Seasons

 Never had a job that was outdoors. Not for lack of trying. At a younger age, I wanted to work for the National Park Service and attended universities by the sea. But, all my jobs had some connection/view of the outdoors

Coffee shop: Big plate windows to the street and shop sat over Trumansburg Creek.

Warehouse jobs: These were ancient warehouses often unheated and definitely not air conditioned. Animals would pour in through broken windows and torrents of water during hard rains

School job: Always away from my desk for something. Searching grounds for litter. Bringing in deliveries and tossing garbage. Working the dismissal line.

But, in my new job, I am, indeed, at a desk. A nice desk in a nice office for sure but its a desk job. Seasonality is lost on me. Leaving at the end of the day is disconnected from the start. Its darker. Colder or warmer. And its sudden and stark like transitions in a video game. 

I miss that excuse to be outside and feel some connection to the elements. Co workers will say its too cold in the office and I recall standing in an empty parking lot waiting for the distinct broken bumper of the green Nissan signifying the last parent was here for their kid. Its cold over by the conference room but cold usually meant staring into other co-workers eyes when that was you could see. The rest bundled under hats and parka hoods. Often this was loading a truck, the metal walls humming back the chill. On better, yet still freezing days, its the loose wisps of hair of a work crush dangling over her eyes. 

Working at a school, fall meant new bulletin boards. At the warehouse, it was leaves stuck to the sky light windows so that spotty shadows dropped onto the cement. At the shop it was leaf shaped raspberry cookies and new drinks to sell. At the office job, it depends on the prowess of the HR team signing people up for the costume contest. 

People Watching

In Northeast Ohio there is a manic discount grocery/small box store called Marc's. Its owned by a local ersatz celerity/villain named Marc Glassman who has a walrus looking mustache and glasses. His carton mascot version is festooned all over the stores. Above end caps with the latest deal. Right above the door pointing to the exit sign.

These stores are if Aldi rolled down a hill. And, Katamari style, they picked up all kinds of other junk and landed in between a Home Depot and a movie theater. More recent stores have a glo up with a happy block logo with a green leaf (To denote freshness, I bet) but the legacy stores are set in functioning has been energy. 

At some point they have away free coffee at the customer service desk. Where you would go to get cigarettes or rent the carpet cleaners they had a silvery urn of weak scalding bean water. The stuff funeral homes wouldn't serve to the dead

You can buy aluminum foil wrapped Nathan's hot dogs at Marcs. But not from a snack bar but a heated island in the deli. Next to the produce there are wilted African violets and an overflowing "seasonal" section with three dollar slides and knock off toys. Instead of Legos...Mega Brix. 

Lots of good people watching at Marc's. The only benefit when I find myself in there. Privilege check: I find myself in the social strata where I can just go to Target but Marc's is cheap and there for a reason. Sometimes I need a four dollar pack of Gia Nonna Momma (Must be San Marino's favorite coffee, yes) and that hits the spot. And there you see the old timers in marshmallow doughy shoes. A lot of people carrying oxygen tanks and people wearing pajamas out.

And not nice pajamas like when wearing black yoga pants then layering some sort of top/dress over it for this tunic look. People in knotty pilled sweatpants and oversized shirts from Hot Topic. What does the person wearing plaid pajama pants and the Great Malenko ICP shirt have to say of the price of Voom detergent?

Yelling About Laundry

Have you ever watched Pluto TV? I don't know how it works (I assume it is evil and based around some conglomerate of all IPs) but it streams tons of old and random shows for free. It reminds me of OG Hulu when it was all free and random and I still recall watching NBC's Surface (discussed in this blog) and some ABC show about attorneys. That show stood out because one attorney was from Case Western Reserve University which is in Cleveland to which I applied to, and failed, about 50 jobs when first moving here. That show (I really wish I could remember the name) also had a scene where one female attorney spills coffee on her shirt and goes to the other attorneys office to grab a spare shirt*  and she takes off her dirty shirt off right in the middle of the office. Then a male attorney walks in and...its network primetime titillation. I can't remember this show but its like if the first two seasons of New Girl were distilled into 2 minutes. 

