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.

Yeah--One of THOSE Weeks

Okay, so, the work crap continues. I have two major major major deadlines next week, including the basic grant that funds our center, and I have been able to do almost no work on it (no, seriously, I didn't even get to read the RFP until a week ago or so, even though I've had it for a month). Why? Because it's whack-a-mole month. Every time I turn around someone or some agency needs something and it absolutely cannot possibly wait. The person who was being a pain at work is being an even bigger pain, and I am so unbelievably tired of the time-and-energy suck that this person is. We have a meeting tomorrow a.m., called by this person--when what I should be doing is writing the fucking proposal, already--and I really want no part of it.

Sunday morning I got an email from Chuck: his 81-year-old mom died Sunday morning (on CK's birthday, no less). Apparently she had walked into the hospital a week ago Sunday, seemed to be getting better, then took a bad turn Wednesday. All the choices involved massive, risky intervention, and the best possible (and not terribly likely) outcome involved dialysis and a nursing home for the rest of her life, along with other undesirable aspects, and she opted out of that. Chuck and his sister called her friends and relatives, and everyone got to come and say goodbye to her over the next two days, and she slipped into death Sunday morning with her kids by her bed.

Chuck called me Monday to tell me about the services--a funeral mass in the city in which she lived, but a smaller one here, too, at the cemetery--and told me I was not obligated but was welcome to come. (He told me the details in the previous paragraph as part of that call, too.) Of course I decided to see if there was any way I could make it to the thing here, and, in fact, I could, so I went--fortuitously with a ride from a coworker who lives near there and who had to be off this morning for a meeting at her son's school. She dropped me off and then came back and picked me up, which was a huge, huge help.

When I got there, one of the first people I saw was Chuck's sister, who gave me a big, long hug--she told me, several times, that she was so glad I'd come. And, really, so was I. I liked their mom a lot, and I got along well with her, and I'm glad her death was relatively painless, relatively quick, and in such a manner that enabled her to say goodbye to the people who loved her (and vice versa). Chuck was a bit more restrained, but I realized, much later, that one of the people there (it was a small crowd, maybe 25 people, and nearly all family) was, I think, his current girlfriend. He and I did have an amusing conversation about the fact that the picture on the casket was taken at our wedding (and, apparently, they buried her in the suit she wore, too)--it was a great picture of her, so I'm glad.

The other entertaining moment was when Sis introduced me to a long-time friend of hers, someone about whom I'd been hearing for 10 years but whom I'd never actually met. Sis said, oh, this is my friend Mary, and then turned to me and said this is Narya who is, um, and I said "Chuck's third ex-wife." Which was kind of amusing, and to the point, but also completely explanatory. (Another side note: later, the friend said, I've heard so much about you, I expected you to be very tall. Which made me laugh, because I've realized that i act as though I am much taller than I really am.) I said to Sis afterwards, well, if you're ever in the city, you should come by, we could have dinner, and she jumped all over that, yes she'd like that, etc. etc., which was nice. And Sis's husband's sister, whom I'd met multiple times over the years, was friendly, too, and said in passing that she'd missed seeing me.

Ex-wife number two--CK's mother--came over and we air-kissed (which was fine), but I kind of stayed away from Chuck's cousins. I didn't quite know what to say or not say, so I just stayed the hell out of the way and tried not to be intrusive. I didn't go to the luncheon afterwards--I hadn't planned on it, and I had to get to work, but once I realized the new girlfriend was going to be there, I wouldn't have gone anyway. No need to make Chuck more uncomfortable on an occasion like this. I was just so glad that he invited me to come (and, simultaneously, didn't put pressure on me to come, because he knows that getting to a cemetery in the burbs isn't exactly an easy feat for someone w/o a vehicle) and that I was able to go. She was a good person, and a kind person, and, personally, I always appreciated it that her devout Catholicism was a way for her to be a force for good in the world rather than a dogma that she used to divide people. She looked for the good in people, and didn't care if it came with a communion wafer in hand.

Meanwhile, today was the 26th anniversary of my sister's death, so I had that going for me, too.

I've just been so stressed out lately. Work is fraying me, because it's all deadline-related and the federal government is not interested in whatever excuses I may have. Simply not interested. And I had an editing job to finish over the weekend, too, so Friend and I ended up bailing on Pearl Jam (much as I wanted to go) AND bailing on Elvis Costello last night--a concert I had looked forward to all summer, actually. We didn't have tickets for either one, so we weren't out the money (and we did manage to see Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal on Friday, which was fabulous), but still, bummer.

Tomorrow I'm going to work as long a day as I can possibly stand, and maybe get some stuff out of the way. I've already decided that I am not going to let the morning meeting get to me. My boss and coworker and I hashed it all out for 2+ hours this afternoon, and I think we reached a place where we're on the same page, and I instructed coworker that we need to let Boss take the lead tomorrow. So, we'll see what happens; I have too much real work to do to allow myself to get sidetracked into pointless bullshit.

