A Trip to the Zoo and Avoiding the Traffic

One of our plans for the summer was a trip to the Buffalo Zoo in Buffalo, NY, and Thursday was the day that was chosen. We needed to wait until after Eldest returned from her trip to Guatemala, which she did, and although she brought me neither avocados nor guacamole, she did bring me 100% Guatemalan coffee, which is decidedly delicious, and astoundingly awesome.

There was one small drawback: apparently someone else decided to visit the Buffalo and Western New York area Thursday as well. If you, gentle reader, guessed President Obama, you have read the news and are correct.

Thankfully, we passed the airport just before Air Force One landed. We made it to the zoo just after the gates opened and had a wonderful time laughing at the baby gorilla's antics, oohing at the young polar bear frolicking in the water, and haha-ing at the hyena's laughing.

After the PGA tour made it’s championship stop in Rochester, I was eager for this trip to the zoo to see the lynx and a tiger. We stopped to see the lynx, but no one was on the greens. We saw not one, but two tigers. One was stuffed dead and the other was alive. So at least half of that plan worked out for us.
  

Sure sign for Lynx, but no one was home

Stuffed Tiger

Sleeping Tiger, I am jealous

Then it was on to the adventure called lunch. We tried to find a Dairy Queen that served burgers and not just ice cream. This was a futile search. We opted to stop at the first fast food joint we found. Not being that familiar with Buffalo, we ended up at a McDonald's just off the campus of University at Buffalo (UB). Yes, the same UB where the President of the United States was speaking. When I realized where we were, I was mortified. After all, we may have gotten stuck in some presidential traffic constipation; and I hate that. 

In an effort to find out how much trouble I was in, I turned to social media. I searched twitter for the official President Of The United States hashtag (#POTUS). The first thing I found was autocorrect thinks POTUS should be corrected to POUTS; how sad is that? After manually correcting autocorrect, I discovered that the POTUS was no longer at UB: he wasn’t even in Buffalo. He was at a diner in Rochester. In order to reach that diner, he had to travel practically right by my house and I missed it! This day was turning out to be totally stinking awesome.

We left Buffalo and returned to Rochester, tracing the same route Mr. POTUS followed. I want you to know I was able to negotiate the route without the aid of a phalanx of state troopers clearing the route for me and without helicopter air support. I guess I am just more awesome than some people.

Thank you Mr. President for my three jobs.

This was written in May, 2012. If you are reading it now, thank you. 

Today, it is expected that the Labor Department will announce the creation of 165,000 new jobs. I have three of them. I work three jobs, not because I am a workaholic. I could be a card-carrying member of the local Union of Procrastinators, except I keep putting off sending in the application. Nor do I work three jobs because I am greedy and want to make lots of money, since none of them pays extraordinarily well.

For my regular, 40 hour a week job, I go to the home of nine people who score lower on IQ tests than the majority of people score. Working in an environment like this can be quite stressful. I have been lied to, lied about, misused, maligned, and mistreated. In truth, if it weren’t for the nine residents of the house, I would have quit a long time ago.

Let me explain with a story. One afternoon I was particularly grumpy. I was not happy with life, particularly life at my 40 hour a week job. Yet, here I was walking in the door for another 8 hour sentence. When I walked in the door, Max met me with a huge smile. Max is not short for Maxine, Max is not even her real name. Everything Max does is 100% full of heart and today was no exception. I walk in grumpy, and Max comes around the corner with a huge smile and a big greeting. “Hi Wob!” That is what she calls me, Wob, not Rob, which is too formal for her I suppose, but Wob. “Hi Wob!” she grinned, “Welcome home. I am glad you’re here Wob. Are you hungry? Come in the kitchen, I will get you some snacks. You want a banana Wob?” The words came so fast and with such enthusiasm, I did not have time to blink before she had my hand and led me into the kitchen for a piece of fruit. Grumpiness…gone.

My second and part time job is at a printing and distribution center for time sensitive documents. Whereas my full time job is the most rewarding, this job is the most enjoyable. I work in the middle of the night, usually until 3 in the morning, in a noisy building, with cold, hard concrete floors, pushing heavy carts of documents into trucks to be distributed throughout the surrounding counties. If a mistake happens, it means lots of grumpy managers and customers. The equipment used is complicated and as you know, the more complicated a machine gets, the more likely it is to break down. When machines break down, things run late, when things run late, there are grumpy managers and customers.

What makes this such a wonderfully enjoyable place to work? The team of men I work with. Each person expects the other is eventually going to screw up and keeps checking what the other is doing. Eventually one of us screws up and someone else catches it and disaster is averted. Usually. If not, then we brace ourselves for grumpy phone calls.

My third job is my newest job and will hopefully take the place of my full time job in a few months. In the morning, I assist students to transition from home and community environments to the school environment. In the afternoon, I assist students in decompressing and smoothly transitioning from school to home environment. On top of this I get to drive a big yellow bus and stop traffic, which is way cool.

Thank you President Obama, for creating my three jobs. 

Is it election time already?

This past weekend I was pondering what to blog about this week. It is too soon for the Superbowl;it is a few weeks away. The New Year is just about two weeks old, and I definitely do not want another Emergency Room—leading to surgery—visit for anyone in my family. Looking for some inspiration, I turned on the TV, which I soon realized was a dumb move, as I scrolled through the barren waste land of TV entertainment. Then, just before I switched it back off, there was a fleeting mention of Republican caucuses in Iowa.

Yes, it is that time again-- presidential election time. This is when politicians act like pre-schoolers. They run from state to state and city to city, raising their hands in the air, bouncing up and down, full of excitement and energy, saying, “Ooohh ohhhh, pick me! Pick me!” This behavior is especially evident at this early point in the presidential race, the time known as primary season. When politicians are not in the midst of campaigning, they are acting like Junior High students. Trying to impress members of the opposite gender, assessing their place in the world, and being chauffeured from place to place.

The first official primary is held in New Hampshire. The state has written and passed a law that they will hold the first primary of the presidential elections. This, to me, was an amazing revelation on self-determination. I have decided to use that same concept while waiting in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I will boldly tell the clerk that I passed a law so that I will now be first in line. How liberating and simple.

But, what about Iowa. They just had a republican primary kind of thing just before the New Hampshire primaries. How did they get away with that? I researched this and found out that Iowa does not actually have a primary-- they have a caucus.  One problem solved and another created. What is a caucus? A caucus is just like a primary, only different. The word caucus is an Americanism derived from the Greek word kaukos, which means to drink and first appears around 1755.  This is probably because most political gatherings were held in pubs, where people drank and boisterously debated about whom they would support in the next election, leading to the term, “Raucous caucus.”

Republicans in Iowa caucus just like it was a primary, with everyone showing up to polling places to vote. The Democrats have a much more complicated process, involving huddling around signs with the name of their chosen candidates and belittling each other for making such poor choices. If not enough people huddle around a particular candidate’s name, they have to disband and move to a different candidate’s sign. I saw the formula that is used to set that threshold and quickly realized I should have paid more attention to my Calculus professor in college.

With Iowa and New Hampshire behind this budding class of preschoolers…errm, politicians, now the stumping really begins as they hustle across the country, shaking hands and extolling their own virtues, and saying, “Pick me!” An interesting item to note regarding the origin of stumping. I believe it comes from our first president George Washington, who chopped down his father’s cherry tree, leaving a stump. When confronted with the stump, George replied, “Father, I cannot tell a lie.” This is likely the last time a politician has not told a lie.