Riding The Good News Wave

Tonight, at the end of a long work week, I got some great news.

What an impact good news can have!  The moment before, I was physically and mentally dragging; after the news I was charged with energy and felt as if I had been jolted with adrenalin.  Before, I had been gritting my teeth at the antics of the inconsiderate jerks on the road, but after I was filled with charity toward my fellow Friday evening motorists.  The music on the radio sounded so much sweeter, and the cold wet weather seemed much less miserable.

When I got home, I happily fed the dogs and was untroubled by Kasey’s incessant barking.  I kept a smile on my face even as I picked up, bagged, and tied off a stinky dump that Penny deposited as we went for a delightful evening stroll.

I wish I could bottle how it feels to get some really good news and share it with everyone.  I know that I can’t — so I guess I’ll just enjoy it for so long as it lasts.

The Space Heater Season

Today, in office buildings from sea to shining sea, men inevitably will be dealing with one of the most intractable problems known to nature.  For it’s February, and that means we’re in the midst of the space heater season.

The problem is straightforward.  The weather in February is awful and, worse, it’s unpredictable.  Maintenance staffs across the land will have heated their buildings to a entirely reasonable baseline temperature given the prevailing conditions outside.  For some people with two X chromosomes, however, that just isn’t good enough.  They’re too hot, or they’re too cold.  If they’re too hot, the windows get opened and cold air rushes in.  If they’re too cold — which seems to be a far more common condition — the space heaters get deployed.

A normally constituted man walking from office to office might move from a pleasant 70 degrees to meat locker conditions to equatorial heat in the space of 50 feet.  There is no way to dress properly for such conditions.  And if you are required to actually sit in one of the space heater offices, good luck to you.

The space heater is humming, its heating coils are blazing, and you feel the sweat beginning to trickle down the back of your neck.  Meanwhile the office’s occupant — who is probably wearing a sweater, to your amazement — yammers on, oblivious to the fact that conditions in their office are like those in the hot box used to punish disobedient prisoners of war in The Bridge on the River Kwai.  In short order you are focused solely on that suffocating heat, face flushed and nodding absently to every word, trying desperately to bring the conversation to a close so you can retreat to areas of the building where normal conditions exist.

I don’t doubt that space heaters serve a useful function, but I’m glad when the space heater season finally ends.