QOTD: "Anything is magic if you don't understand how it happens, and science if you do." - Mark Clifton
Reading: Malinda Terreri, A Tax Deductible Death
Listening to: Beausoleil, Cajunization
Decluttering accomplishments: balanced my checkbook, paid bills, did hand laundry, got the car smog checked, picked up needlework pillow at the finishers, cleared off a shelf in the linen closet for travel stuff (e.g. binoculars)
I am still working on the Ecuador travelogue. I had a few delays because I had to remember where I put the USB cable for the digital camera and I had to figure out how I wanted to organize what I was writing. Some things work okay as one long file, but I decided that this was better done with individual files for each chapter. At any rate, I've got three chapters yet to write (out of eleven) so it will probably not be up until next weekend. Especially as I have to travel on business this week.
I did, however, update the life list.
I've decided that going away over Christmas / New Year's is not really a great idea. There are a whole lot of minor chores I normally do at the end of the year and it's just easier when I can devote an entire day to going through my desk files, for example. Never mind that I had Friday off from work, as that was filled with other errands. And seeing a movie. I wouldn't normally have gone to see something like No Man's Land, but I'd liked the trailer. It's worth seeing if you have a fair tolerance for dark humor. In the end, the dark dominates the humor. Which seems appropriate for a movie about Bosnia.
Not much is going on at work, largely because we're waiting to see if our program gets cancelled. There was a big meeting in D.C. on Friday, that I haven't yet heard any results from. It's unlikely they will kill things outright (and it's unlikely to have any effect on my job if they do), but the next few months will be hectic as we scramble to answer too many questions from too many people.
So let me write about something else instead. Namely, the problem of calendars. At home, my wall calendar is a Jewish calendar that I picked up at the synagogue where storytelling meets. That means it runs from September through September so doesn't create an issue this time of year.
But I also need a wall calendar at work, as well as calendar pages for my organizer. The latter should be simple, but I couldn't find the right size of two page a day ones this year. So I got one page a day ones. Which would have been fine, had I not gotten the type with Far Side cartoons on them. The cartoons take up too much room, so I have less free space for notes than I prefer. The pages were too expensive to abandon them, but I will look harder next year.
I also use pages that have a full month on two pages at the front of my planner and that's where my second error this year came in. I inadvertently bought a different brand than I had in the past. And they start the weeks on Monday, not Sunday. Which has been confusing me every time I look at the bloody thing. I will get used to it - just in time for next year, when I will inevitably end up with one that starts the week on Sunday.
The wall calendar for the office used to be a simple matter. Ruth Stotter published a wonderful calendar having to do with folklore and storytelling and I bought those every year. I guess she decided it was too much work for too little reward and she stopped doing the calendar a few years back. That year I scrambled and ended up with a Magnetic Poetry Calendar. I thought I'd be inspired to immense creativity all year. Instead, I ended up feeling guilty about not writing more.
The past couple of years, I've used the Lonely Planet calendar. The pictures of exotic places were nice, though rather dangerous to a person of my inclinations. I never had any particular desire to go to Laos before a whole month of looking at photos of Luang Preband, for example.
I'd probably have gone ahead with the Lonely Planet calendar this year. But I got a wildlife calendar in the mail, as part of some charity solicitation. I also got one of Western art, which I promptly discarded. I can look at penguins all month. I can't look at cowboy and Indian paintings for more than about 15 seconds.
Which is all well and good, but I'm feeling guilty about being cheap. I wouldn't use this calendar had it not been free. (And it's my policy not to let charity solicitation gifts influence what organizations I give to. I'll use the greeting cards and address labels and so on all the same.) I even found myself looking over the calendars in the bookstore when I was at the mall to see the movie. In the end, I decided that being cheap isn't so bad.
Next year I should start looking at calendars around July.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel