The Fort Mudge Memorial Dump

I've finally figured out that the problem with work these days is it's a dichotomy paradox. The self-study is Almost There, but it's going to keep changing by teeny tiny degrees of Almost There every day until the middle of July, at which point it will be There by virtue of having a hard deadline. The teeny tiny degrees of Almost There are hard to see, though, and living among them is tiring. That's why I keep saying I want to go back to bed and stay there until next April.

On the home front, I managed to give Snip one tenth of a manicure by letting her sit in my lap and get a claw stuck in my jeans, and cutting it before she figured out it was stuck. She thought that wasn't fair, but she's not the one who gets her leg pierced when she gets claws stuck in my jeans. And I'm the one with the opposable thumbs.

Oh, make up your minds, will you? Three months ago the half-day every Friday for six months course didn't need a final evaluation survey, because it was only four hours a week maximum. Today it needs a survey. It ended two months ago; do you really think anybody's going to fill out a survey on it now? ARGH.

Chorus committee meeting tonight. I'm debating whether I want coffee or beer first. Coffee would be a good idea in terms of taking minutes; beer would be a good idea in terms of listening to the same people have the same conversations for a couple of hours (it's supposed to be a one-hour meeting) and yet again fail to arrive at any useful conclusions. However, ubi caritas et amor, dei ibi sunt (which is probably grammatically wrong, but I know what I mean), so I can try to be charitable and not say what I'm thinking.

At least next week is graduation, so everybody ought to start being happier by the end of this week. And the weather is supposed to remember it's the middle of May, not the beginning of April, starting tomorrow. That'll help too.

I was having an interesting dream this morning, half thriller and half sort of romantic comedy. It had something to do with somebody being poisoned (but not killed) by cocaine in food at a resort in Santo Domingo, and the cocaine coming from Egypt smuggled in ancient Egyptian artifacts. The woman (not me) who was investigating this was friends with the guy who got poisoned, and had a couple of other ditzy female friends who did things like get tied up in some sort of resistance bands while trying to do yoga with them. I was observing all of this, but not actually involved in it, and of course I woke up before I found out who the poisoner was. The whole thing might have made a decent novella if (a) I knew how it ended and (b) it had made any sense whatsoever. As a dream, it was entertaining, though.

Today isn't really my favorite day, because people keep asking me for things they could do themselves if they bothered to look for the one piece of information they don't have. That, however, is work, and it's easier to ask me for six things than it is to do one thing.

At least this morning the sidewalks were dry pavement all the way from home to the bus stop. I don't know if it was salt, sublimation, people with ice axes, or some of each, but whatever it was, that was nice. The bus stop is still in the street because there's a three-foot-wide plow berm between the sidewalk and the street, but it's nice that I can get to the appropriate corner without ice skates.

I managed not to go out for a Large Slab of Dead Cow the last time I wanted one, and I probably won't do it this time either, but right now a ribeye sounds like an excellent idea. I suppose I could have gone to Bartley's last night after the chorus committee meeting and had a Large Slab of Ground-Up Cow instead, but I wanted to get home because my brain had quit working. Taking minutes for nearly two hours of half of the committee convincing the other half to spend $2000 on advertising, in order to maybe make money on ticket sales, does that. Besides, it was snot-freezing weather, so the sooner I got the standing around waiting for buses over with, the better. I like Arctic air a lot more when it stays in the Arctic where it belongs.

I didn't go to the Boston women's march, because huge crowds are not my best thing. (Although I was OK with the Patriots game I went to. I think maybe it was because there were seats.) However, I have been thinking about what I can do/should do/want to do about the whole situation. I can't change the whole situation, but I can do something about part of it. The question I keep coming up against is which part. I believe that abortion and gay marriage should remain legal, but apparently my opinion doesn't count on gay marriage because I'm straight. I believe in the Golden Rule and that the Golden Rule should be colorblind, but apparently my opinion doesn't count because I'm white.

I would dearly love to tell one of my straight white relatives-by-marriage to haul his Catholic head out of his Libertarian ass for a minute and think about what happens if abortion is illegal and the country is awash in children their parents can't afford. He objects to abortion, and he's firmly in the "I get mine and I don't pay for anyone else's" camp, and that makes me incredibly angry. If he's going to insist that all children must be born, he damn well can't insist that he doesn't have to help pay for them. End rant.

I'm most of the way through The Pillars of the Earth, and wondering whether pigheadedness was an actual survival skill in 1100s England or whether it's just the way the author thinks. Pigheadedness seems to cross all classes, professions and sexes in the book. No wonder there was a civil war going on?

I bought some disinfectant/anesthetic gel for Lily, and she promptly washed it all off (it's safe for feline consumption). It seems she doesn't want any. Fortunately she seems not to really need it either. I just wish the fur would grow back, because its absence keeps reminding me that there's a hole in the side of my cat. Snip is, as usual, washing the living daylights out of Lily's head, but stopping there.

Remembering the Good Things, the weather on Saturday was a revelation. I feel like it hasn't been sunny on a weekend since before Christmas, so I went out grocery shopping (I had to do that anyway) and indulged myself shamelessly on the way home by going to both JP Licks and Union Square Donuts. And now I have satisfied my sugar craving for the next couple of months. I may have to do something about my chocolate craving eventually, though.

Then I came home and played a complete game of Civ 5 for the first time, and won it by cultural victory. I don't think I've ever won a game by cultural victory before; usually I win by building a spaceship first. Then again, I've never played as the Celts before either. I didn't really intend to spend five and a half hours doing that, but I didn't tweak enough settings to make it shorter, either. Next time I should see if I can tweak the shape of the land masses, because being stuck in the middle of a very long, very narrow continent was a pain in the ass. At least it meant everybody wanted open borders with each other. And I do have to admit it was fun clearing out barbarian axemen by sailing a destroyer up to their islands and going KABLAM.

I knew the end of this week was going to be tough, and I was right. Especially yesterday. Thursday I merely got to work at 7:05, helped set up breakfast, and started taking minutes for the CODA Standard 2 mock site visit at 8:00. Half an hour of break at 1:00, back to it again until 5:15. Dinner out (Taberna de Haro, which was good, but the chairs are too high and I had to mountaineer myself into mine). Home, feed cats, fall into bed.

Yesterday, there was all of the above except dinner, and added fun involving the CODA meeting being in the new building and the clinics being closed for staff development. Everybody at HSDM cuts through the clinics on the first and second floors when they're going from one building to the other. But when the clinics are closed all day, the doors are locked and you can't cut through. (The clinic director thinks that's stupid because nobody's going to be smuggling patients in and working on them. But the facilities director had a fit about security.) Usually you can also get from one building to the other by going outdoors, but the main building entrance is closed for the next several weeks while they rebuild the outdoor stairs. So the only way into the main building (where my office is) when the clinics are closed is through the new building via the basement. Not Useful. Probably also not legal in terms of fire exits. However, also not my problem, because I'm taking the first half of next week as vacation. Therefore I don't have to think about it at all.

Lily likes chicken-flavored pill pockets, thank goodness. We're training each other on acceptable usage thereof; if I put it on the floor, she'll eat the pocket and leave the pill. At which point we try it again, and so far she'll eat the pill the second time. But if she takes it out of my fingers, she'll eat the whole works the first time. Maybe she thinks she's getting away with stealing it if she takes it directly from me, and has to get rid of the evidence? I don't know.

Snip has recovered from her cold, or at least I assume so because her Niagara of the Nose is gone and she doesn't sneeze when she wakes up. She thought I needed to be Washed Properly this morning, which I was inclined to let her do; she wouldn't be trying to sand the skin off my nose if she didn't feel like doing it.

I have to go out at some point today and buy some more pill pockets and run various other errands. This is the first time I can remember since summer that I'm not feeling like I Gotta Do Everything NOW. I wish more of my life felt like that.

Took Friday off, because I had spent so much of the week putting out fires. I still had a lot of suspiciously smoldering ashes, but I was at the point where I was just as likely to throw kerosene on them as water. So I took the day off. I spent the first part of it spending $1200 on embroidery framing, but I go to these framers because they're good, not because they're cheap. Then I went grocery shopping, and then I went home and did less than I probably should have for the entire rest of the weekend. But at least I didn't answer any emails, even though I was reading them (see "suspiciously smoldering ashes").

I hate being at the point where I have done everything I possibly can to fix a situation that isn't really my fault in the first place, and things are still going wrong, and even though there's nothing I can do about that, I'm going to get blamed for not fixing it. (My lab supplies were supposed to be delivered on Thursday. I don't have them yet. I need them for 1:00 today. The tracking web site says they're in this zip code, but they're not in this building. This is going to be my fault, even though there's nothing I can do about it.) It's turning me into a neurovore (thank you, Terry Pratchett, for inventing that concept!).

