Trivial Annoyances

[Tom Storer]

In the restrooms at my place of employment, next to the sink is one of those things that loops a cloth towel in a big roll--pulling it down brings out enough for a typical hand-drying operation.



My feeling is that a civilized person will dry his or her hands, then pull down a stretch of dry towel for the next person.

My trivial annoyance: many people do not do this. They dry their hands and just leave the wet part in place, requiring the next person to pull down the towel to get to the dry part.

towel.png (358.67 KiB) Viewed 15958 times

Pulling down the towel takes a fraction of a second. But having to do so makes me grit my teeth with rage and hate.

[Tom Storer]

In fact, it's air dryers that are more unsanitary. I know this because I read an article that said so, so it must be true.

The gist was this: when you dry your hands with a towel, cloth or paper, you physically wipe microbes off your skin. When you dry your hands in warm air, the microbes do not blow off in the evaporating water. They stay on your skin as the moisture disappears. In addition, microbes tend to thrive in warm, relatively humid restrooms, and so extra microbes in the circulating air light on your hands. The studies cited observed that people who dried their hands with an air dryer ended up with MORE microbes than they had before, whereas towels reduced the number of microbes.

So there.

(Of course, those microbes are usually perfectly harmless anyway, no matter how many you have on your hands.)

P.S. And the reason air dryers are increasingly popular has nothing to do with hygiene, anyway. It means no further investment is necessary and makes for a clutter-free restroom, freeing staff to do other things than tidy away wet towels.

[pig pen]

When did OCD become such a common affliction? I mean, unless you're performing surgery or cooking food for others, what is this insane obsession with cleanliness?

yours truly,

Another Savage

[stonemonkts]

You know that gray very thin wrapping Locatelli uses on their romano cheese. Scraping it off with your thumbnail a millimeter at a time, cheese becomes wedged under your nail. Fucking annoying.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

You know that gray very thin wrapping Locatelli uses on their romano cheese. Scraping it off with your thumbnail a millimeter at a time, cheese becomes wedged under your nail. Fucking annoying.

Yeah, but when you go to bed you can suck your thumb and lull yourself to sleep. Btw, Locatelli Romano is one of my favorite cheeses. It's my go to cheese for grating or slivering on pasta. I don't peel the wrapping. I take a sharp knife and slice as close as possible to the wrapping. You sacrifice some cheese but it's much less frustrating. And...you get to the good stuff much quicker.

[stonemonkts]

That's a good tip. You're right about the good part too, the sliver close to the wrapping is usually dry anyway. I also love that cheese, and often use it in salad (of course I always use it on pasta).

[moldyfigg]

I dry off my hands on the guy standing next to me's shirt.

[bluenoter]

Today I went to "my" hospital's Radiology dept. to have a (routine) CT scan. The waiting room was full.

DESK PERSON: Listen for this number to be called, and then we'll get you registered.
She handed me a plastic placard displaying an enormous 4.

Much time passed.

DESK PERSON: Number 3.

Much more time passed.

DESK PERSON: Number 1.

ME: What about Number 4? You called Number 3.

DESK PERSON: Oh, the numbers aren't in order.

ME: Ohhhhhhh.

Next:

DESK PERSON: Number 9.

Eventually, as I was being registered:

ME: You know, if you were to call the numbers in order, everyone would know what kind of wait to expect. They're not pictures of vegetables; they're numbers! They mean something. They denote an order.
-------------

I worry about my high blood pressure every time I'm an outpatient at "my" hospital, but being an inpatient there is much worse.

[Ron Thorne]

Yeow! What a "system", bluenoter.

[bluenoter]

Trivial only to a trivial degree:



(from the weather.com report for my zip code)

But this isn't Alaska; this is Washington, DC.

I need to walk and take public transportation. Even if I'd gotten around to ordering a pair of ice cleats, I'm almost as wimpy about wind chill as I am about ice.

[pig pen]

It's a been a strange weather year here too. We had non-stop snow in December where I had the snowblower going almost every day, then we had extreme cold with temps at -30c (-22f) and windchills way below that followed by a warmup to double digit temps above zero. Now we're back to the relative cold (today is -16c, ~3f) which isn't too bad for January but we got spoiled by the recent warm weather and it's a bit of a shock.

The worst thing with all these ups and downs is that there is ice everywhere. I remember when I was a kid winter was simple, everything froze in December and started to thaw in April, I could deal with that. These crazy swings are killing me.

[BeBop]

It usually doesn't work this way - believe me - but I've been blessed with good weather the past two months. My Minneapolis job during the "polar vortex" was cancelled and I was in balmy London. December, I got snowed on in Cairo - unusual, but not particularly unpleasant. Rainy Holland beat the heck out of my usual Christmas work in equatorial Africa. Right now, I'm in Costa Mesa, CA.

