Blargh.

Work of fiction.

In today’s thinking and poking around the thought struck me: how cool would it be to write a book. Like a for real at least 200 page novel. It would be awesome.

Unfortunately I feel utterly incapable of conceptualizing a whole plot/story/world. Just much too difficult and my ideas are so rarely original.

Keeping this in mind I’ve struck upon two more abstract ideas:

First as I was eating my two clementines with my lunch I was reminded of JM’s short story for a creative writing class. I don’t recall if it was about an orange or if there was just somehow an orange that was prominent within the story. But I considered stealing and writing a story about being an orange. However I then realized that the difficulty of the orange being consumed could be avoided by instead writing a story about being an inanimate object. One of those could stick around for much longer. Or maybe what about writing a story about being a cat. Oh! It could be a story with a twist! If one managed to write about the life and times of this non-human in a very human way would it may be possible to basically ‘trick’ people and create this very interesting slightly-off feeling.

I had a second and then even a third idea but I got excited about idea one there and forgot the others. Blast.

Do what you can.

I have a three day weekend beginning at 4:30PM today. This makes me very happy.

During my time not at work I am feeling like I really really want to accomplish something good. Some kind of awesome craft comes most to mind. So I’m trying to plan for this.

Unfortunately I have absolutely no motivation and nothing sounds like I actually want to go through with it.

Uncool.



Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

62 and sunny - or not

Supposedly it is gorgeous here today. The whole idea of it makes me very bitter. Not that that is very difficult to do or anything.

63 and sunny says weather.com. And people who come in keep informing me about the amazingness. Or as a fun alternative one coworker said I should leave early because it was so freaking nice.

But instead I am choosing to remain ignorant. I knew it was going to be amazing but I'm pretending it's normal. And being as I have no windows or outside doors this is easy enough to do.

I suppose I could (have) left early, but for some reason I felt the need to actually work my 8 hours. This makes particularly little sense being as I'm on day 10 in a row right now. Maybe I'm just staying to be 'hardcore.' Or maybe that post I wrote yesterday got to me. Difficult to say.

If it stayed light past 6 I could still make at least half an effort at still getting out and enjoying the unseasonable awesomeness.

Instead I am an office-potato slacker.


When spring hits for real I am so going to try bike commuting. [I may die crossing the roads but I've said this before].

Demoralized slaves.

I was reading an article over at The Brazen Careerist. She was actually posting a letter by a 20-something investment banker that was his response to Obama’s proposed salary caps for companies that receive bail out dollars. The letter was kind of stupid the main premise being ‘why not cap hours worked?’ It went on to talk about the French system and generally wasn’t well done or written at all.

But it did get me thinking.

Particularly there was a comment left by someone in the medical profession about how resident doctors were being limited to 30 hour shifts and 80 hours max and that some said this was too low. Wow.

The normal work week, my own included, is 40 hours. Some weeks, concerts, I’ll hit around 60. But doing 80 seemed impossibly large.

So I broke out the calculator:

-24 hours in a day 7 days in a week and holy-moly there are 168 hours in a week. Whoa now my 40 seems like nothing.

Well maybe it’s because so much of it is lost sleeping?

-24 hours in a day less 8 hours of sleep still 7 days. Still 112 usable hours in a week.

Ok so I’m generally not at all very productive right after I wake up, it takes time to attack the week. And things like eating can take time.

- 24 hours in a day less 8 hours of sleep less an hour in the morning less an hour and a half for other mundane things times 7 days. 94.5 hours left to occupy.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain about working my 40 or 60 hours so much.


If the workers do not fight for higher wages, if they do not fight for a shorter workday, if they do not fight for, let us say it in a provocative way, day-to-day economic issues, they become demoralized slaves.

23

I am now 23. In fact I have been so for a few days even. But I did have a good birthday.

Although realistically there were some downer thoughts. However I think I decided that for some reason just the idea of it being my birthday puts me in a positive mindset and so it's just going to be a good day no matter what. I recall the same sense of feeling from other years. I'm just a good bit more happy mellow on my birthday.

