If they can put a man on the moon ...

     

If they can put a man on the moon ... 

I wonder why no one has invented a dental drill that sounds like Vivaldi’s Spring or even Barry Manilow’s Copacabana—or for that matter, the patient’s own iPod playlist? When the dentist drills, my senses of sight, smell, and touch are in la-la-land but I can still hear Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee screaming a hole into the center of my brain. Birdsong? Ocean waves? Dental procedures have become surprisingly pain-free, but now it’s time for some bright person to make dentists’ tools sound more relaxing.

Can’t they train baristas to pick up cups and mugs without touching the rims? That seems unsanitary to me, and it’s very common.

Why does Amazon.com send me a product review request for an item I bought directly from someone’s Amazon Wish List? Does Amazon’s computer not realize the gift recipient, not I, will have the opinion? Amazon is usually king of user-friendliness, but they dropped their scepter in the can on this one.

Speaking of computer programming gaps, this past year I registered online and verbal dissatisfaction with services of two companies. The vice president of one of the companies even called me on the phone to apologize and offer to fix what they had messed up. And she did fix one problem. But both companies continue to hound me with weekly e-mails hawking the specific services I had told them were unworkable for me. I find it hard to believe these two technologically sophisticated companies do not have a way for the customer service department to communicate to the marketing department to pull a customer from their mailing list. I worked in marketing for decades, and back in the dark ages, we could easily manually pull labels of people who had requested no mailings.

So I ask you, if they can put a man on the moon, why can’t they … [You fill in the blank!] ?

My winter gardening break isn’t quite over, BUT …

February in Chicago. Two months of no gardening, and I’m leanin’ back (…aaah…) into a huge cushion of gratefulness that I live somewhere whose weather gives me this break from gardening. I cherish knowing my break will last another month. Gardening articles in Sunday papers hold no interest for me now. I don’t care that there’s a hot new-for-2017 adenophora with fairy-bell blooms and upright stems right now. I’m resting. Robert and I have tried to discuss springtime ideas like moving the rose bushes, transplanting black-eyed susans, getting a new clematis, but these plans go nowhere. We’re not in gardening mode yet. I have tucked away a mental note to look for hardy hibiscus, but if this note gets lost, oh well. Saturday we stopped in a local gardening center only because Robert thought he might find pots for his indoor jades. So imagine my surprise when a full-blown vision for a new flower garden appeared in my brain as I stood in front of the seed packet display. I’m still resting, and I’m not so antsy to dig in the dirt that I’ll unseat myself early from my comfy garden-break cushion, BUT I will admit to a little hollyhock and larkspur excitement.