Tag Archives: thanksgiving

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Grown adults. I’m totally on board with kids being excited to see the snow. I’ll even forgive students who are excited at getting the day off. What I don’t think I will ever come to grips with are grown ass adults who crowd around the window eyes agog whispering and tee-heeing. Yes, it’s snowing. No, it’s not all that exciting. If you don’t stare askance out the window on a typical rainy day, there’s not much call to do it just because the temperature happens to be below 32 degrees. I know not everyone has gainful work to do on the day before a Thanksgiving, but I’m over here madly trying to get something wrapped up and off my desk before everyone makes a break for it so if you could at least pretend to be productively engaged that would be great.

2. Internet legal experts. You know, I’d have a lot more respect for the deluge of legal “opinions” smothering the country if I had any sense at all that the people behind those opinions had any sense of the purpose of a grand jury or the basic concepts of how the legal system works. Although I taught basic civics, I’d never have the audacity to claim undisputed knowledge about the intricacies and vagaries of the American judicial system. I do however know enough to be certain I’m not expert. That’s why I’ve not made many comments on the particular case du jure. While I haven;t hidden my opinion, I opted not to take to the interwebs to dazzle the world with it. I’d far rather stay quiet and be thought a fool than open my mouth and remove all doubt. It’s a shame the average American internet poster isn’t as circumspect.

3. Email. I was away from my desk most of last week, so when I stumbled in to the office on Monday I had approximately 900 emails waiting for me. Of those, I reduced 600 that were either overcome by events, spam, messages I was copied on for no apparent reason, or otherwise emails that didn’t require an action on my part besides hitting delete. Of the 300 remaining messages, 2/3 were of minor importance directly to me, were confirmations, status updates, or otherwise information that required little more than a “yes,” “no,” or “acknowledged” in way of response. That left approximately 100 messages that legitimately needed my attention, that required substantial thought, or that I needed to farm out to others in an effort to generate a response. We all could have saved a lot of time this week if the first 600 “so what” emails had never been sent. We could have saved a little more time if we collectively stopped to consider if we really needed to send any one of the next 200 messages. More importantly, I wouldn’t be scrambling around at the end of the 3rd day of mailbox clearing trying to respond to the 100 that really mean something if I hadn’t needed to wade through the other 800 emails to find those little gems. My point? Email is a tool, but you don’t have to be. Please use your distribution lists and the reply all button for good instead of evil.

For the love of our game…

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If there’s anything more thankless than going in to the office and trying to get some work done on the day before Thanksgiving, it’s got to be posting a blog later that same night when it’s virtually guaranteed that absolutely no one is going to be paying attention. The only thing in my favor is that here on the east coast we got the first snow of the season, so many potential readers might just be sitting the night out at home. I’m not holding my breath on that, of course, which is why you’re reading this process piece instead of seeing anything remotely resembling meaty content.

After more years that I want to think about, I really do have a sense for how scheduling drives the number of posts. It’s a blessing and a curse since it means sometimes I’ll withhold some good writing until I know more than a few people will be paying attention. It also drives the fact that I almost never post on Friday and Saturday. Sadly the world has better things to do on those days than listen to another blow hard ranting on the internet. I’m not selling any advertising here, but still it’s nice to know that what you write has got a fighting chance of being seen… because no matter how much noise we make about writing for ourselves and not for an audience, we really, really want the audience.

So as you’re sitting there, toasty warm in front of your pre-Thanksgiving fire, sipping your nog (or whatever it is you’re supposed to sip at Thanksgiving), think of the poor harried bloggers out there smashing away at their keyboards and wanting nothing more than a few more people to drop by their site. Take a little time tonight and poke around WordPress or Blogger and there’s a good chance you’ll run across someone whose voice you need to hear. It’s a jungle out there, but there are some incredibly good writers too who are just churning it out for the love of our particular game.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Yeah, it’s a day of thanks and all, but it’s still a Thursday and no matter how thankful we are, that’s no reason to just ignore the annoyances that continue to be so plentiful.

