How I Got Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carry Me Home

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

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

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

Listalicious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second Opinion

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

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

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

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

So, no stress there.

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

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

Back to the Keyboard

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

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

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

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

Anyway.

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

So!

Seems like everyone is on a blog holiday this month. Personally, it has been completely insane. Every time I turn around, there's another damn fire, and I have to drive the truck and unroll the hose and go rescue the kitty up on the second floor. And we have not one but two visits from federal funders next week. And then there's the personal dramas. So, yeah, even though this is often my favorite time of year, in part because of the solstice, I've had little opportunity to enjoy it, and I'm finding that other bits are interfering with that, anyway.

Eventually I'll write it all down for you, but not this morning.

Look! Over there!

. . . where something interesting is happening.

Sooner or later, I'll probably get a break, but it won't be any time soon, by the look of it. There's a proposal due on Tuesday; it has turned out to be relatively simple, but I'll be much happier when it is done. Then there's the big site visit at the end of the month. And the regular reporting, on which I am always behind, because I never have time to put systems in place. And the local funding agency that is extremely peeved with us (and with good reason, I may add)--today I was channeling my old boss at the substance abuse treatment agency, as I scribbled phrases and hints for my boss as he spoke to the agency rep, even though I could hear only his side of the conversation. (My old boss was a master at dealing with funding agencies, and I learned so much from him.) Anyway, it chugs along. I make bits of progress on things, and my boss is coming to rely greatly on me, not just to get things done but as a sounding board, a way to think or talk through things, and also because I am making his boss happy, too.

I am almost completely ignoring whatever is going on around Sotomayor's nomination. The little bits I've read make me want to smack someone, and I simply do not have the energy for yet another round of racism and misogyny. Same with the latest round of torture crap. Same with Cheney the Dick mouthing off. I am completely sick and tired of these huge wads of fuck blathering on and on and on, and I am even more sick and tired of the media giving them any attention whatsoever. They. Fucking. Lost. If we thought you were right, we would have voted for you. But the media continue to run to them, letting them shape the narrative. You know what? I do not care what some 65-year-old privileged bag of fuck thinks about Ms. Sotomayor's empathy, demeanor, or any other goddamned fucking thing. Here's a nice big hot steaming mug of shutthefuckup; drink it. And here's a cramitupyourass scone to go with it. Now go away.

As you may know by now, the Hawks finally lost to Detroit (or, as they're known around here, the Scum). I really didn't think they'd get past Detroit, and it was a valiant effort. Much as I would have enjoyed going to the games--and hopefully seeing the Cup--the reality is that, as the first graf above makes clear, I am insanely busy at work, so I'm short on time, and the tickets are not exactly cheap. No more games = more time and more money for me, so it's not a complete fail. Plus, Pittsburgh is on a tear, and I don't think the Hawks had the guns to go up against that; not this year, anyway.

Indy was fun, too, despite Friend passing out briefly from dehydration/heat. (Yeah, THAT was not fun.) Sunday is Milwaukee, which is also fun. At Indy, they can get some speed, because the whole track is 2.5 miles; in Milwaukee, the track is only a mile, and if you're seated high enough (which isn't difficult or expensive), you can see the whole track, and they sometimes go two or three cars wide--at nearly 200 mph. That is, the two races provide different views, even though they're both ovals.

The thing that continues to fascinate me is trying to figure out the nexus between human and machine, plus the money that accompanies the machine. For example, handball is a supremely simple sport, which was one of the reasons it appealed to me: gloves, eye guards, a ball, four walls (you can play with fewer but I never did). That's it. There really isn't much you can do, equipment-wise, that is going to give you an advantage of any kind. You can practice, you can get coaching, you can practice some more, but that's all on you; there isn't a thing you can buy that is going to win games for you.

In open-wheel racing, though, there's this finely tuned machine in the mix, and it's much more difficult to see how much effect the driver has on the thing. In Formula 1, for example, in part because of the way one team interpreted some of the design rules, a driver who hadn't won much (at all?) before this year has won all but one race so far, and the two drivers for that team are at the top of the driver standings. That is, their vehicle has a design/engineering advantage such that the two teams that won everything last year and the year before--Ferrari and MacLaren Mercedes--are barely in the pack.

But those two teams have wads of cash, so they can change things during the season, and their drivers are good (several championships among them), so it will be interesting to see how much they can improve their vehicles' performance by the end of the season (they've already improved somewhat). I think what I'm trying to say is that the best driver in the world cannot win the races if his/her vehicle isn't fast enough. Can a mediocre driver take a great vehicle to a win? Maybe once, but steadily? Not likely. Even competent drivers don't win all the time, even with great vehicles. The other thing that's sort of amusing is the notion of "fast enough" in this context, in that, during qualifying (i.e., in Indy, just one car on the track), the vehicles were within a hair's breadth of each other in terms of speed, i.e., it's not as though one vehicle/driver is just blisteringly faster than another.

I know; I know; not that interesting to y'all. But it's either this, or rant about something, and I don't feel like ranting today.

Bread Instead

Is it weird to include a loaf of bread in the price one charges for a pair of tickets?

Turns out the second home game of the next series is on Sunday . . . which is also Indy. Which would even have worked out if they'd played the game at, say, 8:00; we could have made a mad dash back and probably made it in time. But nooooooo; game's at 2:00. Flip side, though, Bossman is more than happy to buy the tickets: I asked for face value plus a loaf of miche, which is one of the best breads from the best bakery in the city. Friend tried (albeit not very hard) to convince me to try to sell them for big bucks, but I suck at that kind of thing. I'd much rather get my money back, get an incredible loaf of bread, and enable someone who will be VERY happy to go to the game actually go to the game. (Bossman had season tickets for years and got them again this year for the first time in a very long while, but the bill for playoff tickets showed up when some other major expense showed up, plus he probably didn't figure they'd go this far. Or something.)

