"Nah, if I go in there it could get weird. There'll be all kinds of SPAM to sort through, obtuse references to products I never will buy, and e-mails for stuff I'll spend an hour deleting through. Better off just leaving things 'Be' as my Mom always says."
'Other' voices in my head begin arguing with the first two, cruel names are tossed back and forth like pizza dough in an upscale Italian Restaurant and then another voice drowns them all out with a hearty, "For the love of Pete, would all of you SHUT UP?!?! Check the Inbox, Dude, you're making me and that 'other one' NUTS!"
This final voice appears to have come from our dog, Sandy, who is sitting next to me at the Dining Room table. She sits motionless with one paw up and the front of her lip pulled back over dangerously-gleeming teeth. Great. All these voices in my head an now the DOG has to get into the act.
I'm doomed.
"Yeah, you are, but you don't even know why yet. Wait till you try to sit on your bed later tonight. I left a little something on your comforter for you. A little bit of me, you know, just for YOU. Heh, heh, heh..."
She puts her paw down, 'chuffs' and walks back to the Living Room presumably to defile yet another piece of defenseless furniture.
Like I said at the beginning - a day like any other.
Soooooo, I give in to my dog, the 'voices', my better judgement and I click on the Icon which opens Outlook. 118 Messages. Super.
Most are ads for 'stuff'. A couple are from comments people have left as a result of my FaceBook postings and, hold on, what's this... Cool, it's something I can USE. A useful thing!
It's a note from my friend, GrumpyElder, with a link to an article online AND it's right up my alley. Maybe the voices were right (once), after all.
And this, after much literary cross-talk, brings us to today's post...
It's about the Environmental Protection Agency and the wonderful things they do... For US.
To bring you up to speed, here's their Mission Statement: "The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment."
Shoot, I'm all for THAT! (Although after re-reading the mission statement again, shouldn't it read: "The mission of THE EPA is to protect human health and the environment"? Just wonderin'. You trying to tell me that with the amount of money they SPEND protecting Red-Spotted Salamanders that they couldn't have someone proofread their own Mission Statement? Yikes!)
On their site, they have an image which overviews their mission.
Okay, get ready for it, here it comes (I didn't make this up - it's THEIRs)...
What can we take away from this fabulous representation of 'What they do'?
(When I copied the above image for inclusion here, I found that it was named, "Perf Circle". I'm assuming that this was short for 'Perfect Circle'... Give a Graphics Artist a Federal Grant for $1.3 Million and you too can have a Perfect Circle on your website! Perfect!!!)
I'll take a stab at what this Image represents:
1. They plan 'Strategically' to do... er, um, 'Something'
2. They plan some more while applying 'Costs' against the afforementioned plans
3. They set up budgets according to their 'plans' and then they 'spend' (your money, to accomplish their plans)
4. Lastly, they 'Report' their Results to, um, someone, who is most likely, dressed as...
A Red-Spotted Salamander
This is him. I call him, "Sal A. Mander".
Why?
