What's So Hot About 2014?

Recently I read something about 2014 being on the way to being the warmest year on record.  I'm not sure where I read it, and I am trying to kick a habit, so I can't tell you for sure.  I think it was a headline for a newspaper article, and the only "paper" paper I read is the one and only ISLAND PACKET, Serving the Lowcountry. soooo....  (But I may have read it as a headline on the online version of a newspaper, and I look at three of them on a not-so-regular basis).

Oh, and the Packet's status as the only "paper" paper in my life is changing.  I took advantage of an offer from The Wall Street Journal for 12 weeks for only $12.  The only issue is that I had to give them a credit card authorization to automatically charge me $32.49 per month after this special introductory rate runs out, unless I cancel my subscription before they submit that charge at the end of the 11th week.  Now, I won't forget that, because, while I like the The Wall Street Journal, there is no way it is worth $389.88 a year.  Over the years, I once paid $149 for a year ( I believe it was 2006, but I could be off by 3 years or so....) but never more than that.  Where was I?  Oh, yeah, "... the warmest year on record..."

I still am not sure where I read that, I should look it up, but there's that habit.  The habit?  I am trying to stop looking up every thing that slips my mind for more than a moment by "googling" it on my smart phone.  I swear it is causing me to lose faith in my own memory.  I fear becoming completely reliant on Google for remembering everything for me.  I'm even tempted at times to "google" where I left my socks, and, pray tell me what I will have to do when I misplace my smart phone and it doesn't ring when I borrow someone else's phone to call mine so I can find it, and so on..., and don't tell me about that locator app you can put on your phone, I know the FBI is involved in that one somehow, so I have no intention of even "googling" what that app is much less putting it on my phone.

So, the gist of the article was that, globally at least, the average temperature on Earth will set the record for the warmest recorded.  The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations Agency, announced this as a "preliminary finding."  It became mind-numbingly detailed about the increase of

What's So Hot About 2014?

1.03 degrees in the average temperatures from January thru September of 2014 above the 1961 to 1990 reference period, yada, yada, yada....  My point is that everyone I know who lived in North America has pointed out that last winter was one of the coldest or snowiest (or both) winters they can remember,  This winter is shaping up to be even worse (tell those poor people in Buffalo, NY where more than six and a half feet of snow fell in a day or so this is the warmest year in recorded history.  Tell everyone in the Midwest who are seeing snow in November and freezing temperatures nearly every night since the beginning of November.  People, people, people, this average temperature stuff is slippery.  You cannot tell me it's getting warmer than ever when we keep having harsher and harsher winters.

Try telling me.  I now own a "space" heater, purchased to supplement the heat produced by our nearly new heat pumps (these really ought to be called "no heat pumps," but that's another story).  And I live on the South Carolina coast! Why did we invest in this machine from space?  The mah-jongg ladies were unable to get warm when we hosted last week!  Now, they were sitting at a tablee on a ceramic-tiled floor (not known for its warming properties) adjacent to our screen porch on one side, and backing up to an expanse of four windows approximately 18 inches above the floor, and extending five and a half feet up from there facing west in the morning.  These were not exactly prime conditions for staying toasty warm, but we did buy a "space" heater (What do these things have to do with outer space, anyway?).   Don't believe everything the United Nations tells you.

P.S.  Yes--you guessed right--I did "google" the article after all.  It produced "about 15,600,000 results in 0.44 seconds," only slightly faster than the half hour it would have taken for me to remember where to look for the article.

Stealing Stradivarius

Stealing Stradivarius

If I were going to write a novel, I'm pretty sure what its subject would be.  The villain of the piece would be an Itzhak Perlman look-alike who wants to add a touch of larceny to the great man's legacy by nearly getting caught with the item in question, then slipping away.   As I watch the story unfold, it occurred to me that such thefts must have happened many times.  These instruments have been so rare for so long.  I am not sure how many I would indicate are in existence today, I have seen a list of six hundred and fifty, but heard estimates as high as eleven hundred.  There have been fakes discovered.  Dendrochronology (the science of determining the age of wood) has proven the age of various impostors, proving they really weren't made of wood harvested in the 1600's.

The modern ear is apparently losing its ability to pick out the real thing in blind listening tests.  It's true.  That special sound said to be specific to the instruments manufactured by the Stradivari family in the late 17th and early 18th centuries is hard for audiences to pick out in live performances.  I know which violin would be the one that disappears as well.  It is the Baumgartner (yes, they have names, these violins).  You see the Baumgartner is presently on loan to Iryna Krechkovsky until 2015.  The Baumgartner would vanish in the last week of the loan's term.

One reason I have selected this one is the striking coincidence in this name--my hair stylist is named Iryna, and I have an appointment with her again tomorrow.  Imagine Iryna K. sighing as the days of December dwindle down to the single digits (even today, she has only twenty-three days left before she must return it to the Canada Council for the Arts).

