Monday

Aug 20, 2001

Monday, but two-day week!

I have cleverly arranged the next three weeks so that I don't work a full five-day week in a single one of them. This week is two days. Next week is three, but one of those I will probably take a sick day. I have to spend the entire morning in the dentist's chair. I don't think I'll be feeling too good after that. Then Labor Day arrives and I'll celebrate with a four-day week.

Note to self: if you are looking forward to a day in dental hell as a day off, something just sprang loose in your head. Learn to enjoy work!

I accomplish a little today. I have an ally in my hardest task and an energetic one, too. This makes me feel better. In another task, I feel I have intervened too late (if I'm intervening at all which I'm probably not). Probably I'm just pitching what the project is (or hopes to be). When I ran projects, they ran out from under me and I couldn't control all their technical, marketing, documentation bits to suit me. Now I'm an outsider looking in on this process.

At lunch SuRu and I went to z'Tejas. We made up plots for thriller novels. Don't ask. Things are always a little more mundane than they seem at heart. The z'Tejas is doing a booming business while the place next door is being redone to be Eddie V's. It never ceases to amaze me how much money people can spend redoing restaurants. The way the local economy is going, there may be some regrets. Still, lots of people seem to be putting away lunches. The waitress is hoping to sell us a dessert even though we had guacamole, hot sauce and chips and I've had enchiladas (port, not great) and SuRu had chicken-fried chicken and a mountain of mashed potatoes. The serving was so huge that she apologized to the bus boy when he took her plate since it almost looked untouched.

Back at work, I skip another meeting. It is one that I think I don't need to be at particularly but I also think I might catch some grief and I'm not in the mood for it.

Forrest is at a neighborhood meeting about Shoal Creek when I get home. I can't stand these meetings. The people who show up have time to think up the weirdest ideas. I figure I'm going to get my packing done for the trip but I sit down with some cheese and wine and the newspaper.

Forrest comes home and says the neighbors want to form a children's committee so they can express how they feel riding their bikes on Shoal Creek. (I wouldn't let my kid on Shoal Creek until they were twelve or thirteen and I don't walk on it myself more than I have to because it's too busy and when I do I cut into people's lawns sometimes.) In the last round of this battle, the bikers won, leaving us to park our cars in our driveways and never back out and leaving walkers out of the picture. Then there was a reprieve from somewhere.

Our street hasn't had striping complete for months and months. Maybe a year. Because of this controversy over bike lanes, garbage cans, parking, traffic, etc. We don't have sidewalks. They are probably too expensive to put in. Oh, well. We built the circular drive to hedge our bets. Now I pull out head first and have a better chance of living out my life without hitting a jogger or biker.

I don't do anything constructive. I read the paper pile down to zero. (Well, if you don't count the eighteen inch pile in my office.) I read my book. We watch a rerun of Third Watch. And Dateline.

OK, I'm a slug. But I have tomorrow night to pack and I enjoyed my reading. And I'm in bed at a reasonable hour for a change.

books and stuff, guest room 2001

"...the purely private diary becomes too self-centered and morbid. One should have a remote, but not too remote, audience."
Harold Nicolson quoted by Joseph Epstein , Talking to oneself
The New Criterion (Online)

JUST TYPING

I can't remember when my fascination for words began. It wasn't just reading, either. It was words as palpable things capable of leaping out from a page of text by someone else and becoming my own private toys. They were a shape, a work of art, not a collection of letters. Of course, decomposing words into letters was something of a stumbling block in my brain and I had to make friends with words in the whole.

Meta info and links:

I've been reviewing old entries. The broken links and egregious typos really upset me. I've considered a 'one year ago today' bit here but have resisted it as I haven't found anything that interesting to point to. Also, in October/November I will reach a point where I stopped posting due to being all over the map. I am going to be gone again in late September/early October for a couple of weeks. Maybe someday I will post for every day for a whole year. But I really don't think so. Even doing it retrospectively would be hard without being retired, I think. Trying to post every day is a silly obsession.