AAA maps

We're taking a trip over Christmas, and we're not visiting relatives. We're going to Savannah, Georgia. It's a nice place, we know no one there, and it's full of history, or something. It has a busy port. It also happens to be a good overnight stopping place if a family were to drive to Orlando, Florida -- not that this is relevant, just a useless tidbit.

I went online about two weeks ago to order AAA maps. They came in the mail, but we determined this week that we neglected to order one map we needed. Betsy visits our local AAA office in person to get that map. First, the main receptionist speaks to her in the hushed sotto voce tones of a librarian. Are people studying here at the AAA office? Betsy tells her what she wants in her normal voice, and the receptionist logs it into their computer system, which tracks and assigns work to the various sections of the office: maps, travel agent, membership, insurance, etc. Betsy then proceeds to the map desk, where a pleasant young woman sits, waiting for her computer to register the assigned task from the receptionist. Evidently my wife moves faster than electrons, because she arrived at the map desk well in advance of her map order. Betsy paced uncomfortably, unsure of the protocol. Should she just verbally announce the one map that she wants, as people did in the previous millenium? If she did, is the woman allowed to act without authorization from the computer?

Did I mention that Betsy is the only customer in the entire establishment?

Finally, the computer pops up with instructions, and the clerk leaps to life. Betsy has her map of Georgia, and makes her escape.

Why couldn't the receptionist have just hollered, "Hey Sylvia, we need a Georgia map," rather than waiting for the computer to tell her what to do? Would that violate the whisper-only policy at the AAA? Did they put this system in place to protect AAA member confidentiality? After all, what if someone comes in looking for AAA discounts on bordellos or dog fights or something?

Cat détente

An abandoned young cat found us a few weeks ago, and after the inevitable failure of a multi-pronged campaign to find his owner, the rest of the family besieged me to keep him. The only two dissenting votes were mine, and that of Max, our pre-existing cat.

Max has behaved much like a middle-aged TV star, threatened by a younger, more youthful starlet. He's forced himself into acting more cute and playful around us, while exhibiting a thinly-veiled hostility towards Oreo. Oreo, for his part, has tried to remain non-threatening towards Max, and acknowledge him as alpha-cat. I've sought to reduce tensions by providing two litter boxes, two food bowls, and showering each of them with reassuring attention and affection. They now co-exist for hours without incident, much like People's Republic of China and the USSR in the 1960s. Perhaps I'm the Henry Kissinger of cats.

Speaking of ol' Hank, my wife Betsy insists that his accent is fake. She thinks that he affected it in his youth, playing on the American presumption that anyone with a German accent (and lacking a toothbrush mustache) must be smart (cf: Albert Einstein). She's heard him speak German, and he's terrible. Also, she tells me that his older brother speaks English largely indisinguishable from native-born Americans. Since it's harder for older children to pick up a new language, how could the younger brother have a thick accent while the older lacks it? Didn't they both escape from the Nazis and move to the US at the same time?

My wife ... queen of the pointless conspiracy theories.

Upsetting snack

A few days ago I'm at the office, talking with the brigade S1 about something. As we're discussing, we're walking around and talking, as people do. I think nothing of it, as he goes to his food stash in the corner to pull out a can. It's mid-afternoon, and he's getting a snack; no big deal. As we're still hashing out the issue, he takes his red can of Campbell's tomato soup, pulls the lid off the can, and proceeds to lift it straight to his lips. I issued a direct order to him: "You will not drink that room-temperature condensed soup straight from the can! This is not a homeless shelter." He seemed quite puzzled by my horror, although he did grudgingly comply.
I don't consider myself a food snob, but -- sheesh -- I do have some standards.

Cat

A stray cat showed up on our property recently. He had a flea collar, so we knew he belonged to someone. We canvassed the neighborhood, and put up signs, in the remote chance someone would claim him. The children, of course, have become attached to him. They named him Oreo, because of his obvious resemblance to Alfonso Ribeiro. Our current cat, Max, remains unimpressed by his cuteness and polydactyly. We thought we had a family to adopt him, but alas, generations of bland Anglo-Saxon interbreeding have left their two children with manifest allergies. Now we have the unwelcome responsibility to take him to the Cat Gulag, otherwise known as the animal shelter.