WARNING!!

STAY OUT OF MY LANE...because it is the slowest one.


i-10 has 5 lanes between metarie rd and causeway. that means on any given day there is only a 20% chance that a person could (by chance) pick the slowest one. 20 is not a lot of percent...it means that i have a 4 times greater chance of picking a lane that at the very least is 2nd slowest...but i don't. every day the slowest...and most days not the same lane.

some days i switch lanes just to watch my new lane slow to a crawl and watch my previous one pass me by. and i think, "bugger! i should have stayed!" but had i stayed...it would not have moved...i have come to realize that.

things are consistant:
-i will always arrive at work 5 minutes late (no matter what time i leave my house)
-i will always leave 5 minutes early, because i set every clock within my sight path 10 minutes fast so that (to me) it seems like i put in a full day's work and then some. this serves a dual purpose as (since my line of sight is the same as my boss's) she always thinks that she is 5 minutes late to work so she can hardly chastize me for being just a little bit later than her...oh, i am crafty.
-i will always get cut off by a 40-something, gym-rattish looking lady in a black audi tt who should have stopped going to the tanning bed after her skin turned to jerky...but she didn't...and she always has the top down on the tt so as to not only over expose herself to cancer-causing uv, but also breath in as much carbon monoxide as possible. the day that she doesn't cut me off is the day she dies of cancer.


moving on:

there is this passage in catch-22 where heller speaks of an individual in a bombing squadron. this guy is in the line of fire every time his plane's wheels left the runway. he expects every mission to be his very last.
he lives in fear of dying. heller mentions that the man si constantly shooting skeet when he isn't flying missions; this individual does this because he absolutely hates shooting skeet. you would think that a man with so stressful a job, a man who loses friends after every mission would want to spend his time doing something that he enjoys...or, at the very least, drink until he cann't feel. but he does what he hates.

his rationale for prepetuating his own misery is flawless:

he does it because he loves life.

if the next mission is inevitable, he wants it to be as far in the future as possible.

time passes more slowly when you are miserable.

so in order to get the most out of life (or the time between missions) he has to be miserable.

so, he was happy when he was miserable.

the concept has me captivated. it's genius. if i had the mentality of dunbar (i believe is his name) i would love my job...because i hate it. this morning i walk into work 15 minutes late...that is the ealiest i've come in all week. i've been doing this quasi-experiment: i try to be the last to come in and the first to leave; i am doing this to see if anyone notices...thus far, they have not. today, my shirt is untucked and i'm wearing cargo pants and tennnis shoes (much more casual than the others in my office) and no one has so much as given me a cross look.

the VP, to whom i am indentured, last wednesday had a bout with dibilitating back spasms putting her in the hospital for 36 hours. the doctor informed her, at the ripe age of 30, she has 2 heniated and 1 bulging disc. i don't know how many discs one has, but i feel at this rate her spine should be fused by the end of the month. since that time she has been coming into the office (for reasons that escape me) to do whatever it is that she does. however, she is also heavily medicated on some sort of codine product and every time i look into her office she is swivelling hypnotically from side to side in her office chair. whatever it is that she does has to be suffering because of this.

the president of this company, who occupies the corner office about 10 feet from the biege metal and formica box in which i reside, has said "f***" approximately 15 times in the time i have been typing this. now the VP-COO just told somebody to "jump up his a**." i'm not sure what he means by that but it doesn't sound pleasant and i, for one, has no interest in participating in such an activity.

that is all for now...ooh 17 now...he just said "f***" twice in a row.