Ghosts 'n' Stuff

“Darkness falls across the land

The midnight hour is close at hand

Creatures crawl in search of blood

To terrorize [your] neighborhood

Where I work is just a few feet from the Willard Library in Evansville.  The Willard is notorious for being haunted by the "Grey Lady." 

I've spent many hours of my life in that library and I've never seen her.  That's not to say that she isn't there.  I could always watch the ghost cam, or I could go on a ghost tour, but for either of those, I might have to stay up past my bedtime, and, well, I have my priorities.

Now, the Willard is like way over a 100 years old, and at some time during those years, the building I work in - the old Fendrich Cigar Factory building in Evansville, which is next door to the Willard - provided extra storage for the Library on its fourth floor.  The story goes that some of the workers at Berry have seen the Grey Lady in our building, too.  Maybe she just likes to get out.

I've always disregarded these stories.  But lately, I'm beginning to wonder.  Several times in the past several months, I would resume typing at my computer only to find that my keyboard had been unplugged from the USB port.  The first couple of times, the cord just seemed as though it had just wiggled loose.  But the last several times, it has been totally unplugged.  Frankly, I just assumed that someone was playing tricks on me.  If I still worked with a certain attorney who may or may not remain nameless... it will depend on where this post ends up going, then I would certainly believe he was just trying to gaslight me.  During the 10+ years I worked with him, he was constantly up to something, moving things around on people's desks, putting empty sardine cans in another attorney's desk drawers, placing framed photos of himself on other people's desks just to see how long it took for them to notice.  Many of you KNOW who I'm talking about.  However, unfortunately I no longer work with him.  Sniff...

That doesn't mean that there might not be someone here at Berry who could be playing with my mind.  After all, one of the attorneys here at Berry is his friend.

And whosoever shall be found

Without the soul for getting down

Must stand and face the hounds of hell

And rot inside a corpse’s shell

But just the other day, I was sitting at my desk working, minding my own business, USING THE KEYBOARD with no issues.  My phone rang, and I stopped, picked up the phone, and talked with the woman who called - all the while, sitting at my desk, with my keyboard and the USB cord/port in my sight.  When the call was over, I hung up, and started typing again.  But the keyboard wasn't working.  I looked and saw this

Photograph of reenactment of the crime



Note that the USB cord (circled in red) is a good 1-2 inches from the USB slot.  Let me repeat that the general area contained in this picture was within my sight the ENTIRE TIME, so no actual person unplugged it!

The foulest stench is in the air

The funk of forty thousand years

And grizzly ghouls from every tomb

Are closing in to share your doom

Frankly, this all reminds me of about twenty years ago (OMG, I'm getting old!), when I had a VCR (again, evidence of age, I suppose) that seemed to be possessed - it would turn on and off by itself.  Seriously, I'd be sitting on the couch, reading a book - back in the good old days when I could actually see to read - and all of a sudden the VCR would turn on.  I didn't have cats back in those days, so I couldn't blame it on a furry paw stepping on the remote.

I don't think I believe in ghosts, although assuming no malicious intent on their part, ghosts might be fun to have around.  There are several mystery series where the main character and his/her ghost companion go around solving the murder.  Of course, why the ghost can't just ask the ghost of the murder victim who killed him is beyond me. 

Anyway, Happy Halloween!

And though you fight to stay alive

Your body starts to shiver

For no mere mortal can resist

The evil of the thriller”

- Rob Temperton

Voting Booth Cafe

Don't worry.  Surely you know from experience with this blog that this will not be a political diatribe.  I keep all of those comments private and obviously I keep in contact with you no matter how wrong your views are.  Plus, remember, I'm shallow.

No, the topic here today is only vaguely related to any election.  Here goes...

