Monthly Archives: December 2011

“Beam It Out of Here, Scotty”

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

You'd never guess it from looking at my office or the guest room (it's really time to invite some overnight guests so I have some incentive to get the leftover Christmas wrap and other clutter out of there), but we've been getting rid of stuff. It's time for some end-of-year sorting and clearing out. Okay, make that end-of-years, plural, starting with, oh, about 1992.

We've found the occasional almost-forgotten treasure and a certain amount of just plain junk. Most of the stuff, though, falls into that troublesome category of things that are obsolete or unused, but that are still too good to throw out. We have no need for them whatsoever, but theoretically at least, we might—someday. Or someone might. We just don't know when, how, or why we might ever use them.

Of course, that theoretical potential is exactly why they've been sitting around all this time gathering dust.

Why doesn't somebody hurry up and invent a recycling/transmogrifying machine? It would operate somewhat like the transporters from Star Trek. The machine would disassemble something down to its very atoms, but instead of putting it back together the way it was, it would reassemble those atoms into something new.

You'd put your old stuff—an IBM Selectric typewriter from 1979, say—into the machine, program the right settings, and press "start." After some whirring and beeping and a few flashing lights, out the other end would come a new laptop, a couple of e-readers, and a set of stainless steel tableware for eight. Oh, and that nine-sixteenths wrench that's missing from the socket set.

Just think of the possibilities. Outgrown jeans and old tee-shirts could be transformed into this year's fashion, or maybe a new pair of Carhartts coveralls. An old bicycle could become a new skateboard. Unwanted Christmas gifts could be transformed into just the thing you'd have bought for yourself. The lighted plastic "pig driveway markers" I got in a white elephant exchange could become a new pair of dress shoes that didn't pinch my toes. Fruitcake or gingersnaps could be transformed into dark chocolate.

Now, that would be regifting.

Of course, there are still a few technical details to iron out before such a machine could ever be perfected. And if it were ever to be made workable on a practical scale, it would completely disrupt the world's economic systems. We certainly wouldn't want to do that, given how perfectly everything seems to be working right now.

So it may be a while before the "Atomic Recyler" is on the market. In the meantime, does anyone out there want a perfectly good Selectric typewriter?

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: Carhartts, e-reader, IBM, recycling, Selectric typewriter | 3 Comments

Dreaming of a Redneck Christmas

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

The man next to me was snoring. Thank goodness it wasn't that awful kind of snore that builds to a crescendo, then pauses for a few moments to prolong the suspense until, about the time the weary listener has resolved that tomorrow—no, make that today, it's 2:37 a.m.—is definitely the day to call the sleep apnea clinic, the hapless sleeper gives a strangled snort, gasps for breath, and starts in on the next measure.

This was a regular, rhythmic snore that wasn't really very loud. It probably wouldn't have kept me awake had I been in my own bed.

Of course, in my own bed I could also have easily poked him in the ribs with a loving elbow and asked him sweetly to roll over. That wasn't an option here. For one thing, I wasn't quite sure who the guy was.

Besides, we weren't in the same room. My lower bunk with its hard mattress was on one side of a thin wall and his was on the other. So much for sleeping like a baby at the annual family Christmas gathering. (Actually, I was sleeping like a baby—the one next door was awake several times during the night, too.)

Sleeping arrangements aside, here is the important question for this year's party: Did this qualify as a redneck Christmas?

Possibly. Here are the contributing factors:

1. We were at a hunting lodge in the South (well, South Dakota). It was decorated in Modern Taxidermy with mounted deer heads (the one with only one antler looked embarrassed), elk heads, turkeys, bobcats, and pheasants. One of the gifts in the joke gift exchange was a set of mounted antlers—from a deer personally shot by the giver, Great-Grandma (who was merely Grandma back when she shot it).

2. Grandma wouldn't have been up for any deer hunting this year though. A fall on the slippery back step a couple days earlier had left her stiff, sore, and with stitches in her arm. She joked that she hadn't exactly been run over by a reindeer; she just felt like it.