1. Federalized healthcare. I’m really starting to wonder when the powers that be are going to fess up that the rollout of the Affordable Care Act has been a cluster and push it back. From my reading, it’s a goat rope that hasn’t seemed to improve much over the last six weeks and doesn’t seem likely to improve much over the next six. I think a president who stepped back, admitted that his people screwed the pooch, and focused in on Launch 2.0 might actually earn himself some goodwill. But you know me, I’m a crazy optimist.

2. Appeasement. I know that Prime Minister Chamberlain, errr… President Obama is expecting “peace in our time” with Iran, but it feels a bit like we’re giving away the whole damned store and getting nothing to speak of in return. Time was “because we said so” was a perfectly reasonable approach to take with a belligerent nation whose stated foreign policy is to destroy the United States and our closest allies. I’m not sure I even recognize what’s passing for foreign policy these days. The world is a dangerous place and doesn’t get any less dangerous when we roll over and play dead on the important issues.

3. Food. So. Much. Food. I’ve never thought about bulimia, but there’s a first time for everything.

The most wonderful time of the year…

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The week of Thanksgiving heralds the arrival of that most magical and wondrous time of year… and I’m not talking about Christmas with its faux joy, peace and goodwill towards people you otherwise can’t stand. I’m talking about the four weeks between the holidays when nothing gets done and everyone is busy burning off what’s left of their annual leave. In short: Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the long march towards the end of the year when there are fewer colleagues around asking reports, wanting to see slides, and generally pretending to be productive. It’s the time of year when the pretense of being productive falls away. Sure, that’s only because there are barely enough people around to keep the lights on, but beggars shouldn’t be choosers.

There are going to be plenty of people running around for the next month trying to put together pick up meetings or cram on one more “special project” before 2014 rolls in, but mostly even they know they’re putting on a show for the sake of appearances. I’d be hard pressed to find anyone who really thinks they’re going to be able to get anything significant accomplished at this time of year. That makes for a low key environment… and low key makes me exceptionally happy.

If I haven’t learned anything else from being a drone these last 11 years it’s that this time is fleeting. Before you know it, and well before you’re ready for it, we’ll be back to the full-on grind. So the advice from your kindly Uncle Jeff? Take some time. Slow your roll and remember that no one ever saved the universe with their PowerPoint slides. Even when you think what you’re doing is important, there are well over seven billion people on the plant who don’t care if you live or die.

Perspective, my friends, is everything.

Misplaced outrage…

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I keep seeing how “outraged” people are that stores are opening ever-earlier on Thanksgiving day. Facebook and Twitter are full of posts demanding that retailers stay closed and calling boycott at every opportunity. That’s fine. Whatever helps you get your jollies.

One thing you can trust on is that stores like Macy’s and Kmart aren’t opening because their CEOs are philosophically opposed to Thanksgiving. They’re opening because there is growing consumer demand that they be open. If people didn’t want to start their shopping before the bird gets sliced, none of these stores would think anything of leaving their doors closed for the duration of the holiday.

Growing up in a rural, out of the way community I can remember a time when you were hard pressed to find a store of any kind open on Sunday. Later, most places had “limited” hours on Sundays, say noon-5:00 PM. Today, Sunday is just another day in retail. That’s not because the stores are evil, it’s because it’s what the consumer demanded. Despite what anyone thinks of its merits, culturally speaking Sunday isn’t generally considered a “day of rest” by anyone I know. It’s just the second half of a 48-hour weekend where we’re all trying to get done what we need or want to do.

I’m not sure why anyone thinks it would be any different with Thanksgiving. If you don’t want to be part of the crass commercialization, by all means stay home until 12:01 AM Friday morning. If you think you have a Constitutional right to observing a holiday on the day of the holiday itself, you might want to consider work that isn’t involved in a customer-service related field – oh, and don’t be a cop, or a nurse, or a soldier, or work for a power or water company, or, yes, in retail. I’ve had plenty of jobs where work rudely intruded on my days off, and while that sucks, sometimes it’s just plain unavoidable.

