Hello, Winter*!

*technically not winter yet

You've GOT to be kidding me with the salt on the roads.  I can't believe we are still doing this, and what's more, I can't believe it's actually getting WORSE.

To keep roads safe for our cars we apply something that destroys our cars.  Smart.  It's like giving little kids peanut oil to use as moisturizer.

There shouldn't be white clouds of aerated salt being kicked up by the flow of traffic.  Our roads and parking lots shouldn't be white.  Grocery carts shouldn't be leaving white trails of salt inside the store.  A mechanic shouldn't be telling us he's going through what used to be a lifetime supply of brake line in just one season.  

I only went to a two-year school but I think coating the Earth in salt may have ill effects on the environment.

I don't know what happened to sand, or "winter sand" that had the little pebbles in it, but I think it's past time for Big Salt to f#$% right off.  Or how about this idea; let's only salt the most steep hills where sand may not work.  Again, only two years of post-secondary education at work here, but we are absolutely destroying our cars all the while increasing our inspection safety standards in a time where the average price of a new automobile is literally $47,338.  Yes, let's definitely add more salt.

White Lines (Don't Do It)

Particularly painful to see when there's no snow around

My car is 15 years old.  Here are a few closeup photos of it.

I am lucky to only have this much body rot.
Also - tires should not be white.

I don't have any problems a couple thousand dollars worth of State-mandated bodywork can't solve.  Or $47,338.  OK BE SAFE OUT THERE

Mark

I'm going to write this down because I think of it often and it was one of the better experiences of my lifetime, even though I feel writing it down could ruin it because it sort of takes it out of the aether.  I need some sort of place to park this memory.  This great moment came from a sad event, but ultimately I guess this is what made it so impactful.

A friend and pillar of the local music community passed away a couple years ago, and a gathering was held in his honor at a venue known for its support of local music.  Our local music scene has a very storied past and everyone was there.  Everyone loved this guy.  We all remembered our friend with short stories and tributes that each of us, in turn, told from the lone mic on the stage, standing next to his guitar that had a spotlight on it.

My story was about meeting him 5,000 miles away from home, with a few others of us from the hometown.  The story was essentially about feeling very much at home while being so far away from it, and how he was an instrumental part of that moment.  

I know everyone, no matter how seasoned, gets a little nervous before speaking in front of a crowd, and I certainly did, too.  But here's the thing; I spoke with ease.  It was seamless.  The story had a beginning, middle, and end, and it had anecdotes.  I had a point.  I said exactly what I wanted to say and was never lost.  It was fully sincere and came off exactly as I wanted.  What happened next was what made it one of the greatest moments of my life.

After I said my thank you and left the stage, the room echoed with heartfelt applause.  As I made my way off the stage and back through the crowd, people I didn't know were patting me on the back and saying "Good speech".  I got back to my spot and one of the friends I had been standing with leaned over and said "That was a good story."  Cripes.  I really connected.  In the time that I was working my way back to my spot, with the applause still going, my closest friend in the music community was making his way to the stage to say a few short words, and he's a beloved member of the community that people were happy to see and the applause only increased when he stepped on to the stage.  He was brief and awesome.  When he returned he told me that he wasn't going to say anything but I had inspired him and he wanted to follow me.  We do play in a duo together so I was happy for the pairing.

When everyone who wanted to speak had finished, we returned to mingling around the room and people whom I'd never met were engaging in conversation with me.  People who hadn't previously paid me much attention were reaching out.  A longtime, popular local musician struck up a conversation with me, the bar owner told me he appreciated my story, a local music reporter just randomly started telling me his life story, another stranger started talking about her guitar to me...  For just a brief moment I became a guy everyone wanted to talk to.  Obviously my story really tapped into the love everyone had for this musician.  It was a great feeling.

