Things We Didn’t Know

When we get the family together — kids, grandkids, cousins and significant others — my sister and I often learn things we didn’t know.  

This week we had an early Thanksgiving in Indiana, by virtue of the fact that I was visiting from California, and some of us would be in Florida in late November.  Plus, we never miss a chance to eat potatoes.

Before we sat down, we gathered in the living room of the house shared by my sister and brother-in-law and our parents, and my Dad said the blessing.  He started his Thank-you-gram with gratitude for my mother, his wife of 63 years, his two daughters, their children and THEIR children.  It was a supremely poignant moment and there was a lot of snuffling before he was through.  That moment alone was worth the indignities of going through security at SFO.

The menu included the traditional Midwest fare: A…(Read more)

Countering Optimism with Skepticism

He just does it to make me mad.

Keeper and I will be sitting in front of the TV, watching Anderson Cooper, and he will say, “Obama’s going to win by a landslide.”

”What are you basing that on?” I’ll ask.

“I read a lot. I am certain of it — it will be the worst defeat in history,” he’ll answer.

Then he gets this smug look on his face, the one that never fails to infuriate me.

Now, secretly I hope he’s right. Clearly, the polls show the Democrat is ahead. But what bugs me, and Keeper knows it very well, is that there’s no way to tell FOR CERTAIN how the election will turn out. Yet, he blithely makes “I’ll guarantee you” statements about events he has no control over.

Sure enough, my innate skepticism kicks in.

“What if there is voter fraud again?” I say. “Or what if people get to the polls, and…(Read more)

Juror #7 Reporting for Duty

The letter was from the Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo. Its meaning was clear: I was to report to the Hall of Justice In Redwood City on a particular date at such-and-such a time, no excuses.

Is there anyone who greets a jury summons with a “Yippee! Fifteen dollars a day and all I have to do is put my entire life on hold. Woo hoo!”

I thought not.

I put a note on my calendar: “CALL ABOUT JURY DUTY,” hoping that the call to the jury commissioner the night before I was due to appear would yield the welcome recording, “If you have been assigned to jury #1002, you are excused.” In my ten years of residence in California, I have received nine summonses and nine reprieves. I had never had to set foot in the courthouse.

Let’s skip over the part where I discovered I had written it down…(Read more)

A Celebration of Cellulose

As a person entrusted to provide your weekly humor quotient, I must say it has been difficult lately. Everywhere you turn there is bad news and worse news. It seems my grandfather was right — the world IS going to hell in a handbasket. 

All the more reason to find something to celebrate. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present for your partying pleasure…National Forest Products Week! (Work with me here. The other choice was “Evaluate Your Life Day” and now doesn’t seem like the best time to do that.)

Besides, we all love forests and forest products. Can you name some forest products, boys and girls? Wood? Paper? Very good. But did you know there are THOUSANDS of items we get from trees, according to the Idaho Forest Products Commission? On their web site (idahoforest.org) they list SOME of them–just enough to form a picture of a tree. (Awww.)

The list has…(Read more)

Don’t Box Me In

In nearly every job interview I’ve ever had, I’ve been asked “Where do you want to be in five years?” The lone exception was the guy who, instead, asked me how far I’d be willing to go to help the boss (him) de-stress. I sat there, stunned into silence, while he sipped his drink and formed his next question. I like to imagine that, if I hadn’t bolted out the door, his next question would have been, “Where do you want to be in five years?”

“Living off the huge settlement from the sexual harassment suit,” I would have replied.

The five-year question, I suppose, is designed to reveal a couple of crucial things without asking directly: will you still be here or will you quit after we spend six months training you? Are you serious about your career or is it a stopgap until you go to grad school or get…(Read more)

We All Have to Pay

As I sat down to write this column, my mind refused to focus. And who could blame me? After days upon days of being bombarded with bad news, writing something light and amusing is a challenge. And yet, I know you depend on me for that.

The list of things we’re supposed to worry about, itemized every day in the news, was so much on my mind that I decided to just get it all out. Psychologists sometimes advise writing down your worries and fears on a piece of paper and then tearing it up or burning it to a pile of ashes to symbolize letting go

I’m guessing that some of you have the same worries. Let’s try the write-and-release method and see if we feel better.

First on the list is the economy–as it is in every single headline or newscast. Here’s what bugs me the most. Keeper and I are…(Read more)

The People Have Spoken

The votes have been tallied (more than 100 as of this writing) and the people have chosen Change.

In the PC vs. Mac election, in which I vowed to let the public pick my next computer, it was a landslide: 84 percent voted for Mac, 16 percent for PC.  One outlier cast a write-in vote for Linux.  I’m guessing he’s voting for Ralph Nader in November.

The Mac fans were not content just to vote–they felt compelled to voice the reasons behind their vote.  Most often mentioned were the easy set-up, the short time the machine takes to boot up, and its superior resistance to viruses. The consensus was “Once you go Mac, you’ll never go back!”  Self-described MacAddicts use a lot of exclamation marks.

The Windows fans were largely silent on their chosen candidate, beyond commenting that it’s become the standard in the personal computing world and it’s hard to buck the…(Read more)

Things that make you say “Duh!”

Do you sometimes feel like you’re the last to know? Have you made an amazing discovery and then found out the rest of the world has known about it for years?

I was browsing through a book called “Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life” by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. It’s a book I wish I’d written–an amusing compendium of the author’s experience and wisdom, in alphabetical order.

I turned to the “J” section and came across Rosenthal’s musings on her husband’s name: “J-A-S-O-N. J-July. A-August. S-September. O-October. N-November.”

As crazy as it sounds, I had never noticed that the name I gave my older son 33 years ago was a mnemonic for remembering the order of the months, in the way that “ROY G. BIV” has helped billions of schoolchildren learn the colors of the rainbow.

I e-mailed Jason to tell him what I had learned. He replied, “How do you think I memorized the order…(Read more)

Life is Squirrelly

Bailout, Schmailout.  Let’s talk about something really important: celebrity squirrels.

If it weren’t for the fact that October is Squirrel Awareness Month, I would never have known about Sugar Bush.  More about her later.

Squirrel Awareness Month is the pet project of the Squirrel Lover’s Club, which boasts 2,500 members.  Personally, I fail to see how anyone could fail to be aware of the little buggers, but then I live in Squirrel Central.

With a walnut tree in the back and tasty flower bulbs in the front, my house is smack dab in the middle of a squirrel smorgasbord, visited by dozens of ravneous rodents every day.

Corky knows each and every one of them and greets them with an indignant yapping.

Except for the fact that they set off the Incredible Barking Corkster, I really don’t mind the little guys.  I find the tail-twitching beguiling and the paws-to-mouth nibbling adorable. 

We are blessed with a…(Read more)