If I wished, I could make a full-time job out of taking surveys, not that it pays terribly well. My wireless carrier wants me to fill one out after keeping me on hold for 30 minutes — before walking me through figuring out why suddenly I can’t log online to pay my bill. Our auto insurance carrier asked me to fill out a customer satisfaction survey, after I filed a claim for a minor fender bender in our driveway. Once after eating at a Mexican restaurant chain in Tyler, the waitress pleaded for me to go online and fill out a survey. I could win $5,000, she exclaimed! So I went online and filled...
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The Summer Olympics shall soon commence in London, where rain falls in absurd amounts, buses carrying athletes are locked in traffic, the company charged with hiring security guards is a few thousand short of employees , and those in charge are trying not to freak out. But, as the British have said since the eve of World War II, “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Stiff upper lip and all that.
Many years ago I posited a piece about what events would fit a Summer Olympics in East Texas. I took a look at that piece, written during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, to come up with a new version. It’s fair...
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A friend told me the other day about how his ex-wife once accidentally set their swimming pool on fire. I do not think this was a factor in the divorce but tend to not inquire deeply into such delicate matters. Anyway, she and a girlfriend were throwing a bash and decided it would be lovely to have floating votive candles in the pool. Probably she saw something similar on cable television. I am sure it provided an atmosphere of luminescent festivity on an East Texas summer evening. Plus the candles might have helped ward off mosquitoes.
Speaking of which, I read an amazing story in the New Yorker...
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I came across a news item the other day. The famous Mickey Mantle’s restaurant in Central Park South is closing down after nearly a quarter century in business. Mantle was the small-town son of an Oklahoma miner who went on to become one of the greatest and most beloved baseball players to wear the pinstripes of the New York Yankees. Hard drinking and injuries shortened what was still a stellar career. Mantle quickly went into the Hall of Fame and personally downhill.
I am a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan. It is a generational malady that cannot be cured. Fenway Park is shrine I try to visit...
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