Monday Mug Shot

Happy Tuesday carefully disguised as a Monday!

Okay, the Mug Shot is late this week. Ya know how when there is a holiday the garbage is picked up a day late?

Bad analogy. The Mug Shot is NOT garbage! But we are in the test area for an automated garbage pickup here. We have two mini dumpsters on wheels. The gray one is for garbage. It holds a TON of garbage, more than we have in a week, all in one mini-dumpster that even I can wheel out to the curb! I do admit, it’s easier when it’s empty, but even full, I can manage it! I found that out when David was on vacation last month and I had to take it out. Every other week the blue one, for recycling, gets picked up. When the garbage truck comes, it pulls up to the curb and extends a large clamping arm that grabs the mini dumpster at the middle and lifts it up to the opening where the garbage goes in the truck, turning it upside down and emptying it. When the arm turns the dumpster right side up, the lid comes back down and it’s placed back on the curb.

At first I didn’t like the idea. The automation would displace workers. While I‘m not happy that where we had one person driving and two picking up the garbage before and now there are one or two people in the truck, I also see more smaller trucks doing other things while the garbage is being picked up. My thought, my hope, is that a large number of former trash pickup employees were reassigned rather than laid off. As part of the unworking class, I want to see advancements made for the good of people, not just for the good of money. Laying people off only puts fewer people who have buying power and that’s bad for the economy, which in turn, causes more jobs lost! It’s a vicious spiral. But it seems like the new idea for trash pickup is not convenience at the expense of people or the economy and at least for now, there is no increase in the taxes for trash pickup, which, regardless of what they complain about on the radio, is not at all expensive here and we get a tax cut for recycling!

So, the Automated trash pickup doesn’t seem to have displaced many workers. I can definitely see the safety benefits for the trash collectors in not having to lift the cans or bags repeatedly which can cause all kinds of strains or spams from the repetitive motion, let alone the dangers of doing that while sanding on ice in the winter! It’s also kinda cool to watch the metal arm grab the mini dumpster like it’s a cup of coffee and chug it!

So, it’s safe, cool and fun. NOW the analogy works! So, the Monday Mug Shot is delayed one day after the holiday, just like the safe, cool and fun garbage pickup!


Monday Mug Shot

The Professional Football Hall of Fame
Canton, Ohio

Before we talk about the visit to the Football Hall, lets first talk about the mug. I love this mug! I have a few like this and I love them all! See the football on the mug handle? It spins! I hold the mug by the handle and I can flick at the football with my thumb and it spins! How cool is that?

Okay, I’m a dork. But I’m a happy dork in my little world with toys on the handles of my coffee mugs! Yanno, it’s a good life lesson. If you can find joy and a smile in the smallest things, you’ll always be able to find some good in a bad situation. I look for the little things that make me happy all the time and I always have something to smile about. Of course the flip side of that is that I am very emotional and when there is REAL cause for joy, I’m often moved to the point of tears. But I found during Nanifest XL that my teary joy moved other people too. That was good for more hugs and who doesn’t want more hugs from the people they love?

Okay, now I guess I’d better get on with how I came to own this mug with the cool spinning football!

In the late 90s and early 00s, I wrote for an indoor soccer publication called The Great Indoors. The editor and I traveled to a couple of out of town games and we discovered that we were good travel companions and had some similar interests beyond indoor soccer. It was on one of our nonbusiness trips that I went to my first Minor League Baseball game and became thoroughly hooked! On one visit to the Cleveland area, where the newsletter is published, we went to Canton, to the Football Hall of Fame.

I am a casual football fan. I like the game and love to watch it played when it’s played well. I love sports anyway, my sports knowledge, not for the pro players, but for the rules and strategies of the games, is what gave me the edge over two already in-house men who were the other finalists for my sports producer position in the early 90s. I liked football and I loved Friday nights in the fall at work. At the high school varsity level, they play was enjoyable to watch. But I was not a devoted Sunday afternoon armchair quarterback. I liked the hometown Lions, but I suppose when your home-team only makes the high school teams look better, it does deter one from becoming an avid fan of the game!

So, I agreed to go to the Football Hall of Fame, but didn’t expect it to be anything more than maybe an opportunity to tuck some trivial pursuit sports answers away. I discovered that I knew more about the NFL than I thought! I didn’t feel like such a student.

There was a video presentation, the NFL Experience, that was pretty cool to view in a theater setting that was like sitting in a locker room to watch the movie. Then we went into the museum to see the exhibits.

I was pleased to find that I knew names and accomplishments, I learned new things too, but it was what I already new that surprised me. It wasn’t such a dry day after all. It was an interesting day of football discovery and self-discovery. I’m not as detached a casual fan as I thought.

I guess, once a tomboy, always a tomboy, at heart anyway. I still wore skirts to work on the days that I wasn’t climbing on top of the production truck in the field, but that part of my nature that played hockey, collected gardener snakes and spent half of my allowance on baseball cards before I was ten was still alive and kicking. When I graduated from trade school and interviewed for both a video job chasing trains and one producing high school sports, that was my inner tomboy. And now, well I watch the Patriots with David and a better team to watch has made me a little more into the pro game. And I still don’t like shoes - the tomboy lives!

Oh, I’m still a casual fan, but a fairly knowledgeable one...for a girl! ;)