But here's the real thing; my speech was memorized.  Maybe not word-for-word, but it was mapped out and sometimes directly quoted.  About a week before this memorial service, I took the time to write down the story I remembered about our friend, and all the time I needed to spend searching for the right word or the best phrase I had already invested, in private, a week ago.  I wasn't up there reading off a prompter or index cards, but I had organized my thoughts, and I know that made the difference.  We all loved Mark. He really was a pillar of the local community, and I'm so glad that his memorial service evolved into one of the most warm and impactful moments of my life.  Never been to any other service that felt so much like a celebration of someone's life and contribution, and this is where Mark's memory sits.  Thanks, friend.

Legos

This oversimplification will quickly run into trouble, but let’s not let that stop us.

Musicianship generally falls into two main categories:  the people fully understand the instrument and use it to express art, and the rest, for whom the instrument is like a puzzle that sometimes makes art.

A true musician looks at the fretboard of a guitar for example, and sees the shapes that evoke all the different moods.  The happy and sad sounds, the tension, the mysterious, the disorienting... basically they understand the palette and can paint any picture right there in front of you. 

For the rest of us, guitar is a puzzle that we sometimes know how to put together.  We hear something we like and we practice practice practice to imitate it.  It's like a parlor trick.  We may call it up from time to time (and actually pull it off in the moment!) but it's mostly rote.  The real musicians sit down and start sketching images and the rest of us do our best to recreate those sketches - almost like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  We learn all the pieces and assemble it.

But I’ll tell you something about us jigsaw puzzle players; we're having fun. The puzzle has a lot of pieces that can be put together thousands of different ways, and not all of those ways make music (those are the bad days - it happens) but somehow it doesn't really make the guitar less fun.  Well, actually yes it does.  But so what?

So while us Puzzle People would love to sit down and freeform sketch something compelling, we don’t really have that, and that usually leads to becoming discouraged.  Not all us punters share the “guitar is a fun puzzle” outlook, but it can definitely help those bad days when you walk over to the guitar and step on a Lego.

Strippers, probably.

    I never went to a strip club because it was my idea, but the two or three times I went, I saw some stuff. And I don't just mean the nekkid women.  

There was that time someone called over a stripper, pointed at someone else at the table and said, "This is Scott.  It's his birthday."  It wasn't Scott's birthday and I can't see how that would matter, but I guess maybe the only way to know is to try.  Fun Facts: strippers, by definition, don't care. 

There was the time that Brian, who was an excitable gent, found himself particularly attracted to one of the strippers and when she came over he basically announced that he wasn't going to be able to contain himself, whatever that meant.  Upon hearing this, the stripper opted out.  Brian spent some time in prison and died a free man not long ago.  You see, Brian got involved in dealing drugs for a time.  When plainly asked "why" by his friends, he freely admitted that he was not blessed with the type of brain that would ever land him great fortune, and he was perfectly happy to experience some amount of wealth even if it landed him in jail, which is a place he might well end up in anyway.  In the end it was brain cancer that got him but either way, clearly that stripper made the right call.

The story that sticks with me from The Brian Night doesn't involve Brian at all.  The group of us sat at a table, and at the table next to us was a young man who was paying a stripper by the song.  He had a roll of cash.  It was clear that he had become enamored.  If the direction of her gaze was any indication, the stripper seemed like she wanted to be anywhere else, but the young and evidently very incompatible man had a plan to slowly hand over his life's savings.  Now, once again for the record I would like to state (whether you choose to believe me or not) that I do NOT have much experience with strip clubs.  They honestly aren't my thing (and I know I'm not alone in that) but one thing I think everybody knows is no touching.  Right - well here's the part that sticks with me.

Shorty after we arrive, the stripper who is being monopolized by the young man with the bankroll manages to break free between songs, goes over to our table and, for no money, starts dancing for Joe.  Joe sits there with the body language of any normal person, that says "What the fuck am I supposed to be doing about this?"  Then the stripper says something in Joe's ear.  She motions to a bouncer (female!) who immediately comes over, and like an NFL ref negotiating a coin toss, the bouncer says something to Joe, says something to the stripper... and then Joe and the stripper start making out.

I say - Joe and the stripper start making out.

