False economy

Where I work, they have pretensions of being green. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that they (at least) are fooling themselves.

About 12 months ago, something disappeared from the troughs of the urinals in our building. I know you're thinking the little yellow hockey puck things that stop it smelling like well a urinal. And you'd be partially right too. They changed to blue cubes. What disappeared was water, which means that pure....um you know was flowing into the sump and generally making things delightful. The place smells bad now and the amount of water saving is probably offset by the lack of hygiene...

The second thing they do is turn off the air conditioning every night. This is undoubtably good for the environment, but not so good for the hamsters that still have to work given we are a 24 hour centre.

The third thing that they did was a classic in dubious benefit history. They mandated that we should all go to company screensavers on our computers. This was apparently going to save 300 tons of greenhouse gases a year...

Not to be critical or anything, but I figure that these massive green efforts are probably offset by another directive which says that we must leave our computers turned on 24/7 in case they want to direct an update to the computers after hours. This has the added benefit that when the day staff clock on in the mornings after the air conditioning has been off all night, it then takes 6-7 hours for the air conditioners to drag the temperature back to normal.

Rant over. Catch you later.

Right,

The funeral is done and as far as these things can be, it was a really nice ceremony. Everybody's speech was nice and it was more like a celebration. The kids helped to lighten it up too.

For those without a scorecard I have a daughter 13 - call her T, son 10 - L, and my brother-inlaw has a boy O who is 6 and a girl E who is 2 (going on 30). It was my grandfather's funeral so only my kids had ever met him. Nonetheless at several times during the ceremony I looked across to see both L and O in tears. It broke the tension somewhat and we were able to smile a bit. L got quite indignant and asked why I was laughing; I told him it was a coping mechanism and turned away to smirk.

I figure that L and O have a career as professional mourners if they want it, kind of like the film Wedding Crashers but with funerals.

Sharon (my wife) may have got a job out of all this. She has always wanted to try her hand at embalming but you need to be sponsored by a funeral home to do the course and the opportunities are limited as most of them are family run. However, she was asked to send them her resume so maybe this could be a change of career. I'm sure she would enjoy it.

Anyway that's it for now (boring wasn't it)

A beginning and an end

I've started this blog at an odd point in my life. Suddenly I have financial security but at the cost of losing an important and due to the lack of children in our family, a large percentage of my family. My Grandfather died on Tuesday. He made it through the Anzac day holiday, but suffered double renal failure that evening and passed during the night.

My parents have arrived and we are all busy trying to sort out, clean up and throw out most of the detritus of a life well lived. Just when momentum is gained, it is lost as we come across an item which causes a nostalgic moment that extends to a nostalgic hour and a couple of cuppas.

I know this feels unfinished, but its all I have at the moment...