I mentions all this because Pluto tends to just ram the same kinds (if not the same one outright) ad in breaks. All fast food or all laundry products or, when the time is right, all election ads. One day I got stuck on the laundry train and yelled that the Tide Clear Pods don't look as appealing as the normal ones. Just make them all clear and not candy themed.

"She shouldn't be wearing pants!" I scream incredulously and pointing at the TV. Not at the world most boring adult film** but instead as the ad for the Bounce static cling reducing sheets. Our commercial heroine should take her slinky ankle length dress and walk around pants less (or at least in sweats) while the sheets do their magic in the dryer. That makes more sense, yes? What do I know, most of what I know is from movies.***

*This is an all pro move and something you should do especially if coffee has a laser lock on fucking up your day. Never wear white, anytime!

**Anyone who patches pornography on the TV is either a boomer, somehow incarcerated, or an absolute maniac. Why the tube sites have that "Broadcast to TV" button is something that should be regulated. You need to drop three multifactor authentications (texts and a finger print scan and something not yet invented) before that beams to the flat screen. 

***This post features a lot of people in varying states of undress. I guess sorry, not sorry. 

Check In

At middle age, I found myself using the term " value add" unironically. There was a contest at work to name the new conference rooms. Drop them all here in the link but remember it is not anonymous so keep that in mind, folks. I submitted generic local pride names (Lake Effect) and my most acerbic was "Quick Wins" which, mileage varies if people will get the tongue in cheek note. In the last year that is the zenith of my writing having pivoted to a new job in the entrepreneurial world. 

I used to write to textualize fantasies and day dreams. The pandemic with its zoom calls and intimate distance was fertile ground for jotting things down. I would drop them on my blog and feel accomplished. A little less hollow after another meeting. I thought I was funny. Or somehow sage. Often they were indeed just fantasies as I had co-workers whisked into adventures henshin super hero style.

In the tenth grade I read a snoozy short story, Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and can't remember a thing save the guy day dreamed of planes and adventures. I would re-read it save the very teacher who assigned it to us, re-connecting years later on Facebook, apologized to me for making us read it. "Im sorry I made you read that silly story, but looks like you made it!"

Everything jotted down was a Walter Mitty type aside and, in a new environment, not sure if I would have the same feelings or time. I wrote during hollow moments in a job already plateaued. I had reached a point where the flow, however hectic, had enough cadence so I could swim through the ebb and flow and find 10-15 minutes where it was OK to do anything but work. 

In college, a creative writing class introduced me to the short stories of George Saunders, specifically CivilWarLand in Bad Decline. It's good but note that at last check I think Saunders had been, as popularly and freely applied today, "cancelled" for sexual harassment. But, damn, were those good stories and I appreciated that, before writing, he had miscellany jobs. Here was someone who just bounced from being a cook to oil derrick technician to writer. I think of that when I think of something I should jot down on the blog if even for minor eyes. The lonely Russian porn bot reading this. 

Gordon Square

The old church stood

All afternoon I waited

Tables loaded with porcelain 

I'm sorry you saw that

Vomiting, voiding into the bowl

Left for passing dogs 

Bent page copies of free literature 

This isn't a library, sir. Jabroni, jerk

Move along. Buy or move along

Clean up and sanitizing. Bleach

Stainless steel cutters at the meat market 

Oldest thing left besides the church 

The bar features Fruit Loops and cheese

Crackers on their hotdogs for six

Dollars rattling on ends of the street 

Blocked and bookends by bus 

Lobby energy

I make fun of my mother too much but I'll say she raised me with what would be quickly called class. But with a higher word count called crippling anxiety of what others would think. So Mami would never let me get away with what I call hotel lobby sloppy. Folks queuing up to order coffee in their swimsuits and rolling overloaded bell boy carts with Joann Fabric totes. 

