I'm feeling surprisingly contented right now, despite total chaos. A lot of that contentment is just simple acceptance. For example, work is rather insane right now, but much of the craziness comes from things I can't do anything about, so there's no point in worrying about it. It's best to just leave the office at the end of the day and leave it all there. I will, however, throw out a few random out-of-context quotations from the week, for possible amusement value:
"He has the bunny flu."
"What took you so long?"
"Uh, I fell into the river."
"That bastard thinks I'm his best friend now."
"You're should remind him that you're his only friend."
"One of my great disappointments in life is that musical terms don't work in real Italian."
"We just figured that if everybody else is going away, why shouldn't we? But we expected somebody to figure out it was a hoax because the luncheon was on a Sunday."
"I didn't mean to call him an idiot. I meant to call him an imbecile."
"It's a tradition."
"I smell burning rubber."
"Oh, that's just my tea."
"Just give us all your money and everything will be fine."
"Who do you work for? Oh, then you didn't hear that."
In other news, I took advantage of nice weather to walk over to the Kennedy Center after work on Thursday. We had a lot of discussion about the best route. The Theodore Roosevelt bridge probably makes for a shorter walk, but there doesn't seem to be anything to do on the other side that doesn't involve trying to get across trafficky streets. The Key Bridge, on the other hand, takes you to the C&O canal path. It's supposed to hook up to the Potomac Heritage Trail at some point. Aside from having to wait for a mule to go by (the Park Service runs mule-drawn canal boat tours), that worked part of the way. There was a movie being filmed further down the path, so I couldn't go all the way through, but had to turn down to the Georgetown waterfront. Which deadended at a boathouse and I had to double back to get over to the sidewalk by the Potomac. At any rate, it was a pleasant enough walk, and shorter than my colleagues had guessed. (They said about three miles, but I think it's more like two.) And I didn't fall into either the canal or the river. I had plenty of time to grab a quick supper before the concert I was going to. There are free performances every single day and I always feel I should take better advantage of these. Instead, I only make it over there for the rare performer I'm familiar with. In this case, it was Australian folksinger Judy Small, who doesn't tour very much. She sang a mix of old and new songs, with more serious material than I'd hoped for. Alas, she did not sing "The I.P.D." Still, she has a strong voice and it was good to see her perform some 20 years after the last live show of hers I'd been to.
Other than that, it's been work and household odds and ends and napping and reading and so on. Usually I find routine to be deadly, but I'm enjoying the contrast.
Copyright 2004 Miriam H. Nadel