November 13, 1990
Dear Everyone:
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
Everyone is decorating for the Holidays.
Some more than others.
Of course, the stores start decorating as soon as
the Holiday Season officially begins, which used to be right after
Thanksgiving. Now, as near
as I’ve been able to determine, it’s the weekend before Daylight Saving
Time ends.
I did my decorating the day after Thanksgiving.
Which is to say, open the door to the “Christmas closet”, reach
up and lift the wreath off the nail on the wall, carry the wreath out to
the living room, open the front door and hang it on the screw that stays
outside the door all year.
There. All done.
Well, not quite.
I also put lights on my patio fence.
But this year, I used those tiny little lights which look like
stars and are much harder to remove than the traditional screw-in bulbs.
Last year, I had to replace over a dozen lights, not because they
burned out but because the kids got a thrill out of climbing the fence
and taking them. Either that
or there was a tremendous market for “hot” Christmas bulbs.
As for the other stuff, tree, crèche, stockings by
the chimney, etc., I decided not to get a tree, since we won’t be here
for Christmas. And I don’t
have a chimney to hang stockings by.
And as for the crèche to be honest, that space is still occupied
by the porcelain eggs that I put out to decorate for Easter.
I’m afraid I’m a little behind schedule, decorating-wise.
In the office, I pulled my silk poinsettia out and
put it on the bookcase.
Added a garland draped from the room divider and completed the décor
with the little Santa that “Alma” had so proudly make for each of us out
of a roll of toilet paper.
Evidently, I’m the only one who saved my toilet paper Santa from last
year; no one else has theirs out.
One of the great things about Christmas is that you
can actually see what parts of buildings various departments occupy.
This is because “themes” run through the corridors, identifying
groups that work together.
For example, CITC people have ornaments hanging outside their offices.
The Learning Center people, on the other hand, used wide ribbons
to turn their doors into “packages”.
Also, the Learning Center is in the center of a building, which
means there are large pillars in the middle of the room, holding up the
second floor. These pillars
were also spiral-wrapped with ribbons, turning them into giant candy
canes.
A decorating tip to remember, the next time you’re
stuck with a pillar you don’t know what to do with.
CUSA “Winks” has candy canes hanging outside their
offices, while Corp “Bean Counters”, which has a large room with
cloth-covered room dividers, hung stockings outside their cubicles with
candy canes and other goodies peeking out of them.
“Jeannie” has also done some decorating.
She got a small, live, potted tree which she placed on a stand in
front of the living room window.
From the parking lot below, it looks like a full grown tree.
She also has a fireplace, complete with stockings, and lights on
her balcony.
(The lights that I didn’t use, the ones from last
year, I donated to charity.
Although, it does occur to me that people who can’t afford to buy
lights, probably can’t afford to pay the extra PG&E bill for the lights
anyway.)
In other news…
Remember the Dinosaur?
Back in the mid-1970’s, during the oil crisis, Company ran a
series of commercials to encourage people to conserve fuel.
One of them showed a lot of dinosaurs, flying reptiles and
“funny-looking sea creatures” which had given “his or her all for that
tank of gas”. The commercial
won a Cleo award, although Company did receive a letter from some
informed source who pointed out that oil
couldn’t have come from
dinosaurs because everyone knows that there was oil in Alaska and Alaska
was too cold for dinosaurs to live there.
The upshot of all this was that the Dinosaur became
a sort of unofficial mascot.
He showed up on safety posters (picture of Dinosaur with a file cabinet
falling on him) and User Guides (Dinosaur showing Comproid how to use
his PC) and a lot of other places.
Well, a couple of weeks ago, I was in a RACF
meeting (RACF means computer stuff – another of “Ashley Holtz’s” jobs
that I do instead) and we were informed that word has come down form on
high: The Dinosaur would no
longer be used as a mascot unofficial or otherwise.
Company policy. It
seems that dinosaurs are large, slow, not very intelligent and,
moreover, extinct; and that’s not the image that the Company wants to
project.
What does this mean for the Dinosaur?
He hasn’t disappeared.
He’s just gone underground.
Love, as always,
Pete
| Previous | Next |