I got a letter in the mail recently that had my address handwritten – or at least it looked like that. But it was really a font and printed on the envelope. Also printed there was a sort of transparent gradient house with a tree in the front yard.
When I opened it, there was a letter from an insurance agent with that same house picture – only now it was in full color and I could see it was MY house. Or, rather, a picture of my house as it used to be – before the tree in the front yard was cut down – pulled from “public sources” (as explained in the caption), which in this case meant google street view.
The caption also said that no agent had been to my house and it wasn’t the company that I already work with. But, they wanted to be my agent.
In a super-duper creepy way.
I mean, it got my attention, but it was also unnerving enough I don’t want anything to do with it. On the flip side, pretty impressive amount of work to get to that produced.
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Our building at work had a chili contest recently – this is where I had moose meat chili, naturally – and it was a gathering of all the departments that worked there.
We assembled in the conference room on the second floor and everyone helped get the table set up. I was already eyeing the cookies off to one side when a colleague from one of the other departments announced that we should pray first.
My first thought was “what, really? Here?”, but everyone closed their eyes and bowed their heads.
Everyone, that is, except for me and one other guy. We had our eyes open, looking around at the rest assembled and made eye contact. Eyebrows were raised and shrugs exchanged, but we both just waited quietly until the prayer was done.
Which was not quite as soon as I would have liked – given that the food was already on the table and, well, we were at work.
And then it was time to eat.
I guess what puzzled me was why the colleague assumed that this would be okay with everyone, and that everyone should participate, and that everyone believed in the same things he did. It wasn’t bad, it was just… well… why?
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Jim had one last paper to write for his art therapy certification program and I volunteered to help with documenting a technique. We got the table and supplies set up and he gave direction while taking photos of me putting blobs of white paint to colored paper and then folding and unfolding to get a sort of ink blot. Except I was instructed to think of this as clouds and to try and see an image there.
On the first page – black paper – I didn’t see much until I spun the page around – but then the blots suggested an owl’s face. I used some oil pastels to sketch the rest of the shape and gave it a title.
On the blue paper, the blots right away looked like two swans facing each other. I added in a little color for the beaks and drew lines to better suggest the shapes.
I asked Jim how I did and he said, “well, you’re sane,” – which was such a relief. Apparently I came up with really normal things to see there and it just happened that they were both birds that I saw in the “clouds”. If I had drawn something like “demons eating babies” or something, that would have been a red flag.
So, good news, I’m sane. Who would have guessed? I’ve asked for a certificate, but he’s been busy.
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And hey, how about that weather? Weird, right?