Three Little Words

"Seriously?!" exclaimed my next-door cube neighbor in disgust today. "I think developers just select words at random to use as street names. I just got a literature request from someone on Technology Forest Drive." We all laughed - cubicle walls don't really exist in our office etiquette-free environment - and she added, "Really, it could be anything. Flute Potatoes Avenue."

I didn't laugh as enthusiastically at that one, because frankly, I was kind of jealous I didn't think of it first.

We complain - or at least I do - about words being used without regard to their meaning. Yet I'm rather forcibly reminded, by a recent episode in my nineteen-year-old daughter's dating life, of how certain words have lost a great deal of the impact they used to have for me.

Katie has a new boyfriend she was very excited about a week ago, and is thinking about breaking up with now (assuming she hasn't already). A few days ago she came to me with a furrow in her young brow. "I told Jake I love him," she said, troubled. "We were at a party and I'd had a couple of drinks. But I really don't love him."

I didn't particularly see the problem, but Katie felt the need to call Jake the next day and clarify that she was, in fact, not in love with him. "Are you breaking up with me??" he asked. "Oh, no," she said, "just I don't actually love you, that's all." "Oh," he said.

Personally, I would have just let it go. Saying "I love you" to men you don't actually love, I tried to explain to my innocent young daughter, is just a normal part of the female condition, and probably male as well. You say it. You didn't really, really mean it. Worse yet, you say those tender yet insincere words to someone who responds with something awkward like "Ummmm," or a little more debonair, such as "Awwww" or "That's sweet" or "Thank you." Which is what Jake did (I believe Katie told me he is an "Ummmm" man, and I can respect that; awkwardness is not a quality I disparage in any way).

But it's funny, now that I think about it, because when I was in my teens and twenties, those three little words seemed to matter far, far too much to be uttered in vain. And that's not just a girl thing. My first serious boyfriend, my sophomore year in college, once took me to a Moody Blues concert at Zilker Park. They sang "Nights in White Satin." We clung together throughout the song and he sang along softly in my ear, and it would have been only THE MOST ROMANTIC THING THAT EVER HAPPENED ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH, except that every time the chorus got to "I love you" he switched to humming. Words meant things.

Now that I'm past 40, "I love you" doesn't seem quite so untouchable, so sacrosanct. I don't say it dishonestly, but there are so many kinds of love, aren't there? As in, I care about you - or it would be personally devastating to me to do something that would cause you significant pain - or I hate to see what you are going through right now - or I know you well enough to be truly comfortable with you, and being comfortable feels so good. I remember somewhat the fiery passion of "True Love," but it never really worked out in the end, did it? Maybe it turns out that, like every other expression of human language, "I love you" refers to some unspoken middle ground between what the speaker and the hearer believe it to mean.

So do you spend your life stressing about whether you really mean it when you say "I love you"? Or do you teach yourself contentment, and settle down with your sweetheart and your thirty-seven cats in a cottage with climbing roses and a white picket fence on Flute Potatoes Avenue?

I have no clue. I'll have Katie figure it out and get back to you on it, in about 25 years.

The 99% Likes Opera, Too

Is it just me, or is the basic message of "Die Zauberflöte" that women are dark, scheming and evil whereas men are wholesome, honest and good? Because Mozart can stick his magic flute where the sun don't shine, if you catch my drift. Or is that an awful, vengeful thing to say? Well, Bill Gates is paying a visit, so I can't be held accountable for my irrational female behavior.

I don't know if the Austin Lyric Opera will ever top their production of "The Bat," but their "Magic Flute" had some cute modern touches and very good singing, particularly by Sarastro and Pamina. The sets were overly minimalist, I thought - I mean, it's fine, it works, but you really should actually have a dragon of some kind onstage at the beginning. Even an extremely tacky rubber one would be acceptable. I did like the touch of having Tamino run out of arrows and, in desperation, heave his bow at the invisible beast.

Unfortunately, FunFunFunFest is also going on just across Riverside, and the Long Center is not completely soundproof. So at least on the very very back, top row, I was a little distracted by the deep bass thumping from outside shaking our seats - loud enough to drown out the Queen of the Night, who was more precise than powerful. It's a typically Austin experience but not necessarily a happy one, though I expect Mozart would have found himself more or less at home in a mosh pit drinking canned beer, the misogynistic bastard.

After the show, Katie and I teetered across Barton Springs to have Whataburger while the parking garage cleared out, and got made fun of by drunken 4F goers who may not have realized that we could hear them, inasmuch as they were the only ones shouting. (Katie pointed out that their tickets cost about twice what ours did.)

