Fun and Games Dept

View from a corner Starbucks.

Today is Thursday. I keep thinking today is Friday but a quick check of the calendar confirms that which I feared, today is Thursday.

I’m already in weekend mode. I hope I remember to come to work tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, let’s dance.

So I am sitting in our local Panera on a Saturday night. If I were just a smidgen more like Sheldon from Big Bang Theory, I’d be doing laundry, but honestly that’s just crazy. I do laundry on Friday night.

Such an exciting life to be led.

Earl and Jamie are on a camping excursion just this side of the New York-Pennsylvania border near the quant little town of Deposit. I was going to go as well but I didn’t know what the cell phone reception was like down there and since it’s my on-call weekend, I figured that having cell service was very important. So I have been home trying to amuse myself.

I had plans to write lots of code for a project I’m working on with my friend Jeff, but it turns out that sometimes I become insanely stupid (or insanely distracted) because I haven’t been able to figure out the simplest of tasks in that arena today. I can usually do these things with one hand tied behind my back (it’s a cute trick I like to show off with at staff meetings), but I don’t know if it’s because it’s Saturday and my mind just isn’t into it or what, but I couldn’t get any of my code to make sense today.

Perhaps my mind just needed to relax.

I did accomplish 121 minutes of cycling this morning. I was going to ride for an hour but I just couldn’t bring myself to head back home as I was too busy enjoying the summer weather. Summer officially starts in a week and it’s finally starting to feel like it will really happen around here.

I am happy to report that this Panera is one to never disappoint; there is a young tot screaming at the top of it’s lungs at a pitch usually reserved for Mariah Carey before she got über diva-ish. If I were a cocker spaniel my head would be cocked.

A man just kind of stared me down as he walked by en route to the beverage center. I couldn’t help but notice this as I saw his mustache and mustaches tend to catch my attention. (He looked like he could have been in the military at one time). This got me to wondering why I have this scraggly beard. I always have ambitions of becoming the next Dan Haggarty with a big, crazy beard but I just don’t have the genetics to pull it off. Well, the left side of my face can pull it off, but the right side can not. While I’m quite unbalanced at times, I don’t like to look the part. Even though I know this, I keep hoping this will change as I get older but it doesn’t change. It just gets grayer. I was recently told that my beard looks like a creamcicle. I took that as a compliment.

People watching fascinates me and I have selected the best seat in the house here at Panera for people watching. I am situated right next to the food pick-up area. A woman in a long flowing prom gown just walked up to pick up her tomato soup. Now that’s a snappy date.

There was once a teacher who had next to her picture in the yearbook, “People fascinate me. I’ve never met a person that didn’t impress me.” Though I didn’t have that teacher (she taught special education), I LOVED that attitude and have sort of adopted it along the way. Sometimes I lose sight of that philosophy. That teacher had such a zest for life. She’s the one that helped me on one particularly rough day in high school. That attitude and that one day changed my life.

My gosh I’m getting heavy in this blog entry. Perhaps Panera needs to start serving cocktails.

The child has stopped screaming like Mariah Carey. Cocker Spaniels and garage doors all over the area can now relax and calm down. I know that I have.

After blasting Facebook and Twitter with rapid fire wit, I sent a text message to my husband.

Oh look, it’s raining. It’s been raining. It will continue to rain.

This song has been going through my head today for some reason so I thought it’d be fun this dance track. The theme of the video fits with the vibe of the U.S. these days.

Here’s “Baby Love” by Regina from 1986. It’s co-written by Stephen Bray and Regina, who was producing hits for Madonna around the same time, with the intention of Madonna recording it. When Madonna passed, Regina decided to record it for herself.

So I went on a little bit of a Twitter rant this morning, specifically about news that Verizon is turning all “metadata” associated with *all* phones calls passing through their network over to the NSA. I will say right here and now that Verizon is doing this under court order and I have no doubt in my mind that the other telecoms in the United States are doing the same thing, but the article was specifically about Verizon. Broadly speaking, this activity falls under the Patriot Act and is taking place so that we have a safer place to live.

Right.

I’m sorry, but I don’t feel safe knowing that the government is amassing all of this data from innocent citizens. My rant went a little bit like this:

You get my drift.

