How I Got Here

Jonquil asked about Heinlein, which, in my slightly wine-besotted state, unleashed a flood of memory. Many of the people at Jonquil's place, including her, are science fiction/fantasy (SFF) fans, and quite a bit more knowledgeable and well-read in the genres than I am, I hasten to add.

As I was getting ready to go off to college, a local friend who was 7 years older than I and whom I knew from my theater stuff (and from our backgammon and herb and vodka-and-lemonade evenings with two gay friends) gave me "Stranger in a Strange Land," which I remember slogging through but not particularly liking. I liked the concept of "grokking," but I could not tell you a single other thing from the book, and it certainly did not inspire me to go find more Heinlein. I've since found out--from reading others' conversations--that Heinlein is a rank misogynist, so I'm just as glad I didn't bother.

And, as I've probably bored you with told you before, the guy who sat behind me in Algebra 3/Trigonometry (Jeff Innes, where are you . . .) insisted that I read Lord of the Rings, which I promptly did, thus capturing me for life. But I really didn't stumble across SFF other than that, somehow, despite my love of Kurt Vonnegut and despite my voracious appetite for the written word.

My college had (and has) something called Winter Term, wherein students are required to go do something for a month. Some people take a month-long course; some do an internship; some go volunteer someplace; when I was there, a group of black students retraced part of the route of the Underground Railroad (my college is notable for being the first racially integrated college in the country as well as the first college to educate men and women together, and the town was, in fact, a stop on the UR). Both professors and students teach the courses on campus, and, in retrospect, I suspect that professors use the winter term format to work out new courses as well as to teach or lead a month-long symposium on a subject into which they're delving, out of personal and/or professional interest. Anyway. One of my two favorite college professors taught a winter term course that I took on the subject of Work and the Meaning of Life. (is it any surprise that the meaning of work has been central to my thoughts throughout my sentient life? It's certainly been there for at least 30+ years.) I can still picture--as though it were yesterday--my professor reading a passage from a book a student had given him (I think), Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed:

"Here you think that the incentive to work is finances, need for money or desire for profit, but where there's no money, the motives are clearer, maybe. People like to do things. They like to do them well. People take the hard, dangerous jobs because they take pride in doing them, they can--egoize, we call it--show off?--to the weaker ones. Hey, look little boys, see how strong I am! You know? A person likes to do what he is good at doing. . . . But really, it is the question of ends and means. After all, work is done for the work's sake. It is the lasting pleasure of life."

And that single passage made me go to the bookstore, find that book, and then find other of LeGuin's books. Keeping an eye out for her name led me to other names, occasionally, and years later a friend suggested Sherri Tepper. I read The Gate to Women's Country and got drawn in again. Occasionally I'd read something that turned into a space western, and I still don't have much patience for those, and occasionally I stumble across something--possibly a recommendation from someone from Jonquil's flist,--that draws me in. Point being (in so far as I actually have one, which is debatable) that, despite my love for a number of SFF writers, in general my knowledge of and reading in the genres is limited. But when it's done well, I love the freedom to explore an idea. The Dispossessed, for example, asks the question, what would it be like to live in a society that did not have private property? How would that work? What problems would arise? What would happen if someone from that world went to a world where there was still private property? Frankly, it's one of the best explorations of anarcho-syndicalism I've ever seen, and one of my great regrets about leaving academia is not having the opportunity to teach that book in a political theory class.

Carry Me Home

I put on my sherpani hat and went off to the farmers' markets this morning. My haul:

*10 pounds of honey
*3 bars of beeswax soap
*10 pounds of blueberries (on sale for $28)
*some maple syrup
*two bunches of organic beets (greens attached)
*9 pounds of dried fruit (strawberries, pears, cherries, and apricots; the latter were supposed to be peaches)
*a loaf of semolina sesame bread
*a loaf of flaxseed bread

And when I say "haul," I mean that I got everything except the bread, syrup, and dried fruit at one market, then took a bus to the second market, then took two more buses to get home. My back was less than delighted at this, but whatever. The only thing that concerns me is that I really have to freeze those blueberries--and 10 pounds is a fuckload of blueberries. I'll probably IQF them tomorrow, or possibly today if I get ambitious, but meanwhile I must start editing.

