And thankfully, it was only a test. But when a crusty old fart like my father calls before 9 in the morning to tell you that he wants his family at his hospital bedside, and that said family means you, your husband and your dog, well you just better believe that tracks were made, rubber was burned, etc.

By the time we were crossing the bridge over the South Fork of the St. Lucie (what, three hours after the call?) the old man was grousing that he couldn't understand why we came up right then. Tomorrow would have been fine. Jeez, the way he and my brother were carrying on, we didn't think that there'd be a tomorrow.

By the time we left, yesterday, the old man was giving all of us shit. He's feeling better. The more that he griped, the happier we were.

And now I'm back at the office, grabbing my ankles and saying "Thank you, ma'am, may I have another?"

That was the subject line of the following e-mail. This has to be one of the saddest things I've ever seen come across the virtual transom. This person is trying to apply for a job at the hospital. She wants to be a clerical worker. Here is her e-mail, in its entirety. Only the names and addresses have been removed to protect the guilty.
"I TRAY TO APPLY BY THE APPLICATION BUT SOMETHING HAPPEN WITH THE COMPUTER

I APPLY NOW I F YOUR LET ME APPLY HERE


I APPLY FOR CLERICAL POSITION HERE MY RESUME


Education: English Center August, 1996

Miami Senior HJ August, 1993



Certificates: Business Computer

Application 1

December, 1993

D-Base

April, 1996

Lotus-Beginning Intermediate

April, 1996

Medical office Technology

August, 1996

Windows 95

August, 1996

Business Communication

August, 1996

Ms-Dos

August, 1996



Languages: English and Spanish



References: The English Center

Principal Diaz Fugue.



Work Experience: I have Experience in Teacher Assistant.

When I was in HJ School 1993



Let me work with your for vonlunteer for

One week if any to."

This is just so sad. And she sent it twice, with the same mistakes both times. I forwarded it to the HR department, because who am I to say she isn't qualified to work here? Just because she can't spell or use spell check? Hell, I have vice presidents who can't turn on their own computers, so why should a secretary have to be able to write in English? It's not like it's our primary language in this city, after all.

Another conversation on the train this week was with a woman serving jury duty at the Federal Courthouse. The room was filled to capacity, standing room only, she said. And then they made an announcement that if you didn't think you could speak/understand English well enough to follow along, you could be excused. (No matter that there are translators in the courts.) Two thirds of the room left. And I know she wasn't exaggerating, because the same thing happened to me last year. The room holds several hundred people.

Don't be fooled by the mass exodus, however. Most of the folks who left probably do speak/read/understand English. They just don't want to serve on a jury. Why? Who knows. I sure as hell don't.

The Anti-Christ (my ex-husband) is a criminal defense attorney. The ideal juror is one who doesn't read a newspaper, or listen to the news on the radio, or watch the news on TV. The ideal juror has a flexible view of right and wrong, and an IQ somewhere around dishwater. The idea that those kinds of people could be my peers (jury of one's peers?) makes my blood run cold. Just another reason to keep the proverbial nose clean, then.

I had the most interesting exchange on the train this morning. There was a woman sitting near me with a "Kerry for President" button on her backpack. She also had two boxes of aroma-emitting pastries, but I wasn't interested (Hah. Yeah. Right) in them.

I asked her if she'd heard many comments about her button. She said no, not so much, yet.
I asked her if she was FOR Kerry, or AGAINST Bush. She said, oh man, against Bush. In fact, she said, she had become an American citizen after the 2000 election just so that she could vote against him this year. "I come from Brazil," she said "and so am used to a certain amount of bad stuff, but that? I had to be able to vote to stop this."

She went on to say that there is a fine line between anarchy and democracy, and she sees Bush heading towards anarchy, where he does what he wants and there is no one to stop him. We talked about "The Handmaid's Tale" and how close to the present state of affairs it is. Then we talked about "Wag the Dog" and how it, too, is too eerily close to the truth of our current administration.

I wish more citizens felt like her. That it is our duty, our obligation, to vote. Every time I hear someone say that they don't vote because they don't like the choices, or because they don't believe their vote counts, I could just pull out my hair. Or theirs. Votes don't count only when you don't cast them. Or if you allow them not to count.

In Florida, in the 2000 election, our votes were disallowed by a state government run by the brother of one of the candidates. When the propriety of this was questioned, we were drowned out by the paid voices of the Republican operatives brought in from around the country. The brother in question was appointed President of the United States, and every time he is questioned, the questioner is drowned out by the paid voices of the right wing media. It has become a crime in effect, if not in actual law, to question the government.

But read your constitution. Read your Thomas Jefferson. It is not a crime, it is the duty of every citizen to question the decisions made by our government. If we, as citizens, do not agree with those decisions, then it is our obligation to remove the people speaking in our name.

Regime change begins with you. If you aren't registered to vote, then go out and register. If you don't want to belong to either of the two major parties, then register as an independent, or a Libertarian, or a Green. Just register. Then, just vote.

Until you do, don't complain to me that your vote doesn't count, or that you don't like what's going on in Washington.

