During a recent walk through my local convention center I looked upward and noticed faux bird and clouds/sky hanging throughout the expanse of the food court.
I *think* I get what the vision was here, but the size of each piece seems rather small; the sky/cloud pieces especially should be larger in my opinion.
I’m curious if whomever came up with the idea- if the execution was as intended.
I’m curious if it’s weird to eat your meals under a fake sky with fake birds.
Lastly, I’m curious if when this food court is open and hopping, if convention attendees even notice the fake birds and sky adorning the ceiling?!
Sidenote: The “featured image” you may have saw in the WP Reader was WP’s AI generated image.
While the “sky” and “clouds” are more noticeable, this looks like bird wings hanging from the ceiling, instead of the representation of a full bird. Verdict, this is even creepier than the actual installation.
Do you have any public spaces in your area with *curious* adornments? Drop a note in the comments below.
HOUSEKEEPING
Unfrazzled Analyst is now on Instagram. Feel free to follow and check out bite sized versions of the posts you see here.
What is a typical day? Is up down? Why ask why? All kidding aside, this is an interesting question for me because something I’ve come to realize is that each week reveals itself to have its own personality, and within each week, the seven days in between feel typical compared within that week, but can very easily feel atypical when compared to another week.
Even the magic 8 ball is against me. “Is today a typical day?” “My sources say no.”
If this all sounds convoluted- it is! One of the reasons I blog is to document my “mundane” experiences – because apparently my “mundane” experiences sound made up. If only! The expression truth is stranger than fiction definitely applies to my everyday living.
Rather than describe my current day, I’ve opted to talk about one of my commuter experiences from 2021 that was typically atypical for me. It was August, and was reporting for duty into the office a few days a week after being comfortably productive nearly 18 months in a magical palace I call “home”.
At this point, it was week 3 of going into the office. As I stood at the side of the busy road, waiting in the hot (90 degrees at 7am) and relatively humid rays of the early morning August sun, I thought “what better time of year to start commuting again.”
Nothing wakes me up faster than gasoline fumes from passing cars amidst the beaming sunlight of a typical August morning.
While standing at the bus stop, I noticed an ant hill near me. Great. I paced around to avoid the ants. Last thing I needed was to have ants crawl up me. As I paced, one of my neighbors who works for the county walked up- let’s call him Gene. Gene walked up and expressed joy that he had not missed the bus.
“I ran like hell yesterday because the bus driver showed up 5 minutes early”. Luckily for Gene, I recently discovered that the local bus company now had an app that could track where the bus was in real time. I demonstrated the app to Gene and forgot about pacing around to avoid the ants. Before I knew it, the bus was here.
During the “before” time, I would have been lucky to board at this point as the bus was usually packed by the time we reached the park and ride- the last stop before heading into the freeway. During the “return to office that only my company and a handful of county offices seemed to enforce in 2021” time, it was pretty much myself, Gene and maybe 3-4 other people on the bus ride into work. Which meant I could sit anywhere and be far away from anyone.
I plopped down in a seat towards the back of the bus. As the bus pulled away from the stop, I glanced down at my sneakers and noticed a handful of ants crawling around on my shoelaces. I quickly brushed them off with my hand. At that point I figured I must have stood too close to the ant hill when I wasn’t pacing around. No big deal – just a few ants.
I then turned my head towards my left leg and froze in absolute terror- my pant leg was engulfed with hundreds of tiny black ants. I closed my eyes for a second then opened them thinking maybe, just maybe I had fallen asleep for a minute and this was all in my head (hey falling asleep while commuting to work is a perk of public transportation). I opened my eyes and my leg was still covered by hundreds of moving creatures.
The stuff nightmares are made of- oh wait I’m actually awake.
I took a deep breath to assess the situation. In my head I kept telling myself “don’t scream don’t scream don’t scream don’t react don’t move don’t do anything”. I didn’t dare draw attention to myself.
Thankfully, no one was sitting in the aisle next to me or behind me or in front of me. Confident that none of the other passengers had a view of me, I quickly rifled through my backpack (which was sitting on the otherside of me on the non ant infested side) and pulled the cardboard backing from a spiral notebook I had tucked away and starting scraping the ants off my leg and onto the ground.
Who knew this doubles as a tool to fling ants off oneself?
I quietly stepped on whatever ants were immediately underfoot, but I recognized that I was grossly outnumbered. While I succeeded in scraping the ants off me, they were now pooling around in the seat next to me and milling around on the floor. I had to escape the ants.
