Day of the Dead odds and ends

I have another boss-from-hell story. Believe it or not, it's about a different boss. He wasn't nearly as bad as the other one - that is, he was awful, but he was consistently awful, whereas the milton-hog was unpredictably dysfunctional.

But I'm not telling that story today, because it's a bit long (not as long as the milton story), and I'm still cobbling it together from memory and an old email. And I still need to do a little research for the epilogue.

Instead, here are some odds and ends.

• We had a big, huge, gigantic "town meeting" teleconference at work today. The person who was running the meeting was not a good speaker. I'll spare you most of the details of the audio problems that arise from having a 100-party teleconference. (For one thing, people don't think to mute their phones until someone tells them to; the mute code is *6, so when the moderator says "don't forget to mute your phone," you can hear two beeps from every person hitting those buttons.)

The very long-winded moderator, who droned like Ben Stein in a Clear Eyes commercial, said a couple of funny things. First was the recurring phrase "from a vision perspective," which as far as I could tell was simply a time-consuming way of saying "uh." Second was when he promised that the task force "would not create any artificial barriers to progress." Yikes - what's the alternative to artificial barriers? Real barriers!

• Today I got a very intimidating (if I didn't know better and didn't have insurance) postcard in the mail, promising hefty fines if I don't hurry up and get medical insurance by the end of the year. You can tell they mean business because of the thick red stripe at the top (yep, I mean business too).

Then you get to the end of the scary thing and it says "If you already have health coverage, please disregard this notice."

Heh. If they don't know whether or not I have insurance, how can they fine me?

• In the USA, we bury or cremate our dead, have a funeral, and then after that we're on our own. We can make a special effort to do something with our families afterwards, but it can be difficult to find the initiative to set up something like that when you're still grieving, and it may not seem worth the trouble once the grief has mellowed.

Today is Mexico's (and elsewhere's) Day of the Dead. It's actually a two-day event, remembering children and saints on November 1, then everyone else on November 2. In between, there's an overnight visit to the cemetery, bringing gifts, food, and drink to the deceased.

The rituals and celebrations provide an automatic, organized way for families to celebrate departed loved ones in a positive atmosphere, so that the shock of death and the raw grief of the funeral isn't the last time they remember bonding over their loss. It also provides an ideal time to discuss death with children in a relaxed way that isn't possible when you're breaking them the bad news about their goldfish.

Granted, Día de Muertos is mainly a religious holiday, and the celebrations are based on the belief that the dead have gone on to a better place. But I still like the idea of a formalized and festive celebration of the dead, rather than the lonely, somber, piecemeal approach that's the norm here.

• This weekend: Plimouth Plantation with the kiddies!

Useful Spanish of the day:
Si mi abuela tuviera ruedas, sería una bicicleta.
(If my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle.)