3. The entertainment included the usual board games and even a little bit of televised football, but the featured activity on Saturday afternoon was target shooting, with coaching from Great-Grandpa. Shooters included most of the granddaughters as well as the grandsons and sons-in-law. The great-grandkids are still too small to manage a shotgun, but they helped by picking up empties and unbroken targets. Next year, maybe.

4. The feature story of the weekend was the encounter some of us had with a dead skunk when we went for a walk. Someone suggested taking our picture with it, like the picture taken with the dead porcupine a few years ago (don't ask—that's a different story). As we approached, however, the "dead" skunk lifted its head and looked at us. An unhealthy-looking skunk out in broad daylight is not a good sign. We scrambled to a safe distance, my sister used her cell phone to call her husband the veterinarian, and he came and shot the critter. He also saw that it was caught by one leg in a trap. That immediately changed our perception of the skunk. Shooting it, instead of a necessity to get rid of a potential threat, became a necessity to put the poor thing out of its misery. (We skipped the picture.)

Arguments against this qualifying as a Redneck Christmas:

1. None of the in-laws were related except by marriage.

2. Too many teeth.

3. Too many e-readers.

4. Too many college degrees.

But I'll let you decide. Redneck Christmas, or just another ordinary family get-together?

And while you're making up your mind, have a Merry Christmas!

Categories: Family, Wild Things | Tags: antlers, redneck, South Dakota hunting lodge | 2 Comments

It’s a Wrap–Or Not

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Crisp ribbons perfectly coordinated with elegant wrapping paper. Sharp, even corners. Edges of the paper perfectly trimmed and turned under. Tiny bits of invisible tape discreetly applied in precisely the right places. Some Christmas packages are so beautiful that you hesitate to even mar their perfection by opening them. The givers of these gifts are so skillful that they make gift wrapping into fine art.

I am not one of these people.

(Let's pause for just a minute to let all of you who know me get over your surprise.) Okay, that didn't take long.

I do, actually, have a piece of paper stashed in a closet somewhere certifying that I graduated from college with a major in art. It might seem logical, then, that I would be the artistic type when it comes to packages. Nope. I must have registered late the semester they offered Gift Wrapping 101.

My packages tend to come out lopsided. True, this may be partly because I never seem to have boxes the right size for the gifts. I tend to roll things up in several layers of paper or recycled plastic bags, creating odd-sized, lumpy parcels that I then try to camouflage with wrapping paper.

Even when I do use boxes, though, I never quite achieve that professional designer look. The wrong side of the paper always peeks out somewhere. The tape always shows. I never quite manage to cut the paper perfectly straight, even though my primary objective when I buy wrapping paper is to get a design with straight lines on it. And let's not even talk about ribbons. I think I used to have a bag of used bows somewhere, but I haven't been able to find it for several years.

I was intrigued, then, to read an article in this week's paper about decorator who teaches a class on creative gift wrapping. This woman makes her own boxes. She makes bows out of scrap ribbons. She creatively recycles materials from around the house. Among her suggestions for wrapping homemade canned goods was to use a hollowed-out piece of birch log. On her list of essential gift-wrapping supplies is something called "raffia ribbon."

I have no clue what raffia ribbon even is. I suspect from some of her suggested uses for it, however, that if I did encounter some I might commit a decorating faux pas by calling it "twine."

Obviously, this woman takes her gift-wrapping seriously. It's a good thing I didn't know about her class in time to sign up. I'd probably have flunked.

Or maybe not. She did have kind words for recycling by using the same gift bags year after year. And she said a popular style for wrapping this year is "shabby chic."

I don't know about "chic." "Shabby," though? That part, I can certainly do.

Categories: Just For Fun | 5 Comments

In the Doghouse

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

The first do-it-yourself carpentry project I remember attempting, when I was too young to know any better, was a stick horse. To start out with, I had a wooden head. (That would have been the horse's head—and aren't you ashamed of that unkind thought you just had?) It was cut out of plywood, and I think it may have been something I painted in school.

