“Never a dull moment,” indeed!

To avoid naming names of people, places or institutions, I invite you to imagine the following scenario:

You work at a place where brilliant, creative people – artist-musician-dancer-engineer crossbreeds – make cool things.

So you’re on your way to work one day, and when you get to your destination street, you see a bunch of cops and emergency vehicles crowded around the upcoming intersection. You think nothing of it. This is America. A clusterf*ck of cops and emergency vehicles is not an unusual sight.

You get upstairs to your meeting. Most everyone’s already there, except for the person leading the meeting. Then he calls someone in the room to say that he’s been delayed a few minutes, go ahead and get the meeting started.

He finally enters the room, replete with casual yet apologetic haste. He’s late, he explains, because he’d encountered an “incident” on his way in that “involved one of our people,” so he stopped and talked to the detectives to help sort it all out.

Uh….

It turns out that “one of our people” had left his cool-thing-in-progress on the street momentarily, but in that moment (of course), a passer-by found it. Police cars, fire engines and bomb squads arrived. In the end, the authoritative involvement included two cities. The intersection remained closed off for several hours, diverting traffic. News reporters entered the fray. Also, implementing communications safety procedures developed in the aftermath of tragedies at several universities in the nation, university officials alerted the entire community of students, faculty and staff on their cell phones, cautioning everyone to stay inside until an “all clear” was issued.

All because our guy’s project – a kind of animated sculpture resembling a round device with lights and flexible parts and whatnot, I don’t know exactly what – had been left in a box next to a parking meter, an unfortunate happenstance. What are the odds? And what are the odds that the exact person who could un-kerfuffle the whole thing happened to stroll through that intersection on his way to our meeting?

If you can imagine all this, you’ll know I’m not exaggerating when I say that I have an exceptionally un-boring job, as far as office jobs go. (It’s especially impossible to be bored when you go home to another creative genius.)

And on that note, I’m off to get ready for the day, which begins with taking Callaghan’s father to the airport. We’d capped off his visit from France with a side-trip to California to spend time with my parents over the holiday (Memorial Day) weekend. Our month of hosting house-guests has wound down to an end! It was fun, but I have to admit, it’s good to get back to a routine. I like routines.

 

The Ronnie James routine.

The Ronnie James routine.

 

So does the Wrah-Wrah.

It’s Labor Day! Let’s All Do a Whole Lot… of Nothing.

Today is the first Monday of September, which means that it’s Labor Day here in the States (and in Canada too, I think). The holiday celebrates workers, and its meaning is to rest. It also means that we – Callaghan and I – have no idea whether we should actually expect our huge house-shipping-from-France arrival event to happen today, as the shipping company had given us the awkward holiday weekend delivery window of Saturday through tomorrow.

How does it work with truckers and others whose jobs take them on the road for extended periods of time? Do they look at their little calendars on the dashboard and go, “Okay, it’s time to check into a motel!” and then sit there for 24 hours until it isn’t Labor Day anymore? Or do they just plow through the holiday, disregarding it completely? That wouldn’t seem fair. No one should have to work on Labor Day.

Or, as a former boss of mine used to sort of joke, people should actually work extra hard on Labor Day, a viewpoint shared by this guy:

 

KimJongNumberUnTwitterFeedCaptureLaborDay2013

 

It’s interesting how the way we think about work seems to be a reflection of what we do in life.

For example, yesterday, Callaghan was telling me about his friend who owns a restaurant in France.

“He’s a nice guy, but he’s not the best person for his job,” he said. “He should actually move to Costa Rica.”

“Why Costa Rica?” I asked, intrigued as always.

“Because he’s a sloth. He’s… very relaxed.” He went on to describe the guy’s slowness in bringing water and bread to the tables.

But of course! Only an artist/illustrator/cartoonist could so naturally reach such a conclusion. Leave it to Callaghan to get me forming mental images of sloths working in restaurants, balancing drink trays and platters of food on the ends of their long arms.

Anyway, have a great Labor Day! I don’t know what you’re doing, but we’re planning a Breaking Bad marathon… because we’re addicted. Har har!