Two Blues in One Day

This was the day before:

My afternoon walk unintentionally flushed out two birds from a low bush near the building to my right.  They flew out ahead of me: a brown bird, and right behind her, an amazingly velvety blue one.  They stopped in a tree just ahead by the path.

I slowed to take a look.  They seemed to be a couple, or at least dating, since they stayed together in the branches.

The blue boy didn't seem like the bluebirds I've seen before.  More like a little songbird, though perhaps a bit larger than the crooners.  Certainly not as large as a Jay.

After snapping a crude distant shot of this amazing discovery, I continued on upstairs to the 4th floor where I'd been covering the reception desk all week for the afternoons.

Jill came up with her rolling basket around 3:00pm, doing the mail run for Tonya.  She is always so nice to me, so very kind, and friendly, and just really a pleasure to work with.

She's around 53 I would guesstimate, rather round, with simple short hair.  Her cubicle downstairs is filled with rainbows of the wholesome kind, and cute signs about being blessed and that sort of thing.

Did she ever have children?  She never spoke of them.  A man?  Never mentioned one.  She must live a simple life, perhaps in a trailer park somewhere out in east county.

Excited by seeing the blue bird, I mentioned it to her.

In her playful way, she said, "Well, why didn't you bring it up here to show me?"

"Well... I didn't have a firearm with me," I explained in obvious jest.

"I'm gonna have to talk to Wendy about you," she said, shaking her finger in mock disgust and disapproval.

She lingered a bit as she dealt with the mail baskets associated with 4th Floor Reception.  She chatted about looking forward to the weekend, and for this day to be over.  We agreed that we were both fortunate to even have a job.  She mentioned that one of our local sign-holding beggars who works Friar's Road during the day had been spoken to by the police, she'd noticed while returning from lunch.  Was it illegal?  We didn't know.  She said "That could be me out there, holding up a sign" she laughed, along the lines of our gratitude for having jobs in this economy.

The phone rang and she waved goodbye and disappeared into the elevator.


This was the day of two Blues:

During the next afternoon, lo and behold, the exact same scene as before.  The couple flew out from the low bush in front of me and on up to the tree.

This time I was ready to spend a bit more time to try to get a better picture.   My little advanced point-and-shoot has limited zoom, but I can compensate by setting the resolution to gargantuan and then later just cropping the bit that I want.

Now I had a nice one to show Jill that afternoon when she came round for her mail run.

When she came up, she did enjoy seeing it, and agreed it was very, very blue!

Was it a robin of some sort?  We then noticed the bit of salmon-red on his breast.  Maybe he was a sort of a blue robin?

I told her how this time I'd spent some time watching, and saw him swoop down through the air and return to the tree with something in his mouth, a moth I suppose.  He was a hunter!

When she left, she said something about not having "anything bad to tell Wendy about me" and I asked her to tell Wendy what a good boy I was today.

(Wendy works at the same company, different building, and I believe she and Jill met at the company picnic last summer).

Although working up at the 4th Floor Reception desk sort of slows down my productivity, since the PC up there is a little less ergonomic and the overhead lights glare, I do enjoy it when I'm asked to cover.  It's fun to see all the underwriters and managers cross the front of the desk, and of course, my peers such as Jill are always a pleasure.

It was late in the day when I noticed two of the higher-ups walking down the hall.  It was an HR manager and a local supervisor.  Following close behind and between them was a woman in a red shirt, her face wet with tears.

It was Jill.

They turned and waited for an elevator down.  I could hear sniffling.

I never saw Jill again.

The next morning when I walked past her cubicle, formerly rainbow-decorated, I saw that it was now completely bare.







My day took on a very distinctive shade of color.

The Tiniest Ones Sing the Sweetest Songs

Every day around 11:00am I walk out to the little park that's here in the business campus where I work.

As I sit on a bench and do my reading I often hear a new song that I've never heard before.

Since we're located right next to the stadium in Mission Valley, that really means we're right next to the San Diego River, which evidently is a vacation spot for traveling birds.

The song of a sparrow is pretty enough for me.  Yet these other birds sing some AMAZING songs.

They're all different.

One that I thought was funny sounded like a baby making a fizzing little "raspberry" sound.  That was different!

Most of the songs I've heard just last a few seconds, then there's a pause, then a repeat.

The other day, however, I heard a continuous song that just stopped me in my tracks as I walked to my bench.  Turning to my left, I followed the sound, which was coming from the south.

I didn't see who was singing, but when I passed this bare tree, it was evident that I was about to pass by.  The song was somewhere in the tree.

Then suddenly, there he was!  Very small, very tiny, very yellow (!) and sitting down low in the tree, very easy to see.

He didn't seem to mind my presence, in fact, perhaps he stepped it up a notch!

I could see the feathery front of his little throat popping in and out as he just BELTED out his continuously varied tune.

It was really, really beautiful.

It gave me the feeling of wanting to clap that little guy on the shoulder and say "WELL DONE little man!  WELL DONE!"

Of course that wouldn't really be appropriate.  It would analogous to hearing a beautiful new song as the ringtone on someone's phone, and then going and praising them and hugging them and congratulating them for the music.   It's just their ringtone!  True praise would belong to the artist who wrote and recorded that song.

So, of course, it's Jehovah I need to praise for that little yellow songbird's melodious singing.

Which I did and continue to do when I'm amazed by these tiny singers.

Wendy later assured me that telling Jehovah how good the music is would be the correct thing to do.

She added,

"Then Jehovah will tell the birdie!"

I'm Getting Fat

Notice the clever title of this post?

In case you're wondering what it's a metaphor for, what it symbolizes, and what the meaning is, I will tell you.

