Worst-Case Scenario

I received a gift in the mail yesterday from a friend who lives in another state. She said she was cleaning out one of her bookcases and found a book she knew I could use. I’m not sure if she is familiar with the area I moved to but I’m going to assume she thinks its particularly troublesome.

I started thumbing through the chapters of this book titled, The COMPLETE Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook. Yes, the word complete is in capitals and bolded to emphasize the thoroughness of the edition and I realize there’s more here than I anticipated.

How to escape from a mountain lion might come in handy here in Frazier Park and the advice is exemplary. Make yourself look bigger than you are is first and foremost. Quite a challenge since I have spent most of my life trying to look thinner than I am.  Open your coat as wide as you can, it suggests, but what if it’s summer and you’re not wearing a coat? How do you make yourself bigger? I was in complete suspense. I turned the page.

The next step is to try to talk him down. Hmmm. Either the suggestion is to calm him or criticize him. I’m no mountain lion expert, but I would probably be best with criticism.  I think I would mention that his fur looks ridiculous sticking up like that, his teeth are yellow and his breath smells of bushy-tailed wood rat.

Keep your voice even and low. Remind him it’s only a game and it might help to take a few deep breaths. If he threatens to strike, quickly move into the center of his potential swing. Now the only way you could get me to be that close to a mountain lion is to drug me beyond reason or offer me a very large sum of money.  Neither is a distinct possibility.

Grab his club. Really? I wonder what country allows mountain lions to carry clubs? He would scare me enough just as he is but I should know what to do in case I am faced with a club-carrying mountain lion, so I shall read on.

This sounds a little scary but you must grab the club in mid-swing, near the grip. Pull down until you can wrap your arm around it and secure it with your armpit. Using your elbow, give him several sharp jabs in the chest until he lets go. So, armed with an elbow and an armpit (no pun intended) I will be able to survive a mountain lion attack? I’m ready.

After inspecting the pages further, I found them to be stuck together by a peanut butter thumbprint (peanut butter is my friend’s weakness). It seems the directions involving the club was how to disarm an irate golfer. 

Wow, this book truly does have nearly every worst-case in it ranging from how to make an emergency Menorah to how to survive sand in your swimsuit. I can’t wait to check out the CD that is pasted on the inside of the back cover. For the life of me I can’t figure out why my friend wouldn’t have already opened it.

In addition to solutions to hundreds of dire situations, with illustrations no less, the book itself can stop a bullet. I’m certainly not going to test the validity of that claim but I am impressed.

Technically Speaking

A technical writer is a professional writer who engages in technical writing and produces technical documentation for technical, business, and consumer audiences. According to Wikipedia, this defines the profession as preparing information that helps users who use a product.

When, however, does the technical writer stop informing the user and begin to confuse them? Is there a limit to just how technical the writer needs to get? Are they really trying to inform or simply impress the reader? Sometimes the simplest of directions can turn into a highly advanced intelligent quotient exam.

Last week I was reading an overview of forecasting in the manual for the software that the company I work for uses. I shall not name it but it rhymes with Snoracle. I was looking for helpful tips for master scheduling by way of user-defined rules for combining a system algorithm and sequencing criteria by establishing pre-defined sets, entry options, consumptions, demand class and time buckets. I felt like I was panning for gold. Occasionally I found a nugget but for the most part the only thing that turned up was a minimal amount of dust.

My neurons began to wonder. What if software manual writers were hired to write directions for every day chores? Say for example, doing the laundry. It might go something like this;

Estimating demand for specific articles can be determined by using any combination of historical, statistical, and intuitive techniques. Configurations for individual components should be based on nomenclature found on individual article’s inner seam. It is advised that when assembling a single configuration, or assemblage, that components be of allied chromaticity and texture.

Depending on location of access, apical or anterior, place components into vessel. Optimum performance and results depend on several factors. Care should be taken to avoid force when satisfying vessel dimensions. It is essential that the abstergent selected be compatible with the frangibility of the individual components.

Follow manufacturer’s instructions located rearward on the carafe or carton for correct thermal selection. The measure of the thermal readings will be located on the machine control panel board showing options to measure igneous, arctic or thermal equilibrium before selecting appropriate welter.

Are you still awake? We’re just getting started and the instructions are written assuming you already have a washer installed and hooked up.

