Little things at workplace that make you smile

1. A late afternoon meeting gets cancelled at the last minute.
Frown: The meeting was to discuss your raise or promotion.

2. Boss's car dies on his driveway on Monday morning.
Frown: Boss calls you for a ride.

3. Office loud-mouth/motor-mouth gets a sore throat.
Frown: The raspy voice sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

4. Sore throat continues for several days
Frown: Actually YOU are the office loud-mouth.

5. Free treats courtesy of coworkers.
Frown: When you are on a diet.

6. A stroke of luck in the form of free coffee from the vending machine.
Frown: To the person right after you.

7. Unscheduled fire drills during spring or summer.
Frown: The loud fire alarm woke you up from your power nap.


Please help me add more.

The Art of (Not so) Small-Talk

You are on your way to start your work day, with a million and three things on your mind. Entering the elevator, absently you press the button for your floor and this vaguely familiar dude accosts you with a broad grin:
"Good Morning!"
and you reciprocate the nice gesture:
"Morning!"
alarm bells have only just begun to go off in your head, when he springs the next shot with practiced ease:
"How are you doing?" or "How's it goin'?"

I dont know about you, but this question has stumped me countless times, leaving my tongue twisted around all possible responses. And I end up doing the verbal equivalent of trip and fall flat on the face.

What are you supposed to say?
"I am good" or "I am fine"?
Should you, or shouldn't you follow it up with the same query for his sake or maybe even add a question or comment about something else? What can that something else be?

By now you are wondering whether you have the time to cram it all into a response and do so before one of you exits the elevator. More often than not, by this time your pulse has jumped 20 points and you are a mumbling mess. You can feel your brain churning at the imperceptibly slow pace of solidifying lava. You actually want to believe that it is working.

If however you are a pro of small-talk you respond to that question, ask the same of him and also throw in a comment about the weather or the Football game last night. And you do all that with the glib ease of a snail slithering smoothly over a rough surface, albeit faster.

The rest of us are however cowering before the lurking masters of small-talk. Its like entering the Dojo as a novice and having to fend off the onslaught of a Black-belt on the very first day. But there is no respite. The grand masters of short order verbal wizardry are everywhere. In elevators, water-coolers, hallways, bus-stops, at the bank or waiting in the check-out line - you name it.

I have tried all kinds of behaviors in response. The muttered-under-the breath reply worked for a couple times, before the more energetic small-talkers cued in and turned the knife once more: "What was that?" (with a winning smile).
A practiced "I'm good how are you?" was frequently so long that it was still going on when the other fellow had already disappeared around a corner.
I tried being rude and sought to suppress all banter by giving no replies or only grunted ones, but pro-small-talkers are an irrepressible lot.

Finally I decided to just give in! There would be days when I can come up with a decent reply and then there would be those other days, when my tongue would trip me over every syllable to the amusement of my assailant who just ambushed me. It is easier to trip and fall than to worry about it endlessly :-)

And here she is!!

The moods of weather are mercurial, to say the least. Yesterday it felt like a sauna, but the rains overnight changed all that.

We just met Autumn of 2007. Not much has changed really in the scenery to suggest that, but the cool damp feel of Autumn is very much here, and this time, she seems to want to stay.

If the seasons were all feminine, then Summer would be a mother - verdant and fertile though short-tempered at times, Spring an ebullient young child and winter an old grandma with flowing white hair sometimes grumpy but glorious nonetheless.

Fall would definitely be a raven haired dark eyed lady, forever young and beautiful at heart, artistic and creative in all her expressions. You can easily picture her smiling eyes looking into the depths of your soul and seeing you in a way that you feel good about just being yourself and smile with her. Wearing myriad beads, trinkets and a long flowing skirt with shades of bright crimson, peach, orange and gold she sashays around stoically with a calm dignity. Now and then you catch the golden sun gleaming in her hair or shining through her beads. The moods of the moment are a quiet reserve and noble poise.

While all my entreaties to mom summer to leave and make way for lady Autumn were met with scorching episodes, I know that if I try to make her overstay, grandma winter might have a rather frigid reaction. Besides she starts getting bored and listless after a while and begins to long for faraway lands. Fickleness of temperament is part of her being.

So, enjoy her company while she stays.

