The Soda Machine

I ran into M.C. in the breakroom at work buying a soda. Knowing that he only buys sodas in extreme circumstances, I asked him if today had been a bad day. He said it was just one of those days when you feel the whole world is against you.

About an hour later, I ran into him in the breakroom again, and again he was buying a soda. (No, the point of this post is not to criticize how often I find myself in the breakroom.) I commented to him that it must be a really bad day, if he was already having another soda. At that exact moment the soda machine was spitting his perfectly crisp dollar bill back out for the fourth time. He just looked at me and said, "You know it's bad when even the soda machine turns against you."

Pant Sizes

I tried to buy clothes for my niece today, but I didn't know her size. I called my sister-in-law to ask what size to buy. She told me that my niece is skinny as a rail and as tall as a tree. She said that she has problems buying pants for my niece, because by the time she buys pants long enough for her legs, they are too big in the waist.

I can sympathize with that...or at least I used to be able to sympathize. Now, I buy pants to fit my growing waist, and I have to roll them up at the bottom to keep them from sliding over my shoes.

Where are the pants for the short, fat people!?

Facebook

I signed up for Facebook and finally joined the "in crowd." When filling out my personal information, it asked if I was married and to whom. I indicated that I was and selected my wife's name from the search. A pop-up was then displayed that said, "A message was sent to your wife to confirm that she agrees to being married to you."

Agrees to being married to me? What if she doesn't agree? Is this a new kind of anullment? Does she really have the ability to just "opt out" via Facebook?

I feel just as nervous as I did when I was waiting for her answer to my marriage proposal.

A Wee

That's a wee bit more than I expected. Oh, that's a wee mintay!

How much is a wee? I asked B.D. this question today, and he replied, "A wee is a wee." Profound, right? I told him I was looking for something more along the lines of 'the approximate distance between your thumb and forefinger when you hold them this far apart.' He said that that won't work because a "wee" doesn't always apply to distance. Sometimes it deals with size, sometimes with time...it can mean so many things.

Now, how am I supposed to measure a wee of time with my fingers? Answer me that, Mr. Smarty-pants. Ha!

All or Nothing

B.D. said yesterday that Jesus being the Son of God and dying on the cross for our sins is a belief. It can’t be proven as fact. Which is why he has a hard time blindly accepting it as truth. Let’s suspend my personal feelings about this being a fact which I believe in, rather than just a belief of faith. My question is why wouldn’t you want to believe it?

You have the ability to believe in an all-powerful being that has nothing but your best interest at heart. He takes care of you, blesses your life with abilities and gifts, provides for you, loves you, and even dies for you. He is never mean or hurtful to you. He lets you mess up, spit in His face, disobey, and walk away without it ever causing Him not to love you. You can crawl back to Him, and He forgives you without holding a grudge or storing it away to take out on you later.

What could be better than believing in this? Why would you resist? What harm would it cause you to believe it? All of the reasons are on the Pro side with none on the Con side, so what’s the problem? I just don’t understand it.

I accede that I am a person that tends to believe things are true until proven wrong, instead of the other way around. But what comfort can there be in not believing in something in general and God in specific? Why would anyone want to believe that God doesn’t exist until they have proof that He does? That just leaves you alone…with nothing…with no all-powerful being watching over you, protecting you, and helping you. Between those two choices, I am dumbfounded why anyone would choose nothing.

Mocking Happiness

How bad does your life have to be when you mock someone else’s happiness?

Someone is on a phone call behind me, and he’s laughing in obvious happiness. And all I can do is silently find ways to make fun of his laugh. Which doesn’t make me feel any better about my own crappy day. Nor would I feel better if for some reason he had heard me and started to have a crappy day because of it. I would just walk away thinking how pathetic and overly-sensitive he was. His pain…and his pain at my expense…would not bring a shred of compassion to my heart.

Why, just because I’m upset, would I begrudge someone else their happiness? Because I don’t want someone else to be happy if I can’t be too? Sick, just sick.

The Dartboard

I used to have a dartboard. I hung it up on the side of my dad’s workshop. Most days I hit the side of the workshop more than I hit the dartboard. Either that or the dart would miss completely and land in the grass somewhere. One or two even went over the fence behind the workshop.

My dad finally made me take it down because I was putting a lot of holes in the workshop. Funny, the dartboard looked practically brand new. You couldn’t even tell that someone had played on it.

Curling Toes

When I sit without my shoes on, I tend to curl my toes underneath my feet. I’m not conscious of this. I don’t even know why I do it, but without fail, it will happen. Then, one day I noticed my mom doing the same thing. So, I guess it’s a genetic thing. I guess the true test will be if my kids do it too.

Lost

I wish I was lost…and nobody knew where my cubicle was. I’m so tired of people coming by constantly and interrupting the flow I’m trying to get myself into. I was admonished and betrayed for attempting to bring a little positivity and fun into this wretched gray, waffle of an office. So, now that I want to just be left alone and let the imbeciles I work with fend for their own joy, I can’t keep them away from me.

I sent someone an e-mail, making a very simple statement. Rather than just sending a reply back via e-mail to clarify her point (clarification which was completely unnecessary to begin with), she felt the need to walk over to my cubicle to tell me in person. So, instead of reading her useless response in five seconds and deleting it, I was forced to listen to her drone on for seven minutes, seven wasted minutes of my life that I’ll never get back again. In addition, I had to force a non-annoyed look onto my face. A feat which is not easy when you want to beat the person to death with your shoe…or a handy stapler…or perhaps just stab them in the neck with a brand new red ballpoint pen.

