RL stuff and some funnies
I have said many times that I am NOT a phone person. E-mail is my friend. Nothing unnerves me more than having to talk to a "customer" (aka citizen, legislator, reporter, etc.) on the phone; I'm always terrified that I'll say something REALLY stupid and end up getting cuffed around the head for being a complete idiot (I mean, I've worked there for 14 1/2 years, but I'm the ultimate generalist, so my knowledge of what we do is a mile wide and an inch deep)...
Anyway, today I had to talk with two people who couldn't have been more different, and I think I came out okay (at least I wasn't dead at the end). This morning I talked to an old lady, and I do mean old (approaching her 98th birthday) who lives in a small town a few counties north of here. Mrs. R told me that every August, the local chamber of commerce holds a tractor race on the street in front of her house. Not only that, but 50-60 tractors arrive by 10:00 a.m., double-park along her street and the cross street (she lives on the corner) and sit there idling their engines for 10 hours. So the streets around her house are filled with blue diesel smoke for hours on end that weekend. In addition to being almost 98, Mrs. R has asthma, and she was begging me to help her find some way to convince the Chamber of Commerce folks to move the race someplace else. The Chamber of Commerce told Mrs. R, "You should leave your house for the weekend." WTF??! RAAR. I told her I'd talk to our field staff and see if they could help. So I spoke to someone who told me that we couldn't do anything to help Mrs. R, because our regulations and laws don't cover this situation. ADLKJA;FJDA;F I wish we could have helped her.
This afternoon I got a call from a lawyer who wanted to find monitoring data that would prove that even trace amounts of certain air pollutants can get inside buildings. I had to tell him that we don't have anything to do with indoor air quality, and that we hadn't publishes an annual data report since 1998 because our former data analyst took a different job and his position was eliminated, so we'd had no one to analyze our data and write that particular report for about 5 years. I said that we continue to collect the air quality data and send it to EPA, and showed him where to find the data online. I didn't ask what he really wanted to use the data for. Personally I'd probably rather not know...
I'll be glad when it stops being hot here. It's been steamy and close and just NASTY the last few days. Not to mention bad for people's lungs. Supposedly tomorrow will be better. I hope so. I've been sleeping really strangely the last few days. Must be the heat.
Funnies:
Have you ever mistaken a dog for a towel? - thanks to lady_carrie for this one!
Letterman on summer reading:
* The Big Book of Condoleeza Rice Looking Pissed
* Charlie and the Organic Carrot Factory (by the editors of Healthy Eating)
* Ansel Adams: The "Lens-Cap-On" Years
* My Favorite Undercover CIA Agents, by Karl Rove
* Names I Should Know, But Don't, by George W. Bush
* Damn, My Ass Hurts, by Lance Armstrong