Areas of Unrest

5 July 2001 - Hurdy Gurdy

QOTD: "Microscopes and telescopes confuse clear sight." - Goethe

Reading: Tim Severin, The Jason Voyage

Listening to: Pierre Bensusan, Musiques

The hot sauce mentioned in passing in my last entry turned out to be a well-received gift. Milo had delegated me to get our gift to Lt. Col. M. on the grounds that I'm "the creative one." (Bear in mind that Milo is the person behind the concept of the Nintendo gamedolphin, a truly evil idea for disrupting dolphin society. And that he names cats after serial killers. All I do is write haiku in my weekly highlights.)

Anyway, I chose hot sauces based entirely on labels that would relate to Lt. Col. M's favorite phrases. "It is rocket science" translated into a bottle of a brand called Rocket Fire. "You're fired" led to Last Rites Hot Sauce with the words "fire me" on the side. And "pain is good" was responsible for a bottle of Pain 100%.

The work week included meeting his replacement. J.R. seems like an okay guy so far and - wonder of wonders - he likes to doodle! I won't be alone anymore! I've always found it eerie that nobody else at work ever doodles at meetings and I end up feeling horribly conspicuous about it. Aside from that, he gave the usual rah rah teamwork type of speech.

About the only other thing I did at work was review documents and try to sort out travel. I hate it when I've just filled out a travel request and then get conflicting information about meeting dates. I'm saving myself a trip to Boulder by taking off to go to Providence next week, but the week after may involve trips to Boulder and/or Sunnyvale and/or Dayton. I fear that somebody is going to ask me to go to Washington or Huntsville at the same time, just to add to the total chaos and hell. The week after is Sunnyvale, but it looks like most of August and September will be Boulder. Oh, well, maybe I'll manage to get status on American as well as United this year.

I've also had a change in vacation plans. They didn't get enough people for the Ecuadorian highlands extension after the Galapagos cruise, so it's been cancelled. Some people would either switch cruise dates or just decide not to bother, but I've left the flights as they are and I'll just figure out how to get to Cuenca and Riobamba on my own. It doesn't look at all difficult - just a matter of doing some research and making a few decisions. What I'll probably do is fly to Cuenca and take a bus from there to Riobamba and the famous train north from there. (The train is famous because it's essentially a school bus converted to run on the tracks and you get to sit on the roof if you want to. I will probably pass on the rooftop part of it.)

As for the Fourth of July, Leonard had a party that included some truly amazing music. I wouldn't have thought of the combination of lute (a tenor arch-lute, to be precise) and harmonica, but Richard made it work well. The real highlight, though, was Juan and Sharon, who played hurdy gurdy and accordion, respectively. I'd never seen a hurdy gurdy being played before, though I've seen them in museums. It's built on the body of a lute and has four strings - two for the notes, plus two drones. There's a crank that turns a bow wheel and also produces a percussion effect with a movable bridge. The notes are controlled via a piano-like keyboard. The sound was somewhat like a bagpipe, with all that droning. They played several French dance tunes, which were a lot of fun. Everybody was completely fascinated.

The party broke up fairly early so I went home and watched fireworks from my balcony. I had a great view of the Culver City fireworks, about a mile due south - the advantage of living near the top of a hill and having a south-facing balcony. I could also see most of the Marina del Rey fireworks and smatterings of stuff to the southeast, too. It was a nicer way to spend time off than doing my much neglected housework.