I have never come closer to kissing a complete stranger than I did just now (it was the deliveryman with the lab supplies, who delivered them at 12:40).

Maybe I'll survive the rest of the week after all...

What, I ask you, is the point of having a FINAL schedule if people keep changing it? (I suppose the point is to make them only change one version. But what I'd really like is for them to stop changing any version at all.)

I'm mildly grumpy today because the Journal of Dental Education editorial staff probably thinks we're all idiots, because I've submitted and then had to have them unsubmit the same article twice now. That's what happens when my boss tells me this is the final version and please submit it, so I do. When I do, all the authors get an email. Then one of the middle authors realizes he has more edits. There's no way for the submitter to recall an article; you have to email the associate editor and get them to do it. Which I have, twice, for the same article.

Oh, and after they finally fixed the air conditioning issue, now we have an issue with the "pH neutralization tank", which means the building smells like sulfur. I think we should just all work from home until after Labor Day. That ain't how life goes, though.

At least I got to grin this morning because it was New Crunchies Day, which is Lily's favorite day of every month or so. She heard me throw the dregs of the last bag in the trash and launched herself off the top of the living room bookshelf, and came barreling down the hall for breakfast. That's as animated as she gets in the morning when it's hot out, and sounds like this: *THUD* *galumpfgalumpfgalumpfgalumpf*mrrw? Mrrw! *crunchcrunchcrunch* Snip, meanwhile, knows merely that it's breakfast time and Lily's interested, which means Snip ought to be interested, but what's holding up the breakfast?

Went whale watching yesterday (humpbacks, minkes and a fin whale) and turned myself into a crispy critter. To the point where I almost didn't come to work today because I didn't want to have to say "No, it doesn't hurt" to everybody I talk to. But it was fun, as it usually is, and I got some decent video of humpbacks. I have finally learned that taking stills of whales with the camera I have is an exercise in futility, because by the time the shutter closes, the whale is elsewhere. But I do love my camera for taking still pictures of things that don't move very much.

It's been long enough since we (meaning I, because I'm the one who always does it) submitted an article for publication that I forgot how the dance goes. It goes like this: boss asks me to submit article. I confirm authors, confirm order they should be listed in (it matters) and confirm that I have the version of the article we want to submit. I go through the six or seven variations on username and password for the article submission site until I get the right one. I fill out all the information and upload the files and submit the article, which sends all the authors an email. At least one of the following happens: 1) one of the authors wants to be removed; 2) boss realizes the version I submitted isn't actually the right one, despite my asking; 3) somebody else who read the article and made comments has to be added to the authors list; 4) the journal has changed its formatting requirements and bounces the article until we get the formatting fixed and resubmit. (Today's winners are #2 and #3.) I don't know why I bother submitting anything the first time if the chances of having to resubmit are better than 50%.

My shoulder hurts. It must be humid again. (It is; I was outside for lunch and it's disgusting.) I almost wouldn't mind getting caught in a thunderstorm before I get home, white shirt notwithstanding, if it would clear the air out a bit. But the thunderstorms always break up before they get here.

Snip is lucky she's cute. Last night I bought myself a new laptop, and transferred everything to it from the old one, and was just about to start erasing the old one when Snip popped the 2 key off it. I tried for the next four hours to get the spring back on the computer and the key cap back on the spring, and couldn't do it. By now the spring is probably inside out, upside down, and backward, because I reassembled it so many times. I am not about to pop another key off on purpose to see what the spring looks like, because the way this is going, I'll end up with two keys I can't fix. And the Computer Loft is closed this week, so I hauled the laptop to work today for nothing and my shoulder is not pleased with me. And the pull chain for the lights in the ceiling fan in my office at home is stuck (off) too. That's less of a disaster than it might be because I tend to sit in there in the dark anyway when I mess around on the computer, but it would still be nice if it hadn't decided to break last night.

Remembering the Good Things, however, the new laptop is very nice. Continuing the tradition of naming computers for bands that don't exist, the new one is called Huge Happy Hedgehog Face. And the fan part of the ceiling fan still works, and the chain repair doesn't look like it's horribly difficult even if I do have to buy a new switch (I hope not, but I'll probably have to anyway). And at least I have a ladder, so I don't have to improvise with the kitchen chairs. But I have to not electrocute myself, because it's an aluminum ladder.