I probably could get a ton of money for the tickets, I should note. For example, someone is selling two tickets to each of the first two games, in a similar section, for a total of $1000--but face for these tickets is about $100 apiece, or what would be $400 for the four. I guess I have this notion that even ticket resales operate on the what-goes-around-comes-around principle. People have helped me out multiple times, and I can turn around and help out someone else--plus I get a fabulous loaf of bread out of it as my "surcharge."

I don't have all that much to offer up here, though. There was an article in last Sunday's NYT about female bullies that annoyed the shit out of me, but I've been neglecting to write about it because it was the same old tired patriarchal bullshit. The article started off saying that 60% of the bullying done in the workplace was done by men . . . and then proceeded to say no more about male bullies. And, here's a surprise: men bully both men and women, but women bully mostly women. How fucking dense can this person be? Bullies pick on the weaker/subordinate people. Who's more likely to be subordinate(d)? Oh, wait, that would be . . . women. The comments were a whole other festival of woman-bashing--it made it sound as though no man ever bullied anyone ever, it was just all those mean ol' women. Jesus christ on a cracker. Of COURSE some women are bullies--being female does not mean one cannot be an asshole. But did you see the part where the vast majority of the bullying is done by men? (And that's provided that the measure of bullying is accurate, which, good luck with that; d'ya think there's any chance than any woman who is strong will be regarded as a bully by some people, simply because she isn't being all subordinate and shit?)

Did anyone even consider that women get points with patriarchal men if said women bash other women? Has anyone noticed how the patriarchy encourages women to police other women's behavior, thus making it look, to the untrained eye, as though it couldn't possibly be a sexist thing? Did anyone point out that many (patriarchal) structures reward bullies and assholes, so anyone who wants to succeed (or has to survive) within those structures has to engage in or at least tolerate that behavior? And who among us has the wherewithal to go up against a bully, especially if there's any kind of piling on? I am of an age, and education level, and income level, and I have a boss such that the consequences of calling out bullying are way less likely to be problematic for me, but most people don't have that privilege. (We also don't have any bullies, quite, where I am now, that I know of.)

The more interesting question for me is why people don't join together to fight a bully. Haven't you noticed the people who see the bullying going on but don't say anything, just sit around hoping the bully doesn't focus on them? Of course, someone above the bully in the hierarchy has to give at least tacit approval to the resistance, and someone has to be willing to point out that the emperor/empress is, in fact, unclothed, and that's difficult to do, and sometimes it's difficult to see it. And some situations cannot be changed: I have been extremely lucky in terms of my immediate supervisors. Seriously; despite the occasional irritations that are part of all human relationships, I have had very good bosses, with the occasional extraordinary one thrown in for good measure; that makes a huge difference, too.

The other thing I've discovered is that a strong personality can alter behavior for the good. I think most people would agree that I have a strong personality (though it took me decades--really--to figure that out, for an assortment of reasons), and one of the things that enables me to do is to set a tone in some settings. For example, I try very hard to compliment and acknowledge people publicly. Not in a blowing-smoke or sucking-up kind of way (because no one ever trusts that, nor should anyone trust that), but just acknowledging people's good works. It encourages others to do it, it feels good when someone does it, and it doesn't cost a damned thing. I know some people think everything is an all-or-nothing game--i.e., in order for you to do well, someone else has to do badly--but I really fight against that mindset, because I hate it. And that kind of positive influence can snowball--I may be able to start it, but others have to carry on with it.

I do wonder what would have happened if the one very difficult person hadn't left about a year ago. She and I would not have been a happy team, by any stretch of the imagination, and I am certain she would have done her best to sabotage me. Given the information imbalance that she would have had and would have fought to maintain, she would have succeeded, too, which means I would have left (or my boss would have had to choose). I'm just glad I don't have to deal with it. It's not that there are no frustration with my job now, and it's not as though there aren't always politics when two or more humans are around each other, it's that there's a whole other level of disfunction through which we don't have to fight.

Anyway, the stress continues: big site visit at the end of June, and at least one proposal between now and then, which will require a bunch of coordination with others, plus I need to get some data together, plus one of my coworkers will be gone for three weeks (don't ask), plus some hockey, and Indy, and Milwaukee . . . so, yeah. Might be a little busy around here.

HAWKS WIN!!

. . . as nearly 27,000 people, including me, cheered them on. It was v. v. v. loud, and a tense game, and omigod what a lot of fun. And tonight it's back to the same venue, for the fourth time in eight days, albeit for Bruce this time. I shoulda just rented out space in the pressbox or something and moved in over there.

Pole Day with Hockey

Whew.

This week was, in fact, rather insane, in a very good way, what with two hockey games, a concert, and, last night, a few beers with the medical director, whom I like tremendously, not to mention going full-throttle all week on the budget stuff, with very little help from anyone else. There are housekeeping chores this weekend and a lot of hockey and racing on television (Formula 1 qualifying was this morning at 7 and the race is tomorrow morning, and today was Pole Day at Indianapolis, when the drivers fill the first 11 spots on the grid for the 500, including the pole). So I watched F1 qualifying as I puttered around, then my mom called as I was getting ready to leave. We talked for awhile, and then I headed out for the shopping.

