Bathrooms so automatic they poop for you

I'm about to finish my third week at a new job, working in this building. Fancy, right? I've never worked downtown before, and this is very much downtown. So far, this is what I'm thinking:

1. Working downtown is fun. The city and the people and the bustle and all of that. For about a second, when I caught myself looking up at the building as I was walking in, I made a pact with myself that I would always look up to admire the view on my way in. Naturally, I haven't done that since. Maybe now I will tomorrow -- that might make some kind of sense. But I don't really get sense.

2. The girls are a lot cuter, and there are a lot more of them. In the suburbs, it's just kind of different. In the suburbs you have families and white trash, and not a lot in between. In the city, you have all those girls who used to be part of a family but wanted to rebel and didn't have anywhere else to go because they didn't like the way white trash folks smelled. So now they're out there in the grand metropolis, distracting themselves from daddy with makeup and boots that aren't quite slutty. But then they all get on the Brown Line when I'm waiting for the Green Line, and I get disappointed.

3. Yesterday on the morning train, I smelled phenomenal for some reason. Believe me, it's unusual. So every time I would catch a whiff, I would stop and look around, like, "heck, who smells so good on the Green Line?" and then I would remember it was me and I'd take a big sniff of my jacket and smile and even manage to freak out the bag-lady across from me. And that's no small feat.

4. After that, I had sort of an off day -- you know, when you just feel dumber than usual, and think, "oh, this is what it's like to be everybody else," and then you spend ten minutes trying to remember where the "Save As" button is in Vista, and then you decide that maybe a nice cup of coffee will do the trick, but you can't figure out how to use the nice high-tech coffee-hot-beverage machine in the office, so you just poke at it for a while and then fill your travel-size mug with water and pretend that's what you wanted all along, and shuffle back out of the kitchen, remembering a second too late to wink at the cute girl from Room 33-something, so you're actually winking alone in the hallway.

5. But then I found myself giggling at my bed last night. This tends to happen when I go to bed early. And there I was, chuckling while I shimmied out of my pants (I'm kidding -- I never shimmy out of my pants, except that one time). So I guess the whole day couldn't have been that bad.

6. But the coffee machine does bother me. Flavia? Anyone ever heard of this? Supposedly it's God's gift to the 4:30 blahs, but my problem is that when I have the 4:30 blahs, I'm in no mood for cool, zany, hipster machinery. I bet if I ever had a nice big cup of coffee out of that machine, it would put me in the perfect mood to make myself one. Which doesn't exactly work.

7. Everything else in the office is all high-tech too. Like in the bathroom (come on -- you knew I was going there), it's automatic flushing, automatic water, automatic soap and automatic paper towels. My first time through the gamut, I had to stop before I got paper towels and say "ooooh" while doing Jazz hands.

8. Going back to a regular job in a regular office, which I haven't done in a while, reminded me of my old routine, and part of that was this blog. So while I'm making no guarantees, I wouldn't be surprised to find myself pouring out my poopful thoughts with some regularity again. I guess we'll see.