Todd Stadler's blog

Random thought while at work #82459

You know what country I really wish existed? Non Sequitorial Guinea.

Like its near-namesake, it would be a small African country. In contrast, however, there would be yogurt. Lots and lots of yogurt.

When you'd land at the airport, you would be greeted, "Welcome to Non Sequitorial Guinea. I had fish for dinner last night. Hippopotamuses are more aggressive than you'd think." And then someone would hand you a shoehorn.

It would be a laid-back country, because nothing would ever get done. But it would also for that reason be a relaxing vacation destination. And the leading producer of mouse pads.

A new definition of 'free'?

Last week, while I was hanging out at the airport waiting to pick up Oakland Todd, I noticed some young men in suits handing out literature.

You can always tell such people are religiously affiliated, because pretty much no one else in an airport (1) wears suits and (2) just stands around. Business people wear suits, true, but they're always rushing somewhere with their wheeled luggage or staring deeply into a laptop screen. And, yes, there are those people in airports who never seem to be in a hurry to get anywhere (I'm looking at you, luggage cart people), but they're never wearing suits.

Even though I'm religious myself and in favor of people sharing what they believe, I tend to ignore such well-dressed loiterers for the reason I assume most people do: when I'm at the airport, I'm going somewhere, not hanging around looking for a philosophical discussion.

But on this particular day, I wasn't going anywhere, and the light rail schedule had conspired to drop me off at the airport quite a bit before my friend's plane arrived, so I found myself in the unique position of looking for something to do, someone to talk to ... like, say, that Jehovah's Witness over there near the escalators.

It's not that I was particularly eager to have him tell me about his faith, given that I find that my Lutheran understanding of Christianity meets my needs and answers my questions, and from what I know of the Jehovah's Witnesses' teaching ... well, not so much. If anything, I was pondering the irony of talking to him about my faith, he being a captive audience and yet likely predisposed to discussions about God and all.

But I was mainly motivated by the desire to just talk to him, find out how it's going, what's up, what he thinks, hello, and so on. It's too easy — again, even for a Christian like me — to view religious solicitors as inhuman monoliths of dogma, wanting nothing more than to shoot down your views with a sharp retort and notch invisible points on their allegorical stone tablet. Um, or something like that.

So I walked up and shook his hand. Judging by his reaction, I'd guess this doesn't happen a lot in his line of work. Heck, it doesn't happen much in my line of work — or leisure! — either.

I asked him how things had gone that day, how he came to be there, and things like that. It was all unremarkable small talk until he mentioned the particular hurdles involved in getting permission to stand around in an airport.

I guess I'd never thought much about it, but I was surprised that you couldn't just show up at the airport and stand there. I mean, you can, but only if your purpose is solely to stand there, waiting to go somewhere. And, if while you're waiting, you happen to talk to people, that's fine. But, he explained, if you show up with the express intent of standing there and hoping to talk to people, then you need a permit.

"Ha!" I said to him, "Like some sort of 'free speech permit' or something?" Chuckle.

And then he took out a piece of paper from his suit pocket and unfolded it. At the top, it read "Permit for the Exercise of Free Speech". Oh.

I guess I'm some kind of naive free-love hippie to think that a permit for free speech seems ... oh, I don't know, a bit odd. I can think of some reasons why one would want a permit system, sure. And I'm not even sure how public the airport is, really, that just anyone would be able to get a permit to, ahem, speak freely there.

Still, a permit system implies that there are reasons one's application could be rejected. Reasons that you wouldn't be allowed to exercise your free speech, as it were. I don't like that.

But my thoughts on police states and civil liberties suddenly came to an end when Oakland Todd called my mobile phone, trying to figure out where I was. To my Jehovah's Witness friend, it might have seemed that I simply got tired of chatting with him, since my set-to-vibrate phone gave no obvious indication that it was ringing, prompting me to quickly end our conversation.

And so I leave you with this thought: aren't mobile phones cool?