Anyway, my self-assigned task was to attach the head to a broomstick to make a complete horse. I remember working away, one eighth of a turn of a screwdriver at a time, to screw the two pieces of wood together, until I simply couldn't turn the screws any further. I had no idea that a real carpenter would have drilled holes first.

Another time I started to build a doghouse. I had the idea that you needed to start with a frame and then put boards on the sides, but that was about the extent of my architectural skills. I got four scrap two-by-fours nailed together into a crooked rectangle for the base, and then got stuck when I couldn't figure out how to attach the uprights at the corners. I had maxed out my skills. Since I was scrounging scraps of wood, I ran out of material about the same time, and abandoning the whole project seemed like the only good idea left. You might say the doghouse never got off the ground.

Quite a few years later, as a beginning adult with a toolbox of my very own and a college degree (including a major in art which, unfortunately, didn't encompass anything useful like "Introduction to Doghouse Design"), I set out to build a house for our outdoor cat.

The style was Early Grocery Box. It consisted of one cardboard box inside another with insulating material stuffed in between. I cut a nice round (well, almost round) door into one side and put a couple of towels inside for flooring. I even gave the whole thing a coat of blue paint for waterproofing before I put it in the coziest corner of the front porch. It was kind of cute, in its own lopsided way.

As far as I know, the cat never spent a single night—heck, not a single minute—inside the house. Maybe he didn't like the color.

Or maybe he was too embarrassed to be seen going into the uneven little door. Being a smart cat, maybe he had noticed the difference in connotation the English language gives to "doghouse" and "cathouse." As in, "He was in the doghouse for a long time after his wife found out about his visit to the cathouse."

Wondering about the peculiarities of language may not be any more satisfying than trying to build doghouses or cathouses, but it certainly is easier. I'm a lot less likely to stab myself with a screwdriver, for one thing. And any half-finished constructions that don't work out? All I have to do is hit "delete" on my computer, and all the evidence of my false starts and miscalculations magically disappears.

If only I could do the same with the half-started creations on my sewing machine and my workbench. Somebody really needs to invent a universal "delete" button, something like a television remote. It would be the perfect tool for wannabe crafters like me who persist in imagining they can create vast projects with half-vast skills.

Categories: Remembering When, Words for Nerds | Tags: cathouse, doghouse | 1 Comment

Drop the Purse and Back Away Slowly . . .

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

A long time ago, I remember reading something in a murder mystery that made me want to slam the book shut and throw it against the nearest wall. No, it wasn't a factual error, such as having a character load a clip into a revolver or locating Mount Rushmore in North Dakota. Nor was it a case of the previously strong-minded and capable heroine walking blindly into deadly peril when any person with an ounce of common sense would simply have called the cops.

This was even worse.

The author described the contents of a female character's purse. It contained a comb, a lipstick, a compact, a few dollars, and a handkerchief (clean, of course, and neatly folded). That was it.

A male author might possibly have been forgiven this editorial faux pas—though it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect him to have done a little basic research. This author, however, was a woman. She knew better.

The pristine purse she described had no odd pennies in the bottom. No wadded-up tissues, used and otherwise. No random grocery lists. No wrappers from restaurant after-dinner mints. No cough drops so old they had melted to their paper wrappers. No car keys. No bobby pins, nail file, or lip balm. No pens, working or not. No lonely mates to long-lost earrings. No napkins with mysterious phone numbers or to-do reminders written on them. Not even, somewhere in the bottom, a wallet or a checkbook. (No cell phone, either, but that was okay because they hadn't been invented yet.)

As I recall, the character was looking through her purse in search of something that might help her escape from a dangerous situation. She didn't find anything useful.

Served her right, too. A real woman would have been equipped to pick a lock with a bobby pin or fend off the bad guy with a nail file. Or at least try to choke him with a couple of stuck-together cough drops.

Categories: Just For Fun | 1 Comment