elainegrey

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.

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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?

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.

Coughing and reacting midday today took my voice for most of the afternoon, and now i have a terrible sinus headache. All out of the blue.

grumble

It's light outside, and i noticed on Thursday that the sky was still twilit as i drove to a 6:30 pm meeting. We're now in the rapid rate change in the sine wave of day length. Thus the biannual disruption of daylight savings time must be approaching, and i am disappointed to see that it occurs at the beginning of my March trip east.

Well, Blondie, can't you come up with something you are happily anticipating?, I think, as i slide the "health notes" and "mental frame notes" down, getting those grumpy accounts out of the way.

I have a recurring "Robinson Crusoe"-esque daydream, set on some Earthlike but alien planet, in a glacier carved valley high on a plateau. I also have a similar "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" daydream, sometimes set in the lowlands of that alien planet. During meeting, my mind drifted to thoughts of whether i could make fish skin leather with primitive materials and how, if marooned, one might try tapping all species of trees to see what useful substances could be obtained. As i pulled back from those thoughts, i wondered why this is such a persistent daydream for the first time: inventiveness, experimentation, and curiosity were my answers.

I want a job where i can explore many questions. I don't think i need to be a primary contributor, per se, i'm sure that the ease with which i can imagine tapping a forest of trees could only be actual if someone else did the real work. The identification of the opportunity, the chance to observe the experimental results, tweaking, and then on to something else. Leave the production processing to someone else.

When my mind drifts in Meeting it also drifts to fiber, and i find myself designing or solving problems in projects. When i think of making a living from such a thing ... i can't. But i realize it is the same mental energy that the daydreams tickle: inventiveness and experimentation.


Health notes: ( Winter colds )

Mental frame notes: ( I probably could shift to a better one. )

Dear [primary care provider],

Thank you so much for helping with that paperwork for when i was sick in late December. It was somewhat confusing how the Health Records division managed things, but it all worked out.

I'm writing now to ask if it would be appropriate to try a round of antibiotics for my sinuses. ( TMI )

I'm tired of the discomfort and drainage.

Thanks for your advice,

me

My observance list today notes:

Feel your vocation to be fully human. [12]
The Birth of the goddess Inanna in ancient Sumeria. [1]
1959 USRR's Luna I launched (first moon probe, first extraterrestrial satellite) [5]
b Issac Asimov (1920 01 02 - 1992)

I've long sense lost the references that the numbers refer to, in calendar system change after calendar system change. (Hmm, weofodthignen: how does one call attention to an editor , and find the appropriate mesopotamian editor, that there is nonsense in the article about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inanna ? I don't have time this morning to figure out how to excise all the opinion appropriately.)

Yesterday i worried about having enough energy for the work day today. I have rested so much this holiday season: can i bestir myself to work? This morning, i think i can. I did make an attempt to flush my sinuses. One flush seems to have had little effect on my comfort and well being. I suppose it's something that must be repeated.

I have been going back and forth with Evernote support, trying to fix an weird and intermittent-ish issue. I've installed new versions of software, generated logs, and even downloaded my entire Evernote collection afresh. I appreciate their help, but i am a little tired of the bug (for which i do have a workaround) and the troubleshooting. I just don't know if it will fix itself in time, just like it developed over time.

Yesterday afternoon was lost in a spate of waiting. Starting at 3 pm when i arrived to find the previous patient waiting, there were other waits in line to find things that were to be ready long before needed another ten or fifteen minutes.

This morning i still bewail my sinus condition and the various resulting discomforts.

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I received in the mail a Travelsmith dress bought on eBay as part of my attempt to get work dresses for under $20. This dress turns out to be far more curve accentuating than my usual choices and yet doesn't leave me feeling like i'm wearing a sausage casing. It's knee length, which is also shorter than i usually choose. It will suit Christine quite well if i can't find myself wearing it, but i will give it a try today as we go out for brunch and then visit The Conservatory of Flowers and the De Young in Golden Gate Park. I'd love to go to the Academy of Sciences as well, but the day may be too short for that.

The switch to dresses is a shift for me that i think is mainly being driven by comfort and annoyance with the challenge of finding pants and jeans that fit. I feel like i never get the length right even if i finally find something that works with my hips and waist. For years i wore skirts, but somehow the skirt doesn't seem as appealing as the simplicity of a dress: one outfit all together. This then leaves me considering my collection of exceedingly sensible shoes and wondering what to wear on my feet. My usual go-to walking shoes don't quite seem well paired with a dress.