Silly. It’s so simple. Just read the instructions. Of course, there is always that irritating individual who will shake their head and say, “You don’t understand this? All you have to do is separate the darks, lights, choose the speed, don’t overload the machine, set the water temperature and turn the cock-a-doody thing on!”

Don’t let them fool you. Someone showed them how to do it because we all know technical writers are paid to baffle your intelligence.

Stuck In The Middle With You (Hundreds of Drivers)

I used to have an art teacher that spoke of tilling the soil of your mind. She insisted that if you begin doing things differently like opening doors with the opposite hand you normally do, trying a new restaurant instead of that same old place or taking a different route to work, it tends to stir up the imagination and stimulates the mind to create. I can’t say I totally agree with that when considering the recent changes in my life.

I would like to talk about exploring the wonders of the human mind when it has been freshly oxygenated with a good tilling but I’m not.  I want to talk about what happens when the mind has been caught off guard with unexpected situations. I moved recently. Not unexpectedly, happily. My husband and I found a house we love just forty miles north of where we were.  It took a good year for us to find exactly what we were looking for and going through the escrow was like being on the wrong end of a rusty plow, but it’s kind of like childbirth, once it’s over you tend to forget about the pain. Heh. Till, till, till.

With all the out-of-the-regular activity going on in my life you would think my mind would light up like a searchlight scanning the sky with bright ideas. Instead, it was more like Novocain being injected directly into my creative center. My frontal lobe is still numb but I am starting to feel a noticeable tingle as the reactivation occurs. To add to the dead zone, notifying everyone of our address change was nothing more than added anesthesia.

Businesses are so complex these days that they often don’t communicate with themselves. Just before we moved we changed our information at the bank we deal with. Our debit cards were successfully updated but our credit cards with the same bank were not. When I tried to download a free app on my phone I kept getting the message that my card number didn’t match my bank records. This moronic bank shall remain nameless but rhymes with Mel’s Cargo.

The app I wanted to download monitors traffic and alerts you of accidents and advises alternate routes. A co-worker recommended that I check traffic daily because my commute home is a good thirty-five minutes north on Interstate 5 otherwise known as the grapevine and is well known for its closures and gridlock. Well, I couldn’t download the app so I thought I could get by without it for a day or two.

Have you heard of the idiom, ‘Baptism by Fire’? If not, I’m sure you’ve had a very difficult first experience with something.  Sigh, I’m spoiled. For the last seventeen years, I have enjoyed an eight-minute commute to work. Most people would think 35-40 minutes is a drop in the bucket and some would trade me in a heartbeat but it has been an adjustment.

I have now had the pleasure of being trapped in a traffic jam for six hours. I am truly sorry for the victims of the accident that caused the gnarly congestion but I have never experienced being held captive that long between two semi trucks.

To my left was, Three Amigos Tequila, organic, prize winning, 100% de Agave and produced by the Gonzalez family in Jalisco, Mexico. Of course my mind wandered to the movie, Three Amigos, and I was able to recall the song that Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short sang in the desert, Blue Shadows on the Trail. I tried to remember the words but it’s hard to sing the harmonies without Lucky, Dusty and Ned. 

To my right was a Dos Equis semi.  The logo brought an image of the most interesting man in the world to my mind, Jonathan Goldsmith, the ruggedly handsome character in the Dos Equis TV ads. I imagined him slapping the Three Amigos across the face in Three Stooges style, back and forth, over and over, eyes rolling, hats spinning. That actually provoked an out loud laugh. Wow, I had managed to occupy my mind with that scenario for a whole ten minutes.

It was the flash of an eight-foot-wide chrome mud flapper on the back of an RV that sported the name, Country Coach that snapped me into the moment. Why would anyone need a mud flapper across the whole back end of their RV? Do they know that every time they hit the brakes that flap swings and reflects EVERY SINGLE DAMNED headlight behind them?  It’s blinding! I felt like I was being tortured with intermittent third degree…for hours! I would have given up my darkest secret for relief. If I only had a crane and why wasn’t my car equipped with a coloring book?