Which was interesting, in an unexpected way. I wandered over to the bakery to get some bread--I have yet to find a place in this city that makes bread that even comes close--and ended up chatting with Bossman for a few minutes about hockey (he had season tickets but didn't get playoff tickets). I stopped at an Argo that I walked past, because I realized I had a card in my wallet with some money on it, so that tea was sort of free. Stopped at the bank, then to Peet's for more tea (I had been running low both at work and at home). Because I bought tea in bulk, I had a free cup coming to me, so I settled in with my book. After awhile, I realized that I was in no rush to get anywhere, for the first time in what felt like ages. I had no plans for tonight, other than to watch hockey, and no plans for the afternoon, for that matter, other than watching some of Pole Day and working out, which could be done simultaneously. I could read, drink my tea, and just relax, for as long as I wanted, before I headed to Whole Paycheck. It felt very nice, I have to say.

I even managed to stock up on some produce for the week, so I won't have to live on the oatmeal stashed in my desk drawer--strawberries were on sale, and I got some broccolini, too, which I'll steam and take to work cold, perhaps with some of the lemon tarragon dressing I got. (Okay, this has devolved into a what-I-will-have-for-lunch blog, which is pretty pathetic.) Some pistachios, so I can make another batch of nougat with the egg whites and dried cherries I still have around; I still have an orange that isn't moldy, so I'll use the peel of that, too, except this time I'll remember to boil it to open the pores and soften it, and then perhaps put it right into the boiling sugars. And maybe I'll make another batch of cookies and take some to work.

As you may be able to tell, Friend is out of town--hunting wild turkeys, this week and next week, with a brief foray back into town from tomorrow sometime until Tuesday. If he doesn't get a ticket for Monday's game and doesn't get back early enough tomorrow, I won't see him until next weekend or after, but, with my schedule, I'll barely notice. (Okay, that's only partly true.) This week includes at least one hockey game, a concert, and at least one dinner with a friend; I want to see a couple of other friends, too. I had intended to do a weekend yoga workshop next weekend, but realized that if the Hawks keep winning, it would conflict. I could still sign up, and might do so, but another weekend like this one--i.e., with sports on the TV and not a lot else to do--could be a good thing, especially because the following two weekends will involve going to races and, possibly, hockey games.

One of the downsides to watching all this television, though, is the re-immersion in the patriarchy. Yeah, I know, it's not like I don't run into it in the rest of my life--I do not have a Rancho Deluxe--but I watch relatively little television at my house, and, at Friend's, often as not it's on tape and we zip past the commercials. And, of course, commercials are the biggest source of the crap. Frex, the Pl@yb0y channel is advertising heavily on the channel on which the hockey games are playing, and the ad is getting on my last fucking nerve. I won't bore you with a recounting of it, but it scores on every last patriarchal trope. Then there's a Bridgestone tire commercial that features Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head--she's nagging him in this shrill voice about his driving, he has to stop short, or swerve, or something, and her lips go tumbling down the hill, shutting her up--and guaranteeing I'll never buy Bridgestone tires. Not that I have any intention of buying a car or tires, but it is a wildly offensive ad. And so on.

Plus there are the endless beer ads--did you know that Mi!!er is "triple-hops brewed"? And it still tastes like piss! (Yes, I know, I have become a total beer snob, and I don't care; I do not want to waste time, calories, or buzz potential on crappy beer.) And the new pasta thingies from, um, Pizza Hut, maybe? I love how they make up names that sound like they should mean something in the language of the cuisine they're supposedly producing--Italian, in this case, so they come up with "Tuscani" (pronounced "tuss-CAHN-ee") or something. Sort of like Tuscany, but with that "i" at the end to signify that it's Italian. No, really! Just like you get at restaurants! Restaurants like Pizza Hut, anyway; not so much at places where the food is good. Or the pasta in a bread bowl from Domino's: I figure you have to cut it in half, so you can slap a half on each ass cheek. Okay, fine, so I'm a food snob, too; sue me. It's not like cooking good food has to be expensive.

Anyway, I have to stop carping so I can devote my full attention to hockey.

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.

The Advantage of Cranky

As the scarcity of posts might suggest, I have been occupied with extrablogular activities. Work, mostly, which has been time-consuming and difficult, but also some hockey (with more in the offing); okay, lots of hockey, because I'm watching on television what I'm not watching in person. Friend has been in a frenzy, as well, because he's going turkey-hunting two weeks in a row, and the preparations are extensive. (He fusses more than anyone I've ever met, except myself--his systems have systems. Of course, many of mine do, as well, so I understand. But back to that in a moment.)

Next week, for example, I have two hockey games and a concert, as well as major deadlines at work. The following week I have a concert and possibly a hockey game, depending on how the series is playing out, and dinner with a friend. I have promised to (and want to) hook up with at least one pastry school friend in the next two weeks--if we can figure out how to include the Brazen Tart (so i can hear more about this farm thing she's mentioning!), then we'll do that, too. Then there's Indy at the end of the month, and June will be consumed with preparing for a visit from our federal funders at the end of the month.

The last two weeks at work have been difficult--we're supposed to be using this new financial software to do our budget for the year, which, okay, whatever. Except, of course, it doesn't necessarily accommodate all of the quirks of federal funding and the program income (in the form of Medicaid and/or Medicare reimbursement) that is sometimes included in the federal budget and sometimes is not. And I've never done this before. And the person who was doing the budgets before me was an ass, in multiple dimensions, primarily in the form of not telling anyone what she was doing and making things unnecessarily complicated. On top of that, the controller for our organization keeps changing the bits we need to pay for and is less than clear about where, exactly, they're supposed to go in the context of this software.