I had to time this in a way so that none of the other passengers would notice I changed seats. We were quickly approaching the park and ride- that would be my window to move, but I’d have to do it before any passengers at the park and ride boarded. I quiety slid my backpack on while fanning the ants in the seat next to me to avoid them crawling back on me.
As the bus pulled up to the curb I saw there were only 2 passengers waiting to board. There were 3 passengers sitting towards the front, but only one passenger sitting in a row ahead of me but behind the other passengers. As the bus pulled up, I quietly slid out of the seat, and stealthily moved up 4 rows from where I was. The one passenger I had to pass had their eyes glued to their phone. Success. I made it into the seat undetected before any new passengers boarded. I felt home free.
Settled into my new seat, I took a deep breath. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell the bus driver? If I do, what do I say?
“Hi Mr. Bus Driver, I apparently boarded the bus full of ants which no one seemed to notice and now the back of the bus is infested.”
“There are ants back there- for all I know they were there already there when I sat down.” This actually entered my mind- where the ants already there? Was it a coincidence that I was fixated on ants at my bus stop? Did someone else bring ants on the bus?
“Ein bus ait ‘ants’?” I’m pretty sure the driver didn’t know German but technically I could inform the driver of ants this way.
Then what? Would the driver kick me off the bus? Would I be banned? Would the driver make everyone deboard to wait for another bus? On the outside I sat cool as a cucumber smiling while wearing my sunglasses. On the inside I was panicking. I imagined myself in an interrogation room at the bus company being questioned by a surly bus driver demanding to know how the ants got there. I don’t even know if such a thing exists but my mind created that image at that moment.
The bus pulled away and conitnued to sit there with a stupid grin on my face. After we’d been on the freeway for about five minutes, I looked down and saw… about 5 ants. DAMN!!! The ants were slowly trickling forward. I quietly smushed every ant I saw with my foot. I felt like I was playing a video game in slow motion. About a line of 5-6 six at a time would slowly move forward from under my seat. I’d kill those, only for another round of 5-6 to appear.
It was like playing a slo-mo live action game of Space Invaders.
This was all nerve wracking and went on for 20 minutes. As the bus drove up the exit ramp and waited at the light, one passenger from the park and ride walked up to the driver.
“Hi- there are a TON of ants in the back of the bus”.
Oh crap – I could feel my throat closing up. I was about to be busted. I thought for sure someone would remember where I was when I boarded. I stopped breathing as the bus driver reacted to this news…
By shrugging his shoulders and saying “oh ok”. And then the light went green and the bus driver continued on with the route. The. bus. driver. did. nothing. No reaction. Did not care.
I deboarded at the stop before my typical stop. I just wanted off of that bus. When I stepped off, I waited for the bus to drive away before shaking my backpack and patting down my pant legs, shaking my feet and just making sure none of those little monsters were attached to me. I could not believe I was a hot mess for the past 35 minutes, desperately plotting escape from the ants while also fretting that I’d be banned for life from riding the bus and all the while the authority figure on the bus gave zero cares that the bus was about to be overtaken by ants from outerspace (okay yes I’m exaggerating at this one).
When I got to my office I stared at a blank monitor for five minutes before realizing I had not docked my computer. I was relieved to be at my desk not covered in ant bites but I was still traumatized by the ride into work. Thankfully, the bus ride home was uneventful- the bus I boarded home was not the same bus and it was a different driver. Normally I’d cap this with a lesson learned but – I really don’t know that I learned anything except don’t get covered in ants before boarding public transportation.
Have you ever been covered in ants? Or any other type of bug? Or encountered ants on the bus? Do tell!
Noise is an underrated topic for the working world. Depending on your work environment, the type of noise that permeates through your workspace can vary from the drone of electric tools to the bustling sounds of a cafe.
I’ve always worked in an office environment. I’ve spent many years trapped volutarily located in the confines of floors in buildings of downtown areas. What I’ve learned over the years is it takes immense patience to work around people you’d probably slam the door on if they showed up at your house other people.
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com I’ve never had an office that looked this modern. My current office is outfitted by office furniture another company in the building was going to throw away.
For my entire career as an office worker, I’ve had some type of hybrid or alternative work schedule. The difference between the past 4 years and the “before” time (we all know what I’m talking about here) is that the days in office vs. remote are flipped. Before- I was in office 4 days a week, and at home 1 day a week on average. After, well you get the gist.