All that said, of course, any night you get to go to the opera is a good night - uncomfortable shoes and all. Going tonight was Katie's idea. That, coupled with the fact that today my son brought me a vanilla hazelnut latte from the coffeehouse where he works, gives me a sense that my decision to have children is beginning to bear fruit, so to speak.

Now if I can just bend them to my nefarious will.

On Your Feet!

Don't take it sitting down!

Inspired by Anna's post on IKEA Hackers, I decided to make myself a reasonably economical standing desk. Not, perhaps, as economical as Anna's, but still a heck of a lot more affordable than most of the options out there. The Anna in the IKEA hacker post is not to be confused with my own ten-year-old Anna, who is, don't get me wrong, brilliant and creative, but has not yet to my knowledge invented an item of furniture of any kind. Give her time, for crissakes, she's only ten. Sheesh.

I used my existing desk as a base, though I'll probably replace it with another Vika Amon 23.5" x 45" tabletop ($19.99) and four of IKEA's $3.50 table legs. It'll look a little more uniform, and anyway, my old desk is a cracked and peeling piece of crap.

So the thinking here is that I spend most of my waking time sitting at the computer, which is a polite way of saying that I spend most of my waking time sitting on my ass. I've read a few articles about what a bad idea this is, and it only makes sense, doesn't it? Standing at the new desk, I tend not to stand still; I shift my weight from foot to foot, idly lift a knee to stretch one leg behind me, march in place, dance around a little bit, in a fidgety way. It's about four hours a day - quite a bit more on weekends (this is my home workstation) which was spent in almost total inactivity, now spent in light activity.

So here's what I used to make my desk:

1 - cheap ass cracking peeling piece of crap old desk - $0.00, tax included
1 - Vika Amon 23.5" x 45" tabletop in black finish - $19.99 plus tax
1 - 4-pack 8" Capita legs - $14.00 plus tax
1 - Ekby Jarpen shelf - $9.99 plus tax
2 - Ekby Tore brackets - $5.00 each, $10.00 plus tax

Note that the shelf and brackets do not include screws, which is kind of weird for IKEA, who usually provide not only the hardware required, but many of the actual tools needed for assembly. Fortunately, I have a pathological inability ever to throw away anything that looks as if it might possibly be useful in the future, with the result that I was quickly able to get my hands on the screws needed to assemble my shelf without ever leaving my house (again - IKEA is in Round Rock, or possibly Houston). There's a lesson in that somewhere, but it probably isn't a very good one.

So that's $54 to convert my desk from sitting to standing. Once I add another Vika Amon tabletop and the Curry legs, the total will ratchet up to a whopping $88. Not really too shabby!

I did also spring an additional $30 for a barstool at Wal-Mart (I'm sorry, I realize that I've just contaminated this post beyond all hope of usefulness to anyone) so that Anna (my ten-year-old, not Anna from IKEA Hackers) could still use the computer. She's short, I'm sorry to say, but she's doing her best to amend that fault as fast as she can, eating all her vegetables, etc.

And speaking of height differential, here are a few notes on the finished size of the standing desk. The keyboard/mousing surface is 38" high, which works perfectly for me at 5'5" tall. If you need a lower desk, the Capita legs are also available in 4" and 6" heights, for a slightly lower price. If you need a taller desk, you can buy bed risers/bed lifts, which can add another 4-8" to the length of the legs, for around ten bucks.

A couple of additional notes:

1. I live about one mile from the Congress Avenue bridge, and I have never witnessed the famous bat emergence, which takes place every evening at some unspecified time determined only by the caprice of a million winged rodents. Or not. Maybe they're not hungry. However, in two trips to IKEA last week, one to scope out available materials and one actually to make the purchase, I TWICE saw a colony of bats emerge from underneath I-35 in long, smoky coils. Beautiful! A coworker of mine, who lives in Round Rock, said, "Oh yeah, we call those the 'white-trash' bats. They don't even go south for the winter." And apparently, they are not too proud to show themselves to passing motorists, while hordes of spectators along the Congress Avenue bridge, or even on bat-watching riverboat cruises, every single evening from March through October, may well go home disappointed. Fucking hipster bats.

2. My feet are KILLING me, especially the heels. From what I read online, this is perfectly normal and nothing to be alarmed about. Once my feet and I come to an understanding about who is responsible for standing and who is responsible for being stood upon, I plan to convert my desk at work as well. This would necessarily mean no more wearing high heels to the office (sigh).

