Life in the Slow Lane

After my experiences of the last week, I might just congratulate someone next time I hear their car had trouble. Sure, the pocket book situation isn't all that fun, and I wish I had moved my laundry from my trunk before the truck driver had to fish my spare tire out... and before I left it for other mechanics to fish the horribly mutilated tire back out, but when there is a red Ford Mustang convertible to drive me to work tomorrow, things aren't so bad. * And yes, Mom, I'm okay and you can call me to make sure of that.

Today, I was minding my own business when suddenly I realized that people say "Shipping and Handling" when the handling comes before the shipping. Doesn't the non-sequential naming of the fee bother you, too?

The most polarizing question I ask during a routine day is "Do you have internet access?" If I asked this question of many of you, it would be like asking "Do you breathe oxygen?" But surprisingly, there are still a large number of people who view the question as akin to "Do you fly to work?" Yes of course you know that there are some people in some places who do such a strange activity, but it isn't you, and it isn't likely to be you any time soon. The other day I got the response "Yes, but I have to drive about half an hour to get there." Where in the United States can you be an entire half hour from internet access? I guess when I am on the 5 at rush hour, I am half an hour from internet access. But my point is, that this one question has the power to make the person who hears it believe that either I am A) Condescending or B) Out of touch with the real world. But then of course, I live and work in California which is the same as ...

I have already mentioned that my new office space has tons of glass and how you can see a great deal of the insides without moving much at all. I recently realized a very dangerous aspect of this: I can see the snack counter every time I return from my trip to the printer. It is doubly dangerous in that I can see well enough to spy that there is some sort of snack, but not well enough to see what manner of snack it is. Have you ever tried walking by a potentially amazing treat time after time after time? Eventually, you just have to find out what it might be. And so I make all 175 steps it takes to reach the snack counter, just to see. But 175 steps is quite a hike. And once I find out the only choice is stale blueberry-peach muffins, I figure I need some sustenance to get all 175 steps back to my desk. Or I find that the snack is some decadent dessert and because the trip will require 350 steps in total, of course I can take a slightly larger piece than I would otherwise. Proble...

Hours in my work week: 40 Hours I was unofficially in charge of my department: 45 (Includes lunch breaks) Hours where I was my department: 10 Number of external phone calls received: 21 Number of letters written: 13 Number of walk-ins: 2 (To my recollection, we've never had even one of those before.) Number of tours by my desk: 9 Number of tours given by me: 1 Number of tours I received: 1 (The NPO that rents space from us.) Steps to the printer: 21 Steps to the kitchen: 60 Steps to the snack counter: 175 Times I was left in the dark: 7 Times I signed onto a co-worker's email account: 15 Times I want to do this again: 0

Sun set Originally uploaded by biukalee . I am sharing this photo with you because I am in just that much of a sharing mood. But I will only let you enjoy this picture if you ignore the large piece of red lint that was aparently on my lens at the time of the picture.

Tho the ocean billows roll Originally uploaded by biukalee . I took this on a visit to the beach a month or two ago, but I thought I would share it all with you now. Why? Because it looks ever so much more peaceful than my day at work.

In my walks, I walk within 100 yards of this tree, yet it was months before I noticed it. When I noticed it, my first thought was "That tree is going to fall on top of the house... someone isn't thinking clearly." And the next time I thought "This is amazing! An incredible tree! How come no one has noticed it before this?" And then I looked up and realized I was standing on the corner of Rock Tree and Rock Vista. So yeah, someone else noticed the tree before me.

There have been many times I doubted I would make it, but here I am, one year later. The first day on the job, I spent eight hours sitting at my desk without any light, squinting my way through a couple hundred pages, wondering how on earth I had gotten into a job which would require an estimated three months of training. I came home with a headache, shut myself in my room and napped until it was time to go to bed. Today I was the most equipped in my department, working in the place of four others over the course of the day, yet returning to my desk to wish for further training on what waited for me there. I ended the day squinting at my desk because I had no co-workers to trigger the light sensor. That first day, a year seemed a life-time, and a life-time seemed an eternity. Some things haven't changed... I still stutter when saying my job title, I still have trouble knowing when it is polite to hang up. But at least I now know that a year in a 40 hour-a-week desk job is not a...

