October 6. Thursday Night.

Hi Journey.

Joni seems to think there is somebody or something most strange going on in the alley out back. Looks like somebody's been sifting through our trash in the dumpster out there. Said she went to lug out the trash this morning and noticed the heavy gray plastic dumpster lid was propped up against the brick wall of our building. Fortunately, there wasn't much of an odor wafting out; mainly since our alley has no restaurants backing up to it, but rather just a smattering of small offices and a couple retail shops. Still, the occasional sack lunch and wet coffee grounds can stench up the air a bit, so Joni walked around til she was beside the dumpster and stretched up and out to pull down the lid.

She let on she was quite stunned to see the sacks inside pyramided up one atop the other on the left-hand side of the dumpster and that the right-hand side was completely bare save one lone clear bag plunked down in the middle with papers strewn all about.

Joni instantly recognized the bag as ours, of course. Not just because it was clear but because several of our draft design sketches for clients neatly papered the entire dumpster floor. Each had been carefully uncrumpled and spread about on the metal until the whole floor of that half of the dumpster looked like a skewed floor plan of a new home.

Of course my first thought was that one of our competitors set out to steal our ideas…or our client base. Immediately I thought of Donna Costellian Interiors or Rita Fenworth Design. Seems like a can't even flick on the radio without hearing an ad from Donna (although I can't imagine where she gets the money for the ads—maybe she took it out in trade).

No, Crystal, not that kind of trade, either. Miss Prissy Costellian is much too uptight to get horizontal for any radio ad salesman.

For TV, maybe.

But after mulling it over for a few minutes I realized that neither of those ladies nor any of their staff would be caught rummaging about a dumpster in a back alley. Plus, even if they had, why not simply fetch out the whole garbage sack and haul it back to their office. It made zero sense to burn up all that extra effort to rearrange the other bags and then spread our designs out on the floor. Even if one of the other shops had hired some kid to slink into that dumpster and snap some digital photos of our designs I'd imagine they'd simply grab the bag and dash.

Which is exactly what Joni did. She grabbed the Sony Digital off the big table inside our Tethered Helium conference room and shot three photos of the floor of that dumpster, then threw her garbage bag on top and closed the lid.

Maybe I'll buy a shredder.