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Dear customer service representatives: please end your conversations with “Have a good day” not with “Thanks for calling such and such”. Because people will want to respond with “You too” and your final words must allow for “you too” to make sense.

The worst case is when the agent says “Have a good day, and thanks for calling us” because the first part gets the caller’s brain primed to say “You too” and it’s hard to switch gears that quickly. So the end of the conversation ends up being “…and thanks for calling us.” “You too.” Click.

It doesn’t have to be exactly “Have a good day”. It could be any other sentiment to which a response of “You too” would be appropriate.

Why is it that bullies get a holiday?

Not just get a holiday, but get to bully others on that holiday and everyone just accepts it.

It’s more of a problem in school, as bully problems in general are more prevalent in school. People seem to grow out of it once they reach the business world. Most of them do, anyway.

I regret that I did not write this post in time for the day this year, but consider this advance warning for next year’s occurrrence.

Picture this, as from the bully’s perspective.

“I like this particular day, and you don’t care about it. That makes you worse than me. I’m going to ask you about my people. You had better have some representation of my color on you, otherwise I am going to threaten you. No, more than that, I’m going to assault you. The only way for you to be saved from physical pain is to agree with me. Do you understand?”

I was going to say there are two types of people: those who like St. Patrick’s Day and those who don’t care. But I won’t disagree if someone wants to add a third category of people who actively dislike the day.

Me? I’m in the don’t care for it camp.

What I do dislike is being hounded by the people who do care. And pinched.

Why do you need me to participate in your holiday? Why can’t you enjoy it without my participation?

If I remember in the morning of St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll be tempted to wear blue (the original color of St. Patrick) or orange (since I’m not a Catholic) and justify it that way. I can celebrate your day, but if I do I’ll do it with the color that I want.

I was working in the barn one evening when Beta popped in. He wandered around and poked his head in one of the stalls.

He asked me “Is that a cat?” Knowing we do not have a cat, I peeked in the stall.

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I provided this image in case you were wondering how I felt about the game of Monopoly. The exception is the card game Monopoly Deal, as that is interesting whereas the board game version of Monopoly is not.

We had an impromptu tongue twister competition the other day. The winner was our youngest child – the 4-year-old.

Beta proposed a tongue twister, which Gamma promptly tried and failed. Then I thought I would propose one which I always mangle: “Word World”. For those of you without young kids, Word World is a TV show that teaches kids letter and word sounds. For some reason, I can never say the name of the show correctly. It usually comes out as “world world”. So I figured it would make a good tongue twister for other people too.

However, the first person to tackle the “word world” tongue-twister was Delta. Being only four, he hasn’t quite mastered his Rs and Ls, so it came out as “wuud wuud, wuud wuud, wuud wuud”. He said it correctly, for how he pronounces things. But the rest of us forfeited, knowing we couldn’t compete with that.

We moved this summer, and I thought I’d compare the old bus route to the new bus route.

Whereas in years past our kids were the first on the bus and the first off the bus, this year they are first on the bus and last off the bus. The old school at least recognized the importance of limiting the kids’ time on the bus, so we had a long bus ride to school but a short bus ride home. It all evened out.

I don’t know how we angered the bus garage, but at the new school our kids have an hour ride each way, whereas the kids at the other end of the route are on the bus for 5 minutes each way.

Not only is the route direction worse, but the route itself is longer – with many more stops and very convoluted.

Anyway, here are the plots of each bus route (1 mile per grid line):

Old Route
We were stop #1. S is the Start (bus garage) and F is the Finish (school) for pick up. Drop off went in the same order, 1 first and 4 last – but it started at the F and went straight down to our stop.

New Route
We are stop #3. Again, S is the Start and F is the Finish for pick up. Drop off is reversed, so we are the third-to-last stop.

As you can see, there is a lot of stopping and starting and it is much more convoluted. The school is barely more than 3 miles away, so my wife just drives down and picks them up at the end of school. That way they are home about 45 minutes earlier than if they rode the bus.

Give this guy a wide berth if you happen to be driving near him.