Yesterday, like most other days, I got up and set out in my running clothes. The whole idea was to put in a run, take a shower and get to office for all the meetings and such.
Except, I made the mistake of opening up office emails before going for the run. Looking back though, I am glad I did. For there were too many things that had happened overnight that needed my attention and decisions quickly. Weighed in “run and then work” or “work and then run”. Eventually went with the former. The challenge was that I was still in my running clothes – you know those bright ones I wear with matching shoes and all.
Ah, well, I figured if I can reach office very early and get cracking, I should be able to finish in a couple of hours and then go out for a run before anyone showed up at office. And none would be any the wiser.
Like all of those best laid plans of mice and men, five hours later I was still ploughing thru work. The calls had started – and worse, the scheduled video conference calls (thankfully, all were internal) started too. And there I was – in the most ridiculous Friday dress down day clothes you can ever show up in office with 🙂 In fact, I had to explain to all the folks at office when they came in lest they thought I was off my rocker. Well, any more than they already think 🙂
The good news is that eventually around lunch time I had an hour gap – long enough to put in a quick 5K and then shower in the LA Fitness and resume work. The bad news is that I had to run in those hard concrete sidewalks (ouch) under the noon sun.
At least I was far more presentable during the video calls of the afternoon. And since this is me we are talking about, even that was only relatively speaking 🙂

Okay, that was the fourth challenge in as many days days from my FB friends. If I get the general drift, I am being challenged to put up a happy picture of Sharmila and myself  (good luck finding it) for ten successive days (haha! lots more good luck finding them) and then everyday I am to challenge another friend to do the same.

I have certainly no issue on what you want to do with your FB timeline – entirely your choice to post and my choice to ignore them. That being said, my first thought was – What??? What  kind of a challenge is this? Mind you – this is not a request. This is not a suggestion. This is a CHALLENGE to prove my love and happy marriage!!! How many wives do I have these days?

To what end? How are ten pictures of Sharmila and I – and remember – we have to look happy in all of them which dramatically reduces the sample set in our case – going to make one iota of a difference to anybody? Other than of course, setting the wrong expectations to the poor souls that are contemplating on getting married 🙂

By the way, you are not fooling me one bit about your marriage with those pictures. Put some candid pictures – one where you were fighting, one where you completely embarrassed yourself, one where she sent you to sit in the corner, one where you unexpectedly got a surprise…. you know all those small real life things that actually make a happy marriage. All those seemingly happy moments you self-choose does not define your marriage. Those are meant for a Facebook pyramid scheme. If your marriage is anything like mine, its happiness is not derived from a continuous stream of smiling face photo-ups but unrelenting ups and downs with an underlying trust and belief that the other person will always be there for you. You can’t take a picture of that. You have to feel it.

I have to say, I do enjoy sometimes when you occasionally put those happy pictures of you and your spouse. I feel special that you desired to share a happy moment with me. And certainly feel happy for you. Those are special moments. Let’s keep them special. That specialty goes away in my mind when I realize that you are doing this for a “challenge” and worse, you are trying to make a daily habit of it for some time. And that you intend to encourage such behavior from ten other people!

And maybe you still feel you need to do that. Ok. Your call. But why me?? I and the king of TMI in FB. I am the exemplar of hedonism in FB with every bit of my life posted on Facebook. Have you not been warned at all not to encourage me to post more? Even the carriers are going – dude – throttle back – your data use is overloading those snooping NSA servers 🙂

Ok. Now allow me to finish this post, quit searching our photo databases for ten pictures and instead utilize that time to think of one more reason to pick up a fight with Sharmila 🙂

The idea was to cut down on words and make it more pictorial.

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