Why I'm wary of potluck food

Myself and a colleague spent 75 minutes cleaning out our two staff-room refrigerators. This job takes two people, I have found, not just because the refrigerators get as manky as a family of run over squirrels on a dry summer day, but because one has to, in the process of cleaning, throw out a lot of other people's food.

Yes, there were two all staff email warnings. There were also the large signs up, with specific dates, on both refrigerators, for weeks. But despite all that, when one finds four containers of sealed, fancy yogurt, and they have no initials on them, it can be a wrench to toss them in the garbage. At that point one needs a partner to remind one that "They were warned." Alternatively one can look and see that the yogurts expired two years ago, but that only works for some things.

Near the end of our clean up one of our colleagues came into the break room. We were quite eager to see her because we had some questions about a bag with liquid in it that had her initials on it. It was okay to throw that away, she said. Then she listed off the only things she had in the refrigerator that she cared about. I wasn't paying much attention at this point, but I'm pretty sure she mentioned "Meatballs for tomorrow's potluck".

"Uh-oh."

I listened a little more carefully when she spoke about her meatballs for tomorrow's potluck again a little later. I definitely threw away two bags of meatballs, in sealed packages, and then in a grocery bag, about an hour ago. In retrospect they might have been slightly frozen and were thawing out in the refrigerator. I think those might be the meatballs she was talking about. They had no initials, which was technically enough to do them in. But, as usual, I discussed them at the time with my cleaning partner: "Do they have an expiration date?" She asked.

"11-9-17 on one." I replied. "I can't find one on the other. It might be from before they put expiration dates on food."

Ha ha ha. We threw it out.

And in so doing saved the potluck, and maybe some of my co-worker's lives.

Do what you love

Tensions are high as Pakistan and India seem perched once again on the very precipice of war. These are two countries with nuclear weapons and so war, already not at all funny, takes on an element of cataclysmic horror. I am writing this post several days ahead of time so by the time you read this cooler heads may have prevailed, or you may be hunkered down in your lead lined bunker.

You do have a lead lined bunker don't you?

Oh you trusting soul!

Anyway, whatever our collective situation is re apocalyptic radiation poisoning and end of the world rains of fire, I would like to address the possibility of Nuclear Winter.

If Nuclear Winter is coming will it be cancelled out by global warming?




Ah well, it was worth a shot.

See you all in heaven.



Wait, they do have blogs in heaven, don't they?


Right, right, it wouldn't be heaven otherwise. 

Guns

Due to some initiative of the County we hand out gun locks at my library. This means every once in awhile someone wanders up to me at the front desk and says "I heard maybe that you might have gun locks to give out?"

And I cheerily respond "We do!" (I like to give out good news). "How many would you like?" I ask.

I see their eyes light up and I see the calculation run through their brain that says "I would like 20, but what is the amount I can ask for and not seem like I'm planning on killing a bunch of people?" So I add "You can have three." Because that is how many they can have.

They say "I would like three" because this is America and that's how we roll. Well, not anyone I actually know, but on the Internet it's how I hear we roll.

So I go to the secret box in the Many Managers Office and get three gun locks. I take them to the front desk and I say "I need to see your guns to hand these over."

Just kidding. I don't say that. Though it might be fun. No, what I say is "Please do come back if there's a Zombie invasion. We'll need help."

They say "Ha ha ha." Then they go home and do gun safety and maybe do and maybe don't kill a bunch of people.

Why I have so many Addams Family t-shirts

Morticia and Pugsley are working harmoniously in the boulevard strip garden that borders the sidewalk fronting their crumbling mansion home. Gomez pops by. "Why are you taking out all the Venus Flytraps?" He asks.

"Yes darling, it's an unfortunate sacrifice." Morticia responds. "But with all the dogs coming through the neighborhood lately we wanted to try a nice bed of poison ivy."

Scientific proof of darkness

I hate shelving items on the bottom row. It turns a 2-step process into a 4-step process. On any of the other shelves I merely need to 1). locate the correct location for the book I'm holding, and 2). insert the book into that slot. But for the bottom shelf, due to my long history with back injury, step one (locate the correct location for the book I'm holding) is now followed by 2). in a controlled squat with my back held straight, lower myself down. Then is 3). insert the book into that slot. Which is finally followed by 4). carefully raise up, keeping my back vertical, into a standing position.

Prone, as I am, to a slightly over developed sense of injustice, I am regularly convinced that by some bizarre and slightly hostile trickery of a minor god, a far greater percentage of the books I shelve are on the bottom shelf than on any other shelf.

