The shape of holiday

Above is a picture of the Thanksgiving dinner about to begin. Elspeth is on the left, with Alyssa, then Betty (still in her smock from preparing the meal) and our guest for the afternoon Sue Ringersma.

We had a nice day. Besides eating, I slept most of the day. As usual, I've been sick. Still am. Slept most of Sunday as well. I like sleep.

Holidays mean nothing but stress at work. I have to expend double the effort to get a day off. The problems it causes are immense, for my position anyway. You see, I'm neither high enough up the management chain nor low enough to work a shorter week and get a true holiday. I still worked four days (my normal week) at 50-ish hours, so, I had Thanksgiving Day off (thanks to Krista for working that), but worked another day of the week I normally wouldn't.

In the words of Monty Python: Now that's a fair court!

OK, I'll stop the whining. ...

The shape of things

The problem of leftovers raised its head as the Thanksgiving meal finished, and the "problem" (as if having enough food could be a problem!) of fitting the leftovers into the fridge again contronted us.

Poor Jayne. She again had to hear my rant about storage containers (that is, Tupperware) in the refrigerator. Here's the thing: Why do companies make, and we buy, storage containers that are round? Bowls for food storage -- what's the point?

The storage containers need to be rectangular or square because the refrigerator is rectangular. Duh. If all our containers were rectangular, we could better use our storage space, not leaving gaping spaces between round bowls. Thus, more could fit in the old ice box.

It's like a life-sized game of Tetris.

Same with my cooler I take to work. My lunch items need to be in rectangular storage containers so I can maximize the space in the rectangular cooler. Throw in a round container and, well, I cut my carrying capacity -- and eating potential -- in half!

So, until my refrigerator and cooler become round, I say no to circular bowls and those "compromise" oblong abominations.

Illumination

One more thing for my Dad and brother-in-law: I actually successfully changed the headlight in the Kia. Write this one down.

I haven't changed a headlight since Chevy stopped making those rectangular housings for cars (I still have all the "special" screwdrivers for that!). So, yeah, it's been a while.

Usually I take the car to the dealer and have them change the light while I had other work done. This way, I didn't look like a total mechanical incompetent. But the Kia dealer is in Grand Rapids about 50 miles away and gas is $3.29 a gallon and, even at 30 miles per gallon in the Kia, it's not worth the trip. The journey would cost more than the bulb.

But I managed not to explode the bulb by smearing my fingers all over it. And I did not break the cheap bent paperclip-like apparatus that holds the bulb in place. And it works!

Thought: The light that has lighted the world!