Still haven't decided what Sunday is going to consist of. Right this instant I'm tempted to run away and eat a lot of something I most likely shouldn't. But that's because I want the computer and the ceiling fan fixed and I want not to be at work and I want a lot of other things that I don't have any particular control over. (Why is it so impossible to get human beings to stop shooting other human beings?) (Don't answer that. It was a rhetorical question and I don't want to discuss it.)

I suppose the fact that the weather is cold, humid and solid overcast is pretty appropriate. I'd rather have London's weather in London, though.

Yesterday was a calzone and beer and be damned to responsible adulthood night. I should have gone to chorus rehearsal, but I just wasn't interested. I needed to go home by way of the liquor store, and since the pizza place was between me and the liquor store when I got off the bus, and I can take a hint, there you go. So I ate an entire calzone and drank a very large bottle of 9.2 beer (Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout), and didn't give a damn about the fact that I should have been at chorus rehearsal. It was going to be a question of whether I went to chorus and committed homicide, or went home and marinated myself. So I marinated myself, and then woke up once an hour between 1:00 and 4:00.

Today is somewhat better, in that the retreat schedule and the small group consultant session schedule have been released into the wild so people can stop asking me for them and start complaining about where they appear on them. And I only have to deal with the lunch order and the dinner reservation at Eastern Standard, not the breakfast and the midmorning and afternoon snacks.

However, I'm pretty thoroughly pissed off at the "send an inspirational quote to the first person on this list, add yourself to the end and bcc 20 other people" requests I'm getting FROM THE MEDICAL SCHOOL (I know, because the message says "this was started by the admissions office and leadership.") I've gotten two now. I will not be spamming 20 (or should it be 40, since I got it twice?) other people. If it were three or four people, I might have, but no way am I doing it to 20. Or 40. Especially since most of them would be faculty and students, and the faculty I deal with wouldn't appreciate it, and the students wouldn't read the email anyway. I suppose at least it isn't threatening me with deadly diseases or loss of limbs in vehicular accidents if I break the chain. But that's all I have to say for it.

Right. Rant over. On to the good stuff, like the sunshine, which is almost warm enough to sit out in and drink coffee. I know that because I tried it at lunchtime. And there was lunchtime. And coffee. And the new copy of my birth certificate arrived yesterday, so I can stop worrying about the old one falling apart (which it is). I haven't actually needed my birth certificate for anything since I stopped being a graduate student, but it's nice to know I have a copy that will survive being sneezed at. I'm not sure the old one would have.

Not necessarily good stuff, but silly: Since Lily's cyst is making a noticeable-from-a-distance lump (it sticks her fur up in odd directions), I've taken to calling it Marlene. (Lili Marlene, get it?) The vet says if it doesn't bother Lily, I have to learn to live with it, so I'm calling it Marlene so I can stop taking it seriously. I think it really does help, but I don't have a clue why that is.

Not feeling it today. Whatever "it" is. Today isn't quite an Easter Island day, but I seem not to be communicating in any language anyone else understands. When I say I need to know who to address an externship recommendation letter to, I need a name and a university, not a request for three more letters to send to "other programs" (still no names or universities).

It's easier to figure out what I don't want, because everything that comes up is met with an instant Do Not Want. I guess if I take the opposite tack, I want:

- The oral surgery course schedule to stop needing rearranging at least once a week
- The CODA Standard 2 nagging to be somebody else's problem; there's a schedule, but nobody's following it and I don't know how to make them follow it (short of filling out their forms for them. NOT happening.)
- The CE credit application for the April retreat not to include a budget and a schedule and a writeup of each individual workshop session's goals and objectives
- People to realize that they can't call into meetings in rooms with no phone jacks and bad cell service (well, they could, by cell, but it won't work well enough not to be annoying)

What I want amounts to a nap in a sunbeam, followed by an excursion to somewhere that sells Swiffer cloths, followed by an enormous bowl of pho. I might get the Swiffer cloths off the list tonight, at least. I've been trying to get around to that for two weeks now, but a combination of weather and other places I had to be got in the way rather extensively. I hate it when mandatory responsible adulthood gets in the way of responsible adulthood that makes me feel better.