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Posts Tagged ‘six degrees of seperation’

Small Earth

Posted in Lifes Observations, Small town life, tagged , , , , on June 8, 2010| 4 Comments »

The players:

Farmer Bob. 

First, he is not a farmer, farmer Bob is a consultant for farmers in Tennessee. Here is a very brief and simplistic explanation of what farmer Bob does.

If farmer John’s crop is not quite right  he calls farmer Bob and sends him a plant or soil sample, farmer Bob can then possibly  tell Farmer John what he needs to do to grow a healthier crop.

Secondly, his name is not Bob.

Lab technician Clarice.

Who is  really the Assistant supervisor in an environmental testing lab.  In brief, Clarice tests plants (and water) for a variety of chemicals for a variety of reasons mostly for the betterment of growers and researchers to produce better products.

Her name is not really Clarice, (but she is my wife).

So what in blue blazes is this post about?  It is about small worlds. 

Farmer John in Tennessee is having problems, so he calls farmer Bob, who gets plant samples which he sends to the lab (here in Pennsylvania) where my wife works.  There is a slight glitch and Bob calls Clarice, and as always happens with my wife, they get to talking.

Before Bob went to Tennessee he was in California.  My wife lived in California until she was 19.  Bob used to do consultant work in California one of his clients was a poinsettia farmer.  My wife used ride her horse on the same poinsettia farmers land.    Bob raced motorcycles, my wife was also involved in motorcycle racing, (see where this is going?) it turns out not only were they part of the same SCORE (International Off Road Racing) for the famous Baja races in mexico, they also raced at the same raceways in California. They clearly didn’t know each other back then, but chances are pretty good that they crossed paths, probably more than once.  Here they are 30 yrs later in different parts of the country doing business and sharing shared memories together they didn’t know they had. 

Kind of makes you wonder how the moron driver you flipped off on your way to work this morning is going to fit into your life 3o years from now.

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Denny’s

Posted in Lifes Observations, tagged , , , , , on February 22, 2010| 7 Comments »

Yes my wife and I eat at Denny’s.  I’d be the first, okay the second to tell you that the track record with Denny’s has not been great. My father would be the first.  However even my father likes the Denny’s in State College.  The food is good, the location is perfect for us and I even know some of the wait staff by name, which for me is an incredible feat.  There is Dana who is so good at her job and is such a fun person to be around, that she got my father to admit that there is hope for Denny’s and is now willing to eat there when he visits, of course we have to make sure that Dana would be taking care of us.   We have also gotten to know Mark quite well, in fact my wife is talking to him on Facebook as I write this blog. Even when not sitting in Mark’s section he makes sure we are taken care of properly.   Carrie always makes sure she comes by our table to say hello and enquire about us and the dog and is joy to talk too.  We don’t see Marvin (one of the managers) much anymore, but when we do he always stops by to say hello. There are others I like who I will apologize to now seeing as I can’t remember their names off-hand, such as the young woman who is usually at the cash and always laughs at my corny jokes. 

The other night as a couple sat down at a table across from us the woman nodded and waved at my wife.  My wife asked if we knew them from somewhere.  The womans response was that she has seen us in the restaurant a few times now so she felt like she knew us.  I thought it a little odd, but my wife being who she is started up a conversation.  I don’t know how the conversation ended up where it did, but it turns out that this couple were also volunteers for Sparrow, the wild life rehabilitator. They help her transport the animals when transport is necessary.  I realize that Sparrow is the only wild life rehabilitator in the area, but how many people are involved in this endeavour.  How many of you release wild life? or transport wild life? or even know a wild life rehaber?  I’m not seeing many hands.  Yet I’m eating at Denny’s and my wife strikes up a conversation with a complete stranger and of course we know the same people and have the same interests. 

A family at another table was obviously listening to our conversation and they decided to chime in.  While they are not involved in animal rescue on any ‘formal’ level they do have six cats and like our six cats they rescued them all.  They also happened to be looking for a good vet, and seeing as we just found a good vet in the area we were able to help them out on that front. 

