elainegrey

Oh no. The half kilogram of new China tea produces a mighty acidic brew, nothing like the keemun i favor. Looks like milk in the morning tea for a while. (And i may be asking if anyone wants the tea, once i see what it is again.)

Also, my laptop has been trying to repartition the external firewire drive and failing. I finally aborted so i could type on my machine before work today.

I've spent the quiet of this morning looking at the details for Sunol regional wilderness: gate opens at 8 am (so leaving at dawn is unnecessary), plant list, maps, and podcast. This should be a nice target to keep in mind this week.

Yesterday was a gently lovely day. Meeting was fine, but i knew i could not spare the energy to stay for Adult Ed. My dear friend leading the discussion understood, particularly when i explained my boss was in town this week. Home where Christine and i chatted about epistemology over lunch, and then about the design of the quiz for our app. I know have a better sense of how the questions should be structured. I spent some time knitting (knook) while listening to the Mary Russell story The Game, and as that story plays with the Kipling story Kim, i downloaded a Google Book version of Kim. Note to self: check with Gutenberg editions before going to google! Oh, the typos in the text! (On the other hand, illustrations. Hmm.) Christine ran the grocery errand alone while i finished a few household chores. Evening was our usual British mystery: this night we chose the next episode of Foyle's War.

While i am stressed when thinking about this week, particularly given an aside the vice president made about my boss' visit's purpose, i think i'm also doing a good bit of self care.

Vacation and then three weeks of intensity have left me feeing decoupled from relationships outside of work.

This must be one of those disruptions that offers me a chance to restructure, be mindful of what i want. Admittedly, though, the sense of waking form the work trance is one of being dazed and uncertain as to what is necessary or desired.

There's self care and house care, which are neither immediate nor sustained gratification.

I've been poking at the Lupine work when i have had breaks, and note the undermining critical voice that passes through my mind. I try to hold tight to my vision of communicating not expertise but awareness of diversity in the natural world. I am not an expert in botany; i am someone who delights in the multitude of forms that plants have taken in their evolution. I want to help people who are curious up the next step in satisfying their curiosity, delivering them to the front door of the botanists prepared with satisfying observations.

To that end, should i make a photography junket this morning or continue with the photos i have?

Or, another long term investment in the future: should i do crafts with the supplies i have? All the paper supplies for making cards - i have pondered making cards not for my pleasure but to use the supplies and then try to sell on etsy ... i wish there was a way to see what was *selling* on etsy, not just what is for sale.


Christine has awakened: looks like we'll go for a photography walk.

Yesterday i felt like i had some horrible chemical exposure during meeting for business. The headache and malaise stayed with me the rest of the day.

--==∞==--

Before the impact of the chemicals, i wondered what Benjamin Franklin would have thought about "metadata" collection in the mail. This morning i find that collecting data of the cover of your mail is prohibited (except law enforcement yadda yadda). I'm not in the mood to let myself be distracted to find out if one needs a court order to read someone's mail or collect the "metadata," but i find it telling that the information on the cover of mail has been considered privileged. Metadata, harumph.

Back to messenger pigeons?

Yesterday was a bit of a cascade of stress. I did clear up a communication gap with my product counterpart where i was taking a section of notes as an aspirational goal and he was taking them as engraved commitments.

One huge chunk of issues is due to the fact no one moved on the scheduling when i was on vacation, and that fact is obscured in my colleague's mind: he only sees "We're having problems with the last mile."

I pushed around paperwork all evening in a bit of a mental haze, and i've canceled my Monday vacation. I know this isn't the wisest of mental health moves; on the other hand, i've got to get ahead of the relentless steam roller because i don't see how to get out of its way until we've dealt with a huge backlog. I do need a frank chat with my scrummaster: he attends the engineering meetings that go on forever, and i wonder if that takes too much of his time.

Anyhow, big exhale from me about work.

I "shoulda" had an appointment with my career counsellor this week but i continue in my behind-ness.

--==∞==--

Pissed. It may not be the actuality, but i feel like the build coordinator has just dumped something on me because he's gone off to attend the shindig with the new president. Rather annoyed that i was up late working, and i find this email at 7:18 for me to do crap before 9 am.

I'm somewhere between crying and quitting. I am not in position to quit, so i probably ought to have a good cry.

Spent too much time this morning pondering grey cards for controlling white balance (after reading http://www.natureandphotography.com/?p=1459&utm_source=feedly a few days ago) and whether a popup mesh laundry bag might make an interesting portable diffuser to put over plants.

I am so jealous of each minute before i have to get out of my morning reverie. I worry sometimes about how long i huddle in this gentle time on weekends -- i can spend the whole weekend reclined and pursuing my curiosity via the internet. I believe that were my time not so abruptly switched to constant triage of messages, all equally urgent from the sender, i would be able to transition out without the wrenching feeling.

I may get more jealous of this time before i get more generous. One of the best things about my new clarity is that there are so many threads of exploration that i now feel free to drop.

--==∞==--

Christine is home tonight!

The heat did hold off yesterday, and looks like it will hold off until Friday. And even then, it won't be that hot. That teaches me to sit in the sun too long wearing black.

I've had a slip in my confidence in my photography+writing vision, thinking about all the native plant experts who abound and feeling a sense of accusation of hubris washing over me. On the other hand, i feel a clarity about my desire and intent:....

--==∞==--

At which point in my journaling, at 6:50 am, i get a Skype IM from a colleague, "yt" followed by "911." I interpret this as "Are you there? I have an emergency," and thus my day began.