I was, as a matter of fact, feeling exactly this way about my shelving just a short time ago. And I was quite aggrieved. But then my deep, judicious thoughts cut in.

They said: Seriously, do we

a). exist in a world of small, mercurial gods and fairies where meaningless statistical events are all entirely personal?

Or, am I

b). simply a person who, naturally enough, emotionally reads mildly unpleasant events as being slightly larger than they are in scientific, objective actuality?

Fair question.

So I decided to run a test. I would shelve 20 books and keep track of how many were on the bottom row.

There are five shelves of roughly equally occupied books. A statistically normal account should produce four out of twenty books on the bottom shelf.

I shelved the 20 books. It was a lot of work! Eight of them were on the bottom shelf. I'll admit to a level of disappointed surprise. I was hoping for the sane, scientific explanation. Better that than how it turned out:

They really are out to get me!


Though fortunately they're not too serious about it.

Elevator surprise

We live on the top floor of a building with an elevator. Sometimes I use the stairs, sometimes I take the fancy way, especially if I'm heading out for my solitary morning walk commute in the bitter conditions of this Winter. It gives me extra time to finish putting on my vast array of outerwear. Even though my building has dozens of units in it it's rare to run into anyone on the elevator and it's easy to take it for granted that one will have it to oneself.

So when today, on the first floor, the elevator opened up to suddenly reveal a woman with her rambunctious dog I was startled. I was so startled I sort of yelped.

"Sorry." she said, tugging her dog into the elevator with her as we passed.

"You just never expect anyone in the elevator." I said to explain. 

It's the fifth time I've said so this week.

A study

An important new study on studies came out today. This study shows that 82% of all news venues will report the results of any study given to them without even reading beyond the first few main points of the study. It also shows that studies are regularly reported in an uncritical fashion, and that people reporting studies rarely fact check, consult peer reviewed commentary, or even examine the conclusions against common sense. The study further goes on to find that more than nine out of ten study reporting venues are run by colorful tea cozies and that the Capitol of France is now located in my kitchen sink. People prefer the taste of wood shavings to that of strawberry ice cream. A nickel is worth way more than a quarter. And nearly everyone agrees that the clever people who come up with and conduct studies should all be paid 20 times more than they currently are. 

The study concludes that 86% percent of reporting venues are vulnerable to being eaten by chipmunks, evil turtles rule the U.S. Senate, and that I have a winning smile and a delightful way with statistics. 

A windy little story

This month, I tell you. First there were the minus 60 wind chills. Then there were the endless snowfalls which have so buried our dear cities that only the chimneys poke up out of the quiet, vast sea of whiteness. All we can see from our high up building is that great blanket of snow and the little red rectangles poking occasionally out of it, blowing pure white trickles of smoke into a vast blue sky.

Now has come the wind.

It is a terrible, terrible and fierce wind. It is dangerously cold. Most of us cower in our abodes, but winter is long. So even though it's a battle some of the neighborhood kids have struggled out to the great snow hill with their sleds. The wind fights them at every step. It tries to steal away their toboggans and inner-tubes. It is too strong against them to allow them to slide down the hill towards the river, the blinding wind blows far too hard for that. It is an epic wind too mighty to be moved against.

But there is still a way. Far at the bottom of the hill they simply sit down on their sleds, as if in defeat, and the wind blows them to the top.

Parking the car

One of our prominent work areas looks out on the carpool and disabled parking spots. And so I have much cause and opportunity to look up and gaze with horror upon my fellow humans. The carpool spots are filled mainly by textbook revolting American stereotypes. Emerging alone from their obese vehicles, they save themselves 40 steps as they walk to the slightly nearer front doors of the library from their stolen parking spots after spending the morning in Church praying to their grotesque, insane President.

I don't wish them well. Though I know enough of some of these people, from helping them in the library, to understand that they are in a constant cycle of both perpetuating and paying for their sins. And I try to keep in mind, to temper my rancor, that there are worse sins than parking in a carpool spot illegally...

Like, for instance, parking in the Handicapped spots illegally.

Unlike the carpool spots which are used by two clearly identifiable populations, planet hating miscreants (solo patrons), and welcome users (non solo patrons), the Disabled spots are used by people on a vast, murky ethical scale. You tell me: who, if either of these, are in the wrong: The retired firefighter with a ruined right leg and two replaced hips, who, though she has no handicapped tag, limps in agonizing slowness to our front doors, or the middle aged business executive who has a legal handicap tag but in every way seems perfectly spry, able, and unpained by his quick journey to our relatively nearby front doors.

