A Thought

I had a thought yesterday:

What if there were a sentient alphabet?

An alphabet that worked to make people understand how to read it and forced them to use it?

An alphabet that reproduces by people writing with it so others would use the same alphabet?

An alphabet whose very twists and edges to had meaning we couldn't understand, but changed how we think?

If there is such an alphabet, could we know?

Old Movie

I'm sitting in a theater waiting for them to start playing South Pacific. You know, the musical by Hammerstein and Rogers.

The weirdest thing is their playing disembodied audience sounds. Mumble, mumble, mumble.

It's disconcerting.

Normally, by now, my phone would be off and I'd be reading the book that's in my lap. This theater is way too dark. It's at the level that most movie theaters use after the previews start; dark enough to see the film on the screen, but bright enough to easily see the aisles and seats.

I know. Have you ever had your eyes dialated at the optometrist? It's at that level. Very uncomfortable, for me. I'm here by myself and I'm not going to ask a stranger, so I don't know if others find it as uncomfortable as I do.

The mumbles are strange. Constant. Part of me wonders if this is what He'll could be like. Unseen people having conversations around you, but you can't make out any words. Just sounds with enough structure to let you know it is language, but nothing distinct enough to be language. Listening to conversations in a language you don't speak would be easier on the brain because you would be able to make out individual words and sentences.

Have you heard the good news?

My cousin graduated from high school on the 2nd of June. I was the only one in my immediate family to go and sit and be bored and congratulate the kid and his parents and blah, blah, blah.

After the ceremony, I went to the house of my uncle and aunt for cake and chips and conversation and such. Eventually the subject of my youngest brother's wedding came up (it was last Saturday, for those with a score card) which the mutated into my uncle asking me about the program my brother is in.

Since I don't think I've written it down here before: my brother just completed his first year of medical school. Two or so years ago he earned his Master's degree in public health, which allowed him to travel to a few places in the world and see how crappy things are in other places. And although he wouldn't phrase it this way, he decided to become part of the solution. Hence, med school leading to tens of thousand in debt and a way for him to help educate people and solve some basic problems that too much of the world suffers from and too many people die from, like diarrhea.

So, my uncle and I talk about this for a bit and he asks me if I've ever considered doing something like what my brother is doing. I admit that yes, I've thought about it. He asks why I don't go in that direction. He says he knows I'm smart enough to do it if I want to and he thinks it'd be a good job. I agree with him that I could probably do it, but I won't. He asks why. I tell him that, in large part, it's because I'd have to deal with people around my space or in my face all day long and I don't really care for people. He looks around at the gathering thing and asks what I think this is. This, he says, has people. I give him a lopsided grin thing and nod, hoping that it show that I am uncomfortable being there. That I'm not there for my, but more for them. I think he gets it because he switches gears and asks me about writing. He says that he remembers me doing a thing with a blog and asks why I don't do writing. That's something I can do and don't have to deal with people, he says. I agree with him, but... He cuts me off with a but what. Just do it, he says. And I try to go into my explanation about how work leaves me mentally and emotionally exhausted so that when I'm done with the work day all my brain is good for is nothing he doesn't listen. He thinks I'm making excuses. Maybe I am. I've just been so worn out from work that I don't know anymore if it's actually work or if it's just me finding ways to be stuck. I don't admit it to him, though, because soon his wife jumps in about how it's important to have hobbies and I let the subject get changed. Of course that conversation has been with me for almost three weeks now.

Yesterday, there was news from work. Apparently my asshole boss has been let go. If I believed in a lord, I'd probably be thanking that being. My hope is that the person who is temporarily taking the asshole's place does not micromanage like he did. I hope she takes the time to listen and think before making a judgement. I hope she stands up for the nurses. I hope she does a good job and whoever they end up replacing the asshole with full time does a good job, too.