So, of course, yesterday I had to spend the whole day at a management retreat with the management team, doing team things. The person who facilitated it was good at it, and it wasn't as completely heinous as it could have been, but the timing made it less worthwhile. I'm being pressured to have the budget done by close of business on Monday, so being forced to spend a whole day away from it was rather problematic. As a result, I'll do what I can on Monday, but that's it. And I have a concert to attend Monday night, and a hockey game Tuesday night. My feeling about the whole thing is that I'll do what I can do, but if the organization sees fit to drag me away from the budget for a "retreat," then I have no problem going to a concert on my own time, rather than, say, working through the weekend or something.

One of the interesting dynamics yesterday is that our manager self-identifies (according to one of the exercises) as a "feelings" person (or "informal" and "easygoing," to use the metric of the day)--he's the only one in that quadrant. Which means to me that he'd damn well better have some people who are "formal" (in the sense of write things down, have meetings with a purpose, be task-oriented) and "dominant." At first, I was the only one in that quadrant, and I was kind of pissy about being forced to put myself there, because I have adapted to so many different environments. Reasonably quickly, the new medical director--whom I like tremendously and with whom I really enjoy working--realized she belonged with me, and a third person (whom I actually don't think belongs with us) joined us. I pointed out to the medical director that she and I had more education than anyone else in the room, and that we had obtained it in male-dominated environments, which I think affects how one operates. it's also worth mentioning that, except for our boss, who is gaygaygay, everyone on the team is female. It's the most female environment in which I have ever worked in my whole life.

The funny thing about this, to me, is that you can only have these discussions in office world. Of course there are different personalities in other environments, but in a place like the bakery, we have to get a product out the damned door. Everyone had best be task-oriented. And, more to the point I'm trying to make, in many ways, in that environment, I was, by comparison, more "analytical" (i.e., formal and easygoing), when I was working with Bossman on a new product, and also the person who did a lot of smoothing things like a feeling person would do (e.g., the pizza on Saturdays). Yes, I was also organized and task-oriented and so on, but so was everyone else, so that became an irrelevant evaluative criterion. In office world, you can lose sight of this. Of course, one could argue that this is a typical task-oriented-person's assessment, and you might even be right.

The other thing that was interesting is that we nearly left without discussing the biggest challenge we all face: the boss's boss is demanding, doesn't respect boundaries, wants what she wants when she wants it, etc. (which sounds like addict behavior, if you ask me, though I have no reason to think that's true). But as we were discussing challenges and how we were going to meet them, etc., I finally said, "Are we going to discuss the elephant in the room?" And our boss said yes, we should, and the facilitator said, good, let's finish this other thing first and come back to it. What was amusing was that everyone knew what i was talking about; it was also amusing, to me, that I was the one who mentioned it. If I hadn't, it wouldn't have gotten said, and all of the fine suggestions the facilitator was throwing around would have been useless for 70% of the problems we face. (What happens is she decides something is a crisis, she fires off urgent emails to our boss, and he comes barging in to whatever we were doing and flails around about it. The underlying issue is that she does not realize that we cannot do the grand expansions she has in mind without getting the operational infrastructure in place--the infrastructure that either never existed or that crumbled under her watch.) So we actually talked about it, but what I've been saying to my boss for months is still true: he's going to have to suck it up and confront her on these things. At least other people thanked me for bringing it out in the open, and I could sense the relief everyone felt to be discussing it; as I said yesterday, I'm nothing if not blunt. Actually, the whole group became more animated during that discussion, despite it being the end of the day, than they had all the rest of the day, which means everyone wanted to talk about it, even if they were afraid to bring it up.

And I think that is yet another advantage of being a cranky old broad: it's clear to me that this is one of the main underlying issues, and we can do nothing if it isn't discussed. No one else was willing to bring that up, however, even though nothing would get solved if we don't discuss this and do something about it. But, really, I don't care: what's she going to do to me? And, frankly, I'd tell her to her face--diplomatically, of course, and acknowledging her needs and her position, but seriously. So, for once, my what-the-fuckityness came in handy for actually addressing an issue. We'll see what happens.

Muffin Madness

Per Luna's request:

Dry ingredients:
400 g flour
125 g wheat bran (toasted 15 min. or so in oven)
120 g. flax meal
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking power (maybe 2.5?)
1 tsp salt
60 g dried buttermilk powder
Mix these thoroughly with a fork and set aside.

Dried fruit:
100 g blueberries
50 g cranberries
130 g dates
40 g apricots
250 g boiling water
Soak the fruit in the water; when it cools enough, cut the apricots and dates into small pieces. If the fruit isn't too dry when you start, you can cut the fruit up before adding the boiling water.

Wet ingredients:
350 g water
3 oz. butter
2 bananas or approx. 60 grams of applesauce (room temp, esp. if the bananas were frozen)
250 g honey (can sub some malted barley syrup, or even a little molasses, but probably no more than 25-50 g or it will change the flavor dramatically and will need more baking soda)
2 eggs, room temp

Set the oven to 350. Toast the wheat bran and let it cool. Soak the fruit and let it cool; cut it up as necessary. Grease two muffin tins with a little butter, plus you will need some aluminum muffin cups; you could probably make this as a quick bread as well.

Cream the butter with the paddle on your mixer; you'll want a large bowl. Add the honey and barley syrup. (To eliminate the sticky measuring cup, cream the butter, then take the bowl off the mixer and put it on the scale, adding the sugars directly.) Cream the sugars and butter together. Add the eggs one at a time. Add the bananas or applesauce. (It may break/curdle if some of your ingredients are cold.)

Add the dry ingredients and the 350 g. water, alternating (3-4 shots). Stir in the dried fruit.

