Here at work we live in an elevator culture. We are on the 11th floor, which is about seven stories higher than is reasonable for a walk-up. With that in mind, you'd think that the company that manages our building would have some incentive to maintain the elevators. Well you'd think wrong if you thought that.

As I left the office to go to lunch, I noticed an unusually large number of people waiting for the elevator. This didn't seem too odd, since I usually go down to lunch at 11:45 (thereby avoiding the rabble) and today it was 12:15. Maybe this was how the rest of the world lives, I thought.

Fifteen minutes later our crowd had gotten larger and more unruly. The crowd was developing a Bulls-win-the-championship riot vibe. I came back into our offices and asked our Office Manager to call the building and ask them what the deal was. It turns out they were well aware that (a) only two elevators were working, and (b) only one of the functioning elevators is traveling past the sixth floor. They were planning to call the company that maintains the elevators. Seems like the obvious call, but I was still glad the building had thought of it.

Today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a person wrote in with a question. How is a bicyclist supposed to proceed when there are no cars around and their bike is too light to trigger the automatic device that changes traffic signals when cars are present? Now, if this question strikes you as reasonable, you ain't from around here. If there are no cars around, why are they stopped? I was baffled by the question until I reconsidered the fact that it *is* Seattle and I do live in a state where the governor proposed a law allowing the police to ticket drivers traveling too slowly in the left lane.