Things are looking better and brighter now. I’m not referring to the weather forecast, which calls for a cold snap over the weekend, but to my personal psychological climate. Yesterday’s storms have largely passed. You want to know more? Well, if you insist…



The first thing that got me down yesterday was Romney’s withdrawal speech at CPAC. I wasn’t enamored of him as a candidate, but he seemed to me the best of the field. I think my dislike for McCain, like that of many conservatives, is mostly feelings-based. He bugs me, and I’m pretty sure I’d bug him if he knew me. I suspect that whenever he finds an excuse to give the Christian Right a wedgie, he goes away from the finished task with a warm feeling of having made the country a better place.

That said, I’m really tired of the people who call into radio shows and bark that McCain’s a liberal and they’d rather see Clinton or Obama in the White House. You have to live in a very bizarre alternate reality, it seems to me, to say that. I’d rather hire a guy who does his job well and cares about the welfare of my business, but gives me a hard time now and then, than hire a guy who’s polite and empathetic and keeps giving the stock away.

I like hyperbole as a satiric technique. I’ve been a big fan of Ann Coulter’s until recently. But some people seem to be taking their own hyperbole seriously.

If I wanted to be a member of the Silly Party, I’d register as a Democrat.

OK, on to the next low pressure area of Thursday. As I’ve said before, I’ve made it a custom over the last months to eat my Saturday lunch at a local Chinese buffet. The food is pretty good and the prices are low.

Well, for the last couple weeks the hostess has been telling everyone about Chinese New Year (Thursday, Feb. 7 this year). It was important to have lots of business on New Year’s Day, she explained, because according to their tradition, whatever you do on New Year’s you’ll do all year long.

Basically a superstition, but I’ve developed a personal interest in the restaurant, so I thought, why not? Give them a boost.

So I swung over after work, and was shown to a booth. The place had the biggest crowd I’d ever seen there.

I got up to load my first plate, and behold—there was no food. (That’s hyperbole [see above]). There was some sweet and sour chicken. Some egg rolls. Some wontons. No rice at all. All the other trays on the steam tables were empty. I realized that all the customers were sitting around waiting for the food to show up.

Eventually a few other things were brought out. Some fried rice (at last). Some shrimp. Some noodles. But more than half the trays were empty at any given time.

OK. I can understand this. They didn’t expect the turnout they got. There was probably only one guy in the kitchen, and he was desperately trying to keep up. And the hostess was doing all the waitressing and bussing, so I understand that she didn’t find time to clear away my used plates or refill my drink.

But when I decided I was done and went to the cash register, the hostess informed me that dinner was a higher price than what I was used to paying for lunch.

Even though there was way, way less food. And almost no service.

That, I thought, was adding injury to insult.

I dealt with the disappointment in my usual manner. I didn’t complain. I left my usual tip. But I probably won’t go back for a while. That’s how we passive-aggressives operate.

From what I’m told about Chinese culture, that’s how the Chinese do it too. So I’m being diverse and multicultural while I’m at it.

If what happened yesterday is what happens all year, I’m afraid they’re going to have twelve months of disgruntled customers.



So I was more bummed than before when I got home. There I found a dunning letter from a medical company with which I thought I had a payment arrangement (apparently I didn’t).

And then my renter told me the bathtub drain was clogged up.

After several hours wrestling with it, I discovered that the drain lever was closed.



But today I got home and found in the mail a refund check from my insurance company (I keep forgetting my mortgage company pays that bill).

So everything’s all right again.

I suppose it must have been a test. I’m not sure why God bothers to test me that way. He already knows how I’ll perform. If the test is to see whether I keep my cheerful attitude in the midst of a lot of petty annoyances, it’s kind of pointless. I’m never cheerful, even when I feel relatively good. You want to get a smile out of me, you’d better be a publisher with a book contract, or a woman out of my league willing to go out with me.

I suppose it was just a status check. Status: Surly (Normal).