Life in the Slow Lane

If you plan to make idle conversation with your co-worker about data-entry while you type away, it would be a good idea to make sure that the Queen of Data-Entry Relations has not chosen just that minute to walk by.

Over the last several days, I have had multiple opportunities to peruse classified ads for rooms available for rent. If you have had any experience with this sort of thing, you probably are not surprised to know that I come away with a renewed appreciation for what I have. Alongside the down-right disturbing (it is alarming how many people have decided that it is easier to advertise an empty room than to go through the hassle of personal ads), are the frustrating (if you go through the trouble of advertising a room, why not take the extra 30 seconds to give details like cost, or location, or size of room, or how to be contacted?), and the depressing (one room for $1000 a month plus utilities?). But over and over I am puzzled by the qualification "looking for someone clean but fun" or "looking for someone with a sense of humor but tidy". Has the entire world decided that those two things don't go together? Sadly, reading through these classifieds puts my sense ...

Today I was going to treat you all to some rather awesome pictures, but for some reason, Target's photo people messed up my photos again , and so you will all have to wait to be inspired. So I thought I would complain about matchmakers instead. First, let me confess that I have, at one time or another (or a lot more than that, too), contemplated matchmaking. I think there are several appealing things about being a matchmaker. For anyone who has even a small toe worth of romantic inclination, there is something magical about the process of two average people becoming absolutely non-average to each other. And, of course, if you manage to be a part of introducing them, you get your fifteen seconds of fame every time the smitten couple shares their "How we met story" for the next seventy-five years. But I think there are other things at work in matchmaking. I imagine the satisfaction that is to be had over pairing slacks with a snazzy shirt is just a faint shadow of the s...

Anything that gets a lot of attention has at least one unauthorized version. At my desk on the corner of Main Thoroughfare and Bathroom Hallway, I am slowly developing the grand tour "The Unauthorized Version." That way, while people hang out at my desk waiting for their traveling companion to exit the restroom (How awkward is that?) I can entertain them with strange but true facts. Of course, some may not find the mysteriously vanishing "Exit" sign entertaining. And others may not appreciate the eerie resemblance the main architectural feature has to a coffin. Still others may find it down right dull to hear what methods we use to outsmart the light sensors (flying kleenex boxes, anyone?). But you've got to be intrigued when you can hear conversations on the floor below you better than the person on the other side of the elbow-high wall. And who could turn away from the tale of the construction worker who was seen every day for two weeks, wearing the same ...

Sometimes I feel as if I am standing on the edge of a great cliff, trying to say something profound. From my precarious position I look out across the expanse of wilderness as it merges with civilization. I see roaring rivers and myriads of trees moving to music just beyond my range of hearing. I see the endless criss -crossing of roads, the confusing tangle of asphalt. I stand at the edge, and I make my mouth open as if to speak, but the valley is too big, the words disappear before they are formed. And dejected, I look down. Down to where my feet touch the earth. Ah, the ant. Perhaps my words will come nearer to giving justice to the ant than they can for the valley. And so I speak of the ant and hope, one day, to speak of the valley.

Why does style not mesh with gemütlich ? The closest they managed to get today was when my cozy-clad knee smacked right into the corner of the ultra-modern coffee table.

I'm taking the Random-Yellow-Card-Question Challenge . If you were lost in an unfamiliar city, what would you do? There have been many times that I have been lost in an unfamiliar city. Back when my move to Los Angeles coincided with me learning to drive, I spent hours upon hours being lost. Usually it had something to do with me turning East into the setting sun or getting directions for approaching from the North and then needing to come from the South instead and not flipping all of the turns. But as scary as it may be to be lost in Lost Angeles, I remember being more afraid when I got lost in Brussels. I was tagging along with my friend on a school field trip to a concentration camp ( Breendonk ) and on the way back we stopped to do what everyone wants to do after spending time thinking about man's inhumanity to man: shop. My friend and I had no Belgian currency (before the days of the Euro) nor did we really see anything worth looking at in the closest mall, so we se...