Little Gray Office

In my little, gray office an air purifier stands in for an open window and blows purified air (stand-in for warm, gentle breeze) at an overstuffed bookshelf and tousles the papers on my desk -- meeting agendas, post-it notes with scribbled contact information missing corresponding names, worksheets clarifying plural and singular noun and verb agreement. There is a bag of dried-ginger trail mix out of which I've picked what seems like hundreds of chocolate chips. There is a transparent, fluorescent-pink clipboard with ruler markings on its edges that has May's special projects calendar clipped on -- trips to the beach at Lincoln Park in West Seattle and to the Experience Music Project are scheduled. Underneath the clipboard there is a Hokusai calendar given to me by my brother, and taped to the wall above those things are incorrect calendars outlining our schedule for the week of 1/16/06.

All of this is a lot of clutter and just a little bit of work. Except for the three hours I spend in the periwinkle-colored classroom, I face the computer all day and try to keep my back to the window. Why? Because the view boasts nothing bucolic. All I can see is highway 405, which has occasional but terrible accidents, and a big office building with tinted-black windows and a sign for the University of Phoenix. Oh! I just looked out the window and whaddayaknow? A young maple tree that must have faded into the gray background during winter has come out for spring dressed in green and is acting as a lovely buffer for the ugly, unfriendly University of Phoenix building! Thank you, spring!

Linda, my supervisor and office-mate, who most often feels more like a freshman-year college roommate, sits behind me and doesn't check up on me to notice that I am writing silly and bland notes on my blog. Thank you, Linda!

And finally, thank you blogger and all blogs all across the internet everywhere for creating an outlet like this one for me to channel my energy into during boring work hours and for allowing me to reconnect with lost sort-of housemates, like Jackson Eaton.