"We ran out of giss."

"About fiffteen minutes ago!"
The rumors are true. There is no gas in Atlanta. There is no gas for hours outside of Atlanta. In case you’ve wondered what it’s like when a city of 6 million runs out of gas, I’ll tell you. It’s pretty much the same as usual, only the gas stations are all closed (and in case you’ve wondered how a gas station indicates that they have no gas to sell, they signify this by pulling the prices from their reader boards). You can drive around town all day, and even out to the communities over an hour away where my coworkers live, but there will be no open gas stations. I was first alerted to the "crisis" by my sister-in-law in Utah. "Hear you're out of gas." Uhhh...that's news to me. In my defense, B was sick last week and passed it on to me, causing me to miss work on Monday and Tuesday. Apparently out-of-town towns started running out of gas this weekend (some stations closed, others with “only” regular—and only at one pump). This led to panic and runs on gas which, in addition to the fact that no gas is coming, has run the whole area dry. Since we didn't take any road trips over the weekend (because we were sick and already had fun plans here to suffer through) and don't have TV or internet at home, Wednesday, my first day back at work, was really the first day I could hear something about this. After she clued me in that something might be amiss (nothing SEEMED amiss) I checked out the local paper in the breakroom. In the "metro" section I found the article "Why We Ran Out of Gas." That same day I read about the potential crisis in Newsweek. It predicted we would be completely out of gas in about 9 days. They were one week too optimistic. But other than those two references, my daily internet surfing hasn't pulled up much national attention.
Somehow I keep expecting life—ok, specifically TRAFFIC—to be different without any available gas. Because there is no more gas, when people run out, they can’t get more. So, each day I drive to and from work and I look at the cars next to me and wonder who won’t be on the road tomorrow. SOMEBODY is on empty. I just KNOW they are. I believe that the roads will slowly clear and I’m looking forward to that. I’m hoping to be the last one driving! I will be like Will Smith in I am Legend. I’ll drive fast, using all the lanes in my 2003 Nissan Sentra! When I told my sister about my belief that my gas will last longer than anyone else’s, she suggested they should have some sort of game show/contest! Last one driving. Unfortunately, it appears that no gas is coming and when any gas DOES arrive, there will be MILLIONS of people on empty, which will suck it all dry in a matter of minutes. There’s also the panic problem. If gas arrived, people would fill EVERYTHING (all their vehicles, lawnmowers, and several gas cans). If they happened to see another station open later, they would top off. Crazy panicky hoarding. Because of this, the problem will take a while to work itself out, and who knows when the gas will begin arriving. As it is, we won’t be affected for at least another month. B bikes to school each day. I drive a 10-mile round trip. That commute, plus the 30-miles for church is only 80 miles per week. Grocery stores are two blocks away (walk), Braves game/airport/etc. we use the subway for, and we have two half-full cars to use! If the situation doesn’t improve in the next few days, I predict no one will be able to come to work by mid-week next week (except me) because they all commute ridiculous distances. No one wants to live in the city for obvious reasons, but it’s working well for this gas shortage. But, I admit that it is possible that there will still be no gas for the getting in a month; at that point, we will be affected. I’ll have to take the bus (if they are running) or walk 4.5 miles each way… I do wonder how busses and police cars etc. are getting gas. I also wonder how soon we will see this affect the food, since a truck may be able to get here from Kentucky or other locales with gas, but it won’t be able to get back out. Interesting things to think about, but so far there is no indication that anything is amiss—except for the blank reader boards on thousands of gas stations.

