Areas of Unrest

1 January 2000 - Resolutions

QOTD: "Progress is what people who are going to do something really terrible almost always justify themselves on the grounds of." - Russell Baker, Poor Russell's Almanac

Reading: Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

Listening to: Kurt Weill's Johnny Johnson

I actually had to work yesterday. Well, I could have taken vacation, as all but four other people from my department did. But I have better plans for my vacation time. Actually, it will be nice to have Monday off instead, since things will be open. And I needed to spend some time on cleaning off my desk a bit. (The desk always looks fine but that is just because I hide all the papers in one of the overhead compartments.) I left a little after 1, and decided to stop at the Westside Pavilion. After grabbing lunch at Jody Maroni's, I realized my timing was perfect for seeing Sweet and Lowdown, the new Woody Allen movie. It was quite enjoyable, particularly for anybody who is a fan of jazz guitar (and, especially, Django Reinhardt). I also bought a video I'd been looking for (namely, Volume 2 of Master of Mosquiton) but managed not to buy any books.

I came home, read email and then set off for a New Year's Eve that included a labyrinth walk, people talking backwards, an African fire ritual and the video of Big Night. What I would have liked was kissing my sweetheart at midnight, but I had to settle for a phone call today. Which led to my resolving to stop trying to tell Robert how to live his life. Not that I've told him that - we left off where he was still irritated at me for making fun of him for reading tabloids. (He'd sent me an article about Tristan da Cunha and said something about how you find this sort of stuff in The National Enquirer and not in The NY Times. I pointed out that the back had an article about 12 year old supermodels being sold to sheiks to get money for drugs. This wouldn't be an issue if I could actually pretend not to know him when he reads this garbage in public.)

My other resolutions are all the usual take better care of myself and my apartment ones. Get rid of all this clutter, eat more fruits and vegetables, and so on. I did decide that it isn't worth the time and energy to try to sell magazines on ebay; 10 year old issues of control systems journals are not likely to bring in enough money to make it worth having them around even a few more weeks. I threw out a bunch of things before I could change my mind.

As for the rest, I'll take it in small steps. My biggest priority right now is my annual cleanout of my financial records. I go through the file drawer in my desk, throw out anything that I don't need, and file away bank statements and tax-related information and frequent flier statements and so on. I probably keep a lot of stuff longer than I need to, but I'm better than the rest of my family at that. About a year after my father died, I went through the folders he had kept in the closet in his study and they dated back to the 1950's. I had a very hard time persuading my mother that there was no reason she could ever concievably need an electric bill from 1956.