It is Sunday, March 30.  There are only 226 days until my birthday.  I am not expecting gifts from everybody, but I thought I would give you plenty of time to shop just in case.  Today we remember the birthdays of Maimonides, Vincent van Gogh and Secreteriat.  On this day in 988, Boudouin IV with the Beard became the Earl of Flanders, in 1867 the US purchased Alaska from Russia for $7,200,000 (2 cents an acre) and in 1987 Vincent van Gogh’s “Sunflowers” sold for a record $39.7 million.  It is Seward Day in Alaska and Transfer Day in the US Virgin Island.

I have been getting a lot of calls recently from people who should not be calling me because I am on the Do Not Disturb list.  I got wise to one of the latest scams when the person called the other night and said that they were calling because I had answered a questionnaire regarding taking college courses.  I said I had not filled out any questionnaire and hung up.  The next afternoon I got a call from the same group, using the same come-on.  I decided to have some fun with them.  I asked why he was calling since I was on that list where I was not supposed to be bothered by cold calls.  He said they are allowed to call if people have filled out their questionnaire.  I asked him where this thing was that I filled out and he said it was an on-line site that I visited.

I let him go for a couple minutes (being retired I have some flexibility with my time) and then I interrupted him by asking where these classes were held.  I explained that I could not drive too far and it would have to be during the day, because I could not drive at night.  He explained that the classes were taken on-line and all I had to do was pay the tuition and everything would be set up for me.  I asked what the tuition was and he said it would depend on how many classes I wanted to take.  He explained that I could just give him a credit card number and they would take care of everything.  I asked if the tuition included the purchase of a computer and access to the internet.  There was silence from the phone.

“You see, I am 76 years old and do not have a computer.  Come to think of it, you said that I filled out the questionnaire on-line.  How did I do that without a computer?  This is starting to sound like one of those scams I keep hearing about.  Is my credit card going to end up being used by people in Albania or something like that?  I hear about this type of foolishness on the radio all the time.  What did you say the name of your company is again?  I think I’m going to have to report you guys for … “  Click.  He hung up.

As I said we are starting to get those calls more frequently lately.  I think I am going to have to start playing games with them.  I once had a company call me several times a week trying to sell me chimney cleaning services.  I finally told them that I did not have a chimney.  I told them I had it removed because I did not like the way it looked on the side of the house.  We get calls about saving money by changing our gas provider and our electricity provider.  I have decided that I am going to tell the gas providers that I am going to provide my own natural gas by eating more Mexican food.  As far as the electricity thing goes I may tell them that I am going to store up the static electricity that I generate walking around the house in the winter shuffling my feet.  For others I will just have to wait and see what pops into my head at the time they call.  The key is to start getting the company names so that they can be reported for calling.  One point I like to make is that if I need to buy something, I am not going to do it based on a phone call from someone who cannot even read my name properly.

These companies need to train their people better before they let them loose on the phone.  When I answer the phone, there is always a lag while they look at their computer for the note that says if a man answers, his name is William.  Usually, during that lag, I hang up.  If it is someone I want to talk to they usually call back and I explain that I hit a wrong button on the phone.  I do that a lot with my cell phone.  Well, not a lot, because I don’t get that many calls on my cell.  But I do have the problem with pushing the wrong button because they are all small and in the same area of the phone.  I even have trouble hitting the right buttons on my keyboard because my fingers don’t always hit where I am aiming … but I digress

If you are seriously trying to sell something to someone, your callers need to be more prepared.  You can’t have a 10-second lag while they figure out who they are talking to.  Even worse, if you are not sure how to pronounce a last name, don’t even try it.  Just call me William rather than Mr Edendin or some of the other futile attempts I have heard.  Based on what I hear, some of these people are in dire need of more training.  I have done sales training and managed call centers.  I would be happy to help train your people.  Just keep in mind that I do not go out of the country.  If you want my assistance, call me.

This week our fact tells us that a hippo can open its mouth wide enough to fit a 4 foot tall child inside.  I have had a number of candidates who would fit that bill during trips I have made to zoos with my son and grandsons over the years.  A few times I am sure that there would have been several people who would have helped put the kid in the hippo’s mouth and then stayed to make sure he did not get out.

Well, that’s it for this week.  Let’s all go out and have a folly in honor of Seward Day.

