Pete

You know those ads on TV for Expedia (or is it Travelocity? Meh - details...) that talk about needing a vacation from your vacation? Well, I can relate. Court-imposed work deadlines immediately following a major holiday are always fun. The weeks leading up to that holiday become more hectic than the holiday preparations themselves. I haven't even had time to think about what I'm going to buy for my friends and family, let alone go anywhere near a mall. Fabulous...

Since I'd prefer not to blog about work itself, but work is on my mind about 90% of the time these days, I'm going to dig into the archives and share a distantly-related work story about a special visitor I had at my office one day last May (May 28, 2004, to be exact).

Pete

His name was Pete (or so it became by the end of our evening together).

Pete arrives on the 5th floor of my office.

I found Pete the cicada wandering the floor of our office. At about 6pm, he was trekking along the carpet, minding his own business. I told him it was a little late for an interview. Lucky for him, I'm a sucker. I happily kill roaches, ants, earwigs, spiders, mosquitos, moths, gnats, flies, or any other such household insect pests. But cicadas, after waiting 17 years in fetal hibernation, had what - 9 days to live, max? I couldn't just stomp the poor critter, who had made it, through some miraculous feat, all the way to the 5th floor of an office building. That was trial enough, I'm sure he was nervous and tired. At the time of our encounter, it was nearing the end of the day, so I figured I'd just bring the little guy downstairs with me when I had finished up.

Pete waits for me while I finish up my work.

I put him on the stem of my bamboo plant, where he hung out for a few minutes; but it soon became apparent he was much more interested in what I was doing than any diversion the plant could offer. He only had a few days left to exercise his brain capacity before passing away. He offered to intern free-of-charge for the remainder of the business day.

Pete gets bored and decides to intern for me.

Pete crawled over to my notepad and did a quick review of my meeting minutes. He corrected a spelling mistake, for which I was humbled and appreciative. Not only could Pete read, he was also a pretty solid data guy. When I showed Pete my struggle to get my numbers to tie, he did a quick data query to discover the outliers. Without Pete, I might have been at work for an extra hour. Pete and I gave each other a high-five.

Pete discovers an astounding flaw in my data analysis and saves me at least an hour of additional research time.

When the day ended, I carried Pete downstairs and outside. I let him go on a little planter at the front of the building, only after he had whispered in my ear the location in which he and his concubines had buried their larva. Brains like that might come in handy 17 years from now...

And now...back to the grind.