The Raptor

Those of you who know my sister might think it’s funny that I took this picture for her. I want her to post it on her blog because it would be funnier there, since she named the blog “tiffany-blue” after her lifelong dream to work for Tiffany’s. She has a picture of herself at Tiffany’s, pointing excitedly at the sign—it's on the blog; and if you ever chat with her online, the picture of “herself” is a picture of a Tiffany’s box. The good news is that I think our local Tiffany’s is hiring! But she may be too purist to post this photo, so I will do so here along with a fond memory of T.
T and I lived less than a block away from each other for three years at BYU. During that time she was acutely addicted to the TV show 24. No one was allowed to call or visit during the hour the show was on and would be severely reprimanded and turned out for forgetting this restriction. One afternoon T was in a panic because she had injured herself unknowingly during the previous night’s ritual 24 viewing. In order to watch the show without sacrificing her workout, she had started doing “calf raises” on her apartment stairs. Up, Down, Up, Down… Somehow she became entranced by what was happening on the TV, lost track of time, and never did recall just how long she had actually done them. All she knew is that she could now—a day later—hardly get around her apartment. “Just come down here; walking will be a good stretch for the sore muscles,” I told her. Half an hour later I called again, “Where are you?” “I’m still walking; it hurts SO bad; I can’t put my heels down!” The discomfort only worsened each day for the next week, her heels never touching the ground for the better part of the month. For days, then weeks she s-l-o-w-l-y tip-toed her way around and did her best not to let anything—even a mattress—touch the back of her legs. In addition to taking slow, tip-toed steps, she leaned her body forward slightly and tucked her arms in close in a “doubled-up in pain” manner as she laboriously transferred her weight from foot to foot. We liked to call her “the raptor” during this time. A week after the initial injury, I decided to find out just how many calf raises she had actually done. 100? 1,000? 5,000? She said she really had no idea. I went to my stairs and did 300 calf raises. The next morning I really didn’t feel anything. She was shocked by this. “So, I must have done more than 300?” Yep. LOTS more. It’s still a mystery just how many. My conservative guess is 10,000. A week and a half after the injury I actually convinced her to meet me at Target for some shopping. She agreed, reluctantly. When she called me to say that she had arrived and was walking in the store, I went to greet her and she looked almost normal! True, she still was the raptor, but her curious gait was not so noticeable behind the empty cart she was slowly pushing. Leaning forward as she slowly lollopped along, heels high, her shriveled arms were the perfect length to reach the pushing bar of the cart.

I joined. Have you?

I finally was able to get started on one of my life goals this weekend. This one has been a long time coming, and, unfortunately, will be a long time in its unlikely completion, but at least I’m on my way, which is farther than I’ve been able to get up till this moment. I am now registered in the bone marrow donor registry! This is no small thing. I have always wanted to be registered, with a life goal of donating bone marrow, but it hasn’t been the easiest thing for me to sign up—despite what they say. I’m a big fan of blood donation, organ donation, cord blood donation, and bone marrow donation. The problem is that even for the most common of these donations (blood), I don’t yet qualify. But someday I will qualify and I will have to make the time to go regularly. Although they won't let me donate blood just yet, they WOULD take bone marrow from me if I were a match for someone. So, I just need to get on the registry. But that’s the hard part because getting on the registry is as easy as signing up the next time you give blood, which is not so easy for me. Luckily, there is a hard way too! Just find a community, or church, or school that is sponsoring a big bone marrow donor registration in hopes of curing some specific person (or others) or in memory of someone who was not cured. Maybe these drives happen all the time, but I’ve only heard of one, and it was years ago and several states away from where I was living at the time. B has known of this seemingly unreachable goal of mine and last week passed along a flier advertising a sponsored bone marrow donor registration! We both signed up—me because I always wanted to, and him because he was there. I feel like I’m on my way! Now I’ll just wait by the phone. You should too. After all, I had to put down the names, addresses, and phone numbers of several of my readers (4, which is likely the majority) so that the bone marrow harvesters will be able to find me no matter where I go. [I realize that this post is just setting up the post I will make in three years detailing my supreme disappointment when the phone call comes…and it’s for B.] On a side note, they gave us these “I joined. Have you?” stickers. That evening we went to a big BBQ at our bishop’s house. He’s a heart surgeon and has a house/yard big enough to say, “everybody come over to my house for a pig roast. Bring your friends. You can park on my lawn” which by itself is kind of impressive (there were LOTS of people), but was large enough that we could play simultaneous soccer/football/volleyball games. Additionally there was the food, the pool, and 40 large tables with chairs. Anyway, there were lots of people we knew from our church and others we didn’t know who weren’t from our church, and I thought it was funny that B and I had “I joined. Have you?” stickers. Hey, this church of the roast pig isn't so bad! How do I join? My favorite part was having the bishop come out on the deck a couple stories above the law expanse and, using an electric megaphone, announce “There’s still 100lbs of pork.” [New life goal: someday use a megaphone on my property.] Apparently, a whole pig was “roasted” over a 20-hour period in some sort of pit that the bishop had someone build for this event. I never saw it and I don’t believe I ever ate any of it either. People had been singing the praises of the roast pig for weeks before the event. “You could toss a shoe in the pit the night before and it would taste good.” I don't think I got to try that pig [or shoe].
I wish I would have kept an actual hard copy list of life goals I’ve had and accomplished throughout the years. I still don’t have a list of the goals I’m working on, but the current and future goals are usually on my mind. Once I do them I will forget that they were things I wanted to do as they become instead “things I did.” Some of my current life goals include going on a pioneer trek. Not a fake one in GA with the church youth group. I want to walk through IA, or WY, or even OR (wouldn’t that be fun? Fording rivers like they really did on the “Oregon Trail” computer game?) somewhere that people in handcarts and covered wagons really went. I’ll wear a skirt too, and sing as I walk and walk and walk and walk…and…walk. I bet Grandma will want to come! Another life goal I have is to be involved with the Special Olympics someday. Once again, I don’t want to be involved as someone who shows up at the event just on the day of and cheers, but someone involved enough to attend meetings in the weeks prior to the events and has to be there early each day of the competition! I’ll stop now because the point of this entry is not to list all of my current life goals, rather it is to celebrate the near-completion of the bone marrow donation quest!

