Hey Kids,

I served for Jury Duty last week. Is it sad that I was so happy to be back to work this Monday? I suppose not, as I actually really like my job and knew there would be quite a bit to catch up on.

But I do want to share the two greatest moments of testimony:

"Um, well, what month are we in now?" "April." "Okay, so last month was...May!"

"Well, if we are to believe Ms. Twit,..." (the prosecutor's name was Ms. Twite.) I can only hope that this was an inadvertant mistake (as no one event mumbled a giggle like I did, oops) in the Closing Arguments by the defense.

I just want y'all know that if you keep RX meds in other bottles, you should re-think this. I only say this, because, previous to the trial, I had two prescribed medications that I kept in a 1/2 & 1/2 bottlle so as to only have one bottle to keep in my purse, and now, I'm afraid to do that. I don't expect it would ever get to the investigation force, but I just don't want to ever be in circumstance where I could possibly be prosecuted. Ai-Eee.

Why

This is my new "thing that bothers me" for the day:

Why does the "management" care where my bare butt sits? I ask because the paper toilet seat dispenser on my work bathroom door asserts that this convenience has been "provided by the management for [my] convenience." I can only hope that they have much better things to worry about. I mean, maybe they have very large bonuses that need to be awarded to former employees that were terminated for cause earlier this year. Clearly, that would be much more important.

P.S. I hate wanting to be a Prius-driver right now. Either, I feel pretentious. Or elitist. Or like a pro-recessionist.

If Life Is a Series of Offices, Why am I in a Cubicle

Is it sad that my profoundest source of positive excitement in life in the past week and a half is the following?

• Last week, I acquired ½ and ¼ of a wall for my cubicle, so now I have 3 and ¾ of four walls around my deskspace. All I need now is a door and I will feel that I have finally “made it.” I’ve considered bringing in a beaded curtain to suffice for the current orifice. However, the beads would probably require a tuffet, small glass table and a crystal ball. Maybe even a boudoir robe and turban. I think I’ll keep my ¼ wall hole for now

• As of today, I have two monitors!! If you’ve never worked with ten files at a time, you may not understand how exciting and extra productive that makes my work life. In the short few hours I’ve had this amenity, I’m already starting to wonder how I ever muddled through without it.
  

This all brings me to reason #11 that I don’t hate Spokane. I love where I work, what I do and the fact that I feel as if my talents and skills are used there. For this, I wish I didn’t hate Spokane.

There Is No Place Like Not Home

Hi there. Yes, I know. It has been many moons. But, I’m going to ignore that right now and just jump into what I wanted to talk about. Today’s post is a bit of a thought exercise, one of those “always look on the sunny side of life” sort of ventures. To say the least, I am a bit disillusioned with my current city of residence and am getting antsy to be elsewhere, hopefully soon. So, I thought that it might help my outlook for the remainder of the time that I remain here if I spent some time thinking about the things I might actually like about living here. May I present…

10 Things I Don’t Hate About Spokane

1. Nothing. (Okay, so I realize I’m not trying very hard. I’ll give another go.)
2. Grocery stores here have public restrooms. Granted, these latrines are generally just one step above those at gas stations, on a scale of nasty to 5-pound-cochroach-infested. Still they exist which sometimes…is important.
3. Nothing else. (Oh, I’m sure that will get old soon, but right now I still think it’s funny.)
4. My church. Interestingly enough, I help lower the average age of the congregation’s choir considerably, which is fun.
5. My grandparents live here, and I often spend Sunday afternoons after church with them. I will complete my transformation into honorary octogenarian yet.
6. I’m less than a day’s drive away from my little brother and his wife…and Canada…and many outlet malls & Native American-owed casinos (though I think that last one describes much of the western US.)
7. We have 4 seasons. This year, three of them have been winter, but at least we can ski in the front yard…and down arterials on occasion.
8. It is not Los Angeles.
9. I live in a nice two bedroom apartment with a washer & dryer, dishwasher, wood fireplace, walk-in closet, skylight, vaulted ceilings and a private garage that was constructed less than a decade ago. By myself. And I pay less than most people who have roommates in LA. Eat that.
10. It takes less than a half hour to get out into nature that is not predominately populated by humans. Although, it can be a little creepy when taking a hike and suddenly realizing that you are surrounded by herd of deer. Don’t let Disney movies fool you, those herbivores can be really vicious when no one else is around.
    

Well, alright, I think better now. I should be able survive here a bit longer.

