I'll Show You Mine; You Show Me Yours

Let’s face it, here in the frigid Midwest this time of year it is hard to come up with blog post topics. Not much exciting going on in the land of the dead. Running is in maintenance mode. The only races around are those that start with “Frozen” or “Snow” or “Igloo” or “Don’t Blame Me You Chose To Live Here”, etc. So I thought I’d go all MTV Cribs on you and show you around my place. Well, specifically, my work space. You know, “where all the magic happens”.

I know you probably thought that my work space is a fantastic giant trampoline in which I repeatedly try to back flip myself onto one of my pet unicorns, based on all of the wonderful, thought-provoking, offbeat topics I’ve provided for you over the years. Close. Instead, as you can see below, it’s a $30 clearance desk from Office Max. The desk has one of those roll out trays for the keyboard that I have to keep jamming back onto the track due to the weight of my apparently humongous wrists pulling it out too far. A roll out tray that cannot sustain the weight of a gaunt runner’s wrist? I see why it was in the clearance section.


You’ll note the requisite Runner’s World calendar. You’ll also note that I’m downstairs in the basement. No trampoline. No unicorns. Just a few spider webs, the clicking of the furnace, me, and a disgruntled llama (not pictured).

What you can’t see is the pile to the left of my desk of chewed fingernails, dried boogers, and lost ambition along with the vapor of Farts Past hovering in the air. The fingernails and boogers are swept up each week with the vacuum. The lost ambition is a bit more clingy.

I have two monitors. Me and my clearance desk are rich that way. You could say that I could multi-task by exploring two of your terrific blog sites at a time. You know, getting more done…reading more posts. You could say that but you’d be wrong. I have much better things to do than put up TWO blogs on a screen at a time. No, the left screen is reserved for my porn* (not pictured). The right screen is where you prattle away about something or other.

You’ll also notice that, behind my larger monitor is an In/Out box (t.w.s.s.) See:


Why do I have an In/Out box when I work from home through a largely paperless company? Basically, it’s a place to put my kids’ pictures when they come bounding down the stairs.

“Dad, look what I made for you.”
“That’s great honey but you can see Daddy’s having his Porn Time. Put it in the Inbox and I’ll review it later.”

It’s been five months. Haven’t gotten to it yet.

And, finally, on my desk you see a coffee cup from a local race. It’s their “prize” for finishing in the top 5 of your age group. It’s a prize in the same way that winning The Bachelor is a prize: You don’t really want to but, since everyone is watching, you feel you have to take it. I have a bunch of these mugs. I’ve donated a few of them to the local homeless shelter. If you walk these streets, you might find a few of Michigan’s capital city’s homeless sleeping on cardboard boxes and drinking their own hobo urine from one of these mugs. It’s the least I could do. Literally. Philanthropy!

Oh, and if I look far over my left shoulder, here’s my lazy dog. She sleeps quietly there six hours a day EXCEPT the moment I call into a teleconference, in which case, she finds something urgent to bark about. Maybe the llama is spitting at her?

She doesn't have a liver condition. She's not really jaundice. My camera battery is failing.

Now that I’ve shown you mine, perhaps you’d like to show me yours? Consider this a gift. You didn’t really know what to post about anyhow, did you? I’ve just given you a topic for free. You’re welcome, internets.

If I see a photo of your blog work space online that I find interesting (based on my own unknown criteria but it wouldn’t hurt to include a midget), perhaps I’ll send you one of those fancy race coffee mugs like you see on my desk. I have others in the kitchen cabinet. Unused. And no, before you ask, hobo piss not included. You’ll have to supply your own.

Now get clicking.

Happy trails.

*“work”