Areas of Unrest

19 December 1999 - Looking at Opportunities

QOTD: "We were married for three and a half weeks and she had me in court for four and a half years. We were like ships passing in the night, only I didn't realize she was the Exxon Valdez." - James Woods (re: Sarah Owens)

Reading: Daniel Drennan, The New York Diaries

Listening to: Brazzaville

I got email not long ago from a woman in France who explained that she was a psychic and had gotten a "flash" about me when she saw my email address while searching for a friend of hers named Miriam who had moved to California. She assured me this was positive and I'd have some opportunity coming up and I should probably go to a psychic to find out more to be prepared to take advantage of this. Most intriguingly, she did not seem to be selling anything, although she did include her URL.

I wasn't about to go to a psychic, but I did find myself thinking about what opportunities were arising. I was half-hoping there might be one in connection with seeing Robert this weekend. Alas, there wasn't anything different in that direction. On the plane up I had been reading Beryl Bainbridge's The Birthday Boys, which is a novelized account of Scott's Terra Nova expedition. She has Petty Officer Evans commenting on his parting from his wife, saying "It never ceases to puzzle me, that, while men and women's bodies fit jigsaw-tight in an altogether miraculous way their minds remain wretchedly unaligned." Which is a pretty accurate description of the situation with him. We hadn't seen each other in months and we've both been stressed out but we barely managed time to talk. Chemistry is a very evil thing.

Also, while up there, I met Saori in the city for lunch and touristing. We ate a pleasant meal at Henry's Hunan, then explored the Metreon. Which turned out to be essentially a glorified mall, with overpriced "attractions" geared to very young children and video arcades for adolescent boys. The best of it was a browse at H.E.A.R. Music, where Saori bought a copy of Back Tuva Future as a gift for someone she'd hooked on it. She told me that throatsinging turns out to be an effective nerdometer. We went on to the far more worthwhile Cartoon Art Museum, which pleased me by having an exhibit on Edward Gorey, who has long been one of my favorite artists. We also spent some time browsing in Stacey's, where I once again exhibited great restraint.

Anyway, the opportunity may well relate to some career advancement developments. I got an invitation to participate in a workshop I was interested in, which sounds prestigious until you find out that the way you get these invitations is essentially by asking. Even so, it looks good and might help me push my career further into a direction that interests me. Not that I'm doing badly - I got my raise this week and that's always some validation of my worth to my company - but I can use excuses to spend more time on the activities that are more fun.

There's a bunch of other things I had planned to write about, but I'm tired so they'll have to wait for other entries. The opportunity to get enough sleep is one I rarely manage to take, alas.