Saturday, July 27, 2013

Heroes.

I guess everyone has a pedantic pet peeve and foremost amongst mine is the use of the word "Hero"in inappropriate ways. Sportsmen who save the day are called "Heroes", people who help old ladies across the road are "Heroic". The currency has certainly been debased but truly there are people who should be described as heroic: nurses who have to tolerate bad behaviour from patients they are trying to help and who have no option but to remain calm and professional, people who grind away in deadend jobs and who go home to their families every day without complaint, these are heroes.
These ponderings have been set in train this week by what can only be described as a truly pooey situation in our neighbourhood. Yep, the huge sewer main which runs along our back fence has imploded causing chaos downstream from us. Thankfully (though I do sympathise with those affected) we haven't had any issues. We have however endured the constant noise of the large trucks pumping waste from the access point in our garden in order for them to rectify the problem. Large bright blue hoses snake down our driveway, traffic cones block off the street and we have become quite a tourist attraction for local rubberneckers.
All of this activity prompted me to think that these folks who are here working late into the night in the cold and with a job description that isn't that attractive are the true heroes of our civilization. Workers in the frontline, doing a job nobody tells their careers adviser that they aspire to and remaining steadfastly cheerful through it all. Doing a job that most people are grateful that they don't have to do themselves.
Public sanitation has possibly saved more lives than antibiotics and all other medicines combined but nobody gives that a thought when they yank the chain!


Saturday, July 20, 2013

Never, ever....

 ever buy a treadmill!
As a necessary condition of our move to a smaller house we are shedding larger items of furniture and various things that have accumulated on our surfaces much like limpets on a rock and they are sometimes proving as difficult to move as aforesaid limpets.
So, on to the treadmill. The treadmill (hardly used)  is a huge beast purchased by our son for us when the Prof was experiencing some health issues in the vain hope that it would encourage a healthy lifestyle (did I mention it is hardly used). As I write four grown men are attempting to get it through the door (it got IN the door) but it is stolidly refusing to go out the door!
Stay tuned...
My Saturday etegami does seem a mite gloomy but hey, with the weight of the treadmill on my mind, who can blame me? (Don't get me started about the monster barbeque!)



Saturday, July 13, 2013

Star Trek, "To boldly go..."

Inspiration came this week while I was watching the latest Star Trek movie for the umpteenth time (yes I am a Trekkie and I loved the original TV series). I managed to extract several quotes that make perfect sense to me and it dawned on me that Mr Spock is one of the great philosophers, in fact I think he is probably behind all of those pithy motivational quotes one sees ricocheting around the internet. It is possible you know as he can time travel!
Seeing a very old Leonard Nimoy play the original Spock is a bit salutary when one thinks that when he was a young man I was a young woman. It must have been all of that time traveling that made him so wrinkly, I can't possibly have aged the same as he?
I am willing to bet, say...one dollar that I am the first etegamist to use one of Mr Spock's epigrams on an etegami, any takers?
I married this saying with an image of one of the magnolias currently blooming in our part of the world. Perhaps because I think that all of nature is somewhat improbable, including that apex of creation the sloth (you though I was going to say man didn't you? but truly isn't the sloth just so cool?).
Maybe a sloth will feature in my next etegami, now how can I get one to hold still for long enough to be painted?
To round off the week, two etegamis of the same duck but different sentiments.