When I lived back east, a friend of mine and I used to take a drive to upstate New York together on occasions when she needed to pick up her children from their dad's home. On the way, we enjoyed stopping at the World Trade Center for lunch. We would grab something yummy to eat and sit in the courtyard, staring up at the awesome towers and having a blast just watching people. When we had the time to spend, we actually took a trip up the elevators to Windows On The World. We never ate there; we couldn't afford it, really, and were not dressed for it. But oh, the view! It was absolutely breathtaking. I will never forget it, and fervently wish that I could take my husband and my stepkids up there and share it with them.

When the towers fell, I was sad, not only for the obvious reasons, but because I had wonderful memories of that great place, which I would ever see again. Since 9-11, I have taken to looking for the World Trade Center in movies. I smile when I see the towers, standing tall and proud and beautiful. My most recent WTC "sighting" was last weekend, while watching Trading Places with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy. I like that one. Not only is it a really fun movie, but the WTC is not simply in the background. It is up close and personal. Near the end of the movie, Aykroyd and Murphy actually walk between the towers; you can see the distinctive decorative construction along the bottom that is recognizable to everyone as one of the largest pieces recovered from Ground Zero. I remember walking between the towers in the exact same spot with my friend, and it is a great memory. The movie brings it back for me. Not the horror or the grief; the happy times I spent there.

Do you ever see the World Trade Center in movies or TV shows? What have you seen the towers in? How does it make you feel? Or do you have something else that you look for while watching movies, something that brings back a happy memory for you? I would like to hear about it. I would also like to find out if there are other WTC bytes out there. I'd like to see them...for old times' sake, you know.

You never know who could be watching you at any given moment. For example, if you pull up into the parking lot of an office building and park in front of a large, mirrored window, you should assume that there is someone sitting on the other side of that window working at their desk. It is also safe to assume that this person is bored out of their mind and just dying for something interesting to look at outside their window. That person could even be me. Actually, if you happen to be one of the two men who pulled their El Camino into the parking space directly on the other side of the window from my desk today, it was me. I was watching you from the minute you parked.

The first thing I noticed was that the car did not seem to be very clean. This is Bakersfield, however. Dirty cars are a given, especially after the light, misty spray that occurs on rare occasions, which some people call "rain". Since it nearly rained a couple days ago, I gave the dirty car a pardon. But when the two men climbed out, each holding a Styrofoam cup the size of a gallon of milk, my attention was caught. I happen to be the unfortunate individual who has been charged with informing patients that they must leave their drinks and food outside. And so, I noted the huge drink cups and hoped they were empty, which they were. This fact was immediately apparent when the two men took a final slurp from their straws and proceeded to toss the cups into the lovely flower bed outside my window. I drew in my breath in outrage. How dare they! I was so incensed by this that I determined to ask the men when they entered the building to go right back outside and pick up their trash.  I thought better of it, though, when I realized that our waiting room was packed with the late-afternoon crowd. It would have been grossly unprofessional of me to pick an argument with the two men in the presence of witnesses. Therefore, I decided to do them and my office a favor by taking care of their trash for them. Outside I went, without a word to the slobs (although, I must admit, I threw them a glare as I passed). I picked up the Styrofoam cups from the flower bed and deposited them into the nearest trash receptacle...or at least, the next best thing.

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when those guys found their trash in the back seat of their El Camino. They really should not have left the windows open. This is Bakersfield, after all. Someone could take something out of their car...or in this case, return it to where it belongs.

Unfortunately, I am sure the Styrofoam will find its way into someone else's yard. But at least those guys will know that someone was watching them be slobs.

Once upon a time, I was an avid music lover. I spent high school and college singing with a few bands, attending every rock concert available, and blowing out the speakers of all my dad's cars. My parents yelled through my bedroom door to "turn that noise down" at least every hour for about six years. I once considered hiring a private detective to track down two hundred CDs that some jerk stole from my car. But my love of music died very recently. More specifically, in the last two and a half years, around the time I started working for my current employer. That was when I discovered that it was possible to hate a song so much that you could spend hours awake at night in an attempt to exorcize the infuriating tune and moronic lyrics from your head.

The reason for my workplace torture is that one of my coworkers decided long ago that the office radio is her own personal domain. She is the only person allowed to touch the thing, regardless of the fact that she is not the one who actually owns it. And every day, from open to close, all we are subjected to is the so-called "hits" upchucked by KLLY95. This amounts to about seven lousy songs that are played ad nauseum, at least five times every single hour. And so our ears are assailed by such untalented individuals as Beyonce, Britney Spears, and some woman who can't seem to come up with a reason to finally write a love song for some unnamed guy. It really gets interesting when I am working with a preteen patient and her mother, trying desperately to keep up my contact lens monologue while the strains of "rolling 'round on me in between the sheets" plays in the background. It's very embarrassing.

Before you ask, we have tried numerous times to either change the channel or turn the thing off altogether. No matter what we do, KLLY comes back like an evil spirit, ready to haunt us again. Someone kissed a girl who shoulda put a ring on it, and it's too late to apologize because it starts at your toes and goes to your nose...on, and on, and on. Talking to the radio queen is fruitless. She refuses to hear of it, even though even she complains about some of the crummy KLLY selections. We think we have figured out part of the reason why, though. It is really kind of a high-school-crush thing, involving her boyfriend...whose name is KELLY.

So, do any of you great bloggers out there have a suggestion for those of us at my office who have begun humming show tunes to ourselves rather than listen to that inane radio anymore? And just so you know, I already suggested that Mr. Kelly change his name, hopefully prompting his girlfriend to change the radio station. However, I don't think he wants to be known hereafter as KRAB.