Rumor Milling

This Past Weekend

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks at work. We have a couple drivers who are inveterate conspiracy theorists. They see a grassy knoll behind every issue. They’ve convinced themselves there is a vast governmental/industrial complex conspiracy to poison the working class with bus exhaust fumes. Stay with me here, all of the complex filters the EPA now requires to control emissions are actually insidious devices to spread toxins into the environment. I’m serious, they actually believe this and have been vocally preaching it to their fellow workers. I’d heard it but dismissed it out of hand based simply on the idiocy of the basic tenants of the claims. But in today’s world where any argument can be bolstered by something found on the internet (I mean – look at who our president is) they wouldn’t go away. I thought about firing them but that would have only made them martyrs.

I’ve always found that shining the truth on the claims of the viciously stupid has a way of banishing them back to the dark corners they usually and should inhabit. I now know more than I ever hoped to know about bus filters and emissions, etc., etc. We reached out to both the bus and engine manufacturer, the EPA, OSHA as well as some other acronymical entities. They all reported the buses were the cleanest in the history of buses. I met with the union leadership today to lay it out for them and am sending a letter to all employees with next week’s pay checks summarizing our findings. Hopefully this sends the cockroaches back into the shadows.

Colors in the Running

Back at home, my wife is in full interior decorator mode which calls for decisions. That’s a physically painful state for her in which I have never found the courage to interfere; even when asked for my usually summarily dismissed opinions. She scared the hell out of me last night when I came up from the Man Cave to find a broken off piece of granite counter top. I knew I would have remembered doing that as I hastily scanned the new counters to find them all intact. Once my heart returned to semi-normal rhythm she explained she’d commandeered a piece of the granite from the installer so she could accurately compare color schemes. She spent the day out gallivanting with the Neighborhood Mafioso in this effort. They are dangerous together.

The Scary Granite Piece

We had dueling FaceTime calls with our offspring last night. We were in the midst of a call with the Favorite Son and ABFA when our nightly call from New Jersey chimed in. When I opened that we found the First Blog Reader in mid-meltdown. We’d never been witnessed such an energetic display from her but it did bring back memories of her mother who displayed the same capabilities at a similar age. We finished our call with the New Hampsherites confirming an Easter rendezvous and then checked back in with our granddaughter. The storm, engendered by differing opinions with her parents on whether dinner or Sesame Street was more important, had subsided. The parents won, they always do, and were recompensed with the dazzling display of emotion we witnessed. She’d settled back into her charming personae when we rejoined her but I could tell both of her parents, after a long day, were not totally enamored of their progeny at that moment. I think it took all of thirty seconds for her to worm her way back into their good graces though, she does that to people. I didn’t spoil that détente by pointing out the “terrible twos” were within range. 

Coloring - A New favorite Activity with Abuela