I still commute to an office a couple of days a week to keep up appearances , because the company said so, be a “team player”. even though in my current role I have no real reason to be there. It’s ok because I get to waste more time getting “the scoop” from selected co-workers in the office and go for long walks in the area it gives me a change of scenery each week. Nevertheless, when I’m in the office it still requires patience to focus amidst other people’s noise.
I live in a different city from where I work so I can walk through construction zones for a change from my quiet tree lined neighborhood.
I had different office jobs throughout my college career, but the REAL adjustment came into play in after I completed my master’s degree and stepped into my first analyst job. This was the first job where I had to really concentrate on the work- it was mentally taxing.
The type of troubleshooting I had to do required more thought and diplomacy than I was used to on my other jobs. I was a budget analyst at a large state agency and errors in calculations had consequences.
Now, I don’t know if I took the job too seriously or if the others in my office didn’t care, but I was stuck with 2 co-workers in particular, let’s call them Helene and Kara- that TALKED LOUDLY ALL DAY. EVERYDAY. ABOUT EVERY MINUTE OF THEIR LIFE IN THE OFFICE AND OUTSIDE.
Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com Do you have this guy as your co-worker? It’s fun isn’t it, trying to get work done with the office bullhorn in your presence.
Oh- and lucky me, because they did a alternate work schedule of working 8- 9 hour days in a row to get every other Monday off, they were usually in the office by 7:30am and already knee deep in conversation by the time I rolled in at 7:45am.
A typical morning was something like this:
“Oh Helene- may I offer you some pop- corny corn?” Cue INSANE LAUGHTER FROM BOTH.
“OMG Kara that is one of the BEST Doug Heffernon lines”. (Note: I had not seen an episode of King of Queens at this time to know WTH they were talking about).
“Ok Helene, this is your week to take care of Seamus! Here you go”. (Seamus was a leprechaun pen they played with in the office. Yes these were grown ass women that cared for a leprechaun pen. Don’t worry there will be a post about this in the future.)
“Kara, when are you going to join my Zumba class?” (Helene taught Zumba classes in addition to this day job).
“Oh, I’ll aim for this Wednesday. I just got a phone # from the new guy on my bus route, and that’s a perfect first date.” (Idk what bus route she took- I never had that kind of experience riding the bus all these years).
“That’s perfect, I have five spots left and I”m trying to fill them up”.
“What time is it?”
“Eight thirty- is it too early for a snack run?”
“Yes, let’s go in an hour.”
“OMG guess who I ran into?”
“Who?”
“That lady with the eyebrows that used to work down the hall?”
“OMG does she still pencil in her eyebrows like its halloween?”
“Girl and then some”.
AND IT WENT ON AND ON LIKE THIS ALL DAY LONG. I didn’t have control over the background noise and it was frustrating as hell. There were no TVs in the office, so I had to rely on music. Thankfully, I had received a free iPod for joining my school’s alumni association. It had still been sitting in the box- my second week on the job I tore open that box and got to work filling it up with music.
Fast forward to today. I have no clue what happened to Kara and Helene, but I continued to have my share of Kara and Helenes in the office over the years. I still don’t understand how I had patience to not snap and strangle them all zone out the din. But somehow I managed. I’m fortunate that now I have a dedicated home office which makes it convenient to control noise. And because I have an office at the office complete with a TV, I can shut the door and just leave the TV on to drown out the Kara and Helenes of today.
Serenity Now!
But for those of you stuck with sitting out in a cubicle or open workspace with such inconsiderate delightful co-workers, get yourself a good pair of headphones and find the background noise you can control. And know that I feel for you!
I recently posted these photos and zine as four separate posts on a different blog…
Sound confusing? Well it is.
Since the beginning of this year, I’ve wanted to start fresh with a new site and be more intentional vs my initial go round blogging from 2011-2014. So in June I did start fresh and built a new site where I was going to be more serious. And I started posting things.
In digging through my WordPress account, I found this blog that you’re reading now.
I forgot I had this blog. And reading back through the contents, I was like – this is my true voice. Actually I created this blog as a complement to my main one back in 2012 because the main blog was focused on sharing the interesting and weird stuff I photographed in my area, in addition to sharing snippets of writing I was working on at the time. This blog was my sarcastic side- the “let me make fun of the absurd.”
The reality is, my true voice is somewhere between my two original blogs. But there’s no reason I can’t do it all in one spot. So I’m going with this one.
However, I already posted some cool photos on the other blog so rather than a simple reblog of those posts, I’m making ONE BIG POST mashing together the photos I posted on the other blog and now all my current content is in one place because I can. :-p
So here goes…
The ZINE
You can download a PDF copy here or from the DOWNLOADS page.