I know that my thinking puts me over in that fringe area at times and that my ranting probably gets me labeled a lunatic now and then (put ’em together and whatya got? Lunatic Fringe! woo!), but if there is one thing that I firmly believe it is in privacy and the natural free will of people. I’ll admit that I have control issues but in no way, shape or form, does it seem OK to me for the government to be keeping track of every single phone call made by every single citizen of the United States for a indeterminate amount of time. There are too many insane people with questionable motives in governmental agencies that could tap that database for reasons other than the original intention and furthermore, when these kinds of behaviors occur without question or challenge, they become the norm, and quite frankly, this is a solid step in the direction of an Orwellian 1984.

I’m not a fan of this. At all.

The U.S. Government screws up all the time. We all know that. Back in 1990 the DMV repeatedly sent me a bill for some service charge that they felt they had failed to collect when I moved my car to its new residence. I ignored the bill repeatedly and they sent me warnings about losing my license, my virginity and the inability to digest corn.

The bill was for $0.00.

That’s right: ZERO.

To shut them up, I made a check out to the DMV for ZERO.

I never heard from them again.

Now, let’s see you have your iPhone or Android phone jammed into your back pocket. And you’ve butt dialed someone. Repeatedly. We’ve all been there, screaming into a phone saying “you’re calling me by mistake!” But your ass is feeling feisty and has inadvertently made some random international call and you’ve butt dialed some guy in Iran. Repeatedly.

24 hours later you have a drone hovering over your backyard and you’re toast.

Now, I know that sounds wicked far-fetched, but papers get mixed up, signals get crossed and some do-gooder (god I sound like my grandfather) in Washington decides that you’re a threat to National Security and you are no longer allowed to fly, see the Liberty Bell or digest corn.

You laugh, but with the idiocy in the bureaucracy, it could certainly happen.

As I type this, I’m wondering if I should be concerned about sharing my feelings on line, because it seems that the house is being buzzed by a Lockheed C-5 Galaxy.

You think I’m joking.

So this morning I got up a few moments before the alarm, took a peek at my iPhone and then hopped out of bed to get my day started. It is at this moment that I made a crucial decision that would set the tempo for the rest of my day.

I decided to smile.

Even though it was a chilly morning and I needed to head to the office soon, I pulled on my sweatpants, put on a t-shirt and what I affectionately call my “trailer trash jacket” and went for a 15 minute walk to get my blood and mind moving for the day. I may not have had time for a bike ride but I certainly had a few minutes to walk.

I continued to smile.

(Taken at 5:34 a.m., I look like I just got out of bed and I’m not ashamed of that.)

It’s amazing what you can do when you decide to smile and it’s even more amazing when you decide to share your smile with others. Admittedly, this is something that I forget at times and sometimes I scowl and that scowl becomes contagious. This is not good for the human equation. It’s the smile that we should make contagious.

The reason this has been on my mind today is because I just walked into the Dunkin’ Donuts closest to work. This is the same location that once upon a time always had my large, unsweetened iced tea with lemon poured and ready to go when I walked in the door, but times change and habits are modified accordingly. The attentive staff always had a smile on their face. They were pleasant and they seemed like they were enjoying their job.

A new shift leader has apparently joined in the past couple of months. The first time I noticed that she was added to the staff, it was because she was shrieking at a co-workers about the hot chocolate machine. People may say that I exaggerate at times, but trust me, “shrieking” is not an exaggeration when used to describe the noises she was making regarding the discontent with the hot chocolate machine. It wasn’t until a few visits later that I noticed the words “shift leader” on her badge.

This new addition to the crew is never smiling. She doesn’t look very happy. Maybe things like hot chocolate machines bother her. Perhaps her till is unbalanced. Maybe she’s unbalanced. I hope that whatever makes her choose not to smile is not something that turns out to be insurmountable, because no one should have to live a miserable life.

Her scowling has become contagious, and the rest of the formerly pleasant staff have turned very quiet and apathetic towards their duties. I have noticed this on my last couple of visits. If the store is dead silent when I walk in, it means she’s the shift leader.

So today I decided to smile at her. It was a happy, well-intended smile. I even said, “Have a good day.”

Nothing was returned aside from a blank stare. Apparently my smile was not contagious enough. Maybe I’m spooky. Perhaps she found my intentions to be creepy. Whatever the reason, she decided not to return the smile. That’s all well and good and as I said before, I hope she can find a reason to smile at least once today.

As I left Dunkin’ Donuts I made the choice to continue smiling. And for me, that in itself is a reason to smile.

OK, so I guess we ended up going for a little ride today. 288 miles to be exact.