that might occur at any given time. They have solid naming requirements, such as “freezing temperatures” (during the winter, mind you), to warrant naming such an event. They’re cute names like “Petunia Partly Cloudy” and “Rinalda Rain Shower”. Sometimes they theme the names, for example, naming everything based on Greek Mythology, like “Athena Asshattery”.

The current weather storm that is allegedly gripping our nation during this time of thanks is called “Winter Storm Boreas”. Boreas is slated to bring us a whopping six-inches of snow (please, I’ve seen bigger) and temperatures in the low 30s. This six-inches of snow will be approximately 4.6% of the average annual snowfall expected in our area during the 2013-2014 winter season.

Give me a friggin’ break.

It’s bad enough that schools close now if there is a suggestion of snow in the forecast and that folks raid their local supermarket for any trace of milk or bread if there’s a few flakes of snow in the air. When did we become such a fearful, spooked out society? Another thing to consider: naming the storms has another detrimental effect that I think might be the inspiration for all of this: insurance deductibles and the like go up for weather events that have names. Name the storm, incur some damage, more money for the insurance companies. Granted, it’s not the National Weather Service that is naming these storms, it’s the very commercially-driven Weather Channel that’s doing the naming, but as most know, anyone capable of pushing a pencil for a living at an insurance company certainly has the where-with-all to quibble over the details of where a storm got its name.

What a bag of Wanda Wind.

The hysteria surrounding any sort of winter weather event in Central New York really strikes a nerve with me. When did we become such a bunch of weak sheep? Having lived 97.4% of my lifetime in some sort of Great Lakes snow belt, I’m used to snow. In fact, I like the snow. I don’t like the cold but I like the snow and while it does stick around way too long, I’m kind of proud of the fact that I live in an area of the country that has the largest single-blade snowplow in the world at an airport that rarely experiences weather delays due to snow, all while getting triple digit inches of snow during any given year. I’m not afraid to drive anywhere when there’s a suggestion of a flurry in the air. I know how to drive in the snow, I know how to live in the snow and I certainly know how to survive in the snow. If it looks bad outside, and anyone that has any sort of IQ level in the triple digits can deduce if it’s bad outside or not, I don’t go out. If I’m going somewhere, I put my phone AWAY and I pay attention to what I’m doing, where I’m going and what the road conditions are. It’s not rocket science. If it’s beyond your skill level, MOVE. I don’t need a person trying to find the bleakest, scariest looking scenario to fly to so they can go on camera and talk about a storm with a name telling me not to go outside. They should be saving the names for the big stuff, like hurricanes that blow buildings down and typhoons that blow islands away. This naming of storms that will bring six-inches of snow to the GREAT LAKES SNOW BELT is insulting to the intelligence of everyone involved. If we live in a world where we need everything gamified (after all, naming a storm also gives it that air of “it’s just a game!”) so that we can be distracted long enough to pay attention to the weather, then we seriously need a thinning of the herd.

Now I know that having a “winter event” during the Thanksgiving travel rush is big news because the whole airline travel thing is a big deal and nothing makes people give thanks like seeing someone else on a television screen sitting in a pile of luggage up to their ears in the middle of an airport terminal. But the fact of the matter is, people need to calm down and The Weather Channel® seriously needs to stop this idiocy of trying to drum up ad dollars by naming “weather events”.

I am at the office today. Per my routine whilst at the office, I just picked up a large, unsweetened iced tea at the local Dunkin’ Donuts. Long gone are the days where the staff was friendly at they smiled and said “thank you” and the like. Now you are greeted with a blank stare and airs of hysteria surrounding some sort of drama with the hot chocolate machine. There is no greeting, there is no parting message, just some punching of virtual buttons on a screen, money tendered and less money thrown back at you.

I’m starting to feel old.

Now because I grew up in a retail environment, I’m probably more sensitive to this than most, but it makes me nuts when a cashier hands me back a wad of cash with the coin laying on top and a receipt on top of the whole mess. I know we live in a world where faster is better, but come on, please at least pretend that you care that I am contributing to your low cost paycheck.

The total came to $2.86. At any other Dunkin’ Donuts it would have been $1.99 plus tax, but this is the Johnstown Dunkin’ Donuts and they have tea bags laced with gold or something, so we pay extra for the surly service. I handed the cashier a $20 bill.

1. She put the $20 in the till before giving me my change. WRONG. You lay the $20 on top of the till so that if there is a disagreement to the amount of change given to the customer, there’s visual evidence.

2. She put the $20 in the till tails up, which was contrary to the $20 directly underneath it. WRONG. All your bills should go in one direction. I always learned that bills went heads up and to the right, but others might have a different approach. It doesn’t really matter (actually it does to me) outside of the fact that all the bills should be going in the same direction. It just shows care and organization. Disorganized money means you really don’t care: you don’t care about your job, you don’t care about whether your drawer balances or not and quite frankly, I’d bet dollars to day old DD donuts that you don’t care if you’re wearing clean underwear or not.

