Areas of Unrest

QOTD: "If Mr. Vincent Price were to be co-starred with Miss Bette Davis in a story by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe directed by Mr. Roger Corman, it could not fully express the pent-up violence and depravity of a single day in the life of the average family." - Quentin Crisp

Reading: Sheila Nickerson, Midnight to the North

Listening to: Brazzaville

Decluttering accomplishments: threw out more magazines and threw out or filed various papers

30 March 2003 - Complaint Department

Today is the thirtieth of March. Spring starts on March 21st. Therefore, it is Spring.

I live in Virginia. Virginia is south of the Mason-Dixon line. The Mason-Dixon line divides the north and south. Therefore, I live in the South.

Let me repeat. It is Spring and I live in the South. So what the hell was the snow today all about? Can you get me the complaint department, please?

Okay, I had checked the weather forecast and gone grocery shopping last night and I didn't actually have to go out in the snow which didn't stick, but this is ridiculous. Especially as it had gotten up to 70ish during the week.

It did give me a chance to get a bunch of stuff done at home. I suspect I have more magazines I want to get rid of buried somewhere in the study, but for now I've gone through all the ones I could find. My next big project involves photos and, specifically, filing all the negatives in plastic sleeves in a binder. Yes, I know I am compulsive. I also found out where all my warmest socks were hiding. The polar fleece socks I bought when I went to Antarctica, along with several pairs of wool socks, had disappeared long ago. When I went to Manitoba a couple of years ago, I had to go out and buy more warm socks. All winter, I've been thinking about the cozy polar fleece socks I was sure I still had somewhere. I even tried to buy some new ones at REI, but they didn't have them in my size. (I have absurdly small feet for somebody my size. This is not something I care much about, but it makes it hard to buy outdoors socks.) Anyway, I happened to move my tennis bag and noticed that it felt like there was something inside (aside from the racket). And, there they were - two pairs of cute and warm polar fleece socks and four pairs of warm woolen socks. I really should put them somewhere where I have a chance of finding them next winter.

As for actually doing anything, this was a fairly slow week at work. Monday night, after work, I had a reception to go to on the Hill. It still amazes me that one can just walk into the House office buildings. I mean, there's security in the form of x-ray machines and metal detectors, but you don't need to show any ID or sign a register of who you're visiting or anything. This reception was for M.I.T.'s Washington Summer Intern program and I found myself looking at the interns and wondering if I'd ever actually been that young. I chatted with various other alums who said the same thing. It was good to be sociable and I got a free dinner out of it, too. Anything that involves chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert can't be too bad. I'll also note that I don't think I'd been over to the mall at night before - at least, not since my eighth grade class trip where we went to the Washington Monument on Friday night - and it was really nice seeing everything all lit up.

I should also add to my ongoing celebrity death watch. The obvious news this week was the death of Daniel Patrick Moynihan. The personal significance there is that I remember voting for him the very first time I voted. That was also the only year I voted in New York, by the way. The celebrity death that was probably less noted was that of Adam Osborne, the developer of one of the earliest practical home computers. I doubt that all that many people remember the Osborne 1 and, to be honest, all I remember of it was lusting after one. I do recall that Zilog (which made the Osborne CPU) donated defective chips to Berkeley and we used them in a class on switching control.

There's a bunch of other stuff churning in my mind, mostly on the usual theme of having too much stuff and needing to get rid of it and still being tempted to buy things. But I haven't worked it out well enough to write coherently about yet. In the meantime, I'm going to cower next to the heater and spend some time trying to do something with the yarn stash while watching trashy movies on television.