Change

Well.

The Big Transition continues at work, and it's taking its toll on everyone. While I can rant with the best of them, there are days when I think that I am least . . . deeply bothered? freaked out? of all of my coworkers. It's really kind of fascinating to watch (and to have a hand in, for that matter). Some of it is definitely age, but most of it, as I think I've said before, is that I have changed "careers" multiple times in my life, sometimes by choice and other times not so much, and each time I've done so, I've had to learn a whole new field. On one hand, of course, this is a bit stressful, but, on the other, it gives me something new to learn, and it has given me experience being discomfited, if you will. The people within whom I'm now working have (a) worked with the organization for at least 10 years, and (b) worked with each other for at least 10 years; at this point, they have worked out all of their miscommunication and their routines and their divvying up of the world.

Suddenly, the world has gotten much larger, and it has new stuff in it, and they must work with people who do not have any clue how they Do Things, and there are many more Things to Do, and some of those things are Very New Things. This all makes for much discomfort and dislocation, and, as we all know, people deal with that in different ways. (I actually think my boss created the position for me that s/he did precisely because of my experience with such dislocations.) As I have been saying, despite the multiple frustrations we experience with each other, no one is lazy, malicious, or stupid, and that is huge. No one else seems to think it's as huge as I think it is, but I think it's absolutely vital. It doesn't mean that we're going to be able to work everything out with no bumps or irritaitons or rashes, it just means that the people involved are capable of working it out, are unlikely to sabotage working it out, and will likely work hard to work it out.

It's also true that I have lost a couple of battles--that makes it sounds too dire. It's true that, in several arenas that I think are important, the person who is making the decision doesn't see/agree with the things I've observed and pointed out. I do think it will backfire, in a big way, but some mistakes have to be made for people to understand the flaws in their systems.

What's also interesting and sort of amusing to me is that the people who are, at least theoretically, taking over chunks of what I have been doing, are both multitudinous and freaking out. Seriously--and not to pat myself on the back--but it's taking three or four of them to even begin to do what I have been doing single-handedly, and they haven't really taken over yet. It's more like they look over my shoulder as I keep doing big chunks of it. And criticizing, of course, when they're not freaking out.

The other thing around which I have not yet wrapped my head is that they don't seem to forego vacation time when there's something big due. The last two Big Things--including the one where we/I fucked up--included vacation time by people who are supposed to be taking over big chunks of what I do, and the vacation time was within a week or 10 days of the due date. Which makes no sense to me, and probably explains why I have nearly maxed out the amount of vacation time one can accrue. One of them included airplane tickets to a foreign country, so that's understandable, but that person also arrived back in town and started fucking with my Plan, because That's The Way WE Have Always Done Things (even though I could only have discerned the Way YOU Do Things through psychic abilities, and was therefore taken aback and peevish).

And, truly, I'm not being critical there. Having a Way to Do Things that actually includes people other than oneself does probably mean that one can take vacations, and there was no way to know that this particular adventure really didn't allow for vacations for the people in charge of getting it done. Lessons have been learned, i believe, but there's still a lot of freaking out to do.

Not by me, though, if I can help it. Loaner Cat does what she can to refocus my attentions, which is always good. I've also been reading again. There for awhile I was rereading a bunch of stuff, but suddenly I'm back in New Book land. And my latest somewhat guilty pleasure has been the George Martin books, or the first one, anyway. People whose opinion I trust (all online) seemed to like it a lot, so I figured I'd get the first one and see whether I like it, and, so far, it's entertaining, A potboiler, for sure, in the manner of Dorothy Dunnett, I'd say, but I admit to liking her stuff, too, way more than I probably should.

I'm always a bit annoyed at comparisons to Tolkien, though. While I freely admit that Tolkien isn't for everyone, and while i have registered my various objections to the film versions here, and while I recognize that Tolkien's inclusion/treatment of women leaves much to be desired in many ways, I fell under the spell 35 years ago, and it's not going to change. More to the point: the issues notwithstanding, Tolkien's fiction was an outgrowth of his philology and linguistics, of his invention of new languages and the creation of backstories around the beings who spoke those languages. While others have certainly created whole worlds out of whole cloth--Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea, for example, which I love--that world creation takes a different form. It's neither good nor bad (except for the occasional author who apparently consciously tries to emulate Tolkien in some way, which is a project doomed to failure), but it has a different origin than Tolkien's world creation.

Thus, while I am only part of the way into the first volume, I would liken the Martin books more to Dunnett, or, I suppose, LeGuin, than to Tolkien. But Tolkien got a big boost with the movies, and nobody knows Dunnett, mostly, so, to sell the books, Tolkien gets thrown around, which does a disservice to both him and to whomever is supposed to be the "new" Tolkien.

Look, people, Tolkien is sui generis. Unique. Singular. Stop using him to sell things that Aren't Like His Works At All.

Random

I only seem capable of food blogging these days . . . let's try something else.

Partly it's because all of the stuff at work goes on, but I've become more wary about going into detail on the 'tubes (not that I've ever had any inkling that any coworker even knows I have a blog, much less has stumbled across it, number one, and, number two, the people about whom I would be most dismayed stumbling across this thing don't have enough internet savvy to find it--most probably don't know what a blog is, much less how to find mine; but you never know). Some things are going quite well--the new middle lord (my direct supervisor) has turned out to be quite good; I like hir personally and professionally, and zie seems intent on finding ways to use my talents to their fullest rather than just letting me continue to do three or four jobs in obscurity. Which, hey, all good. But it's too soon to even try to talk about it here; it remains to be seen what can or will be done.

So I go to work, submit the next thing, come home and provide a lap for the cat (Friend's cat is living with me for a little while, as I think I mentioned), work out, watch the hockey game if there is one, watch Top Chef on Wednesday night, maybe go out for dinner with Friend one night, maybe do some cooking or baking if I'm inspired.

My tile-making class started this past week, and I'm already feeling weird about it. Part of it is that I know that what I need to do is to sit down and do some drawings, start doing something, anything, really, but, instead, I dink around. The one tile I made last year actually came out reasonably well for a first effort, and I'm looking forward to making it even better, but that was a goddamned expensive tile. And now I'm in a class where I'm surrounded by people who are Genuine Artists--or it feels that way to me--and I'm just a schlub with no ideas about what I want to create. And I know that that approach violates the Top Chef Rule--cook your own food and don't worry about what other people are cooking--but my brain keeps going there anyway.

Well, there's only been one class, so maybe I'll get my head out of my own head and actually do the drawings I need to do, and create some fun playful stuff just to amuse myself, and take a couple of afternoons off of work and spend some time in the studios (which doesn't cost anything extra if you're taking a class). I also know that I do my best work when I have the opportunity to just fuck around, play, see what evolves, and I didn't have much of that last spring. I have a ton of vacation time--nearly three weeks, plus five personal days--so we'll see. And did I mention that I want to just have fun with it, fer chrissakes?

This week's other task is to find out what the weird patch on my leg is. I called my dermatologist today and got an appointment for Thursday. I'm perfectly willing to pay my co-pay only to be told that it's just a patch of, I don't know, eczema or something, but it doesn't look like anything I've ever had on my skin before, and it's in a location that isn't a good candidate for plain old dry skin, and I moisturize after my showers, and I've been treating it for 10 days or so with no results, so I figure it won't hurt to have an expert take a look at it. It's probably something stupid and routine--and that would be absolutely fine with me.

As for cultural commentary: Lately I've been reading Eliot Pattison's Inspector Shan series, and absolutely loving it. I've worked my way through the first four, I think, and I alternate with other stuff, of course, but it's way fun. The other thing I've discovered--and, yes, I realize I'm late to this party--is "Big Bang Theory." I've been getting it on Netflix and watching it while I row, and it makes me laugh out loud. I just finished season two (I alternate with the BBC's Inspector Morse series), so I have a few more disks to go. But it cracks me up, and I've always had a crush on both Johnny Galecki and Sarah Gilbert, so it's even more fun. I got a new TV, too--a big-ass sucker--but I'm using the old TV in the back bedroom with the rowing machine, i.e., I only get to watch the little TV while I row, but I have the rowing machine out of my living room. No furniture yet, but the furniture maker was here the week before last, and as soon as I figure out what I'm getting back on my taxes I'm going to order some stuff.

Okay, that's the best I can do without involving food.

Evil Asshole and the New Overlords

It's difficult to determine just how many posts I have started and abandoned--some of them quite lengthy. But I get half way through a story, or some more-or-less-connected thoughts on something, and I just don't finish it. Tonight, though, I am determined to finish, and the yeast in the kitchen will make sure I have the time. I tested a recipe for Cooks Illustrated, for wheat bread, and I really rather liked it. I only made a couple of changes--all butter, instead of some butter and some oil; wheat bran instead of wheat germ; and I made rolls instead of a loaf of bread, because rolls are easier to freeze and grab from the freezer for lunch--and I rather liked it, so I'm making it again. One of the good things about it is that you start part of it 8 to 24 hours before the rest of it: a biga and a soaker. It says 24 hours, but I left this one for more like 30, and I'm sure it'll be fine. The down side is that it raises three times after you mix everything together, but you don't have to do much, so it's not too bad.

Anyway, it's on its final rising, and obviously hasn't baked yet, so maybe I'll actually finish this.

