I can either give you a boring play by play of my trip to Paris/Rome/Madrid (though I will quickly tell you about the knife fight I saw), or I could tell you how I spent my Friday at work … Surprisingly, the latter is the better story, at least in my mind.

First, the knife fight. We were walking through Paris, finally crossing over the Seine on our way to see the Eiffel Tower, and crossing the river, there are these African guys making bracelets (that Darren warned me not to let near you) and after telling him a few emphatic “Non”s, we were approached by a guy trying to sell his art on the same bridge. We said “Non” and continued to cross the street. We just had to wait for the light to turn red so we could cross. So we wait… and we wait… and meanwhile, the art guy starts yelling at the bracelet guy. This yelling escalates with each guy having some ally or friend or something, so there are four guys yelling at each other. All of a sudden, BAM, art guy pulls out a knife. Bracelet guy responds in kind, and now we have two guys with knives, while Lauren and I wait to cross the street. The signal refuses to change. The two friends manage to diffuse the situation, and by the time it’s diffused, the signal changes. Of all the places visited on this trip, I thought I’d most likely see a knife fight in Madrid, or, even more likely, the Atlanta airport (kidding… sort of…).

You haven’t experienced excitement until you’ve watched a knife fight from 10 feet away, while trying to cross the busiest road in Paris.

So now, with no segue required, here’s my second story.

When I first switched to office life, I was afraid I’d never adjust and bore myself to death (sort of). After 9 months, it sees like I’m finding ways to adjust. So on Friday, with not much to do, I decided to do a little sociological experiment. About a week and a half ago I put my broken washing machine on the free section of craigslist and received 15 emails in about 20 minutes. I figured this type of response was typical, it was a completely broken washing machine, so a ton of people would respond to something of value.

Clearly I can use this for evil… or at least my own entertainment.

Enter my ad on craigslist. Free gold watch. Insert sob story about some girl breaking up with me (the girl happened to have given me the watch) then “threw the watch” to a location that just happened to correspond to right outside my office window. After being flagged a few times and reposting, I finally got it to stay, and it stayed up for about 45 minutes. In that 45 minutes, we spotted 3 very obvious people searching the field for a gold watch. The only unfortunate thing (for them) was that the location wasn’t near any convenient parking (see map) and that baseball field (where the watch was allegedly located) is behind 2 gates. This meant that you could see the people from a mile away as they came in looking for the watch.

It was like “To Catch a Predator” but the only crime these people had committed was being naive, stupid, desperate, or all of the above.

Seems like I’m getting used to this office stuff.

Having doubts that anyone reads this anyway, I apologize to anyone who does for the space in between updates.

I hope all is well with you. As for me: Lots has gone on. Almost all of it good stuff.

Fully moved in to the new house, enjoying it very much.

Also, went to Europe for 9 days. Pictures are in the photos section.

Actually, that’s about it. Pretty boring, I know. I just really don’t feel like writing here when I could be in bed. Apologies. I’ll try to update more later this week with something of note. I’ve been rather uninteresting lately. Haven’t had a good rant in a while.