Downtown Blogging

I am sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Portland and using my Palm 3x to compose this message. I am waiting for a collegue of mine to discuss an upcoming course I’ll be teaching.

To pass time, I recall why I hated using this stylus and the reason why I left the daily workplace some nine months ago.

To get to Portland from Battle Ground requires a twenty minute drive to a bride crossing the Columbia River. Like I said, a twenty minute drive – unless another thirty thousand people are trying to do the s me thing. The twenty minutes quickly becomes forty, then, another thirty just to travel ten miles into the metro. It took then another ten to find parking downtown; I couldn’t find a public restroom, even at the Starbucks, and there was a huge line there where the person in front of the line was grasping his head in mental confusion, talking to himself, trying to plat magic tricks with open items on the counter; the clerk was having a fit and the individualbarely knew where he was let alone understood he was buying coffee.

In line, I became distinctly aware of the fact that I hadn’t done this morning ritual in nearly a year. I was shocked at the amount of time, the inconveniences, the literal insanity of it all – how complacent I must have been to simply do this every weekday as routine. Now licking his finger and writing on the windows to Starbucks, are the actions of one mad indicidual any less crazy than my own just one year ago? Everyone is dower, gloomy, glaring here in the downtown coffee house. They glance at me and sneer, these people, angry, uptight, concerns crease their faces. They realize that I don’t belong – that I’ve managed to wiggle free of the jacket – and I’ve only come for the visiting hour.

I’m only too happy to leave.

Russell Mickler, CISSP/MCSE

Principal, Mickler & Associateswww.micklerandassociates.com

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