QOTD: "To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to hell." - Igor Stravinsky
Reading: Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians
Listening to: nothing, since I should have been in bed a half hour ago
Decluttering accomplishments: I filed some stuff away at work, but home is pure chaos, alas
The title of this entry is a wonderful description I read of the anthrax threat. Realistically, sending anthrax spores through the mail is an inefficient way to kill people. But it does create fear and distraction.
I've had plenty of other sources of distraction this week, as the usual round of meetings was filled out with having to come up with cost estimates for the replan of our program. Which meant a lot of time cursing at spreadhseets. When I insert a row, I think Excel should be capable of figuring out that I want it to be formatted just the way the rows I inserted it between were. Combining that with getting data later than promised and some of it not making sense, there were some long, tedious days there.
I'll also note that the lights in my office continue to be flaky, working just fine when it's bright and sunny out or when we call in for repairs, and not at other times. I've almost persuaded other people that they're light activated.
I did indulge in a bit of retail therapy to counteract the stresses of the work week. Actually, I had gone to the mall to buy a congratulations card for John, who has passed his primary exams. (I gather this is equivalent to part 1 of his specialty boards. The South African medical education system is beyond my understanding. But, it sounds like a real accomplishment, as he is one of only four people in the country who passed all three parts, including both written and oral exams. In other words, he done good.) While there, I bought a slinky with a pig head and tail for Milo for boss's day. And I bought some action figures for myself - some related to Buffy and the first three Legion of Super Heroes ones. It will take them forever to get to my favorite super heroes, no doubt. But my completeness obsession won't let me wait until I can have Brainiac 5, who I had a major childhood crush on. (So I had a thing for smart men even back then. And his green skin was so cute.) So Saturn Girl, Lightning Lad and Cosmic Boy it is, at least for now.
As if working 12 hour days all week weren't enough, I had an incredibly hectic weekend. There was a Volksmarch in Burbank on Saturday morning. I enjoyed the part of the walk that went through residential neighborhoods in Burbank and Toluca Lake, but there was a boring stretch on Lankershim Boulevard and a tedious wait for the shuttle up to Universal City Walk. (There's no sidewalk most of the way up the hill and massive traffic, which is why the instructions had us use the shuttle.) While waiting, I chatted with an Austrian couple, who told me they liked Los Angeles a lot, but found it expensive. There was another guy waiting for the shuttle who seemed to be behaving oddly. It was only when he made a few random sounds, sort of like bird calls, that I realized he probably had Tourette's syndrome. By the way, I had never actually been to the City Walk and I realized there's really no reason to go. (Unless, of course, you're a tourist taking the Universal Studios tour.)
Saturday night featured an excursion to Encino to see Katy and Ross perform at CTMS. In the process of which, I remembered why I usually offer to drive when I go somewhere with Penny. I was absolutely terrified much of the time and we bickered over her inattention to staying in one lane and the like. I was also mildly disappointed in the show. There were only about 15 people in the audience and there just wasn't a lot of energy. Ross was definitely censoring himself - and admitted it, though he did sing his song about being a red diaper baby. My favorite bit of the night was the following joke sequence that Katy told:
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.
Why did the dinosaur cross the road? There weren't any chickens in those days.
Why did Usama Bin Laden cross the road? To keep up with the dinosaurs.
Penny also told me that she'd gotten an amusing chain e-mail that suggests punishing Bin Laden and crew by giving them all sex change operations and sending them back to live under the rules they made.
Today was spent reviewing papers for the IEEE Aerospace Conference. I read one very good paper and one that started off very good but didn't have a lot of actual data. Another one was obviously written in a hurry by a grad student who wrote his conclusions before looking at his data. The last paper I read was probably very good, but it was hard to tell since I was tired enough that I got completely bogged down in the notation. It's a good thing that we score ourselves on how thorough our reviews are, because I had pretty much nothing to say about it. In the future, I'll have to remember not to read papers by statisticians at three in the afternoon. The paper review committee did provide particularly good refreshments this year (chocolate croissants in the morning; orange roughy as one of the options for lunch, strawberry mouse in white chocolate cups for dessert) and it was nice to see a few people I don't see often. But it was also time I could have used for housework.
Not to mention sleeping. Speaking of which....zzzzzz.
Copyright 2001 Miriam H. Nadel