I visited Paris with my family
over the holidays. A couple days before Christmas, we walked to the Eiffel Tower and
encountered very long lines of tourists. By contrast, no one was standing in line at the sewer
tour’s ticket booth late Christmas Eve morning. We walked right up, purchased
our tickets and down the stairs we went to begin our self-guided tour.
For the last few years, anything green has received
incredible attention. The high price of oil, the threat of global warming, and
a strong economy have caused us to view the world through green-tinted glasses. Fast forward to today. Oil is cheap, icy weather engulfs the
U.S. (global cooling?), and our economy stinks. Could the vast green sea become
a puddle?
The advent of air conditioning a century ago brought us into
a new era, the AC in HVAC. While heat
could be delivered in various forms into a space, cooling came in one medium -
cool air. The more, the better. Somewhere you had cooling coils to create
this new-found luxury, and fans and ducts to deliver the valued commodity to
the place it was needed.
Once the cool air had severed its purpose, it had little value.
The French arrangement of placing
the toilet in a separate room from the rest of the bathroom fixtures makes
sense to me, for the most part. I’ve encountered this setup in French hotels
and, recently, in a private apartment in Paris where I spent Christmas with my
wife, our three grown kids and relatives who are living
there. After all, why should someone
experiencing French cuisine on top of a trans-Atlantic flight tie up an entire
bathroom for long periods of time?
The recent spate of mergers caused me to wonder why we - the valued
customers of these companies - were not consulted about their unions. I know we
could pick better partners. So at the top of my 2008 Christmas list, I asked
for mergers that will bring a smile to the face of every employee, customer and
even those not-so-lovable boardroom Scrooges.
The construction
market stinks. The stock market brings constant pain. The financial bailouts
grow more insane by the day. Manufacturers are struggling. Nonprofits are
laying off staff. Retailers are filing for bankruptcy. To all of this I want complain loudly and shout, “Bah humbug.” But I can’t.
Now that Thanksgiving is over, we have a few weeks before
the Christmas spirit peaks and we have to be nice to people. Now is the perfect
time to take advantage of people and make some easy money for your company. Here’s how to do it...
Woke up at about 4 am one day last week to the sound of a
“fog horn” in the house. Went to the bathroom – where the tub was a sub-woofer.
The noise was even louder in the kitchen. and even worse in the basement...
Earlier this week the U.S. Commerce Department released
October stats indicating that new home and apartment construction have dropped
to an annual rate of 791,000 units, a 4.5% decrease from
September. Certain to receive unwanted focus is the fact that this
total is the lowest national annualized rate since 1959, or nearly a
half-century.
As I was waiting for my wife after a show recently, I gave
the “nod” to several other guys, also waiting, and wondered about the
woman experience in public restrooms. I never
knew, after being together for more than 25 years, that one of my wife’s
horrors in life is the road trip and the dreaded required trips to the public
rest rooms.