Well, Lansing had it’s first significant snow fall this week.  Did the new snow melting system work?  No!  They still had to plow the walkways.  It was a nice idea any way.

I suspect that the water was either not hot enough or else it wasn’t circulating fast enough.  Either way, it didn’t melt the snow.  But, at least it did  keep ice from forming underneath the bricks and causing them to pop up.

Maybe they will fine tune the system so that it works better.  We’ll see.

The state is trying a new approach to snow removal on the sidewalk out side of my building. They removed all of the concrete and bricks and installed a labyrinth of plastic tubing for hot water. Once the tubing was tested for leaks, the walkway was rebuilt with bricks and concrete, just as in the past.

Conceptually, this should work. When it snows, the hot water is activated. It, in turn, melts the snow. No need for plowing, no need for chemicals. I have a similar system for heating the floors of my house. However, with my house, I have control of what happens there. Not so with the state.

First of all, this is a pretty high tech solution for a place like the state. Do they have any one there that is knowledgeable and understands the system? Or are they going to rely on the contractor who may be out of business in two years? After all, he was the low bidder.

And who is going to maintain the system? The department that funded the installation of the system is not the department that will be expected to maintain the system. The capital outlay people only have to beg for money once in order to install the system. The maintenance people have to beg for money every year in order to maintain the system And, it only takes one year of budget cuts to ruin the whole thing.

Then there is the problem of interaction with other departments. Will the grounds crew remember to warn the subcontractors about the underground pipes went they plant new trees? Will the electricians remember to notify people before they shut off the power? And in five years will any one remember that the system even exists?

While I don’t mean to sound negative, there is way too much confusion and mis-communication here at the state. So, I see the potential for a system failure in the near future.

Saturday night, as a Valentines Day celebration, my wife and I went out to eat. There is a place right in town called the Flat River Grill. In is located on the Flat River and has excellent food. It is the only place in Lowell that offers fine dining and it does a fantastic business.

The Flat River Grill is owned by the Gilmore Collection. The Gilmore Collection has about 20 restaurants in the West Michigan area. While the menus differ from restaurant to restaurant, they have a lot of items in common. They cook over a wood fire and offer a selection of Italian and French cuisine.

Saturday night, we both had Tournedos Oscar with crab meat, asparagus, and garlic potatoes. All meals come with fresh baked bread that is eaten with spiced olive oil. Most excellent.

On some mailing list, somewhere in the world, there exists a person named Wep Swift. I have never met this person but according to his mail, he lives at the same address as we do.

About once a week, Wep gets a fantastic offer for a credit card or a magazine subscription. I keep saving Weps mail for him thinking that he is going to show up some day to claim it but so far, that hasn’t happened.

Publishers Clearing House says that Wep has already won a million dollars and Wep doesn’t even know it. Poor Wep! And lets not forget all of those letters that, according to the envelope, have important billing information and say “final notice” on the outside. Perhaps if Wep would pick up his million dollars from the Publisher Clearing House, he would be able to eliminate all of those “final notices”.

About a year ago, I started subscribing to a free magazine which focuses on the restaurant business. In order to qualify for the free magazine, you have to give them the name of your restaurant.

My restaurant hasn’t actually opened yet as I am waiting for Wep to pick up his million dollars. Maybe he will want to invest in this restaurant of mine.

Anyway, I named my restaurant, “Swifts Epicurean”. But the magazine entered it as “Sunifts Epicurean” with Ned Swift as the owner. Sunifts. Sounds like I am serving middle eastern cuisine. Besides,who would use their own last name in the name of their restaurant? Terribly uncreative. Right Tommy Brann? (Tommy Brann is the owner of Brann’s, a local restaurant chain.)

So, if Wep ever picks up his million dollars, maybe I can start serving that curried chicken to the public.

My boss and I stopped at a local convenience store the other day on the way back from a meeting.  While we were in there, a 30ist woman came in wearing a winter coat and pajama bottoms.  After  studying the situation for a little while, my boss whispered in my ear that she thought the woman was wearing pajamas.  I whispered back that she was correct in her observation.

My boss was shocked.  In her mind, pajamas are only to be worn in bed.  And, if you are out of bed, you put on a robe.  But more importantly, you never wear pajamas in public.

I was surprised at her reaction and told her that it was a fad to wear pajamas to high school.  This sent her on “tilt”.  I asked her what the difference was between wearing pajamas verses sweat pants?  She said that pajamas were like underwear that you wear for sleeping.  I told her that most schools would rather have girls in baggy pajamas than short skirts or tight jeans.  Apparently, even though she has two teenage daughters, the pajama issue has never come up before.

A few years back, a minister got the idea to start a church for singles only. He believed that singles were the most over looked group in any church. So, by starting a church for singles only, he hoped to reach out to that often neglected element of the church.

One of the rules for membership in the church was that you had to be single. He was afraid that the marrieds would get control of the church and over run the singles. So, if you got married, you had to move on to a different church.

Some of the people who joined that church were divorced, some were widowed, and some had just never gotten married for what ever reason.

As time went on, a lot of the singles joined the church, found mates, married and moved on to a different church. But there was a small element of singles that did not find mates. Why? Because there was some serious character flaw in them that made them undesirable to others.

The church ran smoothly for a while. But, after a few years, as more and more singles joined the church, got married and left, the singles with the character flaws became the majority in the church. Soon, the church was over run with members who had flawed personalities, and they didn’t get along with anyone.