See, I Can Do The Serious Thing Too

A Cold Open

My breath shoots out in short puffs ahead
Creating instant crystals as it hits the frozen air
My feet strike the dirt as mallets on lead
Propelled by frosted ghosts for legs, so numb they could be bare

Up another hill and down, up again
Icy trees with icy needles ringed by icy brush
But this next hill climbs the ridge and then
What a sight breaks upon the barren monotonous

The hill beside alone is clothed in green and melting sun
But the grasses in the field below sparkle like diamonds

Through the shade I have made my dash
Wishing for the solar rays to warm my bones
But now thawing, I see that the winter passed
Is revealed in beauty by the new light shown

Well, I'm out running again. Being exercise, this is, of course, a positive move, and I wish I could say that I'm doing it purely for love of running or of healthy living. Currently though, I hoping that spending more time physically running will keep me from figuratively running. Life in Spokane has been rough so far, and part of me wants to just keep jumping from city to city until I find a place where the sun of luck is shining. But the past week+ has taught me that I have a lot of work to do if I want to get my life in order, and running away is not going to help this winter I've been stuck in disappear any faster. So, I'm going to keep running up the same hills and persevering until I feel the sun again. Maybe then I can look back on this seemingly barren portion of the journey with satisfaction.

Movin' Right Along

Okay, so some of you may be asking why I haven’t mentioned my upcoming move on the blog. Some of you may also be asking what the square root of a rhinoceros is. To the first query I say: since when do I ever talk about anything that’s actually going on in my life here? Mostly, I use this space to write about silly things that happen around me, but I’m rather short on the details of my personal life. If something exceptionally funny had happened in the course of this whole moving craziness, then I would probably blog about that. But so far, the most amusing thing to happen is that the stress/lack of sleep is causing me weird mood swings, meaning I’ve recently found myself on the verge of tears in Baskin Robins for reasons other than the recent discovery of the saturated fat content in a deluxe sundae.

On the whole, I am very excited about moving to Washington, and I’m very excited that Orrin is joining me on this journey of alveolar smog extraction. And right now I don’t have a lot of humorous things to say about that. I’m just happy.

(And we all know that the square root of a rhinoceros is a fruit cake twice removed. Geez, come back when you have a hard question. )

I'll Take Potpurri for $200, Alex

Okay, so I don’t know why it seems that so many of my blog entries are strings of randomness, held together only in the most tenuous fashion by the common thread that clearly I must be crazy for sharing these tidbits with you. But apparently, that is how I’m most often able to get anything at all posted, so here you go. Bask in the absurdity.

• Sometimes when I am running late to work, I pay extra to purchase a day pass to park in one of the parking garages that is only a three minute walk from my building (my normal structure is a 15 minute walk). The other day I pulled up to the parking attendant booth, presented payment to the attendant and as he handed me the day pass, he said “Park in the structure, now.” This struck my as a very odd thing to say, as clearly I was no novice to this parking thing – the evidence of my parking awareness comes in the form of an accumulation of day passes from the past two months strewn all over my dashboard. It made me wonder for a second what problems they were having with people’s parking habits that he found it necessary to tell me to actually go ahead and park in the structure I just purchased a pass for. Next time I’ll just respond casually that while I had intended to take the elevator in my building up to the top and park on the roof, since he told me to park in the structure, I will just this once.

• Driving in Montebello last Saturday, I saw a sign that I could have sworn on first glance read “Cat Wash - $5.00”. And I thought “Wow, I know the schools need the money, but that seems like an awfully hard way to have a fundraiser. They should at least be charging a lot more – y’know to pay for the tetanus shots and whatnot”. But, as you may have guessed, when I got closer, I realized that while the lower case “r” looked a lot like a “t”, the sign did in fact read “Car Wash - $5.00.” Some people have to ruin all my fun.

• Have you ever been in a really long line for the women’s restroom (I’m assuming the members of my male readership have not had this privilege, but then I don’t know your history and who am I to judge) and had one woman cuts through the line doing the pee-pee dance so violently she’s bruising her ankles, and everybody in line feels sorry for her and lets her in the next available stall? Well, I have a few questions about this. Considering that the rest of us have dedicated the past 20 minutes of our lives to waiting in line, is there a chance that no one else “really has to go”? Knowing in advance that the establishment sells beverages and that it is full of other people purchasing said beverages, and that the more crowded an establishment is, the greater the likelihood that the women’s restroom will have only two stalls, how do you let yourself get to the point where you have to choose between breaking a social etiquette code to cut in line or ruining your new shoes? And of course, the biggest question: is my staged pee-pee dance good enough to fool anybody into letting me cut to the front the next time I’m faced with a big line at a sporting event?

That's all for now folks. Tune in next time to watch me read an entire stack of magazines and fall asleep on the couch watching a PBS program on the history of the hot dog. Good times.