Below is the Digital Edition…
Garden 1: Japanese Friendship Garden/Rohohen: Phoenix, AZ
So now that you’ve seen the ZINE, below are some photos of the Japanese Friendship Garden, also known as Rohohen. Prior to November 2021, I’d never visited the gardens. I ended up here after registering for a weekend writing class through the Phoenix Arts Center. The class was focused on using nature and meditiation to generate written work. Having been to various writing workshops and conferences over the years, this was by far my favorite workshop.
The entire workshop was conducted at the garden over two morning sessions (9am-noon). Both days, we were given time to wander the garden on our own, encouraged to sit and observe, meditate.
After a specified amount of time, the class of 10 plus the instructor would converge on the lawn where we’d discuss our observations, read short pieces on nature and then write based on prompts given to us by the instructor.
We’d then share pieces of our writing to the class. It was a very positive experience!
One drawback is that our class did not stay in touch. One of our classmates did send out a group email after class to see if anyone would like to have regular meet ups at the garden for future writing sprints. Although some of us responded, nothing ever came of it.
I have found it hard to locate a writer’s group – either in person or virutally- but in the meantime I’ve continued to find smaller events/opportunities such as this workshop to keep me motivated and inspired – to move forward with my craft.
I did generate many pieces of writing during this workshop. Last year, I began to sift through my scribblings from this weekend. As a result, I created the zine referenced above to highlight some of my writing from this weekend.
One thing I reference in the zine is an apartment complex that overlooks the garden, as seen in the photo above.
If you are ever in the Phoenix area, I’d encourage you to visit this spot! Despite a nearby festival intruding upon the serenity of the garden on the second day, the garden is truly a hidden treasure in the city.
Garden 2: Vizcaya Gardens, Miami FL
Taken March 2015 at Vizcaya Gardens, Miami Florida overlooking Biscayne Bay. It’s a historic estate that was owned by some bigwhig from the 1800s but has many antiques as well as actual gardens. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the Miami area.
QUESTIONS:
Questions for you!!!
Do you have a favorite spot in your area that provides serenity from the din of city?
Do you have a community around one of your hobbies or creative pursuits? If so, how did you find your community?
Author’s note: Current day commentary has been added in italics.
Do you work in an office environment (down to a couple of days a week now). Do you typically buy or bring your lunch to work only to eat it at your desk ( used to be no- but there’s no lunchroom on my floor but I have an office now)? If so, here is a friendly piece of advice. If you have trash generated from your lunch, do everyone in your office a favor and throw it away in the trash can located in your company’s lunchroom or kitchen or whatever trash can is farthest away from where you and your co-workers sit (yup I still do this cause I don’t want food trash in my office).
Each day, thousands of workers find themselves relegated to eating lunch at their desk due to:
Lunchrooms that look like they were originally built as bomb shelters and are therefore more depressing than one’s cubicle or office (yup still the case- same building,different company, different floor with now zero accessible breakrooms).
Lack of outdoor seating areas with actual shade.
Smartphone is on the fritz so you haven’t had time to check in on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Tumblr/Pinterest/Foursquare (Twitter now X, idk if ppl still use Foursquare or Tumblr), so you need to use your work computer to let your friends know how completely stupid your dumb boss is because he or she needed your help to figure out how to get in on today’s Groupon deal (no really my boss at the time made me help her with this).
Just too busy and can’t afford the luxury of a lunch hour (this is a basic right, so you should really fight for this one).
Health and workplace experts are always telling us we shouldn’t eat lunch at our desk. Eating at your desk adds germs to your workplace surfaces (seriously wipe down your workspaces weekly with Clorox wipes), and you don’t get a chance to “unplug” and clear your mind, which often times bogs down your afternoon productivity.
Despite the numerous warnings from “experts”, walk into any workplace and you see countless workers hunched over their desk scarfing down whatever they could throw together in their lunchbox before running out the door that morning.
It happens, and I’m not here to lecture people on the hazards of eating at your desk. But if you are a cubicle lunch eater, I want you ask yourself a question. That question is “do I enjoy the smell of rotting trash?”
If you answered “yes” to the above question, just stop reading this blog post right now. Nothing I say will change your mind about your habits.
If you answered “no”, then next time you get ready to throw away that banana peel or can of sardines in the trash can sitting right under your desk, imagine yourself sitting on a mountain of banana peels and sardines. It isn’t a pleasant scenario to imagine, isn’t it. But guess what – the is probably the image that your cubicle neighbor will generate once that sardine can hits the bottom of your stinky trash can.
