Tuesday, August 01, 2006

The simple things

I took a 4-cup coffeemaker to work, along with my "Final Draft Booksellers" mug, a random spoon I inherited somewhere along my collegiate career, a thing of milk, and a clearance-aisle container full of sugar. I shoved a shelf full of germicides and rubber gloves and odd bits of denture-making machinery aside to make a spot for it, and took over another shelf in the cabinet for the filters and sugar. It made me happy.

I had to fine a great many people, mostly teenagers, for missing their appointments or canceling them with less than 24 hours notice. If you have a teenage child, and send him to the dentist all on his own, and trust him to make appointments, and he assures me on Thursday he'll be there Monday morning, it seems to me he ought to be equally responsible for getting to the aforementioned appointments or taking the consequences in the form of a bill. But there are those who differ. And I do hate fining people. Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice. A simple thing, but one which makes dentists and associated persona very happy!

And I'm in the middle of most amusing book: To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. It's time travel, Victorian, all about a cathedral, and keeps referencing Tennyson, Latin, and murder mysteries. It even talks about Lord Peter and Jeeves by name.

4 comments:

sarah said...

You always did have a playful way of looking at life that made it all interesting. :)

Gabi said...

Alternatively, Jonathan, you could come and join us on the dark side and learn to drink coffee :).

Glad to hear that work exists, is going, and going well at that. What more could the recent graduate desire? :)

Campeador said...

I may have seen the book around somewhere. Of course, the more pressing concern is: have you read the classic from which that title originates? It's "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome, one of my favorites.

Pinon Coffee said...

I have not, but after this book, I'm quite inclined to. :-)