Silly Sunday: Directions

While delivering flowers, i've sometimes had difficulty finding places.  The routing computer at the flower shop used to be terrible!  It would give awful printed directions, often telling you to leave a business or area and go to a different one, then come back to the first one again for a second delivery.  It should have put all of the deliveries to the same address or area at one stop or right after each other.

It used to be that i would tell them to tell their route optimizer to go home, it was drunk.  They have sobered it up, although they called it reprogramming it.

It still isn't perfect, though.  If a particular road is so new it hasn't been added to its maps yet, it puts the stop in the right place, but skips giving you the directions for it.  That's when i have to "call back to the barn" and get them to tell me where to find it.

Yesterday i was on my last run of the day when the directions told me the name of a street on which to turn, but it's such a new street that it doesn't have a street sign yet.  Thankfully i was able to wave down a very nice young gentleman who told me where it was, then had me follow him since he was going that direction.  He pointed out the street, and i got that last delivery in.

Having to ask that nice young man for directions reminds me of a joke.

Boudreaux an' Thibodeaux was jes' settin' in front de little main street store in Ville Platte one day many year back, an' a man drive up an' roll down de window an' say, "Entschuldigung, koennen Sie Deutsch sprechen?"

Boudreaux an' Thibodeaux jes' say, "Heh?"

Den de man say, "Parlare Italiano?" 

An' Boudreaux an' Thibodeaux again say, "Heh?

One mo' time he try, "Hablan ustedes Espanol?"

Boudreaux an' Thibodeaux jes' shake dey heads an' de man drive off disgusted.

Den Thibodeaux turn to Boudreaux an' ax, "We speak Cajun French, an' we speak Cajun English, do you t'ink we need to learn a t'ird language?"

An' Boudreaux he answer an say, "Mais, non!  Dat man, he spoke t'ree language, an it don' do him no good!"

     

Today is

Clean up Your Room Day -- one of those holidays that no one knows how it got started, but it's a good idea, especially if your house is decorated by teens in "Recently Ransacked" style!

Constitution Day -- Federated States of Micronesia

Golden Spike Day -- finishing the first US Trancontinental Railroad in 1869

Hanswijk Procession -- Mechelen, Belgium (since the year 1272, the Sunday before Ascension Thursday, the town celebrates Our Lady of Hanswijk, in thanks for the ending of plague and war)

Infant Mortality Awareness Day -- as we celebrate mothers today, let's remember those who have lost children

Mother Ocean Day -- celebrate the wonders of the ocean, wherever you happen to be; day originally proposed by the South Florida Kayak Fishing Club

Mother's Day -- Belize; El Salvador; Guatemala; Mexico (always May 9 in these countries)

Mother's Day -- Anguilla; Antigua and Barbuda; Aruba; Australia; Austria; Bahamas; Bangladesh; Barbados; Belgium; Bermuda; Bonaire; Botswana; Brazil; Brunei; Canada; Cambodia; Chile; China(People's Republic of China); Colombia; Croatia; Cuba; Curaçao; Cyprus; Czech Republic; Denmark; Dominica; Ecuador; Estonia; Ethiopia; Fiji; Finland; Germany; Ghana; Gold Coast; Greece; Grenada; Guyana; Honduras; Hong Kong; Iceland; India; Italy; Jamaica; Japan; Kurdistan; Latvia; Liberia; Liechtenstein; Macao; Malaysia; Malta; Myanmar; Netherlands; New Zealand; Pakistan; Papua New Guinea; Peru; Philippines; Puerto Rico; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; Samoa; Singapore; Sint Maarten; Slovakia; South Africa; Sri Lanka; Suriname; Switzerland; Taiwan; Tanganyika; Tonga; Trinidad and Tobago; Turkey; Uganda; Ukraine; United States; Uruguay; Vietnam; Venezuela; Zambia; Zimbabwe                  

National Shrimp Day

Punch's Birthday / Covent Garden May Fayre and Puppet Festival -- St. Paul's Cathedral, London, England (Punch, of Punch and Judy, celebrates his birthday on the Sunday closest to May 9 with a fair and by preaching at the cathedral to other puppets and their puppeteers, or "professors".)

Resistance and Liberation Day -- Lebanon

State Flag and State Emblem Day -- Belarus

St. Cathal's Day (Patron of blind people, drought relief, epileptics, paralyzed people; Taranto, Italy; against blindness, drought, epilepsy, hernias, paralysis, plagues, storms)

St. Father Damien of Moloka'i's Day (Patron of lepers, outcasts, those with HIV/AIDS; Hawaii)

St. Job the Patriarch's Day (Patron against depression and ulcers)

Trust Your Intuition Day -- practice, and you'll get better at it

World Lupus Day 



Birthdays Today:

Kenan Thompson, 1978
Amanda Borden, 1977
Jason Brooks, 1966
Paul "Bono" Hewson, 1960
Phil and Steve Mahre, 1957
Donovan, 1946
Dave Mason, 1946
Marie-France Pisier, 1944
Judith Jamison, 1943
Gary Owens, 1936
Barbara Taylor Bradford, 1933
Pat Summerall, 1930
Ara Raoul Parseghian, 1923
Nancy Walker, 1922
T. Berry Brazelton, 1918
"Mother" Maybelle Carter, 1909
David O. Selznick, 1902
Fred Astaire, 1899
Max Steiner, 1888
Karl Barth, 1868
George Ross, 1730
Emperor Fushimi of Japan, 1265
Emperor Claudius, 213


Debuting/Premiering Today:

Twister(Film), 1996
"The Rest of the Story"(Radio), 1976
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major(Shostakovich Op. 102), 1957


Today in History:

The Roman armies under Titus open a full scale assault on Jerusalem, 70
Vienna's church orders all Jews to wear a distinctive garb, 1267
Scottish nobles recognize authority of English king Edward I, 1291
Amerigo Vespucci allegedly leaves on a voyage to the New World, 1497
Christopher Columbus "discovers" the Cayman Islands, 1503
Jacques Cartier visits Newfoundland, 1534
Scottish Protestants under John Knox uprise against queen-mother Mary, 1559
England forcefully annexes Jamaica from Spain, 1655
Benjamin Franklin first tests the lightning rod, 1752
Louis XVI becomes King of France, 1774
The Barbary pirates of Tripoli declare war on the United States of America, 1801
New York City banks fail, and unemployment reaches record levels, 1837
In India, the first war of Independence begins, 1857
The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah (not Promontory Point, Utah) with the golden spike, 1869
Romania  declares itself independent from Turkey, 1877
The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Nix v. Hedden that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit, under the Tariff Act of 1883, 1893
The first Mother's Day is observed, 1908
J. Edgar Hoover is appointed Director of the FBI, 1924
First successful launch of a V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground, 1946
Bill Haley & His Comets release "Rock Around the Clock", the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the Billboard charts, 1954
The nuclear submarine USS Triton completes Operation Sandblast, the first underwater circumnavigation of the earth, 1960
The Federated States of Micronesia  becomes self-governing, 1979
François Mitterrand becomes the first Socialist President of France in the French 5th republic, 1981
Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president, 1994
Deadliest day on the mountain: a rogue storm on Everest claims 8 lives, including experienced climbers, 1996
The Maeslantkering, a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands that is one of the world's largest moving structures, is opened by Queen Beatrix, 1997
Solicitor General Elena Kagan is the youngest Justice and third woman nominated for the Supreme Court of the United States, 2010
Microsoft announces plans to purchase Skype, 2011