Oh, hellfire and damnation

I got to the Bernina shop at lunchtime, ONLY to discover they don’t have the proper drive belt in stock for L’s machine.  The repair guy thought he could order one and get it here in a week.  By dint of explaining that L’s on deadline for an enormous theater-production contract, and that curtain is goin’ up with or without us, he finally allowed how he could order it and have it shipped overnight, which should have L working again by Friday evening—provided, that is, that the distribution center he orders from has a belt in stock, and doesn’t attempt to back-order it all the way to the factory.  (Anybody got any good, quickquickquick backup plans for getting a Bernina 930 missing its drive belt running again, just in case?)

I did go on and pick up both Sunday pledge captain shifts for KUT’s drive, which means my schedule now looks like this:

• Saturday, 10A-11A maybe and 1530-1600 (Folkways)
• Sunday, 7A-10A (WESun and This American Life) and 8P-11P (World Music)
• Wednesday, sometime-after-6P to 11P, (ATC and Paul Ray’s Jazz), if the drive’s still going

Just for the entertainment value, if I’m not working Friday morning I may drop by the station just for the entertainment value, and because first-day and final-day Eklektikos shows often turn out to be affairs that need all hands and the cook.

That’s one of those antique phrases I use that no one else in the world seems even to know any longer:  “all hands and the cook.”  It’s very descriptive once you understand it, though.  A sailing ship was meant to be sailed by a third of her crew, and certainly by no more than half, depending on how you arranged the watches.  You didn’t turn out the off-watch unless something way way big was happening—a hurricane, for example.  And you never asked the cook to turn a hand.  Never ever.  The cook was on board to do only one thing:  feed the crew.  Otherwise, he was inviolate when it came to tasks around the ship.  The only time you called Cookie out of his galley was if the ship was in imminent danger of sinking unless everyone on board turned to and worked as hard as any three men could to save the ship from foundering.

If you needed all hands and the cook on deck, you were truly in a tight spot and hurtin’ for real.  So when you hear me say that something or another needed all hands and the cook, you can be sure that something big, metaphorically speaking, broke loose and didn’t want to get tied down again.

Tsar Boris ejaculated within the secondary plastic.  Fnord.