What would you do with a Klondike bar?

Dearest friends,

what tidings, what currents stir the vast sea of the internet?

On the morrow I shall come into great Fortune, a sum whose value (known for these past two years to consist of a certain Amount, not enough perhaps to eradicate the ravages of Disease and Hunger from the world but sufficient to wreak some benevolent transformation on my modest kitchen) has at the last moment increased via the arcane processes of the Colubrid bonus system. One can only imagine a room filled with Executives, dice-rollers and roustabouts every one, deciding based on Whims and various notions to reward a year of discontent and strife with this morsel of undeserved lucre, while all around are loyal Servants content to strive for the cause and yet perhaps compensated only by Salarie. Surely I myself should have chosen differently were I in that smoke-filled den, and able via word or gesture to influence such an outcome... and yet it was not mine to choose, and no wrong would be set right were I to refuse the coin set before me.

The morrow, not laden yet with enough of import for its admittedly rather rococo taste, also should bear some news from the monolithic and imposing Order of the Go-o-o-ogle. Mayhap, as I think some days, the lustre of my Personality and charm of my evenly spaced whiteboard coding may wring from them an Invitation to join in the collection of all the Data from the Earthe and Beyond, and make it Searchable while not falling into the Abyss of Evil; and yet it remains equally plausible that the tumbling of their dice (for between you and me, gentle Reader, I have had the chance to peer through a small window into the monolith, by dint of standing up on tip toes, and the room of the hiring committee bears no small resemblance to the hazy gaming den inhabited by the givers of bonuses already described in this missive) shall leave me to continue fending in the jungles of Colubrid, where my excellent Supervisor and 19 Dexterity could well continue to guide me adequately toward skill, acclaim and the rewards of the world. It is a small mercy that the outcome depends not a whit on the velleities of my ever-fluttering neurons; that my few moments upon the stage are themselves fading into uncertain Memory and the ending will not be mine to pen.

And thus on the eve of some drama and suspense, I find myself in no especially certain frame of Mind. This life, once plotted and crafted with considerable Care for both daily tolerability and sustainable Benefits, seems to have outstripped my feeble attempts at guidance and now plunges whither it will, and as I cling to its turbulent Mane with tiring hands my thoughts turn incessantly to the Principle of Peter, stating as it does that each of us shall rise to his or her level of incompetence and there struggle like a fly in Starbucks caramel syrup until the end of mortal days. How is one to know whether a Phase of growth may in fact be no phase but the upper limits of innate Ability and Talent? And conversely how may one gain certainty that a period of struggle is only that; that it has an end after which the person may begin to enjoy such things as conscientiously "bringing clarity and focus to a nebulous project"? Perhaps my attempted flight from the swamp of Colubrid has more to do with unsought Success than I once believed, and less to do with the techological Failures and Idiocies wrought by the vast three-horned Merger that so nearly has destroyed all our souls. One always wishes to take the right Actions for the right reasons, and yet how often in my orbit around the sun have I failed, sometimes doing the right thing for reasons indefensible by all but a madman and sometimes in all beneficial intent doing Wrong? The numbering of such would be a chore beyond the tolerance of the most patient intern. It remains to my flagging will only to wish for a cessation of the Drama of decisions (with, perhaps, a similar postscript related to the Drama among my friends), and to hope that the broad sweep of Time shall reveal my proper place in the Machinery of the age.

In the meantime it is a pursuit of some amuzement and distraction to ponder the destiny of the Bonus described above; mayhap it shall find its resting place on my ceiling, home now of myriad unadorned light bulbs, in the form of beautiful fixtures. It could be that I shall exile it to the fertile compost mound of savings, as a younger and sterner flexagon would surely have done without Hesitation; or it shall flow merrily off in some unexpected direction in accordance with the current tendency of affairs, in response to I cannot imagine what impulse. If, cordial reader, you care to join me in idle speculation, to what use might you put such a windfall? You may assume that approximately $2000 is available for the game; that no Debts or Liens are outstanding that are greedily awaiting prepayment, and that Saving, while ever the noblest of endeavors, is satisfactorily enough accounted for at present that no great Good would be added to the world in that fashion.