Awkward Pie: The long walk

When you work in an office like mine, there's plenty of opportunity for awkward situations when you venture outside the three and a half walls of you cube.

Here's one that comes up often. In the building where I work, there's a corridor running long and straight (yeah, yeah, The D. I know. "That's what she said.") between blocks of cubes (or, as I call them, cell blocks).

Anyway, several times a week I'm faced with the situation of seeing a coworker coming down the corridor toward me. Maybe I'm on my way to the break room, or heading to a meeting room or whatever. But I'm walking one way and the coworker, who is probably someone I only marginally like it I even know their name, is walking toward me.

No remember, this is a very long corridor. Maybe fifty yards or even longer. So depending on where we both entered the corridor, we could be walking toward each other for a very long time.

That's where the awkwardness enters the equation. At some point, I like to at lease acknowledge the other person (whom I probably don't like, but I'm a nice guy, see), usually with a fake-friendly wave or a head nod. If they get close enough, I'll offer a polite "Good day, sir."

The problem is, if I wave too soon I've got another 30-seconds or more of walking toward the person. It's an awkward window of time because it's too short to strike up a superficial conversation, but it's too long to just stare at each other as you approach.

Anyway, I've come up with a couple of strategies for dealing with this phenomenon.

If it's in the morning and I'm just arriving, I usually have my computer bag in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. With my hands thus occupied, I don't have to wave. Then to fill the awkward window, I usually take a drink of coffee, pretend it's too hot and blow the cup to cool it off. Do that a couple of times until my coworker either turns out of the aisle or we pass each other.

But my preferred method is to use my cell phone as a prop. I have one of those so-called smart phones, so when I see someone open the corridor I can pick it up and pretend to be busy checking my email and text messages.

Depending on how long I'll be walking toward the oncoming person, I can also fake-check my voice mail messages. Usually I throw in a frustrated head shake, like someone just left a message with a really unreasonable request that is going waste a lot of my time today, you know, just to be convincing.

Then when I get up even with the oncoming coworker I can give one of those "What're you gonna do?" shoulder shrugs.

What do you guys do in this situation?

tagged: office, cubicle, awkward, corridor

I hate to say I told you so...

Not to swagger jack The Hives, but a few recent events have made me realize how much it sucks to be correct sometimes.

Take, for example, this issue of AIG paying out millions ("millions", sound so quaint after bandying about terms like "billions" and "trillions" so much) of dollars in executive bonuses.

True to political form, politicians -- especially Democrats -- are acting all outraged and verklempt that such a thing could actually happen. Never mind the fact that they wrote provisions into their bailout bills that allowed an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009.”

Look, I'm not here to defend AIG. They should be out of business as far as I'm concerned. I'm just saying that when people voted for change, I'm pretty sure they had in mind a climate where companies like AIG weren't being enabled by politicians like Pres. Obama, Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Christopher Dodd.

And they are enablers. Let's face it, you don't have to be an economist (whatever the hell that is) to know that when you pump a brajillion dollars out of a firehose into the economy with virtually no oversight, you're just creating a breeding ground for backbiters and syndicators.

And you people who thought we were getting change, as I've been saying all along, should have known better. A comment from Sen. Dodd is particularly telling.

We have a right to tax.

-- Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut

"We have a right to tax." This is the Senator's solution. Put billions of dollars into a failed business (from which, btw, you are the single largest receiver of campaign donations) and then tax that money right back. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.



tagged: AIG, bonuses, The Hives, Obama, Dodd, economy, bailout

YouTube Tuesday: The Mother of all Funk Chords

This is about the coolest thing I've seen on YouTube in a long time.

YouTube user Kutiman has been grabbing Internet video and audio, slicing, dicing, mixing and remixing to come up with new original works. He calls his project ThruYou, and it's an amazing example of editing and persistence.



tagged: ThruYou, funk, music, mashup, video, You Tube, Kutiman, editing

No man is an island

I first met George about two years ago.

It was a week or two after we moved into our house. I was in the back yard trying to do something about years of overgrowth and neglect by the home's previous owners. George was in his backyard, raking his tidy, well-kept grass.

We met at the chain-link fence and introduced ourselves. George and his wife are the original owners of the house next door to ours. They're retired and split time between Overland Park and their house "down at the Lake" of the Ozarks.

I saw him frequently outside, tending to his yard and house. When we had our siding replaced, he asked for a couple dozen of the cedar shingles we removed. He used them to patch holes wood peckers had made in the cedar siding of his house.

We always took time to greet each other and spend a few minutes talking. He'd ask after our family. He made friends my parents and in-laws.

A guy couldn't ask for a better neighbor.

I became a little concerned when I stopped seeing him so much. The lat time I saw him was in September or so. We were talking about various home repairs when he mentioned, with a smile and a chuckle, that "I just don't seem to be getting around as easily as I used to."