After five years, the church closed. But, it didn’t close because of a lack of membership. It closed because no one in the church could get along with anyone else in the church. In short, they could never reach a consensus on any thing. So the church ground to a halt.

In my own church, I have seen a lot of good people join and a few people who are not so good. The good people stay for a while but ultimately they are driven out by the not so good people. When you are not the only church in town, the good people have options and so they leave. I suspect that we will be gone by summer.

I was sitting at a traffic light the other day waiting for it to change. There was not another car in sight, yet, I had to sit there and wait, car idling, gas burning. So I said to myself, “this is stupid and wasteful”. If I had been wanting to turn right, I would have been on my way by now. And if I had been waiting at a stop sign, I would have made my stop, checked the traffic and proceeded right, left or straight through. But since I was waiting at a traffic light, I had to wait for the light to change even though there was not another car in sight.

In my opinion, traffic lights should function like stop signs that move from one side of the intersection to the other on a regular basis. In this manner, the green light would guarantee the right of way because the red light, just like the stop sign, has halted the interfering traffic. And, just like the stop sign, if the intersection is clear, you can proceed, even though you have a red light.

Think of the gas, pollution and congestion this would save. The problem is that the law enforcement folks are probably totally opposed to such an idea. After all, according to them, the safest intersection is a 4 way stop. While this is probably true, I can counter that the safest road is the one with no cars on it. So, if I am waiting at a traffic light and the only car on that road, that road is less safe. But, if I can get off of that road by going through an empty intersection, that road becomes safe once again.

Think about it.

When I left Calvin College and started working for the State Of Michigan, I realized that I was moving from a conservative environment to one that was, well, not as conservative. In looking back on it now, it wasn’t so much that I had left conservative Calvin, rather that I had left conservative West Michigan. I hate to say that I left Calvin and joined the normal world as I hardly consider the state to be normal in any sense of the word. But, working for the state did get me out of West Michigan and a chance to see a less conservative life style.

I had only worked a few months for the state when I found myself alone in the elevator with an attractive woman about my age. When we made eye contact and I saw her smiling face, I felt obligated to say “Good morning”. She responded with “Good morning”. Since she was still smiling at me, I thought that I needed to take the next step in social engagement. I said “How are you?” And she responded by saying “Terrible! I just started my period.” Alllrighty then. This social engagement has just taken a strange twist.

Keying in on the fact that she had used the word “terrible”, I had reason to believe that she was not happy about this event. So I responded with “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” Now at this point in time, the social engagement is about to come to an end. Short of inquiring about pads or plugs, I had no other response. Fortunately, the elevator arrived at my floor. With a smile and a nod, I stepped out.

This was only the first of what turned out to be a very strange aspect of my life; women, both known and total strangers seem to feel the need to tell me about their gynecological problems.

Once, I was seated next to a women on a flight back from Texas. Generally when I am seated next to a woman on a flight, I do not initiate conversation as I do not want to appear that I am hitting on her. In this particular case, she struck a conversation with me as soon as I sat down.

She told me details of her life and I of mine. Hobbies, interests, family, etc. Finally, as we landed in Chicago, she told me that her uterus was sagging.

Now, I didn’t even know the woman’s last name but she did have a sagging uterus, I guess. Did she think that I could prop it up for her? Perhaps I should have suggested Kegels. Instead, I told her that I was sorry. I will never forget Cindy with the sagging uterus.

Over the years I have heard about hysterectomies, both total and ovary sparing, HRT, endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome aka POS. What’s more, I know the gynecological state of every woman in my office area. And it is not that I have particularly asked about them as I have been told about them. I am now at the point in time where I can render opinions and make recommendations.

Did I ever tell you that I lead a strange life?

The other day, my wife expressed in interest in a remote car starter. Some people at work have them and she thought that it would be nice to have on cold winter days. Rather than having to go out at night and start her car and then scrape snow and ice, she wanted to be able to push a button ten minutes before she leaves work so that her car will be nice and warm when she gets out. This seemed like a reasonable request particularly since we are experiencing record low temperatures.

My first course of action was checking the Internet. In doing so, I discovered that there are a lot of different remote starters with a lot of options. The basic remote starter has a limited distance of about 500 feet while some of the more expensive ones have a range of several thousand feet. Since she parks close to her office, distance was not a problem.

Some remote starters have a build in 2way alarm system. It can start your car and also notify you if someone is tampering with your car. Not only does it sound an alarm to annoy the people around your car, it also sends an alarm to annoy the people around you.

I also discovered that there are diys kits for those who want to diys. Since I had neither the time nor the warm garage for a diys, I opted for a professional installation.

Grabbing a phone book and going down the yellow pages, I found a place that was close by. When I called, they asked for the make, model and years of the car. They then quoted me a price and asked if I wanted to make an appointment. Since I figured it would be a few days before I could get in, I said sure and asked them what they had available. They told me that they could do it right now. Two hours later, my wife’s car had a remote starter.

The next day, a few minutes before quiting time, my wife hit the start button, the car flashed its lights, and the car started. But, unfortunately, she got distracted at work and was not able to get to the car before the unit timed out and shut the car off. But, at least the car was warm when she finally did make it out of work.

Last fall, the management got the idea that moral needed a boost. So to boost moral, they started bring in jigsaw puzzles for the break area. I guess the idea was that if moral improved, then production would improve.

Well, the puzzles are a big hit. Some people spend hours each day working on the puzzles. I don’t know if they are more productive but at least they are happy.