Tuesday

Oct, 30, 2001

buckle down

I wake up and go to sleep several times. The giant clock digits count off the time.

I have been dreaming that I'm at a conference in a big city. I keep bumping into people I haven't seen in a long, long time. We are trying to find accommodations. Short couches and old-style army cots seem to be available. I go into a big room, like a bus terminal or building lobby. There are enormous racket ball courts with people playing. At the end of the court is a small window framing a city scene.

Work. I try to have an opinion about several papers that have been presented to me. I have a sinking feeling of déja vu about some things and a feeling of renewed hope about others.

Lunch. I have been feeling reclusive and I was going to go out alone, eat and look at a book store or something. Called Mom, though, to make sure they got the van back and she said Dad would like me to drive him to the dealership to get it. So I eat chicken breasts, leftover butter beans and a salad with them. I put my Mom's image of her medical cards and her important medicines on the desktop so she can just double click them and won't have to remember how to open Word or a file.

I think I'll go to two meetings in the afternoon but I skip one (it's a meeting I should attend occasionally) and the other is cancelled. I would have thus satisfactorily finished some nagging work except that the LA thing interfered.

Someone set up a meeting in LA at a conference next week that none of us were going to attend. I'd pushed this off on someone else but they decided that my presense was necessary. The guy can meet me at 10am or 3pm on Wednesday. Neither time is conducive to a one day trip. Sigh. Because the direct gets to LAX at 9am if on time and the direct leaves at 5:35. And the meeting is somewhere near the convention center, near downtown. So I bat this around with people far senior to me via email and finally capitulate that I should go. The scope of the meeting has expanded, too, and I have to think about how to use the time wisely for the company.

We were invited to a party for a politician. (Invited as in we paid the money, I think.) FFP said we didn't have to go. So at home, shaken by the prospect of a quick trip to LA (sigh again) I knocked around eating candy intended for the Halloween ghouls. FFP came home. He'd been to the store.

We started fish tacos. I helped in that I cut up onion, cilantro and tomatoes and heated the tortilla in the microwave. As FFP sautéed the fish or changed his shirt to do it or something the phone rang. It was Pineapple Girl. She wanted to drop off a note thanking us for the meal the other night.

We invited the Pineapple one in for a fish taco and opened a 1997 Zin and urged her to share with us. It was the first time she'd come to our house and we turned on the lights and showed her the garden. (Remind me to make a new muscians page for the site, OK? I keep meaning to do that.)

Pineapple Girl was meeting a friend to discuss bidness (as in contract work for pay) at Cloak Room. She invited us along although she left a message we didn't receive telling us there was something we needed to know before we got there. Don't know what that was. Her friends were there and the politicians. I had some club soda and quit feeling sociable (I'd briefly regained it, you see). The politicians were loud, there was some smoke, the guys in the baseball game on TV kept making errors. I wished I was home in my chair dozing. I think I haven't been quite up to snuff health-wise. I keep being very tired. So at 9:30 I talked FFP into leaving and we did. He wanted to take the gals to Four Seasons or Jeffrey's bar or something. Sometimes I'm up for stuff like that. But I was a real grump about it. I think the threat of this trip didn't help. This kind of contact (and the inconvenient travel that goes with it) comes with the job. I know that. So...get over yourself, LB.

happier times of 48 stars, image stolen from ebay long ago

"The greatest timesaving device is not resisting temptation."

unattributed in 20,000 Quips & Quotes edited by Evan Esar

Meta:
This is back in a rhythm. The completely examined life. I just know that I can finish the year with an entry per day, no matter how tiresome you may find them!

JUST TYPING
Do something productive.
If.
You can figure out what that might be.
If.
You can figure out how to make things better.
Not worse.