While I cannot see whether or not any people using the disabled parking places have the required handicapped permissions, I can say that most of the people I see emerge from those cars seem well and able enough. Certainly I cannot judge hidden conditions. But because the majority of people who use the Disabled spaces who seem reasonably able is so vast I am compelled to conclude that a huge number of disabled parkers are up to at least some measure of ethical malfeasance. 

A couple of hours ago I looked out the window at an old car that had just parked in a handicapped spot. An older woman slowly emerged from the car pulling out a walker with her. She had only one leg and maneuvered and kept her balance in the snow using the walker. She worked her way to the back door of her Dodge Dart. With struggle she got it open. She pulled out a folded up wheelchair and awkwardly got it set up properly in the snow. She folded up the walker and shoved it into the car while gingerly getting herself situated in the wheelchair.

"Now that's what I'm talking about!" I exclaimed with admiring satisfaction.

Then I felt a little funny about it.

The helpful note

Working in common with a lot of different people at a public library sometimes the only feasible way to communicate is through a post it note. Sending out an email to dozens of people about "computer number 14, the one to the far right at the front desk" will likely be forgotten by the time any of its readers encounter "computer number 14, the one to the far right at the front desk". Whereas a post it note stuck on the keyboard of that computer that says "The Caps Lock on this keyboard is broken. A work order has been submitted" Is completely informative exactly where and when it needs to be informative.


Well, not completely. But even then it provides a relevant context for discussion. If further information is required one can turn to one's co-worker and say "Hasn't this note been on here for, like, two years?"


To which your co-worker will reply "At least!" because our technical services department has been profoundly dysfunctional for over a decade now.


But this brings up an important issue regarding these notes: Always date them! When one writes a note the date does not seem particularly important as one thinks it will be clear to everyone that the time referred to on the note is "now". But time is weird, and by some device that even the greatest geniuses of the World have been unable to fathom, "now" irresistibly becomes an element of history, the past. We can see this trick of the universe in play by looking at a post it note attached to a chunk of plastic that looks as if it were chewed over lovingly by a medium sized dog, maybe a terrier of some kind. And on it is a post it note reading "Louise Finkelstein will pick up." With no date on this Louise Finkelstein will always be in to pick it up. Louise Finkelstein will be imminently arriving for eternity. With a date on it the march of time will reveal the mendacity of Louise Finkelstein, and allow for the throwing in the garbage of said disgusting object, relieving the library of a terrible burden. In the first scenario all are perpetual losers. In the second scenario, in the end, only a Bull Terrier in Mahtomedi is a loser, and he was doomed in either case.


But even more important than the inclusion of a date on any note is the inclusion of the note author's initials. Including one's initials is taking responsibility for what one writes on the note. If one is uncomfortable taking responsibility for the content of one's note, that is probably an indicator that the note is neither useful nor wise. Including one's initials indicates humbleness and wisdom. It allows for the possibility that something on the note may be unclear despite one's greatest efforts. I regularly extract information and make use of information on the unsigned notes I come across, but I don't respect them and throw them away at the slightest provocation. A post it note stuck to a safe with the combination written on it that has no date or initials on it is clearly the work of an incompetent lunatic imperiling our entire workplace. A post it note stuck to a safe with the combination written on it that also has the date and the note author's initials is a work of daring usefulness that indicates that nothing valuable is kept in that safe, but that we nevertheless, for some ridiculous reason, keep stuff in there that we all need to get to.


This morning there was a note by the phones announcing some barely valuable item that a patron lost and was looking for. It included the patron's name and number. It was unsigned. If we were to find this item, which is extraordinarily unlikely, we would not look for a note to match it up to. Which brings us to my final bits of note advice:


Just because somebody asked for it doesn't mean you have to write it down, and, just because it was written down doesn't mean it is worth keeping.


And so to my co-workers I would just like to add: If you are looking for that note about the lost wireless mouse, I threw it away. 


2/23/19.

FC.

Work orders

Attention End Users:


We will no longer be responding to problems outside of our work order system. If something goes wrong, if there is an emergency, if equipment appears to be malfunctioning do not stop us in the hallway. Do not call us. And do not take the elevator to our work area to tell us about it. You must fill out an Intranet work order. There are no exceptions to this process!

