Question Quest

The title actually has no meaning. It just so happens to be the book sitting next to me right now. It's part of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony, which, if you haven't already, I highly recommend reading.
That, and the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson.
That series has changed my whole life.

But I digress.
(Is it a digression if you were never ON topic to begin with? I'm not sure...)

Tonight was the opening night of the reprisal of Man of La Mancha at the Cocoa Village Playhouse. The show ran last May, and it was so wildly popular our director chose to bring it back this season. We had a grand total of three rehearsals stretched over November and December to refresh our memory of what we had to do.

What.
A.
Rush.

It's hard to describe the feeling you get when the curtain rises and you see the audience sitting there waiting for you to amaze them. And without fail, after our Don Quixote de La Mancha sings "The Impossible Dream" there is a full minute of standing ovation before we can continue the show. It's an honor to work with people who have this much raw talent.

But enough about that. Let's talk about hurricane-proofing.
Now, I live in Florida. We're so used to hurricanes, they hardly even faze us anymore. But I had assumed that their destructive potential was still recognized. Apparently, I assumed wrong.
Two days ago, I walked in to Olive Garden to clock in and noticed that an entire section of the restaurant was empty. And I don't mean "slow night" empty. I mean "lacking tables" empty. Apparently a small child (Best guess: 6-7) had been playing around outside earlier and had tossed a marble-sized rock at one of our expensive hurricane-proof windows...which promptly shattered. So obviously we have two possibilities here:

1) The child is some kind of genetic mutation, or possibly a demigod, possessing the type of superhuman strength required to shatter a reinforced window with a tiny stone.

Or

2) "Hurricane-proof" just doesn't mean what it used to.

It makes me wonder what other standards have begun to slide.
"Now don't worry folks, this submarine is 100% water-proof."
"Our credit card database is completely hacker-proof."
I was going to add child-proof to that list but then I realized that standard went out the window (no pun intended) a while ago. I've seen parents hand a "child-proof" container they couldn't open to their kid, who opened it with no trouble.

So the next time someone offers you something _____-proof, you might want to ask for some proof (that pun was intended) before you buy it.

-Tim

This is my quest, to follow that star ...
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far ...
To fight for the right, without question or pause ...
To be willing to march into Hell, for a Heavenly cause ...
~Man of La Mancha

(Oh hey, look at that. My quote just kind of tied the title in nicely. Do I rock or what?)