I told him in parting to take it easy and have some red wine, then went on with my mowing or raking or whatever I was doing at the time.

Then October and November passed. December, January and February. I knew he and his wife liked to spend time at their lake house. They were also prone to flying south in the colder months, wintering in a condo in Florida or taking a Caribbean cruise.

Finally, this weekend George was out in the back yard again. I was glad to seem my friend again, but I almost wished I hadn't.

George had lost about 50 pounds since I'd last seem him. He moved slowly and his voice, low and smooth six months ago, had become raspy, like there wasn't enough breath behind it.

George was polite as ever, but he did say it hasn't been a good winter. He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in October and has been on chemotherapy for six months.

The clothes he wore as a healthy, paunchy 195-pound retiree look like they're going to fall off of the 50-pound lighter version of him.

I awkwardly gave encouragement and inquired as to his prognosis. He said the doctors have told him you never really get rid of pancreatic cancer -- that you can hope for another year or maybe two.

True to his from, he was positive and upbeat. He said he would enjoy each day as much as he could. He is determined not to give anything up.

But even though it is apparent that he is still the same strong and healthy person in many of the ways that really count, I can't help but feel worried and sad for my friend.

tagged: pancreatic cancer, health, neighbor

Beware the Ides of March

tagged: Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Ides of March

Economic cave in

Okay people, pay attention 'cause here's a news flash: Times are really tough.

I mean the economy is really bad. People are getting laid off every day, profits are plummeting, national debt is skyrocketing. Word on the street is that the economy is so bad that Donald Trump's toupee has been moonlighting as Amy Winehouse's merkin.

So if your like my Supermodel Wife and I, and you're in the market for some baby furniture that will come in handy in about the middle of June, you'd better do what we did and shop around. After hitting up several retail furniture stores, we decided we didn't want to drop two grand on miniature dressers and such. After all, according to the all the headlines, there are some needy bankers who need that money more than we do.

Like the good netizens we are, we checked out Craig's List, which in turn led us to the super secret underground warehouse of Overstock Freight.

Since it's so secret, I can't give you the specific directions here. Email me if you want them. For now, I'll just say that the warehouse is in a series of caves, deep in the hills of northwest Missouri.

We found our way there, passed a guarded gate and into one of a couple dozen cave openings. We spelunked our way to Pillar 36 where we found the warehouse's store front.

Inside the warehouse, one of dozens in this network of secret caves, we found loads of overstock and discontinued merchandise -- dressers, desks, chairs, kitchen wares and appliances, lots of stuff for kids.

The packaging wasn't fancy, and there was some scratch-and-dent stuff, but most of the merchandise was comparable in quality to what you would find at most furniture stores.

Near the back of the cave at the base of one of the pillars, we found a dressing table and armoire set. We examined it thoroughly. It was in like new condition and the set together was less that $500.

We had a small SUV and a long trip home, so the proprietor gave us a $100 discount since we'd be making two trips.

So if your in the market for new furniture (or playground equipment or kitchen utensils, or whatever) and if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can shop in a cave.

tagged: economy, furniture, cave, Missouri, Donald Trump, Amy Winehouse, shopping

Salmonberry

Note to the coffee shop/sandwich bar in my building: If you keep the blueberry muffins in the same refrigerator case as the poached salmon salads, what you get is a blueberry-salmon flavored muffin.

And it's not as tasty as it sounds.

tagged: breakfast, blueberry muffin, poached salmon

More change than you hoped for

I'm not sayin' anything, I'm just puttin' this out there.

Actually, I guess it was BusinessWeek that put it out there. So I guess I'm just passin' it along.

I'm still not sayin' anything, though.



tagged: economy, stock market, Obama, BusinessWeek, policy

YouTube Tuesday: Morning Elegance

This one's been out there for a while, but it's new to me.

I'm captivated by this elaborate stop-motion animation. And even though the music (which is really good, btw) is a bit melancholy, the video gives it that touch of whimsy that makes the production as a whole very satisfying.

Well done, Mr. Lavie.



tagged: video, movie, Oren Lavie, Her Morning Elegance, Opposite Side of the Sea, music

Friday Blogthing: Album Cover Meme

I haven't done one of these in a long time, but the results I got from doing the Album Cover meme fit together so nicely that I just had to share.

In case you're unfamiliar, here's how it works (hat tip to Average Jane):

1. Go to “Wikipedia.” Hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band.
2. Then go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Then, go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days” and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or some other image editor to add text and make it look cool.

This is the wikipedia article hit
Here's the quote I got.
And this is the Flickr art I ended up with.

Add them all together and you get the latest Top 40 Skinhead Neo-Nazi Hate Metal album.



tagged: meme, Friday Blogthing, album cover, Fatherland For All, Francis Beaumont