You’re not yourself lately.” I’d been working on a software program and must have spaced out when my coworker Mike snapped me back to the here and now. Mike and I shared an office at work. Even though we spent so much time together, as he also took on the persona of our guitarist Chee Keydood in Velvet Cocks, we got along fine. More like brothers, actually, since we gave each other crap all day long. I turned in my swivel chair to face Mike. His wavy brown hair was mussed up as usual and he was wearing his standard jeans and button-up plaid shirt, vastly different from his stage outfits, which could range from the stereotypical rock-guitarist leather pants to more eccentric ones of a leather tunic, plates of armor, and big boots. He was squeezing one of the many stress balls that he picked up at the tech conferences we went to. Mike was the only person I knew who actually used these tchotchkes, so coworkers often gave him theirs and he ended up amassing a large collection of colorful, yet somewhat useless, items.
