Tuesday posts during my work day

Huzzah, the 5:30 am meeting is moved back to 6. The big meeting that displaced it has been canceled. Of course, canceling that big meeting twigs a suspicion of leader-fail for me. Then i find it's been canceled due to a family emergency of the Veep's.

I'm getting a book on Affirmitive something or other -- Affirmative Inquiry -- via interlibrary loan. I know i learned to only see the dust and dinks and misalignments and all other imperfections from my mother. I know this is my problem, and i know it needs to change.

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The day has wound down at 4. I've been puttering and now it's 4:30. There's still Work To Do, but i need to be at the Meetinghouse at 6 pm for a couple hours. The snacks now aren't dinner substitutes: i need to get dinner before going to the meeting house. There's not really enough time for a walk......

(no subject)

Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl)

Yup, need to practice that. If Katla also blows, "the Iceland volcano," will not be a sufficient name. Christine and i have been having fun listening to the occasional streaming news report and noticing the constant elision of the entire name.

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I really need to set a little time aside for myself and planning. My first season of my year ends with Beltane. I've felt the seasonal planning has been incredibly resonant this year with the sickness and depression of January and February stretching into March, the equinox making a shift towards healing.

I think back to one year when i was considering quitting my job: i gave myself a winter, when i let myself just say no to anything and everything and actively did not think about the "problem." Before the end of the period of rest i'd set aside, i had untangled the threads of the "problem." It seemed as if it solved itself: rested, the resolution was clear.

I didn't have that winter this year: instead it was a darker, deeper drain of energy. Spring has been a coming out of the dark, not like waking up rested, but literally recovering from illness, mental and physical. The recovery is happening. I've tried celebrating the recovery, but what i sense is that i have a grief of losing my way. I recognize that i believe i can manage my depression with more control than i really have. Framing it as "lost my way" creates a hook to hang guilt on: perhaps i should say i'm grieving that i didn't have my health go my way.

I suppose i should frame an intentional Beltane ritual around grief: fire to burn away symbols, flowers over the ashes (or , as i usually get a potted plant, ashes around the soil).

(no subject)

Today: ran the battery down on one phone then on another. If i'm going to be on phone conferences all day, it might as well be at home in the comfort of my very worn snuggly robe.

My full day had been put in, and i was wired -- i realized with regret i'd made a second pot of Keemun instead of (no caffeine) Rooibos . I spent a hour at Cost Plus World Market pulling together a Administrative Assistant Day basket for our Person Who Makes Things Work. I really like how the basket came together -- warm reds and yellow golds, with a touch of fuchsia and lime green -- and i don't mind splurging on her. (And she likes making things attractive, so i want it to be attractive for her.) One colleague gave me $5 and my boss gave me a jar of fancy spaghetti sauce and fancy pasta. I hold out hope that other colleagues will chip in similarly, but even if they don't, i don't want her to know that.

Home and we watched some strange History Channel show, "American Pickers." I retired to my bath and found myself thinking about a store in Edenton NC and my once-upon-a-time thought to write a story, a novel, about a young woman in the that town. Thinking of her being friends with the owner of a antique store and heading to a estate sale and listening to her friend plot profit margins entertains me. She needs a gossipy, busy-body of a friend, and a "picker" would be a good one.

I realize i would need to find some good documentation about BBS in 1991 and ideally some information about providing computer support to small companies that used PCs (Doctor's office reservations and contacts and billing? I know the Edenton radio station Christine worked at used a PC for generating the play lists). I imagine my main character encouraging some of her clients to add phone lines so she could dial their machines up and do some proto-sysadmin work on the PCs, but skipped PCs (essentially) and delighted in VAXen in the late 80s and unix in the 1990s. I had linux on my second PC before Win95 came out. (My first PC was a Timex Sinclair 1000, but i digress.)

Thinking about this story again after some years, makes all of the technology changes seem far more fascinating. The first chapter i've always imagined her flying to Michigan: i realize now how different planning a flight is.

I certainly don't want the story to be about 1990s how things were done, some sort of reversal of the sci fi novel's constant description of how one gets the news or contacts someone over a distance or the flying car.

http://groups.google.com/group/nc.general/browse_frm/month/1993-02
http://groups.google.com/group/nc.general/browse_frm/month/1994-04 << which had the green card lottery message in it, oh the flashback trauma.

Also, there's an eternal-september.support USENET group.

Which leads me to believe: if LJ goes all the way down the tubes, i will be unrepentantly retro and return to USENET.

Anyhow.

I've not been on the net for me much today. I've missed checking in when i was alert, and now i'm exhausted. Creative, but exhausted.

Why is marzipan so heavenly? I bought baking marzipan as a treat for myself: it seemed more likely to be of high quality....

SLEEP