I have a couple of different options for this:

a. Go to the doctor's office. Get a note that says I need a standing desk. Wait around in the waiting room (on my ass, incidentally) for an indefinite amount of time, and fork over a $20 copay. Work pays for whatever the actual desk costs, probably a lot.

b. Go to IKEA. Buy the super-cheap white VIKA Amon tabletop, 4 Capita legs, and an Ekby shelf and brackets. Total cost: about $40.

For the time being, I'm about ready to offer sexual favors in exchange for a good foot rub. Or I could get a pedicure at River Salon and Spa for $20, which is probably a better deal, because it includes getting my toenails done.

Stick With "Workplace: Mission Zero" and Nobody Gets Hurt

As I was walking out of the building where our safety meeting was held this morning, I caught my high heel on a water hose snaking across the landscaping, and nearly tripped and fell. Driving out of the parking lot a few seconds later, I saw my former boss doing the same thing.

Safety, they keep telling us, comes first. Then they prove incontrovertibly otherwise by their official actions. Yet it is not malice that does this, or shoddy work practices, or cutting corners. It just seems to me that reality keeps rearing its undeniable head and making a neat mess of all the plans, policies, programs, and lofty intentions we keep implementing to deny it.

However, I don't mean this bitterly. Our senior management is deeply serious about the issue of workplace safety, to the point where they happily spend a full day with us in an overcooled classroom, participating with joyless loyalty in roundtables, telling tear-jerking stories, trying to discover... what? Why does the workplace, despite the brightly-colored ideals of unrestrained capitalism, fail to conform to the brightly-colored ideals of a workplace Utopia?

They are genuinely sincere. And we want to be safe... right? I mean, every employee, on a personal level, values his or her own personal ability to go home at the end of the day and do whatever he or she does best - be it hug the kids or go out on a massive happy-hour-instigated bender - to at least the point at which he or she would not, by any means, find it a matter of indifference to determine whether said employee might just as well be wiped out by a stray cement mixer.

Are you with me? (As one of our facilitators kept saying this morning.)

Well, we went through exercises and brainstorming, and determined (over the protests of one of our participants, who I'm sorry to report I thought was not nearly as bright as she should have been) that the most important element in incentivizing* employees to implement safety initiatives was to give them ownership.**

So, while accountability is important, said most of us in our group, the most important element is to personalize and internalize the concept of safety, to where the reason people look out for it is because they want to and believe in it, not because you'll get in trouble if someone gets hurt. Right?

But one woman in my group had a lot of trouble with this concept, and kept arguing it. "I'm sorry, you guys, I'm just not getting it," she said. "You have to have accountability. Why are you all arguing with this? It's got to be the top priority!" Others tried to explain the carrot vs. stick concept to her, all with varying degrees of failure; then time was up, and we submitted our inconclusive results with the rest.

More troubling to me, really, was the beginning of the day's exercises. This is a government agency I work for, and the initiatives we implement today ought to be not merely for the good of employees, but for the general public. So I was deeply troubled when an official representative of the meeting organizer stood up and began our day with an official prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the success of our endeavors today.

Yahweh, Ashtoreth, fickle Fate, lucky chance, or whoever assist us, please, in the preservation of human and animal lives to their full and healthy span. But ordering a roomful of employees, of whatever religion or lack thereof, to bow their heads and participate in a sacred convocation in the name of a particular deity whom many do not observe, upset me a lot. Keeping everyone I work with, including the public, is sacred to me. But invoking a prayer as an opening ceremony which excludes many of us from the get-go is a very bad, bad thing indeed, and I hope to get this addressed by the appropriate, responsible parties.

I've been away for umpteen months, so you shouldn't expect this to be funny. However, if it's any consolation, I'd like to point out that at least we didn't have to watch "Highway to Certain Death," largely concerned with the individual employee's responsibility for avoiding the blind spot of a cement mixer, today or at any threatened point in the immediate future.

Peace, blessings, and workplace safety to all.

------
*You will never be able to pay enough to earn what it actually cost me, on a personal level, to get me to use that word... never.
**This also once meant something.

Read At Your Own Risk

Running, I sometimes think, is overrated. I say this partly on the basis of having seen people run who are even chubbier than I am.

They're never smiling. Never. Neither are the skinny ones.

Today was the Capital 10K race, about which I know very little (and will not even bother Googling it to see if I should spell it "Capitol" or "Capital"); but we shared the streets with some 22,000 runners today - largely without injury!

A friend with a kickass bluegrass band had sent out an invitation to come see him play at 8:30 this morning at the Farmers' Market at 15th and West, a straight shot across race-congested downtown, and just two miles or so north of where I live. Well, would you even try driving, under the circumstances? Most major thoroughfares were closed. And it's not like I couldn't do with a bit of exercise. So we decided to hoof it.