Like sometime in the past 10 years or so, Vanderburgh County (where I live) started having early voting.  Possibly it's the whole state, I don't know, but it definitely is in Vand Co.  You could always vote an absentee ballot; that's how I voted back in my days at DPU.  But for those of us who have no legit reason to obtain an absentee ballot, early voting was a God-send!  Instead of getting up early on Election Day and risking being late to work, and having to stand in line with a bunch of other idiots who couldn't get an absentee ballot, now, I can go any day I like (obviously during the 2 weeks of early voting, duh..), to my local library, after work, generally there's no line, or if there is, it isn't bad.  Rose likes early voting.

Exercising my right to vote is one of the only forms of exercise I get, so I do it regularly.  Of course, back in the days when I lived in Posey County and there were rarely any contested races in the primary, I would sometimes skip the primary, but...

Anywho, a month or so ago, my friend Erin posted on her Facebook page a link where Hoosiers could go to confirm they were registered to vote lest they go to the polls and be turned away.  However, as I have previously stated, I have voted in every election they've held since I turned 18, lo those many years ago.  Therefore, I poo-poo'ed Erin's post and disregarded it.  I'm obviously registered to vote.  After all, I just voted in the primary in May!

I hereby officially apologize to Erin for poo-poo-ing her.

Monday, Oct 22nd, was the first day we could early vote at the library.  After work, I drove home, picked up the Mom-bot, and drove us to the Red Bank Library.  The parking lot was full and the line to vote was out the door (of the room where the voting was happening, not the Library) and into the hallway.  But it moved relatively quickly.

Since I'm on drugs, I happily chatted with the people in line around me.  (I was standing for two - Mom sat while I held her place in line.)  Once I got in the room, I could see that one of the two women behind the table where we check in was the same wonderful woman who I entertained back in May when I came to vote in the primary.  See I couldn't find my ID. 
My wallet isn't all that big, but like the Doctor's TARDIS, it's bigger on the inside.  Plus I had just returned from a conference in Chicago, so it was full of receipts and other stuff that I hadn't cleaned out.  There certainly was no cash in it.

We get to the front of the line, and Mom goes first to the other lady, then I go up to the woman from May.  I hand her my license, she zaps it with her scanner gun thingee.... and nothing.  She pauses... "hmm, I'm going to have to type it in."  She types in my birthday - nothing.  My last name...Barger.. nope, nothing (except Mom, presumably, because by now she has moved on to the line waiting for an open machine.) 

So by now, the wonderful lady... who I'm going to call Linda - she looked like a Linda.  Linda calls someplace governmenty - so Vand Co Voting Headquarters, say.  We go through my name, date of birth, finally the guy on the other end tells her I'm registered to vote in Posey County.

For those of you paying attention, Mom and I have lived at the 'do for nigh onto 9 years now (in November, 9 official years).  And I've already pointed out that I vote regularly... and that I talked to Linda in May when I voted, in Vanderburgh County.

Linda was very sorry, but there was nothing she could do.  So I was like, cool, no problem.  Not her fault.  And besides, by now, Mom is finished voting, so we can leave.

So the next day, I called Voting HQ to see what was up.  I spoke with a lovely, friendly woman named Connie (her real name).  She looked me up and confirmed that yes, I'm registered in Posey Count, but she can tell from my "voting history" that I've voted in Vand Co 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016... "you even voted here in May for the primary!"   To which I responded, "I know!!" 

She said she was going to have to call Posey County to see what was up and that she would get back to me.  AND SHE DID!  She called me back a few minutes later to tell me that the "computer guy" in Posey Co merged my record back to Po Co for some unknown reason, but that he was going to un-merge me back to Vand Co and he was going to call her when it was done, and she would call me.

AND SHE DID!!  She called me back to say it was done, and that Rick said "hi," and she was going to walk a "Certificate of Error" down to ??? (another governmenty, voting-related office) as soon as we hung up.  I asked who was Rick?  She said that he's the computer guy from Posey County and he said to tell me hi.  (Oh, that Rick!) (??)  Anyway, I confirmed with her that I could go to the library on my way home that night and vote.  She said yes.

