March 2007

At first I was going to argue The Rolling Stones, but Brian Jones blew that. According to Wikipedia, The Kinks are:

…now the only major British Invasion band whose original members are all still alive…

I found it to be one of those ‘huh’ moments where you never really thought about it, but then it’s presented to you and it has enough of an impact to take you out of whatever track your mind was in at the time. It’s such a useless fact, one that if you ever brough it up in casual conversation, people would look at you funny.

I immediately thought of the Stones because it had been so long since Brian Jones died, I tend to forget about him ever being a member of the band. I look at their early albums like Beggar’s Banquet and Their Satanic Majesties Request and am slightly startled that he’s there. When I think of the Stones, I think of Mick, Keith, Charlie, and Bill, even though he left the band a while ago. He didn’t die. At least not yet. Another useless fact is that Bill Wyman is older than my dad by five years, which puts him in his early seventies. I’m sure he left the band partly to keep whatever dignity he had left.

The Who is out, obviously, even if John Entwhistle hadn’t died a few years ago, there’s still Keith Moon. It’s easier to remember Keith Moon because he was such a happily crazy character, what with driving a car into a hotel pool and setting the standard for trashing hotel rooms that subsequent generations of rock stars can’t match. Brian Jones was more serious and drank because of the pathos of it all. Keith drank because it made his drumming all the more rabid.

What about The Yardbirds? I only know the ‘famous’ members are still around. Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. I looked The Yardbirds up on Wikipedia, and they’ve reformed, of all things. I didn’t see if any of the members from the early sixties kicked the bucket.

Do I NEED to mention The Beatles? I do not. Everyone of my generation remembers where they were when they heard Lennon had been shot. He was our JFK in that regard.

Damn. See how these things can stick in your head, make your though processes go zooming off in weird directions. Before you know it, you’ve got a few paragraphs about absolutely nothing at all.

So my office moved over the weekend.

Heh, not so exciting in the grand scheme of things, so I shall commence with the long-winded back story henceforth.

The company that provides my day job has several offices in Canada and the US, one being, obviously, the Portland office in which I spend my day. The Portland office was a sublet situation. Canadians, I’ve discovered, are notoriously frugal individuals, and will put up with all sorts of things to save a buck. They also like to drink a lot of beer, but that’s a blog post or two for another time.

So, in the interest of frugality, the Portland office was a sublease of three offices and a large room from an engineering firm downtown. Conditions were very spartan. Those of us in the big room used folding tables as desks. We didn’t have filing cabinets or drawers to keep project files or store our personal stuff. When I started there, we sat in these old chairs that must have been meant for a conference room. If you sat in them for longer than an hour at a time, which was most of the time for us, you’d end up with a sore back. Because the room was open, every annoying habit you had or your coworkers had was open for ridicule, not publicly, of course, but over a pint or three at the bar after work. Generally not the best environement for productivity. I like the people I work with, annoying habits aside, but the situation would get so intolerable at times I seriously thought about quitting.

The only saving grace was the flexibilty I had to work from home. We all took advantage of it. Otherwise, I think we would have killed each other in ways that would have made the Branch Davidians look like pussies.

To quote the wise man, Ron White, I tell you all of that to tell you this.

We moved into a newer, bigger office over the weekend. Now, rather than 8 people crammed into a single room, we have 2 people each in four offices. Monday was a good day. I walked in my office, MY OFFICE. Those two words never sounded so good. But even the fact that I have a office with a door I can close wasn’t all that made me happy. No, it was the silverware.

What was really funny about this move was the recognition of the little things we sacrificed at the other office. We didn’t have our own kitchen, our own refrigerator, our own SILVERWARE. I walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge to see it stocked full of beer. I remarked to a coworker how I thought that was a well stocked fridge. He took me back to the kitchen and gave me a proper tour.

He opened all of the cabinets in turn. Each was filled with wonderful treats. One had cookies, one aspirin and such, another had new glasses and cups, the last plates. As he opened each in turn, my exclamations, yes EXCLAMATIONS, of joy became more ferfent and loud. I could not believe such bounty could ever exist outside of my own home ever again.

He saved the best for last. He opened a drawer to reveal NEW silverware. Our silverware. Slowly and referently I reached down and took a fork and held it up for inspection. It was as if we were the ape creatures in 2001:A Space Odyssey, clustered around the Monolith. After admiring its new shiny finish, untouched by hand or dishwasher, I let out a sigh and softly set it back in its place in the drawer.

I walked back to my office, content.