Portion into muffin cups (about 2/3 full) and bake about 20 minutes. (That's an approximation--I haven't settled on exactly the right amount of time. Poke a muffin with a toothpick to test doneness.) Makes about 28 or so. (Yeah, I know, an inconvenient number.)

Obviously you can substitute in several locations, most notably in the the dried-fruit arena. I discovered the dried buttermilk a couple of months ago, and it's so much more convenient than wet, but you could do the math to use wet instead of dry and sub liquid buttermilk for the water.

As you can see, these are pretty healthy, so they make a nice breakfast, especially with a piece of fruit added. They freeze well, too. Let me know how they work for you, if you try them.

Playoff Baking

If you watch the Stanley Cup playoffs--and I doubt that you do--you will hear the announcers refer (in their Canadian accents) to "playoff hockey," by which they mean that the intensity is ratcheted up in a couple of dimensions that you may not see in other sports. In particular, the hits are harder and more frequent. Given the speed the players reach on their skates, this is non-trivial. For the first two games, I had very close seats--on Saturday, I was five rows from the ice. (It turns out this was NOT a good seat, in that one cannot see the whole ice and ends up watching on the jumbotron, but when the action was right in front of me, yes, it was an excellent seat.) Thus, the playoffness of the hockey was obvious. It's also extremely entertaining because the team is pretty good, though young, and, at least as important, there is a lot of energy from the fans.

The family that owns the team basically told fans to go scratch for many years--including refusing to allow the games to be televised. When Friend and I went in previous years, the place was by no means full. As soon as the owner died and his son took over, there were changes, including televising all games. (If they show the owner on the jumbotron, the crowd cheers--which I really don't see very much in pro sports.) As a result, the place is completely full--sold out for every game. There is a tradition of cheering during the national anthem, such that, by the final bars, the place is insanely loud. On Thursday and Saturday, you couldn't hear the singing over the cheering--which, given the level of amplification of the singing, is saying something. So that part is kind of fun. I am not particularly attached to the team, mind you, but it is completely fun. The speed is amazing, and there are very few breaks in the action, and the fact that my seat is in a different section for every game of the playoffs means that I'll get a bunch of views of the game. Many of them are single seats, too--we were only able to get seats together for some of the games--so that part is interesting as well.

My boss has been sick since Thursday, and likely won't be in this week, I'm guessing, which doesn't sound like a lot until you realize that there are several major things due in the next couple of weeks (budgets, strategic plans, etc.). In other words, the crunch continues. One small good thing: I got a new computer, which has more than the one hamster in it that the other computer apparently used for power. It's still a Windows box, which continues to suck--I always forget just how much tweaking Windows and Office require to set things up the way I want them. There are all these fiddly bits, hidden in various locations, that turn on supposedly helpful automatic shit that mostly gets in my way and annoys the fuck out of me. (I'm reading a book sort of about this--"Broken Windows" by David Bank--and it's quite interesting. Friend contends that the fiddly parts are built that way on purpose, to make the application seem difficult and out of reach, thus building a market for their "training" courses, and I wouldn't be surprised.)

Anyway, I spent most of Saturday before the game doing some baking: a batch of nougat, flavored with orange peel, roasted hazelnuts, and dried cherries, as well as two kinds of honey; another round of peanut butter cookies; and a batch of breakfast muffins.

The nougat is even softer than it usually is, for reasons that aren't entirely clear to me. I know I brought the sugars to the right temperature, so I'm guessing that it's the orange peel. The flavor is VERY nice, though, and I made this completely for me, so I don't much care.

The cookies I made with chopped peanuts this time, as the recipe required . . . but I reduced the butter by half (one stick instead of two) and did NOT miss it, and I replaced nearly all of the white and brown sugars with honey and malted barley syrup (which helped with the moisture lost from the butter), and I again added chopped semisweet chocolate. They were much better than last time--quite good, in fact. I'd make them nearly the same way again, though I'd maybe add a little sea salt on top. I can't imagine what they'd be like with all of that butter; it sounds like they'd just be greasy.

The muffins may well be my best batch ever, which means I may settle on this particular variation. I'll grab one from the freezer this week and resample them, but I think I've found it. They have dried fruit, bananas, very little fat (3 oz. butter), toasted wheat bran, and ground flax meal, so they're actually pretty damned healthy. I put some malted barley syrup in these, too, and I liked the way it made the sweetness even more complex. I also ended up putting a little orange juice in them, because I had used the peel in the nougat, but I don't know that that would have affected the flavor or texture all that much. I could always use the peel as well as the juice in the muffins, though.

As you can tell, I'm experimenting with different sugars, particularly the barley syrup. (I should point out that it's the same thing that gives the malty flavor to beer.) The other thing I want to make with the malted barley syrup is something that takes advantages of the malted flavor in a bigger way. I'm thinking of taking a basic sugar cookie (or chocolate chip cookie) recipe and subbing the barley syrup for the sugar and maybe adding some chocolate chips to get that malted-milk-balls flavor. That will give me a start, anyway, and it likely won't suck, even if I end up tweaking it for fucking ever the way I usually do.

The Snorefest That Is My Life

Want: wine.

Am having: dried plums (doncha love how prunes have been rebranded?), some cheese and crackers, and Ginger-Os.

Am boring.

I continue to chip away at the pile of crap, and I even continue to make some progress, most notably with the two current major tasks: resolving a budget issue with the federal government, and setting up a database for one of our programs. (I don't actually have to build the thing--it's very very large and complex--but I do have to figure out how to tailor it for our use, which is turning out to be kind of insane. I enjoy it, in some ways, because I see its potential for making our lives much much easier, but the setup is nontrivial and I have to get information from the users about how we want to use it. Part of the reason I have to do it is that there isn't anyone else in the whole part of my organization who could even begin to know how to do it, plus we don't have the IS help/people we need. Remember the person who felt unqualified back in December? S/he quit, a couple of days before the probationary period was up in February.) There are three other major tasks that I'm ignoring at the moment (the strategic plan for the organization; our budget for next year; and preparation for a major two-day visit from our federal funding agency), all of which will come due in the next 10 weeks.