Have you ever set out for a destination without being entirely certain where you were headed? Surely you have. No matter what your name is. You must have done this from time to time. "Zognitz and 94th? Sure, we can get there in 48 minutes! Just be sure and take Dowsydip Drive, so you can avoid the crosstown traffic!" And then, after hiking seven miles to Zognitz, you suddenly realize, with a painful sinking feeling, glancing at your walking companion, who is sweaty, panting, tired, and verging dangerously close to grumpiness, that you might just possibly have confused your destination with one on at Zbignab Drive on the other side of town. Furtively, you belatedly consult GoogleMaps on your iPhone. "Oh, hey... wait, hey, um..." you say.

I have always relied on the good-natured patience of others.

Still, from my point of view, the walk was a wonderful one - from our home neighborhood of Travis Heights through the office parking lot at Riverside and Congress, which had evidently been set up as Potty Central for the jogging horde, up South First to Auditorium Shores, along the hike-and-bike trail to the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge, where for some reason I can't entirely understand there was an upright piano.

It was cabled to the railings of the bridge, but the plastic sheet intended to protect the piano from today's anticipated light mist had blown off, the wooden dowel at its end not sufficiently heavy to keep it in place. Well, by God. I may not be much of a hero - in fact, I go to pieces at the slightest suggestion of conflict, forget about anything remotely resembling an emergency - I have never done what I felt to be an adequate job of protecting my children, when they were small and helpless, against the varied onslaughts of unsympathetic teachers, bullying classmates, and neighborhood toughs. But damned if there isn't a bit of backbone in me after all, and what it takes to bring that out is a defenseless piano on an ominously cloudy day.

"Waitwaitwait," I said, "stop, come back, we have to cover this up."

So we straightened out the plastic sheeting, pulled the wooden dowel back into place, and tucked the bench in over it - the bench then unprotected, but it was the only way to keep the plastic sheet from blowing off again - and made sure all was secure before we left. An hour or so later, it began drizzling. I can't help wondering, rather glumly, if the piano's owner will come back, find the finish on the bench ruined, and blame the stranger who uncovered it, not realizing that the cover wouldn't stay on otherwise. I really hope not. It was the first truly good deed I feel I've done in a long time.

At any rate, we rescued the piano, continued on our hike, had breakfast at Sweetish Hill, saw many beautifully elegant Old Austin homes, enjoyed the sensation of seeing on foot many fascinating sites that we've always missed before because we're always in car, discovered that West Lynn Drive is not West Avenue, backtracked a couple of miles to the proper spot, and saw our friend play half of the last song of the truly awesome Blacktop Bend's set, before heading back for lunch at Hickory Street and home.

At the Lamar underpass under Third Street is an art installation - a mural or two, the infamous stupid blue highway-sign thingies, and a written manifesto of sorts, profoundly meaningful and deep, several paragraphs in block letters on a white background on the support structure of the bridge. I stopped to scan it, having driven past it often; but my eyes gravitated towards a Sharpie'd inscription at the bottom:

"TL;DR"

Ha! Touché.

They Go All the Way Up

"Do you prefer your floor high, or low?" asked the front-desk clerk as I was checking in.

I was a little puzzled, because I had never really thought about it, but I guess I'm happy as long as it touches my feet. Are we talking 1970s-era conversation pit sunken living room here? Or those elevated white plastic paneled floors, like they had in mainframe workrooms of the same period, which served the dual purpose of keeping the circuitry cool and hiding the wires? I probably stared at her for too long, and she's had excellent hospitality training, because she smiled without a hint of condescension and added, "Do you prefer to be on a higher or lower floor?"

Ah. Yes. The eighth floor will be fine, thank you.

When you travel a lot, I'm given to understand, you sometimes have trouble sleeping, and that could explain the overall sluggishness of wits that could lead you to think a hotel clerk was offering you platform flooring. But this was my first trip in over a week. Moreover, I generally find that I sleep better in hotels, because hotels tend not to issue you flailing, kicking bedmates with sharp fingernails - at least, not respectable hotels.

This trip was to Arlington, to visit the location of our big annual conference held in April. It will be great; they always are. But I'm beginning to find that more and more of my focus is on the quality of the bed - sort of an unattainable object of desire during the conference itself. The Sheraton has rather magnificent ones. They are soft, and the bedding is fluffy, and the pillows are plentiful enough to make yourself a little nest out of... aaaaahhhh. But I won't see much of the bed during the actual conference, because the stern summons of work comes well before dawn, and the siren song of the hospitality suite drowns out the gentler call of fresh white linen.

