A change of scenery

View from Writers' Block office. November 2009.

I have been looking out the same window at work for a little over nine years. I've watched the seasons change on the burning bush just out of view in this photo over on the left. It's a beautiful red right now but the leaves are starting to fall. Sabrina, the wandering Israelite on my desk, has really thrived in this location.

It has been a privileged perch for these many years - I can see people coming and going ... and I can watch the wildlife in the field just beyond the parking lot. When Gloria goes out to sit in her car during the day I wave at her. On warm and sunny days I've enviously watched the guy who does the landscaping, thinking I could do the edging and he could come in and try to think up a headline. I'm not sure why, but when someone gets flowers the flower delivery people often come to the back door so I get to be first to know. I usually like to be first to know stuff. Oh, just say it, Scott: Ann had her baby. I know, I know. How in the world can that baby be eight years old now? Where did the years go?

When the window washer people come, it's always a surprise and never convenient to move the clutter off my desk. I enjoy watching them squeegee my window and then I move all my papers and stuff out of dripping danger so they can do the inside. I think squeegie-ing windows would be kind of fun, too.

In any event, the view is going to change today, one of many adjustments being made to prepare for ...