I was supposed to--at least theoretically--go to a conference downstate the week after next, but I just said I couldn't go. They're going to try to stamp their feet and tell me it's mandatory, and I am going to refuse to go. I have playoff tickets, and there's at least some chance the trip would conflict, number one, and, number two, I am too fucking busy with this other shit to take two days sitting in a conference room hearing a consultant blather on.

I have yet to find a conference of any kind to be a worthwhile experience, in any of the fields in which I have practiced. I probably would have loved Camp Bread, if I had been able to go, so that would have been an exception, but otherwise? A lot of wasted time.

Even when I was a would-be professor: the one major conference I attended was tedious, and I realized then that the whole event had little or nothing to do with actual presentations. Most panels were held in front of very few people; not much of interest got said; and reading the papers would have given you about 85% or more of what you needed to know about the panelists' work. Some people were able to network effectively, with colleagues with whom they were working or wanted to work, for example; there was also some job interviewing, IIRC, though I don't think I had any. The best part about the whole thing was that I drove out to California and back with a friend who had a car, and we visited about 6 or 8 national parks during the course of the trip; we turned it into a two-week expedition so we could saunter back. I saw parts of the country I'd never seen before, I got to wade in the Pacific Ocean, and I had a wonderful time in the parks and with my friend (despite hitting a deer), but the actual conference? Sucked.

Tonight I'm mostly enjoying the knowledge that I don't have to work for two whole days; I managed to finish the editing job last weekend. I was very glad to have the work--basically, it will pay for the tickets mentioned in the previous post--but it's nice to have the weekend off, too. Even if I am boring.

Keeping the Economy Moving, Singlehandedly

Work is a pain and stressful and so on and and and.

There; got that out of the way.

Meanwhile, my iPod appears to have died, finally. It's been coughing some lately, when I use it, which isn't all that often. But that will change soon, because it's warm enough to walk to or from work, thus varying my exercise. (Do you think I had enough clauses strung together there?) Anyway, I could probably get the battery replaced, but I've decided what I really covet is a Touch: I get all the music bits, plus WiFi, plus various game and apps were I to want them (which I may not; I'll have to rummage around and see if anything appeals). I do not want an iPhone, because (a) I am content with the cellphone system and service I have now (but not the phone so much, which kinda sucks--Sanyo Katana I'm talking to you) and (b) I loathe ATT.

And, pretty though the iPhone is, I'm really not that interested in it. I want a cellphone for pretty limited reasons--I don't come close to using the minutes I pay for--and having a prettier phone wouldn't change that. I DO want the music, and maybe occasionally the (free!) WiFi, but the websurfing on my phone that probably costs money? not really at all. And the apps and such I can have on the Touch. The nice thing about the Touch is that I get the functionality I want for a one-time purchase price. So, yeah, I think I'm going to get one, even though it means I also have to upgrade my operating system on my iMac, because I'm a couple of versions behind. That, however--and arguably the Touch as well, given some of its capabilities--is a business expense.

I have also been going a little crazy with the ticketing for various events. So far the schedule includes (between now and September): Blackhawks playoff games (first two rounds); the Dead (2 nights); Springsteen; Phish; Widespread Panic and Allman Bros.(2 nights); U2; Dave Matthews (2 nights); a beer-tasting festival; Indianapolis 500; Milwaukee Mile; and the Indy car race at Chicagoland. It'll be interesting to see U2, because I used to not like them very much at all. Over the past 10 years or so I've enjoyed the occasional song, and the snippets I've seen on television or whatever have been pretty good, so I doubt I'll hate it. I also doubt I'll become a devout fan, but I don't know that that's a necessary outcome for it to be worthwhile.

And!! My walls no longer look leprous! Yes, they did, in fact, paint the place (and put a weird switchplate-with-no-outlets-thingy in the middle of one wall, for reasons that are completely unclear to me), and I got the lease extension and they did not raise the rent, so yay. I don't think I could have put moving into the juggling mix without dropping several other things that would have shattered into sharp little pieces and embedded themselves in my feet. Or something.

No Flour

Every time I start to write a post, I end up finding myself four paragraphs later having done nothing except bitch; sometimes I throw in some moaning or whining, for good measure. Then I reread it and I get annoyed with myself and I delete it and go to bed the end.

I had a friend in college--we still exchange the occasional email, every couple of years--who tried to teach me to juggle. I learned the basic principles and did it a little, but I didn't have the patience or enthusiasm to practice it the way it would have required to actually become even the least bit proficient. Nevertheless, that's what I feel like I've been doing lately at work. I'm juggling too many things, and I drop something every so often because I cannot keep them all in the air; or I manage to toss a thing away, but then three more things get tossed into the mix, and something else tumbles to the ground.

There are no 50-pound sacks of flour, and that still counts for quite a bit. I've had a few tantrums with my boss this week, though, because I'm getting quite tired of having him tell me that I Have To Do This Thing! Because It's Late! Or His Boss Wants It! That does not solve any of my problems. I know these things are late, and I even know what it will take to fix them, but I keep getting dragged into something that takes four times longer than it should, or I discover that the previous director of business operations--who is a friend of his--fucked us in yet another way. Next week's blowup will be because a final report for some bullshit little research project about which I know nothing but am still supposed to write was due this week, and I simply did not get around to (a) fedexing the data to the person who's supposed to analyze it (not least because I don't know what our fedex procedures are) or (b) calling the foundation and asking for an extension. I have no clue to whom I'd need to speak, and, guess what, i do not fucking care. It will have to get in line behind the various projects that bring in sums of money with two commas in them, because I deem them to be more important, and if anyone has a problem with my priorities, then I will point this out. I cannot do everything, and I refuse to try.