Work continues its stressful march. I think what was happening was that several people, including the finance person (not the one w/ whom I continue to work, and my opinion of that person has improved some), but the higher-up person, who is an evil asshole rat bastard. I didn't trust that person to begin with, but I have since discovered that Evil Asshole was one of the major promulgators of the various canards that contributed to my boss's departure. Luckily, I don't have to work much with EA; s/he has been kicked upstairs, is going on to Even Greater Things Within The Organization, blahblahfuckingblah.

In any case, EA (and others) basically told the New Overlord that we were all a bunch of incompetent boobs, with my ex-boss being the least competent of the bunch. So NewO and others had the idea, I think, that they'd get rid of my boss, and maybe a few other people, and so on and so forth. Except, oh wait, we're actually NOT incompetent! So maybe it might not be a good idea to shuffle us around like a pack of playing cards. The other crimp in the plans is that they keep adding administrative salaries to our budget. Well, fine, but where the fuck does everything think those dollars are coming from?

So I just try to do my job, and quietly point out that yes, the emperor is still without any fucking clothes. It's very tiring, though.

Luckily, I've been reading some really great books. In particular, I have finally discovered Eliot Pattison and Michael Gruber, and they are both completly riveting me.

I've also been doing my usual use-up-the-vegetables cooking: yesterday's side dish involved turnips, onions, garlic, potatos (which were, unbeknownst to me before I cut them, a lovely pinkish-purple inside), kale, and spinach, all of which came from the farm share except the kale, which came from friend's garden, and some gruyere. Didn't suck. And one night last week I used kale, turnip greens, and some other stuff. So, all in all, the farm share has improved somewhat, though I have had more damn lettuce this summer than ever in my life. At least it's not iceberg, and is a mix of various greens, but I am getting very sick of salad, even though I'll be eating it this week and likely next week and possibly the week after. I throw in some carrots and radishes (also from the farm share) and some cheese, and it's pretty tasty, but still. Enough with the salad, please.

Okay, the bread is not just baked but now cool enough to eat, so I'm going to go test some.

Crime Scenes

Nearly all of my entertainment is crime-related these days: I'm making my way through the Parker and Spenser novels, and my current Netflix choices are the Inspector Morse series and, this past week, the first season of "Hill Street Blues," which is still, IMHO, the best show ever broadcast. Unfortunately, only the first two seasons ever made it to DVD legitimately (I've seen some stuff for sale that I think isn't quite legit that claims to provide all seasons of the show), so I am destined to be left wanting more. Back in the day, when HSB was first broadcast, I made no plans for Thursday night that did not involve being in front of the TV, watching the latest installment. (This was long before VCRs, DVDs, TiVo, Television Without Pity, etc., and you either saw it or you didn't.)

The show hasn't been on television much since then, despite having produced enough episodes for syndication, because the stories overlapped and the threads often ran through multiple episodes, and they'd make no sense if you didn't watch them in order, which, I imagine, would make syndicated broadcast difficult. In the first five shows of the first season, for example, there's some question of whether one of the cops is on the take. If you saw those episodes out of order, they'd make no sense. In the first three or four episodes, the precinct is preparing for a visit from the president, which involves a gang truce that Furillo negotiates. (Most amusing cameo so far: a gap-toothed David Caruso, as the leader of the "Shamrocks," an Irish gang. Which, really? An Irish gang? In which city, in the 1980s?)

The creators of the show never specified what city it was, though I do remember Philadelphia's city hall making an appearance in a couple of shows. I later learned that the scenes of the outside of the precinct house were filmed in Chicago, at the Maxwell Street house. I realize now--now that I've seen the originals, as it were--several other of the opening scenes, most particularly one with an Old Style sign outside a bar, were also filmed in Chicago; I think most of the rest of it was filmed in L.A., even though the city has the weather and the grit of an old industrial city--Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, something like that.

Anyway, one of the things that has become glaring is how technology has changed in the last 30 to 40 years. In the Parker (and Dortmunder) novels, for example, Parker acts and talks like someone out of the 1950s, maybe early 60s. I think, as Robert Parker did with Spenser, the origins get blurred a little in the later novels, so that he can still be doing his thing in the 1990s and not have to be 85 years old to make the math work out. (In one of the early novels, Spenser says something about serving in Korea--which would have been in the early '50s, and would make him around the same age as my dad, who is 79. I remember reading that in later novels, it sounds as though he served in Vietnam, not Korea. Similarly, Parker has a dishonorable discharge somewhere in his past.) But in one of the later novels that I read out of turn, Parker observes that it's harder to find wads of cash these days, where so many transactions happen electronically rather than with piles of paper in hand.

I can't help wondering what would have happened if Parker and Spenser had crossed paths. The reality is, they likely would not have. Both of them operate on the principle that people do stupid shit, and they find ways to exploit that, Parker for his own benefit and Spenser for his clients' benefit, but neither of them does a lot of stupid shit of their own. Parker doesn't mind killing someone, at least not in the early novels (though Dortmunder and Kelp and their compatriots never resort to violence), but he doesn't do it out of pure malice. If someone gets in the way--typically by intruding in some way on Parker's activities, rather than by innocently stumbling into the path--Parker does not hesitate to kill him or her, but in general it's not his preference. He doesn't kill for fun, and he doesn't kill if he doesn't have to do so, which kind of sets him apart from the crime that hits our newspapers, and, most importantly for this what-if, he avoids making stupid mistakes himself; killing someone unnecessarily is stupid.

On HSB, all of the phone calls are on land lines--many even on public phones--because no one had cell phones in 1982. Thus, communication is actually a plot point in many ways: where is this person, where that conversation can be held, what kinds of tracing are possible. By way of contrast, I have conducted about 85% to 90% of the business of buying a condo via email, other than actually looking at the place. I have never met the lawyers in person, though I have spoken with the lawyer and her assistant several times (including twice today, as we finalized the papers that are going back to the sellers). I have met the mortgage guy once. I never met the appraiser, though I have paid them money. Except for some mortgage papers that I signed in person--in part so the mortgage guy could explain things to me in person--I've even submitted a lot of paperwork to him via email. The papers the lawyers have sent on my behalf, for example--i've only seen PDFs of them.

But being so immersed in crime (and hockey and racing) is a little weird, even if the crime is fictional and even if my reading and viewing is on both sides of the line, as it were. It also makes me wonder what it is that makes someone decide that theft is the way to make one's money, and it definitely makes me sure that I have little or no interest in making my living that way.

I haven't forgotten kstyle's comments, either, about baking and cooking, but it's time for bed, so those musings will have to wait.

Eureka

Yes, indeed, I have found the place I want. When I saw it yesterday, it was nearly everything that I had suspected from the pics I'd found online. Entertainingly enough, the one thing it does not have? A laundry room that can be reached from inside the building. But we ended up running into two women in the laundry room and chatted with them for a few minutes, and they said that people go down in their pajamas to do laundry; it's down a set of back stairs, and, except for the going-outside part, and the steps-rather-than-elevator part, probably not terribly different from my current arrangement. It's not across a courtyard, for example. One of the women has lived in the building for 17 years and the other for more than 10, i.e., it's clear that people like living there. So, the agent will be submitting a bid for me tomorrow; we're meeting late afternoon and I'll start the process of initialing and signing things, including pieces of paper that transfer dollars to other people. (When you start thinking about it that way, it becomes ridiculous very quickly.)

While on one hand I very much would like this place, it has not become the least bit real to me yet. There are way, way too many things that have to happen, and, especially given the difficulties that other people I know have been having, I'm not celebrating until I have keys in my hand--or, more likely, until I am moved in. The reality is, if it doesn't work out for any of a number of reasons, I'll need to keep looking.

On the other hand, I've also started thinking about how I'd go about using the various spaces. I wouldn't have nearly enough furniture for the place, but I'm not worried about that; I'd prefer to live there (or somewhere else) for awhile before buying furniture. The backsplash in the kitchen is wood, so I'd start thinking about designing and painting some tiles so I could eventually replace that--that's the kind of thing that I can do over time (and, for that matter, might well be something I could no matter where I move). One of the bedrooms is a little oddly shaped and carpeted, so it would be useful as an office space, because I could put my desk and chair in there and not worry about scraping up a hardwood floor, and I could get a futon couch (one that's a little smaller than my current one), and, voila, office AND guest bedroom. Both bathrooms are nice--one has a big shower and no tub (which I like), and the other has a window in the shower/tub (which I love) and wonderful bright blue accent tiles. Both bathrooms are directly connected to the bedrooms. I would definitely need a nice comfy chair for the sunroom, so I can sit there and read or do needlepoint.

Etcetera.

I really cannot think about it too much--even as it's rather consuming--because there are just too many things that have to happen first.

Meanwhile, I'm going back to the beginning of two series of books: the Spenser novels, by Robert Parker, and the Parker novels by Donald Westlake (writing as Richard Stark). They're interesting on their own, but also juxtaposed. Parker, at least in the early novels, is a little bit outlandish so far, but it's such an interesting contrast to Dortmunder and Kelp, the two main guys in the comic crime novels by Westlake. Dortmunder and Kelp never killed anyone--occasionally someone got hurt or even died, but never at the hands of the main guys; Parker shoots people all over the place, at least in the first novel. (I read a later one as the first, and there was less of the shooting, so I'll see how the series plays out.) But Parker is also an interesting contrast to Spenser. They're similar types, just working on opposite sides of a line--and the line really isn't one about legality. I want to read a few more of each series before i develop that thought, though.