Note:  Working in the legal field, as I have, for these last 28 years, I've dealt with a lot of governmenty types, and Connie wins the prize for being a) helpful and b) doing what she promised - i.e., calling me back!  TWICE!  Yay! Connie!

After work, back to the Library.  Oddly enough, there was no line, so when I walked into the room, I gave Linda a big ol'wave and smile!  Linda scanned my license - nope.  She typed in my info - nope.  She called HQ and told my story of woe - the person she was talking to confirmed that yep, they had a Certificate of Error about me and that I could vote.   (I repeat, "Yay!  Connie!)

I had to fill out a form, but finally, I was able to vote and go home. 

One preachy note, if you're reading this and are eligible to vote.... get your furry butt to the polls and vote.  I could have just said "F*** it!" and not pursued it, but the right to vote is something my ancestors fought for (literally) and shouldn't be taken lightly.  I don't care who you vote for ... well, that's not true, I'd prefer you vote for the people I'd like to win, but...  as long as you vote.

Of course, if you are able to do early voting, like me, then you'll spend the next two weeks wondering why you still have to watch all these freakin' campaign ads!  Argghhh!!!

conjunction junction, watts youre funktion

As I believe I've mentioned before, Mom, the twins, and I are members of the DAR.  This basically means that we have an ancestor (or in our case, we're going on 10 on Mom's side of the family and at least 3 on Dad's side!) who participated in some way with the Revolutionary War.  Now, Rose is not a joiner so I don't attend many meetings and am happy to just pay my dues.  Mom, however, is a joiner and she goes to meetings and a couple of years ago, she agreed to be the American History Chair.  She was in charge of the American History Essay Contest open to all middle school kids in Vanderburgh County AND the Christopher Columbus Essay Contest open to all high school kids.  Mom being the Chair, of course, meant that I was her de facto co-chair. 

The possibilities made my inner nerd tingle with excitement! I created a spreadsheet of all the schools in Vand Co, both public and private, with contact info.  Oh! It was (and still is,) a  work of art!  Mom was thinking about mailing stuff to the schools, and I was like, "Join the 21st Century!  We're doing this by email, baby!"  Obviously, it was all fun and games until the essays came in and we had to actually read them.  Each essay had to be judged by two DAR members and one non-member.  Again, between me, Mom and the twins, we had the members down and Mom was able to finagle a couple of her friends into being the non-member judges.

The first year was the 100th anniversary of the National Park System, so the essays were supposed to be a diary of a trip to a National Park. The next year was the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, so they were supposed to imagine it was 1918 and it was the end of the War and such.

Aside from the obvious plagiarism from Wikipedia (they didn't even change the font when they cut/pasted!), and the Nazi's in the essays about WWI, we survived and managed to find "winners" each year.  After Mom's two-year term, she was happy to step down.  My thoughts were that we had the operation down to a fine art now and it seems a shame not to continue, but there you go.

In May or so, when the new Chapter Regent (like a President) called me and asked me to be the new American History Chair, I must have been having a fit of insanity because I said yes.  After all, Mom and I had done very well the previous two years.

No less than three separate women called me, during the next several months, to offer their advice on how to conduct the essay contest.  (Note that when Mom took over, NO ONE gave her any guidance - we hoed that row alone!) 

AT this point, I have to point out that I am a member of Generation X and one of the personality quirks of Gen X'ers is that, since we were the first generation of latch key kids and had to learn how to fend for ourselves, we do not like people to take it upon themselves to "help" us.  I never realized this about myself until I attended a seminar about the different generations and how their personalities differed.  When the speaker was describing the Gen X'ers, I was like "Oh my Gosh!, that's ME!"  One of the few things about my mother that drives me nuts is that I'll be telling her something and her immediate response is to suggest ways to solve the situation.  I don't want help, I just want her to listen to my story.  I never knew why, but it always made me angry when she would do that.  Now when she does it, I just shake my head and smile at my inner Gen X.  But I digress....

