Sunday, August 17, 2003
SUNDAY MUSINGS
Kicking back on a Sunday morning reading the NY Times and drinking a cup of coffee are right up there with the greater pleasures in life -- at least in my book.
Good thing the east coast blackout didn't occur on a 10-degree-Fahrenheit winter afternoon.... MSN had a very funny headline the day the blackout occured: "Ten Tips From Iraqis on How To Deal With a Blackout." Someone over in the news department has a sense of humor.
Most interesting thought in today's Sunday NY Times came out of the NY Times Magazine section. Walter Kirn talks about what globalization will do to the American middle class i.e. the draining of jobs to cheap-labor countries. He has a great idea that capitilizes on two things that Americans do very well: buying and using products. He says, "Maybe Americans should be paid consumers, retained by China to absorb the output of the factories that closed here and opened there but won't be able to stay in operation unless the American workers who got canned can purchase the things they no longer get paid to make. How about a Marshall Plan for Cleveland financed by Beijing?" Now that is a great idea.
The NY Times SundayStyles section had an amusing article about spoiled pets in the Hamptons (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/fashion/17PETS.html?8br) -- where dogs are treated to doggy camps, doggy play dates, baskets of toys inner city kids could only dream of, and a guy who writes out prescriptions for Clomicalm (antianxiety medication) from his van with a license plate that reads K9SHRINK. And out on the west coast where I come from? Try dog spas, acupuncture, and a cabinet full of vitamin supplements equal to the GNP of many a developing nation. Someone out there knows who I am talking about, right?
Also in the SundayStyles section was the Sunday selection of smiling NY couples en route to the altar (after which statistically 50% will be headed to the divorce courts). I remember a few months ago the big flap from the right (I think Ann Coulter led the charge) about the newspaper's new policy to also feature gay couples. I am frankly more concerned about all of the heterosexual couples who seem to be subconsciously choosing mates that look like they could be their brother or sister... It's positively creepy.
There were some glossy furniture ads that caught my attention enough that I just checked out their websites (I'm dreaming of deck furniture for the deck, and a new couch for the living room in my dream house that exists only in my head). The Stickley furniture website gets the Anna's Bloviations Award for smart, cost-saving, and environmentally friendly advertising/marketing. You can now download their catalogue as a pdf file (they probably figure that most people who can afford Stickley furniture will also have a color printer). I would only recommend further that they start using Zinio, software that gives you the same look and feel of reading a hardcopy print magazine or catalogue on your desktop.
Pay-back is a bitch i.e. the mountain of life that awaits you when you return home from a week-long trip. At least the house wasn't destroyed by my teenagers and the dog was still alive, so I have that to be thankful for. I know my nineteen-year-old didn't have a party here while we were gone because he has never once been able to cover up his tell-tale tracks well (bottle caps under the couch, sticky floor, beer rings on the glass table, etc., etc.). My daughter may have had a party but I have no conclusive evidence to prove that this was the case. I only found it odd that the upstairs toilet seat has suddenly become loose as if someone had been supporting him/herself by their forearms as they retched into the toilet. There were also a few streaks of hardened 'something' on the outside bowl that may or may not have been traces of vomit. Perhaps I am being unduly suspicious. The only reason I know about the icky stuff around the toilet bowl is that I had a sudden urge to clean the house top to bottom after I got back from London. I hope that this random act was just that and not some foreshawdowing of pre-menopausal hormonal spikes to come (how else to explain such erratic behavior). I was like a cleaning machine gone hay-wire -- cleaning crevices of the house no man or woman had been before (certainly my cleaning woman had not been there before). It was as if an obsessive compulsive space alien had invaded my body. I even dragged out all of the Oriental rugs, heaved them over the porch bannister, and beat out large quantities of dust and sand with an old tennis racquet.
An even better way to clean an Oriental rug is to take it out in the winter after there has been a dusting of fresh dry snow. You lay the rug out flat onto the snow and beat the back with a broom or tennis racquet. All the dirt and pet hair sticks to the snow (as opposed to ending up in your nostrils and lungs). I learned that from my days living in Austria years ago. The women in the apartment building where we lived were determined to make a good Austrian housewife out of me, and properly beating a rug was one of the many useful things they showed me how to do. First they had to scold me for rolling up my rug and dropping it like a dead body from my fifth floor window onto the snowy ground below (I just thought it would be easier than lugging it down five flights of stairs). But apparently throwing the rug out the window wasn't allowed.... I give them a lot of credit for taking on such a hopeless case as me. And I guess all of these years later, a few things sunk in after all, including a lifelong fondness for ironing. I still owe a story on that one...
