A slow slow day

[murakozi]

It's the Friday before a long weekend and it's dead here at work. Vacations, business travel, an annual corporate meeting out of state, and the recent layoffs mean that I'm the only person in my group in here today. There are maybe five people total at this end of the building. Today is the last day for two of them so they disappeared on a long lunch and have been futzing around elsewhere all day. It's danged quiet and the day is dragging. Twice now, I've gone over to the water cooler in an empty office to refill my water bottle and ended up spending 5-10 minutes just watching the planes take off and land across the street at Dulles.


I knew we'd be getting a new arrival at the barn last week. Turns out we got two. Two new boarded horses moved in. One is an unregisterd QH mare who somehow still has an AQHA registered name of Raindrops on Roses. They just call her Rain. She's on the smallish side for a quarterhorse and is a sorrel switching to roan-ish color on her underside. The other new addition is a thoroughbred gelding named Jasper. He's pretty young and apparently was bought off the track and ended up a rescue horse. Both of them are pretty friendly and seem to have decent stall manners. Rain is supposed to be extremely green and Jasper has had zero training other than the minimal stuff he got to be a racehorse. Hafta see how they work out.


Anyone who knows me well knows that I love old tv shows. I'd rather watch Mr. Ed for an hour than 90 percent of the shows currently on the air. Now one of the shows I really like is Dragnet. The second, color version of it, not the original black and white ones you can't see anywhere anymore. I don't like it for the great acting, engaging storylines or realistic portrayal of police life/work. Mostly because it has none of those things. Instead I love it because it shows Jack Webb's dated (even for the time) whitebread view of the world as he wishes it exists. That and the fact that everybody takes definite turns talking. Anyhoo, I mention Dragnet because, while on the web this morning, I found a link to a Microsoft site that explains to parents some of that weird language their kids might find on the net:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspx

I'm not saying anything negative about the page. Nothing wrong with the info or presentation there. However, just knowing that Microsoft is the one presenting it makes me think of Sgt. Friday explaining the language and culture of criminals, drug users, and hippies on Dragnet. It reminds me of the first color "Blue Boy' episode, involving LSD, wherein Friday goes on about Travel Agents.*



The day is really dragging. I wonder if I can sneak out of here early.


*Friday talks bout how LSD users call getting high 'going on a trip'and how they go to a pusher, which they call a 'travel agent' to purchase their drugs, called a 'ticket.' I'd heard of trip and tripping and all, but never the other two. Since I was born in the 60's and had no direct experience with the terms at the time, I asked older friends and coworkers, one of whom definitely had been a hippie. None of 'em had ever heard the 'ticket' or 'travel agent' things. Maybe it was just a Los Angeles area thing. Or maybe it was just something Jack Webb made up.