The Rote Goodbye.

I have worked at a few different places in my life. I started out as a short cook for Pizza Hut. One of the things they teach you is to be friendly by sending the customers out of the restaurant with a friendly good bye. A lot of my coworkers would send people off with the same line all of the time "Have a good day" whether it was day or night. This is how you can tell if your server is just going through the motions.

I didn't go with the same rote memory line and tried to pay attention to the time of day and even what season it was. Especially if it was near Christmas, I would wish the the customer a Merry Christmas on their way out, which in itself could spark a debate, but I did it simply as a friendly gesture.

For those of you who work in the service industry or in retail, if you do send people off with the "Have a good day" line every time an easy way around all this is to just say "Have a goodn" which is especially effective the south. But at least try to be more personable, people know when you're faking it.

What is it you do again?

I'm a 3D Artist. I model, I texture, I rig, I animate. But even though I've shown some of my family what I do they still don't get it. I don't suspect they'll all ever truly grasp it, but you would think that showing them would've done it. A lot of the older folks in my family abhor computers, so it's no huge surprise to me. It's almost a refusal by them to understand what I do for a living. I don't suppose I have a conclusion for this one, I just wanted to get it out there. Anyone else have this issue?

Exercise

I have been exercising. It makes me feel better but it surely isn't fun. My mp3 player is helpful in keeping my mind occupied and helps to take my mind off of the pain so I can do more than I normally would, which still isn't much. But I gotta say, I often feel like I'm a hamster in a wheel while using my exercise machines. I don't like it.

My job requires me to sit for 8 hours at a time in front of a computer. That's definitely not a job with any physical benefit. I don't mind it and I think I would rather do that than work in construction or something like that. But I do kind of wish that I could get something done while I workout. I do need to split some logs outside here, so that's something.

I'd like to take up hiking, trail biking, kayaking, snow boarding, play soccer, play field hockey, play ultimate frisbee. Which, there's no real productive value to those either, but at least they're much more fun. And it's more social as well. I read only enough of an article to get the point that people who play soccer burn more calories than those who run. And why is that? Because it's more fun, and the competition helps to drive you past the pain in a way that no Mp3 player can.

As if anyone would need to read this to fathom the idea, I mean it seemed pretty obvious to me upon reading the headline anyway, here is the article:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,297437,00.html