Will work from anywhere

The Commuter Daddy Vehicle (CDV) failed inspection earlier this week. Tire treads were not up to snuff. So I spent my lunch "hour" (more like two hours) waiting for new tires to get installed at Sears.

(Tires are on sale at Sears through Saturday, by the way. My Consumer Reports research led me to buy a set of Michelin Primacy MXV4s: Great fuel efficiency rating, and good marks across the board for other characteristics too. Sears had the best price of all the tire retailers in the area.)

While I waited, I grabbed a sandwich from The Casual Gourmet Express, and hunkered down to be productive while the CDV was brought back up to code.

The experience served to illustrate not only am I getting too old for prolonged exposure to malls, especially during a school vacation week, but I also can work from just about anywhere.

The scene:

• In front of me, a carousel, was pumping out the music one would expect.
• To my right, music videos were playing throughout the food court from overhead monitors and the public address system.
• Behind me, shoppers negotiated the narrow pathway between me, a repositioned table and chair, and a Nissan 370Z that folks were trying to submit entries to win.
• Somewhere to the left, a baby was crying.
• Can't connect to the wifi? No problem. I used my Blackberry as a modem via its Bluetooth connection.
• Why was the table repositioned, you ask? Needed power for the Blackberry's low battery.

Of course, making a phone call was too challenging. As a conference call start time approached, I packed my gear, and headed for Barnes and Noble. No tables were available at the Starbucks there, plus the speakers were piping in some music. You never really notice a store's P.A. system until you're trying to join a conference call from beneath a speaker.

Luckily, there was a nice speaker-free spot between two bookshelves that were directly beneath the escalator. The wall I leaned against was vibrating a bit from the escalator motor, but it wasn't audible, so I set up camp.

I spent an hour there, mostly on the phone. At one point a family walked by, and the mother tried to shoo the children past me. Either I looked really busy, or really scary... or perhaps both.