An Odyssey

A few weeks ago my hermit crab [ ] died. I’d like to write a little something about his 3-year-long life with me. He was a comfort and a joy to me from the beginning. He was originally given to my younger brother, who either grew tired of him after a couple months or felt that this crab (and his companion crab) was destined to be mine from the beginning. So, from whatever shores he was originally plucked, the crab was smuggled onto a UT-bound flight by my mother who cleverly hid him in a 35mm film canister along with other small non-living shells. The next year was spent in a rather hostile environment: dry air and extreme temperatures (a house in UT with little heat and no a/c). I have to admit that I always wondered if the crabs would make it another day. I placed the cage on a heating pad in winter, carried it downstairs in the summer, and continually sprayed them with water. Sadly, nine months after their arrival, over my 8-day Christmas vacation, one of the crabs died of what appeared to be thirst—at least, there was no water when I arrived home. The dead crab was spread eagle on the sand and our little survivor was racing around the cage in a crazed delirium. I always intended to get him a new friend, since, after all, hermit crabs like company—that’s what they tell you in the store anyway… But, realizing that hermit crab life was fragile, I held off, fearing that he too was about to kick the bucket and knowing that he had a BIG trip to make in the next few months which might do him in. A couple months later he spent a month in the care of my mother-in-law followed by a car trip from UT to GA. He survived several cage tippings (once in a car, once in a hotel, and occasionally falling off the back of our toilet). Once I asked B if he liked having a hermit crab and he replied, “I never even notice him except when I’m cleaning up the mess when his cage falls.” I noticed him all the time. Usually he was sleeping, often he was clawing at the sides of the cage, and sometimes he was hanging upside down from the roof. After his companion died, he enjoyed trading shells and successfully molted, as crabs are wont to do. He even had a short-lived nude phase. Two months before his death, I upgraded his sand to a fine, bright purple calcium sand. The cage never looked better. Perhaps it was just an unfortunate coincidence that he died shortly after the switch… In any case, I have no idea what to do with the rest of the 10-lb bad of sand. My only regret is not naming the little guy. I never could come up with the right name, and I did always suspect that the next big adventure would do him in. I think I will refer to him from now on as Ulysses.

We live less than three blocks from a large hospital, one of many in this city (and not the one that gets to brag about being the #1 gunshot-wound-treating hospital in the US). I drive by it at least twice a day on my way to and from work and I shop at the pharmacy across the street from the entrance. In the immediate vicinity of the hospital there are always lots of people coming and going wearing scrubs of all colors. Some are wearing white dr./lab coats over them. Some have hair nets on, etc. I really like seeing these people as they head to the pharmacy or to grab something to eat at Chick-fil-A or Wendy’s. I especially enjoy seeing them walking to work or catching the bus or (best of all) driving down the road on a scooter. A person wearing scrubs and a helmet riding a scooter to work in the morning is a delightful sight.

