A Midday Thursday Update

There's not much to say, really. I tried to pretend that I didn't have to make a lunch for myself today, that I wouldn't get hungry or that food would show up or that suddenly, ta dah!, I would have enough money to buy myself a chicken salad sandwich on an onion or poppyseed bun from the BYU vending machines (let's be honest--they're a secret BYU addiction).

But right before I left the house this morning, I put a nectarine, my last banana, and a thing of microwave popcorn in my typical lunch pail (a blue plastic Wal-Mart shopping bag). I also already had a thing of yogurt at work from yesterday. All this fell under what I hopefully entiteld Lunch Plan B. (I'm still pushing for a surprise free lunch at Thai Ruby. "Dr. Hatch, you're going to use department funds to send me to lunch at Thai Ruby? That's nice. Can it be on the clock?")

12:26 pm. I've eaten the banana. I've eaten the yogurt. I'm a little afraid to fill my stomach with buttery vacuity that is microwave popcorn, so I'm heading to the nectarine next. I am still working my way through the GIANT Costco bag of pretzels left over from our faculty seminar (in May). This brings up a story, that is also a tangent, that also might turn out to be the surprise purpose for this blogpost.

1. It was 2001, and I was a new employee in 118 HGB, the Writing Fellow office, we had a similar huge-o bag o' Costcoian pretzels. Someone kept leaving the top of the bag unzipped. And I would get kind of disgruntled and say, sometimes silently and sometimes audibly, "We need to shut this." I was envisioning the 24-lbs of Low Fat Cholesterol Free! pretzels soggy, pasty, white, and limp. Gone. Wasted. No good for the office eating. But two weeks, three weeks, four weeks--the bag was continually left open and the pretzels remained sharp, crisp, and edible. And then it hit me--

2. I'm from NY. In New York we would have needed to close the pretzel bag. In New York, the humidity is a predator and pretzels are unsuspecting, short-lived victims. In New York, you can say things like, "Waste not, want not." (But you wouldn't.) But in Utah, with Utahn co-workers, you can leave the pretzel bags open all you want, and still, months later, have happy, salty, crunch pretzeljoy (that's one word).

It's a lesson for us all. As John would say, "Let's apply it to our lives."

Thus ends my pretzel story. I'm heading to the microwave.

(This blog is dedicated to Laura, wherever I may find her.)