Unfortunately, since our work order system is currently down, we have not yet had a work order submitted for its repair and so are currently in a holding pattern.

We will let you know when it is operative again.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter.

Complaint quota

I don't like complaining about our wonderful library patrons, but sometimes they're simply so infuriating, so inexplicable, and so exasperating! So I try to keep it down to just a few such complaining posts each year.

What did they do this time?

Thank you for asking.

Did they yell at you and call you names? 

No.

Did they steal things?

No.

Did they physically attack the librarians?

No no no.

It's much worse than that.

They created pointless work for me.

"Huh." You might say, quickly losing interest. 

But don't you see? That's exactly it! There we are, me and the library patron. We're on the phone together and we're having a fine time. She is pretty sure she returned that Jude Devereux book, but when she called one of our other branch libraries they looked for it and they didn't have it!

"So why are you calling me?" I ask, though I put it more gently than that, though I can't think of how, so maybe I didn't.

The other branch suggested I call you.

Then I ask for the patron's library card number.

It never occurred to them that they might need such a thing because they naturally think I am magic.

I am totally magic but I want their library card number.

"I have to go to the local Kwik-E-Mart to get that." They say with a touch of irritation that they modify with a quick consideration of how if they have to go to the Kwik-E-Mart they might as well pick up some barbecued corn chips while they're there.

So they set the phone down and head to the Kwik-E-Mart while I, waiting on the line, watch the entire second half of the Atletico Madrid V. Juventus soccer match, which, even though it wasn't a Barcelona game, was pretty good. Then she came back to the phone and I fixed all her problems in the way that my colleague at the branch library should have done in her first call.

"So I don't understand." You say. "What is your complaint about the patron? It sounds like it all worked out okay for you."

To which I can only say, then this doesn't count against my designated yearly quota of complaints about library patrons.

I am, however, complaining about my idiot co-worker at the other branch. But don't worry, I'm allowed to do that as much as I like.

Stopping by a library on a snowy evening

One of my several dozen managers likes to draw cartoons on an informational whiteboard that greets us at the back entrance of the library. I was totally charmed by today's, which featured a signature (borrowed) character of his, standing, waiting in a blizzard at a bus stop, with the snow up to his neck, saying resignedly "My bus may be a few minutes late."


I can look out the back window of the library now, at sunset, and see the snow gently falling among the trees back there and into the parking lot. It is literally snowing, but I was tempted to describe it as "not snowing" merely because it is no longer snowing heavily. This month has been the snowiest February in all recorded history in my cities. My sense of snow normal has grown skewed. But interestingly this is also the same month in which we encountered astonishing, record breaking cold weather as well. At the start of the month we saw temperatures close to minus 30 F., and the windchills on our balcony reached 754 degrees below zero, though, of course, that's not official, and you probably shouldn't quote me.


Nevertheless this has been an awesome February. It has gotten to be so over the top that I'm not even mad at it anymore. It may snow some more on the weekend and instead of dread I feel a vague curiosity. How much snow can pile onto a railing before the height of the snow frosting becomes structurally unsound?


The extreme weather has had a curious effect on the library I work at. There is an almost split personality to it. And my own reaction has taken on its own self-contradictory quality. Every single day events are cancelled here left and right. I'm not sure if we've even had an event in the library this month that hasn't been cancelled. Everything from "Meet a dog" to "Learn why you will never be able to properly work your smartphone" has been called off due to the weather. This has outraged me. I'm here! Why are we cancelling everything? I wander around the library telling everyone that Minnesotans have grown soft.


And yet, as eight inches of snow dumps onto the city and driving the roads becomes a loose-wheeled dance with death, I sit at the front desk of my library and watch person after person still finding their perilous way to our front doors. "My god!" I cry. "Are these people without any sense? Why don't they just stay warm and cozy at home?"


I have been thinking these two reactions make no sense together, but I might have figured it out. If the weather is terrible and I still manage to make it to the library to work, so should anyone else. But since we did all make it here we really shouldn't have to do anything. I've got so many blog posts to write. So, so many blog posts. And miles to go before I sleep.


And miles to go before I sleep.

Busquets at the library

As I write, my dear little soccer team from Barcelona is playing a very important game that I cannot watch.

"Aren't they all important?" You inquire.

I'm so glad you understand!