Finally, remember that Big Financial Crisis at my job? It has all but disappeared. The upshot, in many ways, is that the person who was waving hir arms around and setting hair on fire down--and up--the food chain has ended up discrediting hirself more than anything else. Which, really, is the best thing that could have happened. Or the second-best, anyway; the best thing would have been if s/he had bothered to include the rest of us in the process in real ways (rather than merely hand-waving, here-look-at-this-roll-up-never-mind-the-details ways). As with nearly everything else, the thing about budgets is that the devil really is in the details.

In Which More Things Suck

Be forewarned: I have other, possibly more-profound, thoughts rummaging around in my brain, but I'm out of the patience necessary to write them down, so you're stuck with yet another narrative about how work sucks, how my parents are doing, what I'm reading, and what I baked and/or had for dinner the past few days. Specifically:

Despite my best intentions--and, for that matter, at least some of my desires--I did not come home and work out tonight. Also? No yoga today. And whatever, is all I can bring myself to think about the whole thing. And? Popcorn, dried strawberries, cheese, and cookies for dinner. Also don't care about that.

Why, yes, you're correct; the suckage continues. We're beginning to piece together all the problems--or, rather, diagnose them--but it's still going to be a very long haul. If this were the only thing on which I needed to be working, it would suck, but would be manageable; as it is, though, there are several other important things I must be doing that I need to squeeze in where I can. There are several good, or, at least, useful things about the current annoyances, however. For one thing, I have sent people crap, kept people informed, showed my work, distributed spreadsheets, and so on, all the way along. If I have made mistakes--which I surely have--I have at least provided my work to other people, giving others the opportunity to identify those mistakes. That has not happened--if anything, I'm the one who has identified my mistakes. But the point is, I have shown people what I'm doing, rather than hiding it, which makes it very difficult for someone to say that we haven't inFORRRMMMMed them what's going on. Second, all those years where I wrote detailed accounts of shit, and tried to assemble my facts to make an argument? Turns out that comes in handy, and not so I can point my finger at someone else and say gotcha.

For example: if you tell me that I am "over budget," what exactly do you mean by that? In our context, that could mean:
(a) When we developed the FY budget for the organization back in May, we estimated our costs for widgets for the fiscal year to be $100. After six months, we have spent $60 and it looks like we're on track to spend $120 for the year. We are just plain buying too many widgets, and we need to cut back for the next six months. (Alternatively, we planned to spend more in the early months and less in the later months, but the dollars budgeted were spread evenly over the fiscal year, just for convenience.)
(b) We budgeted $100 back in May for this fiscal year, but, since then, we've reconsidered, and submitted several grant budgets, which allot a total of $120 for the fiscal year for widgets (more or less, because the grant budgets don't exactly line up with the FY budget, by dates). Thus, we are over budget on the FY budget--which the board examines--but just fine according to our grant budgets.
(c) We budgeted $100 back in May, and we've submitted grant budgets that allot $100, but we've seen more patients with insurance than we predicted, so we can afford another $20 in widgets, i.e., we are "over" budget on income as well as expenses.
(d) We budgeted $100 for widgets and $100 for mergatmacaters, both in the FY budget and the grant budgets. However, it turns out we need $120 for widgets and $80 for mergatmacaters, and both of those fall into the "supplies" lines of our grants. (In federal grants, you can move things around within your large categories, e.g., buy more dental supplies and fewer medical supplies than you originally said in your contract budget; you can also move things between categories--e.g., between supplies and salaries--but not quite as much. It's based on percentages, rather than dollars, and you can move a higher percentage of dollars within a category as opposed to between categories.) Thus, while we're over budget for widgets and under budget for mergatmacaters in the FY budget, we're absolutely fine in the grant budget, and we may draw down all $200 from our grant; the current internal rules say we can still only draw down $100 for widgets.
(e) We budgeted $100 for widgets, in both the fiscal year and grant budgets, but we should have budgeted $120, because that's just the cost of widgets, and we can't reduce that cost.

The solution to the "over budget!!11eleventy!!" crisis depends on which of the above scenarios is the case; no one solution will fix each of those issues. Thus, just telling us that we are "over budget" does not help us. In fact, it leads to us being told (as we have been) that, on a given grant, we are both over budget and under spending. Um, well, no, both of those things can't be true simultaneously, folks.

In any case, this is precisely where my analytical abilities come in handy (or we hope they do, anyway). What I've laid out above will actually be reasonably useful in this exercise, I suspect, and, in fact, each of the above is probably true in different parts of the budget. As noted, I'd be enjoying this more if I didn't have several other important things screaming for my attention.

However, some good food was also had this weekend. Saturday night we went out to a local hip expensive restaurant and had some fabulous food. Sunday Friend made some of his gumbo, which included wild turkey, venison sausage, andouille sausage, two kinds of beans, onions, celery, okra, corn, tomatos, rutabaga (my idea), and carrots, and I made the lemon tart again, and, once again, was disappointed by its bitterness. Monday we made squash soup (butternut squash, leftover sweet potatos, the rest of the rutabaga, onion, orange juice, homemade applesauce, all pureed), cracked wheat (I'd thought it was barley when I brought it over; oops), and a bit of wild turkey breast and a bit of venison tenderloin (garlic, black pepper, and a sauce of reduced wine, onions, and shitakis), both pan-fried in a little bacon grease. I had reduced some blueberries with orange juice as part of our breakfast, and the rest of that compote turned out to be a fine addition to the lemon tart; I suggested to Friend that he simply warm some honey and orange juice together to put over the tart for the rest of his enjoyment. I'd also made a batch of the barley sugar meringues, and these failed in a whole other way from the last batch, but were even better eating, so that wasn't a total loss, either. I also made a batch of soft pretzels and pretzel rolls Monday, which turned into more of a project than I really wanted but ended up being reasonably successful.

So, really, working out would have been a useful addition to tonight's program, in more ways than one.

Meanwhile, I'm reading "Get Real," by Donald Westlake, and I'm finding it kind of . . . sad. The book itself is quite funny (it's another Dortmunder and Kelp novel), and I keep laughing out loud at various bits, but, as you may remember, Westlake died a year ago New Year's Eve, so this is the last of the Dortmunder books, which bums me out. For 30+ years my dad and I have been reading Westlake and keeping each other apprised of the latest one. And Westlake was so prolific that he wrote under several pen names--he could write four or more books a year, but the publishers didn't think people would believe that he could write that many good books. In any case, I strongly recommend him.

Speaking of dad, apparently the dermatologist has decided that, yes, the rash is an allergic reaction, but likely not directly a reaction to the chemo. I pointed out to my mom (and apparently the derm guy said the same thing) that it's possible that when the chemo whacked dad's immune system, that basically facilitated an allergy to one of the other meds he takes (the usual blood pressure/cholesterol/etc. combos that men in their late 70s who have had a quadruple bypass would take). The doc also did a skin biopsy (which I had also recommended, thanks to one of the NPs at work, but mom dismissed), but the results weren't back yet.

So, back to the salt mines tomorrow, or the spreadsheets, anyway. I'd actually kind of enjoy it, because it's a kind of puzzle-solving, if the consequences of being wrong or fucking up weren't so bad (e.g., needing to make major budget cuts).

Take Away My Pants

Did you know that clothing can be cursed? Neither did I, but there's no other explanation. I have this pair of green winter-weight gramiccis, and last spring, as I ran to catch a train, I tripped and fell, landing hard enough to rip the knee out of the pants and rip open my knee as well. I got around to patching them this week, so I've been wearing them. Early yesterday morning I zipped up to the bakery to see about an order for Friday (even though it was 6:30 am, I knew Bossman would be there), intending to head over to Peet's afterwards to stock up on Winter Solstice tea. So after I leave the bakery, I'm at the corner and I hit a patch of black ice and fell; bruised my hand pretty badly, but otherwise mostly ended up with dirt on my coat and, yes, the green pants. I have fallen twice in the past four years, and both times I was wearing these pants. What other conclusion makes sense?

There's not a whole lot else to report, really. Work goes along. I have some crap to submit by the end of the year--at least one budget modification, next year's budget for one grant, a workplan, a proposal--and I have to figure out how to submit this other mountain of data, but whatevs. I didn't get much done this past week, because I had off on Tuesday (a personal day used for doctors' appointments), 3,472 meetings on Wednesday, and ended up taking off on Thursday as well (a dentist appointment in the morning, but I've been dealing with an annoying cold all week, so I just took a sick day). I should be able to crank out a few things this week, and I'm planning on working over the holidays, mostly, as well. I'll take off next Monday, and we have off both Thursdays and Fridays, but going in to the office at this time of year means I can get work done without people wanting things from me every damn minute. It would be nice to start the new year with a bunch of little crap (and some big stuff, too) off my desk.

I even made a dent today--and in more than one pile! It was very exciting.

Okay, maybe not so exciting, but still.