By the time four o'clock strikes during the average work day, the marvelous muscle called the brain has reached fatigue. Unfortunately, it is not proper etiquette to spend the last hour of the day staring at the clock on the computer nor rearranging the books on your desk according to size and then color and back again. As a matter of fact, the general expectation is that you will continue working right up until 5. So at 3:30 you begin looking at the mountain of work and deciding whether it would be wise to start this project or that project or whether this might actually be an appropriate time to change the labels on the recycled folders in your file system so they give helpful information like "Letters", "Reference Articles", and "International Records" instead of "California", "Ataxia", and "November 19-26". And beginning in on the pile most likely to fit into the remaining time, you keep one eye on the clock, and hope...

Ever get the feeling that your shoes are trying to tell you something? But you think maybe by tightening the tongue, they'll hush. But you realize the clapping noise is not your fan club, cheering you on as you walk. You realize that your shoe is speaking from its sole and your pretending it's not happening only makes it louder and louder. And as you stop in the middle of the park, a quarter mile from home to take off your shoes, you realize that you can no longer ignore they've been saying "Buy new shoes." Or maybe they are saying "Buy super glue."

It typically isn't good when things like laziness, boredom, and impatience are the active ingredients in a meal. But that was the case for tonight's stew. Boredom with my typical menu prompted me to start dreaming of a hearty beef stew. But first stinginess and then laziness kept me from buying the beef. Last week I found myself at one of my favorite places in all of LA County where the rows of inexpensive produce had me compulsively buying potatoes, carrots, zucchini , and a beautiful onion. But laziness still kept me from other grocery shopping where I might have found stew meat. Last night I was impatient, hovering in the kitchen with my eye on the washer, waiting for my roommates to be finished so that I could have clean towels for the week. Their two sets of sheets saw me through peeling carrots, chopping onions, cleaning potatoes, and cutting zucchini. But I still was too lazy to go get beef. So I pulled out the chicken leisurely defrosting in my nearly freezing fri...

Three showers in as many weeks. Not the water kind, the oodles and oodles of gifts kind. The kind where your mouth cramps from saying "Oh how Cute!" for every onesie, printed burp cloth, and tiny overalls. And the kind where you see what would be a matter for embarrassment if it hadn't just come out of a box in the presence of cooing women. At one shower I had the privilege of sitting next to a woman from Great Britain. She switched out the typical "How cute!" for "That's just adorable!" But she made sure to say it at least three or four times for every gift. And that is where I got my brilliant idea. What if at a baby shower, for every time you said "cute" or "adorable", you had to contribute a nickel to the baby's college fund? With 18 years of interest, the baby could attend university debt free. Wouldn't that be a snazzy gift? I suspect that you would still have the normal crowd of people unwilling to participat...

When I was younger I dreaded the question "So what was the high point of your day?" And yet this question arrived with predicted regularity. Even now I'm not quite sure why I found this question such a difficult one to answer. Perhaps it was the idea that there should have been a time when I experienced that euphoric feeling of standing on top of a hill, being able to appreciate the distance I had come and look forward to the adventures I could just begin to guess at ahead of me. It might suprise you to read this, but I rarely experienced that in junior high and high school. More often than not, the happiest feeling I experienced all day was the satisfaction of finishing my math homework in class or getting to my lunch spot and finding that no part of my lunch was squished beyond what I would want to eat. Which doesn't exactly make a good discussion on the seven minute drive home from school. Since that time I've come to realize that "the high point" ...

I'm going to arrange a protest march to protest protest marches. I'm not against all protests, just the ones that turn a perfectly lovely, un -commercialized day like May Day into something to fear. Someone I know was afraid to take in flowers on their front door step because they thought it might be some sort of terrorist action or some connection to Communists or some nefarious planning by protesters . Flowers! On a door step in suburban America! I guess that is the price you pay for trying to celebrate something that most of the world has forgotten. Is that price better or worse than the price you would pay for flowers if the rest of the world remembered?

I have never been one of those people who will walk into a pet store just to play with the puppies or kittens. I actually happen to be one of those disturbing people who may even cross to the other side of the mall to avoid cooing at the animals. But I've realized that flowers are another matter. This weekend I drove by a flower shop, and I wanted so very much to stop and just run in to stroke the flowers. Every time I go grocery shopping, I walk by the flower display and wish, longingly, that I could take even the saddest looking ones home. Sometimes I stand in their midst and silently ask them if they have any good ideas as to how I can justify spending the money necessary to bring them home. I wonder if I voiced my questions if they would take their cue from me and voice the answers. But alas, I guess I will just satisfy myself with patting them on their heads, stroking beneath their chins, and promising I'll come back to see them next time.