DDS - Getting the Lawn Ready

By I.J. Hudson

Warning!  Do not read further if you have a weak stomach.

It has become a ritual of very early spring – or late winter, depending on temperatures.

Just as some people await the seasons for picking strawberries, blackberries, peaches and apples, I await the perfect time to pick – wait for it – deer droppings in my front yard.  We have a herd of the creatures that traipses around the neighborhood grazing on plants, shrubs, running in front of cars and trucks and leaving their leavings behind. The crop builds until it can no longer be ignored.  You know you’ve reached that point when you can’t walk a continuous straight line across the yard.

Admittedly, the payoff for picking deer droppings is not quite the same as for fruit, but it is exercise and is a much needed chore.  It is preventive in nature in that it diminishes the chances that the small shoes of grandsons will find those deposits of deer scat and transfer them, in smushed form, to the kitchen tile or other interior surfaces – or to their parents’ SUVs.  

I choose February/March as my DDS (deer droppings season) because it often is warm enough to sustain outside activity, yet cool enough that the mostly pelletized material is still hard enough to make handling easier.  If you wait too late in the year, you have to wear gloves.      (Just kidding, I wear gloves.)

It’s fairly easy to pick up, but you do have to use your fingers like a small rake to bring up some of the lower lying “fruit” between the blades of grass.   And I stress some, because you can’t get it all.  Spring rains and grass cuttings assist in reducing the quantity of the morsels you miss.  

I’m sure some of you can/will suggest good uses for the deer droppings.  It may make excellent fertilizer, or a wonderful threaded necklace if properly glazed.  I suspect the latter may already be available online, but I’m thinking that artisan may already have an abundant supply of raw material. 

I do know picking up deer droppings is good exercise that I can recommend to friends who would like to stop by next season.  There is no question the deer will do their part to ensure there is another bumper crop. 

 

Actually, they’re working on it now.

Paper Address Book - Still Useful

By I.J. Hudson

What can an old address book tell you?  A lot.

I’m talking about a paper address book, the kind you used to buy at a card store – you know, with tabs along the side to separate names beginning with A from those beginning with B, etc.

Many of those books disappeared with the Palm Pilot era, then Smart Phones.  Address books became the digital “contacts” and sync-able between desktop and mobile device. Of course, a lot of people neglected to keep that sync going and when the mobile device died, found themselves losing contacts.  Remember when “backup” used to mean pretty much one thing - move backwards, not copy for safekeeping?

The paper version is always there, if you keep in the same place, like a desk drawer in the kitchen.  It’s safely tucked away next to the dish full of change and paper clips, rubber bands and papers you’ve been meaning to file.

The analog book also provides a history of sorts.  As people move or remarry, the address book gathers line-throughs, additions and maybe an occasional “white-out.”  It’s a record of change.  It may be the source of a Christmas card list, a book to consult when you’ve been out of touch with old friends, who have moved, picked up a retirement home, or shucked it all for an RV and added a post office box somewhere.

The handwritten changes are a running history of lives. The old friends, their addresses are phone numbers are tied to us – when we lived somewhere else at a different point in our lives. Some early entries didn’t have/didn’t need an area code; others had an area code change even though they didn’t move. Now an area code doesn’t necessarily denote where someone lives.  It’s just an identification number for someone to dial to reach that phone.

We kept our old paper address book so long that the pages kept coming out.  So we put rubber bands around it, and tried to keep it together.  But, alas, the day finally came when we had to put it aside (not throw it away) and make a new contacts list gleaned from the old.  It is much shorter, but it’s still in a decorative address book, kept in a kitchen drawer.

 Yes, I do have two BlackBerries, and the contacts and appointments in each are backed up.  But there’s something about pulling out the address book when I want to send an old-fashioned card (handmade using software) to someone for their birthday.  The new book does the job nicely, but it was always interesting to look folks up in the old book, note the changes over the years – and reminisce.

 

Commute from Hell - with Compassion on the Side

By I.J. Hudson

I apologize for being away from the keyboard for a few weeks.  I guess it’s just laziness and/or lack of discipline.

I’m back to catch up.  I’m going to bury the lead to this story by providing a little background before making a point.

Most of you read something about the “commute from Hell” in the Washington, DC area when a few inches of snow combined with some bone-headed decisions about releasing workers early so plows couldn’t reach the snow.  Result:  commutes than ranged from a few to more than 12 hours.  Unbelievable.   Power outages were in the hundreds of thousands.  Very few traffic lights, everything shut down.

I personally saw dozens of accidents, a car fire, dozens of abandoned cars, people stranded, confused, out of gas and generally wondering when they would ever get home.

The good old GPS with Bluetooth enabled me to bring up the local hotels and their phone numbers, dial with a quick touch so I could find out that they were all full.  Technology saved me the time of wasting hours, yes hours, driving to hotels to check to see if they had any rooms, a couch in the lobby, a parking lot I could just park in.

I made it through several hours of unbelievable backups and finally found a little driving room up Rockville Pike.  Power was out everywhere, but I noticed the lights were still on at a TGI Friday’s at the Pike Center (12147 Rockville Pike).  As I reached the door, I saw a sign that read, “Because of the weather, we’re closing at 10pm.”  The time:  10pm.  The door was locked!  Sigh…I had just made it through 5 1/2 hours of constant tension, near accidents, and a bit of anxiety - only to come up a couple of minutes short!  Argghhh!

But one of the managers, Chris, let me in to use the bathroom and told me we’re sending our folks home fairly soon and we’re not cooking anything else.  BUT, we’ve got some soup and coffee, and you’re welcome to come in for a quick bite.

YES!  I savored that soup for 25 minutes, letting my stressed out head and muscles unwind from a nasty experience on the road.  Wonderful.  An oasis.  I just sat and enjoyed.

There was no check.  But I left a tip anyway and walked out of TGI Friday’s with a strong desire to come back with a crowd and run up a big check.

Some social media gurus would characterize Friday’s effort as being “remarkable.”  It was.  But was it a culture that the Friday’s manager picked up through the organization, or was it just the way Chris personally treated customers and handled people? 

I don’t know.  I just hope that Friday’s recognizes that it has some good people and pushes their extraordinary customer service under extraordinary conditions throughout all of Friday’s.

What Chris showed customers that night was human compassion.  It’s an example of a social media building block at a very human level - before we called things social media.  A small courtesy by Chris to one customer that really costs nothing, but has the potential to touch a lot of people, who will think about Friday’s in a whole new way.  The social media part is how word of good deeds, good service gets spread.

Thanks Chris.  You’ll see me soon.