Welcome back!  It is Sunday, March 23.  There are only 277 days until Christmas.  I can’t wait until Labor Day passes so I can start decorating the house.  Today we observe the birthdays of Frederik Ruysch, Fannie Farmer and David Ford.  On this day in 1743 Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” premiered in London, in 1891 the first jazz concert was held at Carnegie Hall and in 1972 Evil Knievel broke 93 bones after successfully clearing 35 cars (although I don’t know if I would call it successful with 93 broken bones).  It is Memorial Day in Bolivia, Independence Day in Lithuania and World Meteorological Day world-wide.

Last week, when I was posting my blog, I happened to look at the stats for the previous week.  I noticed that three people had looked at it in Russia and one person in China.  I have to say that I was surprised by that.  Does it automatically translate into the language of the person viewing it or does that person need to understand English to be able to read it?  I am also curious to know how these people came to know about my blog.  Did they go to it intentionally?  Did they Google “inane rambling” and my blog popped up?  Just curious.  If you are from out-of-country and reading this, please comment to let me know how you came upon it and what you think.  Don’t be afraid to be negative.  It will give me something to talk about next week.

We recently began the task of cleaning out my parents’ house.  You would not believe the job we have embarked on.  Keep in mind that my parents moved into that house around 1949, so they had plenty of time to fill it with “good stuff.”  To begin the chore, I had a dumpster put into the driveway.  The dumpster is 8 feet wide and 22 feet long.  I am guessing, but I think it is at least 6 feet deep (probably more).  

My brother Jack and I started on Monday.  He was upstairs in one of the bedrooms.  I worked outside cleaning out under the back porch.  It took me over three hours to get all the junk out from under that porch.  I think that, based on the back porch, the basement and the bedrooms alone, that house could have been one of those reality shows on hoarding.  Jack found text books my father used when he was in college.  I do not know what he was saving them for, but I am pretty sure that by the time he had gotten out of the service they were out of date.

When we were kids, way back in the days of black and white TV (by the way, I hate the phrase back in the day), my father used to put up scaffolding around the house so that he could paint it.  Just for those who are interested, this was quite a chore.  First he used a torch to burn and scrape off the old paint and then he would repaint the side he had cleared.  As you can imagine, this was not a one weekend task.  … but I digress

The reason I bring this up is because some of the wood I pulled out from under the porch was used to build that scaffolding.  Once he had the house vinyl sided, I would have thought that that wood could have come out and been disposed of.  But no-o-o-o!  He saved it.  Why?  Who knows.  He had no plan for it and no need for it.  We did not have a huge stand of trees so we could not expect to build a tree house.  It wasn’t like he was going to use it to prop the house up in the event of a tornado striking it.  It was just that you never got rid of things “because you never knew when you might need them.”

My brother Tom claims that my father has tubes for making dynamite stored in the basement.  I guess he either expected to come under attack and wanted to be ready, or thought making explosives would be a good way to pass the time, if he ever finished painting the house.  We found shirts that were still in their original packaging.  Based on some of the stuff he wore, those should have been opened years ago.  Of course my brother Tom, who still lives in the house, continued in my father’s footsteps and amassed a rather sizable pile of, for lack of a better term, crap in the house.  We tossed several old, outdated computers and TV’s.  The back porch was loaded with junk that should have been tossed years ago.

Anyway, as I said earlier, we started on Monday.  By Wednesday, we had basically run out of room in the dumpster.  We were having that one pulled out and another one delivered.  We estimate that it will take at least four dumpsters altogether to get rid of all the junk in the house (no we are not making Tom get in the dumpster).  The key word here is junk.  There are some things that may or may not have value, but it is going to take time to unearth them. 

 

There are places in that house that I am not sure I want to venture into.  The basement is an example of that.  My father has stuff down there that was close to useless when he got it.  When his father died, he cleaned out that basement and brought the stuff to our house where it has languished since.  I am sure that if you go by my parents’ grave the day we start throwing that stuff out, you will be able to hear the noise he will make as he starts spinning.

One result of this major chore is that the lovely Elaine has already started making plans to divest our house of things so that we do not burden ourselves when the time comes for us to move.  She is of the opinion that we need to start going minimalist.  It will be less to pack, less to dust and less to get rid of later.  I try to keep myself dusted so that I can move to the new house when we go.

In the end we will empty my parents’ house, sell it and move on.  We will take our memories of the good times we had there with us, because they are the things that can never be thrown away.  The rest is just the detritus of the past.

This week our fact tells us that a female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.  That should not be a problem, though.  All she has to do is go by a ferret high school and the teenage ferret boys will be glad to help out.