And the bouncer is right there.  I mean right there, squatting next to Joe and repeatedly clenching her fists to increase blood flow to her forearms, but the makeout session just ends.  The bouncer nods and says "Okay?"  Everybody nods and that's that.  The stripper returns to the young man with the bankroll.  I lean over to Joe and say "What did she say to you!?"  Joe said, "She said, 'I want to kiss you'."  And that was all.  Joe didn't ask her for anything.  He didn't pay her anything.  None of it was his idea.  Except walking into a strip club, I guess.

Again, I don't really know how strip clubs work, but I don't think they work like that.  Seems obvious that the stripper was trying to get the young man with the bankroll to lose interest.  But it didn't work.  She was back at his table right afterward.

Weird fuckin' night.

5 Second Rule!

 What most people don't realize is that the "5-Second Rule" actually comes from the medical community.  Surgeons, in fact.  As they get farther into a surgical procedure, doctors will typically find their gloved hands covered with some amount of blood, and hanging on to a surgical instrument often proves difficult, particularly as you switch from one tool to the next.  The transfer can get messy.  

Dropping a scalpel, for example, is a fairly regular occurrence and upon hitting the floor, doctors will often shout "5-second rule!" and bend down and pick it up.  With slippery hands, these fallen instruments can sometimes be hard to pick up off the floor within the established 5-second "latency period."  The ability to internally recognize a 5-second interval is one of a doctor's most under-appreciated skills.  This inner sense of timing is part of why so many doctors are also excellent musicians.

So the next time you accidentally drop your delicious treat on the floor and eat it within 5 seconds, remember its medical roots!  Well done!

Valediction

 Have I not wrapped up my incessant carping about this yet?  Ha.  No.  I haven't.  But I did have something of a very, very late breakthrough I will share with you now.

Why did I get fired?  It was not likely for lack of skill.  It wasn't because of an inability to fit in.  It wasn't because of cronyism - based on everything I know about the Web Mistress*, she is far too concerned with her own interests to bother with something like that, which brings me to my point.

The reason I got fired is because it allowed the Web Mistress* to control the photographer's billing.  The Firm does not pay the new photographer directly.  His services are billed through the Web Mistress*, and this allows the Web Mistress* to mark up his services.  If she did not hire me, then the bill does not pass through her for her to mark up.  The only way she could potentially profit from me doing the photo shoots would be for her to attend those shoots herself, and that would require her time.  This is very bad.  When the new photographer took the portraits, the Web Mistress* didn't show up.  She didn't need to because she was going to be the one sending the bill for that shoot, and she can add whatever percentage she pleases.  Pushing me out the door opened another door through which more profit could be channeled.  It took me far too long to realize this.  Or it took me far to long to clear my head out enough to see it.  

I suppose if I had worked something out where I was giving her a slice of the action, I'd still have the job.  If that's really true, she can kiss my ass.  I know that the people who hired her to do this job are finding out many things they don't like - and they were warned about all of it.  

Never mind the fact that the website has been in development for ALMOST A YEAR and still isn't done.  I'm going to guess few people involved in this complete fiasco are happy about it.

That, once and for all, really is all I have to say about it.  Thank you. 

*is the PG term used in place of the actual word.

“…”

When I was 19 I loaded everything I owned (which wasn't much at all) into my compact car and drove with a friend clear across the country.  Over 3,000 miles.  We stayed with relatives.  We stayed in tents.  We stayed in cheap hotels.  We saw plains.  We saw mountains.  We saw animals.  We saw days and days of rain.  We locked the keys in the car.  We hiked around Devil's Tower.  We stood at the Four Corners.  We lost money in Vegas.  We drove around Los Angeles.  We drove to San Diego.  We drove back to Los Angeles for another disappointing look, and things suddenly fell apart.  I drove back home alone.  I saw lots of interstate.  I saw Niagra Falls.  I saw my way back home.  But in the meantime, I saw a large chunk of the country.

Not a single member of my family ever said, "So how was your trip?"  Not once.  I kept waiting for the day someone would ask, but it never came.  No one ever asked me about the single greatest adventure of my young life.  "What was your favorite?"  "What route did you take?"  "See anything interesting?"  "How was California?"  "Did you really get in a traffic incident with a girl who looked like Lisa Bonet?  And she was cool about it?"  "What happened with your friend?"  "Did you learn anything?"