Friend and I watched two movies yesterday, one of which was "Into the Wild," which neither of us had seen and which I kind of wish we hadn't watched, not least because it gave me some bad dreams. I didn't know (or didn't remember, in any case) that the kid died, but it did not change my annoyance at him, at his willingness to burn his money, at his lack of compassion or consideration for his family and friends. Near the end, you see him writing, "happiness is only real when it's shared," and I, ever the sympathetic person, thought, "Well, duh; did you really need to go to Alaska and starve to death to realize that?" And, apparently, the answer is yes, which is sad.

Having been raised without religion or deities, and in a family that had and has a strong sense of responsibility, on one hand I never questioned the notion that we--broadly understood, not just my family--must take care of one another. Of course we must; the libertarian mindset is a quasi-nietzschean notion of personal invincibility for the elite few, and, of course, the proponents all think they are among the few. But it wasn't until I found Wittgenstein that I had a way of explaining it clearly, to myself or to anyone else.

One of the basic tenets of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is that there is no private language. The very definition of language is that it is a means of communication--with others. And I came to conceptualize our connections to each other as related to that--communication is a fundamental act. I realize it's several steps from that to a public health care option, and I don't feel like detailing those steps at the moment, but I do see the path.

Or think about it this way: the kid in the movie wandered off to Alaska by himself, ostensibly on some kind of journey of purity, but he brought with him both books and a means of communication (the notebook and writing implements). He brought language with him; he brought other humans with him, even as he thought he was leaving them all behind.

Anyway. The other movie was "Bad Santa," which I'd only seen once but ended up buying this year when I saw it on sale somewhere for $6. Friend was grumpy from his cold, and i thought the movie would make him laugh, and it did, and I found it to be every bit as gloriously profane as the first time I saw it. A perfect antidote to the sticky-sweet offerings of the "season."

Especially as this has been a rough several months in the air around me--my own parents' health issues; two friends losing their mothers this year (and I knew both of them; hell, one was my mother-in-law for awhile); a coworker dealing with some serious health issues (which reared their head again today with another hospitalization, and now he's out of sick time, which is a whole other drama waiting to happen, because he's basically going to have to retire and he can't really afford to do that, even though he's 67); a friend committing suicide; and the general malaise of the economy, which affects my brother and his family pretty significantly. I have to admit that I look forward to the winter solstice, and not because it's Friend's birthday; that's just an extra bonus. I look forward to it because it means the days are going to start getting the tiniest bit longer again, and it won't start getting dark before 4:00 in the afternoon.

And just to show you that, freedom from religion notwithstanding, I still have my superstitions. I was going to wear those green pants yesterday afternoon to go to Friend's house, and I just couldn't bring myself to wear them again. Frankly, I think I have to get rid of them, which kinda sucks, as they're in pretty good condition. I don't even want to offer them to anyone else, in case the curse isn't specific to me.

Nothing to See Here

So for this week in food, the c'testants provided more confirmation of their qualities and personalities. The four best chefs are clearly the Brothers Volt, Keith the Pig Man, and Jen. The other four remaining chefs are all pretty mediocre, despite their opinions of themselves. Their failures may have been from execution, but the failures are at least as likely to be failures of ideas, or failures of just not knowing enough to put something good together.

Robin does seem to be annoying, in several dimensions, but Eli and Mike I-for-Idiot are just sexist assholes. Both of the guys seem to think they are great chefs, which they are not; both seem to think they're oh-so-much-better than Robin, evidence of which I haven't seen; and both act as though every week that Robin remains is an affront to them personally, which is getting really quite tiresome. The fourth chef, Laurine, doesn't seem all that super-talented, but she has a pretty low profile on the show, too. She clearly doesn't have the experience that the top four have, or the chops in general, but she's also not running her mouth all the time.

Mike, in particular, is just an ass. He acts and talks as though he is completely the shit, but he doesn't seem to know how to cook in very many cuisines or styles, and he does not seem to have a grasp of many of the basics. Perfect example: he was teamed with Robin last week, and their bag of food was Asian-themed. Mike asked Robin if she knew anything about Asian food and flavor profiles. She said yes, she did; he said that he did not, but that he was going to run the show, he was going to make all the food, he was going to let her make whatever she wanted and then not serve that part. Simple Asian isn't that difficult to do, if you've got the ingredients in front of you (garlic, soy, ginger, and pepper of some kind will get you pretty far), and two of the other dishes failed much more spectacularly, so neither of them was in danger of going home, but it was just so incredibly dismissive. I've run into men like that throughout my life, and they are so very very very tiresome.

I stumbled across Colicchio's blog yesterday--he's one of the hosts/judges of the show, as well as the owner of several NYC restaurants--and it was quite interesting. I don't know if he does his own writing or if someone edits it or takes dictation, but it's quite well-written, and it definitely provides additional insight and commentary on the actual cooking and the judging thereof.

Anyway. Today was another of my exercises in doing everything on public transportation. I woke up "late" (i.e., about 6:30), puttered a bit, worked out for 20 minutes, showered, and left the house at about 8:20. I took a train (where a kid--teenager?--sat down next to me, despite the multitude of completely empty seats, and then proceeded to crowd me, rub against me, and generally try to get a rise out of the White Lady (he was black); when I got up to get off the train, he promptly got up, and sat down next to another white woman sitting alone, and started up with the same shit, which confirmed that it wasn't my imagination; what an asshole), then a bus, then walked about 1/4 mile to the restaurant where I was meeting kstyle (!1!!) and her husband, who were passing through town, for breakfast. We had a fine time until 11:30, then I walked 2 miles to the acupuncture place. Left there about 75 minutes later, took a bus, then another bus, to a shopping corridor. Went to Trader Joe's (butter, nuts, dried fruit, carrots), Bed Bath Beyond (new water purifier thingy, plus two extra filters), the liquor store (four bottles of wine on sale), Peet's Coffee & Tea (four canisters of tea, plus a free cup), then took a bus two blocks to the el, then took the train home (after waiting for 20 minutes because there was some kind of breakdown), then walked about four blocks lugging all the crap listed above. I got home a little before 5. If i'd been driving, I would have left the house at 9:00, and I likely would have been home by, oh, 3:30, and I would have been able to buy a case of wine--and get the case price--instead of 4 bottles.

On most levels, I don't mind this at all; the only time I've had it any other way was when Chuck and I lived together and he could shlep me to the store, but on errand days like today, unless he was coming along for all the errands, I might well have done big chunks of it on public trans anyway. (Of course, I was living downtown then, too, so many trips were shorter.) Some days it does feel like a chore, though. I know that to do anything, but especially to do a full day's worth of running around, I have to allot time in every slot for waiting for and riding on buses and trains, and I know that I have to make sure not to buy more than I can carry, and I have to make sure to plan my route to minimize the distance I'm going to be fully laden. I also bring a book, because there will be waiting and riding; that part is kind of fun, actually, because I end up with plenty of time to read.

Thus, today I started reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and I am absolutely loving it; it's one of those books where I'm torn between wanting to do nothing except read and wanting to slow down and read it only a bit at a time, so the experience lasts longer. (Yes, I know that's weird.) I purposely put Peet's at the end of the list of visits so I could get my free cup of tea and sit and read for awhile, with no agenda and no rush to get home, which is really one of the great pleasures in life.

I also spent a bunch of time tonight on the phone with an old friend from college--someone I met my very first day of school, back in February of 1977--and it was wonderful. We've known each other for nearly 33 years (really? can that possibly be true?), and there's something special about talking to someone who has known you that long but who isn't family (and who knows your family!). I don't have any friends at all from high school or my home town, so it's really my college friends who have been around the longest.

I'm sure I have some Profound Observations somewhere, but they're not appearing tonight, so you've had another lunch post; oh well. I've been fighting off something for about 10 days; I have no clue whether it's a cold, or just side effects from lots of dry air, or just general malaise, but I've managed to avoid all symptoms except an incipient sense of my body doing battle against something.

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.

Still Not That Exciting

Between hockey games and concerts and work, I barely have time to rest these days. Of course, if the Blackhawks play two more games like last night, I'll be watching the hockey from my couch, which is less exciting, for sure, but also more comfortable and way less expensive, and involves more sleep, because the couch is only steps away from the bed; I don't need to take a bus or train (or get a ride from Friend) to get some sleep.

Monday night was the Dead, and it was quite enjoyable. I inhaled more second-hand potsmoke and patchouli than I have in many years, and I saw way too many white people with dreadlocks. The other thing that is really interesting (as an amateur student of human behavior and amateur philosopher) is the different vibes you can get in such a space. On one side were two women who were enjoying some mushroomic effects. They were dancing and grooving and just generally having a good time--and were fun to be around. They were bouncing around, but also respecting everyone else's space and making sure they weren't being annoying (quite the contrary; they were good-humored and amusing). On the other side were, originally, two guys, but then eventually two women; don't know if tickets were being exchanged or what. The two women were just assholes. One, the one closest to me, was dancing, but she was flailing around and screaming (Woo!) really loud, and whacking into me, repeatedly, and getting annoyed because I wasn't giving her my seat/space as well as her own. (At one point I sat down, in part because that forced her to move the fuck out of my space.)

Eventually, Friend went to find some water; when he came back, I put him between me and her, with no explanation, and he immediately figured out why. Apparently she also tried to yack about it being her seat and he just showed her his ticket, which shut her up some. She continued with the flailing, but he's a lot bigger than I am, and an ex-hockey player, so she wasn't going to get anywhere with him on that score. There was also this guy who took off his shirt and was dancing in the aisle and trying to worm into our row. The ushers tried to get him to move, which he did for awhile, but eventually came back. They eventually had to chase him down and we didn't see him the rest of the night, but I couldn't help but muse on the ultimate selfishness of his behavior, especially in contrast with the mushroomic women.

