Two jokes and an observation.

Two jokes, courtesy of my aunt...

1. President Bush, the First Lady and Dick Cheney are flying on Air Force One. George looks at Laura, chuckles and says, "You know, I could throw a$1,000.00 bill out the window right now and make somebody very happy." Laura shrugs her shoulders and says, "Well, I could throw ten $100.00 bills out the window and make 10 people very happy." Cheney says, "Of course then, I could throw 100 $10.00 bills out the window and make a hundred people very happy." The pilot rolls his eyes, looks at all of them and says to his co-pilot, "Such big shots back there..... hell, I could throw all of them out the window and make 56 million people very happy."

2. February 2nd was Groundhog Day and the State of the Union Address. It is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a hideous little creature of marginal intelligence for prognostication. The other involves a groundhog.

And an observation...
Almost every time I walk to another building's cafeteria for my fix of their "$3 for all the salad you can shove into a small-but-sizeable container" lunch, I walk past an elderly man. He appears to be homeless (I can't be 100% certain - I often see him rummaging through trash cans, but the two aren't mutually exclusive these days). I have never, ever seen or heard him ask for money or other handouts. Instead, he greets every person who walks past him with a "hello, dear" or "good morning" or other pleasantry and leaves it at that.

Today I am having a particularly BLAH day, and after sitting through a particularly BLAH meeting, I went over to get lunch. On the way back from the cafeteria I walked past that elderly man, and he smiled and said "hello, dear" as he usually does.

(OK, so at last here's the observation - hope you're not expecting anything revolutionary, though.) It's really amazing how a perfect stranger can do something random and lift you up, even if for just a few moments.