Monday, October 18, 2010

Monday Attitude Adjustment Story








The beginnings of the MAAS – The trip
Last week I left you at the point of this story where Dan and I had just decided to go with our originally planned route for the journey but changed our start time to one hour earlier at 4:00 AM. That Friday morning, I was in the parking lot by 3:25AM (no one wants to be late for a date with the Director of their organization). Dan and his girlfriend arrived at 4:23 AM; the Director of your organization doesn’t care about being late…for anything with the possible exception of a tee time However, it did make the trip to the airport extremely interesting as I never knew Dan Cone was actually Richard Petty [now I am showing my age…this was the first NASCAR name I thought of and I am not too sure that any of my younger readers will understand the comedic value of this comparison; oh well]. I also discovered that I did have a cast iron stomach as I did not vomit one time, unlike Dan’s poor weak-bellied female companion.

Anyway, we reached the airport and checked in their luggage and got boarding passes. He was the first passenger to check-in and we had to wait 20 minutes for the agents to open the ticket station. I will not detail any more of the activities at the airport because I wouldn’t want to be the cause of teaching anyone new profanity, so suffice it to say I was back in the Signetics parking lot by 5:53 AM. What made me mad was that I had done a lot of work that was required on Friday from home on Thursday evening and could actually not even get to the online system until 7:30 AM, so I had a lot of time to think about…no make that stew over this fiasco…so I wrote a letter thanking each of my co-workers who suggested their particular trip itineraries for their thoughtfulness.

First was Frank “Wrong Way” [last name omitted] who I mentioned was a direct descendant of that old pioneering pathfinder Jonathon Corrigan Nagle(I didn’t say I wouldn’t name their ancestors) who was hired to lead the “Donner Party” into their land of “Milk and Honey”; Oregon. Jonathon was the guide who explained that the more traveled direct route to Oregon, which bypassed the Sierra Madre Mountains, was just too crowded with travelers trekking to California that they would never get to their promised land in time to plant their crops for a good harvest next fall. He suggested the wagon train divert through the Northern Sierra Mountains, which contained the Donner Lake. He insisted that was the only way he had ever gotten to Oregon on time for planting crops and “…besides, Donner Lake provided a wonderful water park-like diversion for weary travelers”. Over the objections of everyone in the traveling party he declared, “I can guarantee that the pass will be clear because the snow won’t fall for three months yet”. He also added that there was no need to carry all the heavy, extra provisions stored in their wagons, in case of a winter stoppage of the Pass, “Dump all that unnecessary, heavy food stuffs you have in your Conestogas so that we will be able to travel faster and re-supply at the “Last Chance [name withheld] Store” located at the other side of the Pass. Of course, all the beasts of burdens glorified this man and raised a statue in his honor even though they were all slaughtered for food because of his bogus promises.

My next message was directed at Todd “The Hunk” [last name omitted] by implying that it was his ancestor, Captain Falkenburg Miller, master of the Famous ship known as “The Flying Dutchman” who had told his crew “Don’t worry about the waters around the Cape of Good Hope; I have an alternate, safer path plotted to get us home” and then, of course, guided his ill-fated frigate across both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans into the nether regions beyond [although being Dutch himself, his grasp of the Dutch language was not too firm and he confusingly assumed “the nether regions” and “The Netherlands” were the same]; never to be seen again except, of course, in low-budget, poorly acted “made for TV” movies. Maybe Captain Miller would not have been retained as Captain of his vessel if the ship’s owners had known that he was also the infamous owner of the “Lost Dutchman’s” gold mine.

Last I thanked Al “Boris” Morris, whose cousin Igor “The Red” Morris had been the navigator for Amelia Earhart on her tragic flight in 1937 when she became a lost legend. A little known unpublicized fact was that Igor was a last minute replacement for regular navigator, Fred Noonan, who was fired after Amelia was duped into believing that Igor Morris had plotted a faster, safer route through the Pacific by way of the Arctic Ocean through the Suez Canal. If she had been aware that his navigational training had been limited to finding his apartment’s bathroom door in the dark [he never paid his electric bills] and his tool kit consisted of a used pad of unlined paper, a metal protractor and a broken, gummy “Peter Rabbit” eraser, I doubt if she would ever have replaced Noonan with him.

I then attached this letter to another memo describing each of the noted luminary’s suggested route to the San Francisco airport; the actual route we took, along with the times involved and then emailed the entire mess to everyone in the CIS department at Signetics…with the post script that I wrote this note because I had so time to kill since, due to the scare these “experts” gave us, we left so F***ing early. Since it was Friday, Al Morris answered my email with the following response: “Enjoyed very much reading your inaugural edition of the Friday Attitude Adjustment Story (FAAS) and am looking forward to next week’s equally exciting edition.” Because Al also copied everyone in MIS on his reply to my email, and almost all seconded his idea, the FAAS was born. Then, when Dan returned from Hawaii and became informed of all the facts, he actually created a new project that I was responsible for which sealed my fate as the official author of the weekly “FAAS”. I even had to select replacement “FAAS” authors whenever I took vacation.


Next week's 10-25-2010 (#164) title: Al “Boris” Morris

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