There’s a few things I’ve been thinking about lately and another handful of items I’m fired up about, but I can’t possibly share them with readers briefly, so here’s No. 1 on the list.

I’m developing an interviewing strategy for business hiring. I’m calling it the Chilean Mine Test.

The premise is, could you live for 70 days trapped underground with the people at work?

In light of recent events in Chile, it’s a question I think more employers should be asking. Sure, John Doe has superb writing and editing skills and can handle deadline pressure like a professional, but what about the pressure of sweating underground in confined quarters with limited food and water with Suzie in advertising and Frank in circulation?

Don’t get me wrong, I like the folks I work with, but trap us in a room together?

For more than two months?

Other than an eight-hour work day, the only other time we spend trapped in a room together is the company Christmas party.

I’m sure I’d be the first to drive everyone crazy. I do it now. What would change?

The difference is there’s no escape. It’s not like “Survivor” where they can vote me off or one of us can walk away. I have to stay. The only other options are to tie me up and shove me in a closet or kill me. These are options I’m sure my co-workers consider daily, but we have rules here that strictly forbid anyone from binding me or ending my life. At least those were the rules with the former management.

But, would those rules apply if we were stuck under ground? And who enforces them?

I admit, I’m not in touch with all the group’s talents and outside interests, but I’m sure, none of us is a trained emergency medical technician.

We are mostly writers and artists, which means we have little to no scientific skills; no MacGyver here. I’m not even sure any of us were Boy Scouts.

But, as people who work in the news business, we do know how to survive on very little. Some of us could probably turn canned tuna and vitamin supplements into a three-course meal.

I wouldn’t go out on a limb and say we’re a physically-fit bunch, and honestly, who knows the psychological state of each staff member. We’re not like the armed forces where they do those evaluations before hiring. Trap us and we all may go nuts.

We are entertaining. We could spend hours – days – sharing trivia questions, political discussions and songs from the 1960s,’70s and ‘80s.

And we’re good at working in the dark.

Look around your work place. Could you slurp from the same can of peaches or bare your innermost fears, let alone your behind, with those folks for 70 days?

Here’s the second thought I’d like to share.

So our neighbor to the south, Orting, has a new slogan – “Small Town, Big View.”

Genius.

They’re working a marketing campaign around it bringing visitors in to experience small-town atmosphere with Mount Rainier looming in the background.

Their tourism site talks about how the quaint, turn-of-the-century town is nestled in the foothills of Mount Rainier between the Puyallup and Carbon rivers. The town center and its parks are filled with maple and evergreen trees, and “You will be awed by the view of Mount Rainier from Washington Avenue.”

The levees on the sides of the river and the 20-mile Foothills Trail provide perfect areas to hike, bike, or walk with take a stroller and the family pet.

“It’s time to take the trail to Orting,” the website notes.

It made me want to go to Orting. It made me want to stop and check it out, not just sneak in the back road to my brother’s house to visit like normal.

It also ticked me off.

Folks there sat around a table, maybe for coffee, and came up with the slogan.

The city of Enumclaw paid tens of thousands of dollars for a marketing plan that gave us nothing. It gave us no catchy slogan. A goofy logo. A marketing campaign around the horse industry, but no plan.

The notion of being the “Gateway to Mount Rainier,” which welcomed visitors to Enumclaw for years, was pooh-poohed by the marketing rep, because everyone has the mountain. Yet, the city website notes Enumclaw is the “gateway” to both north entrances of Mount Rainier National Park.

That steam you might be seeing isn’t venting off that beautiful volcano, it’s streaming out of my ears.