14. Wear my ring around your Neck
“Animals have come to mean so much in our lives. We live in a fragmented and disconnected culture. Politics are ugly, religion is struggling, technology is stressful, and the economy is unfortunate. What’s one thing that we have in our lives that we can depend on? A dog or a cat loving us unconditionally, every day, very faithfully.” – Jon Katz
Without television, we probably would have still heard of Julia Carolyn Child and Graham Kerr, the Galloping Gourmet. From what I’ve heard, Kerr could also have been called the Gulping Gourmet. Julia wasn’t the first chef on the tube, but the most widely viewed. She debuted on the PBS station, WGBH in Boston in February 1963 with her show, The French Chef. It ran for a decade nationwide, earning Peabody and Emmy Awards and may be why we have stations dedicated to cooking and so many cooking shows.
Almost 29 minutes long, when Child cooked a fowl dish – note the spelling of the word in italics as some people may spell it wrong – she brought to the studio four chickens in various stages of reaching the finished entree. Those are the directives of the people who create these shows as I experienced a few years ago making chocolate mousse on a PBS station in Buffalo. Some people have adapted to the time restriction, but it’s impossible to do justice to the art of cooking that way. My favorite cook is Jamie Oliver, because of his concern for health, especially that of children. Another chef claims he’s your cook and not your doctor. There are good guys and those not so exemplary. I don’t treasure shows with competition for dish creation or hosts that scream at people. It just creates too much stress, which no one needs.
The microwave oven has been a timesaver. I never owned one and won’t buy one. It’s good for warming a dish up and I’ve used it for that purpose at work. If you use it to make popcorn, make sure you follow directions. Smoke can set off smoke alarms and produce unwanted showers. The aroma is sickening, too. Thawing food out is another use for the oven, but I do all right just using the stove over low heat and adding in a bit of patience. Avoid that method for frozen turkeys. Cooking doesn’t require a microwave as you can fix baked salmon, salad, rice and a vegetable in less than a half hour. Other choices are warming up a pasta sauce or chili from the day before on a stove in about the same time. Sitting down to a meal is meant to be relaxing. Microwaves only create an atmosphere of eat and run.
I mentioned being a software consultant earlier and should mention that by being one I avoided politics at corporations – that should be a great step to relieve stress, as should being responsible to a single boss. Was I ever wrong in that assessment on two counts? Entering that work meant at least a pair of bosses since I was accountable to the person who found me the contract – the one from the consulting firm – and a corporate supervisor. Working full time at a company involved completing projects for numerous managers, but as a temp guy, I had to do the same. On one occasion the salesman of the consulting place showed up at my place of work and asked, What are you doing? A day before that, I had no desk, so I asked some manager where I could find a computer terminal. He told me to just use any empty one, indicating that someone was away for the day. That sick or vacationing employee turned me in even though I left no coffee stains nearby. Perhaps the manager really meant that I should find a terminal with dust on it, but that was my quest in the first place. As a contract person, you have to serve two or more masters at the same time, which can’t be done.
In many places, consultants are required to be at company meetings. I really hate meetings as I believe productivity varies indirectly to the number of people at that gathering. For those who missed that math class: the more people there, the less gets accomplished. At one corporation, our group met every Friday for the whole morning. Truly boring, I think that time was for showing off how intelligent you were. I think this was based on the number of words you said and how many acronyms you tossed around. At another place, the entire corporation at one location met once a month. This was great if you liked birthday cake, donuts and meaningless awards dealing with attendance. Anyone who doesn’t take a sick day in the stressful world of big business is ill. Sadly, I went to more meetings than I should have. I should have used the reply, I forgot.
Since consulting doesn’t offer job security, it makes you save for rainy and snowy days – the times between jobs. Besides that stress, interviews aren’t what contract seekers look forward to, especially when the interviewer concludes you’re overqualified. Many full time people told me they couldn’t handle either scenario. It takes a special breed to enter into the consulting field.
In addition, you have to go where the contracts are or go without beer or really like beans and rice. It also requires long commutes. My first contract was a spoiler in the Big Apple, not involving Steve Jobs’ company. That first week at Banker’s Trust across from the World Trade Center was something to which I looked forward. By the end of the week, I had a different outlook. My commute was from my home to downtown, a distance of 50 miles. Driving, taking the subway, train, which I used to like, and walking took about two hours. I tried different combinations for making the journey, but the time was about the same. Including work and commuting, I had a twelve-hour day. No one should be subject to that. I was blessed since the assignment was only for six months.
Another source of stress comes around March of each year: taxes. I liquidated one of my investments funds by the end of 2014: it was too oily. Let’s call it BBB Investments, with the first three letters possibly representing Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered. I still had to be involved with the company because of taxes until the middle of March 2015. At that time I needed to log on to their site and had to answer the security question, What is your paternal grandmother's first name? The answer is the name of dad’s mother, Mary, which I keyed and was greeted with the words, Your account access has been suspended because of multiple log-in attempts with invalid credentials. On a try the day before, I put in, Stella, my mom’s mother, but that was rejected too. I have a few more ideas, but I’d have to call to have my account reinstated and I don’t have any more time to invest with BBB. Besides, phoning would only be confusing to the tech guys. My 2014 tax numbers from the company weren’t on the money either.
You won’t receive any dollars for answering these four questions, but you’re welcome to come up with answers anyway. The answers will be given later.
1) Who played for the New York Knicks, New York Rangers and the Brooklyn Dodgers?
2) The score is 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh inning and yet no man has reached second base. How is that possible?
3) Frank drives the ball down the left field line, but the ball is foul. Before the next pitch, he is on third base. How do you account for that?
4) What word in the dictionary has no vowels? This is before tech words were entered into that book. The letter Y is sometimes used as a vowel, but this three-letter word doesn’t have it either.
5) Give a word that has all five vowels in it, in the same order as they are in the alphabet.
Elvis Aaron Presley had albums full of top songs, including ten number one albums and eighteen top of the chart songs in the United States. Released in 1958, “Wear my ring around your neck” wasn’t one of those as it only managed to make it into the top ten. He has been referred to as the King of Rock and Roll or simply the King, and rightly so.