I hate the conflict, and I hate the timesuck of trying to be nice and polite and full of kumbayahity. I hate that people come barging into my office, no matter whether the door is closed, and then just stand there, even if I'm on the phone. I hate being underpaid, relative both to my coworkers and to the work that I'm doing, even as I hate caring about that. I hate the stupidity of several of the people who are making substantially more than I am and whose stupidity costs me even more of a timesuck. The meetings drive me batshit, especially when people are wandering in and out, answering cell or blackberry calls/messages, which I find incredibly rude. (Look, people, you are not transplant surgeons, so I do not see what could be so fucking important.)

We had a full-day strategic planning meeting this week, and it exemplified nearly everything that's good and everything that's frustrating about the whole situation.

I asked my boss if he wanted me to facilitate the meeting, and he said, sure, if I wanted to. Which I did--not because I actually wanted to do that, but because I knew that no one else would, I knew that he hadn't even thought about it (or put together any kind of agenda--for a full-day meeting!), and I did not want to waste all that damned time. It actually went reasonably well in many ways, in part precisely because I did facilitate it, with an agenda, and a vision of what we needed to do and how to get there.

One person wandered away not once but twice, and then started whining at the end of the day because she was tired of the whole thing and wanted to leave, and a couple of others wandered away briefly, but in general people stayed reasonably focused. We managed to identify what we need to do, and we started thinking about how to do those things--except then we got sidetracked because we had to come up with bullshit goals that the bigger organization thinks should be our focus. These goals by and large ARE bullshit, and they will not result in anything real or meaningful, in terms of goals, objectives, or our actual challenges in the coming year. (And, you know, if I got asked by higher-ups about the whole thing, I'd probably say something close to that--that the goals are bullshit and do not relate to the actual things we need to do.) On the other hand, we have a good team, with a lot of strengths, even if there are some glaring weaknesses as well, and we are doing good work, and we are well-funded, so it could be worse.

In addition, I have no difficulties just leaving at the end of the day, or occasionally leaving a bit early if I have something I want to do; I'm even refusing to go to the capitol city for a one-day (bullshit) conference/training session, because (people don't know this is the reason) I have tickets for the NHL playoff games and I will likely have a game one of those nights. There are very few jobs that would entice me, one way or another, to put in 70-hour weeks on a regular basis--or even 55-hour weeks; I did it at the bakery because I didn't have much choice at the time. The job could easily become a time- and energy-suck, and I won't do that. I don't have the desire or energy for it; no one else around me--either above or below me on the org chart--is doing it; and there's nothing to be gained from doing it. If I thought that, say, two or three weeks of intense effort would get me all caught up, and then it would be relatively smooth sailing, I'd maybe be convinced to do it, but it's not at all clear to me that that's true, so screw it. I may need to reevaluate that conclusion.

Meanwhile, I need to finish an editing job this weekend, and I'm hoping to do that Saturday so I can spend Sunday doing a whole big bunch of nothing much. Okay, that's not entirely true: there's an F1 race to watch, and the season's first Indy car race, and a bunch of hockey, so the only question is how long I can remain on the couch.

Blah Di Dah

I am monumentally boring these days. I keep slogging along at work, making headway on various things, but always always always with another mountain of crap to climb. I need time to stop for a month, so I can do everything that needs doing without getting behind on something else and without missing this or that deadline and without having to scramble and drop everything to do some bullshit thing or another. Failing the time-stops-for-a-month plan, I'll continue with the current approach, and I'll just turn to the bakery camera when I'm feeling overwhelmed. That continues to make me feel better, because I can look at it and know I don't have to get up tomorrow and sling dough for 10 or 11 hours.

I also have a freelance job at the moment, and it's one that has morphed into a somewhat bigger job than I think anyone thought it would be. I'm editing what are called "ancillaries"--tests, instructor outlines, powerpoints, etc.--and those usually go pretty quickly. However, this author is completely unclear on the concept of an "outline" in that s/he basically took the text of each chapter and turned it into bulleted sentences. A 25-page single-spaced outline isn't really an outline so much as it is a reformatted chapter.

It's been a time suck the past couple of weekends, and it will be next weekend, too. The thing that really is unfortunate is that it's my first job for this particular assistant (though I know the person with/for whom she's working) and I'm hoping it doesn't go too much over budget for them; I've given her enough warning about the state of things so they can alert everyone about it, and I've tried to scale my level of effort to a place that will work for everyone (i.e., they're getting at least some worthwhile copyediting out of it, but I'm not spending so much time as to make it exorbitant). And, hey, I'm glad to have the work, or, more accurately, the extra cash.

I did manage to get out a little, though; Friend and I went out to dinner Saturday night, and then yesterday marked the start of the outdoor grilling season. We picked up a piece of salmon, and I applied a paste to it that included salt, sugar, pepper, honey, balsamic vinegar, cumin, chili powder, paprika, oregano, and cocoa. It was supposed to be a dry rub, but I leaped ahead, thinking the "essence" from another recipe was a liquid instead of more dry ingredients, so I added the honey (subbing for some of the sugar), then threw in a splash of the balsamic, because I've been throwing it into everything. It was quite excellent, though I'd reduce the cumin by a bit next time.

