You'll Read This If You're As Bored As Me

I spend the majority of each weekday in a small, windowless, beige room staring at a computer screen. So when I take my lunch I get as far away as possible, both mentally and physically, hence my constant reading of fiction. When the weather is good I'll walk to the park or the library. The young teens section is especially good for quiet reading - comfy furniture, big windows, and since it's the middle of the day, a minimum of ne'er-do-well teenagers surfing MySpace- much better than the dedicated Quiet Reading room which is usually stocked with at least one coughing homeless person or newspaper ruffling ruffian. Other haunts include the courthouse (half a block away for when it's really cold), the Senior Center (with a great bench outside that houses a frisky chipmunk), and the Hilton (once... the music was so blaringly loud despite the extremely comfortable chairs that I've not been back).

Today I decided to seat my seat at a new location: the Grand Wayne Center. A few years back our local elected officials decided that the existing Grand Wayne Center just wasn't cutting it. Just THINK of all the organizations itching to hold their convention in glorious, beautiful downtown Fort Wayne! And those studies that showed that the convention reception market was already flooded, well, they surely didn't apply to US! And so they forced out the fast food restaurants in the next block (including one of the top five profitable Taco Bells in the country) and started building this massive glass edifice. Which has, for the most part sat empty, forcing tax dollars to be used for heating and maintenance and staffing and paying off the mega-million dollar loan because the anticipated usage hasn't been met. So why SHOULDN'T I spend my lunch in this massive glass monument? Sorry, this EMPTY massive glass monument. At least with all those windows I had excellent views of the new library and the construction of the Harrison Square project. Hmmm.... three massive construction projects in the last decade, all on the backs of the taxpayers. Now I'm not a cynical man but if I were I'd be wondering if the city council had friends in the construction business.