There is a problem with this, for me though, and it has to do with all the family around here who only hear my complaints about the man and not the actual work that I do. When my parents told me the news, they expected me to be ecstatic. They thought I'd be jumping around and suddenly be looking forward to going to work on Monday. What they failed to think about was the he only made an already wearying/worrying and hard job worse, the job is still going to be wearying and worrying and hard. I hopefully won't have someone peering over my shoulder making the job harder, but it's not going to get better, for me. If I was the kind of person who could just leave all the work bullshit at work, I would be fine, but I'm not. I've been gone from work for a week and a half and have had work related dreams almost every night. Why? Because my job is never done. No part of my job is actually complete until the shift has started then I can't worry about the current shift, but I still have to worry about the next shift and the next day and the next week and the next month. I see holes in the schedule that extend for weeks and months and I'm not allowed to do anything about them because of the limited number of people or the fucking contract or the possibility of someone being removed for training or so many hundreds of other variables. Oh, and now we're coming up on fire season and our prison trains crews to go out and help fight the fires and with them goes nurses which cuts into my fucking schedule and eliminates a body. Of course we don't hire seasonal employees to help if there are fires because, you know, that costs extra money even though it would fucking make sense and ensure that the quality of care at the actual facility stayed high. This prison is not near large cities. I doesn't have a large pool of registry nurses to pull from when we're short. Almost all of them have to drive in from more than an hour away when they do come in...

See, this is why I have the dreams. I should be able to get the hell over the damned place and not fucking worry, but I do. And I try to figure out how to make the shitty situation look a little better with some polish, but polished shit is still fucking shit.

Okay, I'm working myself up. I'm going to stop. I'm going to head upstairs and have some food. I'm going to go and watch Super 8 this afternoon and enjoy myself. I'm going to finish re-reading The Phantom Tollbooth and marvel at its brilliance.

I'll probably return tomorrow.

Be well.

Lack of Feeling

That's my parent's house from Google Street View.

I don't know how I feel about it.

On Time, Work, and Idioms

Today has moved surprisingly fast. Time seems to move in large jumps petween the moments I glance at the clock. It probably helps that I don't actually remember doing my work, although my desk is cleaned off, and that TMSV has been away from her desk most of the day and therefore isn't a distraction.

It was nice to be plugging along at whatever I was plugging along at this morning then look into the corner of my main monitor and see that the time was 11:00 AM, thirty minutes before lunch. It was a surprise to get back from lunch and do whatever I did then look down and notice that it was after three.

I truly have no memory of doing my work.

I must have searched and screened and scanned and data entered this morning, but I don't remember doing it.

I don't remember pulling up much to read. I do remember posting on that other blog. I don't remember playing online games. I do remember replying to comments in the last post and on other people's blogs. I don't really remember my lunch hour, but I must have left the office because otherwise I'd have to pee, probably pretty badly. Like a racehorse, I suppose, but since I've never seen a racehorse, or any horse, pee I'm not sure exactly what that mean. Although I suppose it means pee a lot because, I assume, that an animal that much larger than a human has a larger bladder than me and therefore pees a large quantity when it pees.

Where do you think the phase "pee like a racehorse" came from? Do other cultures have a similar phrase?

That's one thing I sometimes wonder about when I watch science fiction. Idioms, I mean. An alien must get really confused when a human says something was "tongue-in-cheek." Even with a translator that can translate one language perfectly into another language, would it recognize the phrase as an idiom and translate it as "humorously" or "jokingly," or would it do a direct translation of the words? Then the alien would be wondering what the human is doing with his (or her) tongue in his (or her) cheek. And isn't it hard to talk with one's tongue in one's cheek. That's assuming the alien even knows what a tongue is!

Thing should work the other way, too. I mean shouldn't aliens be going around saying things like, "Your words are feglaios on a bentomej to me." What the hell does that mean, right? Hell, even if there's some kind of context around it, maybe it's an argument that's gotten personal, does it mean the words are hurtful? Meaningless? Stupid? Unhelpful? Helpful? What?

Huh, I guess my brother's girlfriend, who's from China, has this problem. Well, on occasion. I can't remember it coming up, but she's only been in the US a few years. It was probably worse early on. Wouldn't it suck to have someone make up idioms then you use them...

You know, I bet my brother's done that to her at least once. I would.

What's in a name? Returns again.

