QOTD: "If a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think very little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time." - Thomas de Quincey
Reading: a couple of books on buying a house
Listening to: Dr. Didge, Out of the Woods
Decluttering accomplishments: threw out several old magazines, threw out 17 AOL diskettes that had been lying on my desk forever, did my taxes, reduced the stack of papers on the living room floor
My life gets ever more complicated. The first draft of the reorganization came out at work on Monday and it looks ugly. There weren't names attached, but it was fairly easy to figure out where I would probably go. My biggest concern is that I think the structure is likely to make it harder to actually get anything done and is more likely to decrease communications than to improve them. But they'll be tweaking stuff for a while.
In the meantime, there was a position posted that I am very clearly well qualified for and that would move my career in a direction that makes sense. The catch is that there's some ambiguity about where the job is as the organization involved is moving from D.C. back to Los Angeles. I need to call and ask about that. And, of course, there's no guarantee I'd get the job. But it's at least worth applying for. There's another possibility, too, as somebody I'd very much like to work for has a vacancy. That job is definitely in the D.C. area, but it might be worth making the move.
As for my current job, this was a hectic week. I got pulled in on Monday to support some briefings to yet another independent review team. That took up all afternoon Monday and most of the morning on Tuesday. Then I had to go to Colorado Springs for a design review. The travel wasn't too bad and I did have some spare time to get together with Marcia and Jim. We went out to dinner Thursday night, so I started my post-Passover return to normal food with sushi. The only catch was that the service was terrible at the place we went to (possibly named Sumo, but in the process of becoming Mobu, or something like that - new owners). We got our miso soup right off. Then the waitress brought us a tray of sushi. Which didn't appear to match anything we'd ordered. A while later she brought Jim's sushi and still hadn't figured out whose food the first tray was. Then she came back and told me half the stuff I'd ordered wasn't available. I made new selections and she came back with those after a while. Well, except for the tuna. She also told us she couldn't figure out whose food the first tray was so we could have it for free. Which was a good thing as it was a long long time before Marcia got her food or before I got my tuna. They did take Marcia's food off the bill and the food was actually quite tasty and all, but I wouldn't recommend the random sushi experience overall. It was good to visit with Marcia, too, even if I still have cat hair all over my clothes. (She has three. Oliver, in particular, is an attention slut. There is a genetic attraction between white cats and dark clothing.)
I used one of my free movie rental coupons to rent Haiku Tunnel this weekend. I chose it mostly because Robert wanted me to see it. It was better than I'd expected - not likely to make it onto anyone's "best movies of all time" list, but certainly entertaining. I found the ending particularly satisfying. I also liked the extended riff on secretary names versus lawyer names. When I returned it, I picked up Ghost World, but I haven't watched that yet because ABC was showing October Sky tonight and I couldn't resist watching that again. It's a superb movie, especially for a space geek like me, and I cried just as much the second time around.
There were also a few news stories I wanted to comment on. A few weeks ago, the city of Bismarck, North Dakota did something way cool. Namely, they set a record for making snow angels. Apparently they had a large number of people gather downtown and all make snow angels. That would have been tremendous fun to be part of.
Less fun is the story that a murder suspect who hanged herself in a Florida jail left a note telling her lawyer to sue the jail for failing to prevent her suicide. I don't have words to express how ridiculous that is. Equally absurd is that the county board of supervisors here in Los Angeles is trying to come up with a plan to stop summoning dead people for jury duty. We have a database of death records so it seems that this should be pretty easy, but I am sure our illustrious politicos will find a way to make it complicated.
The big news story these days, of course, continues to be the Middle East. And I actually have a simple solution to the problem. Israel should return the West Bank and Gaza to the countries it captured them from. Let Jordan and Egypt deal with the Palestinians. And if they refuse to take the land back, point out that they'd be perfectly free to create whatever Palestinian state they wanted to. Jerusalem is a thornier problem, since Jews were not allowed access to sites like the Western Wall when Jordan controlled East Jerusalem. My suggestion is to return East Jerusalem to Jordan, in exchange for giving the Pope control over Mecca and Medina.
I'm making lots of decluttering progress, so I have plenty of room to display my Nobel Peace Prize.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel