The Tools Make the Man

In late 2009 the scientific community went gaga over the discovery of a tool-using octopus. Well, actually there was more than one tool-using octopus, but since no one in the scientific community could remember whether the plural of octopus is octopi, octopusses or octo-pods, they decided to just report on one of them.

The slimy critter in question was videotaped gathering up coconut halves from the ocean floor near Australia, cleaning them out, and then using them as a rudimentary form of shelter. I’m no scientist, but watching the video raised several very important questions in my mind. Why were there coconut halves on the ocean floor? Where did the octopus live before he built himself an environmentally-friendly new home? And what kind of interest rate did the octopus get for its new coconut shell house?

Accounting For My Time

If they made a movie about my professional life, it would be called Kevin Cummings and the ‘To-Do’ List of Doom.

Each workday I start with a nice clean sheet of note paper which I sully with an ugly list of tasks I have to accomplish. This would be tolerable if I could just finish each item and cross it off. Except it doesn’t work that way; every task I accomplish gives rise to two more. And those give rise to two more. And so on until the list is long enough to publish in a handsome, leather-bound multi-volume set.

On second thought, maybe my life-movie would be Hercules vs. the Hydra. Or perhaps just Sisyphus.

If things don’t improve, my legacy to my children will be a lifetime of indentured servitude while they finish the tasks I never had time to get to. It’s not that I don’t try. I’ve purchased dozens of books on time management and fully intend to read them … as soon as I can find the time.

What’s Bugging You?

In late 2009 Consumer Reports evidently ran out of new products to test. What other explanation could account for their decision to conduct a phone survey to find out what annoys people the most?

The answer to that question is obvious.

Phone surveys….except that wasn’t one of the things they asked about.

The researchers called people and asked them to rate their level of irritation at common annoyances. The scale ran from 1 (“it’s all good”) to 10 (“you die now!”) I can only imagine how the calls must have gone.

“Hello. This is Consumer Reports and we’d like to ask you about the things that annoy you.”

* CLICK *

It’s A Date!

When my wife and I went out to breakfast, the waitress asked if we were on our honeymoon. This was a reasonable question as we were eating breakfast in Niagara Falls, Canada which which attracts honeymooners the way a bus accident attracts personal injury lawyers. Pretty much everybody you meet in Niagara Falls — including bus drivers, personal injury lawyers and marriage counselors — is also a honeymooner. If honeymooners were terrorists, Niagara Falls would be the Canadian Falujah.

To complete the illusion that we were inhabitants of that happy space between the wedding ceremony and the first serious fight, we were sitting side-by-side in the restaurant booth instead of across the table.

“Aren’t you sweet,” the waitress said.

Maybe.

The truth is, I’ve come to realize that the real work of dating is just beginning for me. My wife and I have spent more than two decades as co-parents of two boys. I wouldn’t say that we never went on dates during those years. My wife might, but I wouldn’t.

Confidence Man

Really.

It was my fault. If I didn’t want to answer highly technical questions from random strangers, I shouldn’t have worn my red fleece vest to the home improvement center. The disaster that happened the day I wore a white shirt and black tie to the Buy More electronics emporium should have been a clue, but maybe I’m a slow learner.

In my defense, it was cold on the morning I went to the home improvement center and my vest is warm and comfortable. It’s also — and I don’t want to underestimate the role this played in the deception that followed — red.

“I’m hanging a flat screen TV. Can you tell me what kind of hardware to use?”

Was he asking me? Was a total stranger really asking me a question about home improvement?