None of that.  The closest it ever came was once my uncle made a scene at the dinner table and stormed off, and in a desperate need to break the awkward silence my father said, "So... you were telling us about California."  A bit shocked, I said, "I was?" and he said "Yes."  Then the rest of the extended family started conversing about what my uncle just did and that was that.  That was the most we ever talked about it.

Trust me when I say it's too late to bring it up to any of those people now.  That's just how it went.  Yes, I could have randomly brought it up, but that's not the way to do it.  I guess it didn't mean that much to them.  That was pretty upsetting.  I got over it.  Until like 5 minutes ago.

The Long View

The creative world of course is subjective, so it requires thick skin.  Some of your ideas will get rejected for all sorts of reasons and you can't be hurt by that because you'd never get anything done.  That's not news, but what I didn't realize is that there's another angle to this subjectivity where people may fire you because they think there's something better out there, only to hire someone else and find out there wasn't.  Now having gained some perspective, those people might rethink their decision and call you back.  

So after being fired you can have your feelings hurt because your artistic sensibilities have been insulted (HA!), or you can recognize that creative work is subjective and sometimes requires this kind of perspective, and you need to have some emotional awareness of it.

That second choice sounds nice and enlightened, but I'm not so sure that's the answer.  The thick skin part of creative output is accepting that some of your ideas (that you might really like) will get rejected.  It's not about being okay with getting fired.  That's really the fatal blow, I think, and I'm not sure a person should be that thick skinned.  I'm also not sure how often a company that fired you would call you back, but I suppose it could be part of their learning process.  

Nonetheless, everything I wrote up there is why creative types like to use a lot of pomp and circumstance to make the work seem more elaborate than it actually is.  It is possible to show up with a point-and-shoot and take an excellent photo in one click, but that actually isn't as helpful as it sounds.  All the bells and whistles actually help make the process - something that comes from the ether - visible.  And it doesn't matter how thick your skin is, you've got to make an effort to contain the subjectivity of it all.

Literally

For all you fans of semantics, the word "normalize" has become normalized to mean something else.  I bet it did not see that one coming.

People use it as a way to sound cool while randomly scolding everyone about our societal standards, so it's got like twice the fun, which is pretty hard to beat.  "We need to normalize this behavior!" they might say.  What normalize really means is to adapt an anomaly to fit within a standard; change it so it fits within a defined structure.  That's the opposite of what people want it to mean.  If you want to change the defined structure, that's reform.  

It doesn't mean "make normal" any more than disingenuous means "not genuine" or any more than unctuous means "tasty and decadent."  But don't let that stop you.  The simple fact is a word should mean whatever you think it means.  Or if you really want to get technical, whatever it sounds like it means.

Oh I’m just trying to be really wacky and zany.  You know - supercilious.  Have a great day my vestigial friends!

Rick

The morning of the first day of first grade, I sat there on the edge of that big bus seat watching the last minutes of summer zip by the window when the kid in the seat next to me did something I'll never forget; he opened up his lunch box and started eating his sandwich.  I couldn’t believe it.  I sat in amazement.  Never mind that he won’t have anything to eat at lunch, there wasn’t enough bus ride left for him to be able to finish it.  It was a moral and logistical nightmare!  I couldn’t contain myself another moment, and piped up.

“You better put that away - we’re almost there!”  

He seemed a little stunned by the news, looked around and said “We are?”, but then grasped the realness of the situation, and packed up his sandwich posthaste.  I respected that move.  He wasn’t reckless. He was just hungry.

That was the first thing I ever said to my best friend, Rick.  A guy so effortlessly cool, he could eat his lunch on the bus.  A kid who, by age 13, was as smooth with the ladies as anyone I’ve ever met to this day.  He was so even-keeled and just generally seemed to have it all figured out, and we never had anything but fun.  He was 1000 times better at Asteroids® than me (he hit the FIRE button with a blazingly fast two-finger drumroll) and he could always outrun me no matter how hard I tried, but that’s what you want.  You need something to aspire to and Rick was it.  You know that thing about how you never want to be the smartest or even the coolest guy in the room?  Well if Rick was in the room, don’t worry - you weren’t.  

