Sorry, I “stepped out” for a minute. It’s not even that anything all that weird has been going on (“all that weird” being a relative concept here at the home of the Winged One)

It’s just that there’s been a change in the routine. To wit: After sending out about 20 million e-mails explaining that employees playing streaming video on the internet was slowing the whole system down to the point where people were having trouble getting legitimate business done, my employers finally just gave up and banned people from using it for personal reasons at all. They said it was still okay if we were on our breaks. I guess they didn’t want to start a riot.

Actually, we didn’t get a company wide e-mail on this. It was an edict that came from some managers and seemed to hit some departments harder than others. Our boss didn’t say anything to any of us at all, but we still, by mutual agreement, decided to follow along with the flow. All of us like our boss, and we don’t want her to get into trouble in case it was something she simply forgot to mention.

So, consequently, I’m now jumping into a word document to write a few sentences between phone calls. But then, I forget what the document is and wind up deleting it –woops- resulting in no new content for a few days.

However, I do have this to report:

In my town, the place that has the cheapest gasoline is an Exxon Station. It’s the one undergoing a MASSIVE renovation, with a state of the art new food mart going in. It’s still under construction, but it looks like a really nice coffee shop in there from what I can tell so far. I guess there is no way they were going to try out “We poor franchise owners aren’t making any money here – it’s all going to the big boys!” on us Countians. It’s like one of my favorite lines from Stephen King's The Stand “Country don’t mean dumb.”

We had a great picnic with Rob and Theresa on Sunday. Rob showed me where the Roots Market is, and we picked up some prepared foods from there, which were really tasty. It’s in a shopping center in the midst of la ti da Clarksburg, and it was not easy to find a place to park. So Rob pulled around behind some of the shops. As we were going along, I noticed one of those diamond shaped traffic signs with what looked, for all the world to me, like a black hat on it. What the? I asked myself. I mean, I suppose the rich ARE different. Or maybe “country” DOES mean dumb. But who would put up a road sign warning people that there was liable to be a hat ahead? And why would it be a hazard?

It was only after I noticed a very slight speed bump that I understood the sign. I felt pretty much like a bumpkin. But it really did look like a hat!

On Monday, I happened to be in the office of a person who is a counselor – specifically a social worker. As I looked around, I noticed a cheesy macramé / hook rug / natural fiber neutral colored wall hanging. And I realized that, in every counselor’s office I have ever been in there has been a similar looking natural fiber something. This is what I want to know: Do they hand these things out at graduation? Is it like “Congratulations, here is your masters degree and also your cheesy macramé wall hanging!” Where do they come from? Why are they there? Are they supposed to make visitors to the office feel more at home in some way? As in: “Well, I may have my masters degree, but I still don’t have any taste, so you can feel comfortable talking to me.” Or, worse, are these the kinds of things that people who have degrees in social work think others find “homey”?!?

Incidentally, I was not in the counselor’s office because I mistook the “bump” sign for a hat. Though, perhaps, I should have been.