There were however some definite random occurrences that definitely added to the awesomeness of my birthday:

First and foremost sometime early but not to early that morning I'm sitting at my desk at work when P walks in. She's a middle aged woman (one child in college other in h.s.) who does quite a bit for the Symphony. I know she's quite involved in the symphony society and their functions plus she does quite a bit with the education committee and she often comes out when we ask for volunteers to help with random office tasks (generally large mailings). And she's really just a very nice person. But she had been in helping with a mailing the day prior but today she says "I just was in the area and wanted to stop by and give you this *hands me a card* and these *hands me flowers*".

!

Like holy crap where'd that come from? It was amazing. I have no idea how she knew it was my birthday. I figure one of my co-workers must have said something (we celebrate birthdays with cake in the office). But the georgeous flowers (purple iris' and smallish white roses) were so random and just so awesome. I could totally actually enjoy these (verses the last flowers I recieved if you recall).

And then the whole day there were lots of 'happy birthdays' and it was a fairly busy day so people were in and out that aren't all normal staff then most all of them would somehow hear it was my birthday and many gave me compliments. Or it was always fun to see jaws drop when I told them I was 23.

One awesome quote from my boss. "So how old are you now? 24, 25, 26?" Seriously I seem to have them trained to forget how young I am anymore. It's good stuff.

Overall the impression the day left on me was that I really can't imagine how I deserve such nice things. Particularly the flowers. Seriously people you're too good to me.

Purest of all experiences.

Yesterday I had a bit of a profound moment. I am now seriously considering contemplating and researching the possibility of attaining a Masters in Library Science and embarking upon a new career path.

All in all it's pretty crazy and makes me very unsure of myself.



"Believers and doers are what we need -- faithful librarians who are humble in the presence of books.... To be in a library is one of the purest of all experiences. This awareness of library's unique, even sacred nature, is what should be instilled in our neophites."

When it snows.

Yesterday the temperature made it up to the 40's so off I went. The weather was great and it was sunny, and there was snow on the ground.

Down the road I went and when I got to the start of my normal trail it was completely covered in snow. Well that's a no go. So I reconsidered my options and went back out to the main road and up a good hill. I figured that I could take that road out to where it eventually meets up with my normal trail across a college campus. Except that plan involves getting across 6 lanes or so of a busy road. There's a traffic light so in theory it's entirely doable, but not exactly ideal.

So instead I decided to try something that I thought might work. A time or two ago when I was out it seemed like normal traffic was moving along what looks like not much more than a service road but it would work. So off I went and instead of my path I took this road instead. I'd always known of the road but didn't think through that it connected out to the road. It was an exciting find. But I knew that the road ended at a bit of a field/park before the underpass that gets me across the busy road.

I got there and my path was covered in snow with one other bike track and some foot prints. Being hardcore as I am onto the snow I went. My bike is not made for snow. You see I have a street bike. It's not an overly serious racing bike so my tires aren't completely bare. But they don't really have much tread either. I figure the picture I found is a decent approximation of them.

I made it approximately 30 feet I figure before I gave up. It went something like this. I'd petal move forward crunch down through the snow (it was a layer of powder with a crust on top) then have to regain my balance as I almost fall over. Repeat. Every movement was the same. It was torture. In someways it reminded me of the mountain biking when I felt like I was off balance so often. But this time I was not even moving because given the lack of tread each push was getting me nowhere. So I walked a bit then the snow was softer so I got back on and it was much nicer. I continued out to my normal turn around point with only minor modifications.

On the way back I decided that I really didn't want to go back over the snow. But I speculated that there may be a way around. You see the service road that I took is a part of a big old complex. It's called the "state hospital" it used to be a big old insane person facility. Now the state government uses it for some kind of offices I think. I'd seen bits of it once or twice. But the place is freaking huge!

Half randomly guessing I wound around all of these buildings and miraculously enough I made it back out where I wanted. It was exciting.

Distance: 13.071 miles
Average Speed: 11.2 mph
Time Moving: 1 hour 10 minutes 8 seconds

"When it snows, you have two choices: shovel or make snow angels."