Strange things before the sun comes up

I know it's been a long time and, since I have a few minutes while adjusting to jet lag, I decided to try and write down how my morning went (I've been having to retell it a lot anyway.) There were a total of three things that were unexpected.

#1 While going through the toll area of the Bay Bridge, I had out a $5 bill. I didn't realize that before 5 AM, the toll is four dollars. When I handed my bill to the woman and asked for a receipt, she kept her hand (holding my $5) held out to me and said "Change." I didn't understand what she meant, I thought she would turn to the register, pull out a $1 and then turn back to hand it to me. She impatiently screams the word "CHANGE!" at me.

I squint and realize that, between her ring and pinky finger is a tightly rolled and folded bill. I take it and she turns to the register to print my receipt. I say, "Sorry, I didn't see that there."

She says, "I don't give a s$#@ what you think, you motherf%@#$er."

Like I normally do in this type of situation, I burst out laughing. She holds the receipt out at me, I take it and she screams "Get OUT of here you B%#@H!!" - and so I pull out onto the bridge.

#2 I am about to go through the metal detector at the security point at SFO. I let some airline staff in ahead of me since there is no specific cut-in point for this terminal. While standing there waiting, a TSA agent approaches me. (I would like to preface this part by saying, I expect that his normal interaction is he asks someone about an item, they say "Oh." and start removing said item. It's the only reason I can think of for this behavior.)

He walks up to me and the conversation starts, "Do you have a belt?"

"Yeah, it's in here", and I point to the tray.

"Keys?" - I point to my bag.

"Phone?" - I point to my bag.

"Shoes?" - I confusedly point to my sock covered feet.

"You'll need to take your laptop out." I unzip my awesome backpack that separates the laptop section from the rest of the bag, making it TSA compliant to go through on it's own.

This went on for about three minutes as a game of "Stump The Traveler" until I went through the metal detector. Everyone was giggling.

#3 With the plane taking off at 6 AM, almost everyone was asleep. The flight attendants came through asking the passengers who were awake if they wanted a snack - and they had three choices. As she approached my aisle, I could hear the choices and, apparently, so could a little girl a couple rows up on the other side of the plane. Guess which word the kid keyed in on : peanuts, pretzels, or cookies.

I heard noises relating to a desire for the cookies, a whining for the cookies, followed by an all-out screaming and crying. Some genius picks this time to actually GET the cookies - verifying that they do, in fact, exist and are being given out freely. The screaming gets cranked to eleven and goes on for about 20 minutes.

So yeah, Delta, on early flights how about nixing the cookies.

Tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are. ~a fortune cookie

I have a theory that the reason there are so many geeks fascinated by the medieval time period is because of the peaks and valleys of stress in the technical industry. For many, either you are utterly stressed or bored out of your skull. We (and I say “we” because I consider myself part of this group) long for simpler times. In Utopian terms, there were two main phases you were in.

1) You were putting on armor, grabbing a long stick with a deadly bit on the end of it and dealing with your problem.
2) You were celebrating the fact that your problem was dealt with, feasting on whole animals, and listening to musicians sing tales of your courage and strength.

The reality is, there was plenty to stress about. To name a few: disease, foul odors everywhere, Vikings showing up and wreaking havoc, frightening medical practices- and, worst of all, lack of instant access to reliable information on any topic. Also, being under siege for years is a whole new level of boredom and stress.

My point here is that computer geeks often have stress which leads to odd ways of dealing with it – I know I did. It was based on a technique that Native Americans would use when they were suffering from grief or anger or any emotion that they could not get under control.

First, he would fast for a day or two just to let his body know that he meant business. Next, he would go down to a riverbed and search for a rock that "called to him." After that, he would take this rock and go far out into the woods, grip the rock as tight as he could and visualize himself pouring all his negative emotion into it. Finally, he would bury the rock and walk away, leaving whatever was troubling him behind.

If you are an insomniac like me, this may make more sense. The goal is to have a memory of something you can latch onto instead of whatever is bothering you repeatedly forcing itself into the forefront of your mind. You just remember burying the rock when the emotion pops up and eventually it fades away.

I was not about to fast or bury a quarry’s worth of rocks to deal with stress, but here was my procedure. On my walk home at the end of the day, I would press my hand against a certain cement pillar and leave my work stress there. If I started to think back about my job, I would remember the pillar. And, believe it or not, it worked pretty well for me.

When we moved houses I needed a new pillar. After giving it much thought, I decided on a weird sculpture-thing I would be passing by every day. The next evening, following my pattern, I placed my hand on it and, to my surprise, it moved. I grabbed it and experimented and realized that it was meant to spin and, also, the main pieces rotate on their own while the base is spinning.

This is way cooler than the pillar. On particularly bad days I would get the whole thing spinning as fast as I could, nearly slamming myself in the head a couple of times.

I still don’t know what the sculpture-thing is or what it’s supposed to represent. I’ve included a short video below – if you have any idea of the true meaning of my stress totem, I’d love to hear it.