I Can't Complain

Happy Holiday's

I love the holiday season. I love the sense of excitement that exists for the entire month of December.  I love listening to Christmas carols and trimming the tree. I love the little things that people do for each other all month (though I wish people could remember to be so kind and thoughtful the rest of the year). And this year I'm really enjoying the sense of wonder and joy that only a two year old can bring to the holiday. 

There's one thing I don't love, though; the bad grammar that runs rampant all frigging season.  I swear if I get ONE. MORE. CHRISTMAS. CARD from the "Smith's" I will run naked down the center of Assembly Street screaming "POSSESSIVE, NOT PLURAL! POSSESSIVE, NOT PLURAL" until a member of Columbia's finest comes to arrest me.  WHY can people not remember that apostrophes DO NOT make things plural?  That's what the damn S is for. The apostrophe should only be used to show possession, people. And if it's your damn Christmas card, why did you send it to me? 

And as if getting these things in the mail wasn't enough, yesterday I got a gift from one of my coworkers, which was very sweet and terribly thoughtful, but the tag read "Merry Christmas, from the Doe's."  It made me want to run into her office and say "from your what? Your dog? Your house? Your car? Well whatever it was of yours that gave the gift to me, please tell it thanks."  And this morning on a blog, I noticed someone talking about a visit from the in-laws by saying "the Roe's were visiting." 

This probably makes me sound like a Grinch, and I really don't mean to be.  I love getting Christmas cards and unexpected gifts and even hearing about people's holiday plans. But I think maybe next year, all the offenders on my Christmas card list are getting a copy of Strunk & White as their gift.

My Coffee Maker Is Driving Me to Drink

Two months ago, my trusty Mr. Coffee carafe coffee maker sprung a fairly significant leak in its base and had to be replaced.  We had guests and terrible caffeine headaches, so we pretty much just bought the first carafe coffee maker we came across, which happened to be this Cuisinart:

Shiny, eh? It's a lot fancier than poor old Mr. Coffee. It has a separate water filter, a special button for making smaller pots of coffee, and a nifty little light to tell me when it needs cleaning. As an aside, the first one of these we brought home worked for approximately 8 hours, and then stopped working entirely.  This should have been a warning, but as usual I failed to heed it.

About two weeks after we brought Cuisinart #2 home, the red "clean" light started blinkly merrily. Naturally, my first inclination was NOT to actually figure out what that meant and how to make it stop.  Instead I pushed the clean button and various other buttons, alone and in combinations, until I realized that was having no effect.  However, I noticed that pushing the clean button made it change from blinking to solid red, so I just left it that way until the next time I made a pot of coffee, in hopes of fooling it into thinking I'd cleaned it.  And hey, it worked! For 24 hours, until the next time I made coffee, when the light started blinking again.   Since we only use the coffee maker on the weekends, I cheerfully ignored the blinking light for a week.  The next weekend, after we made coffee, I tried fooling it again, by running a pot of plain water through it with the clean light on solid red. That also worked... for one coffee cycle.  This coffee maker is NO fool.

I ignored it for another week, and then decided it might be helpful to RTFM.  The manual explained that when the light is blinking, the coffee maker needs to be "descaled" and provided detailed directions for how to do this, involving precise measurements of white vinegar and water. This was too much work for me, so I just dumped some vinegar into the thing, pushed the clean button to make the blinky light solid, and ran it. Success! The light went off!  Of course, now the coffee maker smelled horribly of vinegar, so I very reluctantly ran a pot of plain water through it.  More success! The light was still off!  Whoo hoo! Now giddy with my victory over Cuisinart #2, I ran another pot of water (because it still stunk of vinegar) and then another.  No blinky light! No mere kitchen appliance can defeat me! 

The next morning, I happily made a pot of coffee in my Officially and Properly Cleaned Coffee Maker. Thirty seconds into the cycle that $*#*&%^#%@ blinky light came back on.  This time I followed the cleaning instructions precisely. The light went off, but two pots of plain water later it came back on.  I have now cleaned this coffee maker more in two months than I cleaned its predecessor in three years (I NEVER cleaned old Mr. Coffee).  No matter what I do that light keeps blinking, silently mocking me. 
I think I'm going to have to resort to the solution my dad suggested when, years ago, I asked him to do something about the annoying shift light on my Jetta.  He went into his work room, rummaged around for a minute or two and came out with a roll of silver duct tape.  "What's that for?" I asked, expecting some complicated explanation about electrical wiring.  "Put a piece on the dashboard, just over the light. That should take care of the problem..."

Dear Coworker

I am so terribly sorry to have interrupted the personal conversation you were having in the community break room.  I could tell from your long sigh and the comment you made to the person on the other end of the conversation before you stopped talking and glared at me indignantly that it was a horrible imposition for me to have come into this public space to use it for intended purpose while you were trying to have a private conversation. In the future, to avoid this sort of inconvenience, you may wish to conduct your private conversations in places which are ACTUALLY PRIVATE. 

By way of illustration, the following places are NOT PRIVATE: 

• the break room, especially during lunch hours
• the hallways and reception area
• the ladies' room, even if you're inside a stall

This is, of course, not an exclusive list of non-private places, so if you need further clarification on whether you should expect to be able to hold a private conversation in some location not mentioned above, such as the sidewalk, while on line in or working behind the register at a retail store, or while sitting next to me on an airplane, please feel free to contact me.