Areas of Unrest

3 October 2000 - What We Have Here Is a Failure to Plan

QOTD: "The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less." - Eldridge Cleaver

Reading: Monica Ferris, A Stitch In Time

Listening to: Juhani Nuorvala, What's a Nice Chord Like You Doing In a Piece Like This?

Believe it or not, with all the randomness of my last entry, I still have a list of odds and ends I forgot to write about. To start with, I am trying to make some sense out of my building being painted. It's not that I don't understand painters coming and changing the color and all that. It's that they seem to be going about it in a rather disorderly way. They waterblasted the outside and might have painted parts of it. They've painted most of the exterior doors (possibly all; I haven't looked at the ones from the other parking lot) and many (but definitely not all) of the balcony railings. And parts of some of the plants near the doors, but I don't think that was intentional. What's weirder is what they've done inside. They've painted a few doors and a few railings, but I can't discern any pattern at all to which ones they've done.

Along the same lines, they are allegedly renovating the bathrooms at work. As far as I can tell, all they do is randomly close the bathrooms on one floor for 15 minutes or so at a time at intervals throughout the day, with the closures on my floor seeming to be magically tied to my need to use the lady's room. (I have no way of knowing if they close them other times, though, so I am sure this is just my usual belief that all facility maintenance is planned to inconvenience me personally.) I am hoping that at the end of this we will actually have things like reliable hot water. In fact, reliable water at all would be a start, since only half the faucets work at all. There is no evidence that any of the people involved in this enterprise are plumbers, so I am holding my breath.

Moving on to another example of good planning, this is rideshare week at work. We all got these wonderful flyers urging us to use the bus and train this week. Too bad they didn't send these flyers to the Metropolitan Transit Authority, whose drivers are still out on strike.

Not that my personal planning is all that wonderful either. The last night we were in Tuva, we were given gifts of liqueur. A very special liqueur, bottled for the Naadim festival and only available as gifts, not sold in stores. This was a minor pain in the neck to carry through Buryatia, Mongolia and China, but I got mine home safely. I'd intended to bring it to the Bards meeting on Thursday, since they'd appreciate it. So I put it out on the kitchen counter. The failure to plan lies in which part of the counter I put it on. Thursday morning I was putting away dishes - and knocked the bottle onto the floor, where it shattered. I had sampled it when I first got home and it wasn't all that thrilling as liqueurs go (sweet and herbal, a sort of odd combination), but it had the memories attached. I settled for bringing along this extremely silly hat I bought in Mongolia, which was a big hit with the gang.

Is it any wonder I still haven't made a hotel reservation for Winnipeg?

Special Offer:

Ever wonder about the music I say I'm listening to? Can't hear Snakefarm or Old Blind Dogs or Pierre Bensusan on your local radio station? Well, here's your chance. In the spirit of musical evangelism I've made a mix tape of music I referred to in my margin notes over the past year. I also happen to have another mix tape handy, mostly of World Beat stuff, that I'd made for another purpose. All you have to do is send me email with your address, telling me if you want the AOU41 tape or the Worlds of Unrest tape (or both) before the end of October 2000. (The links are to playlists.) Nothing is required in return, beyond your willingness to listen. If I decide this was a successful experiment, I'll make it an annual event.