All About Me(me) x 5

Thanks to Jonquil (whom you really should be reading if you're not already): Comment to this post and, if requested, I will give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your blog and elaborate on the subjects given. Here are the five that Jonquil provided to me:

Baking My experience with this enterprise has led me to begin to believe that I really have to go back to school every now and again, in order to master some new body of knowledge. Of course, one could argue, quite easily, that I have not "mastered" baking in any serious, Brazen-Tart-Top-Chef sense of that word, and, if I'm going to be doing that going-back-to-school thing, I really must either win the lottery or find cheaper ways of going back to school. Caveats aside, I find that there is, in fact, a subtle but real sense that I'm Much Better at this than I used to be. I was always a pretty good baker--I wouldn't have come up with the idea to start a bakery if I hadn't had some notion that I already had a frame on which to hang subsequent knowledge--but I can do more, and do it better, than I used to be able to do, and I like that. The chefs in school said that they would expose us to everything, and, indeed, they did. The bakery enabled me to use quite a bit of it, at one point or another, which embedded it even more deeply. This doesn't prevent me from forgetting useful bits (today, while making a batch of nougat, I'm looking at the pan of sugar, water, honey and corn syrup and thinking, "Hmm, I wonder if that's going to boil over?" Answer: Yes; all over the stove), especially because, now that I'm back in Officeworld, I don't use the bits every day. Flip side, though, I enjoy using them a lot more.

Buddhism Sometimes I think of myself as the accidental buddhist. I've never studied it or practiced it, in the sense of belonging to a sangha; I (mostly) haven't read the texts (though at two different points in my life I had a lover who studies one or another of the schools of buddhist thought, and one of them read Sanskrit, IIRC); I don't meditate or even practice yoga at this point; and i suspect my grasp of some of the concepts is more on the order of misconstrued lyrics than anything else. I also don't find myself in search of a religion or in search of meaning in my life. What I find useful about buddhism is that it focuses on finding truth (and provides tools for doing so); it doesn't have any deities; and it advocates compassion at all times. I find the distinctions between engagement and attachment interesting (though I have no clue whether I think about this in "buddhist" ways). I find it interesting that enlightenment is (at least theoretically) available to all, not through the grace of a deity or other intercessor, but through one's own actions, and that each being is responsible for his or her own actions. I have to add that my own attempt to practice compassion as Chuck and I were splitting up ended up being one of the best things I have ever done.

Homekeeping One of win-the-lottery fantasies has to do with buying or building a home that is a model in some way, or a home that has a masonry bread oven in the back yard, or a home that runs on solar energy, or . . . something. Even though I have lived in a major city for nearly 30 years, I have this fantasy of living someplace that is not-city (and definitely not suburbs; I cannot do suburbs, at all). What the fantasy is about, i think, has as much to do with the various arts and sciences necessary to keeping a home, especially the arts and sciences centered around the kitchen and the hearth and the sewing space (and the writing space and the art studio, as long as we've won the lottery here). I think that's actually the fundamental truth that comes out of a Marxist analysis, that we most of us, perhaps all of us, need and want to be able to do multiple things. (This notion is explored to interesting effect in both Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed" (and some other work) and Sheri Tepper's "The Gate to Women's Country," in both of which the residents of the imagined societies are expected to learn and practice multiple arts, crafts, sciences, etc. Much of our capitalist society doesn't think in terms of home "keeping": instead, we're expected to use, dispose of, buy new, in order to create a market. That seems so fundamentally wrong to me, and so at odds with homekeeping.

Friendship I have spent much of the last 30 years living by myself. Since 1981, Chuck and I lived together for about 5 years, and I had a roommate for less than a year in 1983 or so, but I have otherwise lived alone. Given that my family is about a thousand miles away, this has meant that I've built multiple networks of friends over the years, and I love them all. Some fade in and out of my life; some were friends in a specific time and place; some are closer to me than some of my family; some are more casual; and, thanks to modern technology, some I've never seen or met in person. Doesn't matter. We're all a part of these great webs of life and death. Sometimes our intimate (read: marital and familial) relationships and the way our society puts those at the center of everything makes friendship seem like an afterthought, but it isn't. I don't feel as though I have friendships "instead of" marital or familial relationships, because I have or have had all of those; I feel as though the fact that marital/familial relationships haven't occupied the center of my vision and my living space has enabled me to see how friendship is the thing that makes the other relationships possible in some important ways.

Starting over again Oy. Sometimes I feel as though I've lived several lifetimes in this particular lifetime. What I mostly feel is thankful that I have some ability to be resilient, and thankful I have the friends and family who can help me and support me through difficult times. As y'all know, I can also feel sad or angry or self-pitying, sometimes even for stretches of time. But what else can you do except . . . do the next thing? Well, yes, you can blog about it, ad nauseam, but sooner or later you must get the fuck ON with it. I could easily allow myself to be consumed with sorrow & regret, and some days/times that happens; I wish I could have been a professor, or owned a bakery, or been a programmer; some days I even wish I could have had a kid. it's not that my life is somehow incomplete without those things--the Brazen Tart once pointed out, correctly, that one cannot do everything. It's that I would really have liked to do those things (or the first two, for sure, anyway), and I think I might have been good at them, and I wish i could have found out whether I would have been, and I feel like I would have been able to offer more to people if I had been able to do those things (i.e., it's not a purely selfish wish to have done them). Instead, I slog along, writing reports and proposals that maybe four other people will ever read, and it feels like a waste. But it is what it is. And I still get a comma in every paycheck and I still don't have to lug 50-pound sacks of flour up a flight of stairs, so, hey, it could be a lot worse.

