staring into my dog’s eyes at length. 

Molly,

There is a relationship between reading, reading specifications, and staring 
into dog eyes, though some prefer cow, cat or goat eyes. Billy Collins, our 
poet laureate, stares into his dog's eyes a lot and tells us about it in his 
poems... a sort of "romance" without the confusion of human mates. Ask 
Sharpshooter if this is not suspect. I admit, though, that I have always 
found staring into a dog's eyes, or watching ants labor at an anthill, or 
mesmerizing over the large orange spot tacked on the study wall that I got 
when I purchased my Urea Geller Psychic Development kit, more substantive and 
emotionally rewarding than reading project specifications. Nevertheless, 
reading specifications is a hazard of our careers, leastways those of us who 
feel compelled, by Calvinist ethics or merely half-brained curiosity, to 
actually read the specifications, unlike our fellow contractors who proudly 
admit their illiteracy, that we best need to develop great skill in 
deciphering not only what is intended, but how to improve upon the intentions 
of a curious race of beings, or professionals as some insist, that appear to 
more readily see dimensional space in the recesses of their heads, and that 
they have this physical hallucination to a degree that their visions flash 
away many many times quicker and easier than they can assemble a coherent 
sentence. Let me tell you…

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