The flower and the corporation

As I was walking past the library to institute last night, I saw the strangest thing. A man stopped and smelled the flowers which were planted along the path. At first I thought it was odd, even though that familiar old saying popped into my head. I found myself slightly envious of this man, who had thought to take but a moment out of his life to appreciate the seemingly little things of this world. I thought about stopping to smell the flowers as well, but I didn't. I don't know if it was out of fear that I didn't want this guy to think I was mocking him somehow, or if I might have been embarrassed had someone seen me doing something out of the ordinary. For some reason, I was totally self conscious about it. The whole walk back to the institute I was thinking about going back to smell them, just to see what they were like. I didn't really care anymore if they smelled great or wonderful, but within me, I wanted to know that I had taken the time to enjoy something small. I'm resolved that the next time I'm on campus, I'm going to stop and smell them, and I hope that lots of people see me. You never know what actions you take which might inspire someone else to enjoy something previously taken for granted in their lives. And yes, I went on a rant about the qualities of a friggin flower, gush if you please.

I'm sitting at my job while I write this, and I have to say, for "work", I kinda like it. I have a couple friends, and I can talk to them via the chat program we have at work. It hasn't quite turned into the homework encouraging thing that I'd hoped it'd be, but then again, if I weren't doing this, I could be reading. And yes, I'm still way behind in my reading for school. They have what they call Clinics, where people come in to hawk their products to us to get us to both be more knowledgeable for our customers, and hopefully be more inclined to sell their products. I've not learned a whole lot attending the two that I've gone to, but I did win a sweet set of headphones from Skullcandy, and today, I broke a $500 watch from Suunto. In my opinion, Sunnto is a huge waste of money (obviously if I can break it in just holding it for 5 minutes), but skullcandy is a pretty decent product. I love how companies come out with new and exciting "technology" each year for things that we somehow can't do without, and it costs just a little bit more than what we're willing to spend, but dang it, some people just have to have the latest and greatest. If you can't tell, I've learned to hate most corporations. I think that by and large, most of them don't serve any useful purpose to society and yet somehow they take advantage of gullible consumers to stay alive or even flourish. Look at me! I've gone from pondering the pleasures and wonder of the small things in life, to a semi sermon against irresponsible capitalism, they're totally related if you ask me. I love blogging! I suddenly make so much more sense to myself!

Random note- My desk is facing the West side of the building, where I can see outside. This also means, as the sun sets, it shines directly into my eyes for a good two hours. So yes, I'm sitting at my desk wearing my sun glasses. Suddenly I'm much more interested the in visible light transmission percentages of sun glasses!

For those of you wondering, I'm still behind in my reading for school, and I've consigned myself to the fact that I probably always will be. There's just too much going on with it. Not to mention that it's mostly all written by crusty old men who haven't seen the outside of their offices in a decade or two, so it's a little bit dry.