A family riding bikes.
A Sunday evening jaunt.
A radio blasting Mariachi.
A memory, eating tacos.
䷰䷠
Starting brings misfortune,
To remain persevering brings good fortune.
-
She loves nature, but not bugs.
-
How can you find pleasure in a popsicle when your brother is howling in sorrow?
He spilled a drop of that sweet, sweet yogurt drink.
She promptly wiped it up.
When she turned around,
He licked the table.
Not fast enough.
“No more snacks!”䷍䷝
A big wagon for unloading, one may undertake something.
-
Even an offer of popcorn could not mitigate the great distress at the privation that was inflicted upon him.
While clearing the table, I finished his last bite of lunch —
a small spoonful of rice and veggies.
I was chewing when he wandered back into the dining room.
He bawled, fell to the floor, and wailed.
His sister strode in to console him.
A pteradactyl swooped down from the sky.
The terrifying dinosaur was befuddled.
Its head was stuck in an ice cream cone.䷾
An Auspicious Beginning,
A turbulent End. -
To her chagrin, the living room was best as a royal wreck.
I came downstairs to a party.
Yesterday’s tower had reassembled into a sea of tables.
The storage bin lids are tabletops on toilet roll legs.
Dora the Dalmation eats straw with Unicorn.
Bear-Bear shares a Rubik’s cube with Violet, an elephant.
George, Adventure, Tiny, Hello Kitty, and Blades chat around their own table.
“Happy Earth Day!”
I add the globe from her desk.䷼䷓
A crane calling in the shade.
Its young answer it. -
The plastic sacks of salt and starch steadily dimmished then disappeared.
He fears two things.
Mother banishing his toys to the garage.
Not so worried to put them away properly,
Just enough to extract an pledge that she won’t clean up after bedtime.
Father coming downstairs to the pantry.䷋䷥
What if it should fail? What if it should fail?
-
A tower of creatures dominated the horizon of his long journey home.
Seven floors of stuffed animals are sandwiched between slabs of plastic container lids held up by toilet paper roll columns.
More rolls top the penthouse for an outsized gable.
This pagoda is flanked by a pavilion of paper towel tubes topped with a pink throw pillow.
There’s a party on this puffy roof deck.䷷䷳
Success through smallness
-
The baby paunch gradually vanished as he grew enough to see himself.
This evening, my wife cut his hair.
A bit longer on top, shorter on the sides.
A crew cut emerged from the mop.
He aged three months in twenty minutes.䷭䷛
Thus the superior man of devoted character
Heaps up small things
in order to achieve something high and great. -
OPM.32 In Person
I held a pre-bid walk for a flooring replacement project. It was my first major in-person meeting since the pandemic started.
The meeting went very well.
On paper, it’s a basic demo and install. Simple to draw.
But renovations are tricky. The contractors challenged us with great questions. I wonder if they would have asked such questions in a video conference.
After surviving my share of corporate time-sucks, I get why tech productivity gurus hate meetings.
But we’ve chosen a profession that manipulates the real world. In-person meetings are essential. The room pulses with energy when motivated professionals gather together.
A bid walk for a renovation is a no-brainer. The walk was shorter than the round trip to the site but well worth the commute.
Video conferences have proved their worth over the past two years. It is an indispensable tool for an agency that is split between North and South.
But dang, it’s hard to beat a good meeting in meatspace.
~
How are you calibrating meeting formats during this new normal?
~
David Epstein makes a great argument for separating the chain of communication versus the chain of command.
Seth Godin challenges the concept of “next” and posits that we would be better served in thinking our current project might be our last project.
Cal Newport questions the current self-help pop culture usage of “Parkinson’s Law” (work fills the time available). He reframes it as “Well-established work cultures can harbor irrational behavior. Beware!”
~
“Nola Studios is meeting place for NYC musicians,” Down Beat, v. 14, no. 5 (Feb. 26, 1947), William Gottlieb ~
Thanks for reading and please subscribe if you’d like the next letter in your inbox.
Justus Pang, RA
-
I wonder if the landscape rocks appreciated the sudden moisture.
“爸爸后院没有 toilet 我站起来做 peepee”
“Daddy, there’s no toilet in the backyard, I’m going to stand and pee”.
His pants dropped to the ankles, the hip pushed forward and let it fly.
Because we never go out, I worried about his lack of practice in standing urniation.
As with most parenting concerns, it’s a non-issue.
The boy should be less bombastic, but he’s figured out the routine.
They always do.䷀䷍
Flying dragon in the heavens. It furthers one to see the great man.
-
The Papermate Flairs were jealous at the return of an old flame.
Stumble across a Pelikan in a box of old papers.
(bought the fountain pen after finishing college.)
Give it a rinse and reload.
(the ink is also two decades old.)
Writes smooth, better than I remembered.
(not the wisest use of $300, but a nice gift from my past self.)
Wonder what he’d think if we crossed paths.
(I’m exactly twice his age.)䷟䷧
It Profits To be Steadfast.
A Destination Profits.