Office Moshpit

Today after work, I went over to the gym in the next building that's free for all of the local cube dwellers. When I came back to the office, I had my headphones in my ears with Bad Religion blaring way too loud. They've been doing a lot of construction on my floor lately, including the removal of a great many walls, leaving behind a huge open area that will probably house even more cubes in the days to come. I was walking through this giant open area with my music going, and I suddenly had this incredibly clear vision of a moshpit full of my coworkers right there in the middle of the office floor, all of them dressed just as they do on any normal workday. It lasted for all of a second and then it was gone. Even the volume of the music seemed slightly lower as I walked back to my desk.

I know I mentioned a couple of posts back that it'd be nice to live in a kinder world, and it would. But I also like the idea of a world where moshpits occasionally break out in the middle of cube farms.

Good morning, time to get up and go to work

So after a much too brief leave of absence, I returned to work the last half of this week. To say that I was super-excited to be back at the grind would be a great big stinker of a lie. Being OOTO (that's "Out Of The Office" for you non-office types, not "Off Over The Ozarks" like you were thinking) for so long caused me to get used to spending my days engaged in a variety of simple yet satisfying activities, things like playing outside with Henry, enjoying the cooing and gurgling that can emanate only from a newborn, blatantly ogling my wife, not shaving, practicing my juggling. It's a good life. Oh, and I conducted an experiment to test the depths of Simon's stay-asleep-itude, inspired by my amazement at the sight of a newborn baby who actually likes to sleep. Henry took a staunch anti-sleep stance in his first months on this planet, so much so that we couldn't even lay him down without him letting loose with a blast of screams. We actually managed to bottle some of those screams and sent them off to a lab where a team of mathematicians, linguists, and anthropologists translated them into English for us, so now we know that all that screaming was just Henry's way of asking, "GOD, WHY DO I HAVE SUCH SHITTY PARENTS?!" But lo these two years and some change later, the great Simon experiment of 2008 boldly asks the question, "Will he, in fact, stay asleep while his father hammers nails into a wall in the very same room?" Turns out, yeah, he will...I got a whole wall full of pictures hung, and not a single baby dream was disturbed.

But it was back to work for me this week, so that kind of fun has to be relegated back to evenings, weekends, and the occasional day worked from home. I was so not eager to be back that I halfway snapped at the first person who started with the litany of baby questions. Not that I don't love talking about my kids, it's just that it was 8:00 and I was NOT in my pajamas. That can be hard on a sensitive soul like me. So I spent the last couple of days repeatedly answering The Series of Standard New Baby Questions, which was pretty cool. I'm pretty happy to ramble about my kids given half a chance. Plus I grew a beard while I was out, so I had a lot of people point out to me that I had a beard. "Holy crap dude, you got a beard! And it's growing RIGHT OUT OF YOUR FACE!"

The human animal's powers of observation never cease to awe and inspire.

Recommended for all ages

A wicked storm did blow over the little town of Austin today, and yea but a mighty bolt of lightning from the heavens did strike a transformer near mine office building. Were that transformer autobot or decepticon I know not, but I tell ye now that every bit of illumination within the walls of mine office building, both fluorescent light and computer monitor alike, did fall into darkness in one fell swoop. And lo but the cubicle dwellers did cry out in anguish, their howls of torment reaching up, up, ever heavenward towards a God that cared not if their documents were saved or if they were lost.

So that was one of the more interesting parts of my workday. I'll stop talking like that now.

I arrived home to the greetings of a little boy who wanted to play some chase. This is our game ever since Henry started running, chasing each other from one end of the condo to another. Who's chasing who changes fluidly and without hesitation. When GooGoo's chasing me, it often turns into hide n' seek, with me hiding and him finding me, always with a squeal of delight followed by lots of tickling. The dog seems to think it's his duty to narc me out when I'm hiding. Sellout.

Sidenote: my kid is running. With speed and reckless abandon. Holy cheezburger.

The games of chase have taken a difficult turn as of late, though. Difficult for me, anyway. See, for a while there, GooGoo liked to chase after me while pulling or pushing one of his pull or push toys. Now though, he demands that I pull or push the toy while I chase him. And seeing as how those things are designed for people around the 2 foot height range, I find myself running around while hunched over quite a bit. Not so great for the back.

But lo, it does make the boy child happy.