I got a letter in the mail recently that had my address handwritten – or at least it looked like that.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.\u00a0 Or, rather, a picture of my house as it used to be – before the tree in the front yard was cut down – pulled from \u201cpublic sources\u201d (as explained in the caption), which in this case meant google street view.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The caption also said that no agent had been to my house and it wasn\u2019t the company that I already work with.\u00a0 But, they wanted to be my agent.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a super-duper creepy way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, it got my attention, but it was also unnerving enough I don\u2019t want anything to do with it.\u00a0 On the flip side, pretty impressive amount of work to get to that produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
—————-<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We assembled in the conference room on the second floor and everyone helped get the table set up.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first thought was \u201cwhat, really?\u00a0 Here?\u201d, but everyone closed their eyes and bowed their heads.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everyone, that is, except for me and one other guy.\u00a0 We had our eyes open, looking around at the rest assembled and made eye contact.\u00a0 Eyebrows were raised and shrugs exchanged, but we both just waited quietly until the prayer was done.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then it was time to eat.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t bad, it was just… well… why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
—————–<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim had one last paper to write for his art therapy certification program and I volunteered to help with documenting a technique.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Except I was instructed to think of this as clouds and to try and see an image there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the first page – black paper – I didn\u2019t see much until I spun the page around – but then the blots suggested an owl\u2019s face.\u00a0 I used some oil pastels to sketch the rest of the shape and gave it a title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the blue paper, the blots right away looked like two swans facing each other.\u00a0 I added in a little color for the beaks and drew lines to better suggest the shapes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I asked Jim how I did and he said, \u201cwell, you\u2019re sane,\u201d – which was such a relief.\u00a0 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 \u201cclouds\u201d.\u00a0 If I had drawn something like \u201cdemons eating babies\u201d or something, that would have been a red flag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, good news, I\u2019m sane.\u00a0 Who would have guessed? I\u2019ve asked for a certificate, but he\u2019s been busy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
————–<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And hey, how about that weather?\u00a0 Weird, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got a letter in the mail recently that had my address handwritten – or at least it looked like that.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0 When I opened it, there was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_bluesky_dont_syndicate":"","_bluesky_syndication_accounts":"","_bluesky_syndication_text":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2540,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2539\/revisions\/2540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thunderofwade.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}