Sometimes I see a name, here at work, that's just screams at me. Today's: Enrique Goldbaum.

There's probably no story behind the name other than his parents like the name Enrique, but still...

What's in a Name? People Edition

There's a doctor who sends many medical reports to my work. His last name is Guinney.

I just can't keep myself from wondering about his ancestry.

Some Music of My Life

I've spent a lot of time recently wondering when people stop searching for new music to listen to.

At what point do people stop tuning into radio stations that play new, or newish, music and start listening for station that play the music they listened to between junior high and, say, 27?

I don't listen to music on the radio, much. Stations piss me off with all their commercials and intros and traffic updates and inane DJ chatter, so I tend to listen to NPR because the major commercials only come twice a year and the chatter is is less inane. Still, there are those moments when I just don't want to consider anything and I'll flip through the radio. And, like most everyone else, I'll stop on songs that I recognize, songs that I can sing along with.

A few months ago, during all this overtime stuff, I started listening to Last.FM when I could. It's great fun because you put in the name of an artist you like and then it plays music by people who are similar. Without it I'd never have experienced the joys of listening to Moxy Früvous and Julia Nunes, among others. (Although the damn radio keeps trying to slip in Hootie & the Blowfish songs, which sucks seahorse scrōt.) So, in that way I've started to move out of what I know and into finding other things, even if I don't buy any CDs or songs from iTunes or wherever, I'm getting to know some new, to me at least, artists.

Still, though I wonder when people stop listening for new things. When driving through the valley on my way to the airport a few weeks ago, there were a bunch of stations claiming to play the best of the '80s and '90s, stuff for my generation. Have we, or many of us at least, already shut off our desire for new music and only want to listen to what we already know? We're only in our thirties, for Xusia's sake!

Anyway, thinking along that line led me to start thinking about my dad. He used to be a pretty big music guy. Lots of records from the '60s and '70s, but not much of anything, if anything at all, from the three decades following. Seems like he sort of quit buying, and maybe listening, to new music between the time my mom got pregnant with me and when they got married. When he discovered modern day record clubs, he bought stuff from his youth. The radio in the house was, except for days when snow was on the ground, tuned to stations claiming to play "the best of the '60s and '70s." and eventually branched out to include the '80s.

I decided to make a mix for him of artists he may have heard coming from my room when I was younger or never heard at all.

I have a few questions, though, that maybe someone out in bland (you know, blog land) might be able to help me with:

1. I have to include The Dresden Dolls. Finding this band was one of my happiest musical moments in recent years. Right now I'm planning on putting "Coin-Operated Boy" on the CD because it's the most accessible song, I think. It's fun, but not my favorite. It's not like "Dear Jenny" or "Girl Anachronism" or "Dirty Business," but are those too outrageous for my dad? Should I play it safe, or throw him into the deep end?
2. I choose Cake's "Love You Madly" because it's a fun song, but I also thought about "Short Skirt, Long Jacket" and "Going the Distance" and "Building A Religion." Maybe something else? Cake has a lot of great songs, so it's hard for me to choose. The only reason I chose "Love You Madly" is because it was the first song that popped into my head when I thought about putting Cake on the CD.
3. Semisonic's "Closing Time" was choosen because it's a good, catchy song. Hell, it was a single for a reason. (It also has a real bad ass video.) The song's excellent, there's no way for me to deny it, but it's not my favorite. My favorite is "Gone to the Movies." So do I pick my favorite song or a recognized great song?
4. The song I'm most unsure of is "Six Different Ways" from The Cure. I just really enjoy the song, but don't think it really represents The Cure. Any suggestions?

The more I think about it...

...the more I realize that if "Come Together" had been written in the past 5 years the more likely it would have been about bukkake.

Not that it would stop my enjoyment of the song.

"How are you?"

I got the question, "How are you?" from an old friend who I haven't corresponded with in quite a while.

When I went to reply, I paused. A long pause. The thought was, how much do I write?

Do I spill everything on this person? (A person who I never really spilled anything on before.) Do I just say I'm "meh" and leave it at that? If I aim for the middle, which side should I favor more?

