20 Questions (less 17)

1. When a guy at work dresses down a subordinate for checking Facebook on company time and then spends the next forty-five minutes nattering on to his boss about his kid's sports activities, is that an example of irony? Or hypocrisy?
2. A guy comes into the men's washroom and stands at the urinal. He has earbuds in and his iPod turned up so loud that I can identify the tune even as he talks very loudly (presumedly to hear himself over his tunes) to the guy at the next urinal. Does he deserve a slap to the back of the head? Or a swift kick to the knees?
3. When I'm out riding my bike in the neighborhood, what scientific basis is there for the phenomenon that causes children to run into my path and fall, hurling their scooters, soccer balls, etc. under my wheel?

Five-second whipsaw

As I started setting up my cubicle for the morning, I noticed I was missing my cell phone. [crap]

Then, I realized it was probably not lost but still in my gym bag [yay!], back at the house. [crap]

But then I remembered that I had loaded my gym bag with clean workout clothes and placed it back in the trunk of my car [yay!]. All I had to do is go back out to the car and get it. [crap]

Of course, I have been eating too many robin's eggs, the the exercise won't hurt me a bit. [yay!]

Inking it old school

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with Dad on the phone. Our conversation wandered into genealogy territory (as our conversations often do), which led me to my sharing an anecdote about how Mom used to entertain me by making ink blots with a fountain pen she had when I was little.

“You know, you ought to start writing stuff like that down,” he said. He reminded me of a book he had put together a number of years ago, in which he recorded the sorts of family stories that tend to come up whenever family get together, and challenged me to do something similar.

My favorite fountain pen having a lie down on a bed of my everyday handwriting.

So I got to thinking about the smallish stack of blank books I've purchased over the years (but never used) and how I've been looking for excuses to practice my handwriting and exercise my fountain pens. I set one of the journals and a pen next to my chair in the living room, and when I happen to think of something that happened to me over the years, I jot it down in the journal. A description of the first house I remember, and the neighbors who lived near it. My first bicycles. The neighbor kids. My first job out of college. Life in a small town in Kentucky.

It's not always pretty, what with strike-throughs and handwriting mistakes, and it's generally not as well composed as what I might write and repeatedly edit on the computer. But it's kind of relaxing, and whether anyone will ever read any of it or not, there's now at least 37 pages of the stuff.