3. She yanked out the change and handed me a wad of bills, coin and paper. The bills were in disarray (pictured above in the same state as received, save for the fact that I flattened them out) with the heads and tails going every which way. I threw a penny in the tip jar in order to make some sort of point (why does a cashier need a tip jar?) and I pocketed the rest of the mess. The penny tip went over her head because she apparently doesn’t know how to count. She didn’t count the change back to me because, again, it’s obvious that she doesn’t care if her drawer is balanced at the end of the day nor does she really care if I have the correct amount of change or not. While in the grand scheme of things this is all highly unimportant, this must be echoed in the fact that at that very moment, my patronage is not important. I’m not important. My unsweetened iced tea is not important and apparently the continued success of this Dunkin’ Donuts franchise is unimportant.

4. I received a glare when I mistakenly went to the “pick up area” to pick up my unsweetened iced tea because obviously that is all a ruse, everyone that’s anyone knows you’re suppose to fling your body over the discarded dishwasher delivery box that’s in the middle of the line (collecting Toys for Tots) and reach over the scalding hot coffee machines to get your beverage. Thus, the glare.

I was really tempted to dump my drink into the coffee machines but I declined the opportunity.

Here’s the thing. I know that the American Way, especially in the “progressive” Northeast, means to be as hostile as possible to others, especially in a retail environment. I get that. I weep about it, but I understand this. It’s the Millenial way and as a Generation-I-really-don’t-know-what-I-am, it’s not my job to question the ways of the wise. But would it really harm someone’s street cred to at least feign being interested in a task at hand?

Earl and I frequent a diner on a semi-regular basis. There are two hostess/cashiers at this diner and they work opposite shifts. The younger of the two flings menus around and tells us where to sit. When we pay for our meal, she tells us how much change we are receiving. I guess I should be happy that she counts at all. The money is in disarray.

The older of the two women asks us if the booth in question will work for us that night. When we pay, she counts our change back to us from total to tendered. I don’t have to do math, she doesn’t have to do math. There’s no math. We start at $18.84 and she’s going to count the change up to $19 and “one makes $20”. “Thank you and have a nice night.”

Is that really so difficult?

The blame of all this lies in my generation, the “Generation-I-really-don’t-know-what-I-am” set, because we have done a miserable job training these Millenials for menial tasks such as slinging hamburgers at McWhopper. I suspect that because there’s no trophy at the end of the day, they couldn’t care less. There’s nothing shiny, it’s just a job. They’re not getting promoted, they’re not earning stars, there’s no applause. Just a paycheck and that’s obviously not big enough, hence the need for a tip jar. ¹

Here’s a tip: learn some manners, at least fake interest in what you’re doing and for the love of all that’s holy, let George and Abe and Ben all face the same direction in the cash drawer.

¹ I hate those tip jars, however, I will tip at Starbucks IF the folks behind the counter are pleasant about their work. Otherwise, you ain’t getting a tip from me.

I haven’t thoroughly embarrassed myself in quite a while so I thought I would share this video. This song has been bouncing around in my head for the past couple of hours and sometimes they only way to get it out of my head is to just sing it out loud, at full voice. Normally I would do this by singing like crazy during a Jeep ride, but Earl wasn’t back from work yet and I didn’t know what our schedule would be afterward so I decided to just sing it in the kitchen. Because I apparently have too much time on my hands, I decided to record me singing it because I haven’t heard my own singing voice (other than in my head) in a long while.

I think I look like and sound like a can of Cheez Whiz singing this but then again, sometimes I have no shame. Proceed with caution.

So I woke up feeling kind of blue this morning. I was having a dream where I was trying to beat some sort of timer in an action movie. I was in a warehouse on the third floor and whatever needed to be attended to was on the ground floor. The staircase was open, and so, in slow motion with the appropriate sound effects, I jumped over the railing and with a descending whooo sound, I landed on the ground floor, ready to run. The problem was, when I landed I didn’t hear a bum-bum-bum-bum-bum sound trailing off, instead I heard my iPhone in my pocket making its cutesy alarm noise. This didn’t fit into the scenario at all. When I jerked around to see why this was happening, I was suddenly in this reality and my iPhone was making its cutesy alarm noise.

I didn’t leap out of bed this morning.

I turned over and realized that Earl is still away on business (he’s in Memphis) and that it was still dark and quite chilly in the house. Looking out I saw no signs of a sunrise, only evidence of a hard freeze. It was time to get up, get ready for the day and head off to the office.

Sigh.