I will watch a replay of this game later, but now I have to shelve some novels- something (Johansen) I'm (Johansen) doing (Mphahlele) between (Paretsky) each (Patterson) word (Pope) I (Rivers) write (Roy). But I will console myself for this terrible soccer deprivation by telling you about Sergio Busquets. He is a soccer player, a midfielder on said Barcelona team. And when I tell you about soccer players I like to try and connect what they do on the pitch with what we library workers do (at least sometimes) in our jobs.

My second best skill at the library I work at is like what Sergio Busquets does. There is a quiet line of self aggrandizement here, so let me carefully qualify this by saying I only manage to do this for a handful of hours a week, in between the snacking, Internet surfing, chatting, loafing, helping people ostentatiously, complaining about the management, performing, shelving while blogging, and wandering aimlessly.

But I do do this fabulous clerking sometimes, so there.

What do I do?

Oh, right. I work like Sergio Busquets.

There is a famous quote about Sergio Busquets which, if you follow the Barcelona Futbol Club you will have heard often enough for it to have passed into an almost tiresome cliche, but is otherwise fascinating to the uninitiated. It goes like this:

If you watch the game, you don't see Busquets. If you watch Busquets, you see the whole game.

What does this mean about Busquets?

I don't know, I watch the game.

Ha ha ha ha ha. Just a little soccer humor.

It means he's the metronome, the heart beat, the houndsmaster. He's the weather worker. He let's fly the arrows. He crafts the conditions under which the game plays. If he can. If he's at his best he sets the flow of play and makes it open up under his deft touch.

And so, in this mode at the library, which I enter into almost unwillingly, led along to it by workflow, solitude, and an often infuriated desire for perfection, I quietly, humbly, and behind the scenes, take care of the minor details that make everything else flow. I fix the shelving errors. I put in the labels that were missing. I repair things and set them up better. I line it all up to go at a touch. I say the right word. I work in a way a casual observer can't even tell is working, but is massively efficient and quietly industrious. I take care of small details that would be problematic for others later on and that they won't know was actually taken care of. I set it all... spinning.

And most of all, like Busquets, I tend to kick a lot of things when I'm doing it.

A really boring blog post you won't be interested in, though George Clooney might like it

It is a well acknowledged fact that no significant amount of people will read anything on the Internet without being tricked into it. This is why I considered titling this particular post:

Five Shocking Things You Never Knew About George Clooney!

The reason I didn't title this post that way is that, well, besides there not being any shocking things you don't know about George Clooney, I, like many writers, am averse to lying. That's what institutions are for.

If I wrote my blog for a big institution, like The New York Times or something, they would lie for me and they would title my blog post:

Five Shocking Things You Never Knew About George Clooney!

And I would tell everyone: I hate that they titled my blog post Five Shocking Things You Never Knew About George Clooney!, but my editor insisted!

Bastard!

Don't tell him though. He's just doing his job.

Dear Editor: I am finally ready

Dear Editor:



Yes, I have submitted my work to you now 47 times for your consideration.

Yes, you have said no every time.

"Maybe," You are thinking "He hasn't taken my 'no's' to heart."

I have taken each and every one of your no's to heart!

And if it were as simple as all that I would not write you again proposing that you publish my book. I would understand that you really were seriously not interested in publishing my writing.

But there were mitigating circumstances. 

Things have changed.

Those other 47 times I submitted my manuscript I wasn't ready. Deep down I did not really feel that I should be published, even if on the surface I was certain that I was ready. I was self sabotaging.

You might not remember it that way. You might just think each of those 47 times you simply didn't feel that my manuscript was up to the standards of your publishing company. You might not have recognized my self sabotaging even as you reacted to it on multiple levels.

With that in mind let me refresh your memory with some of the devices I have subconsciously used to dissuade you even as you simply ascribed your reticence to the quality of my writing. Once you see that your negative response was due to my self destructive tendencies, and not to the shortcomings of my literary acumen, you will be ready, I believe, to open your heart to the new, fully actualized me, and to my finely crafted works of popular literature.

The following then is a list of self sabotaging elements that have appeared in my previous 47 submissions:


1. Calling your fine publishing house a "den of cowardly corporate fascism".

2. Demanding first class airfare before signing any agreements.

3. The inclusion of fish in the envelope with my submission.

4. Lying about Nobel Prizes when it's super easy to look up whether someone won a Nobel Prize.

5. Having Bob Dylan call you, especially considering how much he mumbles.

6. Any reference to fonts, all 207 of them.

7. THE SUBMISSIONS ALL IN BOLDFACED CAPS.

8. Printing my manuscript in invisible ink.

9. Asking preemptively for my postage money back.

10. Showing up at your summer house in my swimsuit.

11. The whole thing with the pigeons.

12. Impersonating Nicholas Sparks.

13. The thing with the Cheetos bag (I'm glad everyone is okay!).

14.  Telling you that my writing is mysteriously unpopular.

15. Tear-stained manuscript pages.



Now that all this is out in the open I am hoping we can move beyond it and start afresh.