I'm afraid that one year this will not be the case, and then I will know that I am old.

Arlington will be playing host to a little football game in a couple of weeks, I'm given to understand. That's not really any of my concern, but the locals seem to take a certain amount of interest in it. Perhaps their team is one of the participants. No? Oh well, maybe another time.

They do seem to know a thing or two about contraflow, though.

Did you know that the Ripley's/Palace of Wax in Grand Prairie was modeled after a royal palace built in the late 18th century for a dissolute fop later to be portrayed by Hugh Laurie? It's in Brighton, but is not quite as brightly colored as the building it inspired:


I'm looking forward to our visit at conference this year, because they've remodeled the lobby since I saw it last. They may have done some exciting things with the floors.

But What Price Freedom?

There are people in the world who take a lot of pride in their automobiles. Their cars are always shiny and smell new, the upholstery is plush, and they never let you eat Cheetos when you ride with them.

Then there are regular people, who have regular cars. Maybe a dent and a scratch here and there. Maybe a little dusty. Maybe there are a few unidentified loose interior trim pieces rolling around under the driver's seat, and maybe there are a few random other things, too, which may be sticky.

And then there's me. If I had set out from the infancy of my driverhood to possess only cars with what we may charitably term Character, cars that require, nay demand, a humorous cartoon soundtrack to accompany their questionable progress down the street, then I would have made a smashing success. But there was never a conscious effort on my part. It just happened. Oh, sure, I covered my last VW in silk daisies, taped a magic wand to the antenna, affixed frog and rainbow and peace sign stickers to the windows, superglued three plastic martini glasses to the dashboard, and hung a purple disco ball from the ceiling, but that wasn't an attempt to make the car silly. It was only an acknowledgment of the silliness that already existed, and put more of a positive spin on the billowing clouds of white smoke that obscured the immediate vicinity every time I started it up.

I still have the poor thing. I haven't driven it in probably two years. The clutch was getting a little iffy, and my environmental conscience was suffering pangs over the smoke issue, and then someone smashed the driver's side window to steal the radio (as if it worked!!), and I kind of lost heart and stopped driving it. It won't start now, of course, because it sat for so long the battery is dead. I assume the clutch didn't just need a nice long rest to get better, the tires are flat, and the amount of smoke it would probably give off if I did manage to get it started might permanently alter the delicate balance of the Earth's atmospheric gases. Perhaps I can trick a local charity into accepting it as a donation.

So now I drive this large, bouncy thing my friend Diane sold me, on ridiculously easy terms. I like it fine. Parallel parking is of course completely out of the question, and filling up the gas tank will give you apoplexy, but fortunately I don't drive so much that I have to put gas in more than once a month.

It has not yet sprouted any flowers.

But it SCREECHES. I nicknamed it "the Behemoth" shortly after acquiring it, but it's becoming "the Banshee," because it just gets louder, and louder, and louder. One time it stopped screeching, and it turned out that was a very bad thing, because it meant that the alternator/water pump belt had broken. Fortunately, I was only a couple of miles from a Pep Boys, where I was able to get a new belt, which made the car screech again. Embarrassingly. People turn and stare.

I started it up in the parking lot at work today, and a guy I know slightly from another department signaled for me to roll my window down. "That sounds like a serpentine belt," he said. "It's bad. It shouldn't do that. It could break."

"Yes, I know," I said. "The old one did break. This is the new one."

"Well, it needs to be tightened, then," he said, "and I know somebody who works here who can help you - he's a mechanic. I'll call him tomorrow, and ask him to take a look at it for you. No, no, don't worry about it. He's cool."

There's this coworker of mine that I'm dating, and that's probably just about enough said about that. Not long after we began going out, he came into my office rather perturbed. "I'm not sure how to handle this," he said, "but there's a guy I know who keeps asking me about you, since we work together. He keeps asking me if you're seeing someone. The thing that really bugs me is, he could be competition! He's a mechanic..."

Our relationship being clandestine as far as work goes, he never told this guy that yes, I was seeing someone, and in fact the person I was seeing was him.

So now my car is getting looked at tomorrow by a guy who doesn't know that I know that he was asking about me, unless I can think of a polite excuse for begging off - but then my car really is exceptionally screechy.

Speaking of which, Katie has recently turned eighteen, and clearly intends to allow no one any rest by night or by day until somebody coughs up a car for her. Maybe I should just give her mine, and flee the country. By bicycle.