Seminars . . .

Hi everyone! Thank-you for your response with my last Blog, ABBA - Supergroup or tasty fish eggs that come in a tube at Ikea . . .

The last little while I have been attending seminars and meetings. Sometimes I wonder if these folks all go to the same seminars and meetings too. They all speak the same seminar-babble. We have to engage people; we have to use Best Practices, we should assess intrinsically - not extrinsically, etc, etc. etc. Sometimes you're allowed to bring a laptop to the seminar. This means that you can look engaged at the seminar, while at the same time you can be texting your friend (if you have them), playing Solitaire, check your email, and maybe have a nap if you can sleep and sit at the same time.

One time when I worked for the city - we had to jackhammer a hole in a street in front of the City Market. The City Market is gone now - it got demolished so that retired gangsters could have a place to live. At any rate, we got there about 6AM and noticed an old man sitting on the bus bench waiting for his bus to come. As the day went along we noticed that people would sit down by the guy and then they would get on their bus and the old man would stay behind. Finally, it was about 2PM and I told my boss about this guy. He told me to stop jackhammering because I stuttered when I talked. After I stopped stuttering, he told me to go over and check the old guy. It turns out he was dead. When the coroner guy came he said the old guy probably died of exposure. It was summer and quite warm and I couldn't understand how he could have died of hypothermia. He said alot of these old guys are alcoholics and don't eat when they are drinking. Our bodies need food to convert to energy and in fact body temperature and warmth.

I wonder what people would have thought if they knew they had sat by a dead guy that day? I hope my jack-hammering didn't disturb him and that he eventually got on the right bus . . . In a way this is kind of related to my October 30, 2007 post. Funny how the mind works . . . or doesn't work . . .

Stay tuned for my next Blog: Northern Pike: Bully of the Tundra - or, How to Start a Petting Zoo . . .