I humbly ask that in the spirit of new beginnings, and speaking as a person finally ready for this next big step in my writing career, you will take an unbiased look at my enclosed work of non-fiction essays. Hopefully, unfettered by my self-defeating actions of the past, you will see their merits and be interested in working with me to publish them at your lovely and esteemed press. 

If this is so please do let me know at your earliest convenience, and I will release your dog.




With hopes for a bright future together!





F. Calypso

The secret mission

Because our attempts at prayer here have recently gone awry, we offer this prayer:


Please, oh lord, I pray for all the peoples of the world everywhere, and I have a special idea. 

I think a fair measure of atheism would be best for everyone. Please god, make all the people in the world atheists. You know it's for the best. You can do it.

You and I can soldier on together, the only ones knowing the truth. We can do good in secret, away from the eyes of the world, the way it's meant to be done. 

You know, like on this blog. 

Lost to God

It is Saturday, so let us pray. Please bow your heads.

Wait, WAIT! You can't see the screen if you've bowed your heads! Ugh! Look up! Look up!

Ach, I've lost them. 

Should we wait them out? I mean, at some point they're going to get curious about what the next instruction is and they'll have to look up, even if just a peek. 

Look up!

LOOK UP!

Hmm. Nope. They're very spiritual. This could take awhile.

I've got time.

I'm patient. I can wait it out.

Still, I should have been more careful about my initial instructions.

Look up! Look up! Look up!

Arrrgghhhhhhh!!

Look up! Look up! Look up!

No, they're with God now, communing.

We'll just have to...

Hey, wait! What are you doing here then?



Still, it's nice of you to stick around.

Crazy rich

There are crazy people who come to my library and then there are crazy people who come to my library.

I'm just saying that there are odd people who come to the front desk of the library and say strange things that no one understands, and then there are people who come to the front desk of the library, make no eye contact, mumble bizarrely, whether trying to communicate or not, and check out only items related to serial killers.

One of this second kind came in for her weekly visit today. She had found some nice Charles Manson materials and was steadfastly not looking at me or saying anything at all while she rooted around for her library card. She did not look well, morbidly obese and in filthy clothes covered in what I took to be food bits but, considering her interests, could have been anything at all. Waiting patiently for the card I did not need because I knew her name, I noticed her indeterminable color fleece jacket featured a fancy logo from The U.S. Polo Association.

"Ah!" I exclaimed gesturing "A Polo fan are you?"

She did not answer.

Ah well, at least she comes from money.

The river

It is not in my nature to consider myself lucky. My professional dreams have come to little. My 2,200 plus and counting daily missives of extraordinary understanding and wit that you see here have decidedly not captured the world's imagination. My health always seems a little ragged and I currently have a wheezing cough. I scooted one of the rolly chairs at work today under the table and pinned a bit of my palm between the unfortunately raised armrests and the counter edge, pinching it painfully. There is a red mark there still that hurts to touch.

I keep count.

When I am out at the front desk of the library with another person 62% of the unpleasant patrons end up with me. Compared to how, on talent and skill, my favorite sports teams should fare, they do 18% worse. I've never won any notable prize in any contest. My clothes wear out faster than other peoples. Electronics are 3% more likely to be defective sent to me than they are on average when sent to everyone else in the world. The movies I like are too unpopular for the studios to make anymore. If I am hoping that something will come in the mail it won't, at least, not that day. If I want it to snow it doesn't. While Tuesdays and Thursdays are equally long for everyone else, for me the Tuesdays are actually considerably longer than the Thursdays.

I don't work on Thursdays.

I have never been appointed to the board of anything. No one has asked me to do an important and well regarded job. I can't run fast.

And I never forget any of this.

But on this day of the year I feel it is fair to add up all the pluses and minuses. And while I'd hate to tempt fate by saying too much, it is clearly apparent that somehow this great deficit in fortune has been paid in full, though it hardly seems it could be possible, making it all the more astounding. And the pure cool spring of my good luck so overflows as to run like river through my life, making everything that would be just a little bit dead, come wonderfully to life.