And another thing . . .

Orange's comment on the last post reminds me of another aspect of the whole thing that annoys the fuck out of me: I do not believe that all of the people who align themselves with the godbag asshats actually share the beliefs of the GAs. I believe that people like ol' Ann align themselves for reasons that are disingenuous at best, and cynical exploitation at worst. I also believe the leaders, or many of them, cannot possibly believe the things they promulgate. (Fred over at Slacktivist has written a number of posts about this, but I am too lazy to go find them in his archives.) I think that many of the people who DO believe are ignorant--sometimes willfully so, but often because they have little or no exposure to alternatives, and they are frightened of alternatives, and the people who preach to them, like the GAs and their fellow travelers, exploit and encourage those fears.

I've been slammed at work, still, which is wearing me out. Three major things are due in the next three and a half weeks (a proposal; a yearly report to the federal government, which has multiple aspects; a financial report for a federal grant) and several other things are due at about the same time, plus a coworker is out of town for three weeks, so I'm doing some of her shit, too. Between now and mid March, forget about it. But, hey, I can only do what I can do, and there are limits to what I'm willing to sacrifice. I've been working full force since I was hired--and this week is my one-year anniversary.

Anyway. I'm fried tonight, too, so I got nothin' else.

Sleepytime

I think I matched a personal best yesterday, for amount of time spent doing absolutely nothing. Saturday featured some running around--to get something framed, to pick up a few items at Trader Joe's, and to make tiramisu as a months-late birthday cake for Friend. Friend then fetched me and we hied back to his place to cook dinner (mahi mahi with lime butter; wild and brown rice; and a mix of slow-roasted tomatos, onions, black beans, and mango) and admire his "new" dining room. The room has been there all along, but it has housed computers and such for several years; he has been on a roll lately, rearranging stuff at his house, so he was very pleased to be able to have dinner in the dining room.

Yesterday, however, I sat on the couch in the sunny front room, with a fire in the fireplace and a cat on my lap. I had a book next to me, but I didn't exactly read a lot of it; I did spend a fair amount of time kind of staring into space, or into the fire. Friend continued to move crap around as part of his grand rearranging plan, and occasionally came in to put another log on the fire. I eventually got off my ass to take a shower, and, later, to start cooking dinner (more rice; cauliflower that was steamed and then baked in a cheddar sauce that curdled on me but still tasted good; cabbage that was steamed and then sauteed with onions in a little butter, with black pepper; chicken that marinated all day in lemon and ginger and was then basically poached/pan-fried in the marinade). Friend came in at the last minute to do the chicken, as the rest of the stuff was the time-consuming bit, and I did all that fussing so he could continue his operations. We ate in the dining room again, and then retired to sit in front of the fire for awhile. It was every bit as pleasant as it sounds, and I think he was pleased to be able to get more stuff done..

Today I wandered through Whole Paycheck on my way home, and once again bought more than I should have tried to carry (look! pistachios and cherries! I can make nougat . . . and almond paste--I could have used some of that the other day . . . and that fig and almond thing I like . . . Ginger-O's are on sale; must stock up). I managed to shlep it all home, and even did my laundry, which was the real task for the day. And I cut up the pineapple and the grapefruit and threw in the rest of the frozen cherries and blueberries, so I have fruit salad for the week. (I know; doesn't quite measure up to Brazen Tart's adventures in Kauai, does it . . .)

The tiramisu was tasty enough, though not exactly what I had in mind. First, I had decided to make a dacquoise instead of using ladyfingers, which worked reasonably well except it didn't rise enough and the almond flour wasn't fine enough (I suspect those two things are related). I also made a chocolate dacquoise, merely by dumping in some cocoa powder. I combined mascarpone with some "light" cream cheese and some heavy cream, in an effort to make it a teensy bit less heavy, and that worked okay, and I layered fruit in there, too (frozen raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries), to help cut the sweetness. I put a layer of regular dacquoise on the bottom, soaked it with coffee, smeared some of the cream/cheese mixture, and put on some berries; added the chocolate layer, did the same; and added the top layer of regular dacquoise. I had run out of the cheese mix, so I whipped the rest of my heavy cream and used that as a top layer. Remember those chocolate hazelnut cookies? I had crumbs from them in a bag and used them as a sprinkle on top instead of cocoa powder. I think for the next round I'll make ladyfingers or a spongier sponge cake instead of dacquoise, or possibly a combination.

Meanwhile, thanks to my responding to a stupid poll last week (on purpose, to fight the oh-we-christians-are-so-persecuted crowd), I've ended up on the email lists of the godbag asshats from the AFA and affiliated organizations. There's a part of me that wants to stay on the lists, just so I can keep track of their slimy shit, but I just cannot bear it. What a bunch of assholes. And, of course, what with the long weekend and such, I keep getting email, despite having sent multiple unsubscribe notices. If I'm still getting their shit by Wednesday, there will be problems.

