In The Long Kiss Goodnight Samuel L. Jackson plays a broken down private detective who has this habit of singing the things he’s doing. I’m not quite that tired yet but after four hours of curling I had to remind myself not to swallow the mouthwash this evening when I brushed my teeth.

I had wanted to include a dissection of some red hot economic issues as part of NaBloPoMo this year. I did not get to them.

More movie reviews were on the agenda but I haven’t figured out how to do more of them without feeling like I’m shorting the site for which I am supposed to be writing them under my real name.

I’d also wanted to get off my chest a rant about Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and the death of friendship. I didn’t get to that either.

I guess not making these goals gives me an excuse to keep blogging into December and beyond. This isn’t a bad thing.

Ah the Monday after a holiday weekend. Nothing like it when you work at an organization teetering on the brink of insolvency to make sleep Sunday night hard to come by.

It’s character flaw, I know, but I’m always convinced after a holiday that I’m going to get back to my desk to find that they’ve decided they really don’t need me and all my crap has been packed into a box and set on what used to be my desk.  I’m sure if BigPharma could find one they’d be marketing a pill to cure random episodes of paranoia and self-doubt.

I also dread Mondays because, at least until the middle of March, Monday is one of two days in the week on which I am forced to go into the office.  Going into the office didn’t used to be so bad.  My room got a lot of sun and I had it to myself.  Alas, both of these conditions now evaluate to false.

My office with no artificial lighting at 8:30 a.m. on November 1, 2010. Nice, eh?

Sharing an office isn’t so bad.  I’m getting used to the headphones again for music and the fact that my officemate has his phone ringer set way too loud.  What I can’t get used to is the fact that for 8 hours a day no matter how bright it is outside I don’t see the sun.

I know I shouldn’t be complaining.  After all, I still have a job and a paycheck coming in, and I do work at home two days a week. In many respects life could be a lot worse. That said, I’m just as happy to not be at my desk in the office.

Like most cookie recipes the first ingredient-related step is "cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy." And yes, my mixer has hot-rod flames on it.

The pumpkin puree goes in next. This was edible, not to mention delicious, until I added the eggs.

[Read more...]

There are several reasons why I prefer participating in NaNoWriMo over participating in NaBloPoMo.With NaNoWriMo I get the satisfaction of having completed a first draft of a novel. That first draft potentially gives me something I can work on and shape into a story that someone night want to read some day. With NaBloPoMo what I write it typically fungible and tied to a particular or reflective of circumstances that likely will change over time.

The deadline pressure of NaNoWriMo, 50,000 words in 30 days, drives my creative impulse in a way that having to come up with 30 blog entries in that same time period does not. The blog is all about me, about my observations and analysis of the world around me; quite often the characters in a novel tend to take over the story and make it move in ways that lead me to end up some place I did not expect to be when I started.

And then there is the finishing aspect of it. NaNoWriMo has a fixed deadline: 50,000 words in 30 days. Ideally, you want to finish your first draft though I’m sure there are some people who hit word count, “win” NaNoWriMo, and never finish their stories. Since I always have family obligations, and, having participated in NaNoWriMo four times, since I know there will be days when the writing does not come or when I feel like a complete fraud every time my fingers touch the keyboard I always set a daily word count goal that exceeds what you need to write to complete NaNoWriMo. [Read more...]

Buy Nothing Day 2010

Here’s what I “bought” today:

• Electricity
• Water
• Telephone service
• Internet access
• Cable TV

But did I really buy those things today?  My electric company will bill me for my usage for today next month.  The water bill won’t show up until January.  The telephone and Internet we’ll pay for in the first 10 days of December, and the cable has already been paid for.

The whole point of Buy Nothing Day is to throw a wrench in the machine of mindless consumption, to show corporate America that we are not their puppets.  Wouldn’t it be better to do what some friends of mine have done and commit to a small holiday giving season and to consciously purchase only those items and nothing more?