It is Sunday, March 16 and there are only 35 days until Easter, so start looking for good buys on the pink ham.  Today we remember the birthdays of Andrew S Hallidie, Jerry Lewis and Erik Estrada.  On this day in 1521 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines, in 1869 Hiram R Revel made the first speech by a black in the Senate and in 1995 the Mississippi House of Representatives ratified the 13^th Amendment and formally abolished slavery (they don’t like to rush into anything down there).  It is Holi Phagwah in Surinam and Curlew Day in Umatilla, OR.

I don’t have a lot to discuss this week.  Sometimes people just behave themselves.  I think they do it to annoy me and to keep me from having things to go on about.  I do have one thing to bring up.  I was watching the Food Network the other evening and it occurred to me that some of their big-time chefs do not really cook anymore.  They claim that they are chefs and restaurateurs (note that there is no “n” in that word), but they spend so much time on TV that I do not see how they could be running a restaurant.

Just about every other show on that network has Bobby Flay on it.  Is this done intentionally?  Do the staffs at his various restaurants ask the network to keep him busy so that he doesn’t get in their way?  He is involved in several shows or is a guest judge or chef or whatever on others.  Frankly, I could do with a little less of him.

Guy Fieri is busy running around to all the diners, drive ins and dives, doing shows with Ann Burrell (who looks like she does her hair by standing in front of a fan and then using a can of hair spray), running around grocery stores, having competitions with Rachel Ray and, now, doing Rolaids commercials.  Have you noticed that you never actually see him cook?  I liked him when he was a competitor on The Next Food Network Star, but now I could stand a little less of him, too.

 Another person they seem to want us to see repeatedly is Robert Irvine.  He has had a couple shows and they all seem to be the same kind of thing.  I am sometimes mildly impressed with what he accomplishes on Dinner: Impossible (yes I know these are old shows), but his Restaurant Impossible is becoming boring.  It is always the same – he comes in, talks to the owners and expresses incredulity over how they have gotten to the state they are in.  Then he has them do a service and finds all sorts of issues. 

Next up is eating the food and his reactions are the same – the fake gagging, spitting out food, etc.  Next he has his designer come in and he tells her what he wants and doesn’t want.  We go through all the drama about not having the place done in time to re-open, the arguments with the owners about how things should be done and all the other repeated stuff we see every week.  He spends some time showing the cooks how to do one or two items for the menu (Note to Robert – PLEASE stop doing that goofy happy dance) and then we go to the big reveal.  In the end he has saved the restaurant, the family, their marriage and found a cure for genital warts.  It has become very formulaic and not too entertaining.

There are others that I could mention, people like Ina Garten who, while I love the recipes she has in her cookbooks, needs to start dealing with real people.  When you have a family come over for a meal and the kids rave about the cauliflower, you have to know they are not real kids or they have been promised some big things if they say how great it is.  While I am not a big fan of many of the dishes Giada de Laurentiis makes, I watch her show for the cleavage. 

Overall, the network needs to get back to cooking and stop all the contests.  I appreciate seeing a chef make a meal out of the bizarre items in the baskets on Chopped, but chances are I will never be stuck with only lemon grass, grape jelly beans, marmoset meat and radishes to make a meal so the show has no real meaning for me.  Besides that, I find the judges to be finicky, not consistent and a little ridiculous.  The rules do not require that they repurpose an ingredient, only that they use it, yet we hear the complaint that they did not change the ingredient.  Of course this is only sometimes.  There are occasions where they get credit for not changing it.

… but I digress.

As I said I don’t have too much to discuss this week.  I hope to be able to talk more about issues next week.  

This week our fact tells us that deer cannot eat hay.  They can; however, eat plants and flowers.  Out where my brother Jack lives the deer are particular.  One year they ate his flowers by color.  Their least favorite was purple.

Anyway, have a good week and be sure to enjoy the Curlew Day festivities in your area.  Oh, and a Happy Holi Phagwah to you all!

Today is Sunday, March 9.  There are only 78 days until Memorial Day, the unofficial beginning of pale old man legs and fat women who should not wear bikinis season (AKA summer).  Today we remember the birthdays of Amerigo Vespucci, George Hayward, Raul Julia, my sister Nancy and my daughter-in-law Marianne.  In 1562 kissing in public was banned in Naples and was punishable by death, in 1842 Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Nabucco” premiered in Milan and in 1942 construction of the Alaska Highway began. And yes, General Francisco Franco is still dead.  It is Baron Bliss Day in Belize, Amerigo Vespucci Day world-wide and in Memphis, Tennessee, Tuesday will be the start of the five-day Cotton Carnival.

