When Work is Fun

On Tuesday we finally got new registers at work. The old ones were horrendous and were referred to as "the abacai" (as in an abacus in multiples). The Tech guy casually said he was told to throw them away. My fellow Assistant Manger looked at me and said, "Do you have a baseball bat in your car?" I said, "No, but we do have a rubber mallet." And thus became the highlight of this job so far: hitting the crap out of the old registers. Be jealous.




The weapons, the victim, the place in to which the remains shall disappear forever. The "right" way to get rid of old registers at work...

Self-portrait of mid-swing with a rubber mallet. I was giggling the entire time and the Tech guy thought we were nuts.

Damage done, stress relieved. That was way more fun that I ever could have hoped for. 

Life in Two Parts

Act I:
This morning I woke up with a strange and clear image in my head. For some reason I was thinking about straight lines, and how, if enough of them are drawn in a very linear, very organized way, a circle forms. I was thinking about that parallel in life--how straight lines and circles are essentially opposites, and yet one can be formed from a collection of the other. How sometimes we set out so intent on one task and/or path that we look up and we've become/created the very antithesis of what we wanted. We've worked so hard to get somewhere we've just circumvented what we were fleeing. I am not thinking in specifics at all, it was just an observation.

Act II:
I went to Friday Night Live in Herndon a few weeks ago and was people watching like I tend to do. The kids struck me, because of how simple they make introductions and friendship. They see another child and a game forms. There is no awkward, "Hi my name is bla, what do you do for a living?" and obligatory personal space, introduction decorum to follow. It was refreshing. I do wish I could run up, tag someone and yell "you're it!" and just spontaneously have a game form. I think I'd take life, friendships, and time a little less seriously.

Limits of Language

Look at the title, that's what I'm thinking about.
While I was mowing the lawn on Sunday I began to think about this (Mowing the lawn is my philosophical equivalent to some people's showers: it's my thinking spot) . There are words and phrases that only hold their meaning within the context of a language and are lost in translation if ever they attempt the linguistic leap. That is tragic; to be lost in translation. To be floating around as the flotsam and jetsam of dialects, languages, times and verses, trapped in the adverbs and conjugations that come from translation. I feel so limited in my language. I was thinking about songs, and how so much of what is said in lyrics is said in rhyme, and how in another language the words that would rhyme are totally different, so that what can be expressed is going to be completely new to a foreign ear. "Me" is not going to always rhyme with "be" "see" or even "tree". I am not used to the words "Dog" and "closet" rhyming, but in another language it's possible that they could, and could be put together. It just blows my concepts of creation wide open. I feel ignorant and small.
I struggle so relentlessly within the confines of my own tongue; how can I begin to fathom the intricacies of another language? I remember reading that the well educated American knows and uses only a fraction of the English language: something like 10,000 words out of 500,000. Words are wonders to me; I guess I should be introduced to the words in my neighborhood before I leave to meet those of another tongue entirely.