I’m not for mindless anything, and mindless rebellion, particuarly when enacted by people wearing sweatshop-made jeans bugs the hell out of me.  Still, Buy Nothing Day seems like a good idea and until I can ferret out what about it bugs me I’ll keep participating.

Thanksgiving is the one day a year on which I am treated even in some small degree like I’m special, and it’s the one day a year when I revel in being treated like I’m special.  And it’s kind of a weird feeling.

The mashed potatoes don’t go to the table without my approval. I’m not quite sure how that happened; maybe it’s the Irish I got from daddy and cultural stereotypes being jokingly applied. Whatever it is, not only to I get to taste and approve, I also get the beaters.

I also walk out of my aunt’s house with a whole pumpkin pie. Yes, every year she makes a pumpkin pie for me to take home. I end up sharing it with my mother and TGF but still, I am the only one who isn’t offered slices to take home. I think that’s pretty freaking awesome.

Every now and then I question this. I wonder what I did to be treated not only differently but, at least from my perspective, like I’m more important than others. Maybe it’s just the accident of birth. Maybe it’s my personality. I don’t think I did anything specific to deserve it and sometimes that bothers me.

Then again, as feelings of self-entitlement go, getting to check out and approve the mashed potatoes, and getting more pie than everyone else are not extravagant all things considered.  Regardless of why, this small little bit of “special” is just one of the things for which I am thankful today.

Now, I’ve just got to make room for pie. Given that I feel like I’m not going to eat again until Saturday, this might be tough.

I know Thanksgiving is a hard holiday for our friends and fellow Earthlings outside the United States to understand. I’m not sure I understand Thanksgiving.

The First Thanksgiving by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris (1863–1930), Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

The myth is that the first pilgrim settlers had a big dinner with the local natives in celebration of a bountiful harvest season and to show appreciation for the natives’ help. Every kid in the U.S. likely has a mental picture of Indians and pilgrims tucking in for a fine dinner of wild game, corn, and probably some squash though likely our 7 or 8 year-old minds blocked that out because eeeewww, squash.

No one ever really talks about the fact that the people already resident in what is now the eastern U.S. celebrated harvest festivals on a relatively pagan cycle 6 to 8 times per year. The other thing no one really talks about is the 1637 massacre during a harvest festival of a number of Pequot men, women, and children because the upright Dutch and English colonists suspected the Indians of having murdered a trader who had kidnapped some of their children. It’s not a story that goes well with pie and green bean casserole. [Read more...]

Last week I had jury duty.  I did not get seated for a trial.  What I did do was blow an entire work day in and around the courthouse.  Combine that with the fact that I am on furlough one day a week and my Friday was a little bit pressured with requests.

One of those was from a staffer in California who is a nice woman and always understanding when it comes to timelines.  She called me in the late morning to ask if maybe, possibly, I’d be getting to their request because the vote by the San Francisco City Council was this upcoming Tuesday. She was most sympathetic when I explained to her that I had been out on jury duty on top of being on furlough one day a week and remarked that it would be helpful for her in planning to know that I’m only working four days a week.

Having gotten no guidance from my boss, who is NewBigBoss, on how to let folks know about this, and having forgotten to ask him about it during our weekly check-in call yesterday, I asked him today by e-mail how he wanted me to handle letting folks know I’m on furlough on Wednesdays. His reply: “I’d just as soon not put that message out broadly. Staff will just have to give you the notice you’ve requested and we’ll work to meet it.”

And what this says to me is that they did not, in fact, offer the “compensatory time off” to everyone. They waited for people to ask for it.  They expected most of the staff would just swallow the pay cuts, and I suspect most of the staff did just that.  As far as I know, I am the only person in the DC office who is actually taking the furlough day.

So does this mean I have an over-inflated sense of entitlement or that my co-workers have no spines?

And in other strange questions: how long is it going to take the cat to catch the annual mouse?  Yes, we get slightly less than 1 per year.  The challenge is always to find the <ehm> remains before they start to smell.