Kicking back on a Sunday morning reading the NY Times and drinking a cup of coffee are right up there with the greater pleasures in life -- at least in my book.
Good thing the east coast blackout didn't occur on a 10-degree-Fahrenheit winter afternoon.... MSN had a very funny headline the day the blackout occured: "Ten Tips From Iraqis on How To Deal With a Blackout." Someone over in the news department has a sense of humor.
Most interesting thought in today's Sunday NY Times came out of the NY Times Magazine section. Walter Kirn talks about what globalization will do to the American middle class i.e. the draining of jobs to cheap-labor countries. He has a great idea that capitilizes on two things that Americans do very well: buying and using products. He says, "Maybe Americans should be paid consumers, retained by China to absorb the output of the factories that closed here and opened there but won't be able to stay in operation unless the American workers who got canned can purchase the things they no longer get paid to make. How about a Marshall Plan for Cleveland financed by Beijing?" Now that is a great idea.
The NY Times SundayStyles section had an amusing article about spoiled pets in the Hamptons (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/17/fashion/17PETS.html?8br) -- where dogs are treated to doggy camps, doggy play dates, baskets of toys inner city kids could only dream of, and a guy who writes out prescriptions for Clomicalm (antianxiety medication) from his van with a license plate that reads K9SHRINK. And out on the west coast where I come from? Try dog spas, acupuncture, and a cabinet full of vitamin supplements equal to the GNP of many a developing nation. Someone out there knows who I am talking about, right?
Also in the SundayStyles section was the Sunday selection of smiling NY couples en route to the altar (after which statistically 50% will be headed to the divorce courts). I remember a few months ago the big flap from the right (I think Ann Coulter led the charge) about the newspaper's new policy to also feature gay couples. I am frankly more concerned about all of the heterosexual couples who seem to be subconsciously choosing mates that look like they could be their brother or sister... It's positively creepy.
There were some glossy furniture ads that caught my attention enough that I just checked out their websites (I'm dreaming of deck furniture for the deck, and a new couch for the living room in my dream house that exists only in my head). The Stickley furniture website gets the Anna's Bloviations Award for smart, cost-saving, and environmentally friendly advertising/marketing. You can now download their catalogue as a pdf file (they probably figure that most people who can afford Stickley furniture will also have a color printer). I would only recommend further that they start using Zinio, software that gives you the same look and feel of reading a hardcopy print magazine or catalogue on your desktop.
Pay-back is a bitch i.e. the mountain of life that awaits you when you return home from a week-long trip. At least the house wasn't destroyed by my teenagers and the dog was still alive, so I have that to be thankful for. I know my nineteen-year-old didn't have a party here while we were gone because he has never once been able to cover up his tell-tale tracks well (bottle caps under the couch, sticky floor, beer rings on the glass table, etc., etc.). My daughter may have had a party but I have no conclusive evidence to prove that this was the case. I only found it odd that the upstairs toilet seat has suddenly become loose as if someone had been supporting him/herself by their forearms as they retched into the toilet. There were also a few streaks of hardened 'something' on the outside bowl that may or may not have been traces of vomit. Perhaps I am being unduly suspicious. The only reason I know about the icky stuff around the toilet bowl is that I had a sudden urge to clean the house top to bottom after I got back from London. I hope that this random act was just that and not some foreshawdowing of pre-menopausal hormonal spikes to come (how else to explain such erratic behavior). I was like a cleaning machine gone hay-wire -- cleaning crevices of the house no man or woman had been before (certainly my cleaning woman had not been there before). It was as if an obsessive compulsive space alien had invaded my body. I even dragged out all of the Oriental rugs, heaved them over the porch bannister, and beat out large quantities of dust and sand with an old tennis racquet.
An even better way to clean an Oriental rug is to take it out in the winter after there has been a dusting of fresh dry snow. You lay the rug out flat onto the snow and beat the back with a broom or tennis racquet. All the dirt and pet hair sticks to the snow (as opposed to ending up in your nostrils and lungs). I learned that from my days living in Austria years ago. The women in the apartment building where we lived were determined to make a good Austrian housewife out of me, and properly beating a rug was one of the many useful things they showed me how to do. First they had to scold me for rolling up my rug and dropping it like a dead body from my fifth floor window onto the snowy ground below (I just thought it would be easier than lugging it down five flights of stairs). But apparently throwing the rug out the window wasn't allowed.... I give them a lot of credit for taking on such a hopeless case as me. And I guess all of these years later, a few things sunk in after all, including a lifelong fondness for ironing. I still owe a story on that one...
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