work

I am proud of my ability to micro-nap

I replaced my damaged Scarlatti keyboard sonatas CD with one by Dubravka Tomsic. I’ve always liked listening to Scarlatti while I work– I remember a happy snowy morning of geometry homework and Scarlatti when we were doing compass and straight-edge. Yes, trisecting an angle for fame and fortune, I will get right on that! And Scarlatti is in the subset of my writing music that Sanguinity can tolerate when we’re at home writing together. (Russian men’s chorus, no. Enya’s Shepherd Moon definitely no, although it always works because I wrote my whole thesis to it. Cristina Branco yes.) Anyway, I think this version and I will become friends just fine.

Many of our tomatoes were volunteers this year, but they made it and the orange cherry-sized ones are especially nice. Some split skins because of the sudden rains.

Sanguinity took me for pho last night and the restaurant’s TV was showing the Emmys. I hadn’t seen any of the comedies. Remember when the best TV was sit-coms and the Friends cast made more money than any actors ever? When I stayed at a hotel alone this summer and channel-surfed before going to sleep, none of the reruns I clicked through held up to the test of time except Frasier. That surprised me, because I got pretty sick of Frasier when it was being broadcast.

I’m supposed to go to a strike captains’ training tomorrow because my union may go on strike Monday. But even though the union’s good about providing food, I am a very hard sell for meetings that last over an hour. No way 5:30 to 8:30 is going to work for me.

a few bullet points

  • To my surprise, I was invited to a Jeopardy audition after all! I wasn’t really feelin’ it once dates and travel budgets got real, but it’s nice to be asked.
  • Last night I cut up a bunch of fruit for a training I was helping with this morning, and put it in the car to keep it cool overnight because there wasn’t enough room in the fridge. Sure enough, the car was prowled overnight…but they didn’t take the fruit. Who doesn’t want 25 bucks’ worth of delicious precut fruit?! The trunk was open and stuff was thrown around, but all that was missing were the Shell gift cards that had been in the glove compartment. A ball cap was left behind in the driver’s side footwell. It has duct tape on the front and on the duct tape is written REDNECK. I don’t want it, so I’m srsly thinking of hanging it on the fence near where the car was parked, in case Car Prowler wants it back.
  • Sanguinity and I have gotten up to nine miles in our marathon training walks, which means on Saturday evening we walked from our house down to Sellwood Riverfront Park and home again. I heard a pair of mourning doves from the Springwater Trail. Next week’s assignment is a modest four miles, so maybe a hike at Angel’s Rest?
  • I’m reading Peter Cameron’s Coral Glynn. It’s a quiet book, but this scene at an awkward wedding luncheon made me laugh:

    The bridal party arrived, and when they were all correspondingly seated, a waiter appeared with a magnum of champagne and went round the table, filling everybody’s coupe. He was young and terrified and had apparently been told that each squat glass must be filled to its brim. Everyone sat in silence while this feat was slowly and painstakingly achieved. Little beads of quivering perspiration appeared on the waiter’s forehead. Watching him was like watching a medical student suture a wound.

    When the waiter had scurried out of the room, Robin stood and attempted to raise his glass, but its brimming abundance made this impossible, so he bent down and sipped preventatively from it, and, so tamed, managed to hold it before him. “A toast,” he said, “to Clement and Coral: May their days be long and their loads be light, with peaceful days and fruitful nights!”

    Everyone agreed to this toast by leaning over and sipping in a delicate feline way at their champagne.

  • Supposed to ride my bike to work tomorrow, as I resolved to do once a week for the PSU Bike to Work Challenge that’s happening all this month. Last time, I tried using only one gear to see if I’d like a single-speed bike. I got off and walked uphill twice on my way home. This time, I will try using three gears. I think Portland has a club for riders of three-speeds.

    Basically, I act like I should get a medal for riding to work: I am willing to do it if there is lots of praise and prize drawings and preferably a free breakfast involved. After this month I’ll be reading my book on the bus again.

I guess this goes here since FB and G+ can’t accommodate simple html tags

“I like to think of myself as a coworker with lots of experience rather than a boss,” Franklin said.

I like to think of myself as a boss more than a slave but mostly I prefer to not think about it at all because when I think about it, I can’t stop.

“Okay,” I said.

I was worried Vanessa Veselka’s Zazen would be too hip or lit-fic for me, but I think I’m going to love it.

All the Livelong Day

At work I’ve gone from 3/4 time to full time for the next couple of months, to help fill in for someone on medical leave. Last week was my first 40-hour work week in ages. Let the whining commence!

Nah…I miss my schoolkid schedule, but it’s temporary. I’m cutting back on nearly everything else– no going to Chinuk wawa three times a week for awhile, and I don’t know how many walks with refgoddess I can fit in when I have to be at the office by 8:30. Running remains on the back burner. I think I’ll do best when I make things very simple: work, writing, and basic maintenance of health and household. Monastic contentment, right? And I can use the money, with a Colorado trip coming up and some furnace-and-roof debt still on the books.

