PlazaJen: Passion Knit

We had a rep lunch today, up at Piropos. It was a classic example of how the media team interacts and can provide a rep who doesn't know us with a very hodge-podge sketchy sort of stand-up comedy routine that is filled with topics ranging from knitting (of course) to emu (and their crazy need to migrate) to crime.

WE ARE DIVERSE. And eclectic.

I ordered the lobster ravioli, and had a flashback when it arrived, because I got six (6) ravioli, each approximately the size of one (1) Doritos chip. Portion size flashback! Black and red striped ravioli, btw. I immediately saw my alma mater's colors (Go Grinnell Pioneers! Woot! Where our motto was, "Winning isn't everything, it's nothing!") In a too-salty sauce, alas alack. But it was still tasty and would have made a great appetizer! Suffice it to say that right now, I am prepared to eat things that have mustard on them, just to illustrate how hungry I am.

But the whole point of this story is how we were zipping back to the office so we could make our 1:30 status meeting, and I was sort of on auto-pilot and discovered (as I was driving at the roadblock) that I-35 is closed off the Broadway Bridge, and since it's one-way, there was no choice but to veer right and keep going. But my time at another agency reminded me that there was an alternate road, one I've lovingly referred to as "Dead Sofa Way", for it is a stretch of isolation along the West side of Downtown, and because of the isolation, a favorite dumping ground for large bulky items, mostly sofas. I was all, "AHA!" and "Look at us go!" and feeling very satisfied inside that I knew how we could get out of the roadblock situation and still make progress on getting back to work.

Only somewhere along the way, Dead Sofa Way got put under construction. Sort of. Nobody was there, working on it. And suddenly things turned to gravel. Well, I say suddenly, but there might have been a very large piece of heavy moving equipment and two large concrete barriers and a sign that was moved, but there was ROOM to get through and seriously? I am like a man and do NOT like to turn around. My two passengers were laughing and screaming and one might have been begging me to turn around. But why? I have a fabulous sense of direction and like a homing pigeon, I don't want to backtrack! So we off-roaded it a bit. And I seriously was feeling TRIUMPHANT. And as we neared the end of the construction it became quite apparent that there was no way, no how, I was going to get through the concrete blockade on this end of the road. Fuckety fuck. I even eyeballed the mound of gravel, and Kristin offered to get out and level it, just so I wouldn't have to turn back. But there we were, without a shovel. Sigh. So it was backtrack and into the West Bottoms to get back up on a highway.

I love taking the unknown way. I did it constantly when I moved here. I have always trusted my brain to know (generally speaking) which way is North and which way I Need To Be Going, and that with those two pieces of information, I can get there - even if it's a roundabout way. (There was that one time, in Swope Park, in the dark, that we got totally jacked up, turned around and ended up in Raytown. I own it, I was lost. It just is rare.) Sometimes you get to see new things (once I saw a woman walking her pig. On a leash!), sometimes you get to laugh and sometimes you remember that the old way of doing things may be comfortable and can get you there? But that the adventure lies in taking the new path, winding around to give you new vistas and remind you the choice to do so is always there. However, just a piece of advice...it's important to pay attention along the way....I was dead-set on making sure the road didn't end with say, Sudden Drop-Off and Plummeting. Plummeting = Bad.