Coffee Table Declarations
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
I wanted to write something a while ago but for the past half hour two young giggly college girls have been hovering near my desk. It turns out they are here with a college boy, whose father works here and the kids wanted to conduct some interviews with some of our employees for a class they are taking. Aw.
I hate to sound like I'm complaining, but something is wrong with my chair and I can't seem to fix it. You know how office chairs have all those fancy knobs and levers that do different things that can make the chair a perfect custom fit to your own personal ergonomic needs? Well all I can manage to do is make it go up and down. The problem I'm having is that my seat seems to be ever so slightly tipping forward so that all day I am sitting as though I might lunge head first toward my computer monitor at any moment. As you can imagine, this is unnerving, not to mention uncomfortable. The weird thing is, my chair was perfectly acceptable last week. Did someone come in and switch it over the weekend? Was someone sitting here messing with it? It's like that feeling when someone else has driven your car and the seat is in a different place and the rearview mirror is askew. It's things like this that can really throw you off.
This chair stuff is serious business. At my old company we were considering replacing all the office chairs which were old and worn out. A representative from a chair company came with a sample chair and gave a lengthy demonstration. I was one of his volunteers and I'm sure I sampled about 8000 potential chair positions. Not only that, but he showed us how to change everything. If you weren't taking notes, you were out of luck, there was no way you would remember it all. I need a chair specialist now.
I have one final thought for the day. Something weird happened on Sunday that was certainly not a mere coincidence, but doesn't make any sense. I was reading this book for the book club when I came to a line that said something about a friend named Alvin "but he preferred to be called Al". I was lying on my bed and at that exact moment I heard (as I often do) music playing in someone's car on the busy street below. It was loud and distinct and it gave me the chills. I'm not even making this up - the song playing was this. How often do you hear that song these days? What are the chances that I would hear that song at that exact moment? And what does it all mean?
I hate to sound like I'm complaining, but something is wrong with my chair and I can't seem to fix it. You know how office chairs have all those fancy knobs and levers that do different things that can make the chair a perfect custom fit to your own personal ergonomic needs? Well all I can manage to do is make it go up and down. The problem I'm having is that my seat seems to be ever so slightly tipping forward so that all day I am sitting as though I might lunge head first toward my computer monitor at any moment. As you can imagine, this is unnerving, not to mention uncomfortable. The weird thing is, my chair was perfectly acceptable last week. Did someone come in and switch it over the weekend? Was someone sitting here messing with it? It's like that feeling when someone else has driven your car and the seat is in a different place and the rearview mirror is askew. It's things like this that can really throw you off.
This chair stuff is serious business. At my old company we were considering replacing all the office chairs which were old and worn out. A representative from a chair company came with a sample chair and gave a lengthy demonstration. I was one of his volunteers and I'm sure I sampled about 8000 potential chair positions. Not only that, but he showed us how to change everything. If you weren't taking notes, you were out of luck, there was no way you would remember it all. I need a chair specialist now.
I have one final thought for the day. Something weird happened on Sunday that was certainly not a mere coincidence, but doesn't make any sense. I was reading this book for the book club when I came to a line that said something about a friend named Alvin "but he preferred to be called Al". I was lying on my bed and at that exact moment I heard (as I often do) music playing in someone's car on the busy street below. It was loud and distinct and it gave me the chills. I'm not even making this up - the song playing was this. How often do you hear that song these days? What are the chances that I would hear that song at that exact moment? And what does it all mean?
