It’s your second home.

Sure, you might shower and sleep on a suburban street but you probably spend most of your waking hours somewhere else — at a high school, in a cubicle, at the factory, on a  farm. Maybe your second home is a dimly-lit and dusty hallway or maybe it’s a dirty desk near the bathroom.

That’s why it’s such a beautiful moment when you arrive at that second home and find it completely decorated for your birthday. Yes, the gang all pitched in to tie streamers around your monitor, tape Hubba Bubba wrappers to your locker, or drape a spraypainted bedsheet reading “Happy 40th!!!” around the grain silo.

It’s a sign behind all those marathon meetings, late-night projects, and crazy deadlines there’s a bunch of great folks who care about you. When your daytime pals celebrate another year of your life it’s another moment of smiles, another moment of laughs, and another big moment of

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

You’re Jack Bauer.

The clock’s clicking and sweat is pouring down your forehead because you know a bomb is about to go off… on your face! You can feel that sneeze tingle up where your brain connects to your eyeball and you know it’s about to boom out in a showery snotstorm the likes of which this dentist’s waiting room has never seen before.

Now it’s time to look left, look right, and get ready to pull off one of three big moves:

1. Slime Explosion. You didn’t make it. Cue the Family Feud buzzer. Nope, after frantically checking your pockets and combing through your glove compartment you eventually came up empty as the sneeze blew out your face. Now your hands are drenched, your lips are sticky, and you’re disgustingly snotty slimeball of humiliation. Time to find a bathroom or get licking. (-5 points)

2. The Understudy. This is where you couldn’t find a tissue but managed to sneeze into a substitute, just in the nick of time. Yes, you scrounged whatever random thing you could find in two seconds and now you’re holding a slippery n’ soggy Burger King placemat, grocery store receipt, or sweatshirt sleeve. (+5 points) (Note: +3 bonus points are awarded for pulling this off while holding a cafeteria tray in both hands.)

3. Mission Accomplished. You made it! You tapped your jeans pockets, fumbled through your fat purse, or ran to the bathroom as that sneeze was ticklingly the top of your nose. You dove for the tissue box and scrunched it to your nose just as the bomb was going off. (+10 points)

Grabbing a tissue at the last second before sneezing is a beautiful moment. You just swooped in when time was counting down and saved the day doing what you do best.

So today we say thank you for dry shirt sleeves. Thank you for dry lips.

And thank you… most of all… for freedom.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

Just listen.

When the white sky splits and the big flakes fall there’s a certain peaceful calm that covers everything like a blanket. Floating flurries flutter and fly past dull yellow streetlamps before covering coats and cars in a thin layer of icing. Whistling winds fade to whispers and street beeps get muffled into the slowed-down scene in front of you.

Yes, when snowflakes blow those brake lights glow and everything slows into

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Ready, aim, fire.

After dumping piles of frozen pizzas and melting ice cream into your trunk it’s time to turn around and fire the shopping cart into the big pile on the other side of the lot. Sure, sure, you could always walk over, but there’s something much more satisfying about sending it flying thirty feet and having it loudly crash straight into the other carts.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Congratulations, Superdresser.

You just saved twenty seconds of pushing that belt through your jeans tomorrow morning while bumbling around late for work.

Also applies to leaving your shoelaces tied up, keeping your undershirt in your hoodie, and sleeping with your watch on.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Say goodbye.

Watch your high school pal slowly fade into the foggy shadows at the park after a long night catching up on the swings. Close the cab door on Grandma after the smoky bingo parlor clears out and watch her swerve down wet-slicked roads out of sight. Flick on the porch lights as your late-night college chat dissolves into dawn and your friends throw their hoodies on to shiver and slide their way home.

Brush your teeth, wash your face, check your watch … and wonder. You’re ready for bed but that feeling in your head makes you suddenly stop before slumber. You stare at the night, you flip on the light, and you worry with fright until —

The phone rings.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

Once upon a time I ran a sandwich shop.

Yes, it was back in the early 00’s when I was a mayo-squirting kingpin working in the sticky, mustard-smeared sandwich underbelly. Surrounding me were a hodgepodge of acne-covered teenage longhairs who clocked in each day to slice tomatoes, chop green peppers, and fill paper cups right to the foamy brim.

Now, it was just a small shop in the corner of a dusty plaza in the suburbs and we had maybe a dozen folks on payroll, tops. As you can imagine, we got tight pretty quickly and little social norms started bubbling up — things like last one there gets the morning coffees, sobbing uncontrollably while chopping onions is completely acceptable, and everyone dresses up in full costume on Halloween.

Of course, by far and away the most popular house rule we developed was everyone gets their birthday off. It was pretty easy to schedule and the excitement leading up to those big days gave us all giddy little schoolkid highs.

Nope, we don’t get many birthdays on this spinny wet rock so let’s try to take them off.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

They make everything.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here

Get crackin’.

Groggy and sore with jagged bedhead and an achy back you shuffle to the kitchen in stained sweats and mindlessly flick on the stove. Next it’s time to pop open the fridge and squint into the bright light before snagging some butter and the egg carton so you can get down to business. After tossing some butter on the crusty frying pan you swig some OJ and pick at your eyes while waiting till everything starts melting and bubbling. As the coils glow red the soft scents of melted butter slowly swirl and steam around you and that’s when you know it’s time.

Break a leg, crack that egg, and let the simmering sizzling begin.

AWESOME!

Photo from: here