Tuesday

February 6, 2001

quiz: Place? Time? (You should be able to get within a couple of weeks.)

"Wherever you go, there you are."

I wake up dreaming but I can't remember them. I stayed up too late reading papers. I don't want to get up. But I do. Day after day. Get up. Work. Go home. Worry that you didn't do enough, didn't do it right, didn't handle it. In a few years it won't matter, no one will remember. I've been at this job long enough to know that. People come and go. Into and out of jobs. Into and out of life. When there are 10,000 people buried in rubble half way around the world, it gives one perspective. For a few minutes. Maybe. Then one regresses into one's petty life. I keep trying to understand how trivial most things are.

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At work, I'm humming along, getting into things I've put off while I wrote the paper that was due last Friday. Then I get a note that makes me realize two things: there is a meeting in Houston Thursday that I should have known about sooner and attended; and I will have to give a short speech. I scramble to assemble my speech, get a hotel room for tomorrow night, send out messages asking why I'm not in the loop,why, indeed, noone who would have told me about it is in the loop.

Sigh.

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SuRu and I take a lunch break and walk to Brick Oven. A satisfying lunch on the patio although it overlooks Jollyville Road and has a few nasty grackles and bugs. The day is so nice. Being retired would give one a chance to capture more of these beautiful days, outside, walking.

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FFP and I go to an opera lecture at the Ducloux Hall. Wagner was such a character. I've seen Tannhauser which I liked OK I guess. The music they play from Die Wälkure is very cool. I wish I had time to throw myself into understanding opera and history.

Back home, I read a few of the newspapers in the pile. It is growing again, after I made an effort to get a bunch of them into recycling. Sigh. Never enough time.

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