QOTD: "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." - Albert Camus
Reading: Dr. Zakaria Erzinclioglu, Maggots, Murder, and Men
Listening to: The Chenille Sisters
Decluttering accomplishments: did a whole bunch of household paperwork, did all of the hand laundry, brought a few things to storage
I intended to write an entire entry about color, prompted by the terrorist warning system that Tom Ridge announced. But I've been busy and stressed, so I'll give you the condensed version. Namely, hasn't Ridge ever looked through a prism? Or seen a rainbow? Or at least gone to a briefing where somebody presented "stoplight" charts? Blue is supposed to be better than green. Red is bad news, yellow is caution, green is okay, and blue is wonderful. I'm half tempted to start a postcard campaign encouraging people to write postcards saying just "Roy G. Biv" and send them to Ridge.
The other color related story I had was my disappointment at the claim that the universe is beige, not turquoise as previously reported. I heard that during that awful drive to DIA and it got swallowed up in whining about the weather. The problem is, of course, that the whole notion of the average wavelength of the universe is silly. You could use some sort of regional average or you could bear in mind that waves add in complicated ways (which is why blending light doesn't work the same as blending paints does) or you could argue about what measure of central tendency to use. At any rate, I reserve the right to think of the universe as being whatever color I want it to be at any given moment.
But I have a whole lot of other stuff to write about, so further musings on color will wait. I mentioned being busy and stressed and should at least explain a little. We've been in the midst of our annual replanning exercise. Among the various things involved there, we have some sort of reorganization in the works. The top brass had an off-site on Friday, so I am hoping to know my fate tomorrow. I'm trying to be optimistic, but I can conceive of all sorts of awful possibilities.
The other thing at work is finishing our cost estimates, which are (as usual) about twice the contractor's estimates. I got dragged off to sit down with the software cost people two afternoons, helping them set model parameters. The first session wasn't too bad, because it had to do with two simulations that I understand well and had a lot of data on. And it was actually reasonably interesting to see how the cost model works. But the second session had to do with a test tool that I know next to nothing about. We ended up sitting around for a couple of hours trying to reach various folks on the phone who might have some details.
The other source of stress was a letter from my storage place claiming that I hadn't paid the March rent. They're supposed to charge my credit card automatically, so this was weird. I dropped by the next day and it turned out that my credit card had been rejected because they had the old expiration date in. What makes this odd is that the old expiration date was December and the charge went through fine in January and February. The really annoying part was that they claimed they'd tried to call me and the phone just rang. Well, you see, I don't have a working answering machine at home right now. But they have my work number. There was no reason why they should have waited two weeks and then sent a nasty letter (with a late fee) when they could have simply called me at work and I'd have given them the new expiration date. And it might have also been nice had their letter indicated that the problem was the credit card expiration date. I've had the expiration date problem come up with other charges I make automatically (e.g. my ISP) and those companies had the decency to inform me of the problem correctly. The guy didn't charge me for the late fee and the corporation will almost certainly waive it, but I'm still annoyed.
That was another factor in prompting me to think harder about buying a place. I'm frustrated with having half my stuff in a locker ten miles away that I can't access at any random time. It's not really an inconvenient location - it's near work and easy for me to drop by at lunch time or after work - but it's still not like having everything with me. I've been doing some digging around at realtor.com and I can fairly easily afford a two bedroom condo. I can also afford a nicely historic 19th century house in Connecticut. Or a house on Vinalhaven (an island off the coast of Maine). That's the dilemma, of course. If I really don't want to stay in Los Angeles, should I even think about buying here? And if I don't want to stay, shouldn't I be doing something about that?
The weekend was too busy to do much thinking about real estate. I went to Cerritos for a Volksmarch on Saturday. Most of the route was fairly bland suburbia, pleasant enough with blooming roses and a surprising number of RVs in driveways. But the route also included the new library, which has only been open about a week. It's extremely impressive. The highlight is Stan, a T. Rex skeleton, that dominates the children's library. There's a little video you can watch about fossil digs and it explains that Stan was named after the amateur fossil hunter who found him. There's also a huge salt water aquarium at the library entrance. It was definitely the highlight of the walk.
Throw in a storytelling concert at the Beverly Hills library to go to, various errands to run, and sleep to catch up on, and the weekend seemed way too short. And I still haven't finished all the odds and ends that I planned to do. Sigh.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel