Nothing is happening at work, but my boss likes me to sit in my chair all day anyway. Today I wandered away for a while to listen to my iPod and have adventures. When it started to rain I came back, and now here I am.

I work in a commercial park. For those of you who might live in countries where things like commercial parks are rare, the idea is like a modern, self-contained exurban neighbourhood except instead of cookie-cutter houses it features a cloister of low-rise business-leased buildings arrayed barracks-style around a café and a golf course, with a hotel at each corner.

The abandoned boulevards are decorated with young trees shading picnic tables no one ever sits at.

Outside the precincts of the commercial park there is no grass; instead, Big Box Tex Mex Liquid Lunch Emporia separated by garbage bins and Upstairs Exotic Massage concerns. Everything is ringed by parking lots. If you're in the mood for a drive-thru martini, taco and handjob, this is definitely your sort of strip.

Overhead, airplanes turn in slow spirals, in queue to land at Pearson International. They screech and thrum.

The building next to ours is vacant. I go there sometimes. There is a square plaza in the middle of the green glass towers, and I like to sit on the stone benches to eat my lunch. If it's too windy I sit instead on the ramp to the underground freight doors. If it's too rainy I crouch inside one of the four small hollows at the corners of the architecture, in a roofed void behind the pillars but before the green glass. These hollows are very convenient. If it's raining very hard, I will meet a host of squirrels and pigeons in there, too.

"Hi guys."

When the rain is done I can cross the field of connected parking lots that eventually leads back to the loading doors near my desk. I stamp in the puddles. I take a running start to make it easier to leap up to the loading door's ledge.

I seldom see people when I venture out. The sidewalks in the commercial park are purely for form's sake. When people are hungry for Tex Mex or discount mouth sex, they drive. Tobacco smokers tend to clump near the doors, uninterested in what may lie beyond. Theirs is an excursion of necessity.

Today I crossed an unassumed street to an overgrown field of weeds and broken infrastructure near the golf course. Beneath the high grasses were barred apertures in a concrete foundation, connected as some kind of disused waterworks. I could yell in one and hear my voice come out another. I could see my face reflected in the swill, haloed by clouds.

Hands behind my back, listening to Rimsky-Korsakov, idly kicking pebbles with bare feet.

"Hey! Hey you!"

I looked up. A fellow was waving at me. I waved back.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Just having a look."

"I don't see any smoke."

"I'm sorry?"

He was crossing the field, making his way toward me, arms held up high as if contact with the grass tops might burn. When he was closer he said, "Don't tell me you're just having a smoke when I can see you're not."

"I said I was having a look, not a smoke."

"Now you're changing your story."

I wasn't sure how to respond to that, so I smiled politely and moved to continue on my promenade.

"This is private property!"

I turned. "If you say so."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"There aren't any signs or fences."

"That doesn't matter. I can have the police here."

I furrowed my brow. "What would you tell them I was doing wrong?"

"Refusing to leave private property."

"But you haven't asked me to leave yet. How do you know how I'd respond if you did?"

"This is trespassing and I can have you arrested."

"Ah, there. Now you're saying something." I turned around and started making my leisurely way back toward the road. "Nice chatting with you."

"I think you can move faster than that," opined my host.

"Never the less, I'm not."

He began dogging my heels. "Alright, let's go. Pick up the pace."

"No thanks."

"I can call security now and have you detained until the cops get here."

"No, you can't."

"Don't test me, son. I definitely can, and I will."

"Okay," I said, not turning around. "Knock yourself out. Call 'em."

He stopped saying anything until I reached the road. I stretched, yawned, and sat down at one of the picnic tables along the boulevard. "What do you think you're doing?" barked my new friend.

"I'm having a sit."

"This is private property."

"No, it isn't."

"This table belongs to the club."

"No, it doesn't."

"I can call the cops right now if you want me to."

"You keep saying that, but you don't ever seem to do anything about it. All bark and no bite if you ask me."

I'm really not sure why I continued to antagonize the poor lout at this point. It wasn't in the least relaxing to sit at the picnic table -- in fact, my hands in my pockets were shaking a bit, because confrontation makes me anxious. Still, it rankled me that the officious little prick -- some lawn-cutting doozer from a bottom-tier golf course -- wanted to toss his manhood around at the expense of my peaceful promenade.

"I'm calling this in," he warned, still not doing anything.

I looked at his utility belt of shrubbery shears. "Do you have a phone there somewhere, or will you need to borrow mine?"

"I'm reporting you as a suspicious person. And you're refusing to cooperate."

"What is it exactly you feel you need help with?"

He straightened up and tried to look very official. "Alright, I've had enough of your BS. Move along now, this is your last warning."

"You don't seem to understand that you don't have the power to evict me from city land."

"This is private property."

"No, that is private property. This is city property. I have as much right to be here as anyone."

"Think I'm impressed by your attitude? Think you're funny? Well it's nothing but BS. Give me your name. Now."

"Aren't you a gardener?"

"You want to be smart? Tell you what: it would really be the smartest idea if you just cooperated now instead of giving me a bunch more BS. Okay?"

"No, that's not okay."

"So you want to play games with me, huh?"

"Not really," I told him, standing up. And, that being said, I realized I really had nothing more to contribute so I started moseying away down the boulevard.

"If I ever see you around here again I'm calling the police, no question!" he called after me. "You won't think it's so goddamn funny anymore!"

I tried to think of something pithy to shout back at him, but my brain was empty so I just put my earbuds back in and went on to thinking about the next thing...

Shake to Shuffle in the iPod 3.0 software should have a preference for setting the sensitivity. As it stands, I reshuffle the playlist every second step. The whole time I was arguing with idiotsticks the music kept jumping from song to song. That's no way to score a standoff.

It started to rain. I took out my earbuds and listened for sirens, but heard none. Around the corner, across the lots, I scrambled back up the loading door and ducked inside the office.

Now I'm sitting at my desk again. Ho-hum.

I wonder where I shall wander tomorrow.