One of the ladies who called me even felt compelled to tell me all the things that had been wrong about the contest the previous year.  First, one of the speaker's essay was too long... (see each February, the Chapter holds a tea and all of the essay winners are invited to come read their winning essays and get recognized.)  Back to the complaint... and was I aware that I could get online and get a list of the rules and there are word count min/max for each grade...?  Mom would be so proud of me, I kept my cool (I was at work, mind you) and kindly said that yes, I knew about the requirements and we used the guidelines and any essays that did not have the correct number of words were disqualified, and none of the winning essays were "too long."

Her second complaint was that all of the winners last year were home-schooled.  She went on to point out that the essay was meant to encourage public school students... not that homeschoolers weren't welcome to participate.  She could provide me with a list of all the schools in the County if I would like....   I respectfully advised her that every school in the County, public, private, parochial, etc, received the same invitation to participate as the homeschoolers received.  I withheld the fact that only one school sent in any essays and that they were all... sub-par.

The final comment was that she knew someone who knew a teacher at Evansville Day School and she really felt like they'd want to participate, so she would get me a name of the teacher.  Again, I respectfully advised that EVERY school in the County had received an invite, and that even though Evansville Day School had already received the information, if she wanted to provide me with an email address, I would send it to that teacher as well.

Somewhere in all of this, the woman also told me that she had been in charge of the AH essay contest in the past, and there was always very good participation by the schools.  I'm not sure what she expected me to do, go to each school and force the children to write essays?  I'm pretty sure that the fear of upsetting Mom was the only thing preventing me from telling the old crone that if she got such good participation, maybe she should the job take over.

Now, here we are, the essays are in, and out of the whopping 42 schools invited, I received essays from three, let me say that again... THREE schools. 

Now, in case you're wondering about the title of this post, here's where that comes in...

For three years now, each time I read these essays, I am continually aghast at the ....grrr... are these children not taught about punctuation?  Capitalization? GRAMMAR?  I've always been a proponent of the Oxford comma, but am used to the wide-spread failure for it to be used properly.  And I'm not perfect.  I'm pretty sure that if Mrs. Hunt or Mrs. Hewig (high school English - good ol' NPHS!) were to read any of my posts here, they would be equally horrified. 

But I'm talking no punctuation at all! And the run-on sentences.   On the bright side, nary a Nazi has been found in any of the essays I've read, so far.  Oh, you'd probably like to know the topic - it's the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.  So the essays are supposed to be about the pros and cons of the women's suffrage movement.

I think as a essay topic, it's a good one.  There have been some very interesting and original essays.  One of the major problems is that very few of the essays have ANY pros or cons.  Also, a lot of the kids seem to mistake "suffrage" for "suffering" and the authors comment that "the passage of the 19th Amendment and the subsequent end to women's suffrage was a good thing!"*

*NOTE: Obviously this comment is in my words because had most of these written it, Amendment would not have been capitalized and it would have likely read "woman's suffrage" and not "women's suffrage."

This past Friday evening, I lured a few of my friends over to the 'do for pizza, cookies, and spicy pretzels (note my use of the Oxford comma, there) in exchange for their reading/judging essays.  The essays are definitely a case of having to laugh or else having to cry.  I think a good time was had by all of my vict... er.. judges; and I hope they might be willing to come back next year, after all, this is a two-year term.  Sigh.

And now, for a couple of grammar-related comics that make me chuckle.

Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Hey, Hey, Hey, Goodbye!!

Growing up in the 1970’s in the boonies of Posey County (Indiana, for those who don’t know), there were exactly four (4) television networks – ABC, CBS, NBC, and PBS.  At the time, cable didn’t exist, but even after it did, it didn’t for us because the cable didn’t run out to where we lived.  However, Dad worked for RCA doing television repair, so we always had tv’s and we had a good antenna.  It was this tall tower thing which Dad would have to climb up, to get to the roof, whenever he needed to fiddle with the antenna.  In the later years, it held a birdhouse.

TV has always been an important part of my life.  Mr. Rogers started shortly around the time I was born, and there was Sesame Street and the Electric Company.  Then I “advanced” to reruns of the Brady Bunch and Batman afterschool.  Some might argue this was not good for young Rose, but meh..  

Before the day of VCR’s and their progeny, we could watch one thing, and being the youngest in a house of five, I’m pretty sure my vote counted less.  So I was exposed to what everyone else watched.  I’m not talking bad stuff – in the 70’s, I’m not even sure bad stuff existed.  But for example, Saturday nights, my sisters watched Doctor Who (not bad) and Monty Python (questionable, considering my age) on PBS.

Then along came cable and Rose was devastated that we couldn’t get cable where we lived even if I were successful in talking the ‘Rents into getting it.  Somewhere along in there came Fox with the Simpsons and Married With Children, and the CW and UPN (R.I.P.)   I survived.

In the mid-90’s I moved away from home…. Three miles away from home!  But those three miles were important because they put Rose in the range of cable.  Since then, some 23 years, Rose has had cable.  I’ll go without food, but I’ve had cable, or satellite.  In fact, after Dad passed away, and I moved back home with Mom, it was based upon the conditions that A) my cats came with me; and 2) we would have Dish.  (Cable wasn’t and still isn’t an option for the occupants of that house.)

When Mom and I moved to the ‘Do in Evansville, we learned that when the buildings were built, they were wired for Sigecom (now WOW!) and the other cable providers in town couldn’t use their wires.  I don’t know if that’s true, I would think not – wire is wire, but I honestly never investigated.  I’d had WOW! before and had no problem with them.   The cable bill included internet too, and since they were bundled, I had no idea of how the cost broke down, but the cost wasn’t too bad.  I think it was like $90 a month.

Over the years, I’ve read about all the ways and options people had to “cut the cord” and not have to have cable.  I was very interested and would read the articles putting the info away for the future (hopefully far off) after Mom was gone.  What did Mom’s presence have to do with it?   Well, being at home all day, she probably watches more TV (timewise) than I do; and as she’s gotten older, electronic stuff has become a little, er.. shall we say, daunting?  She can handle it all, but it can be confusing, so I didn’t want to make her have to go through learning something new.

Some years later, I received my cable bill one day - it was $201.  Also around that same time, I had lunch with my friend Amy (hey, you've been mentioned in the blog for a second time!!) and she was telling me all about how she uses Sling.  Now, TV is not as important to Amy, so I figured if she was doing it, it meant she’d investigated and confirmed it was a good way to go.  My brain started percolating… Mom can learn something new… and we had to get a new air conditioner (which I’m doing my best to pay for – i.e., not Mom), and a good portion of the money spent on cable could go to that.  (AC is another very important thing to Rose, maybe another blog sometime.)

So I signed up for Sling.  Bonus:  They have BBC America!!!!!  Several years ago, my cable company provided BBC America, although I had to pay extra for it.  I was okay with that - BBC America was my access to Doctor Who.  Then one day, I came home from a rough day at work, where I earned the cash to pay for cable, I turned on my television only to discover that I no longer had that channel.  Of course, I called – now, Rose does NOT like using the telephone, so the fact that I immediately picked up the phone and called should demonstrate the importance here.  I was told that BBC America had upped what they charged the cable company to broadcast and it was so much more that the cable company decided to no longer offer it.  Needless to say, I was bummed.

All totaled, I now pay a grand total of $85 for "cable" and internet.   When I received my first reduced bill from the cable company (because I had to stay with them for internet), it was the grand total of $38!!!  I did have to buy some antennas for the network channels, and a Roku for each TV, but those are one time investments.  Rose is now very happy - especially since BBC America has been showing "13 Days of Who" running up to the premiere of the new season!