So maybe instead of railing against how “unfair” retailers are being, look around and see how many of your friends and family members are going to head to the stores before or after dinner on Thanksgiving Day. If the answer is more than “none,” go ahead and enjoy living in your glass house… and give it some thought next time you want to buy that discount mattress on President’s day or get the deal of a lifetime from the car dealer on Labor Day, or when you’re going to see a movie on a Sunday afternoon ensuring that some poor employee has to give up their Sabbath to sell you a ticket, make your popcorn, and fire up the projector on time.

Let’s be blunt for a moment: If you are legitimately thankful for your family and friends, does it make a tinker’s damn worth of difference whether you’re all sitting down for a turkey dinner at an appointed date and time or whether you nosh on eggs and bacon at the local diner at 3AM on any other random Thursday? I’m just having a tough time seeing the “so what” of all the commotion.

Here’s to not feeling like warm death on a muffin…

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After enjoying Thanksgiving with the family, doing more in person shopping in one day than I do the rest of the year, and fighting off what was either a very brief cold or a singularly bad attack of allergies, I’m slowly working myself back into the old routine. Being Sunday, of course, much of that routine involves being annoyed that the weekend is already over. Weekends, even when they’re twice as long as usual, never really feel long enough. At least no one else won the Powerball jackpot last night, so that means I’ve still got a shot at it on Wednesday. That’s pretty much my happy thought for the first half of the week. After that, I’ll make no promises about keeping up a cheery disposition – especially since we’re now in the long stretch of no scheduled days off leading up to Christmas. The last few weeks have spoiled me with the random clumps of annual leave liberally sprinkled across October and November. Somehow I’ll manage to get by with just the normal two-day weekends for a few weeks, I’m sure.

So, now that I’m not feeling like warm death on a muffin, I’d better get on with doing the odds and ends that keep this place from falling down around my ears. With the holiday over, I’ll try to get back to something like a normal posting schedule here. In the meantime, if you really have an itch for more reading, take a look at the five “new” old posts from October 2006 that I put up earlier this morning.

Be thankful, or My Seven Favorite Sins…

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Thanksgiving is without a doubt my favorite holiday. Say what you want about Independence Day or Columbus Day, but for my money, Thanksgiving is that one most quintessentially American holiday. Basing a major national holiday around a table laden with high fat, high carb, loaded with sugar foods is just about the perfect celebration of gluttony. I have to think that no one could pull off that kind of holiday quite as well as America can and does year in and year out.

After our high calorie meal, the vast majority of us are going to spend a good part of the evening lying about the house inspecting inside of our eyelids. Score one for sloth. After we’ve sufficiently recuperated from our meal, as a nation we’ll waddle off into the cold November darkness to our retailers of choice. Once there, we’ll spend billions of dollars on trinkets and baubles of every type. If someone is unfortunate enough to get in our way, we’ll trample them in a rush to the shelves piled high with merchandise. We’ve taken a bite out of wrath, greed, and envy right there.

Now, while we’re waiting in the checkout line or once we finally get our precious haul back to the nominal safety of our respective places of residence, we’ll post on Facebook about what deals we were able to scavenge. Our friends and family will be so jealous! Nice to see you there, pride.

The only thing missing is lust, but look on the bright side… This four-day splurge-a-thon is just getting warmed up.

From the writer, editor, and publisher of jeffreytharp.com to all of you, Happy Thanksgiving!

This is definitely my favorite holiday.

Say anything…

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It’s the day before Thanksgiving, which means it doesn’t much matter what I write here. If historical precedent is to be believed, all of nine people will actually see it. Even so, it feels like I should make some kind of effort to eliminate a little more white space from the internet. That seems particularly important since throwing down a holiday edition of What Annoys Jeff this Week on Thanksgiving seems vaguely inappropriate, Besides, I want to reserve the right to skip tomorrow if that seems like a better alternative given the food coma tentatively scheduled to begin shortly after dinner is served.

