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During one of the many interactions that occur on a family vacation, a relative had to apologize to me. I am keeping it vague, because I don’t remember which niece or nephew it was, or even what the infraction was.

Somebody did something innocuous such as run into me because he wasn’t watching where he was going, but that happens a lot when there are 13 mobile children in one house for a week. I didn’t think much of whatever happened, but that child’s father saw it and then told the child to apologize to me. The child apologized rather well, considering how some apologies can go, but I was momentarily (that’s for a moment, not in a moment) stymied about how to respond.

It shouldn’t be that hard to respond to an apology. My normal without-thinking reply is “That’s okay“. But just before I was going to say that, my brain stopped me. I couldn’t say that, because that phrase implies that the infraction was not worth an apology. “That’s okay” really means “You shouldn’t have bothered apologizing because I wasn’t bothered by what you did”, at least in my mind it does.

In this case it was true, but I wanted to reinforce the father’s lesson he was trying to teach his child. And I thought that “That’s okay” would undermine that lesson. In trying to help my relative, I had to abandon my casual response and actually had to think about what reply to give.

What I said at that point was “Thank you for apologizing“, but I think “I accept your apology” or “I forgive you” (not “That’s okay; I forgive you” but a simple “I forgive you”) would also work. I didn’t want to keep the child and father waiting too long for me to say something, so “Thank you” was it.

Also, “Apology accepted” and “You’re forgiven” are true, but less direct than they should be. They may have been fine for a while, but in today’s society of weasely apologies (“mistakes were made”) I think I’m leaning toward putting pronouns in there: I accept, I forgive. Maybe that will encourage pronouns (and active voice) in the apologies.

I heard a conversation today, and I will share part of it with you.

Person 1: “Do you have any more surprises coming up?”
Person 2: “No, none that we know about.”

Two things: Yes, they were serious and no, I was not one of the people.

I find that concept to be related to another popular concept at work, the “what don’t we know about this issue” concept. It’s too easy to answer “I don’t know” to that phrase, but after thinking about it for a second, I do know. It’s everything. Because there is an infinite amount of stuff that we don’t know, about any topic, so it could be a very long process to detail what is not known.

Another post about Saturday’s trip to the zoo – yes, it’s about another sign…

I noticed this sign at the zoo.

I know this one has nothing to do with animals. The zoo has a nice play area for children, in case they tire of animals and just want to run around and do whatever. This sign was encouraging the kids to develop scientific minds have fun while playing in the stream.

It’s not a real stream, but it plays one on TV. This “stream” is the child’s-play-area equivalent to those plastic-liner-and-electric-pump waterfalls that people put in their backyards. Yes, it is a stream, just not a natural stream. But it is fun for the kids, especially those who don’t have access to real streams where they live.

Anyway, back to the sign… It seems this sign is somewhat related to Yoda: “Do, or do not. There is no try“.

Hmm… free marketing advice time, worth the price of admission. Mountain Dew should adopt a new slogan: “Dew or Dew not, there is no try” There are obvious licensing agreement issues with the Star Wars people, but it could work. Or there’s the way I usually remember the phrase: “There is no try, only do.” They could use “There is no thirst, only Dew“.

Anyway, back to the sign… The part I don’t like is “try and block”. If you’re going to try blocking it, and then block it, why bother trying first? Just do it. They meant for you to “try to block” the water.

Remember, never try and do something unless you really want a trial run before the actual event. Try to do something. Or, like Yoda, you could just do something. Even hard things.

“Nor let us try the Lord, as some of them did, and were destroyed by the serpents.”
– 1 Corinthians 10:9

We went to the zoo this past Saturday. It was a good day for the zoo, weather-wise and sign-wise.

First off, this sign, seen inside a new building (“new” as in “just opened about a month ago”).

It clearly states that this particular building does not use any light bulbs. Not reduced use of light bulbs but NO LIGHT BULBS. We are green, but it’s not enough for us to feel good about being green, we have to promote ourselves to you by showing how green we are. Even our signs are colored green.

It’s a zoo. I want the signs to be about the animals. I suppose that “animals” could be extended to “planet”, and “planet” could be localized to mean “building’s lighting systems”. My recommendation would be to put that type of information on a brochure or webpage so that people who cared about it could find it.

I suppose I could have ignored the sign. If all this was about being solarly responsible, I probably wouldn’t have written this post. I might have mentioned it, just in passing, maybe something about do not look directly into a solatube. The building had both skylights and solatubes, and those solatubes are bright. And they worked quite well to light the room.

So why am I rambling about the zoo’s claims of being environmentally friendly? Take a look at this view of the sign.

Do you see the irony? The sign is in the lower right corner. What do you see near the top left? That’s right, a fixture containing 8 light bulbs. And they are lit. In the middle of the afternoon. On a sunny day. You can tell it’s a sunny day because of how bright the solatube at the top left is.

In case you’re not convinced that those are them newfangled electric lights, here’s a closer shot.

Those are definitely powered by electricity. And there were more of those fixtures in this room, so there were at least 16 light bulbs.

So the sign should say “We are green and do not use any light bulbs in our buildings unless we want to highlight a wall with no displays on it.”

Overall, the zoo is great. We are going to keep going back. But the signs could use a little help.

“Therefore their inhabitants were short of strength,They were dismayed and put to shame;They were as the vegetation of the field and as the green herb,As grass on the housetops is scorched before it is grown up.”
– 2 Kings 19:26

Inspired by another blog, I decided to put together my own Room of the House quiz.  The two main things that prompted me were these:

1. The questions didn’t have the options that I wanted to choose, and
2. The comment left by js was more realistic than the actual answers.

So I made up a quiz – I’m tempted to trademark SarcastiQuiz – that has other options and balances the all-positive responses of the other quiz. Plus, the other quiz has only 5 answers: Library, Living Room, Kitchen, Bathroom, and Bedroom. I have not used any of those rooms in my quiz – you get 8 other “rooms”.

So take the House Room Personality Quiz and have fun. Remember that all questions and answers were completely fabricated on a whim and should be taken even less seriously than the professional, psychiatrist-approved quizzes on other websites.

“For to this end also I wrote, so that I might put you to the test, whether you are obedient in all things.”
– 2 Corinthians 2:9

We read somewhere that families are supposed to have a conversation during dinner, so we tried it. Here is how it went…

The question for everyone to answer was “What’s your favorite fruit?”
I answered “Mine’s raspberry.”

Then it was the 3-year-old’s turn. We guessed a few things, to which he shook his head no. Finally he answered “grapes“.
“What color grapes?” my wife asked.
“Green.” he said.

That went well enough.  Then it was the 5-year-old’s turn.  He thought, then answered “chocolate-malt berries“.

If I had known chocolate was an acceptable answer…

On another day, the 3-year-old and I had this little exchange:
“Eat your peas.”
“Those aren’t peas. They’re little grapes. They just taste like peas.”

Okay.

At a relative’s birthday party, I was pleased to see that the gracious host and hostess had provided other desserts, not just the standard birthday cake. I am a fan of the ice cream candy bars. As I grabbed one, I noticed the marketing hype on the front of the box, claiming that each bar has only 90 calories.

Just for fun, I checked the nutrition information on the side of the box. It did not claim 90 calories per bar.

I assume the nutrition information is correct in listing 80 calories, and perhaps the brightly-colored promotion deal on the box front is outdated. Why leave that claim on there if it’s wrong? Who wants to make something have more calories? Since when is that a selling point?