Finally a mystery solved. One careful reader finally explained this to me:
land-office business
A thriving, expanding, or very profitable concern or volume of trade. For example, After the storm they did a land-office business in snow shovels and rock salt. This term, dating from the 1830s, alludes to the throng of applicants to government land offices through which Western lands were sold. It has been used for other booming business since the mid-1800s.
Thank you Rachelle for clearing up something that has been bugging me for some 19 years now.
And now two new ones: two strange phenomena in our Jerusalem rented apartment. The first one: our dryer. This must be the only dryer in the world in which the longer you leave the clothes in, the wetter they come out. At some point we figured we would give it a try, and ended up leaving the dryer on the whole night. In the morning our clothes were ready to be used for "spondza" (Israeli term which refers to using wet rags to clean the floor). I am sure this has nothing to do with the fact that the directions on the machine are in German. When you see "Auffrischen des Unterhosen" and "Leicht-Bügeln Mischgewebe und Extra-Trocken Wollpflege in der Unterstuzungsgevühl mit Goethe und Das Kapital" there are only so many ways you can interpret that. Know what i mean ?
The second mystery involves our television. Every day, at exactly 3PM, the TV goes on for one hour, tuned to the "mosaic" channel (you know, the one showing every channel you could have access to) while playing some local radio channel. While this is fine on a weekday, when it happens on shabat or yom tov, it is somewhat disconcerting. We have no explanation for it.
(In fact there is a perfectly good explanation but not one I will admit to freely: when we first arrived in the apartment, Dani and I grabbed the remotes for TV and cable, and immediately started punching in every button, without once looking at the directions the owners had so carefully left behind for us - real men don't need directions, right ? - chances are we programmed this little "event" into the system...put a thousand monkeys in front of a typewriter and you'll get a novel, or whatever the saying is...Know what I mean ?).
posted by jsaar @ 12:52 AM
1 Comments:
For the TV, I don't know, they're all Japanese. However, have you tried the "Abpumpen" button in adddition to the "Schnell, Schnell" button ? Works wonders for me. Incredible how "rein" the laundry becomes. Also, at "shleudern" time, I can faintly hear the Walkyrenritte in the background. So much for yekke washing machines !
A git yur to all,
Laurent.
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