Listalicious

I had intended to meet friends tonight--one friend has a son who was playing in a jazz trio at a photography center opening of some kind--and then . . . I bailed. I cranked away at work today (including five hours putting together the monthly report for BB, not least because my coworkers are unfamiliar with outlines, no matter how much I create them and hold their hands and practically write their fucking pieces for them), because I don't see how else I'm going to get through the next few weeks. And then I thought about the very long list of chores I'd set for myself (work out each day; go to two different farmers' markets, for honey, dried fruit, fresh fruit, and perhaps some vegetables and bread; clean the disgusting pit of a bathroom; do the laundry; do some baking; clean up the mess and clutter; and crank through as much of the second editing job as possible (the other editing job still isn't quite ready)), and I realized that I would be much happier if I came home and did a couple of things on the list.

So: DMB. When we bought the tickets, we each ended up choosing seats with "obstructed views." The first night, that turned out to mean "sitting in the second row on the side-ish of the stage," which isn't exactly my idea of obstructed. We wandered down, checked out the seats, and, as the opening band finished up, trudged up the hill for a beer. We came back down as DMB came out, and discovered that the seat directly in front of me was occupied by a young man who was--no lie--at least 6'7" tall. And he was standing. And he showed no inclination to sit down. And I am short. I could see absolutely nothing except his back. I was bumming--it was like having been given a wonderful treat and then having it ripped out of my hands.

I sat down--because seeing his ass wasn't so different from seeing his back--and tried to figure out how to somehow enjoy myself. Friend then made me switch seats with him--it turned out that the row in front of us was angled and shorter, such that Friend's seat was actually a front-row seat (I could have reached out and touched the stage). And he could see around very-tall guy, so it all worked out. We were so close that we were effectively behind the speakers, which meant the sound was kind of muddy (especially for those of us who are not huge fans who know the words to every song), but it was very fun. It was especially interesting to turn around and see 40,000 people behind us. The second night, our seats were near the back, not far from the sound board. Sightlines were pretty good, too, so it was a fun contrast with the previous night, and the sound was much better.

The first night, as we walked through the parking field, someone yelled out, from a van, "Hey! It's an old guy! Hi old guy!" The second night, as we walked to our seats, someone yelled out, "Hey! It's a silver fox!" (meaning me; Friend's hair isn't very grey, but mine definitely is). We were amused that we were both identified as Old--which, compared to this crowd, we certainly were; we could have been the parents of about 95% of the crowd. But, hey, we've been doing this for more years than many in the crowd have been alive, we know how to pace ourselves, and I'd say we get a few points for the effort.

We had a hotel room Saturday and Sunday night, and we had lunch on Sunday with friends of his who live not too far away. We originally planned to take a day off and wander back slowly on Monday during the day, but then ended up making a mad dash early in the morning to get to work, which meant we both had fewer than the requisite number of brain cells to rub together at work. But it was nice to get out of town. Part of why I want to crank for the next two weeks is that we're going out of town in two weeks--again only for the weekend, though we both plan to take off on Friday--and I want to get several things out of the way before that.

And, really, I just have a ton of deadlines. The challenging part--or one of them, anyway--is that it involves a number of detailed, complicated things all piled on top of each other, the kind of things where I like to make outlines, and plans, and get other people involved with plenty of advance notice, and so on, and that's basically just not possible. Take two of the things that are due soon, and that I have had on my desk for at least a couple of weeks--i.e., I've had some lead time on them--but that I have not been able to get to because too many other things have been in the way. But there's no point in fussing about it; I'll just do what I can and power through. I suppose I should have turned down this weekend's editing job and, say, just relaxed, or possibly even gone in to the office, but whatthefuck.

I'm half-watching "Pride & Prejudice," which is on Oxygen tonight, and I could write a fucking dissertation about the ads, but I think sleep would be the wiser choice. I did manage to get about 2/3 of the clutter put away, and the bathroom is clean (!!!!), so I was, indeed, able to cross off a few things from the list. Long day tomorrow, though, even if I only do some of the things on the list.

Second Opinion

So every time my dad's doc went poking around in my dad's bladder, he was finding cancerous cells; the doc reassured my parents that it wasn't invasive or anything, but lately the doc had decided to go to chemo, because the spots kept recurring. My parents--partly at my urging--decided to head to Sloan Kettering for a second opinion. That doc had his pathologist read the results/slides, and, when he got that reading (in the middle of telling my parents that it was no big deal), changed horses immediately. Seems like the small-city pathologist was seeing nothing seriously problematic where the expert saw something possibly problematic. So there will be two more trips to MSK (MRI, blood work, the doc there wants to do his own scope of dad's bladder), and then, who knows. (I asked the google about this cancer, today, and found that a new chemo has been fast-tracked by the FDA--as of yesterday.)

