Friday, June 24, 2011

Pet Peeve #18

This is a carry-over from my old MySpace blog where long ago I started blogging about my Pet Peeves.  I was tempted to just make this a FB status, but then I realized that having started the Pet Peeve posts I felt an obligation to continue them in the same format.

Pet Peeve #18 is people who do not respond to emails.  Of course I am not speaking of the simple every day sort of email, but the emails that ask for and require a response.  The emails that the sender initiates because he/she needs a response. 

Case in point.  One of my daughters has worked a seasonal job for the past two years.  She contacted the employer by email inquiring whether or not they could use her this year.  She even asked me to review the email before she sent it and I specifically suggested she add a line at the end in the form of a question that would require a response.  This she did.

This potential employer never responded to her.  She later heard through friends that the job was gearing up but still heard nothing.  Not even, "Sorry, we have a full crew already.".

I find this appalling!  Even if one must send out the less desirable response, at least respond!

The second example I have involves the same daughter asking a friend for assistance with a project.  Instead of responding with something like, "sorry, but I can't fit it into my schedule," the emailed request gets ignored. Fortunately, my daughter is bright enough to move forward with things even while waiting for responses that are not forthcoming.  She knows better than to depend on the undependable.

Is it just me or is this kind of passivity just rude?

Okay, that's out of my system. On to happier things!

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Archives

I'm spending some time in Colorado Springs with family in anticipation of assisting my niece in her drive back to Ohio at the end of the week.  One night I was feeling restless and stayed up way past a normal sleep time wandering around in the archives of my past.  Using the computer for assistance I think I found out more than I was expecting.

Is this strange or not...

I decided that someone I knew a few dozen years (lifetimes) ago was dead.  I know, odd thing to make an assumption about, but I had my reasons.  So I decided I would start checking obituaries.  I didn't find the person I originally set out to find through the obituaries, but I did find that my cousin had died about 3 years ago and I believe her mother, my aunt, is also deceased.  It should make me sad about my aunt, but she was my mother's sister and actually I am sort of happy that they are together again.  I find comfort in that.  As for her daughter, my cousin, she had MS and lived 25 years longer than she was "supposed" to, so I don't find her death shocking or untimely either.  Perhaps the most unsettling of any of it is that my brothers and I are truly the "older generation" now as our ancestors have now all gone before us.

As for the others I was looking for in my mental archives, I found some of those people through other methods, apparently alive and happy which is a good thing.  The road was a bit circuitous, but I've always been good at chasing clues.  The last question I have is about a child of one of these friends.  One child seems to be absent from the present information and I have one of those gut feelings that he may have been a war casualty.  So sad if true.

So I think I'll close the door to the archives for now having peeked into the lives of people I knew so long ago and carry on as usual.  I wonder, am I the only one so fascinated with my own past and the eventual destinations of those I once knew and cared about? Or do others open their archives and examine their histories and wonder...?