I cannot abide them. They keep wanting to stick their noses into everyone else's underpants, for reasons that make no sense to me. Their views on homosexuality and their opposition to equal rights are offensive. More to the point of the shit they keep sending, they have this notion that somehow christians are being "silenced" and "persecuted." That is such a distortion of reality that it's difficult to take seriously. Are churches being burned? Are christians being sent to concentration camps? Are they being denied the right to vote? Are they forbidden to pray? Of course not; quite the opposite. Or, let's look at it this way: when is the last time the populace of the United States elected as their president someone who isn't at least an avowed christian? How many members of Congress aren't christian? (I suppose their answer to that would depend on whether they count catholics and mormons.) Then explain to me how one can even claim persecution with a straight fucking face.

Okay; that's as much energy as I can muster for the day. (It's a sorry state of affairs when I only have the energy to rant for two paragraphs . . . )

Why was Aretha wearing that hat?

Because she IS Aretha, and, yes, she can wear any damn hat she wants. I also appreciated the subtext of shout-out to Marion Anderson.

As I noted elsewhere in Blogistan, I was watching Tuesday's ceremony in our conference room, on ABC, because that's the channel our TV-plus-rabbit-ears received the best. (We do not have cable at work, apparently, so we rigged this up so people could watch.) One of the blatherers commentators said, on seeing Nancy Pelosi and Senator Feinstein and the President-elect come on to the porch, that we would not have seen that tableau a hundred years ago. I blurted, because I could not help myself, that we would not have seen that tableau FIFTY years ago. There was general agreement about what I said, but the fact that the commentator was so ahistorical still kind of amazes me. Seriously: how can you claim to be a journalist and say something that fucking stupid?

Tuesday was also my first exposure to Rick Warren, and what a tool. At least I got a shout-out in Obama's speech. Incidentally, w/r/t the former, a number of my non-atheist friends were completely offended by Warren's recitation of the so-called lord's prayer (including my boss the ex-priest). It took me awhile to figure that one out, because, on some level, to me a prayer is a prayer is a prayer, and I find pretty much all public prayer offensive, particularly at sporting events and official government functions. (If you want to pray at any time, please feel free--I will even, you may remember, make space for said activity at my own (possibly) damned dinner table; but invocations of a deity at sporting and government assemblies are an enforced religious observance that annoys the fuck out of me.) However, I have learned that that particular prayer is profoundly christian, and, thus, at least potentially offensive to anyone who isn't christian but is religious in some way. Apparently there's a dispute within christianity, as well, as to whether one is supposed to have one's debts or one's trespasses forgiven; ah, sectarian disputes.

I believe we have "godless communism" to blame for much of this. I know you can find piety and references to deities all throughout U.S. history, but the upheavals of the beginning of the last century ratcheted everything up a notch. Communism, socialism, and anarchism, and, with all of them, atheism: many Powers regarded them as pure evil, and anything that could be associated with any of them, and anyone who didn't sufficiently despise all of those isms and anything associated with them, could be denounced freely. Same with labor unions, in part because the early labor movements were related, philosophically and sometimes politically, with the isms; all of them had as their goal a kind of liberation and justice for the common person.

Marx's historical analyses may well have been mistaken--that is, though the workers of the world may well unite at some point, I don't foresee that OR the withering of the state occurring any time soon. In addition, the attempts to create marxist-influenced society in eastern Europe/Russia and China were wrong in practice and possibly in theory as well (I do not claim to be any kind of expert on marxism/leninism). Nevertheless, Marx's analyses of capitalism and the oppression of the workers that results from it have much to recommend them. Some teacher along the way pointed out that Smith's and Marx's analyses of industrialism weren't all that different; rather, Smith is less disturbed by the oppression of the working classes that is a necessary facet of capitalism. If that's true, it is thus hardly surprising that the monied powers that be regarded any of the spawn of Marx's analyses as a danger. (Stalin and his evil ilk basically played into the hands of the anti-communist and anti-socialist forces by providing reasons for condemnation--reasons that had nothing to do with the message of liberation and justice that is at the heart of the marxist analysis. Whatever else Stalin was about, he was not about justice or liberation.)

On a completely unrelated note, it's been kind of strange to see Caroline Kennedy in the news of late. She's very close in age to me, and she was most frequently in photographs in women's magazines, either the ones my mom got or the ones I was reading for my dissertation, in the 1970s or so, i.e., when she was quite a bit younger than she is now. The current photographs show a middle-aged woman, which is a very striking reminder that that's what I, too, look like these days (and, let's face it, I don't have a stylist of any kind). Somehow, in my head, I'm still somewhere around 35. I'm trying to figure out how to revise that.

Some of it I know has changed: the other two women that my boss manages are in their mid-to-late 30s, and they're just in a different place than my boss and I are. I can definitely enter the rant zone, I can definitely go off on a tear, but the past five years seem to have made a major change in me. I don't feel as though I've finally reached some end spot, but I also sense that I don't get wrapped around the axle in quite the same way any more. I can't explain it very well, especially because most of you either don't know me IRL or haven't known me all that long, and I know that even to people who know me well IRL it may not be obvious, because, really, I am still capable of ranting like nobody's business.

But it just doesn't matter.