The villain would recruit my hair stylist to impersonate the actual Iryna K.  She would step backstage on the night of the 3rd-to-last performance for Iryna K. and make off with the Baumgartner, giving it to the Itzhak Perlman look-alike, who will disappear.  Why my hair stylist?  Well, it turns out one of the most difficult tasks for an impostor Iryna is to be able to pronounce her own name with precisely the correct number (and quality) of "rolls" the "R" that must be sounded when saying the name.  Only a person of this same first name would be able to pull it off.  Of course, all the while, my hair stylist Iryna will have been duped by this man into believing he is really the renowned violinist, who has tragically misplaced his own Strad and wants just one more time to play a Stradivarius (of course he has to  trick her into it, my Iryna would never stoop to theft--grand or otherwise).  She would do it  to honor one of the final wishes of an artist of his stature.... (yes, he would tell her he has only a short time to live--hey, he's a villain, what can I say?).

When she wakes up on January 1st and learns that "Itzhak" did not return the Baumgartner by December 31st, she realizes what has happened.  She recruits a trio of her customers (I'm thinking one of them would be a handsome sixty-ish guy with curly grey hair and, well you know...) to help her get it back and restore the honor of the other "Iryna."  To do this, the hair stylist Iryna and her customers put together a scheme to steal the real Itzhak Perlman's Stradivarius (named Soil, after the Belgian Industrialist, Amedee Soil), knowing the fake "Itzhak" will be unable to resist the chance to obtain another (given that one of these "Strads" has sold for more than $13 million) when the hair stylist Iryna contacts him to find out where she can fence her newly-acquired Stradivarius.  Once he shows up, they can spring their trap and recover "Baumgartner."  Of course, nothing ever turns out exactly how it's planned now, does it?        

A Moment of Inattention, A Place Lost

A Moment of Inattention, A Place Lost

It's so unlike me.  I can't understand how it happened.  The recording regularly interrupted the muzak of the call waiting to apologize for keeping me waiting, but pointing out that the Social Security Administration oversees benefits for more than fifty million people and that they were taking the calls in the order received.   (So, Wait Your Turn!)

This went on for forty minutes before I began making dinner.  Grilled flounder is usually cooked on foil, I was told.  Just apply some non-stick spray and place the flounder,  skin side down, on the grill after seasoning, of course.  You can't really over-season fish, or so the contributor at Cooks.com had observed in the recipe I found when I posed the question--"What the heck do you season flounder with when you grill it?" to Google.  I know, I'm supposed to say I googled it, but I am being circumspect about grammar and usage today, having read and written a good deal about grammar and usage in the past few days.  (That's yet another draft lurking on the underside of this collection.  Right now I am working on three of them, and am not satisfied that any of them is "finished."  Suddenly, I feel the need to finish things I publish here?).

Back to last evening--I was ready to shift my attention to the grill, which I had to light with a log lighter as the sparking mechanism that usually ignites the grill is either hibernating in the "cold" weather we've had, or has succumbed to corrosion due to near-constant habitation by humidity.  I almost chose "erosion" back there, but the waves have not been lapping at my grill--they remain at the beach, wearing away our piped-in sand which must be brought in about once every eight to ten years in a process known as beach restoration.  I guess the theory is that the sand being sucked up about a half-mile or so out in the water was once our sandy beach, and piping it in as a slurry, then repeatedly running it over with giant bulldozers to wring the water out and flatten the surface is a "restorative process."  Tell that to all the crustaceans, who--if they survive the crushing force of the bulldozers--find themselves lying in the sun (with eyes having no lids or lashes to deal with all that light and dry sand) instead of lying beneath fifteen or so feet of water.  I'm thinking they don't feel "restored" at all.

Where was I?  Oh, lighting the grill, so I maneuvered through the door, holding the log lighter, squeezing the phone between my chin and collar bone and administering a light hip-check to the dolor.  I lit the grill, and waited five minutes more (with at least eight repetitions of the abject apology, accompanied by a preventive scolding if the selfish desire to move ahead of any of the fifty million others being served by the Social Security Administration, who apparently are all on hold, should be starting to form i my dulled consciousness induced by all this muzak, constantly interrupted, etc., etc., etc.).  After waiting five minutes to heat up the grill, I quickly wire-brushed it and was ready for the flounder.  I went back into the house and got the two pieces of flounder, now sitting on little aluminum foil rafts awaiting the voyage on the grill.  I placed each on the grill one-handed (the other hand was still holding the phone).  I then realized I had no tool with which to move the flounder around with on the now-hot aluminum foil and grill.  I walked back into the house, hung up the phone and picked up a spatula and started back out to the grill.  As I reached for the door, I realized it, I was missing something.   I actually had a hand free to turn the knob and push the door open.  My hips were not required for this maneuver, and nothing was squeezed between my chin and collar bone.  I had hung up the phone.  No multitasker here.  An hour of holding wasted.  I have lost my place in line.

It's morning now, and I am ready to call the SSA again, although I find it increasingly difficult to stop myself from reversing those initials I just mentioned.  OK, where's that number--I wonder if I could just hit redial.  OK, I am on hold again, waiting my turn.

What's for breakfast, an omelet perhaps?  Where's that frying pan?  The Pam spray...Oh, and eggs, a little cheese, pooh, and there's some green pepper I can slice up and saute in that other little frying pan if I pull that out and light this burner.  Now, if I turn this burner on....