I know some of you out there might say “but I throw stuff away all the time at my desk and I never smell anything.” To those people, I say liar liar pants on fire. Even though you don’t notice the odor, odors have a way of working through cube walls. Your cube mate didn’t eat clams casino for lunch, so your cube mate didn’t acclimate to the smell and become oblivious to it – you did. The odor from your lunch may not bother you, but it most likely is bothering someone else.
So, my tip is quite simple. Don’t throw away your food trash at your desk. Get some exercise, and walk on over to the lunchroom to throw your trash away in that trash bin. Your co-workers will thank you.( Also, I can’t emphasize this enough, wipe your workspace down with Clorox wipes at least once a week.)
10. I’m absolutely certain that the square root of 4 is 2.
9. I’m absolutely certain that every 10 seconds, another 10 seconds has passed.
8. I’m absolutely certain that I’ll never visit the Republic of Cabo Verde because the idea of being surrounded simultaneously by water and volcanoes is not my idea of a good time.
7. I’m absolutely certain I’ll use the restroom today.
6. I’m absolutely certain that my yard contains dirt.
Also- contains grasshoppers in the summertime.
5. I’m absolutely certain that I’ll be uncertain about some things.
4. I’m absolutely certain that despite my best efforts, pockets of uncertainty will cause anxiety and I’ll have to remind myself not to get all stressed out over unimportant things.
Let’s keep things in perspective. If you die on the job, you’ll be forgotten by next week.
3. I’m absolutely certain that Garfield the Cat hates Mondays. As does most of the working world.
2. I’m absolutely certain that “the sun will come up, tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun.” I’m not into musical theater but even I know this song lyric and hey, it speaks truth.
Yes this is a sunset, not a sunrise, but the sun has to set before it can rise again. Also, this was my first attempt at painting last year. I’m certainly not a professional but it was fun painting this.
1. I’m absolutely certain that there more life lessons in store for me.
Security or Adventure? To be or not to be? Those are questions that have plagued humans since the dawn of time. IDK if that’s true it just sounded good. So to answer the prompt- well duh I want both security AND adventure.
Seriously WordPress, this is a formula failure of epic proportions. Instead of an OR statement this is an AND statement.
I need security to, oh I don’t know, pay my bills, take care of family or have any sense of responsibility. It might sound boring but geez we can’t be all bungee jumping all over the place 24/7 and expect to not have a crap ton of health bills because of broken bones have any type of rest or relaxation or inner peace. All adventure all the time is tiring. I know. Because I’ve gone through pockets of time where I overscheduled too much adventure and after awhile it sucks.
At the same time, adventure is needed to break up monotony of the day to day and expand our experiences. Adventure doesn’t have to be some expensive vacation, like a safari trip or scaling the side of a tall building. You can actually sprinkle adventure through your day.
Like for example, the building I work in was recently bought by a private financial services firm that wanted to move into the building and they thought “huh- let’s just buy the building – how hard can it be to run a building? (idiots).” But whatever- so I’d been hearing stories about the new building owner who sounded like quite a character. I got a tip the owner was outside smoking away while taking a cell phone call with his lawyer after parking his car on a public sidewalk experiencing some parking issues. So I’m like- I’ve got, GOT, to check this out. I nonchalantly walked outside and pretended to be looking at my phone when I reality I was eavesdropping (wasn’t hard- the dude was talking LOUDLY) and taking surveillance photos. I won’t post those here even though it’d be hilarious as the dude was basically wearing sweats while chain smoking and demanding answers on several things from his lawyer.
After a few minutes of playing spy, I decided to take a circuitous route to get back to the building entrance by ducking into another business. What do you know, the building owner went the opposite direction and ended up in the same area without any awareness that he’d been observed for the past 10 minutes. I did nothing with the information I gathered, but it was a fun adventure pretending to live out my real dream job of being a private investigator.
But see, adventure is only special if it’s on occasion or in small doses. Like everything, adventure is best experienced in moderation.
No adventure = no fun.
Too much adventure = fun then no fun.
Some adventure = fun.
Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below. If you’re a PI, convince me I should switch careers.
Taken July 2018, taken near Central Ave and Adams St. in downtown Phoenix. Hanny’s was a department store that last almost 40 years, from 1947-1986. The building was designed by local architects Royal Lescher and Leslie Mahoney.
unfrazzled analyst 