I guess part of it is that I've stopped believing that I'm ever going to do anything that matters or lasts, and I've stopped believing that I'm going to get to do any of the things I've dreamed of doing. Every one of my plans has, after a certain amount of effort and expense and time on my part, gone to shit. I'm doing basically the same work I was doing in 1986 when I left the east coast for graduate school in the city in which I still live. Yes, I have done some fun things--and paid dearly for them, in several senses of "paid," as well as met some wonderful people--so I don't want to sound too poor-pitiful-me, because that's not where I'm going with this. I've also foregone a number of things that might also have been fun--having kids, for example, which was something that I wanted to do only if I had (a) a partner (b) who also wanted to have kids. Having a kid by myself while I was in grad school, for example, or immediately afterwards, when I was deeply in debt and unemployed, seemed like a very bad idea.

So, given that, what am I going to do? Sit around and feel depressed and sorry for myself because I'm a loser? Yeah, okay, whatever; that doesn't sound like very much fun to me, so, no, thanks, I'll skip that. I've experienced depression several times in my life, and I have to say that I found it profoundly boring. I can expound on that if anyone cares, but I really did find it boring.

Okay, so no job I really want; no well-paid sinecure; no kids; no meaningful and fun work (though I do like my coworkers and my current job). I can either be happy with what I have--which is nice, relatively speaking--or I can be perpetually dissatisfied and depressed and crabby. Eh; the latter sounds like too much work. I'd still like to write a book, and I'd still like to start doing needlepoint again, but I don't know whether I'll manage either of those things. I'd like to live in a nicer space at some point, but the thought of moving makes me cringe, and I really don't want to pay all that much more for an apartment.

Whatever. I've resigned myself to being a loser. As noted, it just doesn't matter, so this doesn't disturb me nearly as much as it might have when I was younger.

One final note before bed: I constantly threaten my boss that he's going to be in trouble when I win the lottery. When things get really crazy, I inform him that I'm going to drain my savings account to play. Today he informed me that I'm never going to win, that he has called in all karmic debts to ensure that it doesn't happen. Which cracks me up--the thought that he's praying that I NOT win just amuses me to no end (though I don't know that he prays or even believes in a deity, per se, any longer).

Of Magic and Polar Bears

Okay, the Hairbozo on WNTW is cutting off all of someone's hair again. What a fucking surprise. She had hair nearly all the way down her back, and it was definitely in need of a good trim, but Mr. Whackhappy chopped it all off, to above her shoulders, and gave her bangs. What he basically does is create the need for constant hair fussing. Bangs need to be trimmed, or you're constantly pinning them back awkwardly, hacking at them yourself, or just moving the outgrown bits out of your face. (If your hair is wavy, you may even get the Bozo effect.) I thought she had gorgeous long hair, and a good trim and some styling advice--how to pin it up; how to do some interesting braiding--would've been preferable, not least because I don't much like the short haircut; it makes her look like every other person whose hair he styles.

Yes, I know, I need to get out more, perhaps.

Not this weekend, though. I'm going to tie myself to the computer and edit away, plus do some chores. And play some solitaire.

I particularly like Forty Thieves, and I have a version of the game that enables me to go back, to the beginning of a particular game or just a series of moves, and replay, as many times as I want. Apparently (because i am so lame I looked it up), a winning percentage of about 10% is common, with "good" players able to win upwards of 20%. My winning percentage is around 28% (okay, 27.6%). I tell you this not to prove my lameosity, of which you should be well-convinced by now. I've been playing it regularly (okay, sometimes obsessively) for maybe four or five years, and I will often replay a given hand multiple times. Other hands I win or bail on pretty quickly. I have a few basic principles--when to move cards and when to let them be; what cards to use to fill gaps in the board--but I don't have a lot of rules about using them and I don't count cards. (I try to keep track of deuces and threes and fours, which is 24 cards, but I'm not obsessive about it, especially not the first time through a hand.)

The interesting cases--to me, anyway--are the games that appear unwinnable for some reason and that I don't win within a try or two, but that I have some . . . "sense" can be won. Way more often than not, I'm right, even if it takes me awhile to actually win a given game. I had one yesterday, and I kept fussing with it, trying to figure out which kink was responsible getting stuck, in addition to the fact that two deuces of one suit were buried at the beginning of the hand, but, eventually, win it I did.

What's interesting to me is that sense that a given game can be won, and how often I'm right about that. (And it's not as though I replay every game; I bail pretty often.) I'm sure there are mathematical formulae about the whole thing, but I sure as hell don't know what they are. It seems that some part of my brain can do the calculations, however--or, at least, can reach the right conclusion--and I marvel at that a little bit. There's a kind of calculation going on there, an assessment of some kind, as though my brain can see the moves that need to happen, even if it takes me awhile to get to them, and it's clear that it's a product, in part, of playing a lot, along with some ability at pattern-matching, at least some of which is happening on a subconscious level.

And that's why I'm not just an atheist; I also eschew the magical new age crap. That is, I firmly believe that there's a lot of information available at any given time, but that we can only make sense--or make patterns that make sense--of some percentage of it. We have to learn to edit out the bits that don't fit or that are just (literally or figuratively) noise. Some conditions (autism-spectrum disorders, perhaps?) and drugs affect the editing functions, in ways that can be enjoyable, or scary, or overwhelming.