I think I get excited about seeing these people because I rarely get a glimpse of them in their “natural” setting (doctor offices/hospitals). I used to love the hospital illustration page in “Busy Day, Busy People.” Another reason I think I like seeing them is because I’ve always liked “outfits”—uniforms. If there is a special outfit, I will want it and have more fun doing the activity because I’m wearing it. Swimming is more fun with the goggles and cap. Square dancing is more fun with the bolo tie and petticoat. You make a better dilly bar with a DQ shirt on. Something about a costume… Uniforms make any activity (except Disneyland as a guest) all the more official and important (plus, if you work in a uniform, CHOOSING what to wear on your off time is so fun!).

Still though, when I see these be-scrubbed folk, I like to think about them in the hospital setting. Recently however, I’ve realized that, fun as it is to catch glimpses of creatures from that other world I never visit (thankfully), I don’t like the fact that they just come and go everywhere and do anything in their scrubs, when they are about to walk back into what I imagine to be a clean/sterile environment. It occurred to me that I picture scrubs as adding to the cleanliness of the hospital. After all, aren’t scrubs boiled in Clorox nightly? Even if they are, I see people wearing them, sweating in them, riding the bus in them, hanging out in the same chick-fil-a that I hang out in and then heading back to the hospital, and I’m suddenly quite worried because the scrubs can no longer be considered clean. I’ve been fooled all this time. I thought the doctors and nurses were clean, but really to the patient it’s just like they are wearing regular clothes. I guess the reason they wear them is simply to keep themselves clean. They just toss the scrubs in the wash, or into a boiling pot of water, with no special care instructions. No trips to the dry cleaner. Certainly, keeping yourself clean from the patients is important (and could be accomplished equally well through any other clothing, all of which would act as a “barrier”), but it does not seem as important as keeping the patients clean from everything “out there.” Basically, the hospital staff could be showing up to work wearing jeans, t-shirts, pajamas (easy to do if you sleep in scrubs anyway), anything! And I think this is gross.

To Infinity (then back to earth)

Because B can’t pursue one of his favorite hobbies right now (model airplane flying—his planes are in UT and we have no idea how to transport them. Shipping won’t work because they are too fragile; driving them won’t work because they are too big; flying them out [we drive the car and hang out the window with the controls and they fly 3000 miles] would be too slow) we decided to try something else fun: rockets. I had never launched rockets before, but it sounded easy enough. You order them from a catalogue along with a launch pad and motors. Then you put them together according to the instruction (add stickers/paint, if desired) and take them to a large open area for launching. The rocket will shoot several hundred feet into the air, break apart, and a parachute will come out of the body to slow its descent back to earth (preventing injury to spectators and rocket). Then you stick another motor in and launch them again! B sent me several rocket catalogues at work, but each rocket is pretty much the same as the next, or so I thought, until I saw the MEAN MACHINE. It’s over six feet tall! I told B that’s the one I wanted. Wouldn’t that be a cool sight to see something so big being shot into the sky? We also ordered a regular little rocket [so small you can't even see it in M's hand in the picture above], which would go almost twice as high (1500ft). We’ve had run-ins with a not-so-friendly neighborhood police officer, so I called the police department (from my office, of course—like, I would do something like that on my cell phone since we were going to shoot them off whether or not the police department said it was allowed) to make sure we were allowed to do this (or at least not prohibited) and they almost said it was ok. The only trouble was finding a clearing to shoot them off in. This is Atlanta and it’s a jungle down here, literally. I love it. You have no idea you are in the city. The huge trees and vines that grow everywhere don’t allow for any large open spaces so we decided our neighborhood dog park, though not ideal, would be the best launching site. The dog park is long and narrow, so if the rocket drifted north or south in its descent, we would be able to recover it—east or west we were certain to lose it to the trees. We decided to cut a big hole in the parachute of the small high-flying rocket to speed its descent so that it would not drift too far away. The Mean Machine was not going to fly as high, so we figured it would be ok. Witnesses to the launch include myself, B, our friend K (who was staying with us for a couple days on an extended layover from Paris to CA), M & M (M goes to GT with B in the Aerospace department; M is his wife), and about a dozen uncertain spectators with their dogs watching from a very safe distance. We had five motors so that, barring losing a rocket to the trees, each of us would be able to work the controls (that is, would be able to push the “LAUNCH” button) once. I was a little surprised that the cord running from the control to the rocket was nearly 20 feet long and that when I asked if I should hold the launch pad steady I was told that it would be “dangerous.” So, you can imagine how my jaw dropped when we shot the first rocket (the Mean Machine) and I saw the flames shooting out the bottom as it wizzed upward like a missile. It was SO fast. In about 1 second the 6 1/2 foot thing was hundreds of feet in the air and climbing. Would the parachute deploy? As soon as it launched (during that first second) I immediately thought “this was a bad idea; I can’t believe we’re doing this.” I guess I had pictured the rocket ascending at a slower rate. Well, the parachute did deploy and the rocket fell right into the tops of the trees. Yes, we lost the Mean Machine on its first launch. It’s still up there too. We’ve walked by to check on it twice. The trouble was that there was a wind we didn’t account for. We felt and saw nothing from our vantage point. But way up there, a wind was blowing westward. So, we compensated for that wind with the little rocket by shooting it at an angle into the eastern sky. This time it almost landed in the field. B & M spent half an hour trying to get it out of the tree it landed in and were ultimately successful (sort of). We couldn’t see them in the “jungle” but we could hear them talking and shaking/breaking things. They emerged completely wet. They looked like they'd been in the creek, but it was only sweat. But they had the little rocket! Well…most of it. They managed to get the rocket body, but the nose cone and parachute were lost causes. A rocket without a nose cone will probably have some “drag” problems (the body is basically a hollow paper towel roll) and will not fly as straight, and, well, you can guess what happens without a parachute. But they launched it anyway. We began this adventure nearly at dusk, and by this time it was getting downright dim outside. We saw the rocket go up, but we never saw it come down. It just…disappeared. Not exactly the rocket night we had planned, but still spectacular in its way. Worth $20/launch (because of our lost capital)? Only this time.

