January grab bag

As the subtitle of my blog suggests, I write a lot about the various thoughts that I have while driving to work every day. Some days there are some very specific, serious things on my mind, and other days it’s just a veritable smorgasbord of half-baked ideas. Here’s what I mean.

On Wednesday (Jan. 13th), I was twice greeted with “Happy New Year.” The fact that it happened twice struck me as odd because it is the middle of January already. Time is indeed flying. This caused me to ask myself the following question: How long into the new year must we go before we don’t have to say “Happy New Year” anymore? I guess the answer varies, but in most cases I think the greeting kind of fades after about January 5th, when everybody is back to work, school, and the normal routine. One of the instances I experienced on the 13th was at a meeting of individuals who had not met together since early December. This was the first time we were all assembled in the new year. So the “Happy New Year” greeting made sense. But if we had not had our first 2010 meeting until mid-February, would we still have been greeted with a “Happy New Year?” I doubt it. Thus, there must be a cut-off point somewhere.

Speaking of time flying, another thought floated through my mind on the way to work the other day. Do you realize that with the turn of the decade, we are already 1% of the way through the next millennium? I don’t know about you, but I find that to be amazing. One percent may not seem like a lot, but we’re talking about a millennium here. Let me put it this way. If you asked me to make a comparison as to how far into this millennium we are, my guess would be something like a handful of sand along a stretch of beach. After all, a millennium is a thousand years! Before the year 2000, the last change of millennium was during the time of Leif Ericson and before the Battle of Hastings! So, the fact that we are “already” 1% of the way to the year 3000 astounds me.

On my half-hour commute to and from work, I spend about fifteen minutes each way listening to the Bible on CD. After that, I do a lot of radio channel surfing, always looking for a favorite tune. I normally cycle through eight or nine stations, ranging from oldies to rock to contemporary Christian. Occasionally, as I quickly skip from station to station, I’ll experience the strange phenomenon of two stations playing the same song at the same time, or nearly simultaneously (say within a few minutes of each other). That’s kind of weird, because most of these stations have playlists of thousands of songs. Is this coincidence? Perhaps, but in my mind it happens too often to be mere coincidence. My theory is that, like anyone doing any job, disc jockeys periodically get bored, check out what’s going on at the other stations, hear a particular song they like, and decide to slide it right into their own show. That’s just my theory.

A recent coincidence in this vein was when, on three consecutive mornings, I heard Blondie’s “The Tide is High” on my way to work. If you remember this song, I think you’ll agree that it is one of the catchiest tunes ever, and once it gets into your head, it’s hard to get it out. So, there I am on the third day, at work, singing “The Tide is High” all day long. I couldn’t stop. And let me tell you, it’s kind of embarrassing when some fifty-five year old dude who sits in a cubicle just a few feet away hears another grown man singing, “I’m not the kind of girl who gives up just like that.”

I hope everyone enjoys their MLK Day holiday weekend.