I'm always hearing people say that the one thing they hate about Florida (aside from the utter incivility of our drivers) (and our dinosaur-sized cockroaches) (and the humidity) (and the heat), the Number One thing that they hate about Florida is that there is no change of season.

To those people I say: "Open your eyes, and your ears, and your noses." (I also say, "Shut your yap and go home then, and while you're at it, take all of your friends, too.)
It is spring here in my home, and it screams its presence at me as much as the cherry blossoms along the Potomac does to the folks up north. There are baby mangos clinging to the trees, and the branches are starting to droop from the weight. Orchids are blooming. There are Surinam cherries everywhere.

One of my favorite childhood foraging foods, I used to love to watch the looks on the other student's faces when I'd eat the cherries from the bush in front of the art studios at the University of Miami. To anyone born outside of their range, they look like the poster child for your parent's warning to never eat red berries from strange plants, it's probably poisonous.

There are sandhill cranes along the highway. I hear the metallic "Cheek" of the cardinals nesting out in the cherry hedges. The rare, or at least isolated population of Red-Whiskered Bulbuls has come back to my yard to eat the mulberries. The mulberries are staining my dog purple when he goes out to play in the back yard. Possums and raccoons are starting families, and so are out at night, looking for cat food, or at least garbage cans or bugs.

The air is starting to get heavy and moist, more palpable against your skin. Soon the rains will come, and every afternoon the storms will build up out west, over the Everglades, and move across to the sea. With that comes the smell of wet and salt and rotting foliage.

And that, my dear blind and deaf friends, is how you know that spring has come to South Florida.

My date last night was called due to server problems, and we have rescheduled for next week. I'm sorry that I can't report on snappy repartee and drunken frivolity. It'll just have to wait.

This weekend isn't going to be fun, at all. I'm off to visit my father in the hospital. That he's willing to be seen in a weakened state says all one needs to know about the situation.
On the work side of life, I live in an absurdist movie. I was asked yesterday, in the most off-hand way, to take "some photos" "for the web." The real request was for 70-80 portrait-style head shots, printed on glossy photo paper and framed. Maybe they'll go on the web, later.

I tried to explain that my little 3 mega-pixel, fixed-flash digital camera was not the optimal equipment with which to attempt portraits, and suggested that they'd look more like mug shots than head shots. I tip-toed around the issue of not being able to print on glossy photo paper. I suggested that maybe the PR office would be a better source, or, and here's a real fucking leap, maybe, just maybe, they should go to the office of biomedical Communications, where there is an actual portrait studio set up for doing physicians' head shots, and where there is a full-time photographer, and a lab.

I was told that it would be too expensive over there, because it comes out to be about ten dollars a shot. And reasonable at twice the price, I said. Yes, but we can't afford that. We need to do this as cheap as possible. And what is the project? For what reason are we shooting a team of 80 people? Why it's the newest revenue recovery team. It's part of our Quality Improvement effort.

I could cry. Or I could send the story to Dilbert. Scott Adams is going to have to start paying me for all the subject matter I give him.

Time to call the RLA and tell him to get the ice shaver ready for tonight.

So you know you're having way too much fun when you call your husband from a bar 30 miles from home and tell him that you and your girlfriend are thinking that it'd just be easier all the way around to get a hotel room for the night and you'll just go to work the next morning wearing the same thing you wore the day before. Minus the make up, and the coiffed hair and with the addition of a major hangover.
I went out last night with The Coolest Person In the World ^TM and that was the result. After dinner and a whole lot of coffee, however, I just took the top off the Cabrio and turned the music up to 11 and drove home.

Today is the bologna in the cool sandwich, since tomorrow night I'm going out with a fellow blogger. It's our first time meeting face to face, and I plan on not embarrassing myself. I plan on it, but can't guarantee it. In a pathetic attempt to prove my cool, I'll be taking said blogger to Tobacco Road, the best damn dive in Miami, and one in which I have sucked face in dark corners, drunk myself into a commode-huggin' state (not necessarily on the same nights) and enjoyed many, many hours of great live music. Even if I'm a dork, the bar will score points.

Another reason last night was so great was that I was able to miss the 3rd televised press conference in as many years given by our Shrub in Chief. I did pick up the highlight this morning, which was that the man was sure he had made a mistake or two somewhere in his presidency, he just couldn't quite put his finger on one at the moment.

I can. Here's the short list, and please, feel free to add others.

Stole election
Appointed cronies to high offices
Let 9/11 happen without much thought or effort
Lied about the need to go to war in Iraq
Lied about the ease with which said war could be won
Lied about having knowledge or not having knowledge prior to 9/11 that there was a risk
Continues to lie about all of the above
Refuses to accept any responsibility for anything
High crimes and misdemeanors
IQ of a fence post

OK. So there's nothing he can do about the last one. As far as I'm concerned, it's still an offence worth noting.

On a related (pun intended) note, the Brother of the President, Florida's own Jeb (I'll make sure you win this state) Bush has given fast-track approval to built two natural-gas pipelines from the Bahamas to Florida. They both go straight through the only natural, live barrier reef in the continental US. And guess what? He did it with no input whatsoever from environmental groups, but after a month-long "education" program from the power companies who made the proposals.

Read the story here.