I understand that some people want to dance; some want to sway; some want to sit or stand or whateverthehell; but when the only way you can enjoy a concert involves physically whacking into someone you don't know (I'm excepting mosh pits and the like, which I assume are voluntary as well), or encroaching on other people's space without their consent, or blocking aisles that really do need to be kept clear, then you're being a jerk. I don't even necessarily care about people standing the whole time (like they did the other night); I'd kind of prefer that people not do that, because I'm short and, depending on the venue and the location of my spot, there's a good chance I won't be able to see even if I stand, too. OTOH, I'm there for the music, which I can hear whether or not I can see it being made, so whatever on that score.

Yeah, I know, I sound all getoffmylawn, but, really, I enjoyed the concert a lot. And next Tuesday? Bruce!

Before that, I probably should get some sleep--but there's a hockey game tomorrow night, and, if they win tomorrow and/or Saturday (in Vancouver), then Monday night, too. I should do laundry one of these days, too, and there's still that work thing every damn day. And grocery shopping! I need that, too. And some tea. Maybe some snacky bits for the desk drawer. In between, I'm reading Neal Stephenson's Anathem, which I am enjoying tremendously. The review I'd read suggested it was boring or tedious or something, but I've been loving it, probably partly because I read the philosophers he's obliquely (or not so much) throwing out there, even it if was 20+ years ago. He's even brought a tear to my eye a couple of times, but mostly because of the way a few bits have resonated with my own life rather than because of some inherently tear-inducing aspect of the narrative. And as soon as I finish it, I'll head to the Wiki and see what I've missed, so I can go buy my own copy and read it again eventually.

ThreeFour Little Words

philosopher I became a philosophy major almost by accident. I had nearly finished the political science major, and had taken a bunch of philosophy courses, so I figured I may as well do the additional major. Here's the thing, though: much political science tries to emphasize the "science" part, insisting that people who do work in the field ought not ask about what we ought to do in a given case. At the same time, a lot of philosophy became either the study of long-dead Europeans or highly analytical parsing of . . . something. Thus, neither field in which I was interested enabled its practitioners to try to find ways to ask real questions about real people's real lives. My own experience is that in order to illuminate a dispute of some kind, it is important to understand the assumptions at the heart of it--not least because it may be the case that the disputants do not share important assumptions and thus will have great difficulty reaching agreement. It may also be the case that some parties to a debate are being inconsistent, or dishonest, or disingenuous in some way, and it's important to figure that out, too. (I'd say that other debates are more purely political, in the sense that it's a fight for land or power, say, despite whatever historical justifications the parties involved bring to bear.) The thing is, I think it is profoundly important for us to ask ourselves what we ought to do--in a particular situation; with regard to the world at large; in terms of how we interact with the world. Take, for example, the statement that Oliver Stone had Michael Douglas make in "Wall Street" (though I've never seen the movie, I've obviously seen and heard the line): "Greed is good." No. No it isn't. I can tell you what the argument is in favor of greed, and I can also argue against it. That may seem trivial, but it's not. Many people have a sneaking suspicion that that statement is wrong--or right--but they aren't sure whether greed really is good or bad, or why. Different authorities say different things; many people who seem to be arguing against it do not live a lifestyle that seems in accord with a non-greedy philosophy. And just how pure do we expect people to be? I think it is the job of the garden-variety philosopher such as myself to try to illuminate those questions. I had hoped to do it in a classroom, but it seems my real venue is destined to be the barroom and the lunchroom.

Wittgenstein When I first read Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, to be precise), in graduate school, I found it completely understandable--even easy, in many ways. Now, LW is supposed to be notoriously difficult to "get," and, indeed, many people in the class seemed to be struggling mightily with it. Thus, I wondered whether there was something going on that I was missing. At one point I stumbled across a paper I'd written in college (on Rousseau or Kant, IIRC), and, in rereading it, realized that I had anticipated my reading of LW, as it were, by a decade or so. That is, LW was easy for me to understand because I had already absorbed much of what he had to say, even if I didn't have his way of saying it available to me. There isn't a really easy way to sum up LW's Investigations, but, if I had to try, I'd say that his central point is that language and practice are intertwined--what we say and what we do are intertwined, in the way that mind and body are intertwined. Can we talk about them as separate things? Well, yeah. Does it make sense to do so? Not very often, especially not outside of a philosophy class. And if you start thinking about the deep and far-reaching implications of language and practice being intertwined, well, you'll come up with the Philosophical Investigations, or an Investigations-like approach to the world.

well-read I don't particularly think of myself as well-read, so that's an interesting thing for someone to associate with me. I've read a lot, which isn't the same thing, and, in the case of some of you, I've got an extra 20 years of reading. The variety of careers I've had contributes to the variety of things I've read, too. There are substantial gaps: very little Shakespeare; no Joyce or Melville; not much Dickens (because I really didn't like what I read a million years ago); nothing in other languages. But I do love to read. I don't remember not knowing how to do it, and there's not a whole lot I like better than falling in to a good story that's well-told. I don't read much non-fiction--almost none, really--in part because I like the escape of invented worlds.

Okay, the rest of the words will have to wait. I've been working like a dog, still, yet, though good things are happening. (A lot of shit is, too, but I can only do what I can do.) Apparently some shit went down today, but my boss was too peevish about it to tell me, so I'll have to get the scoop tomorrow.

Book Love

When I was in my early teens, I'd go to the local public library with my dad. I'd rummage around on the "new fiction" shelf, and the "adult fiction" (as opposed to the YA fiction, which I found tedious in multiple dimensions), and maybe look something up with the catalogue. I'd end up with a stack of books, and sitting in the car with that stack always gave me a little thrill. I'd read the first couple of pages of a few of the books, or look again at the description on the inside jacket flap, and I'd decide on an order in which I'd read the books, saving what i thought would be the best book for last.

It turns out that, 35 years later, I still do this.

I zipped down to the library late yesterday afternoon, expecting to pick up one book that was on hold for me and finding that two others had come in as well, and I stood on the train platform and started doing that surveying-my-haul thing.

While rummaging through the library's online catalogue, I stumbled across Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, about his hiking on the Appalachian Trail. I have had to be careful where I read the book, because he makes me laugh out loud--he is a very good writer, and it's extremely funny. (He could use a good editor or spellcheck program, though; I've found three or four egregious typos.) I highly recommend that particular book, and I'm definitely going to find some of his other stuff as well.

The other thing I found online recently is a bakery-cam. Yes, that's right; there is now a live webcam in the back of the bakery where I worked. It's more a stop-action cam--it updates every 10 seconds or so, rather than being a continuous feed--but still. I just peeked in and saw Phil and Bossman making rolls (it looks like they have a new roll divider; I'll have to ask him about that). I have to say that watching it the other day made my stomach clench a little bit: I look at it, and I am nothing but happy that I'm not doing that any more. In fact, being away from it for a year (and being able to watch it on my monitor) has made me realize just how much I hated working there by the time I left, for a combination of reasons.

I liked the people, and I even liked a number of aspects of the work, but I got up every morning and had to will myself to not think about how much I didn't want to be doing it. That kind of numbing isn't good for anyone. I've had office jobs where that was true, too--I think it's unavoidable, no matter what you do; that's why they call it "work" and why they have to pay you to do it--but I never felt anything like I did at the bakery. I think it was the combination of low pay and physically taxing work, along with the knowledge that I had absolutely no future either there or in that line of business generally, that made it so depressing.

And as for today's rant:

Burger King has now managed to completely piss me off with a second ad campaign. The current one has these two guys, one with a bag full of their new mini burgers. He tells his buddy to watch, and shows the bag to a woman, who proceeds to squeal idiotically over them, about how cute they are, etc., as if (a) the burgers are babies and (b) all women squeal uncontrollably at the sight of something small and cute. It is beyond annoying. Their previous campaign featured the announcer saying something like, "people are going to bed hungry tonight," or something like that, the solution being BK's new late hours. It was beyond offensive. Got news for you, Idiot Ad-Writer: many people are going to bed hungry because they can't afford food.

I know! Let's cut taxes! THAT will work, for sure! Or at least that's what the idiot Republicans will tell you. I can't even write about politics, because it will make my keyboard explode. (If I could lose weight by ranting, I'd have it made.)

Tools

The book that I didn't like much was "Girl Cook" by Hannah Mccouch; I thought I would like it, for obvious reasons, and there were bits--some of the cooking bits, in particular--that I liked well enough, but the whole thing was chicklit at its worst. I was musing about why I don't like that genre, and, no surprise here, it's because the stories always seem to be a version of "how I found my prince, even though I didn't think I would." Okay, that's not exactly a novel observation, I suppose, and occasionally there are stories that are well-written, so I don't mean to dismiss them all. (I'd also add that not everything that's written by a young(ish) woman falls into the category, despite the marketing that tells us otherwise.) But it got me thinking about how marriage, at least in its novelistic incarnations, has been transformed.