I remember the last time I saw him, he was playing baseball and his dad was cheering him on from the 3rd base line.  “Hey Rico! Just throw it!” he shouted.  "He’s not gonna hit it!”  That was met with slight admonishment from the 3rd base coach but pretty much rolled right off - it wasn’t enough to quell Dad’s enthusiasm.  Cheers for “Rico!” kept coming, and Rico delivered.  

Details of that one weekend I spent in Marlboro, NY in 1982 remain permanently sealed, but it remains one of my strongest memories.  I moved away soon after and we ultimately fell out of touch.  About five years later he was murdered. 

Thanks, Rick.  You were the best, buddy.  Happy Birthday.

Mrs. Carswell

This isn't that far off...

Mrs. Carswell was articulate, like you'd expect an English teacher to be.  A young-ish black woman who carried with her a real air of The South.  She was tall and lanky, and favored bright-colored polyester pants with matching tops.  My strongest memory is of her in Royal Blue, but I know she ran the gamut.  She was stern but somehow likable.  She really put herself together every day and was there to teach English.  Pretty no-nonsense.  And no-nonsense pretty.

She interrupted a student once to lecture them; a lesson for the whole class.  The student mentioned that they "hated" something rather harmless and Mrs. Carswell stopped the kid right there.  "No you don't!  You dislike, you are annoyed by, you object to, but you do not HATE."  And she continued on with her lecture about the power of the word "hate."  I never forgot that.  Probably the first example I can think of when I realized words were a little more than just a way for you to get through a sentence; they have real meaning.

Later in the year we were at our desks silently toiling away at an assignment when the PA speaker came on.  Someone held the mic up to the radio and we heard that President Reagan had been shot.  One kid jumped up with his arms in the air and shouted "Yes!"  Mrs. Carswell snapped at the kid and told him to sit down.  I immediately thought of the "hate" lecture and thought she was going to unload on this kid for feigning true hate, but instead she let it go and listened intently to the PA speaker because that was obviously more important at that moment.  Still, I was pretty certain her opinion of that kid must have gone down a few notches.  

The President obviously was okay, but what I remember most about the shooting was seeing for myself exactly what Mrs. Carswell was talking about.

"Likely" anyway.

I don't know what everyone else is using AI for but here's a sample of how it's going for me.

"Busy Since 1942"

A few words about Dad, who would have been 82 today.

Dad was the internet before we had one.  Of course, since we didn't have an internet, no one could check to see if he was right, but I can tell you he never hesitated.  

Me: "Hey Dad, how come some cars use four valves instead of two?"
Dad (without missing a beat): "Better volumetric displacement."

And off we go...

I'm sure he had his limits, but not for any of my subjects.  I wasn't asking him about The Tell-Tale Heart or Nietzsche's thoughts on... anything, but if you asked him why airplanes fly or what "bandwidth" actually means, you were going to get an answer, and it would usually involve him erasing the little chalkboard by the phone that we used for messages and drawing up some diagrams and writing down key terms that would be discussed during the lecture.  The truth is I honestly never stumped him and as a teenager I wondered how I would ever survive with how much I don't know about stuff.  I remember as I got a little older and explored topics more on my own, one evening before bed I wrote "Sample aliasing" on the little chalkboard and the next day, below it was written "Sampling too slowly for frequencies involved."  I had no doubt he knew what it was, but I guess I just wanted him to know that I knew what it was.  Sort of.

He had a pretty good vocabulary as well.  I remember him using the word "recalcitrant" once, probably on me.  Mighta just been talking about crime though.

He could explain to you, in painful detail, how any kind of engine worked.  Electric motor, gas engine, jet turbine, diesel, flat 6, rotary... He could explain how AM, FM, and Shortwave radios worked.  He could explain tube and solid state amplifiers.  It just went on and on.  Only in the last year of his life did I find out he'd wanted to work at NASA, and after getting over the shock of that I thought "Of course."  Unfortunately he came from a background where college wasn't really an option for him.  He was able to get some college through IBM, where he did work on the electron beam microscope, whatever that is.