It means:  I'm getting fat.

After a year of unemployed bliss on two wheels in a single-automobile family, I finally got a job (about a year and a half ago, I guess) and it involves sitting down all day long.

So it was pretty gradual, and the way I discovered what was happening was pretty delightful.

For nearly my entire life I've been too skinny to even float in water.  It's true, I'm an official non-swimmer.  How I wish I could go back and drown all those onlookers who cheered me on with their splashing shouts of "just arch your back and you'll float!"

Every time I would try arching my back, I would proceed to sink.

However a few months ago, when I went into a pool to practice my usual treading water accompanied by flailing and spurting, I noticed something different:

I was floating like a cork.

So I tried arching my back, and sure enough, I was floating on my back.  Like a cork.

Then it dawned on me the reason.  I had become a flotation device.

Yesterday I used my lunch hour and afternoon break to stay at my desk and work on something personal.  When I got home, I felt a big difference for not having walked 20 minutes during lunch and 15 minutes in the afternoon.  Heavier, fatter, and jigglier.

So I took steps that night.

After eating an entire Trader Joe's flat of enchiladas, I then finished the other half of Wendy's Trader Joe's lentil soup, soaking it up with some Trader Joe's flattish bread toast, while quaffing a big bottle of Chocolate Brown Ale, also courtesy of Trader Joe's.

The steps were in the wrong direction.

Where's a swimming pool when I desire one?  I would like to go in one right now.

Oh you may be winning for now, Gigantic-ness, but I shall get some mental motivation, and I will beat you!

Midnight in Paris (DVD)

A soothing curative for someone like me, who suffers from Golden Age Thinking

Zero Tolerance for Distracted Driving This Weekend

They let me off early for good behavior today.

There was an unusual sight pretty deep into the parking area for our business campus: a CHP motorcycle officer was standing next to a car, his motorcycle on its kickstand nearby.

What?

Then when I saw two other police cars parked outside Costco, although it’s probably not related, it did remind me of something I’d heard on KNX 1070 AM radio this morning:

The CHP is doing a zero-tolerance crackdown on distracted driving this weekend!

My first thought when I heard that was wondering whether to warn my co-workers or not.

Then I thought “no” I won’t warn anyone.

Why not?

Because distracted driving is extremely dangerous. Those mentally agonizing months we spent after Wendy’s Honda James was rear-ended all started with some joker rear-ending us on the freeway. Likely texting, though I have no proof.

If I warn people who are offenders, and they’re careful for this one weekend, what good does that do for either them or me?

So no warnings.

Except for you, since you’re reading this!

Pea Eye

If P.C. stands for "politically correct", then P.I. stands for "politically incorrect".

Today I felt quite P.I.

Sitting in a frozen yogurt shop in San Luis Obispo this afternoon, watching all the people pass by, I suddenly realized something.

"You know, Dad, I think you and I are the only ones in town wearing leather jackets".

Wendy and I love SLO and we always go there when visiting my parents.  It's the kind of town where a store called The Hemp Shack does a thriving business.  (In fact that's where I always buy my wallets, having done so for the past several years now).

It's not the kind of town where people wear leather.  At least on the street as casual wear.

Later in the afternoon, on the other side of town, we were shopping in the San Luis Obispo Costco, and



**** This is an unfinished draft from March 10, 2010 ****  I'll just wrap it up now... *****

So bottom line was, we were in San Luis Obispo Costco, and a guy struck up a conversation with me, asking if we were visiting.  I told him my parents lived in Paso Robles, and my wife and I were visiting from San Diego.  So he said something about "I thought so" and then I made a crack about "leather jackets in SLO" and he seemed to agree.

Whatever... I don't care about being politically incorrect!  In fact, I'm as green as the next guy, since I was wearing a recycled jacket!  Yes, my brother owned that 80's-era padded-shoulder sucka... and when it went out of fashion, he gave it to me.

In Time

What I liked about In Time, the 2011 motion picture starring Amanda Seyfried and Justin Timberlake:

• The concept that everyone in the film, even the 85-year-olds and the 67-year-olds all look like they're 25 years old.  Everyone in the film looks 25, except the kids under 25.  It's like a preview of the New World.
  
  
• The automobiles.  There were three basic styles, based upon, I dunno, something like a Kennedy-era Daddy Wagon Lincoln, maybe a 70's Dodge Charger, and a 70's era Bob-tail Caddy.   They're nearly all painted flat black and hum with their futuristic electric motors.
  
  
• The performance by Vincent Kartheiser as the 85-year-old Phillipe Weis was good.  It was Wendy who pointed out that, though he looked 25, he acted 85.
  
  
• The basic idea that the currency of the future is time, which can easily be passed from hand to hand (wrist to wrist) between people.
  
  
• Oh yeah... Olivia Wilde, briefly.
  
  
  

What I didn't like about In Time, the 2011 motion picture co-starring Cillian Murphy:

1. The juvenile dialogue, which seemed written by a 15-year-old.
   
   
2. There was a chase through a restaurant kitchen and a bowl of tossed salad got knocked up into the air and salad went everywhere.   Please...
   
   
3. The two-bit thug villain had a stupid stereotypical English cockney accent, a la Firefly.  Please...
   
   
4. The atrocious special effects crime of having an expensive sports car careen off the edge, then cutting to an obvious plastic model, blurred and in slow motion, crashing down a dirt embankment.
   

My feeling is that this B movie (maybe it's a B+) will come and go with scarcely a stir, and then later on perhaps become sort of a minor cult favorite.  After all, the concept is pretty original.

After all, one reason we went to see it is that it's somehow related to a movie many people loved: Gattaca.