• A little piece of the subway brought to suburbia

    My office is in the very back of our office complex. My office window does not face any of the other buildings. There is one, mostly deserted sidewalk, between my office and Tampa Bay.

    Can someone tell me why there is a man with an empty wicker basket, playing saxophone outside my office window?

    He’s really quite good; but since there is an empty training suite below me, many of my co-workers are out of the office, and no one is walking on that sidewalk – all that effort is just for me, and I don’t have and cash on me. His music sounds somewhat sad. There’s a hopeless quality to it which is all the more appropriate, based on where he’s chosen to play.

  • When the same thing isn’t any different

    You own a bicycle. You ride and maintain it yourself for fourteen years. One day you ride to work and discover a problem. You put a band-aid on it and let it go at that. A week later you find another problem and you apply another band-aid. This goes on for two months, and you finally decide that you just don’t want to deal with it all yourself right now. You take your bike to the shop for more permanent repairs. Two hundred dollars gets you two rebuilt wheels, new rear brakes with a new cable, a new rear cassette and a new chain. The next day you ride your bike to work, for some reason expecting the bike to feel different.

    It doesn’t.

    It’s not that the problems weren’t fixed, it’s just that two hundred dollars didn’t buy you a new bicycle (even if it was a lot cheaper).

  • Filing the void

    Since late last night I’ve felt empty inside. I woke several times during the night; the feeling was always there. This morning I followed the normal routine, I woke up, I packed my work clothes, and I rode my bike to work. The empty feeling did not go away. If anything, it was worse. Something was clearly missing. Then I ate breakfast and everything was O.K. again.