I vacuumed the apartment today, and as I did so, I thought about how I like vacuuming so much better than sweeping, because there aren't any piles to clean up afterward. Not long ago, though, I felt just the opposite. In fact, I remember saying something to my sister about favoring sweeping because it's easier and faster to get a broom out of the closet, and you don't have to worry about dragging the cord around everywhere.
Which brings me to one of my favorite and most long-standing mental exercises: if you had to choose one--and only one--for the rest of your life, which would it be? Not necessarily vacuums v. brooms; my favorite challenges are choosing one color to see for the rest of my life, and one food to eat.
I've been thinking about these questions for years. Seriously. I'm pretty satisfied with my color answer(s) by now: If I could only see one color, but infinite shades of that color, it would be green. But if I had to pick a tinted lens through which to see all of the colors in the world, it would be yellow. I made this decision after wearing a pair of yellow-tinted goggles in a pool once. That was probably over a decade ago.
As for food, it's a toss-up between my three favorites: french fries, spaghetti, and broccoli. (Nutrition isn't an issue in my particular version of this game.) Still can't decide, and I think it might actually be impossible, because any one food would be ruined after a very short while of nothing but.
Which is why it's nice to have both brooms and vacuums in the world.
On another note, have you seen Creature Comforts? I happened upon it today by happy accident. They interviewed a bunch of regular people about various topics (the part I saw asked interviewees how they felt about flying, and what art is), then animated the interviews with claymation animals. The animators are the same people who do/did Wallace & Gromit and Chicken Run. It's hilarious. You can see a clip here, and there are a bunch of others on Youtube. (Search "Creature Comforts" and "CBS" to see the American version. It was a British show first.)