How to get out of your cell phone contract...

A. Without even trying!
B. With no early cancellation fee!
C. And make money doing it!
D. All of the above

The correct answer is “D. All of the above.”

I got a message a couple days ago from our cell phone company (which will remain nameless, because, after all, all cell phone companies really are the same) asking us to please consider taking our business somewhere else. They have even offered to waive the early cancellation fee and are helping to find a better company for our needs. Now, we had not considered switching and our contract still has 14 months left with our current company, but if we will agree to leave [soon], they will also sweeten our parting by paying our final month’s bill for us. Can anyone guess how we got the company to this point? (Answer coming soon!)

A Side Story

While I was trying to think of a quote for the events described in yesterday's post, “the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord” came to mind, and I decided to conclude the post with that sentiment. I thought it could be traced to the book of Job, but as I searched the Bible for “giveth” nothing came up in Job and none of the other “giveths” were like the scripture I was looking for. Maybe it's not scripture, I thought. So, I asked my coworker if such a phrase sounded familiar to her, and she said, “Isn’t that a song?” Sure…on the same album as “Dust in the Wind,” probably. Eventually, Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal Church in San Francisco, straightened things out. Apparently the Renaissance conjugation of “giveth” and “taketh” is common when this scripture is quoted. But really, it’s printed as “gave” and “hath taken.” No wonder I couldn’t find it. It’s Job 1:21. Anyway, the events described in the post below are not the only events that relate to it. At church, B has just received a new assignment. This is tragic for him because the assignment he has had through the last year and a half has been with the youth group—particularly the teenage boys. B loves this and is very good at it. I was assigned to help with the youth group for the first six months here, but then I was pulled out and given a new assignment. Although I was devastated at the time (A. I took the dismissal personally, and B. I liked being with the teenage girls), my new assignment is SO MUCH BETTER. I’ve been with the kids (ages 3 to 11) since January and I love it. I’m much better at this and I enjoy it much more. It’s just a good fit. The funny thing is that it’s something I had never considered doing before they asked me. I’m in charge of singing time. Yes, I teach children songs and motivate them to sing with gusto! We have a great time and it’s a LOT of work. I get to be creative and I love the fact that it’s all up to me. No one tells me how to do it. But back to B. He now has the job of teaching Sunday School which is his most feared and least favorite of all possible church assignments. He’s had to do this in other places he’s lived, so he knows what it’s like and hates it. It was obvious when he was being asked to do this that he was in despair, so the counselor offered to change the assignment to only teaching every other week. After all, as he said, “This is a popular assignment, so there won’t be any trouble finding a second teacher.” B about died. “Popular????? People are crazy!” I told him to take this as a huge compliment. Out of our massive congregation (there have been rumors of a possible split) with lots of great and smart and talented people, they asked HIM to be the Sunday School teacher (GD). That’s a huge compliment. They didn’t ask ME. They might think I’m crazy for all we know. But not him! Mazal Tov!