Eventually, I wrote. I kept it light. Sure, I said I'm terrified of my immediate future, but even that was kept more jokey than serious.

What's a person supposed to do? A letter out of no where (I was reminded of this fun thing we did years ago, wasn't that a blast?) isn't the proper place to throw hardcore feelings and painful thoughts. The "How are you?" is more an I-hope-you're-doing-pretty-well,-but-if-your-not-I'd-rather-you-pretended-because,-really,-I-just-wanted-to-say-a-quick-hello-and-remember-a-bit-of-fun-and-it's-polite-to-also-ask-how-your-doing-at-the-same-time, isn't it?

Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just me trying to work out my frustration on how fucking vague that question is. "How are you?" ranges from the toe you stubbed on the door while walking to the bathroom at 2AM to the promotion you got at work to the soggy fries you had at lunch to the exquisite, intense, painful, joyful release of an orgasm you had during sex to the mediocre TV you watched, and beyond. "How are you?" envelopes your life, but, in my experience, it never wants more than a three word response, "I'm doing fine." and that's just not really an answer.

"How are you?" has become a meaningless question and it only expects meaningless answers.

Oh, and if the friend who wrote me that letter reads this (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! *ahem* HA!), it's not about you. I promise. It's about what I think of all of us.

A Thought

It occurred to me last night, while watching Nickelodeon (HA), that I am part of The Present, not The Future.

42 Things That Are Good

1. "Under Pressure" by Davide Bowie and Queen
2. Peanut Butter
3. The first frost of fall. (Although we don't get ours here until the last week or so of November.)
4. This xkcd comic.
5. Methyl Salicylate, in safe amounts.
6. How the hat is involved with the Golden Plates.
7. Brothers
8. Scott Pilgrim comics
9. Barenaked Ladies, the band or the naked ladies.
10. $5 night at the movie theater.
11. Thinking about a comic my brother and I came up with, but will probably never make. And if it does get made, it'll never be published.
12. Daria, the TV show
13. "Daria," the Cake song
14. Raccoon faces
15. Fainting goats
16. Republican blocking the bailout plan on Monday.
17. The freshly cut ends from a stick of salami.
18. Thunder and lightning
19. Warm rains where the drops are the size of bees.
20. The extra fuzzy part of carpets under couches.
21. Aquaman, the best superhero
22. Stargate: Atlantis
23. New comic day
24. Tina Fey as Sarah Palin
25. Tina Fey, in general
26. Pen and paper RPGs with friends
27. The upside down question mark. (¿)
28. Fables
29. Jack of Fables
30. ANSI Art
31. Cheese
32. Star Trek and most of what's followed.
33. Low clouds pressed into flat discs.
34. Wood stoves
35. Prime numbers
36. Why stars twinkle.
37. The Muppet Show
38. Blogs devoted to critically thinking about comics.
39. The smell of new, pink erasers.
40. Plurals that end in -ices.
41. Math jokes
42. 5:00 PM

Things I Did Today...

• Bought a gift certificate for my dad's birthday, since I couldn't think of anything else to get him after a week of trying.
• Learned that instead of five weeks away, my next turn at the front counter is in two weeks.
• Got a new plan for how to use the new system at work, by using the new system as little as possible!
• Took a pee. In the potty! Aimed for the freakin' bee. Left a pee for the next guy to take.
• Took one break 30 minutes late and didn't get a chance to take the other.
• Felt grateful for my parents.
• Even the best option is worse than the old system.
• Didn't talk like a fucking pirate once!
• Read not nearly enough pages of my book.
• Ate the last of some leftovers, this was day five. Don't think I'm sick of the meal, though.
• Resisted the urge to explain to my supervisor why rotation is stupid and specialization would work better.
• Listened as the left earphone died.
• Thought about cheesy, garlicky, mashed potatoes that will be made tomorrow.
• Moved all my crap back to my desk from the front counter desk.
• Walked around clicking my pen.
• Wondered why people I work with don't read much.
• Worried about the state's budget, even if it does get signed this time.
• Disappointed in my reaction to learning my cousin was in the hospital. Am I only occasionally such a bad person or am I always such a bad person?
• Thought horrible thoughts.
• Hopefully helped some people at the front counter.
• Farted.