The point is, the information we're editing out is still there; it didn't go away, even if we don't have (conscious) access to it. Is it possible to develop mechanisms or techniques to apprehend more of the information consciously? Yeah, probably, and I'd also argue that what we call "intelligence" has something to do with the ability to manage large amounts of complex information quickly. But there are certainly limits, not the least of which are the fact that we communicate with each other. (Side question: if you take a non-human primate of a particular species to a new colony of that species, can the animal communicate? That is, do all chimpanzees speak "chimpanzee"? Are there local dialects? How are they communicated?) Thus, while I am occasionally surprised by the accuracy of information I wasn't aware of having consciously, I'm not surprised that it exists and that I can tap into it. It's not magic or spiritual.

I'd really like to tie this to Fred's post about gerbils and polar bears, but I really must edit, so I'll leave you to go read the post yourself.

Replacementation

Is the Bible absolutely true? Is it truly the word of God?

Well, if it is, I am fucked. And then I'm fucked for saying fuck. And I say it a lot. It's not really a word to me, it's a comma.
--Lewis Black, Me of Little Faith

If you like Lewis Black, and I do, then go grab his book from the library. It's kind of like reading a long stand-up routine of his, and I find it quite entertaining.

My plate is getting extremely very full at work. I don't think my boss is entirely clear just how much he's piling onto it. We're going to discuss it tomorrow, however, although he doesn't know that just yet. The problem is the director of MIS left at the beginning of September, and there has yet to be any kind of replacement. On top of that, it's not clear that anyone else knew how to do any of the things he did, particularly the things that involved mining data from various big datawads around the organization. The upside is that his organizational skills make me look like a slacker, and he was extraordinarily good about documenting things very, very thoroughly. Thus, were I able to get access to the datawads, I might actually be able to extract material from said wads. It would not be easy for me, and it would be slow, but I might could do it.

However, my boss has not the slightest clue about the complexity of this whole thing, so explaining how difficult and time-consuming it is itself becomes difficult and time-consuming.

In addition, I fear that they will not be replacing the MIS guy any time soon. I suspect the pay scale is not attracting the quality of person they actually need to fill the position, and I fear they will not realize that, because the people making the decision include my boss, who is nearly computer-illiterate, and his boss, the ED, who is also pretty computer-illiterate. The latter can manage communications and documents and such, as can the former, to some extent, but asking either of them to, for example, put together a complex document and store it properly on the shared drive is like asking them to sprout wings and fly. The latter, for example, insists that, after I submit a proposal, I create a PDF of all of the sub-documents, attachments, and the like, into a single file, and that I include things like the audit. She then either prints this out or asks me to do so. Perhaps, then, you understand why I am skeptical that they will be able to hire an adequate replacement for the position.

Without said replacement, reporting, including reporting to our funding agencies, becomes quite difficult, because there won't be anyone to extract data, unless I can figure it out for myself and get access to the information--and a shitty replacement will be worse, in many ways, than no replacement, because it means I will have to fight with an idiot rather than merely fight to figure out how to do something. Well, whatever--still no sacks of flour involved.

Seriously: I am finding that, despite the APs (both of whom are gone now), and despite various little frustrations, I am not getting wrapped around the axle about these things. This is not particularly in my nature, so I don't know where this detachment is coming from.

I'm also finding that I have seriously blocked out large chunks of the whole Bakery Experience. Every so often I think back to some aspect of it, some task I would have been doing at a given time, or the pure physicality of it, or the noise, or the holiday music, or the constant busyness, or the sense of futility that I had to fight just to get out of bed in the morning, and whatever I am dealing with at the office becomes much less problematic. It's really only since I quit that I've been able to process just how awful the whole thing felt to me and how much energy it took for me to continue doing it. I'm also please that I am rediscovering baking--it feels good again, and I'm glad to have that back.

Anyway, I could probably blather awhile longer, but I am tired tonight; I think my zen shiatsu treatment took a lot out of me this evening. Or put it back in ways that made me realize how much I was holding together with duct tape and Elmer's glue. so, hey, I'm going to finish my wine and my water and get some sleep.

p.s. I have not brought myself to watch any of the Palin interviews, though I've been reading transcripts. Good lord--I'm more prepared to be President than she is, and I haven't held an elected position since college. And the whole suspending his campaign while not suspending it? Yeah, THAT's going to work out well.

In what?

My wall calendar at work is from my dad's union. The pictures are mostly of local members. Except this month, when it's a big flag with "In God We Trust" in gothic letters. So I put a Post-It over "God" that has "dharma" written on it. We'll see if anyone notices.

Home and Away

I haven't been at my home much in the past week; thanks to all the hockey games, and an assortment of other arrangements, I've spent about half of my nights at Friend's house in the past two weeks. (We've been going to his house because he has a cat whom he doesn't like to leave alone too much.) It's a little strange, given that I haven't done anything like this in, well, forever; Chuck never had his own place, and before that I wasn't in arrangements where it would have happened. I occasionally feel a little bag-lady-esque, it's true, but it's been okay. It helps that (a) I do not have to get up at the asscrack of dawn, and (b) the trip from his place to my work is wildly easy; the bus drops me off at the door of my place of employment.

Unfortunately, much of this hanging out has been accompanied by the consumption of great food and beer, which has not helped the ass-reduction program (ARP); quite the opposite, as a matter of fact, which is getting on my nerves. I'm really a little at a loss what to do about the whole thing. I do not like working out. I hate it, in fact, and I've only ever done it for any length of time when I was rehabbing from a handball injury or otherwise could not play. While part of me would very much like to start playing handball again, the logistics of that are pretty prohibitive: expensive, for one thing, as I'd have to join a gym that has a handball court and players; and involving much traveling to and fro, for another; and finding a place to do it, for a third. I'm not ruling it out for ever and ever, but I'm also not seeing it happen any time soon. I did walk to work today (about three miles), and then walked to get lunch today (maybe another 1/2 to 3/4 mile), and, now that it's no longer the middle of fucking winter, I may try to do that more often. It will help a bit, I'm sure, but. The biggest "but" (notice there's only one t there) is that I like playing sports, I like DOING something, and that's part of what I miss. So I don't know. I'll figure out something eventually, I suppose, but meanwhile I'm settling on walking and whining about how I want to do something else. If the ARP is going to be successful, I really must do something.

For a complete change of subject, Friend and I watched "Meatballs" the other night. I had recommended it, even though I haven't seen it in 20+ years, because of the chant Bill Murray's character teaches the campers in his charge: "It just doesn't matter." After seeing it again, it probably isn't worth going out to rent or anything, but two other things leapt out at us: There are lot of pretty young women in the movie (and some cute young men, for that matter), it being set at a summer camp and everything. No problem there. The two things that are really striking, however, are that, first, the young women do not play any sports in the movie, e.g., in the inter-camp competition. They are cheerleaders. All of them. The Meatballs camp is kind of halfhearted, while the BigFancy camp has cheerleaders in matching uniforms and such, and we're supposed to take something from that, but the girls don't play soccer, they don't do anything except cheer. Oh--and play field hockey, at one point, which amused me, seeing as how I played field hockey 35 years ago. The other thing that really struck both of us is that a lot of the young women had small breasts--or, rather, the young women had a lot of variation among them in terms of breast size, instead of all of them being mondo-breasted. And there really wasn't a lot of breast display, for that matter. Mostly the women were wearing t-shirts and such, and not skin-tight ones, either. So, really, that was kind of refreshing.

For this post's amusing (and, it turns out, deistically related) items, I saw this headline as I walked past a box today, and it cracked me up. Then, while surfing, I found this (slightly NSFW), which also cracked me up. If you follow the link in that post, you'll find a thoughtful post as well as the source of the (altered) drawing.

At work, well, things have gotten interesting already. For one thing, it turns out that the two major grants that fund the organizations for which I'm working (basically, there are a couple of related organizations that are separate in some important ways but still gathered under an overarching umbrella for a few other infrastructural-type ways) are about to run out. Yes, I have to write two major (as in multi-million-dollar, multi-year, whole-ball-of-wax) proposals, totaling about 300 pages of materials. A few pieces are due April 7, the rest (the bulk of the narrative materials) are due April 21. Let me repeat: the proposals for the basic funding for this organization are due in about a month. So, yeah, no pressure there.

There are a few hills to climb with my coworkers, but I'm hoping I can energize them and get them involved in ways that are helpful to me AND to them and that help us all move in a positive direction. It will be challenging, though. (For example, don't say to me, "I don't think you're understanding me." Not least because I am, in fact, understanding you, I'm just not agreeing with you. You even could say, for example, "I may not be clear here," but don't put the onus on me. Especially when, hello, you're wrong, and this thing you keep touting as the Best! Helpful! Website! Ever! in fact does not address all, or even most, of the areas we need to address in our proposals, so you can't get out of the work that easily. As you would know if you bothered to read the materials I sent to you. But to that person I said thank you, several times.) It's really a make-or-break kind of thing for me, so pissing people off right up front = bad idea.

My boss seems happy with me, and with my work, and with my plan for proceeding, so that's all good, and I do have a plan. Aspects of my current chart will make it clear to a few people that we will need to work on some of these things to an extent and in ways that they seem to be trying to avoid. And my boss agrees that we're going to have to do this as a group. (The person who claimed I was not understanding thinks I should just meet with everyone individually, I think because s/he doesn't want to do the hard work of reading materials ahead of time, preparing for the meeting, and then focusing on the task at hand. But I could be wrong. And I suspect there's some burnout in play, too, for that person and for everyone else.) Basically, I'm doing what I always try to do with this kind of thing: I'm organizing as much of it as I possibly can, which helps people focus on what I really need them to do, and, in particular, the things I cannot do without their input.

All in all, in some ways, this could be very cool. The plans at the heart of these proposals can serve as our guide, as the base for what we do, and that could be very positive. I said all this to my boss, and it was music to his ears--I think he's really, really glad he hired me. And I can see some of the challenges he has faced and continues to face, and I see it as my job to help with that. (I always tell prospective employers that my job is to make my boss's job easier. It's a great line, and it happens to be a useful approach.) One person who seemed pretty negative yesterday--about a different topic more than about mine--was actually very helpful to me: s/he pointed out that weekly meetings would NOT be sufficient to accomplish this, and was very supportive in general. One of the suggestions won't be as helpful as s/he thought, but, again, all of that will be made clearer from the materials I'm putting together.

