the ultimate hajj, at least in our culture

Today, we journeyed to the grand marketplace de l'univers, Ikea. I had never been to one before. When one first opened in our area, I wanted to stay away for a looong time until the hoopla died down.

Then I got ready for our next project -- to replace our rather tired but still serviceable cabinets -- so tired, that two of the doors are kept closed with a lovely red rubber band. So for the last few weeks, I've been measuring, comparing current cabinets to possible replacements, pricing options out.

And today we made our pilgrimmage. The store turns out to be less than an hour away. It's an amazing consumer factory, very efficient with its paths through the store, shortcuts as if we were playing "chutes and ladders," and recognizably uniformed sales associates.

We ended up dealing with a young, and by his own admission, inexperienced kitchen planner. He seemed incredibly defensive -- he knows the "design rules" and seemed unhappy about straying from them even though we're just replacing cabinets, not gutting the kitchen and starting over. For example, we're violating one rule by placing our well-insulated stove-and-oven next to the dishwasher. Apparently, this is a *bad* idea, even though I've lived with this very setup for eighteen years. "Ok, ok," he said, holding up his hands, "I have no investment in your design, not a bit." (yeah, right).

He rushed us through our order, then wanted us to rush through signing for it. I needed some time to check it, and he finally said, "Fine. I'll give you five minutes. And then I need to work with another customer." Wow. We had a little more than five minutes, but still.

And finally, he took us into the back room to pay for the whole order, and as soon as we were done, he took out his inhaler and took a huge whiff. And this kid is probably in his mid-twenties. He'll probably keel over from stress before he's 30 unless he learns to calm down a little.

We wandered through the rest of the store and picked up some accessories, all oddly named, as is the Ikea way. Then a short line to check out, a longer line to arrange for home delivery, and a quick run through the goofy "grocery store."

We were there for three hours (phew!) but there was very little traffic coming home. We're both exhausted.

small town...

As we were driving back from dinner with friends tonight, we passed through the next town over, a small rural place that didn't even have one traffic light when I first moved there in the mid 80s.

Tonight, we were sitting at the light in the center of town waiting to turn right when the light in the other direction turned yellow... beat... beat... and a car went through at a high rate of speed. Just as Robert was lifting his foot off the brake, the next car went through -- with blue lights blazing. And yup, the first car pulled over, then the cop pulled over and then, on this numbered main road, pulled up next to the offending driver, blocking the road. We sat there for a little bit.

There seems to have been some conversation, when, just as suddenly, the cop car pulled out again, turned its lights off, and led the first guy to the other end of town. The first guy pulled into an ATM, the cop went up a little ways closer to the town line and pulled over to wait for his next victim.

I imagine the conversation went something like this: "Do you live in town?" "Yes, officer." "Well don't do that again, understand?" "Yes, officer."

nice day!

Yesterday was wonderful.

It was Friday, my usual day off. And usually, I'm so foggy and fried by the time Friday rolls around that it takes me hours to clear my head and get out the door. For some reason, perhaps because I'm calmly within reach of my first big deadline at work, I woke up early and got out the house fairly quickly for a swim. I don't think my swim was any faster than usual, but I felt like I had a little breakthrough with my kick. There were a few moments there where I felt like I was moving through the water efficiently, rocking back and forth, moving with some measure of grace.

I came home, made some coffee, had a snack, and then briefly caught up with the gentleman who has been doing some small jobs on the house. Yesterday, he was finishing up a tile backsplash over one of the showers, where splashed water was beginning to eat its way into the wall. I had an idea for another project and he was very encouraging and reassuring. So we'll see about proceeding with that. (The backsplash came out beautifully, by the way; Robert and I are both very pleased with it.)

Then I dashed off to meet a friend for lunch. This particular friend and I met 25 years ago at work and I probably last saw her 15 years ago. A few weeks ago, she contacted me through LinkedIn. I'd been thinking about her but had completely lost touch. What a fun lunch -- lots of good catching up, lots of funny little connections we didn't know we had, lots of good belly laughs. We'll see each other again next week with our partners. From all I've heard and know, the partners will like each other a lot.

And on to pick up a framing job I'd ordered a week earlier. When we were in Greece last fall, we stopped at a charming island, Hydra, on which the cars are limited to about three tiny sanitation trucks. The harbor is flat, but the rest of the island rises up, probably volcanically. The footpaths that run parallel to the harbor are terraced and flat, but the connecting spokes are built as staircases. The main form of transportation, other than foot, is by donkey, and yes, they climb the stairs.

The day we were there, we wandered around, had lunch, wandered around some more, and then, after climbing one of the staircases, stumbled into an artist's studio. We bought four tiny watercolors, perhaps just a couple of inches across. I finally had them framed and am absolutely thrilled with the results.

Oh, and did I mention that yesterday was stunningly beautiful? The sky was blue blue blue and it went up to 80 degrees inland. I came home and turned off the heat and opened all the windows, making me and the kitties very happy.

As I was researching options for getting into the Fenway Park area while a baseball game was going on, Robert called to say he was leaving work early. So I hopped in the car and met him. From there, we went to one of our favorite restaurants, where a former manager was such a frequent customer and took me often enough that now I'm warmly greeted when I go there. Both our waitress and the restaurant manager spent time talking to us and they comped our appetizers. And yes, we had an incredibly good meal and left a huge tip.

Then on to Boston. We took public transportation which worked mostly, save a small miscalculation on my part. But we made it to our event on time and what an event it was. We attended the performance of the Black Grace dance company -- a small taste that hardly does it justice is here (sorry, the embedding machine didn't work and after several attempts I gave up) -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU8bVqaC6eU.