Yes, I survived the ordeal, got to recognize my fellow travelers, watched as they indiscriminately relieved themselves on the side of the freeway, played their radios too loud, cursed and pounded their steering wheels and tried to drive past the whole mess on the shoulder of the road. Then, five and a half hours later, just past the site of the accident, a heartbreaking mess, the traffic thinned considerably and then magically disappeared. Where did everyone go? After all we had been through not so much as a goodbye kiss blown, not a one? I got home from work at 11PM.

You can be sure I called Mel’s Cargo bank the next day to give them a piece of my mind. Of course it wasn’t that poor soul’s fault that our records were not updated and she apologized profusely. I calmed down and asked her if she had ever been in a 6-hour traffic jam. She admitted she hadn’t. I pressed her for more, I felt smug and justified. What was the longest time she had been stuck in traffic? She humbly reported that she had been in the Birmingham, Alabama gridlock for 19 hours in January.

I only had two words for her before we hung up, “You win.”

Flying With The Eagles

I still have a buzz from Saturday night. I’m sluggish, headachy, nauseated, and have an overall feeling of unpleasantness. No, I didn’t drink. I went to see the Eagles in concert at The Forum.  The Madison Square Garden Entertainment Company claims they spent $100 million dollars and I was looking forward to seeing this concert mecca’s makeover.  I do so love the Eagles. There’s just something about thousands of screaming people under one roof that tends to make me want to run for the hills. I often remind myself that it isn’t because I am grumpy and don’t like people, it’s because I am an introvert. It turns out I am evil as well but more about that later.

I read an article put out by, The Domains Project, that if you put a drop of lemon juice on 100 people’s tongues, and measure how much saliva is produced, those producing the most will be introverts. Introverts are more stimulated by the environment than extroverts and may react more strongly to it in every way, even taste.

Armed with that knowledge, I purchased two tickets (they were selling out fast) that cost nearly $250. Without looking at a seating diagram (duh) but considering the price, I was confident that the seats would be close enough to the stage that we wouldn’t have to depend on the jumbotron screen to see what was going on.  LOL (I really am laughing out loud, but it hurts).

Okay, so it turns out that we were not informed that section 208, row 22, seat 2 & 3 should require, GPS, hiking shoes, trekking poles, tethered harnesses, helmets equipped with headlamps and perhaps a pee bottle.  Pest repellant is useless in this situation.

The air was thinner at that height but because the heat from 15,000 bodies tends to rise and the venue must not have paid the full electric bill because the air conditioning was non-existent. Somebody got ripped off. I sat there sweating and wondering why I would spend our hard-earned money to sit in hellishly uncomfortable seats spaced way too close together. You would think $100 million dollars, would pay for plush, leather, canopy chairs, cushy headrests and built in speakers but I guess money just doesn’t buy what it used to.

My negative musings were harshly interrupted by loud hoots from the couple behind us. They were howling every two seconds even though the only ones on stage were the roadies setting up. Obviously, this couple had smuggled in their own supply of alcohol instead of filling out the credit application required to finance a couple of beers. They were already lubricated and greasing up for the show.  I only had one frayed nerve left and they were getting on it. In fact, they intended to ride it with a cinch and latigo like a bareback bronc.

“Woo hoo!” is a sound I could go the rest of my life without hearing again. Why is it they never lose their voice during the concert? “Woo Hoo!” The Eagles came on stage. “Woo Hoo!, Woo Hoo!, Woo Hoo! Woo Hoo!”

Have you noticed that the universal sign language of turn-and-glare does nothing to dissuade people from annoying you? I remember a time when it carried some weight but those days are long gone. “Woo Hoo!” The Eagles are performing, Already Gone. “Woo Hoo!” My ears are starting to drip down my neck in an effort to escape.  “Woo Hoo!” I can almost hear the harmonies in, Take It Easy.  I gave my husband a look of apology and helplessness. He just smiled and nodded his head to the beat of the music.  Several more, Woo Hoo’s and the people around us begin use the universal sign of annoyance on the couple, again with no luck.

The Eagles finished their song and the narration of their history was camouflaged with a barrage of Woo Hoo’s. To add to the misery, the woman was constantly flailing her arms and jutting her hands in the air in the shape of hook ‘em horns and screaming how much she loved Henley. Sadly, I doubt he heard her. I was having visions of swinging around, grabbing the couple by their slightly protruding woo-hooing lips and throwing them down the several flights of cement stairs we had just climbed. 