But I do feel a rumble of resentment and panic when my time starts to resemble a sliding-tile puzzle, where I’m moving blocks around but constantly running into the walls of work and sleep. When I consider getting up a half-hour earlier to do something, and it won’t work because it will disrupt things back into the previous evening. Life shouldn’t be like that.

At least I’ve been better than usual this week about taking advantage of short writing opportunities. Ten minutes suddenly seems worthwhile, I’m writing on the bus a little because I might not get another chance all day, and an hour feels like luxury instead of obligation. I hope I’ll have a little to show for it after eight weeks, as I very very slowly conjure up this novel.

Today Sang and I got out to Powell Butte for a little hike– in fact we were all done and back at the house, with a grocery trip thrown in, by eleven o’clock! The wind was cold, so we hastened to the forested far side of the hill. Lots of yellow violets blooming, and the nettles are knee-high and looking pretty darn vigorous already. I was happy to hear a raven, after a winter of staying in town hearing crows.

Yesterday I got around to making soda bread, after buying the buttermilk just before St. Patrick’s Day. Warm with butter: so good.

Next book to read: Lisa Lutz’ Trail of the Spellmans, fifth in a series that makes me laugh out loud. (I’m currently finishing up Kage Baker’s The Children of the Company: satisfying to fill in some knowledge-gaps, but Mendoza is the heart of the series for me and she doesn’t appear in this one.) As for TV, Sang and I are re-watching the first season of Sarah Connor Chronicles, which feels much richer and more suspenseful than the first time around. (So many shows I’m iffy about the first season. Will they all seem better on re-watch?)

I am dismayed that I wish I could turn my brain off

Tomorrow and the day after I’m taking this online class at work that starts at 6 a.m. It was either attend online with east-coast people and start at 6 a.m., or find some classroom in Beaverton by 8 a.m., so I figured it was about even. Still, I am feeling slightly pre-emptively desperate. I will leave my house at five and park the car on this side of the bridge, and catch a very early bus. My usual bus line doesn’t start that early.

I am washing out the coffee pot and finding a travel mug and packing my lunch and laying out my clothes. I guess lunch is going to be at 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. I am resenting the way I’m worrying about all this already, and resenting the way jobs dominate non-job time.

life is a serial

I goofed off at work until I felt compelled to stay late and put together some interview packets so I wouldn’t worry all weekend that our interviewer Jeremy came by to get some and there weren’t any. So then I caught a late bus to the library to pick up my holds and walked home, only to find that the dog had gone beyond his six-hour-or-so limit and peed and pooped on the floor. (He’s, or we’ve, been so good lately, too!) So I cleaned that up and took him out and it felt like a long time before I could sit down with a bowl of cheese puffs and catch up on the internet. Right now I’m about a half hour behind schedule; ideally I would have already posted this and I would be washing dishes or making mac and cheese with garden tomatoes.

(Here I was tempted to tell everyone my Whole Ideal Schedule, but that would make life too easy for the snipers.)

So would you like to know about my current breakfast cereal? Sanguinity and I were at the Fred Meyer marveling at how many varieties of frosted mini-wheats are now available (blueberry! chocolate!), and I spotted the Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats Touch of Fruit in the Middle Mixed Berry. (Link leads to review with the interesting sentence “Maybe this is what happens in the wild when animals chow down on tree bark to find sticky sap and grubs.”)

“Oh, that looks like your sort of thing!” I said to Sanguinity. She likes the granola with dried berries in it. But she said no, it looked like my kind of thing. Apparently I have problems with the self/others concept when it comes to foods I find delicious. And she was right! She had one taste the next morning and said I could have the whole box. She also pointed out that it was like Pop Tarts in cereal form.

I like them, but consider them decadent enough that when they’re gone, they’re gone. On the other hand, I will let myself try a box of the chocolate variety next.

not a comic

Whoops, I spaced Hourly Comic Day on Tuesday. I’ve done it a couple times but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten them posted on the official site. Kate Beaton sets a great example of just doing some hourly comics sometimes, on days when it seems called for. So I don’t feel too bad.

Here’s something that could have been a Three on the Third comic, but probably won’t be:

When Element One, “Evidence suggests I’m not particularly good at my job,” combines with Element Two, “Judging by today, this is one of the stupider jobs in the world,” it seems like my resulting conclusion could go one of two ways. One way is, “Oh well, no reason to angst too much then.” The other is, “MY WHOLE LIFE SUCKS DOUBLE.” Why do I always go the second way?

Mileage news: When I posted my January miles to the Million Mile Ultra, it was my biggest month since last July when I ran that 50-miler! Yay! On the down side, not one mile yet in February. Will walk tomorrow morning.