For those who regularly read my blog, I have to imagine yesterday’s post was a pretty big letdown. “I’ve been waiting almost a week for him to write this,” you probably thought to yourselves while weeping softly into a pillow.

I know. I feel your pain. Last night, I reread what I had written and was practically bored to tears by its awfulness.

Seriously, if this site were The Beatles, yesterday’s post would be a song Ringo had scribbled down on a napkin. If this site was Johnny Depp’s career and you all were adoring fans, yesterday’s post was like sitting down in a movie theater and being subjected to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. If this site were the Baldwin Brother’s parents and all my posts were children, yesterday’s post would be Alec Baldwin.

(That’s right, I took a shot at Alec Baldwin. What’s he going to do? Yell at me on the phone? Make me watch one of his lame movies? Actually, come to think of it, I probably should be very afraid…)

If this site was a database of every analogy ever created, yesterday’s post would be, well…one of the analogies I wrote in the above paragraph.

That’s how boring yesterday’s post was and I’m very, very sorry.

And to make it all up to you, I’m going to expound on one of the items I wrote about in yesterday’s post. Yes, I realize this is like a bully apologizing for stealing your lunch money by pushing you into a puddle of mud, but trust me. You’ll enjoy this story. It’s about rats!

Now that I have your attention (and no doubt caused you to call everyone you know so that they, too, could read what is sure to be an exciting and not the least bit creepy story), I will take you to a time long ago in a place far, far away.

(Translation: Last Friday, down the hall, in my old office.)

After arriving to work after a week of being away taking training, I am greeted by exciting news: I was moving to a new office!

I had been in my current office for quite some time. The two of us (my office and I)  had so many great moments together. There was the time I ate Subway’s Chicken Marinara sandwich for the first time. Or the time I forgot my password for about three seconds until, finally, I remembered it. Or all those times I sat at my desk and thought about coffee in between taking sips of coffee. Ah, good times.

But alas, an era was ending. It was time to clean out my desk and move on to bigger and better things.

Fast forward the following week. I’m situated in my new office. I’ve been given a new leather chair and a nice, big Dell monitor. Life is good. Down the hall, a co-worker was beginning the process of moving into my old office. And here is where the story gets interesting.

While visiting my co-worker in my old office, shortly after she had moved in, I see an ant crawling on my old desk.

“That’s odd,” I thought to myself while saying it out loud. “I never had ants when I was in here.”

During the next few minutes, I spotted several more ants. Later, the co-worker stops by my new office to tell me of the two roach carcasses she discovered underneath the desk on the desk’s perimeters.

“Funny,” I told her, “I never once saw a roach in that office.”

But ants and roaches were merely a prelude to what would be discovered next.

Down the hall, I hear a commotion. Numerous people were gathered down the hall. Assuming the commotion was either due to someone being pregnant or someone having brought doughnuts to the office (possibly to celebrate someone being pregnant), I ignored the chatter and went back to my job. A few moments later, someone scurried over to my office.

“Kevin, come here. You’ve got to see this.”

After assuring this co-worker that I knew what doughnuts looked like and that I didn’t want any, she tells me that something had been discovered in my old office.

“Did they find an old doughnut behind a bookshelf or something,” I thought to myself. “Why would she want to show me that? Oh no, I hope no one is going to try eating it.”

Once I stepped inside my old office, my jaw dropped to the floor.

(Background: In my old office, I had a giant L-shaped desk. On one end, the end with overhead cabinets, a large piece of cork (3 feet tall, seven feet wide) was attached to the background of the desk beneath the cabinets. This way, I could thumbtack important papers and documents for easy viewing. Sitting at this desk every day and looking at this cork background probably had something to do with the cork-themed blog design this site used to have until recently.)

My co-worker who had moved into my office had taken down the cork wall. Some cork had fallen and the only way for her to thoroughly clean the surface of the desk was to take down the cork wall so she could dust underneath it. Well, when she took down the cork wall she discovered large piles of shredded cork.

An animal — a rat — at some point in time had lived in that desk. The cork wall was not flush with the back of the desk — there was a gap of several inches. And with round holes in the desk (designed for power cables and such to go through), the rat was able to crawl between the cork wall and the desk and do whatever struck its fancy.

And what apparently struck this rat’s particular fancy was biting and clawing at the cork wall. He had bit and clawed the wall so much that there were numerous piles of cork dust several inches high.

At first, I was appalled.

“Could a rat had been living in my desk all this time?!” The desk and the cork wall had been in place long before I ever arrived, so it’s possible the piles of cork dust had been created years ago. But then again, it’s possible they had been created just a few weeks ago.

But then I began to think about it logically. I remembered the ants appearing only after I had vacated the office. I remembered the dead roach carcasses on the floor at the outer edges of edges — almost as if the roaches died suddenly once they reached the desk’s perimeter.

Suddenly, it became clear.

The glow of awesomeness I exude must have formed a protective barrier of sorts around me while I was in that office. That’s why the ants couldn’t come out until after I had left. It’s why the roaches died where they did. The rat couldn’t possibly have been living in my desk while I was in that office because my awesome glow would have killed it.

Just as I was about to explain this to my gathered co-workers, someone down the hall shouted “hey everybody, I brought doughnuts” and they scampered away.

I’m sure it was for the best. They’re probably not yet ready to learn of the glow of awesomeness.

Few people are.