I put a couple of MacBook Pros into production the other day for our Communications group. Shortly thereafter, the users informed me that I’d neglected to add any printers to their machines. Whoops. So this morning I traipsed over to their office to add ‘em. Though I had no problems correcting my oversight, one of the printers (an HP 2015dn) reported its location as Boise, Idaho.

Of course, I felt compelled to print a test page or seven just to make sure my content came up on the printer in front of me, and did not, instead, start spewing paper in some Farm Bureau office out in Karcher Junction, much to the bewilderment of folks there. But no, print it did, right here. I haven’t the foggiest idea why the printer says it’s in Idaho, though. It seems happy enough to think it’s there, so I just let it be, dreaming its little potato dreams of the rugged north.

Wow. I really don’t update this thing much these days. I blame two things: general business at home and Facebook. It’s interesting, in a way, how Facebook has sapped the “will to blog” by providing a channel to constantly emit little bits of opinion here and there, acting much like a pressure cooker regulator- and lessening the perceived need to publish larger amounts here.

An additional consideration is that I know my boss reads this blog (hi, Steve!), so I’m not completely comfortable with some of the more cutting remarks I might make about the office, even though the chance of negative repercussions is probably not high. But then, sometimes I just feel that perhaps this blog has run its course, that there’s no more steam left in the boiler. I don’t know. We’ll see.

The first thing the cats did after they woke up this morning was to jump up on the bed and settle down for a nap. Their languid demeanor and slow, comfortable stretches were evocative of a sort of whole-body yawn, and flickers of regret for leaving the cozy confines of the covers briefly ran through my mind.

As the cats settled in for another long period of inaction, I thought about yawning- in particular, how contagious it is. You know the drill; someone next to you yawns and you can’t help but repeat it. While I didn’t see either cat yawn as it curled up for its snooze, they certainly do yawn voluminously when it suits them. But is a yawn transmissible between species? Maybe I should confine myself to bed today (regretfully ignoring the day’s chores) in order to observe the potential behavior firsthand.

Driving home in the dusk on a lonely country road, having abandoned the clogged freeway that is my normal route, I was suddenly gripped by the urge to just keep driving. No destination, no goal, other than to keep moving, to hear the tires sing over another mile of unfamiliar road, following the dotted line forever, just to see where it would take me.

I passed farmhouses and silent rail crossings, empty fields and misty canals. It was at once melancholy and hopeful; mundane, yet profound. Despite the curious sense of mysticism it aroused, I nonetheless slowly drifted out of my reverie and dead-reckoned my way back home, wondering exactly where I’d been.

Where does that road go?

For the past few months now, every morning I wake up to find edge of the bed’s fitted sheet pulled up, and my pillows lolling halfway out of their covers. I haven’t the foggiest idea what’s going on, other than I’m apparently spinning like a dervish in the middle of the night. The way everything is all bunched up, I’m surprised I don’t wake up dizzy. It’s weird; I wonder if it means anything.