Rich Girl, Poor Girl

My boss told me that she and the head boss needed to meet with me a few weeks ago. Of course, my first thought was that they were going to fire me, which they should, and, happily, I wasn’t upset at all at the prospect. Odds were, however, that they still felt my “position” is necessary—indispensible, even—but I still always hope that they will see reason and do the most efficient thing: fire me and disperse my meager duties among other employees. In the meantime, however, I get paid decently, have time for any hobbies/personal tasks, pursue my freelance editing, and enjoy paid holidays, vacations, and insurance. I’m not quitting. So, the fateful hour arrived, and I went to our meeting feeling excited! Would I have a job?!?! Would they fire me!?!? Newsweek magazine has a gradient scale on which they score pop-culture news from the previous week. It’s usually quite funny. The events fall somewhere on a scale that flows like this: Predictable—Shocking—Shockingly Predictable. It’s a funny scale, really, because it’s not in logical order (Shockingly Predictable—Predictable—Shocking would be more appropriate), but I think it just makes everything more fun, and it takes more time to think the meaning and relationships through, so I get to enjoy that page of Newsweek much longer than I would if the scale flowed logically. Please see the illustration below for my own ranking of the theoretical and actual outcomes of the meeting with the bosses:

[technical difficulties transporting the illustration to the blog]

I’ll spell it out in prose:
“I keep my job”—Predictable
“I lose my job”—closer to Shocking than to Predictable, but certainly not completely in Shocking territory or past it into Shockingly Predictable
“What really happened”—past Shocking, approaching Shockingly Predictable

Well, of course, they didn’t fire me. And, OF COURSE, they gave me a card with tons of money. Why? Well, because of all the new “assignments and responsibilities” that I have taken on recently “in a spirit of teamwork and cooperation.” One of my best friends here at KBD quit a few months ago, and two of her tasks fell to me. This has increased my weekly workload by 1 hour. I still average 6 hours of free time per day (not including the hour lunch). Since the company has a policy of only giving raises in January, they couldn’t “compensate” me for my increased workload, so they gave me a little bonus (I’m a shoe-in for a raise in January, though, what with that extra hour of work I do each week). It’s weird, funny, and should be…by now…oh so predictable. I realize that no matter what, I am probably losing spending power even when they give me bonuses and raises when compared with inflation, but thankfully we as a country are not experiencing the kind of spending-power-loss B and I experienced the following week when a GT accounting/registration error cost us $3,600. The good news is that they originally wanted $7,200 from us (the gas company economic model is catching on). With a lot of patient persistence B was able to get them to cut the erroneous charge in half, but the blackmail they put up at that time (“we are the ones who sign to say you get to graduate with one or two degrees”) left us with an unjustifiable $3,600 bill. Unfortunately, my windfall didn’t cover the bill, or half of it. Really, I don’t feel like it could even put a dent in it (although I’d be interested to hear how much money would constitute a “dent” in $3,600), and suddenly I’m certain my company’s ripping me off! How COULD their “appreciation” money compensate me for my time!? Sheesh, what a joke. Need more money. Need to find a better-paying job. Fortunately though, we certainly HAVE the $3,600. We’ve been saving forever towards a house someday, so we can certainly cover the expense. The thing is, even if you made 70K/year (which we don’t), you’d notice if someone took 4K away. I think even if you made 100K you would notice or consider how you spend $4K-chunks. But, what can you do? Just keep saving and say to yourself “The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away…”