It's now after 4. I've had a bowl of ice cream, a four bean salad, broccoli, and pumpernickel bread and cream cheese for lunch, eating the stress out. It wasn't a crisis, but getting clear that it wasn't a crisis but merely imperfect took a while. We still need to fix it by Thursday, which gives me more headaches than i care to think about.

Oh, goodie, in a sign of just how procrastinatory i am, i have finally reorganized a bunch of bookmarks i use for troubleshooting.

--==∞==--

At about 5 pm i discovered that the application we use for our agile project management has a problem. If you log time to a task from one view of the task it shows up on the "burn down chart," but if you log time in other views it does not.

This may explain why my hardworking team seems to only log about half the time that we have to work.

At that point, i walked across the street and bought a bag of chips and spice drops. I have read the whole internet today.

Now to get the day's work done.

ARGH. Procrastination.

Feel desperate need to take shower and not get to work.

I've curated my eBooks not quite to death, but more than i needed to. I know have the first volume of the antique natural history journal Zoe on my iPad. I read numbers 1 and 2 yesterday, and note that Mendeley's app for reading on the iPad is a miserable experience.

Yesterday i also read Rob Sheppard's A Nature Manifesto. I feel that the goal of the project i'm starting on resonantes a bit with his call, in that my goal is to help people see the diversity of life in their locale.

Anyhow, first step is opening my work computer.

Yay, my computer is back. I hope i have made reasonable partitioning decisions. One terabyte. Not that we don't have other terabyte drives in the house, but this is in *my* machine. The crossing the benchmark takes me back to when i bought my first real computer (not the Timex Sinclair) and had a whole one gigabyte drive, and my awe at that size of disk.

Viva Moore's Law, and all that.

Christine is off to see her siblings and her mother for an early celebration of her mother's birthday, and possibly a last chance to see her. The doctor said earlier this week that her mother has entered late-stage Alzheimer's. I am so happy we could send Christine off to NC at short notice: doubly happy that, for once, there was a Delta flight at a reasonable time so i could use up some of the accumulated points.

I was sick yesterday: i seem to have had a 28 hour cold. This morning there's no headache and little congestion.

I have plenty to keep me busy, as i need to get some of the work due yesterday done before Monday.

Yesterday i tracked down more lupines of the Bay Area, finding more "lost lupines" and a few "new lupines." My current theory is that the lost lupines are at the southerly end of the range in the early 1900s and the new lupines are at the northerly end of their range. Lupines of the central valley in the 1900s could be moving west by creeping up the elevation of the coastal range. It's a hypothesis. The counter-hypothesis is that the lost lupines are simply unobserved or extirpated by development, but i'm left with the question of the new lupines, ones now reported but not reported in the early 1900s. As i go through the key, i'll be able to see if the new species might have been lumped in with another observed species, explaining the more recent occurrence.

I have recognized that what am thinking about as my next career is that of essentially being a writer-photographer. I need to begin paying attention to my writing, and so i've moved Virginia Tufte's book on style next to my pillow. I have little hope that the proximity is all that is needed to improve my writing, but it is an indication of awareness.

One of the glorious benefits of this clarity is that i know how to trim my interests. Should i network with python developers? Big data analysts? More identity management folks? No. I may still need to learn python and analyze the data i collect, and i have no idea how long i will remain working in identity management, but i should follow my heart to botany, writing, and photography.

I have lists of things i need to learn to give depth to my writing: topmost is more about the practice of botanical nomenclature. Physics has its egotists and adventurers, but botanists seem to have a bit more drama about them.

If i was to state my interests right now it would be in the interaction of natural history with social history in limited geographies.

Off to start the dungeons and desktops game for the day.

Hi world.

I sick i say!

That's the wisdom of my six or four year old self when confronted by the Christian-Science positive-thinking of my Grandmama.

This morning, i'm staying abed.

Yesterday's long headache gave way to sudden congestion around 3:30. Home i came. Decongestants don't seem to be doing the trick, so i'm surrendering today and will try to think clearly for reports on Sunday. I'd seen a friend who was sick on Sunday: i wonder if that provided the contagion.

Christine's siblings are gathering for an early birthday celebration for her mother this weekend. For the first time, my accumulation of Delta points seems useful, and she'll be off tomorrow to join them. I don't know when her mom will die -- two months or two years is the current prognosis -- but i think it will be good if she sees her siblings as a group again in this context and not wait for a funeral. (Making a note that we need to get Christine a black dress in the next few months.) I'm not sure i can recall the last time she saw them all: for me it was her sisters wedding.

Christine is currently off to get her hair done; i'm hoping my computer will be ready in time for her to add it to her errands.

Christine and i spent yesterday afternoon talking about our project and doing some initial work. "How shall i share the data?" is a huge question. I've figured out how to extract metadata in a semi usable form from Lightroom, and i owe Christine a data model. We've clarified visioning around the first pass of the app. I'm pretty excited.

Does anyone have any journaling friends who live in western North Carolina? I'm brainstorming about living there someday and would appreciate journaling connections. Western NC would be cooler during the summer miasma to which i have lost any acclimation, it would have a landscape that would foster continued wildflower and other botanical work, cheaper than here, closer to our families.

I decided during the trip and in these days after that were i not to have a job that involved management, it would mean that gift could be shared more with Meeting (wherever i was). It's kind of hard right now to imagine, but after the pleasant solitude of this week, mostly withdrawing even from here, i could imagine the interaction energy flowing instead of being squeezed from me.

Some trip photos after the cut ( Read more... )