a slice of happy...

Suggested soundtrack: "Aquarius/Let the sunshine in" by The Fifth Dimension



I finally found something cool about the office where I work. It's the walk to lunch.
There's a Subway sandwich shop less than a mile from the office. I go there for lunch usually, and read a bit while I eat my Spicy Italian sub. Mmm. After the first couple of car trips, I realized that it might be better to walk.
The downside is, it's about 104 degrees here during the day. So I didn't expect the walk to be pleasant. But I had to give it a shot, for the following reasons:
- I'm used to a working environment where I am on my feet constantly, and this sedentary new venture is a (literal) pain in my ass. It might have something to do with the 22-hour car trip (see below) that I don't think I've fully recovered from: every time I sit for long periods of time, or more than a half hour in a car, my right leg starts to hurt real, real bad. It gets more pronounced and painful as time wears on, so at the office I'll simply stand up for a minute. In traffic, I go insane from it and turn into an asshole. Which is a roundabout way of saying that I am sick of sitting for four hours, then sitting in a car, then sitting and eating, then sitting in a car again, then sitting back down for another four hours. I gotta throw some actual movement in there.
-A man can only take fluorescent lighting, canned air, mindless chatter and no music for so long.
-The longer it takes to get to Subway, the more time I have to wind down and listen to music. The drive gets in one half of one song, max. If I were to walk, who knows how many songs I can listen to?
-My car's A/C takes a minute to get going. It takes one minute to drive to Subway. So I might as well be outside, right?

Off I went. I had my iPod going, my shirt untucked, and the sun in my eyes. The Subway was around the corner, across the street. The side of the street I work on has no sidewalk. I crossed the street, fully exposed to our closest star, in what was to become the only real hot portion of the walk. Because on the other side, there was a little sidewalk I had not noticed before. It ran between two twin rows of shade trees. The entire walk was shaded! I was cool as a cucumber, stretchin' my shit out, listening to Stevie Wonder and loving life. Thus began a tradition (if something I've done 6 times to date can be considered tradition).
I get alone time, which is nice. I see things that other people in the office never will. I see lots of bugs. My friends the fire ants pop up here and there. Of winged insects there are no shortage: butterflies galore, dragonflies, and the occasional yellowjacket, who tend to buzz around my ankles for a few yards before flying off to do whatever it is that yellowjackets do besides scaring the crap out of me. Huge mushrooms grow out low and flat in places the sun doesn't reach.One time, I got to see a little bird with a long beak nab a dragonfly out of the sky. He landed, set it down and gave it a peck, only to have it fly off. He quickly re-caught the fat green insect as it landed on a leaf, went back to the ground and pecked it twice. Problem solved. As I watched, singing "The Circle of Life" to myself, I realized that although I am not very happy with most of the aspects of my life right now, this walk is mine, and mine alone, and as long as I'm working here I'll have the walk to keep me the slightly sane and tolerably happy.
It's almost like being on my bike, which always made me feel like I was getting more out of travel than anyone in a car was. For instance yesterday, as I thought to myself that there are more and more dead leaves and acorns on the ground with each passing day, a brief but powerful wind kicked up in the middle of what had been a perfectly calm day. For close to a minute, all of the trees waved, letting loose a rain of leaves that poured out sideways and flew in circles, little tornadoes of leaves, as far as I could see, going up and down and around, getting in my hair, smacking into my face, while the leaves already on the ground skidded along like a moving carpet. It me want to spin in circles with my arms outstretched. Instead, I just took it all in, and when it was over, when all the leaves had settled on the ground and the road and the sidewalk, I smiled and looked at the cars driving by and thought: "Suckers."

Until next time...