It's survey time!

I don't always love my job. Hell, I don't always even like my job, but sometimes the things I see in the office really do genuinely delight me--stuff like free catered eats left in the kitchen or Jesse Ventura walking past my door with a legion of minions. Anyway, someone in the office latched onto the importance of keeping the staff entertained to improve morale, so every few weeks there appears a new survey on the copy room's white board to help us bide our time while we're busy jamming the copier with the latest missives from our respective offices. One survey, for example, was a pro- v. anti-snow query, another was dogs v. cats... that sort of crap. And then I happened into the copy room last Friday, where a new survey awaited me.

There's something to be said for sharing office space with the person who created this:


In a day that was otherwise hectic, crappy, and devoid of leftovers, this survey was the one shining beacon of joy and hope.

For the record, I voted for "foot." You?

Speaking of Cadbury Eggs...

This is so wrong:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/6541785.stm

"The spinning sun blinded her as they dropped."

Twice in my life I've had flights canceled on me as a result of mechanical failure. The first was a couple of years ago, and the second was yesterday. There's nothing intrinsically unusual about such cancellations, I don't think; I imagine that they happen all the time. Both of these incidents, however, shook me up a wee little bit. Here's why:

1) The first incident occurred as I was making my way to National Airport to hop on a flight to visit my friend Kim in Chicago. I was on the Metro, iPod in my ears, bopping merrily along to whatever was in the random rotation at the time, when the train pulled up to the airport stop. The doors opened, I stepped out, and a chill went down my spine as the notes from the next song hit my ears as soon as my foot hit the platform. The song in question was "Glow Girl" from the Who. It's about a plane crash. ("The plane is diving faster; we're getting near the ground. Nobody is screaming, no one makes a sound.") I shook it off and insisted to myself that it was pure coincidence. Still, I couldn't help but feel a bit anxious. I had over 7000 songs on my iPod--I don't know what the odds are that "Glow Girl" would appear in random rotation at that exact time, but I wouldn't take that bet.

I walked to the terminal and noticed that my flight wasn't on the screen that listed the departures. I went to the airline's counter and asked what happened. "That flight was canceled because of mechanical problems. We'll have to rebook you on a different one."

Remember that chill down my spine? It happened again. But as disturbed as I was, I got over it, got on the next flight to Chicago, and had a lovely time visiting Kim.

2) Deja vu all over again: I found that I was revisiting that same anxiety yesterday as I was sitting on Flight 5339 from Minneapolis to St. Louis, the beginning of my trip home after a weekend in Fargo, ND and Minneapolis. (Word to the wise: if you ever think that going to Fargo for a weekend in April is a good idea, think again. It was ass cold with a raw, biting wind. I almost lost my fingers pumping gas without gloves.) The plane had pulled out of the gate--maybe 100 yards--but pulled back to the jet bridge shortly thereafter. "We have a bleed air problem with the #2 engine. Safety first," the captain explained. "But it shouldn't take long; we're just waiting on a mechanic." Okay. I went back to my book--I'm currently reading the second book in the John Dos Passos trilogy "U.S.A."--and drank my airline orange juice (I think the flight attendant was looking to avoid a JetBlue-esque riot, so she placated us with beverages).

So, la la la, nearly an hour goes by, I'm reading along, and I come to a passage in the book featuring one of the characters reluctantly following her companion onto a monoprop plane where he would perform aerial tricks for her. Hm. I kept reading only with great trepidation, as I had a bad feeling about where this chapter was headed. And wouldn't you know, the character dies in a plane crash--I used the last line of the chapter for the title of this entry. And wouldn't you know, about fifteen minutes later, we were all shooed off the plane for rebooking on other flights, as the mechanical problem lingered. (Cue the theme from "The Twilight Zone.")


Now, sure, chances are that these really are just random coincidences, and that's fine. I'd be lying if I said I completely believed that, though. Perhaps some half-price Easter candy will calm my jangled nerves.

Music hath charms to soothe the savage PSK

As my avatar suggests, I spend much of my waking hours with headphones in my ears. Okay, so I'm not listening to my mp3 player in the office or anything (just internet radio--rock on, WMMR!), but the walk to and the walk from work account for about two hours of my day, with my headphones firmly in place during pretty much the entire time. With the right music, I actually get into something of a zone--I've had students of mine have to practically flail their arms in my face to get my attention on the street. It really is a wonderful little gadget, one that I can't imagine living without. It puts me in a decent mood as I head off to work in the morning, it provides the soundtrack to my walk home (which is critical, as I have to trudge straight up a hill for half an hour), it provides a means by which I can brush up on my foreign language skills, and it (sometimes) keeps weird conversationalists at bay on public transportation.

Imagine my horror, then, when I heard it skip for the first time. And the second time. And then it paused randomly during songs. And THEN it would pause for, like, minutes on end in the middle of songs. This was not cool. Panic set in, then frustration, and finally resignation. I tried to reset it, I reloaded the software, and while it worked again for another hour or so, it eventually conked out again. I'd rather just turn the bloody thing off than listen to blips and bleeps of one three-minute song over the course of twenty minutes.

So turn it off I did. And... wow! There's a whole world out there! I heard bird calls that I hadn't heard before. I heard squirrel chatter and Secret Service agent chatter outside the Naval Observatory. I heard radios in cars paused at red lights on Massachusetts Ave. I focused on things that I hadn't really focused on before, such as flowers and leaves and the architechture of the homes that I walked past.

It's been a week now since I put away the headphones. I have to say: the novelty has worn off. Sure, when I'm hiking or rollerblading, I absolutely don't want anything to encumber me or compromise my ability to react to, say, a bloodthirsty, rabid deer chasing me down the trail, so the player stays at home. That, and I really enjoy getting lost in my thoughts when engaged in such activities. It's therapeutic. But I quickly discovered that the tedium of my job requires some sort of pick-me-up first thing in the morning to get me there. Music is easier and far more pleasurable than a cattle prod, hence the mp3 player.

I'm counting the days until the new one arrives from Amazon. Oh, and the hunt for a new job is already underway.