I also have to add that I have been using my rowing machine. I was going to add a bunch of qualifiers there, about how it's not this or hasn't resulted in that or I'm not quite doing the other thing, but fuck it. I've been rowing 3 to 5 days a week, and I've been upping my distance/time a little such that I'm now rowing about 4000 meters (in about 28 minutes), and a couple of days a week I lift 5-pound weights for a (very) few minutes. I would like to get a heart monitor, and will probably do that soon, and I have not completely abandoned the idea of resuming my yoga practice. I find that viewing my Netflix selections, particularly the various television series (at the moment, it's "The Pallisers," based on the Trollope novels), works quite nicely as a distraction while I row; hockey works, too, because there aren't a lot of commercial breaks. Music doesn't work as well for me, though it has sufficed in the past; it's easier to lose myself in the viewing, and I don't have to choose from the crappy health-club viewing choices to do it. Not surprisingly, the exercise is helping my back pain quite a bit. It's not completely gone, and sitting too long in the wrong chair will cause it to flare up, but the rowing seems to be building core strength in ways that help. Baby steps, people--or any steps at all.

Simple Solutions to World Problems

No individuals were harmed in yesterday's meeting. In fact, in part thanks to my boss, everyone sat around holding hands and singing kumbaya.

Not surprisingly, I continue to fibrillate somewhat about the apartment thing. I keep Deciding--that I'm going to stay put, that I don't want to pack and move, that there will be plenty of nice places available next year, and so on, ad nauseam, but do I listen? No; no I do not. I peek at the listings here; I glance at the pictures there; I start to dream about granite countertops and a full-size stove whose pilot light doesn't go out whenever I use the burner, about a bathroom that doesn't suck, about a really great place! for not a lot more a month! which I can afford! Basically, I have to hunt my brain down, and haul it by the scruff of the neck back to the Decision, where I point to it and say, hey, brain, remember this? Because we are NOT MOVING. Lather-rinse-repeat.

I don't think it has all that much to do with moving, per se, but has more to do with fantasies about the Perfect Space. I realize that there is no such thing--especially not within the boundaries of my budget, generous though that is--but whenever I bump up against the thing that is irritating me (or the multiple things, in the current case), then I get frustrated. I also recognize that the owners of the current place could decide it would just be easier to have me move out, or they could dick around and not actually fix any of the things they said they'd fix, in which case moving has to go back on the table. But that would be foolish on their part. The rental agent I saw the other day said they've already had three tenants who had to move out (essentially break their leases) because they'd lost their jobs, and a fourth is about to join them, and this is all since December. It is going to get worse before it gets better. (And, to continue my point, I am actually willing to continue living here and paying rent here, if they fix the shit that's broke.)

Which is why the AIG assholes do, indeed, bug me. Why, exactly, do the companies need to retain the people who caused all these problems? Why aren't they firing those people? Clearly, they suck at their work, and, more to the point, with all of the people who are out of work--in part because of the aforementioned sucking of these "executives"--surely there are people out there who would be happy to take the jobs, and for considerably less than the assholes are making. Oh, they say, but there are so few people who truly understand all this international financial stuff!

Yes, exactly; that's the point. How 'bout we go back to the other plan, the one that involved making things and selling things rather than inventing new ways to shuffle money around while taking a cut for one's own pockets and the pockets of shareholders? I realize this sounds kind of simplistic, but, seriously, the whole point of banks and banking, so far as I can tell, is so people don't have to stuff their mattresses, and other people who want to start businesses (see: things, making and selling) can get loans. What else is there, really? This other shit is just a fancy version of what the mob does--it's money laundering, with a serious vig that you and I are forced to pay.

I've been watching "Bull Durham" with the Robbins/Costner commentary on while I row, and I am reminded of one of the best lines ever: "This is a simple game. You hit the ball, you throw the ball, you catch the ball." Seems like money should be the same thing, no? You make things; you sell things; you buy things. And they are things, not invented financial products that have little or no relationship to the actual world of things. There. Fixed.

Irritation Overlord

I had planned to take off on Thursday, in exchange for having gone in on Saturday and so i could catch up on my editing job, but nooooooo. A person in the organization is being a pain in the ass, and I therefore have to go to a meeting tomorrow morning. I am getting mighty tired of some things, most particularly of scrambling, constantly, to fix things and get things done and submit required things and smooth things over with various funding agencies, and then getting shit because I haven't also done it while balancing on my head and I haven't cured cancer. I jumped up and down and waved my arms around and cursed loudly a lot today, in the vicinity of my boss, mostly to blow off some irritation and partly to make sure he has my back and to figure out what our approach is tomorrow, so I can sit back and mostly shut up. Which I will make every effort to do, unless and until the person who's been being a pain in the ass starts pissing on my shoes again, at which point there will be issues. And then I'm going to come home and edit.

I saw an apartment today, and it had a balcony, and if you stand on the balcony, the thing outside is the beach. That's the good thing. It gets a lot of light, which is also good. However: it's $100/month more than the current place. It's a little smaller in the living room, which makes finding a place for my rowing machine a little more challenging. The kitchen is substantially smaller, with a lot less counter space. Most important, though, my spidey sense didn't tingle even a little--I didn't stand there thinking, "Wow; I'd really like to live here . . . hmmm . . . how can I make that happen? What do I need to do? Can I live with [this or that somewhat undesirable aspect]?" The location is tempting, the lake is tempting, but then I think about the deficits, particularly in the kitchen, and the extra money, and the cost of moving, and I'm not sufficiently tempted.

So send me calming thoughts for Thursday morning.