I have seen a lot of articles and commercials in the last few weeks about the top tech gadgets for the coming Christmas season. Some of it is the standard new speakers or peripherals for computers and cellphones others are in the category of ridiculous. One commercial tell me that to be a good aunt or uncle I need to get my nieces and nephew’s smartphones and tablets. Sorry to disappoint but I will not be buying those for myself let alone others. Maybe I am a tight wad but Christmas gifts should take the whole year to pay off! How about the ad for a personal hover craft, did I mention it cost more than my house? How about a personal submarine, I am sure that is on everyone’s wish list. The only sub I’m going to see is maybe one that uses baking soda (kids ask your dad what this was). Retailers must hope they are going to guilt us into spending way too much on Christmas this year, or at least some are hoping.  Have they seen the economy lately? I don’t think they better put all the eggs into the Christmas basket this year. I predict there will be a few retailers in the February-March time frame that will be throwing in the towel. At least it will be so if they are counting on me to boost their bottom line.

I love catching up with old friends. There are so many people I used to work with that I wish I could sit down with and ask what they are up to? The problem is I have to work for a living. Time slips away from me and the next thing I know I have not seen them in years. People I considered some of my best friends I don’t even know where they live let alone what is going on in their lives. I wish I could bring them all together so I would not have to tell them all what is going on all at one time. Each one I talk to is like seeing a tree branch. Each of us at one time was on the same trunk now like a tree we have branch out to different places. Some of them have gone on to great things; others have had a rough go of it. To me though all of them have grown in some way that has taught them lessons I need to learn. Life lived seem to give us perspectives we don’t get just looking from the outside. My hope is I will learn from their story and not have to only learn by getting knocked on the head like I usually do.

Do you know a guy like this? Every time you talk to him the NSA comes up. He probably thinks Elvis is still alive working at a Burger King in Nashville and don’t get on the topic of Kennedy. There is nothing they don’t have an opinion on and it always is the worst case scenario. Working with them requires a lot of patience. To get to the things you really need you have to wait for them to get through the doom statements to get on to the work at hand. Some days I can take talking to them. Other days there isn’t enough coffee in the world to keep me from slapping their face while exclaiming “get over it”. I don’t like the fact that all the info in the world is being scanned by the government and I think we need to fix that, but if they want to know about the latest set of wireless headphones I want for Christmas they can have at it. My email is boring; my email has more cats than secrets. The only thing they could glean from me is my dislike for snakes and spiders. Of course if they want to torture me that info would make me give up any info I did have. My friends who spend most of their time being paranoid really have nothing to hide as well, except maybe the 3 million songs and movies they downloaded from bit torrent.

When I was a kid I had some very cool toys. I remember G.I Joe, the full size version. I had the jeep that I could put him in it was a good-sized toy of red plastic with black wheels. I also had a plastic BB gun and tons of Lego’s.  While I had some great moments with toys like those the best times I can remember were on my Big Wheel. Not only flying down my street and spinning out but the Big Wheel was only assembled with three bolts so we would re-arrange the configuration. Some put extended forks or flipped the body around so it sat higher off the ground. We would spend hours on those things with and without the seat standing up like a scooter until the last-minute then sitting down and turning the wheel to spin out to the joy of all of our friends. This morning while looking for something on Amazon I came across a full size adult version. Had the not been listed as unavailable I might have ordered one right then. Yeah, I’m almost 50 so what? Nothing would have given me greater joy than to speed down my street  and crank the wheel to one side grinning ear to ear as I felt what I haven’t felt in a long time, that is, like a kid.

Some days you can hear a song and it becomes the theme of the day! On a Monday it could be “I Don’t like Mondays” by the boomtown rats. It is a somber song about a very disturbed girl, but it sets the tone for Mondays. It doesn’t work for every Monday but if they play it on the right day the rest of the day you shake your head and say “tell me Why”. Not sure you can say there is a Tuesday song? Tuesday is just the forgotten day. You aren’t half way through the week, at least Thursday is closer to the weekend so you can say it is “almost” the weekend. What song could me memorable about a Tuesday, the only one I can remember is Tuesday afternoon by the Moody Blues. Awe but then there is Friday, it doesn’t even have to be in the title but so many songs can set the mood. I turned on iTunes radio and set it to play 70’s retro FM play list. Everything from BTO, Aerosmith, to “Hey Jude” from the Beatles seems to fit. Could it be the music or the day? I mean, my boss took the day off, all my project deliverables are completed or waiting on my boss. Could it be that it is just a good day, and no music could ruin that, but it sure is making it better?

Lets be honest, there are not many things I can say we can’t live without. Food, water, shelter from the cold, the last one only counts if you live somewhere that gets cold. Along the equator I could live without the shelter but it sure would stink to not have somewhere to live. So really what is so important that we can’t live without them? If we change that statement to things that make our current life style possible then there are a few which come to mind.