No, I haven’t given this a lot of thought.

Coke Bubbles

I love the way Coke bubbles tickle when they fizzle onto the end of your nose.

Can Opener

Today I brought a can of carrots to work to eat for lunch.

I didn’t bring a can opener.

Faded

Whenever my roommate in college, J.T., would get depressed or have a bad day, I would cheer him up by doing a chair dance for him. And no, that's not a distant cousin of the lap dance. I'd put the song 'Faded' on by Soul Decision and Thrust. Then, I'd start dancing; doing little hip thrusts, "back the booty ups," left and right slides, and front-to-back swivels...all without leaving my chair! It was quite complicated and elaborate choreography.

By the end, I'd have him in stitches. I never knew if it was because of the absurdity of dancing while sitting in my chair, or if it was because of the enthusiasm and energy I put into making him happy. After a while, all I'd have to do was put the song on, and his face would break into a grin. I still think of that time, every time I hear that song.

Saint Harmony

We were talking today at lunch about how Catholics choose a Confirmation Name when they are confirmed into the church. This name has to be one of the literally thousands of saints’ names canonized in the Catholic Church.

A.S. asked if the name was given to them or whether they get to choose their own, and M.C. said that you get to choose your own. So, I asked whether they were given a list of saint names so they knew what to choose from, and M.C. said, “No, you just have to look it up somewhere.”

This started the discussion about choosing the right Confirmation Name. Do you base it on whether you like the sound of the name or whether what that saint did touches you or relates to you in some way? That is when we came up with the idea for Saint Harmony…a saint matching service. The confirmation candidate answers a series of questions, and a list of potential saint names comes back based on a compatibility scale with their answers.

Brilliant!

Live By Faith

B.D. said yesterday that all of the debate over whether Creationism is right is useless, because nobody really knows. I think it’s interesting that people refuse to accept or believe in Creationism because they weren’t there to see it. In fact, they can’t even talk to anybody that was there to see it. All they have to go by is a written account of what someone says happened.

So, by that logic…how do we know Genghis Khan existed? Or Alexander the Great? Or Attila the Hun? Or Julius Caesar? How do I know that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated? Or that Davey Crockett and Jim Bowie died at the Alamo? Or that there were Hanging Gardens in Babylon? Or a Colossus statue in Rhodes?

I didn’t see any of these things. I can’t find anyone that was alive at the time to ask about them. All I have is someone’s written account. Yet, nobody has a problem accepting or believing that these people or events are real.

In addition, Christians believe the Bible, the source for Creationism, was inspired by God. This would make it a better, written source than history books. But suspend the facts for a brief moment and consider the theory that it was only written by men. (How many times have I heard that argument? I can’t believe the Bible because it was written by men and therefore is prone to error.) Why does this book by men deserve less blind faith than the history books I studied in school?

Why do people struggle so much with faith about God and miracles? Don’t they blindly work off of faith for millions of things they have never seen every day?

TGIF

I hate when you ask someone how they're doing, and they say, "Well, it's Friday." As if this suddenly answered all your questions. I feel like saying back to them, "Yes, it is, and Cairo is a city in Egypt, but that really has nothing to do with what I asked you."

Do you know that a study was conducted to determine what is the most common Favorite Day of the Week? And do you know what they found? Friday. And do you know why people like Friday so much? Because the next day is the weekend. Um...then why wouldn't Saturday be your favorite day, because then it actually IS the weekend! I don't know about everyone else, but I still have to work on Fridays, so it really isn't any better off than say Thursday or Tuesday.

Personally, I think all of that is stupid. Why wouldn't we be trying to make the most of every day. Why spend your entire week rushing to the weekends? Do you know how much faster that makes your life slip by? No wonder people always think their life goes by faster as an adult. Kids are enjoying every single day. Sure they may rush to get out of school, but then all evening is a free-for-all. You can do anything. Why aren't adults like that?

For me, my favorite day is Wednesday. It goes all the way back to elementary school. On Wednesdays we had music class. I liked music class so much that I couldn't help looking forward to the next week when we could have it again. Now, I just figure that liking Wednesdays is just as logical as liking any other day.

Methane Signature

Today, I was in a long meeting. Halfway through, the other person needed a break, so he got up to get some water. He left the room and shut the door. And that's when I discovered it. He'd left me a nice treat behind. And that sucker was potent! Within seconds it had permeated every corner of the room. It was so bad that I had to seek shelter outside the room as well.

When I accused the guy of the dastardly deed, he adamantly denied it. I told him that there were only two of us in the room, so one of us was lying.

Wouldn't it be nice if farts had a methane signature? Something that identified them to the person that dealt them, like DNA or a fingerprint. Do you know how useful that would be? No more getting falsely accused of fumigating the elevator. No more getting anonymously "crop dusted." No more conference room farts that nobody is man enough to claim.

On a side note, I was shopping tonight for shoes. I was standing there feeling the lack of cushion in a pair of dress shoes, when I was hit by the same foul stench that I had smelled earlier in the meeting. Suddenly realizing that I was the only one on the aisle, I started to suspect that I was the culprit of the earlier crime as well. Pride and joy filled my heart that I was able to eradicate a room like that...it lasted but a few minutes, because the reek got so bad I had to leave the store.

The Firecracker and the Sunrise

Make me not like the firecracker that explodes with light and color
That expends its energy in a quick burst and then fades quickly into darkness.
Make me instead like the sunrise that creeps its light upon the earth
Then stays to warm and illuminate the life below it for the entire day.