Sure, I sound like a snob dear reader but I have the class to keep it on check and shove everything unfolded into the same duffel bag I've had since high-school. There, functional and not name brand but contained. 

This is "I only go out to eat on Valentines day" energy. A sort of the world stops for me so who cares energy.  Privilege check, I grew up where others vacation so this otherness cut across all lines. Dont do that, its what others do. Not us. And when we did internal tourism it was to affirm we were part of the culture. We got it even when we did the same swim up bar at the hotel by the airport. You could watch jets take off if you had a balcony view. 

The clerk behind the counter is making fun of this on the Slack chat. Karen memes and the line of "I want to speak to the manager" removed of all its venom.

Spring

Mud followed signaling 

Spring from every corner every tile

soiled in terracotta, when younger

just plain brown when older

exposed earthworm casings, tree roots 

Swallowing up sandals, destroying boots

We'll donate shoes. To the school, church 

Anyone who gets stuck in stalking mud

Old sneakers from memories some with

holes, but untouched by mud.

Bother You

I'll stop bothering you

No, it's. Keep going

And going? You sure?

It will never stop

Your response validates me

In physics, in high school, we learned

About Heisenberg. Watch things 

Change them. Save the PDF locked

And the friend zoned and the letters

scrawled in ancient Sharpie pen

So, tell me about your day.

We work together but moved to opposite

Divisions. Never noticed until I bothered you. Sorry, not sorry 

Bend Back Your Bow

I've written about this before, phrases that I enjoy. More so than favorite words but short sentences that evoke a feeling often that little movie that plays in your head when reading. 

One phrase is "bend back your bow" 

And it's all comic book carnal with our heroine in a gleaming white hooded sweatshirt dropped over a vest of body armor. The hood is up beacuse I expect her to make an amazing reveal later and flip that back. Our heroine actually looks like she kicks ass for a living so no waify anime crap here (albeit this whole scene is derivative). Our heroine can pull back on the tensile bite back of her bow string. Full face, grey eyes, Slavic features from years of hurling around crops.

She has her recurve bow, cut from a solid piece of maple and painted an inky india blue, in her hand and when she bends it back the bowstring is scintillating gold light.

Before she fires she runs her tongue along the back of her teeth and presses into a gap made by missed braces in adolescence. This is her centering technique before she lets loose at the imaginary enemy.

A coal smoking tank looping around on a battered cul-de-sac road. A speeding thief on a neon green crotch rocket bike. The office villian made out in all black. Something to end and blow back a wall of heat for a winning pose.

Siesta

 Ill get home from work and enter a dizzy stage of tired. It triggers on walking in and setting everything down. The kids run to their rooms after school and settle in. They will call who gets first dibs on the bathroom on the ride back and camp there for a solid 40 minutes. I'm then on the couch digging my feet into the crack between couch cushions and covering myself in a knitted afghan. 

This sort of tired does not feel earned like after a day's honest work or a hard hike. Instead its a burst drain, an ice jam letting go in February sun and crashing everything onto the patio furniture below. Anxiety leaving the body where one can be most true? My parents had a tchotchke hanging above the fridge  that read...

Home Sweet Home: Where You Can Scratch Where It Itches

Home, where it is ok to cry and kick your dog and scrape the last layers of the peanut butter jar because it was a day. A series of days. 

I type often about sleep and dreams. My dreams are furtive and cyclical anchored in the possible impossible. My life if I never moved out of central New York. A day in the life as a journalist. A restaurateur. Watching a new bridge over the Cuyahoga River open. They are rarely titillating but that is because I undress everyone I encounter, just some more than others. 

A recent dream had me craft blocks of text into infinite work email memos. This is a deviation of a repeating one from my previous job, jockeying in a warehouse, where boxes fell and nested into one another. A waterwall of interlocking cardboard like my son's frozen Minecraft waterfalls. In the first moments of awakening the dream remains vibrant but it fades away at an impossible speed. Forget faster than light drives. Go for faster than dream decay drives. Trying to unravel cooked spaghetti with a school lunch room spork would be easier. 