In the spirit of the impending holiday, I’ve noticed that many of my friends have been listing the things they’re thankful for in a daily post on Facebook. It’s hard to disagree with most of them – friends, family, a roof over one’s head. I’m pretty sure I even saw Miller Light suck in there somewhere. I’ll simply say ditto. My list probably isn’t all that much different from anyone elses and since they’ve already covered the high points, the only thing I can think to add to the list is this: I am spectacularly thankful to have a shower that is now back in full working order. You don’t fully appreciate how nice a thing a working shower is until you’ve been living for three weeks with one that’s gone haywire.

So yeah, if last year was the year of being thankful for being back in Maryland, this is the Thanksgiving where I celebrate the marvel of indoor plumbing. Given this trend, look for next year to feature a deep, heartfelt appreciation for fire or the wheel.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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After a brief hiatus due to Thanksgiving induced laziness, What Annoys Jeff this Week is back by popular demand. As always, here they are in no particular order:

Lame news headlines. In the age of digital media, I get that what qualifies as news might not now be on the same journalistic level as was expected in the heyday of newspapers and network news broadcasts. But really, a banner headline screaming “THANKSGIVING TRAVELERS HEAD HOME” seems like one of those things that should pretty much be expected the Sunday after Thanksgiving. I mean was anyone expecting large numbers of people to go away for Thanksgiving and never come back. I’m not asking for much, just a little journalistic perspective and common sense. Oh yeah, I guess I am asking for too much. Never mind then. Carry on.

Shouting. Yelling across a room full of cubicles to ask a question is not a substitute for the old fashioned intercom system. Actually, it’s not a substitute for anything. We have phones, email, and instant messaging at our desks. In a pinch, we could even walk the 20 feet to ask a question if we really had to, so wall to wall shouting is really unnecessary. Especially at 7:45AM. Maybe I’ll start wrapping notes around small rocks and winging them in the general direction of people when I need to get information to them. That would be at least as effective and much more entertaining.

The Internet. The internet really should be a privilege and not a right. I’m all in favor of people having a difference of opinion on important issues. That’s good. That’s healthy. But only when it’s an informed opinion. When it’s not, well, you’re just left with a large group of incoherently rambling lunatics whose only justification for anything is “that’s just what I think.” While that might be good enough for Jesus and you mother to keep loving you, the rest of us think you’re an asshat.

Mission to Mars…

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Every time I start packing I’m reminded why I so often go out of my way to avoid trips that involve staying somewhere overnight. I’m easy enough to manage; a chance of clothes, a toothbrush, and a bag full of electronics and power cables. I can be packed and out the door in somewhere under 20 minutes. Throw the dogs into the equation and the logistical engineering required for even a one night trip is something that would make the planners of the manned mission to Mars feel inadequate. Food, crates, toys, water, dog-proofing the back seat, the dropcloth to catch massive amounts of travel-induced shedding and stray loss of cookies will get things started. Then it’s a matter of avoiding tripping over them while I get my own stuff backed and loaded since neither will get out of the line of sight once they’ve seen a suitcase come out. It’s even worse once I actually start putting things in the truck. Then there’s unpacking on the other end just to do it all in reverse order a day or two later. Lord knows I begrudge these dogs absolutely nothing, but sometimes they are a real pain in the ass. Still, for all the hassle I wouldn’t really dream of going away without the fuzzy little buggers. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to come up with an easier way of getting their 300 pounds of gear from Point A to Point B without dragging it up out of the basement and getting it into the truck. So yeah, if anyone needs me for the next couple of hours before it gets dark I’ll be spending more time getting the dog’s stuff ready to go than it will actually take to make the trip. Oy vey. The things we do for our kids.