Before Seeing It

I heard a review on the news of WALL•E last night. The reviewer gave it two-and-a-half out of four because, I'm paraphrasing as best I can, parts of it are lonely and sad and families, and especially younger kids, don't need sadness and loneliness when they go to the movies.

I would rather hear what she thought of the movie and why she didn't like it than what she thinks families should want from the movies they go to see. I wonder what she thought of it compared to the "family" films out there, like College Road Trip.

I haven't seen WALL•E yet (I'm going this evening.) but her comment about what families, and especially younger kids, don't need to see.

I completely disagree with her that younger kids don't need to see things that depict loneliness and sadness. These kids, like every other human being, feel lonely and sad sometimes, but they don't always have the vocabulary to describe how they're feeling. When their best friend is gone for the summer and they just don't feel right, how else can they describe it? Seeing things that they have felt, or are feeling, or will feel, helps them to build some sort of language to share how they feel with their parents or others, even it the only thing they can say is, "I feel like WALL•E did when he was on the planet all by himself," and from that parents or an older siblings or other family members can build on ideas to help the kids understand what they're feeling and how it moves on.

Maybe I’m just naïve thinking that kids have reasoning abilities. I doubt it, though.

Hell, I've seen the previews, and WALL•E doesn't stay lonely forever.

That has to count for something, dammit.

Anal Battlestar Galactica

Okay, so this is going to be packed full of spoilers for those who haven’t finished Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica and has some stuff from what’s been out in Season 4, so far, even though I haven’t seen any of the episodes.

That said, I started watching Season 2.0 again last night and there’s a scene in the episode where Chip 6 shows Baltar some of the massacre that took place on Kobol before the exodus. He protests that the gods and humanity lived side by side in harmony on Kobol. The Chip 6 tells him that everything that’s happened before will happen again.

And here I started thinking: 12 Cylon models, 12 Lords of Kobol. Could it be that the Lords of Kobol were Cylons? The Cylons can download their memories and share them with others. If one dies his or her replacement will be along shortly wearing the same face. How does that not appear to be a god to a human?

I’m sure I’m not the first one to notice this or even think too much about it, but since I didn’t want to actually work today, I used the Battlestar Wiki and Wikipedia to compare the 13 Colonies with their zodiac counterparts and the 11 Cylons that we know and the 10 named Lords of Kobol, along with the one who’s not named and is the Cylon God, on a neat little table. I also did one list that lines up the Cylon numbers with the traditional order of western zodiac to see how well that might line up.

Colonies	Astrological Partners	Symbol	My Cylon Pick	Cylon by Number	Comparison God
Aerelon	Aries	Ram	Saul Tigh ?	Brother Cavil Ones	Zeus
Tauron	Taurus	Bull	Brother Cavil Ones	Leoben Conoy Twos
Gemenon	Gemini	Twins	Boomer/Athena Eights	D'Anna Threes	Aurora
Canceron	Cancer	Crab	Galen Tyrol ? (12, according to actor blog.)	Simon Fours	Apollo
Leonis	Leo	Lion	Samuel Anders ?	Aaron Doral Fives	Ares
Virgon	Virgo	Virgin	Tory Foster ?	Natalie Sixes	Artemis
Libris	Libra	Scales	Aaron Doral Fives	?	Asclepius
Scorpia	Scorpio	Scorpion	Natalie Sixes	Boomer/Athena Eights	Aphrodite
Sagittaron	Sagittarius	Archer	?	?	Athena
Caprica	Capricorn	Sea-Goat	Simon Fours	?	Poseidon
Aquaria	Aquarius	Water Carrier	Leoben Conoy Twos	?	?
Picon	Pisces	Two Fishes	D'Anna Threes	Galen Tyrol 12, according to actor blog.	Hera
Earth	**Gaia or Terra**	N/A	N/A	N/A	Cylon God

And so, in the end, I have Athena, the Lord of Kobol who killed herself left without any Cylon to match up.