After all this time I’m not sure why I am still surprised over incidents like this, but I am.  What worries me is I’m getting used to it, what worries me more is I am starting to think that it is a good and positive way to live.  What pisses me off however is that now I learn that Sparrow has people to transport animals.  Where the heck was this information before the skunk incident?

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Small Towns

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 3, 2010| 5 Comments »

The following are just a few examples of how small, small towns really are.

The person who they just hired for a customer service position where I work, used to work with my neighbour.

 A sales person where I work now, used to work at the same branch of the same bank in the same position I worked for, only five years earlier.

My neighbour’s beloved baby sitter had to quit because she got a full-time job.  The full-time job was in the lab where my wife works, (we figured out they were the same person years later)

The maintenance person for the building where my wife works is married to the cleaning person at my work.

My ex-dentists, ex-husband is a sales rep where I work.

My wife’s co-workers husband worked with the person who owned the house my new neighbours now own.

My neighbours grandfather built the house I live in. The granddaughters husband installed our central air and heat for us. Later, the company we hired to fix the original install knew the husband in question.

The entire town I live in, and the town next door to the town I live in know exactly where I live if I mention that I live in the ‘old Donaldson place’

The entire wait staff at Denny’s not only knows us by name but our drinks are practically waiting for us before we sit down.

When I go to the local market, and by market I mean gas station with a little store attached people tell me, ‘so you are the ones with the husky who are living in the old Donaldson place”

You don’t have to know my name, just mention the Canadian eh and they all know who you are talking about.

When you go to any sort of ‘meeting’ and everyone is made to stand up and introduce themselves 8 out of 10 people work at the same place.

Never mind small towns, how about a close knit family, go ahead give a listen.

I\’m my own grandpa

Stay tuned, I’m sure I’ll add a few more and I’m sure you will have some of your own to add.

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It really is a small world

Posted in Small town life, tagged , , , , on December 13, 2009| 2 Comments »

This is not a work related post. The story however begins at work.  I called a local golf center to narrow down an issue they were having and schedule a time for a technician to go and resolve the problem, we made all the necessary arrangements and I went on with my day.

That evening my wife and I were meeting Sparrow, the director of the wild life rehab center and some of her volunteers for dinner.   There was one couple we had never met but we seemed to have a lot in common.  Imagine our surprise when we realized that he was the person I had spoken to earlier that day to arrange for a technician to come out and fix the problem he was having at work.  Such a small world and it was getting smaller.  Later my wife was talking about her work in the agricultural dept.  It turns out the very same day he had spoken to my wife about some soil samples he wanted analyzed!  What are the odds that we were eating dinner with somebody we had never met before yet we had both spoken to during the day on totally unrelated issues?    It is a small world, and it is about to get smaller.  It turns out that they were interested in purchasing a house just two doors away from ours, unfortunately somebody else beat them to it and the house sold before they even put in a bid.  But we had fun imagining how we could have set up a release site for the animals between the two properties.  But wait, the world was yet to get smaller.  Two years later the house came up for sale again.  We contacted our friends and they were still interested in the propery and are now our new neighbors.  Yes the same one featured in hospital and yes the very same who became attached to the raccoons in Magical moments.  Guess what? the world continues to get even smaller.  At the neighbours house-warming party we met the realtor, the realtor’s husband is an aerospace engineer who teaches at the university, (we didn’t know such a program even existed at the university).  He was from Spain so we got to exchange war stories about immigration and had a lot of fun.  Months later my wife and I went through a lot of time and effort trying to purchase two laptop computers from a company who’s online department  messed up the order in more ways than I thought was possible.  Our saviour was a sales rep at the local branch of the store who along with his manager managed to fix everything.  The day we were able to pick up the computers we were chatting with the sales rep and found out he was studying aerospace at the university and surprise, surprise one of his professors was our next door neighbours real estate agents husband.  Yes, the wold keeps getting smaller.  This week I found out that the new hire at my work previously worked with my neighbor. Why am I not surprised?

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