To all my non-Myspace friends... I'm back! Now quit your complaining. I'm gonna double-post in both places... but I still encourage you to get on Myspace. Make it your New Year's Resolution.

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There's a dried up, petrified orange hidden somewhere in my office.

Weirdest thing you've ever seen. It doesn't stink. It's not rotted. It's… petrified. Hard as a rock. So odd. It's like an alien orange-sucker swooped down from planet Orangious and devoured the juice from this sad little orange, leaving no entry wound and depositing it in Gaylord Palms Human Resources.
So, how did it wind up hidden somewhere in my office?

Tommy Bradburn.

I first laid eyes on the orange when I was walking to the coffee pot (getting hot chocolate of course) and this horrid little thing rolled across the floor heading directly for my feet at NASCAR speed. I performed an emergency, yet ballerina-like, graceful leap to avoid tripping over the rascal and immediately turned my nose up at the wrinkly little orange as it slammed into the wall and bounced back towards me.

Doris, meet the orange. Orange, meet your destiny.

It started innocent enough. One day while watering my plant, I discovered the familiar orange resting inside the leaves of my pathos. When Tommy left for home, I returned the orange to his desk, placing it inside a porcelain skull he uses to hold knick-knacks.

The next day, the orange returned to my office hidden behind a scrap book on my bookcase. I put the orange inside Tommy's media top hat that hangs on his wall.

Before long, the Hunt-For-The-Orange escalated into a mad game of hide-n-seek.

It's been hidden in my ficus, inside the ink cartridge cover of my printer, in a book in my bookcase (in an orange-shaped hole carved in the pages of the book). It's been in the light fixture above my desk, trapped between the floor and the drawers of my desk, hidden in the cap of a soldier bear that sits atop my bookcase.

I've taped the orange to the bottom side of Tommy's chair, wedged it inside the arm holding his desk to the wall, placed it inside a remote-control car he plays with when he needs a creative moment.

The entire office has come to know the orange. The orange is a celebrity. Paparazzi follow it everywhere.

A few weeks ago, as I discovered a most fabulous place to hide the orange around Tommy's desk, I laughed excitedly with evil mischief. From across the room Patrick shouted, "Doris must have found a good spot for the orange!"
The orange even has a face these days. Tommy, ever the artist, drew a quirky face on the orange that certainly fits its personality.

And now? Now the orange is hidden somewhere in my office. Can't find the dang thing. He hid it good.

On a daily basis, I get these cryptic email messages that are meant to be clues. Please. The "clues" are little more than random ramblings. They make NO sense!

You know what? Perhaps I'll post clues here! Maybe someone else will discover a pattern I don't see or maybe decipher his "haiku."

Here's the one I received today:

what goes down
must come up

You see? Cryptic and pointless!

Oh the woes of an old, dried-up orange being lost in my office.