Pr3++yG33kyTh1ng

So, Monday, we meet again.
There is nothing quite like a nice long weekend to lull a person into a false sense of security. This allows a Monday (the ninja assassin of the work-week) to assault them with the blare of an alarm clock or, in my case, the growl of two cats on the landing each trying to convince the other of their whiny ferocity at 4am.
Sometimes I hate the cats, but most of the time we settle into a mutual distrust that is, in its way, quite comfortable in its consistency.
I called last night and have been released from jury duty officially.
Not to create ill will, but I feel those of you in the States should know ~$70 of your Federal Income Tax bill went towards having me spend two days at the courthouse reading a paperback and listening to lawyers dance around the subject of why they didn't want me on their jury.
In other news, there is still no cure for cancer.
The past few days have been unseasonably cold in the greater Houston area and I blame myself.
We planted a garden on Monday and I had made a comment on how delicate the tiny new leaves on the trees looked. In retrospect, I'm surprised there was no sleet.
So now I sit in my cubicle, wrapped securely in the leather coat I'd been meaning to remove from the back seat of the car for a few months, annoyed by the bubbling, sucking noise made by my latte as I drink it through the tiny hole in the top as much as by building management's liberal use of the building heating system to make me contemplate removing that jacket -- if not for the fear that I'd spend the next few months meaning to remove it from my cubicle.
One incident in grade school where I left a coat in my locker over a cold weekend has made it all but impossible for me to remove such a garment outside my own home.
See?
Monday, with its brutal assault, has me contemplating the many layers of my own psychosis -- or at least the layer that makes a person wear a heavy leather coat to a crowded conference room in spite of the discomfort.
"I keep my mechanical pencils in the pocket," I try to convince myself, knowing as we all do that they put clips on the things to make carrying them as passengers on a legal pad even easier than slightly bending those clips out to make them more suitable mobile rubber band launching devices.
I can count on one hand the number of times I got the bend just right so that by combining the legal pad with a rubber band I could actually launch the pencil itself with a suitable degree of accuracy, but the goal is there, looming, at every team-building meeting. It lurks under the first couple of bright yellow pages at every "Respectful Workplace" workshop I've ever attended.
"Status Report" meetings? The goal of the high-velocity pencil weapon is on page one, or even written next to "Office Depot" across the top on the part with the staples that don't prevent the ugly tears north of the perforated line.
Yes Monday, while a flying mechanical pencil holds no power over you, coffee most certainly burns your vampiric nature as surely as any Splenda-infused holy water.
You will not claim me as prey without a struggle.