The Eagles announced they would do one more song before taking a break. “Woo Hoo!!!!”  It was this particular woo hoo, placed in a pocket of silence that prompted my husband to stand up, lay his jacket across my lap and turn around. My first thought was, uh-oh, clean up on aisle 23, but what he did next will forever impress me. He took the lady’s hook ‘em hands in his in mid-hoo and said, “I appreciate your enthusiasm and I’m not asking you to stop but your yelling is killing our ears. Would you mind switching seats with us?”

She immediately apologized and they were happy to switch seats. That put them one row closer to the stage. My new neighbors thanked us and intermission began. The loud couple went to relieve themselves and a man further down in row 22 shuffled by and as he passed I noticed the sweat glistening across his upper lip.  His wife was fanning herself. He looked at me and said, “I only ever punched one woman in my life but I was ready to punch her.” I didn’t respond because he didn’t look receptive to having a conversation.

The concert began again and the woo hoo couple eventually returned huffing and puffing from their long climb. Once they caught their breath, they resumed their woo-hoo’s with just as much enthusiasm as before but thankfully it wasn’t as hard on our ears. Yet, her arms were flailing, spirit fingers pointing and she began standing up to block our view.

I leaned over to apologize to my husband. He smiled and whispered, “you know I recorded the history of the Eagles on our DVR from Showtime. We could be at home right now, sitting on our couch, hearing every word, every song, pause it if we need to go to the bathroom or make a sandwich and a bottle of water doesn’t cost seven dollars.”

I pointed to the stage. “But we wouldn’t be seeing them in person.”

My husband smiled and squinted.  “They look like miniature action figures.”

We left the Forum right after the Eagles played Hotel California. We checked out of the place AND we were able to leave. The cool night air rushed to meet us at the door and it felt as if we had been released from prison.

We have decided to curtail our concert viewing but I’m sure the woo hoo couple will more than make up for our absence.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye

I was watching a movie with my husband today when all of a sudden he paused it, looked to the left and to the right then nodded, “Motorcycle.” He resumed the movie.

I asked him to pause it again. “What do you mean, motorcycle?” 

He thumbed over his shoulder and in the next moment a motorcycle roared past our house. “See?” He said, with his ever so familiar I-told-you-so expression.

He resumed the movie and I sat there wondering why I hadn’t heard the engine coming. Is it because my hearing isn’t as good as his is or am I better at filtering out meaningless noise? Often, he tells me when my cell phone is ringing. It baffles me that he can hear it because I keep it on vibrate, it’s inside my purse and is in the next room. How could anyone possibly hear that well? Especially when music or the television is on?

You would think his hearing would be impaired from all the years he has been a musician but it certainly is not. We were recording music one evening and suddenly he stopped playing.

“What’s that noise?”

I shrugged. “I don’t hear anything.”

“It sounds like Rice Krispies in a suit case.”

After a lengthy investigation we discovered it was the sound of carbonation coming from my diet Pepsi can. It had to be removed before we could continue recording.

He tells me when the coyote’s are yelping on yonder hills at night, what type of helicopters are flying overhead and can hear the neighbor’s kid practicing his dance moves in his back bedroom. No, we don’t share any common walls.  He knows when someone pulls into our driveway and which friend it is by the idle of the engine.

He is aware of how many scoops of ice cream that plop in my bowl when I sneak to the kitchen for a snack. He can hear me take the plastic top from the peanut can no matter how quiet I try to be and why does the plastic chocolate syrup bottle have to make that rude noise when you squeeze it? It must sound like a faulty air horn to him. He hears it all. It just isn’t natural.  It feels like I’m under surveillance. 

I’ll bet the government has use for someone with his hearing abilities. I’m sure someone is conducting studies for the acoustic analysis of the sound of the flight patterns of chestnut tiger butterflies.  Just having the capacity to hear bacteria communicating and chatting it up with each other before they have the chance to infect could put us on the road to riches!

We’ve been talking about getting a dog. Great. Now I’ll have two individuals with superior audio skills who will be monitoring my activities.  I will never be outside of their awareness. Ever. I may have to invest some dollars in a white noise generator or a toy drone to act as a decoy if I want to escape their detection. But then why would I want to do that when it gives me such a wonderful feeling of being safe?