Briefly Hitting the Road

For the next few days (Wednesday evening through Sunday evening) I will be, in successive order, on my way to, spending time in, and coming back from California for one part business and one part business-related pleasure. This means meetings all day on Thursday and Friday with evening events scheduled for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I fear this may mean limited time to pay attention to my blog, but I'm pretty sure I can find some time to write something, perhaps when the rest of the guys are on a coffee break. It's going to be a weird two days to be out of town with the auto executives back in front of the Senate and the House to see if there is some financing to keep our state from aspiring to Haiti-like levels of economic and social strife.

Before I go, I would like to share with you two things that annoy me very, very much. The first thing is when people say "Are you walking the dog or is the dog walking you" or some variant, and second, the statement "I didn't get the memo about (insert color here) shirt day". I could die a slightly less aggravated person if I could remove these two statements from the American lexicon.

Both of these statements are things that, for some reason, everyone feels obligated to say when they see a person walking with a dog or when two people who work in close proximity are wearing the same color shirt. I can not understand if the people who say these things think they are being funny, original, creative, or simply attempting to poke fun despite the fact that their attempts at fun-poking are simultaneously being recited >1M times around the world at that exact same second. To start with the dog thing, just to be clear, I am walking the dog, not the other way around. I don't think in the history of time a dog has ever walked a person. That would be craziness and mayhem would break out around the world. I understand that you find it humorous that the dog is excited and pulling on its leash, but it is not funny to me. I would also like you to realize that there is a good chance that at least 3 other people have asked me the same thing on the same walk. I don't want to come across as being too curmudgeonly, but there are so many other things that we could talk about that aren't related to your perception that the dog may be walking me. Because it is not.

On the shirt thing, there are only so many shirt colors in the universe, and these colors all come from the same seven popular primary colors. In many business settings, there could be several thousand employees all working in the same general area. Because of this, there is a great chance that two or more people who work close to each other are going to wear a shirt that you could broadly classify as blue. There is also a decent chance that these two people may be wearing the exact same shirt from the same manufacturer because there are only so many shirt manufacturers in the world. In this instance, I can probably guarantee you that these people will have identified that they are wearing the same color shirt before you, and that they are likely feeling a little embarrassed because they know the "shirt/memo" comment is on its way. What are we supposed to do - call everyone who works in the same building as us to color and outfit-coordinate every single day? It is perfectly acceptable for you to mentally note that I may be wearing the same color shirt as another person, but you are free and encouraged to let this coincidence pass without specific comment.

See you Sunday!