I also matched Athena up with Sagittaron/Sagittarius. According to my minimal research into the zodiac Sagittarians: "Keyword: "I perceive". Freedom loving, straightforward, extrovert, philosophical, intellectual, fun-loving, arrogant, adventurous, expansive, optimistic. Can be blundering, scattered, careless, jealous, too-serious, tactless."

Huh, sounds to me like Starbuck fits that description almost perfectly. Could she be the final Cylon?

Ron Moore said that final Cylon was not in the "Last Supper" photo, but that could be misinformation. If not, then who could it be?

If I’m right with the gods=Cylons thing, then it’s a woman. But who?
Could Ellen Tigh have been a Cylon? She fits the Sagittarius list as well as Starbuck did. Will she turn up on Earth upset, even though Tigh killed her? After all, didn’t the Three who saw the final five say that the last Cylon model wasn’t in the Colonial Fleet?

Vacation Days

I mailed off applications and other stuff to Cowtown three weeks, or so, ago. The deadline for filing an application for the two positions was two weeks ago. I'd really like to hear something back.

A huge part of me is afraid that I won't get interviews there because I also asked them if they could schedule my interviews for a Friday or a Monday morning because of the long drive I have to make to get there. I left out the other reasons, like enjoying having an excuse for a long weekend. Yeah, it makes me feel better when I take a day off from work because I have an interview, how about you? Can you just take any old day off without an excuse and feel okay about it?

Along those lines, I've been thinking a lot about setting up some sort of tour vacation. Sure, I can't afford it right now and probably not next year either, but if I stay on schedule I'll have my final student loan paid off at the end of 2009. 2010 I could go. Get some package and go to Salzburg and Munich and Bern, or a cruise from St. Petersburg to Moscow, or Rome and Florence and Venice, or go to Viet Nam or Thailand or Pakistan or Egypt or New Zealand. I don't know, yet. 2010 is a long way away. Hell, I don't even have a Passport; kind of need one of those if I ever want to get out of the country.

I guess the only, realistic, thing I have to worry about between now and then is how much this sort of thing will cost me in two years. What with gas prices going up and the value of the US dollar going down by a flight across an ocean may more than double. I bet my salary won't.

I could probably start more local. You know, like Alaska or New York or Hawaii. Probably be cheaper, too. Well, maybe not Alaska. Alaska would sort of have to be done on a cruise to be able to see a large amount of the immense state. And I'd rather not do the other two with a tour group, but also not by myself.

Well, two years is a long time. Who knows what'll happen between now and then?

Right?

A Power of Money

So, I pretended I wanted to buy one and went through the phone thing I wrote about this morning to see what the plans were.

Yeah.

Okay, the cheapest one, the one with the least minutes and not unlimited minutes on weekends, was $39.99 a month, pretty comparable to just about everything out there. Then, to get the deal on the phone, you have to get the phone internet connection thing.

Yeah.

The cheapest one of those is $30 per month and limits what you can do for free on the 'net. The more expensive one is twice as much and lets you do wireless stuff through a Bluetooth. I don't understand why that should cost more if you can already access the intersblag. Is it that much faster? It had better be like 8 times faster.

Whatever.

And the at least $70 a month is all wrapped up into a nice-for-them 2-year contract.

Yeah.

I don't think that, even with the great deal on a cool phone, I'm going to be ordering one of these.

The thing is that I'd like a mobile phone. I could get rid of my land line and hold on to one phone number for a long, long time, even if I move to another city.

The problem is that I don't use the phone that much. I only pick it up like once, maybe twice, a week. The rest of the time the machine picks up and whoever called hangs up.

Right now, I pay about $17.50 each month for that honor. I'm sure as hell not going to spend four times as much to not use a phone more than a couple of times each week.

"Ah, but what about those prepaid phones?" some savvy reader may ask.

To which I'd reply, "The ones I've looked at aren't quite right either."

See, it looks like there are two deals:
1) You get a phone and then buy the prepaid time on a card. After a given amount of time, the money you put up expires.
--OR--
2) You get a prepaid contract that you re-up every six months or a year, when ever it expires and the money you didn't spend moves over to the next contract period, but if you decide to go to another company, or in some cases a new phone, you lose all the money you've spent.

