garden pics

Finally...flowers that have bloomed recently or are still showing off in the back yard. Photos taken by Clay with our new Nikon D-50. There are many more photos of other flora, but I don't want to bore you more than I already have...

npr and pbs

Read this


Then, read this


Finally, take action

the office

It seems that people either absolutely love this show, or they simply "don't get it."

I am of the former point of view. This show is absolutely hilarious to me, and I think it is because I worked in nearly the same office at one time. In fact, I swear the show's writers actually gleaned details from my own work experiences, including a glaringly obvious secret office romance. I promise you that I didn't play the part of the Indian girl on the show, but she cracks me up. I am glad that I've since moved on from that job, and I hold only a small amount of rancor. I guess I reached a point where I can look back and laugh at certain situations.

We had a phone book sales rep visit us to discuss advertising with her company.

Rep: Hello, my name is X, and we have some great advertising opportunities for you in our yellow pages.

Boss: Hi, I'm Boss and this is Nan. So, are you with "the real yellow pages" or the fake one?

Nan: (staring at Boss, agape)

Rep: Um...we're company X yellow pages, not technically "the real yellow pages" per se but, um...I wouldn't call us the fake yellow pages...(a little irritated and defensive) let me show you the stats on our readership and advertisers - blah, blah, blah – (enter charts, graphs, dollar signs, shadow boxes, hand-puppets)

Let me just say that after insulting her job, everything pretty much went down from there. I usually walked our visitors out just to have a little one-on-one time to smooth out the wrinkles by inventing a fake neurological disease of which my employer suffers...it's called neuropsychophysiological-verbal-diarrhea.

On a side note, I truly marvel at the fact that the Boss was completely oblivious when he insulted or demeaned people (including his own employees)...even when I (or others) pointed it out to him, the neurons would just sit there staring at the synapses - thinking about moving but instead would fall asleep.

One of my favorite stories is when our company sponsored a prominent concert in the area, and a member of our corporate office decided to get into a who's the manlier man contest with his buddy. Let's just say that this supposed adult (in his early 30s) decided to out-do his friend's latest antics by partaking in drunk copulation in a port-o-let at the end of this all-day, summer concert. I'd like to stress that they chose to have a little fun in a port-o-let after ~3,000 people used that one specific water closet. You could collect enough bacteria from that thing to wipe out every terrorist in the world...or, more realistically, infect them with Gonorrhea. Yuck. The cops actually banged on the door for them to leave the premises. They staggered out, and he said, "No, I'm with company X," while pointing to the group of us thirty feet away. Yeah, that's the kind of PR we want. Thanks, Einstein.

Look for that storyline in an upcoming episode...I haven't seen a dime from the writers. Anyway, the original British version of the show is worth checking out if you like dry humor. Fans of the NBC version will enjoy Dwight Schrute's blog.