The company is from New Zealand and combines modern dance with traditional Samoan dance. Imagine total eye candy (yummmm!), fabulous music, and explosions of movement. There was poignancy and a lot of humor, just great. The last piece used music by JS Bach, with visual accompaniments that made the Bach more rocking than I've ever heard it before.

We caught the tram to our car just before the ball game ended; fans were getting a head-start out of the stadium, but the wall'o'drunken fans hadn't hit the station yet. I even got to sit down for most of the ride home.

Then home, more admiration of the shower-stall back-splash, some warm fuzzy cat snuggling, and to bed.

as seen in the grocery store

In honor of opening day at Fenway this week, or perhaps in an effort to promote a new Red Sox-themed DVD, the local grocery market was running a baseball "Open House" today. There was "plenty of delicious food to sample" AND employees got to wear Red Sox outfits instead of their uniforms AND the regular Muzak was replaced with baseball-themed songs. For delicious samples, one of the tables featured Crackerjacks and peanuts -- mmm, gourmet! Prominently draped over the front of the table was an informative sign that said:

This demo area features nuts.

Good warning. I might have tried the peanuts otherwise.

Robert's big trip to the dentist

Yesterday, Robert took his sorry -er- tooth and the detached crown to the dentist. Within a few minutes, the dentist had scrubbed and polished the crown and reattached it to Robert's tooth. Robert was then sent on his way without having to pay a cent. I find it particularly ironic that Robert, who has full dental coverage right now, got off scott-free. I, on the other hand, am still chewing my nails and presumably grinding my teeth while waiting for that darned "tape" to arrive at the insurance company so that my coverage can be reinstated and the bill resubmitted.

which is the loof and which is the lirpa?

Eleven years ago, I worked for a company called Pure Atria. It was the brilliantly named result of a merger between two companies originally named (wait for it) - Pure... and Atria. I had joined Atria a year and a half earlier. The takeover had happened, and the founder of Pure had no idea what to do with our company. So we at the original Atria were fairly miserable as the Pure guys went about destroying our nice little organization. Old timers were justifiably abandoning ship. It was a frustrating time.

That year, we experienced an incredible snow storm that started on March 31. I remember having to stay late at work and being extremely angry about the circumstances. By the time I could leave work, I had to run a work-errand first. I had to drive in the opposite direction of home, on the highway, with 18-wheelers for company. I have been pissed off at work before, but rarely that intensely. It was a good thing that we couldn't go back to work for two days because I needed at least that much time to calm down. It probably helped that I had a lot of physical work to do (shovelling); I'm sure that helped me work off some of my angst.

In those days, we didn't read work email at home. When we finally returned to the office, there were a few memos waiting for us. One was sent the day after the snowstorm. It said that Rational Software was buying Pure Atria. It was sent from a corporate account and was the usual standard format blah-de-blah, we are pleased to announce, etc etc, and probably used words and phrases such as "synergy" and "looking forward". Great.

The next one was from the President and Grand Screw-up Poobah of Pure Atria. He said that obviously someone had hacked into the computer system, and wasn't that memo the funniest thing? He thought it was such a great April Fool's joke that he'd sent it off to his buddies at Rational so they could share in the hilarity.

Then the following week, we received *another* memo saying that Rational was buying Pure Atria, this time for real. It was enough to make your head spin. And interestingly, all the old-timers who hadn't left yet decided to stick around for a while longer. The early Rational years were a lot of fun -- hard work, but good times.

And the pagsup of Pure Atria -- Reed Hastings? After he was unceremoniously booted out of Rational, he went off to found a little company whose premise sounded crazy at the time. Their vision was to rent DVDs over the internet. What a dumb idea! Except that the world now knows that little company as Netflix.

further dental adventures

Neither my dentist nor Robert's felt that he needed immediate treatment, though he is being seen and possibly cared for today. And last night while he was flossing (why do all great revelations come at that moment?), he looked down and saw his crown on the floor. He hadn't crunched it up and eaten it -- that sounded unlikely anyways. And the cats hadn't absconded with it either, fortunately. We'll see if it's a simple matter of regluing or whether he gets to go through the whole process again.

And in the "how may we be of disservice to you today" department, I got my first implant a few months ago. This is not an inexpensive procedure. My dentist insists on "precertifying" just about every procedure. They're upfront about costs, both total and the amount that I owe after insurance kicks in. So going in for the implant, I knew that the insurance company had approved and agreed to pay for a part of the procedure and I knew what my share was.

(As an aside, this is in stark contrast to my previous dentist, who never mentioned cost at all. I recently got a bill from them five months after the fact. They had received an insurance check a few weeks after I saw them and then sat on the bill for a long time before contacting me.)

A few days ago, I got a letter from the insurance company saying that the whole implant claim had been denied. I called the dentist's office and got a confused story about how I had been "terminated" from the plan.

Since then, we've had many phone calls -- to Robert's HR guy, to the dental plan, from the HR guy to the benefits people, and back to the dental plan. Yes, we'd been paying our premiums for Robert+spouse. But for some unknown reason, the insurance company ended my coverage after just a month of being on the plan. Of course, Robert's employer says there was a glitch at the insurance company. The insurance company points the finger right back to Robert's employer for having ended our coverage.

As of last night, we've been told that we are once again insured, but the insurance company has to wait for "the tape" to arrive. "The tape???" How old is that technology? Can I snicker now? Probably not while I'm on the phone with either Robert's employer or the insurance call agent.