I'm trivally annoyed that I don't have anything to be annoyed about. My condolences to those who are legitimately annoyed.

[sozamora]

I don't understand people who talk on their cel phone while they're in a public restroom doing their business. Forget about the thoughtlessness of annoying other people in the restroom - I would hate to be the person on the other end of the line knowing the guy is sitting in a stall.

[Ron Thorne]

Meanwhile, it's unseasonably warm in Anchorage ... into the low 40s during the day. Thawing and re-freezing is both annoying and dangerous!

[sozamora]

We had what was left of our ice freeze dry last night. And with no snow or ice in the long-range forecast.

I don't say this to gloat or make light of your weather woes, but I'm mostly glad I live in a place where I can wear shorts and t-shirt to work in the middle of January. Drought concerns notwithstanding.

[bluenoter]

. . . .
. . . .

[walto]

I hate winter.

[BeBop]

We had what was left of our ice freeze dry last night. And with no snow or ice in the long-range forecast.

I don't say this to gloat or make light of your weather woes, but I'm mostly glad I live in a place where I can wear shorts and t-shirt to work in the middle of January. Drought concerns notwithstanding.

Growing up, we used to go to San Francisco and, on that rare warm, clear January day, when the tourists were all marveling and enthralled, we'd make some reference to "earthquake weather". But even on the best of July San Francisco days, shorts and t-shirts were an invitation to hypothermia.

[bluenoter]

Ronan I didn’t know well because Mia would never let me get close to him from the moment he was born and Dylan, whom I adored and was very close to and about whom Mia called my sister in a rage and said, "He took my daughter, now I’ll take his."

One trivial annoyance is that the New York Times published that sentence---and in
a Sunday Review | Opinion piece, no less. Another trivial annoyance is that NYTimes.com rejected a comment in which I pointed out the quoted sentence and asked whether the editing of the piece had been nonexistent or insufficient.
Who can explain what's wrong with the quoted sentence?

[tippy]

Disappointing Utah moment #2,489: "The liquor store will be closed on February 17 for Washington & Lincoln Day."

Crackers.

Heartening Utah moment #12: When Utah District Judge Shelby ruled that the same sex marriage ban was unconstitutional.

Disappointing Utah moment #2,481: When a co-worker referred to gay people as animals.

[Ron Thorne]

Why aren't some time-honored phrases good enough for today's parents? Why is a child spending the night with a friend now referred to as a "sleepover" and playing with a friend at their house a "play date"? Somehow, it seems silly, almost pretentious, something for which I have very little patience.

[tippy]

Agree with you on play date. At one time I thought it was just an urban thing cuz you know you can't send your young kids on the subway to go play at their friends by themselves.

And although I can see the sense and kindness of it, the concept of "doggy day care" makes owning a dog seem prohibitively expensive to me. Do you have to set up a college fund too?

[hornplayer]

Ronan I didn’t know well because Mia would never let me get close to him from the moment he was born and Dylan, whom I adored and was very close to and about whom Mia called my sister in a rage and said, "He took my daughter, now I’ll take his."

One trivial annoyance is that the New York Times published that sentence---and in
a Sunday Review | Opinion piece, no less. Another trivial annoyance is that NYTimes.com rejected a comment in which I pointed out the quoted sentence and asked whether the editing of the piece had been nonexistent or insufficient.
Who can explain what's wrong with the quoted sentence?

There's so much wrong with that sentence I scarcely know where to start.... but of course, it's ridiculously run-on.

Rita, do you really think the Times would dare to edit the "great" Woody Allen? :p

[bluenoter]

Ronan I didn’t know well because Mia would never let me get close to him from the moment he was born and Dylan, whom I adored and was very close to and about whom Mia called my sister in a rage and said, "He took my daughter, now I’ll take his."

There's so much wrong with that sentence I scarcely know where to start.... but of course, it's ridiculously run-on.

Rita, do you really think the Times would dare to edit the "great" Woody Allen? :p

But they're the "great" New York Times!

My main beef with that sentence is that the clause about Dylan has no predicate (or no subject,
if instead the missing words were to follow the "Ronan" pattern and consist of something like
"I knew all too well").

[walto]

They should have published your comment, Rita, and they wouldn't because I'm guessing June is right that Woody would not allow anything he writes to be touched. So there was the embarrassment factor.

You're a really good editor. Even though that sentence is a big mess, I'd never have noticed it if you hadn't pointed it out. I certainly didn't when I read his piece. I find it difficult to shift away from sucking up meanings to focusing on grammar when I'm reading--or when I'm writing. That's one reason (of several) that there are so many mistakes, not only in my internet posts, but in things I write for work or for publication. The mistakes may be obvious (often they're just missing words), but I simply don't see this until the post/memo/email/paper has left my desk. I wish I'd had someone like you available to copy-edit my books.