1.The microwave. Nothing says modern culture like the microwave, where would we be without the ability to warm up our lunches to molten lava in less than two minutes. Eating lunch at my desk while I work would not be possible and the skin on the roof of my mouth would not be scared from the edge bites of a frozen burritos.

2.Cell phones. Not just the phone but the smart phone, which allows us to be in constant contact with all the people we wish would not call us. The new digital leash allows me to find out just where my kids are by GPS at any moment of the day. I can tell you I would not have survived if my parents had this technology.

3.Social media.  Never in the history of man have so many people had so little to say! I love to see what people are up to and I am hooked on finding out the latest news. Those come between the game requests and calls to repost something less I be thought not a Christian, conservative, or cat lover!

Our lunch room refrigerator has an all glass door. This is probably to keep us from filling it with garbage or letting it get too dirty, but it also allows for all of us to admire the social setting that is the office frig. As I take my measly lean cuisine in a Walmart bag and try to place it among the other lunches these are a few of my observations.

1.       The perfect salad maker. This lady spends more time on making her lunch than I do getting to work. This thing is a piece of art. The chicken and avocado are arranged like it is meant for a photo shoot. Salad dressing is in a container to the side as to not wreck the perfect setting. Even the wooden bowl she uses adds to the effect. The lettuce is never iceberg that would ruin the color filled glory. And how she finds perfect strawberries in the middle of winter I will never know. No matter how full the frig is there is always room for that salad right up front.

2.       The pizza box bringer. There is always room on top of all the other lunches for a full size pizza box. Even if there is only one piece in the box it is still easier than finding some way else to transport it to work. I sometimes wonder if I brought my lunch every day in a pizza box I would at least be able to get it in the frig.

3.       The condiment keeper. No matter how many times you go to Taco Bell it there will never enough to just throw away the taco sauce. Little caches of ketchup, mustard, honey and butter live on like a science experiment. These and the salad dressing and other condiments left from potlucks that are never classified as to public or private use grow and grow until a brave soul makes the move to either leave them by the sink or just toss them into the trash along with the mystery Tupperware.

I was talking to my mother on the phone this weekend about new cars. When we mentioned the price she told me that was almost twice what she and my dad paid for their first house. I can’t even begin to fathom that! Just 40 plus years ago a house cost less than what a car cost today! My memories of that house are that it was a nice home in a middle class neighborhood, you couldn’t even buy a burned out shack in East Los Angeles for that price anymore. Anybody else remember 5 ¢ ice cream at Thrifty’s?  Sure they had only 4 flavors but it was cold and full of sugar. How about coffee? I saw an old sign for sale that was an advertisement for 10 ¢ coffee. At this point I feel like I should be telling some kid to get off my lawn! Getting older doesn’t suck because I am older; it sucks because I remember better times. Yeah, I love that I have the internet in my pocket and my phone can tell me my heart rate, but I wish it all came with the innocence that we had with not having all this future stuff. Simpler times meant the only version of grand theft auto was a really bad Ron Howard film. Disney was a Sunday night show not multi twenty-four hour channel selections. Mostly thou, It meant not having to drive a car that is still from that era 30 years later!

I don’t typically get over excited over things at work. Are there things I think they are doing wrong? Yes, but no place is perfect and if you don’t pick your battles you end up in a fight with everyone. The old saying about being willing to fall on your sword is really true. There is a young man who is on a project I am working on and he is making Custer’s last stand over something that he just isn’t going to win. The louder and harder he fights the bigger the pile of boulders that are about to land on him. I wish him all the best in his next endeavor, it will be a tough lesson to learn but I had to learn it the hard way as well. We all at times feel like Don Quixote, the only voice that is speaking right against a giant wrong. The problem is never whether it is true or not, sometimes it is the way we go about trying to change the situation sometimes it is the amount of company credibility we have. What we usually don’t look at is the consequences. Even if all the planets align, we still have to be willing to have the outcome be loading boxes of your stuff from you cube into your car and driving away! I learned this a while back and it took me quite a while to land on my feet after it was over. So I probably won’t be making any stands for a long while, the old wounds still don’t feel totally healed!

Today starts the season of food! From now till the end of the year more and more desks at work will be covered with goodies. From the candy leftovers from yesterday to the Christmas cookies there won’t be enough miles left in my legs to run off the carbs I will consume in the next two months. The problem is knowing the rules for drive by eating. You know what I’m talking about? Things like, is it ok to go to other floors lunch rooms and scooping up potluck leftovers? How long into the party do you have to wait to enter the conference room and get a plate? How many times is too many to walk by the receptionist desk and take cookies? Is it different if it is candy? Is it rude to just dig out the nuts I like from the bowl. I really need to figure these things out before the season gets away from me!