This could get . . . interesting, as my dad previously has said that he'd just as soon not do without his bladder, thanks so much. (Not least because my mom's brother doesn't have his any more, and my dad saw that whole process going on.) Which, if the cancer is invasive, basically means dad would be choosing to die of cancer sooner rather than either later or of something else. I don't particularly want to say goodbye to him just yet, but it's his decision. The other question, though, is what happens with mom, and not just in the they've-been-married-for-53-years kind of way: my mom getting a kidney becomes a whole other proposition if my dad isn't around to help out.

Let's hope I'm getting ahead of myself, and also let's wait until all the tests are done.

At work, well, everything is due at once: the two big grants that fund the whole place are due in the next six weeks, along with several crucial interim reports of various sorts for those grants. Plus? I had to move my office today, while the construction is going on, and I'm sharing a smaller office with someone (whom I like--and I offered to share, even though I probably could have gotten away with having the space to myself) for the next three weeks. One of the editing jobs that I took a few weeks ago but which has been delayed is finally going to show up, and a second one has come available as well. I think I'm only going to take the second one if it's available for this weekend; otherwise, I don't think I can fit in everything and still sleep.

So, no stress there.

Friend and I spent the weekend in cheeseland, listening to Dave Matthews (I have a few stories about that expedition), and, two weeks from now, we'll be heading back to cheeseland for a beer-tasting festival. This weekend will feature chores for me, and maybe some editing, plus a day of racing on Sunday (Tour de France finale; Formula 1 in Hungary; Indy in Edmonton) pretty much back to back all day. Which is good for editing days, actually, as chunks of all of that racing can take place while I am listening but not watching, or watching while rowing.

So now you're sort of up to date; I've been missing the blogging thing lately, and I want to say more, but it's after 11 and I need sleep. Maybe this weekend . . .

Back to the Keyboard

In preparation for the 3-day weekend, I went to a meeting with my boss on Thursday (wherein I earned the big promotion & raise I got last week), and then I went across the street to the main library, where I snagged eight books. I promptly read three of them over the weekend, along with having some great food (including homemade elk burgers and some homemade pulled pork) and doing a whole big pile of nothing. Watched the Tour. Watched the Indy car race. Did my laundry Friday morning. Had a brief hour of excitement on Sunday while we all waited to see if my mom was going to be a match for a kidney (she wasn't, but we're hoping this means she's near the top of the list).

I am basically doing all of the financial bits for my organization: developing grant budgets, developing program budgets, working with the funding agencies, etc. I'm not really monitoring expenditures, but I'm doing all of the rest of it. It's an interesting challenge, and I rather enjoy it, but it amuses me that my lack of experience doing these very tasks is why the people who interviewed me five times in the fall of 2007 decided I wasn't a good fit. I had the sense then that I could do these things, but also knew that the person who hired me also had to believe I could do them. And, in this position, I have that, so it has worked out.

Remember that big site visit that occurred two weeks ago? It went pretty well--except the part where my boss's boss (BB) completely pissed off the site review team. THAT part sucked, not least because the fallout is mostly going to hit my head. On some level, it was almost funny: we (site review team and our people) were sitting around the room, in two different locations, and BB was calling in from another city, so was not in visual contact with anyone else. At our end, and, apparently, at the other location, everyone from the organization was basically listening and wincing. I contemplated throwing myself across the room on top of the phone, disconnecting BB and preventing any further damage, but just let it go on. The one thing that helped is that one of our coworkers--someone who had been at odds with me a couple of weeks ago--had the good sense to bring into the room/conversation someone at the executive level of the organization, i.e., someone who can report on and possibly mitigate some of the damage that BB was doing. That will help tremendously; otherwise, someone at a lower level would have had to basically tell tales--true tales, yes, but still; better that that not be necessary.

One of the things I've been enjoying lately is the sense of . . . mastery is too strong, but competence, maybe, that comes with having the details of our finances at my fingertips. It's a puzzle, basically, and I've been enjoying figuring out the pieces. Another enjoyable piece is that I think we actually have a very strong team right now--a group of people with complementary talents, and plenty of them.

Anyway.

I don't have much more at the moment, but I did want to get back to this.