Sometimes these naps extend into the early evening. Two hours and my wife has gotten home and already lived a full second life while I awaken and think I should note that and put in on the blog. 

Bordeom

I pour myself ten cups of coffee
Each morning, noon, and night
Combined, drink only six. Others abandoned. Left to sit
A bread crumb trail in ceramic and black
Rings within rings each one a time stamp
Of  fresh start. Here, let's go. It'll be ok
I'd drill a hole through my gut if I drank
ten cups of coffee
scattered on night stands, back of toilets
One to start, two to go, all the others
Coin flips with a 50/50 on idle time
Something to do; make ten cups of coffee 

#500

In 2006, I began blogging inspired by reading Dave's Long Box. In the early to mid 2000s this was the "start a podcast" phenomenon and between Live Journal and MySpace it really was a day to appreciate the long form. Now everything is much more bite sized, a Twitter thread likely being the closets equivalent to this, or visual with YouTube essays. Everyone today wants to be a streamer. Everyone back then wanted to be heard.

I also had a snoozy job where I sat alone in an attic office waiting for the phone to ring or an email to come in. These were rare so I blogged.

I even had two blogs, one (The Blog of Plenty) for all my hilarious hot takes and another (Fear of the Blank Page) for my creative writing. I thought much about myself then. 

I deleted the Blog of Plenty after getting tsk tsk'ed by my employer. I worked for a small coffee chain in central New York, Gimme! Coffee, and, at the time, their NYC shops got lots of great coverage in the NYTimes as best cup of coffee in the city. That said, there seemed to be a disconnect because while it was the hot to trot of NYC coffee, the chain was actually from lowly Ithaca, NY with all the coffee roasted in a converted barn on Route 96 between downtown and the Town of Ulysses. So it was common among the "upstate" workers to chide this split. I mentioned this on the blog and apparently the manager of the NYC shop saw that. They then called my manager who quickly (There were five of us who worked at my location) deduced who it was. Looking back, that NYC manager must have either been seven pages deep into the Google search or they needed some serious optimization to find my post. 

My manager didn't ask me to delete (I don't care. Its your right to say whatever and you didn't say anything wrong) but he did ask me to never post about this phantom rivalry. But, no one read it and I was spooked (Why, I don't know, but a stupid spur of the moment thing) so why not.

The blog then cycled through ups and downs mostly serving as the lonely diary no one reads. Sure, the metrics say SOMEONE reads these but I think those are just lost people on the Internet. As I get older I realize I am not as funny or clever as I think I am. My best thoughts are found at tail ends of dreams as I wake up and the stirring takes away any memory. I fashioned myself a write, realizing I am ferociously better at making a manifest or purchase order. A work memo, etc, etc, etc. 

At one point I discovered that someone(s) at my current job read this and I was a bit flattered because they seemed to like it. The flurry of activity in 2019-2021 is testament to this.  However, even this waned to the point it was awkward to bring it up in conversation. How dreadful to share your diary and find people think it is just boring. Work chats in slacks and Teams? Now, that is where people are honest. This could have also been indulgence and pity reads, the kind of reading you do of the back of the tea box while waiting for the microwave to ding. 

Yet, I still write. Getting 500 posts. Maybe this site will never digitally rot away and my kids will find it. See their father was boring and disappointed in how he could never have enough patience or savvy to match them. Or the hot takes on Jason DeRulo, Sailor Moon, and Spiderman. Archer's Rise takes and two decade old book reviews. This is a journal in the digital longform. It is a product of its founding time because the Internet has become all AV and listicles and slide decks.  

Anyone who has read then I appreciate your visit. Likely you stumbled here from an errant search or a mistyped search for garlic, but thanks for reading. 

