Fluffy Metting

Last Wednesday morning, I left extra early for one of these Project Management meetings in midtown. I usually out by 9:00 or so heading down to work and getting there with 10 minutes to spare. It was called "the Zen approach to Project Management. It was really fluffy and new agey philosophy of Project Mgt:

1) Awareness, concentration and mindfulness...
2) A water analogy (and a guy who gets sick from drinking water...)
3) Open like the sky...
4) We have to be aware of our inner reactivity to emotions...
5) "Service is what counts" to quote this presenter...
6) "We need to stop being irrational and find freedom and serenity - not passive acceptance - to make things change..."

But the best part: there was a guy there who CLEARLY stepped out of a time machine from 1973. Leisure suit - brown - and a 60s pattern on his extremely polyester shirt

When the presenter uttered the seventh new age PM truth, "The only certainty is uncertainty," I left for work.

My bus stop

My bus stop is pretty cool. It's in front of a cute little church and across the street from a restaurant, a florist, and a funeral home. There's a great storyline in there somewhere. For walker's and biker's the bus stop's also at the point of a long hill where you can see the top and feel like you're not far away from its summit, then it's smooth sailing on the other side. The odd thing about our stop, its little waiting booth, and its bench is that everyone at the stop stands in the road - even when it rains - and not under the overhang or sitting on the bench.

I've never really analyzed it before I don't think - until this rainy morning. A lady at the stop started chatting with another person, someone she obviously didn't know, and her thoughts under her umbrella had gotten the best of her. She was standing on the sidewalk, and everyone else was on the road.

"I've never understood this about this stop: No one stands on the sidewalk. At no other bus stop does this happen. I don't understand it. Why is that? We'd all be dry if we stood over there. And the sidewalk is very wide there. And the buses when they stop stay in the street and don't move over to the side of the street. This is a strange bus stop - very unconventional."

Yes, you guessed it: She was a pre-menopausal soccer mom who's kid just started high school this year and now she gets to spew her neuroses on society instead of her daughters.

I walked down to the next stop without enlightening her to the fact that when it rains, a huge ass puddle forms directly in front of the bench across the sidewalk from the little booth in front of the church's tulips. In order to get around the puddle without getting your shoes soaked, you have to step off the sidewalk onto the road 20 feet on either side of the bus stop area and walk on the street to get on the bus. The bus drivers are so nice they don't pull toward the sidewalk so as not to get passengers wet before boarding. I suppose the "old timers" at the stop just go ahead and stand on the street instead of fighting the puddle. Then all the other generations of bus lemmings just follow suit till they don't remember why the road-standing process started in the first place.