I read in the paper the other day about the changes being made to the SAT’s.  I have a problem with this whole thing.  College Board officials said that the update was needed to make the exam better representative of what students study in high school and the skills they need to succeed in college and afterward.  If this is such an important issue, why are they waiting until 2016 to roll out the new test.  The last change was made in 2005.  By today’s standards, that test was out-of-date about five years ago.  By the time they come out with the new test, it will be time to change it again. 

 One problem I have is that they are not encouraging students to develop a strong vocabulary.  They are doing away with words like prevaricator and sagacious.  Why?  Those are good words and students should be encouraged to expand their vocabulary.  What I find interesting is that my wife was teaching reading to a group of second graders recently and one of the words they needed to know was exhaustion.  Now if those young kids need to know that word, why shouldn’t high school students know words like prevaricators?  

They claim that they are making the test more relevant to the high school curriculum.  Which high school?  Unless all high schools throughout the US are teaching the exact same curriculum, I do not see how that is possible.  Are they going to regionalize the tests?  If so, does that mean the results will only benefit a New Jersey student who wants to go to school in this area?  If that student wants to go to school in Florida or California, will they have to take the SAT for that region?  I understand relevant.  I also understand the need to create a test that reflects what a student has learned throughout their school years.  I just think that you can encourage learning and expanding a student’s knowledge and still be relevant.

As you may remember from other editions, I have a hard time with people who do not pronounce words correctly.  See if you can see what is wrong with the following passage:

The young girl was estatic to find out that her boyfriend was going to take her out for a hamager after school.  She was hungry and could not wait fer the end of the day.  She looked forward to the opportunity to exscape from the burdens of school.  She wanted to ferget about everything and just enjoy her time with her boyfriend.

If you were typing that using Word, five words would be underlined with squiggly red lines.  However, if you read it to most people, they would not notice anything wrong.  You want to make the SAT’s a test of knowledge?  Have students correctly pronounce standard, everyday words.  What gets me is that people who should speak properly do not.  I have heard the language destroyed by teachers, newscasters, etc.  I heard a weather person talking about the tempeture outside.  I heard a news person talk about an intresting story that was coming up.  People are always talking about how they are gonna do somethin or they kinda wanna go to the mall.

I have had people say, “Lemme axe you a question,” and I have heard women talk about a new piece of jewlery they received.  Home buyers go to realators to find a house, people receive alcolades for doing good work, they brag about how well their child is doing in kiddygarden.  They drop the g off words like runnin, goin, jumpin, doin, and on and on.  I may be picky, but really – is it that hard to pronounce words correctly?  Let’s start slowly.  Let’s just start using the “g” on the end of words.  That’s a good beginning.  Maybe people would pronounce the words properly if they looked at them and saw how they were spelled.  Maybe.

Please forgive my rant.  That has always been a pet peeve of mine and occasionally it gets to me and I have to let loose.  By the way, I had a pet peeve once, but it was eaten by my neighbor’s pet project. 

Am I the only one who feels that inanimate objects are not always inanimate and are really out to drive us crazy?  Here is an example of what I mean.  On nights when I take out the garbage, I empty the waste baskets upstairs into plastic bags.  A simple task right?  You pick up the can, insert it into the bag, invert it and dump the trash.  The problem is that just as the trash starts to come out of the can, the bag folds in on itself and all the trash goes on the floor.  What makes it worse is that it is usually when the can has a pile of ripped up paper in it.  The lovely Elaine feels that it is necessary to rip everything into small pieces before discarding it.  I guess she does not want people going through the trash and finding out that we do not use the coupons for driveway repaving.  But I digress …

The trash bag is just one instance of the problem.  I have had more battles with electric cords than I can count.  Why is it that no matter how I want the cord to be, it always goes a different way?  One time I was trying to put the cord for the coffee pot back behind the pot on the counter.  It did not want to coil up the way I wanted and kept uncoiling.  I finally decided to just drop it on the counter and not worry about it.  When I did it coiled up the way I had wanted it in the first place.  This kind of thing goes on all the time.  If you are not having problems with inanimate objects, don’t tell me.  Let me believe that I am not the only one.

Our fact this week tells us that a female donkey’s milk is closest to human milk.  What I want to know is why anyone would be testing that in the first place.

Have a good week.  I’m gonna be back next week writin some other stuff for ya.