Nadir Poem

I'm imperfect, like all of you doomed
To become broken copies of our parents
Save I remember my childhood and project
The Legos I created. The spread of trading cards
This is not appreciated. Leave me alone
Uh huh, that's OK. Yeah thanks. My kids raised
By smaller screens than mine. Luxuries
I had just on a slower timeline. Gifts ungiven
By my own anxiety and the omnipresent end
It's not nostalgia, ever dangerous. It's a chance
To recover pieces of a circle drawing to
Their own mistakes, their own sincerity.

Katamari Dream

 Over the course of the COVID 19 pandemic I discovered the Katamari video game series thanks to the remaster version on Xbox. I knew about the games like how a film nerd knows about every director's canon (Or The Day the Clown Cried) but just hasn't gotten to it. These were also Playstation exclusives for a while and the last I had in that series was PS2 and I was all about the Grand Theft Auto.

The series is endearingly charming and quirky. In short, each game centers around how your dad, The King of All Cosmos, somehow destroys parts of the universe (In the original game he goes on a bender and destroys all the stars in the sky) and tasks you, The Prince, to rebuild them. Your tool is the katamari (I think it is Japanese for roll up) which is a bouncy studded ball (Looks like one of those back massaging balls) you roll around the game and gather stuff up. Get big enough in X amount of time and you move to the next level. Typing that out sounds crazy and also falls short. It needs to be played and if you like puzzlers or are one of those satisfying meme watchers, its worth a try. King of All Cosmos is also a classic bad passive aggressive dad who brutally chides you when you do just ok (Normal is the new black, I guess) much less don't reach size.

I mention all this because I had a lucid and tactile dream where I found myself in one of those trampoline bounce parks. Instead of launch pads the center was a deep pool filled with silicon gummy letters and shapes. Tiny cookie cutter things in the whole alphabet and running from 0 to 10. These also ran up the wall in curated sequences. This wall is all 1234. That wall is all ATGC, a reference to nucleotides in DNA. And I can swim through these quickly even with the katamari in front of me, getting bigger leveling from a beachball to county fair pumpkin. The goal being to push the ball into a hoop with a pattern. Triangle, G, 4,X or Square, B,3,4. It changes with a digital display that sometimes flickers as it cycles between winning combinations. The goal is to drop your katamari into the hoop and hit that pattern but the combinations are approaching factors of pi and you have little control over who you gather. Its infinite and tactile and without pressure even with the game show atmosphere.

I note this because its such a "feeling" dream and one that isn't about work. If you have read this blog, I often treat this as an ersatz dream journal. Note that this blog is coming up on 500 posts and these kind of posts may take it over the milestone.

Video Games

 Post holidays and the house is slammed with stuff. New stuff, some still unopened, that makes me feel an awful guilt. And not the sort of listen to NPR while driving to the Root Cafe to order a fair trade coffee sort of guilt. Or some holy piety simplistic less is more guilt. I feel dumb for buying my kids stuff they look at once and then dive back into YouTube. Extra dumb for thinking they need more as a way to make up for how much I suck as a father. Also a hurt because I want my kids to be like me with these toys, particularly video games and collectibles, but I need to let them be themselves. My son does not play with Legos like I did. Instead of building your own fleets of vehicles and hero rides (after all the formal instruction sets succumb to entropy. Maintaining Lego sets as designed and built requires a combination of real estate and patience saved for the single, the cat-less, or maybe those monks that make Chartreuse) he keeps piles of specific bricks on the floor. These are used to build hand held widgets of modular geometry. Six long eight stud flat planks joined on top of each other and then snapped to the back end of a Lego velociraptor. Motorcycles with the front wheel pulled out and replaced with a set of two rectangle bricks. 

