What's on your desk?

Because our company's board of directors plans to visit soon, we've been encouraged to neaten our work areas. This does not usually take me very long because I don't keep much on my desk.

Besides my phone, CPU, monitor, monitor stand, keyboard, mouse and mousepad, I have:

• two empty soda cans (diet A&W root beer and diet Pepsi - OK, I'm still working on the Pepsi, but it is almost empty).
• my cell phone
• a piece of paper with notes for a brief for Monday's paper
• a red Bic "round stic fine USA" ballpoint pen
• a promotional toy from Quizno's, one of those little cars you pull back and let go of and it zooms away. This one looks like a rocket.
• a promotional card from the Popcorn Board. When opened, a little speaker plays the sound of popcorn popping. "Give your ears a little treat," the card urges.
• a promotional toy from Dairy Queen to flog their Moolatte frozen blended coffee. It is one of those old-fashioned canisters that you turn upside-down, then right-side up and it moos. Cute.
• an impressively feisty purple and green vinelike plant, which is in a yellow pot on top of my CPU (which is protected by folded-up newspaper under the pot). Besides the vine, which I love, the pot contains a small, white ceramic insulator and a pica pole (a type of ruler for unusual people).

And that is it, although near my desk is a filing cabinet that I use only as a place to put my planning calendar, which has color-coded information about stories that will appear in coming editions of the paper.

I don't know what my desk says about me, but there you have it.