Pull Up A Carpet Square
2006-11-30, 16:26

Our company really needs to devise some way to make napping easier during the lunch hour.

You think I'm kidding.

Now that it's getting cold, the 'sleep in the car' option is right out, leaving me with two places: the office, where one runs the risk of work-oriented interruption; and the lunch room, which is neither comfortable nor private, leaving one to worry about snoring before one's workmates (which is, for me at least, a serious and earth-shaking issue; seriously, I don't want to damage these peoples' ears or psyches). So what's a tired boy to do, other than try and get better sleep at night (which is rarely an option if I have any interest in spending any quality time with my wife post the Chaos of Three Children)?

I think the answer lies in a Nap Room at work, with cots or recliners and partitions, basically a communal sleeping area, where you bring your own blanket and teddy bear and pillow and can set a timer. I think a good nap when needed would benefit the company by improving alertness, productivity and quality, which are of course my, along with all other employees', main concerns. Perhaps I'll write up a (definitely anonymous) proposal to give (via suggestion box) to the hierarchy. Surely, they'll jump at the chance to make their employees happier and more comfortable. Surely.

I'm a tad late on the Thanksgiving report, but here goes, anyway. The day was sedate enough, for the most part. My brother and his wife had an older couple from their church over that had no other plans for the holiday due to far away-planted children and the like. They were nice enough, but the problem was that they induced a more religion-based state in my brother, with whom I got into an almost heated discussion over whether same sex relationships were 'wrong' in a socio-biological sense, a.k.a. trying to manipulate science/philosophy to justify religious bias. His basic premise, as I was getting it, was that if something is bad for everyone to do, then it's bad in general: if everyone murdered someone, there'd be no people left, so murder is bad in general; if everyone were homosexual, than there'd be no baby-making and mankind would die out, therefore homosexuality is bad in general (there was another analogy he used that I can't recall at the moment). When I pointed out that he was only comparing homosexuality to negative things, I was accused of liberal naysayer. And when I pointed out that just because everyone can do something, doesn't mean that everyone will, do something, he went back and forth between saying that I was somehow proving his point and repeating his flawed logic. What it came down to was that he'd convinced himself that he was on to something, and that I was neither smart nor savvy enough to convince him that his logic was indeed flawed. Luckily the baby fussing her way toward a nap brought a discussion to a merciful halt that would have otherwise most likely escalated to my going home. Have I mentioned that my brother and I are diametric opposites? We're like bizarre versions of each other, best left to discussing the weather and social interests. Politics (somewhat) and religion (mainly) are right out, and I'm okay with that. I'm just glad that H wasn't in the room, because she would have been either uncomfortably silent out of respect for my relationship with my family, or would have been as snarkily vocal as I was, only with the bold-faced Italian, crunchy-granola, liberal-educated, feminist-lite (don't deny it) aggression factor thrown in. She doesn't realize the depth or our collective family passive-agressiveness. It's not pretty.

So anyway, after that it was pleasantries and happy times (never mind the knot I had in my stomach for a couple of hours afterward, but I'm well used to being in that condition). After m brother plunked out a few Xmas tunes on his fancy piano, he then plunked out a few songs from on of the old Platinum series songbooks, chock full of late 70's/early 80's tunes, one of which sounded like the beginning of the Greatest American Hero theme song. On the way home H and I, as we are wont to do, spontaneously broke into the song, and I got to show off how deep my g33k well goes by breaking into the second verse, as well as the bridge. H was, in true lover-of-geeks fashion, all impressed. I am so lucky that way ("And don't you forget it, chuckball," she says).

-- End Transmission --