On video games I want them to max them out. Its likely due to the success of the medium (The Fear of the Blank Page is on team video games are art) but its not just the volume (We had volume back in the 80s and 90s just a limit on where to get) but the accessibility. You needed to fork over cash to the guy behind the counter at Babbages or KB Toys and ask for the game. Now, just download or snap onto your phone. Maybe because my experience was so formally procedural (Thank you merchant for this good. This piece of plastic and silicon I will take back home once my mom grabs me from the mall) that I needed to really max these games out. I honestly don't recall ever beating too many games as child but I remember playing them often enough if just to feel they were earned. A great example of this is Mario is Missing a game that is quite the lie. 

I bought this game. or, well i made Mami buy it after some negotiation or possible reward. maybe she felt bad to albeit she actually grew up with struggles. And this looked sweet. Luigi is the hero!? No fucking way!

That said, the game is educational. Its a point and click geography game (And I LIKE geography) with a bit of world history and globe trotting. Where in the Mushroom Kingdom is Carmen San Diego kind of thing. The educational aspect is not bad (Oregon Trail was educational. Putt Putt games were educational) but its boring and clunky and slapping the Mario moniker is a betrayal. But, I played it because I had maybe ten games and that was sne and damnit lets play it. And I beat it finding Mario in the Forbidden Palace in China! My kids have maybe 20 Switch games and we have Xbox game pass so I can download games on the fly. Its a bounty that to me and my 90s sensibilities seems still perverse even after years of "modern" video gaming. 

However, when we gave my daughter a Switch (Something meant to save on arguing and teeth barring fights over the OTHER switch my son dominates AND the Xbox with the Minecraft game) so she can play Minecraft on her own. And she loved it for maybe two days until know the Switch is missing (like Mario!) and she is just still on YouTube. Steve and Alex couldn't top Cookie Swirl C, I guess. 

And this makes me upset. "Do you know how much this costs!"

"Well...its from Santa, right?" Which comes out with a bit more venom than this post can imply. 

And then I am "Well...fuck" Maybe the big guy will feel bad then!

There games are played in pieces. Maybe it is because of mobile gaming? Social media? Just progress. My own horrible parentage? Likely it is me just romanticizing my own nostalgia and not wanting to remember I could not get past first few levels of Super Ghosts and Goblins. I want my children to be like me, but only the good parts, and not the crappy part (Which we are all doomed to carry from our parents anyway) while hoping to let them build their own "good parts." I should just let them play. 

New Year 2022

Eat less sugar. I didn't finish my daughter's leftover churro left on her desk

Drink more water. From the tap, not sparkling stuff.

Save money. I stuffed a twenty into the change cup of my glove box. Another twenty tossed into a jar behind the desk. Turn off all the lights. What the fuck, why are so many lights on!

Read more. Or re-read the stuff in the basement already dog eared and yellowed.

Enforce that toy embargo. There are still Legos unopened and nail polish sets forgotten. I'll buy any book or art supplies but nothing tops YouTube. Maybe a skin in a game, your bucks for RoBucks. 

Fantasize less. About work, it's never going to change. About the house which will still leak in all the same spots. About people on the Internet, photos on Facebook from two jobs and two kids ago. 

Write more. In margins and even on this blog writing to a single set of digital eyes unblinking.

Tip of the Spear

This will be the year
That I see
The cute woman
From school with
India ink frame glasses
Circles of light spinning from her wrists
Hold a vanquished foe at
the end of a feathered spear
jabbed under the chin
the head elevated. Anguished
dropped and thud
over the frumpled tiles

Patch of Life

 I once dated this girl who was furiously into journaling. With a dedicated set of pens and drawings in the margin to mimic medieval texts. Dragons hand painted into the margins and embellished flourishes on the starting letter in a paragraph. Stuff like that. And I glanced as it once, something I promised I never would but she had left it open on the nightstand of the hotel and I reached for the light, and saw her describe the place, the island, as a place "she had never seen be so green." This was meant to be a compliment on the tropical fecundity. 