He raced cars at one point.  He used to hunt bear.  He participated in 3-day (long weekend) HAM radio contests, bouncing radio signals off the moon to talk to people on the other side of the world.  He rode a Harley.  He would listen to Judy Collins and Steppenwolf.  He played drums.  He really loved Mom.  He was always reading a non-fiction book (usually about US wars).  He would come home from work and watch the local news, the nightly news, The McNeil-Lehrer Report, Miami Vice, and Nightline. 

Point is, I think Dad was a pretty smart guy.  The way he seemed to know everything about the world around us was inspirational to me.  He and Mom moved away when I was 20, and I remember thinking "I better git t'work learnin' shit!"

Now I'm slightly older than the current temperature, and I feel like I've made a pretty good dent in it.  I definitely don't know all the stuff he did, but I think I might know a few things he didn't.  Don't quote me on that lest I start to become recalcitrant.  I do feel I've built my own decent base of knowledge to stand on (that doesn't require the internet) but if he were still around, I'd still be sending him questions that he would easily knock out of the park.  Here's to you, Dad.  Raise a glass of Tucher wheat beer, which you know I can't stand no matter how much you tried to convince me.

DONE (continued)

Hey - guess what!  You hardcore, lifetime followers of the blournal will remember the Great Water Heater Replacement of 2006.  That was the one where I used every tool I own to install a tankless heater in my basement.  Well, that thing finally quit.

For "reasons", I thought it best to clean the little screen that filters the water coming into it.  It's actually pretty good preventive maintenance after 17 years of buildup.  I switched off the power, unscrewed the little filter, screwed the new one in, and turned the power back on.  Takes like 30 seconds.  Plus 17 years.

The water heater never worked again.  The flame wouldn't come back on.  Mind you - I never even opened this thing up.  The filter is on the outside.  Pretty sure it was just a coincidence.

I called the company and they confirmed that.  The motherboard had fried and, sorry to say, they don't make that part anymore.  I had to order a new unit.  Good news I suppose is that the new one is pretty much a drop-in replacement so it would require far fewer tools and time.  Likely less than an hour, which is nice because by the time it shows up I'll be on my 3rd day without hot water.

I finally got the new water heater and installed it - just as easily as I had hoped!  I switched in on, very very excited to take a hot shower, and it wouldn't make flame.  Seems this brand new unit was defective.  I got on the phone to the manufacturer and they confirmed that.  Then they promised to mail out a replacement part that I could install myself, which is just terrific.  Really, really good stuff.  Who doesn't want the opportunity to fix something brand new?

They never did get the part mailed out that day, which was a Friday, so I just had to wait two more days until Monday for them to send it, so that means I'll only be without hot water for about six days, which honestly is less than a full week.

After installing the new part, the unit still didn't really want to stay lit, so all I really had to do was hire a plumber to remove about 35' of 3/4" gas piping in my house and replace it with 1".  You might remember a post from 2006 entitled "Your Total is $111.08"

Here's a photo called

"Your Total is $458.06"

In fairness, I did buy more than I thought I would need so I wouldn't have to run back to the store in the middle of the job, but I still contend that (inflation adjusted) this doesn't look more than $38 worth of junk.  I got about $115 back.

If you like, you can compare the old install to the new.  Very similar, but you may note the new 1" gas pipe and possibly even the two drains added for posterity.  Before you complain too heavily about how my basement looks, understand that my home was built the same year as the Arab-Israeli War.  There.  That reference should bring clarity.

In all, the new unit doesn't quite work as well as the last one.  The problem is I upgraded and this unit works best when it has more water flowing through it.  With lower flows it sounds a little like a small airplane.  If I open up another faucet somewhere, it smoothes right out and is quite quiet.  I am pleased to have just used those two words right next to each other.  

But I can't complain.  After receiving a DOA, fixing a brand new unit by myself, and paying a plumber to run new gas piping in my basement, plus going six days without hot water in my home, the new heater works really well if I just use a ton more water and gas.  A real upgrade!