Hello from the sick bed

Okay, technically, I'm writing this from the sick couch (I got tired of the sick bed hours ago).

And while I was sitting on said couch, pondering how boring it is to be sick and sit around all day, I thought, "You know what else is boring? My blog!" And what better way to make a blog less boring than by perfunctorily writing a possibly-sickness-haze-induced stream-of-consciousness state-of-my-gastrointestinal-tract screed that is in danger of violating some ethical code regarding hyphenated words? Indeed.

So, the story so far: I got sick* some time on Tuesday (technically, some times) but powered through work until I couldn't take it no more.

This wasn't so much a sign of my steely dedication to work, but rather an indication of how much I feared the bus ride home. Because the only thing worse than being sick* in the relative comfort of your office bathroom is being sick* in the absolute discomfort that is the the back of a bus — I mean, someone could blog about how gross it was that someone else got sick* on their bus and that would be me and then the whole blogosphere would know that I got sick* and how embarrassing would that be**?

Anyhow, I came home, found out I had a fever, and Julia convinced me to call in sick Wednesday, which I did. However, as these things happen, I wasn't nearly as sick* the day I stayed home as the day before — I merely felt achy and crappy all day. But! I somehow managed to avoid watching daytime TV, which likely was one of the reasons I felt better by the end of the day.

Which was a good thing, since my friend Todd (one of at least three non-me Todds I know, and as such a.k.a. "Oakland Todd") arrived in town Wednesday night to speak at the Web Visions conference. (The conference being cheapskates and only paying for Thursday night at a hotel, he got to spend Wednesday night at Le Hotel Stadlere, which, frankly, is no Radisson if you know what I mean.)

Anyhow, it was good to get to hang out with Todd, who I feel like I know quite well through various blogs, though it turns out we probably doubled our cumulative face-to-face discussion time on Wednesday night. Still, I have two friend-of-a-friend routes to Todd, and if social networking sites have taught me nothing (and they have), it's that such a connection means Todd and I share a lot in common (though hopefully not my sickness) and I trust his opinions. Which is true, even if it came off snarky. Message: good times.

Having enjoyed the social atmosphere so much, I concluded two things. First, that I was over my sickness and could go in to work Thursday. Second, that it would be fun to get up with early birds Todd (not me) and Julia and all ride the bus downtown together. Both conclusions would ultimately prove wrong.

Okay, getting up at 6 a.m. wasn't actually that bad. In fact, it was even educational — why, did you know that the sun is already up then, and so are a lot of people, all of whom were apparently riding the #4 bus to downtown! You'd think that, it being so early, people would be pretty lackadaisical about getting on the bus ("Oh, hey, the bus is kind of full ... dude, I'll just catch another bus ... I've got time ... it's, like, way early, you know?"), but no. Still, more time to hang out with Todd (again, not me).

It's indicative of either how early I got up or how late I normally get in to work that, even while walking around downtown with Oakland Todd for a bit, I still managed to get in to work more than an hour before I usually do. Most people in the office weren't in yet, the sun was shining, I was looking forward to the work I had to do, the birds were singing, ... and I got sick† again.

And so I schlepped home on the bus, this time right after I got sick† so as to minimize the chance of my getting sick† en route. And then back in bed. Or on the couch. You know, to change things up, keep them from getting stale.

I can't remember if I had a point when I began all this, but there you go.

*Notice how I'm not telling you how I "got sick" — in fact, I'm using the phrase to indicate that, while I was in fact sick at all times chronicled, there were certain times I made it externally obvious. That (minor) obscuring of this illness manifestation is what passes for decorum on blogs these days. And yet, I respect the public's right to know everything else about me, provided I'm not too lazy to write about it, which I usually am.

**Oh yes, that subtle scent you smell is, in fact, irony.

†No asterisk here — this was a different manner of sickness! And yet, by not going that small extra step to specify exactly how I was sick, I maintain that I'm keeping it "clean", "family-friendly", "for the kids".