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On The Situation: ( I'm doing so much better than i was in November, do i have to keep working on this? )

I woke at 2 am yesterday with sinus pain so that even my teeth hurt, which was strange. I listened to a chapter on team building (fostering creative conflict), Kingston Trio, Thomas Dolby, Joan Jett, and Wall of Voodoo before dozing a bit and then moving to videos. I watched Charade (1963: Cary Grant & Audrey Hepburn), How to Steal a Million (1966: Audrey Hepburn & Peter O'Toole), 18 min of What's New Pussycat? (1965: Peter O'Toole, Peter Sellers), The Grass Is Greener (1960: Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum), and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967: nobody i noticed but interesting dresses & hats).

I think i'm feeling better today and i certainly slept all night (the over the counter collection of remedies Christine returned home with decidedly helped).

Charade was wonderful. I'd seen it before but forgot the ending. Loved the title animations & the score. How to Steal a Million introduced me to a sudden realization of how swoonable Peter O'Toole could be. My. So i tried watching What's New Pussycat? but was completely put off. The Woody Allen factor? The Women as Objects factor? The "Zany Romp" factor? I don't know, but i didn't last very long. On to the decidedly not zany The Grass Is Greener which was pleasant. By the time i was selecting How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying i had figured out the grounds for complaints about Netflix movie depth and was making do. I dislike musicals, but could easily scan forward through the bits of singing & dancing. I did think about work, but mainly i wondered about the clothes. Would folks REALLY mix those colors? Or was this just the stage dressing coming through.

Actually, in The Grass Is Greener there was an unrelenting orange ensemble with bright turquoise eyeshadow all the way to the brow.

I dress in such a minimal palette.

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I wasn't particularly up to observing our anniversary and the solstice. Christine brought home a charming card that delighted me. Thank you, Halmark, for your card illustrated with a fox couple who do not have heavy handed gender signs!

Still in Ohio, pondering going out for a walk this morning and whether the "Feels like 20 degrees" statement is going to stop me. It's cold because it's clear, and a dose of real sunshine is much valued. Or, i could take my shoes and walk at lunch, risking the cloudy skies called for in the forecast.

My skin has flared, this time choosing my cheeks and around my eyes. Tiny bumps, somewhat like those associated with dyshidrotic eczema, are heavily clustered. It's not dyshidrotic eczema, though, since that presents on hands and feet. Thanks to the heavy and large glasses frames most of the flare probably passes as just flushed cheeks, maybe wind chapped. I wish i had brought the steroid creams, but there really hasn't been much call for me to use them, except in one persistent area where i knew i could wait a week.

Also, other unpleasant health symptoms are rampant this morning. Fortunately, tablets of Bismuth subsalicylate are in my emergency pack, and i expect i'll have relief. Also, in my "be prepared" packing is a small sewing kit that i was able to use to darn the small hole in my sweater this morning. I pondered a bit the "i can buy what ever i forgot" packing practice and the "be prepared" packing. I left home feeling i'd forgotten something -- not the steroids, that was an intentional omission -- and assured myself i could buy anything i needed. But "be prepared" seems to have won this trip.

The reason i felt underpacked is that i was wearing the coat when i left the house. Usually when i leave California the coat is bundled into one of the carry ons, bulking it up.

Visit by colleagues is over. Nice to see them and work with them, frustrating to not have prepared agenda, frustrating to have so many other demands.

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( This week at work )

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I am fortunately feeling better from The Cough, with some energy returning.

I really miss Christine: not only was i in the office on Wednesday, but ate out with colleagues on Wednesday, so i've hardly had a chance to see her since the weekend. (I'm up early, and am going to sleep at about the time she comes home from classes; she's getting up just as i am out the door in the morning.) She's worried about me -- health and my work distress -- without checking in together i think her worries ran away a bit.

I've left her one morning in the grips of migraine, another morning she was frustrated over the dead dishwasher.

Oh dead dishwasher, whose replacement part may not arrive before the 27th, you should be glad we don't "Do Thanksgiving." If we did, we would likely curse you for your poorly timed part failure.

Oh Consumer Reports -- You said this model was reliable!!

We've agreed to have Pizza Delivery for Thanksgiving: it is what we would have some of the years in Philly when Christine was in radio, doing night shifts. It's food that she loves, and not focusing on food allows focus on Thanks.

I can let my Inner Martha Stewart play other times.