Hey - I hope you changed those smoke detector batteries last week!  Takes like 30 seconds.

Groundhog

Reporter: It's a full month past your big day!  I'm sure, in some ways, you feel a lot like Santa - there's a lot of build up but after that it's almost like immediate vacation.  This is your quiet time of year, isn't it?

Groundhog: It's supposed to be.

Reporter: Well this has been a very mild winter so some of us wanted to catch up with you after your big prediction and talk about how you felt on that day.

Groundhog: I really want to get back to my hole.

Reporter: A lot of people depend on you to tell us how the rest of our winter will be.

Groundhog: I guess so.  I didn't ask for any of this.  I really want to get back to my hole.

Reporter:  It's been exceptionally warm this winter, so we're wondering about your perspective on how maybe the context of your predictions might be changing in light of these warm winter trends.

Groundhog: This isn't my idea.  None of it.  I didn't ask to be pulled out of my home and shown around to the masses like some pulchritudinous bowling trophy.  I'm not even sure what bowling is.  I just know that I want to be back inside.  That's what I know.  I was happy there.  I don't even know if I was happy.  I just know it's where I wanted to be.  I don't really question it.  Do you have food?  I just want to go back to my hole.

Reporter: Of course some people in California might have a different take on just how mild the winter has been.  How do you handle the wide discrepancy when you have to take the whole country's winter into consideration?  It must be quite a task!

Groundhog: I don't want this.  I don't want to be doing this.

Reporter: You must really blow up on social media for a bit.  Does that ever get hard for you to manage?

Groundhog: It seems kind of warm out.  I wonder if I should go look for food.  It feels very early for it but I'm not so cold.  I might look for food.

Reporter: Do you follow any of the hashtags?

Groundhog: I will go back in.  It isn't very cold but I'm going to go back in.

Reporter: Last question for you - any plans to mix it up a little next year?

Groundhog:

TMOTM

One time I worked for a radio station.  Radio stations were very different back then; they had people in them.  These days they are so automated it's really just one guy hanging around waiting to reset the computer if it crashes.  I'm sure that job will soon be automated, too.  But back when we had people, we sometimes did things to celebrate those people.  One of those celebrations was called Team Member of the Month.  The TMOTM® award wasn't handed out for doing exceptional work, but that's only because no one there ever did anything exceptional.  It would mostly just rotate among the staff to make sure everyone eventually received it.  Sort of like touring the Stanley Cup.  Some people even got it twice.

I worked there for two years and never got it.  I started as part-time so maybe that had something to do with it at first.  I thought maybe when I went to full-time I might have had a shot at it.  There was that time I explained to the Operations Manager how to spool bare audio tape onto existing reels so we wouldn't have to keep buying new reels, which saved us about $300/mo. in operating costs.  There was the time I helped the Program Director get TV audio of the Simpson verdict patched into our soundboard so we could re-broadcast it live, even though I'm sure that was totally illegal.  It was his idea and I just helped make it happen.  I felt like whatever a Team Player is at that moment, but I suppose a month is a bit longer than just a moment.  I guess news of those events never found their way to the right ears.  I certainly wasn't going to sell out the Operations Manager by telling everyone he didn't know he was being wasteful, and I wasn't going bragging about how I potentially helped get our FCC license revoked.  These things were just a day in the life.

Eventually I was laid off.  My last day of work was one of those rare days when I got to record music at a local studio.  These sessions were typically all-day affairs that would wrap up sometime between 6PM and 7PM.  The working day back at the office wrapped up at 5PM, and on my last day the office had scheduled a party for me.  I told them ahead of time I'd be out of the office the whole day.  They knew how these things went.  On studio days, we didn't even come into the office.  They told me maybe I could just find a time to drop by real quick.  I tried to explain to them that was just not possible.  The studio charges $120/hr.  It's just me and an engineer.  If I'm not there to do the work, nothing will get done.

They had the party anyway.  After two years of wondering if anyone remembered that I worked there too, they finally had some recognition for me on a day they knew I couldn't make it, and that was how my last day ended.  It was nice of them to think of me.