That stuck with me even after all this time. The best way to describe something so alive it was just green. I have never seen a space that met that criteria until staring into the roadway berm of a trailhead in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. There, beyond the six inches or so of mowed grass, were spiraling goldenrods and exploding New England asters. Thick mats with tall stalks and lance leaves that tumble over one another.  I am sure this was just disturbed backfill two weeks ago. Hit by an errant mower or the digging for a new pathway.  Each bloom stood out from a wall of green in varying dips of emerald and then lime. What made the scene was all the movement. The honeybees overloaded on dust and then the bumble bees spurred at the leg with their pollen. Threatening hunter wasps bounding each curling stem. And dusty gall flies slicing open the stems to get to the stalks inside and lay their eggs. Everywhere these is movement and color but it is too fast and too small to be taken singularly. Instead its a mass, hypnotic and humming.  There is noise in this scene as the quaking aspen stand behind all this catches the wind and shutters that paper trembling sounds. Its the end of August and this stand is the deep and final sign of all summer against the creeping fall. Finally, there is the weather which is at the inflection point right before a strong thunderstorm. The wind cools from behind so the center of your chest is last to lose the sun's warmth and everything seems to hurry. Race to get inside, to scrape a final bit of pollen, to reach the trail shelter and shelter. The patch moves in circles while also in straight lines as  things shoot to get secure and put an end to the moment. 

DMs

Separated by anxiety, time, and space

to grow and give a chance. She declared

Easier to just like your comments. Texts

DMs never wanted. Just hit the heart

Conversation punted three light-years

Into a future found only in the mind

Of one of us

Hot and Cold

 My current work has me often in positions where people look to me for a solution. And not just for things in my scope but for everything. Their taxes. Someone not flushing in the staff bathroom. The rumor on who will get fired. So, it is the kind of look people throw at a bursting beacon on the horizon in the epic fantasy movie.

Behold, there is the light and fury of Gondor! What shall it bring to this Helm's Deep!?

The worse is temperature. It is too hot or cold in my room. Our school is tired pile of bricks going on 90 years with most everything being original save not in the charming way, like a Butterfly Gold Pyrex bowl, but in the annoying way. Like leaded gasoline.

Too hot and there is a dwindling shimmer on the single pane glass above the radiators. I have one teacher with big statement olive wood eyes who will say "I'm so hot! Please help!" and I think it is a trap. "Yeah you are!" I joke and want to drop the cymbal clap bit. Ba Dum Dsh! This works much better over the work chat. Where maybe she will hit me back with a brief heart/like icon and just make my day. Or a LOL face which is fine but anything better than a simple thumbs up which feels so clinical. In person it is awkward and plodding as I bite my lip and try to hide behind the gewgaws on my desk. And she nervously strokes down the end of her ponytail asking "Is there like a thermostat? Can the custodian look?" Does playing with her hair mean she is nervous? Frustrated? Confused? By me perhaps? So smitten is she!? Or is it because she is close to heat stroke death? Likely the latter.

The custodian could look and just affirm that everything is fine. It is not that bad. In that teacher's room there is nothing for him to draw his ire to so its just fine. Across the hall it is the bad insulation I had installed three years ago. Of course, that is it. Always ready with not just an answer but THE answer. Something else. Just deal or do as I say. 

Too cold and its weak yet threating rimes of ice forming along the vintage window frames. In some spots the walls are so porous that the draft moves paper around behind you making for terrifying backgrounds on Zoom calls "Excuse me. I'm sorry but I have to ask. What is making that drawing on your bulletin board move?"

"Does this get hot?" And people will send me pictures of their radiator registers via text. 

I would hope so, if not dress in layers. If the register is pristine and still painted in the tepid mud puddle brown then likely not. They cut the steam to it. If it is beat and covered in the rainbow of melted crayons then yes, it should get cooking. 

If you are too cold maybe I will sneak a space heater in your room. Depends on if I trust you enough to use it, turn it off at the end of day. Too hot and here is a fan or i guess turn on your AC and defy everything. One day the boiler will be at max power and every AC and fan will be on and the whole space, the whole red brick lump of entropy, will collapse into a singularity of the right temperature.