If you read Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope (or, for all I know, a bunch of other writers from more than a century ago), one of the central plotlines of many of the novels is the urgent need for young women without independent means to find a husband. In all of the stories I can think of, the gentlewomen of no or little means know that if they do not find husbands, they will be relegated to a very poor existence. The only work available (for a gentlewoman, anyway) is as a governess or a companion. In both cases, the women live with another family. In the former, she tutors and raises their children, and in the latter, she provides companionship and, in some cases ("The Eustace Diamonds," for example) she provides a veneer of respectability, because no woman, no matter how wealthy, can live alone, and, of course, household help does not count. Thus, poor women provide the veneer, in exchange for a roof over their heads and food to eat.

One of the other things that's interesting is that women who have an income (Austen's Emma; Lizzy Eustace; Glendora Palliser; an assortment of other Trollope characters) still face tremendous pressure to marry. They are on the market, and they must find someone to marry them before their sell-by dates, else they come to be regarded as old goods.

In all cases, no matter their finances, women are regarded as lucky if they marry for, or with, love and affection. This is particularly true for the poorer women, who literally cannot afford to marry only for love. In the case of wealthy women, the love of a good man makes them better people somehow (as in "Emma," particularly, although that novel has always creeped me out a little). Thus, it becomes advantageous for wealthy women to find wealthy husbands--not because either of them needs the other's money, but because the woman will never believe that he married her for her wealth. Take the Pallisers, for example: Glendora has huge wads of money, much more than Planty, but he has so much of his own that her money is irrelevant to him.

What does this have to do with chicklit?

Well, women now can earn their own way in the world, it turns out. Money confers advantages--that is always going to be the case, I imagine, until we live in a propertyless anarchist paradise--and I bet I was not the only person here who was informed that it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as with a poor one (probably not true for me, but that's a different story), but I have never depended on a man for my bread. I thought I was going to do that, at least until the bakery was a wild success, but we remember how that turned out. It's also true that the trajectory of my life has different significantly from that of the majority of women, and it's also true that I don't have children. (On the other hand, I'm not the only woman my age I know personally who has lived alone so much of her life, and another friend my age decided to have a child by herself and has done so. It may be that we all "attract" each other, precisely because of our deviation from the mainstream, but it may also be the case that there are simply more women out there who have, in one way or another, for some amount of time, made major life decisions without a partner being involved in the decision and have not been destituted by that. Yes, I know that it DOES impoverish many women.)

That is, despite the pay iniquities and the financial and other burdens that raising children add to the mix, it is more possible--though, of course, not easy--for a woman to get by without a man. (Of course this is all heteronormative, but it's an aspect of heteronormativity, not an aspect of being a woman, per se, about which I am writing.)

The point--and I do have one here--is that patriarchy, as a system, increasingly must make marriage attractive to women for reasons other than the monetary ones about which Trollope and Austen wrote so perceptively. This is made easier by heterosexual attraction--many women like having sex with men, and vice versa, and at least some of that attraction is every bit as inborn as the attraction that some women feel for women and some men feel for men. And, really, humans are, by and large, social creatures (that's a whole other Wittgensteinian argument that I'll leave unexplicated for now), so forging bonds of various sorts isn't exactly an unusual thing to do. But neither the sexual attraction nor the sociability necessitates marriage as we understand it.

I could also argue, and not just for the sake of argument, that there are all kinds of arrangements that would suit women better: imagine if we had adequate childcare available, or imagine if women were paid equitably. Those two things alone would put more cards in women's hands, and would enable them to tell men who were being assholes to fuck off. Adequate childcare--and the lack of penalties for caring for children--would also enable more men to be better parents, as well. It's hard to be an involved parent when you have to work 80 hours a week, and it's hard to forego that, if you know that foregoing it means you will not be regarded as eligible for any number of career paths that you might desire for your own reasons. That conundrum affects men and women differently in our current society, but it does affect both men and women. (I also know an unusual number of men who have been the primary caregiver for significant stints of their children's lives, and all of them had job or career situations that did not fit the current norm in some important way.)

In the chicklit genre, at least the bits of it that have crossed my path, the men end up fulfilling the same function they did with Trollope and Austen--providing an escape from a situation that was socially, and possibly financially, undesirable, while at the same time providing True Love. "Girl Cook" is a stellar example of it, in fact, because the woman in question is broke, wants to be a chef, leaves the job she has (for very good reasons), and Just Happens to meet a man who is smitten with her and Very Very Rich, plus he owns (wait for it) a food-oriented television network. In addition to her cooking abilities, she was raised in an environment of sufficient wealth & privilege that she can hang with the rich people and not embarrass him.

But the question that always occurs to me is why the women in these novels spend so much time worrying about finding the right man. They certainly do not need to do that in the same way that Austen's and Trollope's gentlewomen needed to do that. However, it does serve the patriarchy, as a system, for women to be worrying about this, so I do, indeed, blame the patriarchy for chicklit, and I have come to regard chicklit as a tool of the patriarchy.

ETA: I posted this, then meandered over to flea's place and found HER critique of chicklit, in terms of a specific book. Go read it.

Slackaliciousness

*Insert ritual apologies for not posting here.*

I've been enjoying some serious slackitude for the past week, starting with a fab dinner with Friend and the Brazen Tart last Monday, continuing through this past weekend, which included more fresh tomatos, and beer school, and some fabulous food with Friend, and weeding his back (brick) patio (for which I am suffering today, in the form of scraped hands and sore muscles). Work has even been interesting, in the sense that I am basically going to have to build an infrastructure, nearly single-handedly, which should be interesting. Not easy, but definitely interesting.

Last week's go-round with Chuck has been occupying my mind during idle moments, but I think I'm going to keep that to myself for the time being.

I have nothing to watch on television at the moment (except the two Netflix movies sitting somewhere, except I got them for the express purpose, and in one case ("Dogma") at the express request, of sharing with Friend), because the Tour de France is long over, as are the Olympics (which I only watched in a half-assed fashion), and I do not care about the conventions. I realize that is sacrilege, especially for a supposed politics junkie like myself, but I really do not care. I can read the speeches, and even find them on YouTube if need be, and meanwhile I don't care. There's no way in hell I'd ever vote for John-did-I-mention-I-was-a-POW-McCain, and, as you all know, Barack and I are not BFF, so I'm kinda meh about the whole thing. (Joe Biden?? Really? Joe voted-for-a-hideous-bankruptcy-bill Biden? Glad to see you're out there supporting us working folk, Barack!) On the other hand, I am so very, very tired of the pumathing. Seriously, can't you tell that it's mostly the republicans who are stirring this pot? Christ on a cracker; didn't you learn anything from watching Nixon and his evil minions these past 50 years? And the idiots in the media--the so-called-left-wing-media, as they say--run after it, frothing, so that every other goddamned story is about Dissension & Division in the Ranks. Yeah, right; as though every other primary season has been an exercise in crowning the new candidate with rose petals strewn at his feet and not a hint of disagreement, but the Evil! Wimmins! just won't cooperate! Because they're old! & Bitter! It makes my eyes hurt from the rolling.

Thus, I have not turned the television on, though I may do so for The Daily Show. I did go to the library tonight, to pick up the two books on hold for me, and of course I left with three others, because I am unable to exercise any self control whatsoever when I am in a library, even when I have to carry the books home with me without crushing my strawberries, and even when walking is a little difficult because I have sore spots from the weeding. I kind of miss wandering the stacks, and I have not reestablished my Library Notebook, but the put-it-on-hold-and-have-it-delivered-to-the-library-
that-is-mere-blocks-from-work thing rocks my world. (The Library Notebook is a thing my dad started a couple of decades ago: a little notebook in which he'd write down books or authors he wanted to read, so he could remember when he went to the library. I had one, too, for years, and found it invaluable, especially when I was reading the NYT book review regularly, but then I stopped and now I don't read the NYT much, so I'm using post-it notes on my bulletin board at work. Which isn't as good as the Library Notebook.)

And, finally, I am back to baking regularly again, sort of. I have my breakfast muffin recipe nearly at the stage where I won't change it any more. I did not make chocolate chip cookies again this weekend, but I did make a banana cream pie (with a chocolate crust) for Friend, and I'm contemplating how I'll change it next time. I'm also wondering how I managed to gain a pound a day over the last three days, given the relative healthiness of my eating habits. It's too depressing, especially because I have not managed to get to the gym for interval workouts in more than a month (though I have been walking a couple of days a week). This whole exercise question is continuing to vex me, but I'll spare you my whining about it tonight. It'll keep.

Discworld

Why did I not know about or read Terry Pratchett until now? I wandered over to the park at lunch with "Guards! Guards!" and sat on a bench and laughed out loud. The best thing? He's written a zillion books! It'd be like suddenly discovering Donald Westlake or Ed McBain--a veritable treasure trove.

Sing a Song of Small Things

Did you know that there are these big buildings scattered throughout the city--and a cool big building with gargoyles downtown--that have thousands of books in them, and you can go in and borrow the books and take them home for free? Really! And, as Brazen Tart noted at one point (and I am too lazy to go find the post where she mentioned this), you can put them on hold using teh intertubes, and they'll send them wherever you want to pick them up. Well, whichever library building, anyway. The one I went to today has pretty slim pickings on the shelves (which didn't stop me from finding a stack to bring home), and they appear to be severely understaffed, so there are boxes of on-hold books waiting to be unpacked, not to mention a constant line of people waiting to pick up and/or check out their books. There's another branch that's really close to work, and I think I'll do that one instead, because then I can just run over at some point during the day.

