My grandmother and I were talking this weekend, and she was telling me lots of stories about growing up and about her father.

My great-grandfather came to the US when he was 18, and spoke no English when he got here. He had a passion for learning, and although he always spoke with an accent, my grandmother says he had a larger vacabularly, and spoke better than my great-grandmother, who had come to this US when she was three.

He started out as a tailor, and soon ran his own shop. He left tailoring when the doctor told him that breathing in the fibers was ruining his health, so he quit tailoring and ended up in real estate.

He lost almost everything during the great depression, in part, my grandmother said, because he was too generous. He’d go to collect the rent, but if the renters told him they didn’t have the money because someone was sick, or was in between jobs, he’s say, that’s okay, I’ll get it next time. Next time, of course, they were gone. But he’d do the same thing the next time.

Grandmom told me that although her father had a quick temper, he typically snapped something and then immediately forgot about it, so nobody paid much attention to it.

Once, someone made a mistake, and her father snapped, “If you can’t get it right, then don’t bother coming to work!” and then oeft. The next day he was walking downtown and saw the gentleman he’s snapped at the day before. “Are you okay? Is everything all right? You didn’t come to work today.”
The man stuttered, “But, but, you told me not to come to work!”
Her father was stunned, “You mean you listened to me?!”

So last week I decided that I really did want and need a nice suit. I never wear dresses anymore–ever–so I need a little variety in the dressy pants suits I have to wear. On a whim I went into Coni and Franc–one of the local stores that sells women’s clothes. Expensive, and I knew it, but I thought I’d look anyway. The short of it was that I told the saleswoman what I wanted. She showed me three items, the second of which I liked, and tried on. And really liked. And they had a seamstress in store, so I got it fitted then and there. (Just taking in the jacket. I’ll hem the pants myself–couldn’t justify paying somone to do that.)

So I go to a store, the salesperson helps me immediately find precisely what I want, and while trying it on I get it fitted.

Sale.

But what really got me, was that today I got a thank you card in the mail from the saleswoman.

Yeah, it was a big purchase for me, but I didn’t think that in the grand scheme of things I’d spent that much money. But I got a thank you card.

You know what? It worked. They now have a very satisfied customer who will go back there to shop next time I need a dressy outfit.

Just another reminder of how strange the business world is. We have stores like Wal Mart and K-Mart where the shopping experience is typically a nightmare (narrow aisles, too many people, ugh). At both the big grocery stores in town they have self scan aisles, where you get to do all the work yourself AND put some college kid out of a job.

And then there are places where you get helped as soon as you walk in the door and you get a thank you note for your purchase.

What a strange world.

And in the world of cooking purchases, Several months ago I bought a nice microplane zester grater. I’m trying to make the world’s best lemon cake, and that requires zested lemon, and I thought that a finer zest might be better. Now I really like this zester, exept that apparently I’m not qualified to use it. It zested the lemons very nicely, but it also zested the end of one finger, and sliced two other fingers. Which means that I had a bunch of little paper cuts, and then had to squeeze lemons.

Sigh.

I hope the cake turns out well.

Why yes, I HAVE seen the Hudsucker Proxy!
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From the NY Times:

Ms. Fisch added. “From an average-citizen standpoint, what would you rather have Martha Stewart do, work on future plans for her company or make license plates?” she asked, and then added, “Although they would be very nice license plates.”

Finally downloaded the pictures from Cincinnati. The aquarium pictures turned out far better than we expected.

Just some random slacking…

And a note that blogging may or may not be light for the next several days.
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I haven’t had much to say recently. Between recovering from the visit of the 3 1/2 year old, and the sudden onset of an icky cold, I just haven’t had much to say. So…

If you were bored, here are the top ten things to be found on my website:

Yup. Other people besides me don’t know that puncuation is actually spelled punctuation.

And if you’re really really bored, there’s always Corn Cam or the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices (both old favorites)

Similar to the top 200 books, only different.

Bold is what I’ve seen, which is more than most people would expect, all things considered
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Happy Belated Birthday West Virginia!

Yes, we are a separate state.
No, we’re not near the beach.
Yes, we do get snow here.

It’s so cold in parts of the building today, that I’m expecting frost and snow to appear in the hallways.

If we build a snowman, I’ll take pictures.

Don’t forget that tomorrow (June 19th) is World Sauntering Day!

Go out and saunter!

And since I’m home, I’m printing off the picture of my grandfather and his siblings so I can send the original back to my dad’s cousin. Since I’m conviently off work, this is also a good day to go to the post office.

If you’d like to see a copy of the picture, it’s here. Unlike some of the other pictures I have, it only needed a little bit of cleaning up.

The next picture is of Uncle Ben, who everyone remembers as always making people laugh.

I wanna go to the Cincinnati subway!

(Heard last night on All Things Considered)

In case you were curious, here is a picture of me:
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