State Quarter

I recently saw the design that will be used on the back of the Oklahoma quarter. You know what I'm talking about - those quarters that are issued in the order that the state was admitted to the union, each with it's own special design on the back. Oklahoma's will be one of the last, since it didn't achieve statehood until 1907.

There was a contest to determine what the design of the OK quarter would be. With the help of my son, the artist, I submitted two designs. I guess neither was good enough.

The first suggestion I had was to display the Oklahoma state bird - the doublewide.

The second was a fat woman driving an SUV while talking on a cell phone.

I still think both have merit.

First Day of Classes

Today was the first day of classes for the new semester. I taught four classes today. I am tired.

It was a weird day for a couple of reasons. One, coming home today an idiot in a pickup truck ran a stop sign and nearly pronged me at about 45 miles an hour. He was totally oblivious, but didn’t even have the excuse of being on a cell phone. He simply had his head up his butt.

Secondly, there’s a passive aggressive colleague of mine who has stopped speaking to me. It seems he has a very high sense of self-worth that I can’t quite bring myself to agree with. So he hasn’t spoken to me in about a year and a half. And he’s in his 50s? My god, it sounds like something a high schooler would do.

Today I saw Passive Aggressive in the cafeteria sitting with my boss, and my friend Ted. I get along fine with my boss, I get along fine with Ted. I thought. So I decided to get a cup of coffee and join them, even if Passive Aggressive was uncomfortable with that. In the two minutes it took to get and pay for my coffee, the three of them were gone.

Kinda hurts a guy’s feelings, it does.

Finally, I have recently begun e-mailing a friend I haven’t actually seen in 25 years. I sent her an e-mail last week telling her I was going to be out of town in Orlando for a few days, and that I wouldn’t have access to e-mail during that period. She never got that note, and today I received a concerned e-mail from her wondering why I wasn’t responding to her. I told her it was because I’d been in Orlando.

Although she lives near Chicago, she told me that SHE had been in Orlando this weekend too.

Too weird.

Orlando

I’m just back from Orlando - “The Happiest Place on Earth.” Or the cheesiest.

I’m having trouble with that whole “invisible thing” again. My squeeze introduced me on Saturday to one of her colleagues as “Jim.” My name is NOT Jim. I can see why she’s confused: we’ve only been dating six years and living together for five. "Jim." Geeze.

As I was going through airport security leaving Orlando, I was taking my things out of the tub that had just been X-rayed. The TSA fellow looked into one of the bins and took out a tiny vial of nitroglycerin. “Is this yours?” he asked.

“No. Whoever left it probably won’t even know it’s gone until the next time he starts having chest pains.”

“Yeah,” the TSA fellow said, “This is not his lucky day.”