Zamboni

I love college hockey. We went to a game Saturday. They have a pep band at the game. It’s a nice touch. They’re good kids. But I think the band could be used more strategically. Between periods the band sits in the stands while the crowd watches the Zamboni drive around on the ice. This has all the excitement of, well, watching ice melt. About the most exciting thing you can do is to time the Zamboni on its laps around the ice and make bets of some sort.

To liven things up, why not have the Zamboni pull a trailer behind it carrying a small combo band of some sort? Is that asking too much? I gotta think that would be popular with the students and parents alike.

This could be known as the Zamtromboni. Maybe feature a trombone combo…

"Winding" Down the Year

Our local jeweler is extremely friendly. He comes to the counter and chats about anything and everything. Weather, sports, politics, personal experiences, you name it. It’s like going to the barber shop, only there are no chairs and you don’t get your hair cut. So, like, when you go there to buy a watch battery, he’ll stand there and talk for a long time. It’s kind of OK though, ‘cause your watch isn’t working when you go there, so you don't know exactly what time he starts talking. You never actually know how much time you’ve wasted, so yeah, that makes it kind of OK. 

Is a used watch considered to be a “second hand” watch? Or is a “second hand” watch simply a watch with a second hand? Or is it a watch you wear on your other arm? I still maintain that the second hand on a watch is actually the third hand, by the way…

Gift Rap

Gift wrapping is a nice service, isn’t it? You get your gift wrapped, take it home, and there’s zero chance someone at home’s gonna find out what you bought, cause it’s wrapped. The wrappers at the mall always do a nice job, and they use better paper than that stuff you have at home. But there’s a group that wraps even better than those wrappers at the mall. I take my gifts to my butcher and get them wrapped in that nice, thick white butcher paper. Try this for a change of pace surprise for your family this year – you’ll be the talk of the tannenbaum! 

And just for kicks, have one of the packages be meat.

Merry Christmas!

Surprise!

Our friend Jeff threw himself a surprise party once. It was clever and to this day I don’t know if he made up the concept or if he copied it from someone. In a nut shell, he got a bunch of food and sent out invitations inviting people over telling them it was a surprise party for him. On the night of the party he told his roommate he was going out, but hid in the closet (it was summer). He came out of the closet after everybody got there. And surprised everyone. So yeah, go ahead. Try it.

There’s a catch to this (isn’t there always?). Do not try this in the winter. Or in the summer, you southern hemisphere readers. People will hang up their coats in the closet and wonder what you’re doing in there.   

Callendar Conundrum

Do you ever share fond memories with loved ones where you look back tenderly on recent experiences? Sure, we all do, hopefully. At our house, that conversation might start out something like this: “Last week at this time, we were in…” Yeah, those are fun conversations to have. But they can be challenging if you had that experience in a different time zone. For instance, if you live in the eastern time zone and you had the experience in the central time zone, do you look back on the 8PM event from last week at 8PM the following week, or do you wait an hour and look back it at 9PM which would be 8PM central? Or do you, like me, make the wrong adjustment and mistakenly look back on it at 7PM eastern time?

Don’t even think about trying to do this on Daylight Savings weekends when you gain or lose an hour!

Bad Langauge Arts

Somebody at work cussed today and then apologized repeatedly. It reminded me of a class I had in high school where, on the rare occasion a student (not me!) cussed in class the teacher would get all mad (justifiably) and say, “Save that language for the locker room!”. (In hindsight, I’m not sure the coaches really appreciated that.) Well, one day the teacher got really frustrated at the class and cussed at us! From the back of the classroom, someone (OK, yeah, this time it was me) yelled, “Save that language for the locker room!”

While that response was admittedly disrespectful, it was something that may have helped this teacher in the long run. From that day forward she kept her composure and never cussed at us again.

Then again, I cannot speak for her language in the locker room.