So I got home and noticed that my door wasn't deadbolted--and I knew I had locked it this morning. Turns out there had been workpeople here today, who saw fit to cut a hole in my living room wall in order to get at my bathtub pipes. Well, okay, except it would have been nice to know that was going to happen, you know? And, by the way, LOCK THE DOOR WHEN YOU LEAVE.

I was also feeling grateful for Starbucks while I walked home tonight. Yeah, I know, we're supposed to hate them, and yeah, they could have displaced fewer small indy coffee shops. But they've done two very important things (well, maybe three, if you count benefits for part-time workers, and four if you think they've had any impact on fair trade coffee). First, they made brewed decaffeinated coffee commonplace. Trust me when I tell you that 20 years ago, it wasn't particularly common, and 30 years ago you got hot water and a packet of Sanka. For those of us who are naturally caffeinated, this was a real boon. Some restaurants were doing it, too, but your neighborhood coffee joint? Not so much.

Second, though, they dramatically increased the number of coffee shops, and, therefore, the number of public spaces where people could and would go and just hang out. Yeah, bars do that, too, but alcohol isn't for everyone, and you don't really want to bring your kid to a bar, and, really, you don't always want a drink, especially not earlier in the day. Between television and air conditioning, people were spending increasing amounts of time in their own private spaces; suburbs increased that tendency, too. People used to sit on stoops and porches and such--especially in the summer, when it was hot.--but there's less of that around these days. (Apparently, before air conditioning, people even went to sleep in the city parks--in New York, for sure, and probably elsewhere as well.)

But coffee shops turned that around--the beverages are reasonably priced, more or less, many places have some food but don't require that you buy any of it, lots of places have Wifi these days, and people actually have a place to hang out. (Yes, I know, the preponderance of people there with laptops kind of means people are bringing their private space along with them; they're still in public.) There are at least four coffee shops within a short walk of my apartment, and only one is a Starbucks; there are so many between where I live and where I work that I'd be hard-pressed to count them. It's true that there's a university in the neighborhood, which dramatically increases the market, I imagine, but still. I like to go to one once in awhile--though not any time recently--to do some editing, or just to sit with a book and read. Anyway, I think Starbucks should get some credit for bringing back the coffee shop.

I could tell you stories about work, but I don't feel like it. It's frustrating in an assortment of ways--but I'll still get paid on Friday, and I still won't have to lug flour, and it'll still be more money than the bakery, so it's still all good. I'm trying very, very hard to make my boss happy, but I'm also getting frustrated at the constant stream of "emergencies." They're not all emergencies, mind you, it's just that one of the higher-ups has decided that s/he wants this thing NOW, or, gee, can we submit a proposal for this thing, even though it's due in four days? Or, today, why haven't we submitted a project report on this funding? Hmmm; could it be because I had no fucking clue we had to write one? Could it be that it was due when I was trying to bring in the millions of dollars of funding for the organization? Could it be that I've never seen the contract, despite asking for these things? Whatever. My biggest challenge is not telling people to fuck off (politely, I mean; i wouldn't actually tell them that, but I fear that I am not always at my best when someone barges into my office all concerned about a report that hasn't been submitted when (a) I had no idea it was due and (b) I've never seen the contract).

So back to the libraries: perhaps one of the things I'll do when I win the lottery is fund more staff at the branches near me or something. It's getting to the point that I'm going to have to win a lot more money than I thought. I long promised my old boss at the substance abuse treatment organization that I'd build him a treatment center in the city of his choosing, with the only caveat that he had to name it after my sister in some way. I'd love to endow a chair at my alma mater (undergrad; I would go out of my way to spit on my graduate institution). I definitely want to send some cash to Sarah Fisher; Danica gets all the press, and maybe she's even a better driver (I think that's difficult to say one way or the other), but Sarah was there first, and she's formed her own team, and that rocks.* And she isn't posing in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, either. Oh--and I'd hire a masseuse, or even a couple of them, so I could get at least one massage a day, and then I'd send them off to treat my friends, because who wouldn't like that?

And I'd do things like set up college funds for my nephews and CK, and I'd pay off my brother's house, and I'd spread some cash around to my friends, and I'd throw a great party (or even a series of parties, which would be fun and would be an excuse for people to come hang out and eat good food and maybe even dress up, insofar as my friends could be said to be dressing up). But I really don't know how much of my essential lifestyle I'd change.

I was thinking about that today, too, on the way home. One of the things I do is look at the buildings past which I'm walking and imagine whether I'd like to live in them. You may remember the bitterness-inducing walk of last summer, past the big lakeside mansions; my current walk doesn't cause that, in part because, even though some of the buildings are out of my current price range, they're mostly lovely (or truly crappy) old apartment buildings, or six-flats, or even new condo construction, but not like the downtown luxe-boxes. There's an occasional street or two of single-family homes thrown in, and they're probably quite valuable, but it's not that kind of neighborhood so much.

The thing is, what would I do with all that space? Seriously--it's just me. An extra bedroom--even two, if I'm feeling super-extra-extravagant--and a spacious kitchen, maybe an extra bathroom. (But then I'd have to buy all that damned furniture to fill the rooms, which would be kind of a pain.) A washer and dryer in my unit. Some new small appliances, to replace things that have worn out. But a lot of space? Then I'd have to clean it all, and I have enough trouble cleaning the space I have, fer chrissakes. K and I were laughing about this the other night--what pathetic rich people we'd make. Not that I wouldn't want to try it, mind you--but mostly because it would be so much fun to throw parties for my friends.

And, finally, I killed off my domain name yesterday. I'd never actually built a website, and I couldn't think of an alternate use for just bite me bakery dot com, so I figured it was time to quit paying the $5 a month. Oh well; so it goes.
______________________
*If Marco hadn't taken out his teammate at Indy--who then took out Sarah, possibly destroying her chances of racing in one of the other two races they were going to try to do this season--then she probably would have taken home more money from Indy.

Words

Friend left today for turkey-hunting; he'll return Sunday sometime, hopefully with a dead bird in his truck. Nevertheless, my social calendar seems to be filling. Tomorrow I'm meeting with Chuck so we can discuss the thing with which he'd like some assistance; Thursday I'm attending a baseball game, courtesy of Dayjob; Friday I'm meeting a friend from pastry school; Saturday I'm going to beer school again, albeit with J rather than with Friend. [Damn; Penguins just scored against the Flyers, making the score 3-1 with only 10 minutes or so left in the game.] Somewhere in there I must get a bunch of editing done--probably Saturday and Sunday during the day, I'm guessing. If i were sufficiently focused, I suppose i could do some in the morning before work, but I'm not betting the farm on that one.

Meanwhile, I must get to the library; I've been rereading for several months now, and I'm getting tired of that. I did buy one book, and it pissed me off--it's called "the Twentieth Wife" or something like that, and it's apparently based on a real person. It's set in 16th- and 17th-century India, which is the source of the problems. I love big juicy historical novels (or even quasi-historical), and I don't care all that much about every last historical detail being accurate, but I do prefer to read something that wouldn't be completely sporked if it were a movie. That book? Big buckets of fail, I suspect.

The author posits that the 20th wife and the emperor who married her had this incredible crush on each other for, oh, 15 or 20 years. I'm not seeing it. It does seem that, once he married her IRL she ran the place--and not just the harem--but I find it hard to believe that the whole thing was motivated by Romantic Love that lasted for 20 years until it was consummated. As far as i can tell, the Romantic Love of which our popular culture is so fond is a relatively recent invention, not least because (a) women were property in most areas of the world, or, at the very least, expendable, and (b) for the upper echelons, marriage was more about cementing political alliances than about genuine affection (although presumably genuine affection would occasionally break out). I'm guessing that such affection was much more common in the middle classes--the people about whom Jane Austen and, later, Anthony Trollope wrote--than in the ruling classes of any society. In the middle classes, despite the necessity for women without independent incomes to find a husband (and both Trollope and Austen, especially the former, detail multiple aspects of this), women had enough leeway such that the authors could posit Love and not sound ridiculous.

In short, the novel about which I'm bitching is basically a quasi-historical romance novel, with 21st-century fantasies about the meaning of love and romance imposed on the historical record. Feh, I say. It's also not particularly well-written, but it's hard for me to figure out how much is because I was so annoyed about the romantical stuff--whenever it broke out in the book, I'd start getting irritated. What's really irritating is that I suspect the true story is actually pretty interesting.

Boss asked me to help hire the new financial person, so I went through resumes with him, which was an interesting exercise. Two people had arrest/conviction records (the application asks about that). One person explained the situation briefly (DUI, I think), and then said s/he regarded it as a "moot" issue. Umm, okay, except that "moot" means "arguable," not "settled." (Yes, I know it can also mean "of no practical significance; academic," and that's how people tend to use it, but I would argue that neither definition applied in this case.) Another person had a conviction for a physical assault of some kind (I'm being intentionally vague about the actual conviction) and also included descriptions of himself that were . . . unintentionally amusing.

