Monday

Aug 6, 2001

muddle on Monday

I spent the wee hours not sleeping well, having panic attacks one after another about things I am not doing as well as I should, in my business and personal life. In my intellectual and fun life. Everywhere. Impending Monday does this sometimes. Unsettling. Maybe it's the birthday coming, maybe it's being on the cusp of new duties now that I got one thing started. Maybe it's just the type of wine we were drinking.

I'm a little uneasy anyway because FFP is gone when I get up. He's arranged for one of the chefs he represents to be on TV and so he goes to PR the TV people. He enjoys doing it, he says when he gets home. Enjoying work is a good thing.

I finally go off to work feeling a little more out of sorts because I can't get hooked up with the work computer to start my morning from home. It makes me feel disconnected. It's surprising how those things play out. Maybe I've been laid off and this is their way of telling me! No such luck, I suspect.

Nope. The company has had a Code Red attack. So they just cut off a lot of the network. Things seem to be working at work from what I can see, but some things are still impacted. I would have thought they had the fix on everywhere.

I do my best to work and complete one task. But I have no idea what to do with another one. So I fret about it. I discuss it with a co-worker. He is concerned about the same things but also hasn't come up with an idea.

I stop by the parents after work. I show Mom a couple of things about e-mail once again. She seems to understand. She certainly wants to do it. They are eating strawberry ice cream when I arrive. They seem guilty about it and assert that it's the first they've had in a while.

At home, FFP makes a salad with taco-seasoned chicken, cheese, tomatoes. It's good. I make myself a drink. I have a couple. I watch part of Rebel without a Cause and Giant on Turner Classic Movies.

It's a mostly wasted day and I know it. At lunch, I walked to Taco Bell. The sun was blazing, it must have been nearing a hundred already. But it felt sort of good. I didn't break a sweat. I felt good to be outside.

JUST TYPING

On Monday...typing may be all you can muster. Just typing is the opposite of refrigerator poetry where you are confined to full words and a few fill-in letters. With typing the only thing missing are some characters mostly useless for English unless you want to say déjà vu. Even then, with a computer, it's possible with just typing.