Neither one seems like a good plan for a guy like me.
1) I don't want to lose money by not using the time I've already bought because I'm not "popular" or I prefer being face to face or write an e-mail.
--OR--
2) There goes any thought to having flexibility on a prepaid plan.

And here I am, mobile phoneless and quite likely to remain this way, even if I do move.

AAAAAAARGH!

HOLY MOTHER OF FUCKING SHIT!

If only it'd talk about what kind of service plans one'd be roped into!

bored, bored, bored

I leave early today, but that doesn't stop the boring from creeping in. I held on to all the work I was giving yesterday until this morning. It didn't take long to finish. I wandered around the 'net just looking and nothing struck me.

What I really want to do is sit here and read my book, but I don't know if I could get away with that. It's not like high school where the teachers had thirty other students to watch and if one spent the whole hour reading a book, why should they care? Here, there are only a few of us and they expect us to be busy all the time, even though they know that we only get 2/3rds the work we got six months ago and a new person was hired in those last six months.

So, I try to look busy. I shuffle papers around at my desk. I keep a couple of files around. I get up and wander around (although that also helps with my sciatica crap). I type a letter to my parents. I poke around through comic archives. I roll around in my cubie area and grab my stapler as if I'm going to use it, bring the stapler back to my desk and ten minutes later I roll it back to its usual place. I cross off today on the calendar with the symbol I use to mark the short day. I eat a granola bar so I won't take the giant ibuprofen on an empty stomach. I listen to SHTK whine about stupid things and stupid people.

Still, I'm bored.

In my head I start thinking about the future. I start with the near future and the possibility of pizza for dinner. I move on to Friday and the drive to my parents' house and the brother, with his girlie friend, being there; the last time I saw him was a year ago and I've never met her. I wonder if JL and H, among others, will want to game. I skip to New Year's and think about how much I hate that holiday. Then I think farther wonder about people I may meet and places that I'll dream about visiting. I try to picture myself being visited by the spawn of my brothers, which is really hard, for reasons that I don't want to write about. I wander through the house that I'd like to own and I mow the lawn that I always wanted growing up and let much of the land go wild. I tend to an herb garden. I waltz with an old friend at her daughter's wedding. I fall asleep.

And now, along with bored, I'm a little sad, maybe more wistful.

I can't/don't picture what I used to think of as the perfect future for myself anymore. I suppose I don't believe in that movie happy ending.

Still, I'd like to live a day like that Lovin' Spoonful song "Rain of the Roof," just once.

"Perfect Day"

In yesterday's post, I sort of asked for topics and Geewits wrote: "Here's a fun topic for you. Describe a 'perfect day' from the time you wake up until you go to bed. What would your 'perfect day' consist of?"

I'm going to start this with telling everyone that this week may not be the best week for imagining a "perfect day." I sort of had an over thinking weekend which sent me into a period of doubt and loathing that I have yet to slither my way out of. On the plus side, the only "perfect day" I can come up with seems pretty realistic. If I got up and put some real effort into my life, that is.

Perfect Day:

I'd wake up sometime after ten, not because an alarm is going off or there's a noise outside or I have to pee really bad, but because my body just decides that I'm rested enough.
I'd kiss the woman in bed with me, then head off to the bathroom.
From there, to the kitchen for breakfast, something easy -- cereal, yogurt, frozen corn dogs, leftover spaghetti, whatever -- and some book readin' or TV watchin'.
After that a shower and when we're both ready we'd go out we head to a museum or a movie or a matinée at little repertory.
When we're done, we'd go out to an early dinner somewhere out of the way that's a little dingy place with food that's quite delicious.
Back home we'd watch TV and read and talk until we want to go to bed where we'd have that special sort of sex that's full of passion, but is sort of slow, so the temperature within rises and then cool off a little before it rises again, higher than before, and it happens again and again until the pleasure we feel is almost painful, and when la petite mort happens, it really feels that way.
And in each other's arms, we sleep.

There is what today's "perfect day" would be.