I realize that most of the people who stop in here are word geeks like me, but boy howdy, people CANNOT write any more! Seriously; the amount of WTF in resumes is truly mindblowing. Oddly enough, the other thing this exercise does is confirm my lack of faith in most human resources people. Seriously: I know what my resume looks like, I know what my experience is, and, while I cannot walk on water, while I have not, for example, had P&L experience, I should have been getting WAY more responses to my job applications than I did. The fact that I didn't leads me to believe that (a) HR people are none too bright and can't tell a good applicant from a bad one, or (b) there were ALWAYS internal people and the posting was merely for show (always a chance of that, I suppose), which isn't a reflection on HR people. The calls I did get typically came through someone who wasn't an HR person. (At the current place, it looks like every resume gets sent electronically to the hiring person, who then decides which ones to call; the HR people also do the reference-checking, but that's at a later stage.)

So: what fiction have you been reading and loving?

Brain Pan Alley

My brain hurts.

Why? Because I am copyediting what may well be the worst book of all time. Okay, maybe it's not as bad as John Irving, or Tom Clancy, or Robert Ludlum, but I don't have to read their books. Granted, on some level I suppose I don't "have to" read this, either; and at least I'm getting paid to read it. It's truly heinous, however. I won't provide you with any details, but the extent of its suckitude is truly impressive.

On the other hand, I went to a yoga class yesterday AND I worked out today. Plus, the man-who-would-be-my-boss called me and asked me for another reference, which I happily provided. (I really don't like providing references up front, but it was an online form, so I provided one; they need two, which is fine. I gave my other old boss a copy of the job description and a heads-up, so he'll be prepared.) There's no telling what's going to happen--obviously they're still interested, but we all know how that can fall apart. I have allowed myself to think about what a good start date would be (given the editing work that came to me last week) and what I'll do with my "extra" money, i.e., the dollars over and above what I budget for living expenses. Also, if I get benefits, I'd have that $325/month I'm now paying for health insurance as well. I'm boring, though; I've already decided to throw more at the student loan and some into savings.

Tonight's dinner was red lentil stew with caramelized onions, with some brown and wild rice I made yesterday. I haven't made it before, but I did want to get rid of the lentils; it's pretty good, even though the lentils had to be two years old and maybe older. Of course I modified the recipe--more ginger, more garlic, more cayenne; lime instead of lemon, because I didn't have any lemon; and some honey, to take the bitter edge off of it--and I had one of those weights and measures issues. (Yeah, I know; I'm sure you have them all the time.) The recipe said two cups of lentils, about a pound. Okay, fine. I weigh the lentils, and it's a pound almost exactly. Great. But as I'm putting them in the broth, I'm thinking, that looks like more than two cups, and, indeed, it was--three cups, as a matter of fact. So am I going to need more liquid? Only a little, it turned out, but it reminded me again how irritated I get reading American cookbooks and their recipes in measures rather than weights.

I would like to mention in passing, apropos of nothing, that tomorrow the temperature is supposed to drop from 44 to 2 below. (If it went up that much tomorrow, instead of down, it'd be 90.) Friend and I will likely change our Tuesday night plans to take that into account.

Meanwhile, Chuck called this evening, wanting to know if I'd like to have dinner with him Thursday. I said okay, and we chatted awhile, but I'm not entirely sure what precipitated this. I suspect that he's kind of lonely--he's been working an extra job, and his girlfriend dumped him (she decided, after more than a year, that she doesn't want to date someone with kids; good luck with that, honey), and I do know him pretty well. It makes me a little nervous, I think, but we'll see how it goes. I am willing to be friends with him, up to a point, so long as he understands that that is the limit of our interaction, but I have to admit that I'm more comfortable when I'm the one doing the asking. I guess we're both kind of feeling our way here.

Every now and then I run across something I wrote to him; a bunch of stuff is saved on the computer, whether or not I actually sent it, and a few things are from several years ago rather than from two years ago. It's always wrenching to read that stuff and remember the hellish confusion that was my life. I keep the writings around, though, in part to remind myself of what it felt like then. It's one thing to tell people about it now: I have a narrative about it, and I believe I've got some understanding around various aspects of it, and it fits more or less neatly into the narrative space I assign to it (which depends, in part, on the audience, and whether he or she knew Chuck, and so on). But the things I wrote then, before I knew what would happen, well, it's useful to me, to remind me of my own feelings at the time, to remind me of what I was getting from him at the time, and to remind me that I had no idea what was going to happen.

Well, we'll see. I don't know that I want to see a lot of him, because I think he would not handle that well, but I'm willing to take a couple of baby steps and see how he deals with it.

Seasonal Affect

This time of year is always so very difficult--or, at least, it always has been, for me, and working in a bakery basically acts as a multiplier. Beginning with Halloween--which is actually a huge bakery day, believe it or not--it's this crescendo, this marathon, this ever-increasing intensity that ends at Christmas. And the holidays themselves; oy. I have, on occasion, been able to carve out some of the spirit of whatever the holiday is, but it's so difficult. I mean, Christmas decorations already! Seriously; in the bakery, but elsewhere as well. That rushing-of-the-season merely adds to the anxiety.

For one thing, it just wears out. The Holidays has a relatively short shelf life, at least in people's spirits, and taking it out of its wrappings this early means that it has gone a little sour by the time the actual date, whatever it is, rolls around. I realize that it's an economic thing, in part, having to do with retail sales, and how crappy the economy is, and what retailers can count as sales, etc., but that makes it worse for those of us who aren't convinced that either capitalism or the (so-called) free market are really paths to happiness.

For another thing, the extra time devoted to it all just makes everyone kind of sick. It becomes this guilt-laden, sugar-laden, crap-you-don't-need-or-want-laden two-month exercise in overload. I do like the winter solstice, mind you; I sometimes think I could be a pagan or wiccan or whatever branch seemed the most entertaining. Those ways of thinking and measuring keep us grounded--quite literally, sometimes--in the world. So much of our lives--central heating and air conditioning; vehicles of various sorts; artificial light--literally and figuratively insulate us from the world. Mind you, I like a lot of that insulation; a couple of years ago, maybe in the fall of 2005, we took Chuck's son to a scouting thing that was basically a pioneer village with some actual pioneer-era buildings around, and the little house made me cold to think of living there. Those people were cold from October to May, every year. And they probably stank, and they didn't have indoor plumbing, and I'd guess there were various bodily parasites around as well. Ew.

And sometimes I'd like a little more insulation: I am getting quite tired of standing on a train platform as an icy damp wind cuts through every layer of clothing I'm wearing. I am not going to buy a vehicle, but I will definitely wish for teletransportation devices.

The point is, we insulate ourselves from everything. This is a time of year when we want to hibernate, to sleep, to curl up with a friend or a blanket or a pet (or all three, if we're lucky). Instead, we find ourselves running around to events and parties and work and whatever, and those of us in industries that are affected by the holidays--like bakeries, but I'm sure also like restaurants and party locations--just try to hold on, grimly slogging through another day or week of it all.

Just to make my personal experience more entertaining, Bossman is leaving town tomorrow morning, not returning until Sunday. He is NOT happy to be making this trip, so far as I can tell. Apparently, his kids don't want to come home for Thanksgiving, because it's a lot of travel for a short weekend, so the Wife (I'm guessing) has decided they'll go to the kids (one's still at home, one's in California, one's in Texas). Which, okay, but has she realized that her husband owns a bakery, and this is one of his busiest weeks all fucking year? Then again, perhaps today's conversation will provide you with some enlightenment. Bossman started making our stollen yesterday (and it seriously rocks). Today it was being buttered and rolled in sugar, and then his daughter, who's been working there a couple days a week, was wrapping them and tying them up with a ribbon--and the ribbon is a new one he purchased this year, with the bakery's name and logo on it; the ribbon is quite cool. So Wife came through and he said something about the stollen, and she said, I do not care about that, why are you even telling me about it? (In my head I answered: Because it puts food on your table and clothes on your back? Because it's what your husband loves to do?) He said, yeah, but have you seen the ribbon? And she said, the ribbon I care about. Hey, on one hand, whatever makes you happy, you know? But it also kind of blew me away.

On the other hand, I have people around me who make me smile, who remind me to be truly present, who have more faith in me than I have in myself. I have coworkers who make me laugh, and who have taught me just how much can be communicated even when we're not fluent in the same language. And--at least for another few weeks--I make a damned good croissant. They've been truly beautiful lately--and I make sure to give Phil a bunch of the credit. He's been baking them, at least the ones that go in the store, and he knows I like them a little darker than the night guys bake them, so he's been doing that, and they're fucking beautiful. Today we were selling them all two-for-one, because one of our customers hasn't paid the bills and we didn't send them their order--and they buy about two-thirds of our wholesale croissants, so there were a LOT to be sold. The two-for-one thing worked, though; people know a deal when they see one. The next few days will be difficult--work work work at the bakery, then edit like a madwoman on Sunday and on Monday morning, then job interview Monday afternoon (reinterview, actually; Round 2 with the person from last week). Deep breath, maybe, on Thanksgiving, but more likely more editing, along with dinner with friends in the evening. And so on.

And then there's Anthony Trollope. Here's one line from Barchester Towers:

He is somewhat below middle height, being about five feet four, but he makes up for the inches which he wants byt the dignity with which he carries those which he has.

How can writing like that not improve your day? Seriously: if you're looking for an escape from the season, go find a copy of "The Warden," and read that, and then read "Barchester Towers."