O Fall Where Art Thou

Is it autumn yet? Evidently not!
Where are the misty mornings and crisp cool afternoons, when bright sunlight feels nice and warm. There is no gloominess in its cool weather; even the breezy and sometimes wet evenings are very pleasing. Fall signifies the good- even beautiful side of cooler weather after the sticky heat and humidity of summer.

Autumn brings a lot! Crisp sweet apples, fresh hot apple cider infused with cinnamon. Nature putting up a transient show in vibrant colors. The flavor of change all around excites the heart and pleases the soul.

Light jackets suffice to ward off mildly chilly winds. The impending gloom of snow, slush and parkas seems so far away as to not even feel imminent.

Its September and still mercilessly hot and humid. Summer still goes on in all its splendor, way past its departure date. The heat is turning some leaves prematurely brown, bypassing all possibility of exuberence in their free lives. The sun shines on. Lovers of warm weather continue to enjoy these last few days of it for this year. But I am done with summer.

O' Fall where art thou!! I am ready for you!!

A slightly happier Monday

There she was - a small yellow bird, looking ever so tiny on the black asphalt street. Now I can easily conjure up her image as listless, jaded, mourning a loss or even suicidal, but avian facial expressions have never been my forte.

Not that I have never seen a bird sitting on a street, but usually they comply with the norms of bird-hood, and fly away for dear life at the approach of danger in the form of a lumbering being. But this particular feathered friend - a Finch - didn’t flinch at all, even when my heavy boot came within a few inches (few feet actually) of it.
This puzzled me no end. I tried various tactics to make it fly to safety. Stomped around noisily, approached it from the front and even waved my hands about to shoo it away, but all to no avail. She just sat there, as if bent upon giving me the silent treatment.

Now, had this been a low-traffic pedestrain walkway, I could have just let her be. Nobody would accidentally or intentionally cause harm to a tweety bird look alike would they? But she actually sat near the entry-way to a parking ramp. Pretty soon, a couple hundred cars will try to enter the ramp, trying to secure a spot.
I was alarmed. There had to be a way to get her off the street.

I stooped down, precariously balancing my lunch bag and coffee cup and offered my black notebook, to her, hoping that she would hop onto the magic carpet laid out before her, so she could swiftly be transported to safety. But she wouldn’t budge. By now I could see more cars approaching and realized that something needed to be done, and soon.

Gingerly I brought a finger forward and touched the side of her frail body gently, and at the same time, began to entertain the quite disturbing notion that I would have to pick her up between my fingers to save her life. But what if my brutish handling crushed her delicate body? I cringed at the thought.

Now would be the perfect time for any one of the myriad feminine people in my life to show up for the rescue. I have always found women to be very excellent in all matters pertaining to rescue, rescucitation and revival of all kinds of little beings. But alas, time and distance separated all of them from the current situation. I realized uneasily that this was something that I would have to handle on my own. I couldn’t walk away either as I was much too involved in this.

A stroke of genius!!! I knew why she didn’t climb on my notebook to ride to safety. The beastly thing was too high for her, being all of half an inch thick. I understood it all too perfectly now. In my epihpany, I tore a page from the notebook and tried to slide it under the bird's feet.
What happened next caught me completely by surprise. I was expecting the same stoic and static response from her, but just as the paper touched her little feet, she hopped up and flew straight into my legs covered by jeans. As she flailed and flapped around, startled, I also did the fleet-footed tap dance of the bumbling oaf.

It was providential intervention that saved the little thing and it finally settled down on a spot not too far away from its original perch.
As my nerves calmed, I had a surge of confidence. I had at least managed to evoke some kind of a reaction from the bird. Repeating this, maybe I could direct her to a safe spot, assuming that I didn’t panic into another elephant stampede in the process. I curved the paper until it looked like a kind of sail and using the lower edge of it, I nudged the feet of the bird again. This time however, Miss Finch nonchalantly flew away to the safety of some bushes on the street-side, like it was the most natural thing to do.

I was a bit perplexed that the situation suddenly resolved so simply, and yet was thoroughly relieved at the outcome.
I stood there for several seconds, to ensure that she was staying put in the bushes and wasn’t actually planning to resume her suicidal quest.

She stayed put. At least as long as I watched.

Here I begin

After eons of simultaneously decrying the emotional exhibitionism of online journals, yet secretly enjoying reading others' I too am here. Procrastination and inertia played their respective roles as well (not that the world was holding it's breath ;-) ).
Let's see where I get.