On page 25 of Barbara Ann Kipfer's The Wish List, one item reads "spend five days focused on each of my five senses" and it sounded rather intriguing to me. So that's what I'm doing this week.

I started with with my sense of sound for no particular reason other than it occured to me as I stirred from sleep this morning. Tomorrow, I'll pick another sense at random. The thing about this exercise, though, is that you certainly can't catalog everything you sense throughout the course of a day. Do I itemize every song, every note (as if I could)? Do I name the owner of every voice, or at least describe each one? Nah -- I have a job, and I can't capture every little sound.

So here's the result of my efforts:

8:05 a.m. ... A honking horn, a voice on the street, Casey coughs, the fire alarm in the hall chirps, a fire horn in the distance, the scratch of pencil on paper, the hum of the cars on a far-off highway, a helicopter overhead, birds in the stove vent.

9:35 a.m. ... "Imus In The Morning" on my radio and the WHUMP-WHUMP of the rags of the car wash on my car.

9:39 a.m. ... The shuffle of my jeans as I walk into the office, the squeak of the front door, the rattling of pills in a bottle in someone's pocked as he bounds up the stairs.

9:54 a.m. ... Sneezes -- my own, office chatter, the clickety-clack of keyboards.

11:12 a.m. ... Mouse clicking across the office, copiers and printers whirring, a fax machine's squeaky roller.

12:19 p.m. ... The shrill beep of the faulty keypad on the men's room door; the flush of toilets, even from the adjacent women's room; the sound of water cascading from the faucet; the cu-chunk of the paper towel dispenser, then the rip of a new sheet and its russle as I dry my hands. My sneakers squeak on the tiles as I leave.

12:48 p.m. ... The shuffle of lunch bags, the crinkle of plastic, the crunch of chips. British accents in discussion. Someone whistles. My chair squeaks.

5:35 p.m. ... Sounds around the office are very similar throughout the day.

6:31 p.m. ... The click of the soda machine in the kitchen, the thump of my drink, the whirl of the microwave and the popping of the corn. A woman on the cleaning staff enters, crinkling trash bags and rolling her can across the floor with a rattle.

6:38 p.m. ... The popcorn crunches in my mouth and the soda fizzles when I open the bottle.

7:03 p.m. ... Chewing gum, I hear a kind of squeaky-sloshy sound in my head.

7:14 p.m. ... One annoying Yankee fan co-worker won't shut up to anyone who comes near his desk about those damn Yankees.

8:50 p.m. ... Sue coughs, music comes from Gary's computer.

9:30 p.m. ... The fff-chk of my car lock, the ca-chunk of the door, the rev of the engine, the rumble of the tires on the road, the click-clack of the turn signal, the rattle of the CD cases in my center console.

10:08 p.m. ... An airplane flies over, Casey leafs through her magazine.

11:22 p.m. ... Succubus' cell phone vibrates on the floor above. The click of a different keyboard and the sound of Casey's voice pointing it out as she reads over my shoulder. The Channel 2 news on TV. Outside, the quiet of night and the isolated sounds of what comes with it.