I do kind of wish I didn't have a massive editing project at the moment as well. It turns out to be even bigger than we thought (which means both more work and more lucrative), and the production editor just got the last batch of materials to me today, even though the first ms batch theoretically was due back earlier this week. On the other hand, it isn't requiring the kind of massive copyedit that the last one entailed, though I must say that his author is way too fond of split infinitives and passive constructions. I'm going to spend a significant portion of Saturday hacking away at it, then have dinner with Chuck and CK, the latter of whom I haven't seen in a couple of months. And Sunday? More hockey!

Knee Deep

No, I'm not nearly done with the worst manuscript ever, but I'm slogging through it. I've managed to get through 9 of the 14 chapters for a first pass, and I did two chapters in ink to send back to the production editor (to make sure I'm not completely insane), so I'm well ahead of the game. The first five chapters are due next Thursday, but it may be possible for me to finish the whole thing by then, which would be nice, not least because there's another project coming down the pike as well.

Meanwhile, I suspect I have strep throat. Friend had a persistent sore throat, and today he finally went to have it checked out, and, sure enough, he's got it. Seeing as how I was with him when he was feeling his worst, and seeing as how i woke up with a sore throat this morning (I thought it might be just dryness until I heard his news), I'm going to get my ass to the doctor tomorrow. It does feel the way strep tends to feel--pain rather than scratchiness, and no other cold symptoms. I don't typically run a fever, either. Not really what I had in mind--usually Friend and I get together on Tuesday night, and I haven't seen him since last Tuesday night--but bacteria are wily creatures. Truth be told, I'm feeling steadily worse as I sit here, so, much as I miss Friend, I'm just as glad to not be out.

In our religion report for the day, I got a prayer rug (!!) in the mail today, from St. Matthew's church, along with a list of prophecies and blessings and a request page, which I'm supposed to mail back, along with the prayer rug, after I've knelt on it and prayed. (The prayer rug is paper, in case you're wondering.) Also? God's holy blessing power is in the enclosed anointed prayer rug of faith they are loaning me to use. (All in caps, and the phrasing is theirs.)

Among the things for which I can ask are: My Soul; A Closer Walk With Jesus; Confusion In My Home [I suspect this is actually a request to cure said confusion, rather than a prayer FOR confusion, but I'm not sure]; A Money Blessing; Pray for God to bless me with this amount of money: $_________. The whole envelope is full of typographical and grammatical wonders, I must say. I don't quite have the heart (or energy) to try to reproduce the whole thing for you, complete with random capitalizations, boldface, underlining, and combinations of the three, because they're probably harmless enough, but it's quite a sight.

It also reminds me of a conversation I had with my dad. My parents' best friends--including the neighbors, and including my mom's lifelong friend and her husband (the one who died in the fall)--are all practicing Catholics. They've all dealt with this over the years by respecting each other's beliefs and not really talking about it. My dad was raised Presbyterian, but started having doubts in his teens; he called himself an agnostic for years. He was willing to be wrong, but wasn't much of a fan of religion or deities. My sister's death pretty much ended that, and he'd call himself an atheist now. My mother was raised atheist; not surprising, given that my grandfather was an anarchist and an atheist, but not terribly common in the 1950s.

As a result of this, however, my parents didn't go to church services; why would they? When their friend died last year, though, they debated whether to go to the funeral mass, and they ended up going. When I was there, my dad commented to me on what he saw as the ludicrousness of the whole thing--the men in dresses, the incense, the pomp and circumstance and arm-waving. (I asked him if he had a cookie and some grape juice, but apparently he did not.) Having not been to any religious services in awhile, I think he'd kind of forgotten; he kind of didn't remember what it was that people took so seriously. He'd never say anything, of course, at least not to his friends. I've been around it more recently--a friend's Catholic wedding; Chuck's aunt's funeral; CK's first holy communion--but I occasionally have a similar reaction. I mean, it was cool seeing transubstantiation and all, but it still looked like a cracker to me.

And, when push comes to shove, both my dad and I don't care all that much; whatever floats your boat. I do get seriously annoyed when people try to shove a deity down my throat, or when they inform me that I cannot possibly be a moral person and an atheist, or when, like that bozo Huckabee, they want to change the laws of the land to conform with what they believe their deity's rules are.

Which reminds me of something else: I was leaving my apartment one day, and, as I locked my door, I overheard a conversation at the end of the hall between two women. One was saying that she was thinking of giving up her parking place, and she'd have to give notice, otherwise she'd lose her security deposit, but she wasn't sure whether to do that. The other one said something, and then the first one said that she was just going to have to ask god about it, see whether he thought she should keep the parking place.

And that's the part that truly blows me away. If there were a deity or deities, I have a hard time believing that s/he/they would really be a source of advice on my transportation arrangements--or would concern him/herself with the outcome of a football game, for that matter, or even the outcome of a war. Perhaps I should rub the prayer rug on my knees (I'm instructed to kneel on it or place it on both knees, presumably in the event that I am old and/or arthritic and cannot kneel). Or perhaps I should just get some sleep.