This week's celebrity death is Gertrude Ederle, who was the first woman to swim the English channel. It's interesting that, at the time, people didn't think women could swim long distances, while now people think women are better suited to distance swimming than men are, due to higher levels of body fat for both flotation and protection from hypothermia. Still, given my hatred of cold water, I think I'll stick to swimming short distances in nice heated pools.
To follow up from last week, this was another insane week at work. The evil bastard did not show up in person, fortunately, but merely sent his minions, who were quickly snowed by what Alex later described as my excruciatingly long lecture on noise equivalent figures of merit. (For anybody who cares, all that means is that they're associated with a signal to noise ratio of one.) I also was entirely unsuccessful in persuading someone else that starting a briefing with three pages of why they didn't want to do the task was not an effective strategy and throwing in another six pages that claim our baseline doesn't meet requirements is more likely to get the program canceled than to have the high muckety-mucks toss money at us. To add to the stress level, a document I've been trying to coordinate has been stalled by a fight over who drafts the memo that accompanies the request for signature. And two of the other signatories are fighting over which order they need to sign in. This has all the dynamics of a nursery school recess. Fortunately, we manage to maintain our senses of humor over it.
Milo was in town for some meetings and I had dinner with him on Tuesday night at Bonefish Grill in Centreville. It was good, but nothing exciting. I couldn't resist eating the ultimate East Coast fish, namely flounder. Anyway, we talked about the declining morale in our old department (which he just left). I'm worried about Suzanne and Mary Joan and how they'll fare without him to buffer them. It's yet another reason to be glad I moved when I did. In other news, he and his wife have bought a house in Port Townsend, Washington. They'll use it as a vacation place for a few years and then retire there. And, oh, yes, he also mentioned to me that the cast album of Carrie is out on CD. This is widely regarded as the worst musical ever written, so of course I need to get the recording! In exchange, I told him about the German cannibal story that's been on the news all week. The part that amazes me the most is that, when this guy advertised for a young man to be slaughtered and eaten, he got over 400 responses! They didn't say anything about how many prospective victims he met before finding the one he did kill. Way weird stuff.
The biggest news among my colleagues is that Brady's wife had their twins last weekend. I'm frantically working away on finishing a pair of sweaters. I decided to crochet, rather than knit, just because I'm faster at it. I'm doing identical sweaters, in a color variant. Both are green and blue stripes, but one will have blue trim and the other will have green trim.
I added to the domesticity by going through a bunch of papers, filing and discarding. I still have a half a box full to sort out, though, and I didn't get around to filing travel brochures and maps. Those go in the bottom file drawer, which I can't get to until I move some boxes around. I'd also planned to do a bunch of cooking but got tired after 40 minutes of chopping vegetables for a stir fry. It was good - green beans, mushrooms, scallions, garlic, and ginger, with mirin and soy sauce thrown in at the end - but trimming green beans takes too long.
At least this was a good weekend to be all domestic. We didn't have a lot of snow, but any snow at all makes driving less pleasant. We had a little over an inch on Thursday night, which made my Friday morning walk to the metro a bit slushy. Friday afternoon was nastier, with sleet, which is my least favorite sort of weather. The snow came heavier on Friday night, and we ended up with about four inches. That's less than we feared (and less than people further north got). Things cleared up quickly, but it was very cold out. By this evening, about half of it had melted and it should all be gone by Tuesday. The really annoying part is that this is the weekend I usually spend in San Francisco with Robert, who has an annual convention there. My vacation time is too tight and work is too hectic to have managed that, but it makes being cold and alone even more depressing.
Two things I need in a house - a covered garage so I don't have to dig my car out and a fireplace.
Copyright 2003 Miriam H. Nadel