The Blog of Daniel

Just my place to write without any delusions of self-importance.

Where are all the doormats?

I've been quiet because I've been knee deep in re-writing from scratch all of the backend code for saidsimple.com.  Since the front end is also 3 years old, I'll be giving it a facelift too.  I'm hoping to have it completed in the next few weeks.  This time around I am going for the snappy approach, instead of the current comfy approach.

Some other random things in my mind.  Where are all the doormats?

  When I left on vacation, I brought my doormat inside so it wouldn't blow away during any monsoon storms.  On the night I came back, I put it back out and just assumed that it would spend the rest of the night getting reacquainted with the all the neighbors doormats.  I don't know what the hell happened while I was asleep but the next morning I went outside and discovered my doormat was now alone.  All of the other doormats were gone.  As I walked through the rest of the property on the way to the mailbox, I came to realize that the entire place was now devoid of doormats.  It's like my doormat missed the doormat Rapture.  Perhaps it did not repent in time.  I see an M.  Night Shyamalan movie in this.

Perhaps related… also on the night I came home from vacation, I noticed that two buildings down someone had their patio light on.  Nothing unusual there, but day after day I noticed that the same light was still on but by the time I actually parked and got out of my car, it was already out of mind.  It looked like a 100 watt bulb which I estimated would cost about $9 a month if left on all the time.  Since times are hard for everyone I finally made it a point to ask someone at the apartment office to leave them a nice note since they might not know it was on.  Just in case they did know it's on and it needed to stay on for whatever reason (and also just to be nice) I even gave the office manager a brand new CFL light-bulb to give them so it would save my unknown neighbor a wad of money.  Today, while going to get my mail I deliberately went through the parking area and was happy to see the light was off and the new bulb was screwed in.  It's nice to do nice things for people.  On the way back though, walking through the common area, I noticed that every single one of the neighbors along the way now had their patio lights on.  As my friend Dena pointed out, perhaps I am now regarded as the light-bulb fairy. 

I've talked about things like this with Amber and it turns out that we both like to do nice things for people, though in her case no good deed seems to go unpunished.  I have heard many times about her loaning money to desperate people only to see the debt go unthanked and never repaid.  I think god must be telling her that iPod's are not for her because they keep disappearing too, the last one around the neck of a needy friend who has not since and likely will not ever return.  Now that I think of it, I had this very same thing happen with my laptop a while back.

Somewhere out there is a planet, covered in doormats, all of Amber's iPods and my laptop.

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