I don’t know if it was the subsiding of the dream-inspired adrenaline surge, the darkness, the lack of a husband in bed with me or “weekend drop” that was making me feel kind of blue, but I was feeling kind of blue. Ho hum, off to work we go.

As I drove to the office, the sun rising on the horizon like it does on some sort of regular schedule, I came to the realization that I could either choose to continue to be blue all day and just get through it all until I could resume the urgent matters that needed tending to in my dream, or I could find a reason to smile, latch onto that and make the smile grow.

I took five minutes and pulled over on the side of the road. During this time, I opened up a note app on my iPad and I typed a bucket list for 2014. The list is short, rather focused in nature and definitely a subset of my bigger bucket list. For a few moments I focused on the future, and what I want to do with that future. That focus helped make now better. I smiled and I think the smile has been around for most of the day thus far.

The blue feeling feels a little more like a blue sky with sunshine this afternoon. Perhaps a small, simple meditative exercise is all I needed.

Now to attend to that bucket list.

This clip flew by on my Facebook stream a few moments ago. While I know it’s ancient in web users, I still find it hilarious… a good Monday pick-me-up.

My dad always had what we kids would call his “grungy hat”. It was a baseball cap of some sort and he usually had a couple of them rotating in circulation at any given time: he had a vendor hat that he wore at work, he had a piloting hat that he wore in the plane, etc. He rarely wore his hat in the house nor did he wear it at anything that would be beyond a casual gathering. In every photo I have of my dad piloting a plane (including several photos I took from behind him in the Piper J-5A), he is wearing his hat.

At the end of last year I found a hat I really liked. It fits perfectly and comfortably and I feel good when I wear this hat. It’s a digital camo US Army hat that I picked up in our travels. I have been asked a couple of times if I was in the military and I always tell the truth and answer to the negative by saying, “I’ve never had that honor.”

I started flying with my hat at the end of last year. I tend to not wear it, since it doesn’t really fit with what I usually wear as my flying clothes, but it’s always in my carry-on back pack and when I get settled in my seat I take it out and drape it over my left knee. It’s probably kind of silly in a way, but I do this because when my dad and I would fly side by side I’d be in the co-pilot seat and he’d be to my left. The US Army symbology works because dad had the honor of serving in the military in the Reserves.

The flight home from Minneapolis was interesting. The flight attendant, Dawn, asked if I was in the military and I gave her my standard answer. She asked why I had the hat and I told her it was my lucky hat because it reminds me of my dad. I told her that I always fly with it. As we got closer to the airport, the pilot let us know that it was going to be a bumpy landing and Dawn said that we should “remain seated to be safe in the turbulence.” I must admit that I have never heard a flight attendant word an announcement in that way but I was glad that she did. Everyone stayed in their seats.

As we approached runway 15 at SYR the plane was bouncing all over the place. The lavatory door was flying open and closed and I could hear roller boards rolling all over the place in the overhead compartments. As we were coming over Interstate 81 we felt a surge of acceleration, the conditions were too windy and we were going to try again. To the folks in Eastwood, yes, we buzzed you. I haven’t been on a plane that buzzed someone in a long time.

Everyone around me tensed up. A lot. This didn’t bother me at all, I’d been in similar circumstances in a much smaller plane and I know that pilots err to the side of caution. No sweat.

But boy did we bounce around.

The pilot announced that the wind gusts were too high and that indicators were showing bad, we were going to try again. We flew the pattern counter-clockwise, turning base, then final and bumping around like crazy again. Off in the distance we watched another plane successfully land. We headed toward runway 15 and we didn’t get quite over Interstate 81 when they pulled up again.

“We’re going to try again one more time. We have plenty of fuel. If we can’t make it on the third time, we’re going to head to Albany.”

People around me were getting really tense. I remarked, “well that makes sense, Albany is ahead of the front.” I was asked if I was a pilot and I answered to the negative (I need to rectify that) but I added that I had flown since I was a baby and had plenty of experience flying in a private plane, had even co-piloted a few times.

We flew the pattern clockwise this time and in doing so we buzzed downtown Syracuse and the Fairgrounds. It was wicked bumpy, much more so than the last time we went around the pattern. We turned base, turned final and headed toward runway 15.

The third time had to be the charm. It’s the way things work.

As we came in over Interstate 81 I knew this one was going to be the keeper. I had one hand on my hat and instinctively I had pulled my pillow onto my lap, apparently just in case. We landed left wheels first, then front, then right. The passengers applauded, which I usually think is silly but the pilots deserved it. The tension subsided and all was well, though as we taxied to the terminal the plane was still getting blown around pretty good.

I think tonight my hat earned it’s “grungy hat” status. I’ll be carrying it on all my flights and every time I do so, I’ll be flying with my dad.

It’s a Skyway kind of day in Downtown Minneapolis.

So yesterday my FitBit recorded me walking 31,409 steps or 14.4 miles. Since my plan for this weekend in Minneapolis was to do it all on foot (with maybe some mass transit thrown in here and there), I must say that I am quite pleased with how much walking I did yesterday.  My walking was about half and half indoor and outdoor: the weather has been quite nice and the Minneapolis Skyway System is very impressive.

I took a bunch of iPhone shots yesterday. On my way up to the river I stopped and photo bombed a photo that a man and woman were taking at this corner: she was throwing her hat up in the air like Mary Tyler Moore and I was standing next to the traffic light seen in the photo below, staring at the camera like the woman in the background of the Mary Tyler Moore opening. To my left is a TV Land statue of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat up in the air. update: I messed that up, we are looking at the statue and I’m standing where the background woman was.

The Nicollet Mall  is just starting to see the installation of holiday decorations.

My first panoramic shot with my iPhone, standing on the restored Stone Arch Bridge.

Other snaps along the Mississippi.

There’s all sorts of restoration going on along the river, and it is a wonderful thing to see. I really appreciate when urban planners embrace what they have and make it better when possible, instead of just ripping everything done and starting over from scratch.

A bridge to Nicollet Island. I found these power line towers to be quite interesting in design.

The hotel wifi isn’t as snappy as I would like it to be, so the rest of my photos will have to be posted at a later time. I am really loving this long weekend and I’m off to go exploring again. Perhaps I can hit 15 miles today!

So I’m in Minneapolis on vacation. It is just past lunch time and I have already walked 8 miles today. I’ll probably walk nearly 12 miles when all is said and done by the end of the day today.

I feel magnificent.

I am trying something a little different this weekend with my diet and actually eating my heavier meal at lunch instead of at supper time. I think the change of pace will help me sleep better and I don’t have to worry about nodding off at my desk, since this is vacation and all, so I thought it’d be a good time to give this a try.

I decided to eat lunch at the hotel restaurant. I am staying at the Marquette Hotel in Minneapolis and they have a nice restaurant called “Basil’s”, which overlooks the courtyard of the IDS Center.

As I sat there eating my lunch and enjoying a brief conversation with my server, Jan, I had a sudden “geek” moment. Where I was sitting all of a sudden felt very familiar. This theoretically shouldn’t be possible, because this is my first time eating lunch in Downtown Minneapolis. However, the pop culture geek in me kicked in and I realized that I was eating *here*.

In the opening credits of the later seasons of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”, Mary and her then-husband Grant Tinker ate lunch in the same restaurant!

So, while I don’t have a cameraman traveling with me, after being a complete geek I had to do an escalator shot, since I then figured out which escalator Mary was filmed on.

Earlier I quipped on Facebook that I had photo bombed a picture that a husband and wife were snapping where the woman was throwing her hat up in the air like MTM’s famous hat toss. My contribution was standing on the opposite corner looking at the woman, though I was wearing a winter hat and sunglasses instead of a scarf and cat eye glasses (I left them at home.)

I’m such a geek.

And I’m off to Minneapolis on Delta flight 3340. This is my first flight ever as a first-class passenger. This is a weekend of new experiences, and I figured this was a good way to kick it off.

As you can see in the photo above, I took a photo during takeoff, because we can now. At least we can do it legally now. Yay!

I have only one thing definitely planned for this weekend but there’s a lot that I am looking forward to doing in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Today is my only day with a rental car, as I’m going to be one of those mass transit types Friday-Sunday, so I’m going to drive out of the city limits and see what’s in the surrounding area today. One stop will be at American Time and Signal Company, a company that still makes clocks like the school clock/master-slave clock system collection that I have wired throughout the house. I tried to tell the folks at my alma mater that I could have used ATS to help fix the clocks in my elementary school, but they went with a whole new system 12 or 13 years ago. The one clock that was left intact (and that I got from the school) still works beautifully even though it’s nearly 80 years old.

First class is a wonderful experience. I am drinking diet pop out of a real glass. Lovely. Syracuse Airport did not have potable water this morning so there is no coffee or tea for economy class, but they were able to get two pots of coffee from the airport terminal before we left. Coffee and tea for first class. Since I’m enjoying a diet coke perhaps someone in economy can have a cup of coffee.

It is a gorgeous flight thus far. We are currently flying over Hamilton, Ontario. I can see the Buffalo-Niagara Falls area off in the distance. I’m waving to friends on both sides of the border.

Because this is an adventure I elected to wear my Dad’s flight jacket to keep warm in the chilly Minnesota autumn weather this weekend. Dad always liked hearing about our travel adventures, this is a good way to share new experiences with him.

Earl is off to Chicago this weekend to visit Jamie and then next week he is on to Memphis for work. We have another little getaway planned for December (let’s hear it for frequent flyer miles!) and then we’ll be home for the holidays.

Life is good.