The March 2005 issue of Technology Review had a short piece which included the remarkable statement that 2003 was the first year that credit cards and other electronic systems carried more payments than bank checks. At one level, I'm surprised it was as recent as that. At the same time, I'm one of those people who still writes checks for most of my bills. I do, however, use my credit card for a number of routine purchases, largely because I get frequent flyer miles for doing so. And that brings me to something truly mysterious. A month or so ago, I bought gas and put the credit card receipt in my pocketbook. When I got home, the receipt had magically disappeared. So I thought, "okay, it must have fallen out at the supermarket afterwards" and it wasn't a big deal. This Friday I bought gas and put the credit card receipt in my pocketbook. And, when I got home, the receipt wasn't there. I should note that the disappearing receipts happened at different gas stations some five or so miles apart and this hasn't happened with anything other than gas receipts. But it's way weird.
My week was, otherwise, busy but not horribly weird. Work continues to be fairly insane and I've been sharing my fantasy of lying on a beach in Northern Mozambique with my colleagues. That's led Mark to fantasize about Belize. About four or five times a day, when we everybody is rolling their eyes at the inability of some of our program management to answer basic questions (such as "so exactly what are you spending three million dollars a day on?") we look at each other and he says, "Belize," to which I reply, "Mozambique."
I allow myself one weeknight out a week and this week's excursion was to hear Wendy Wassertstein talk at the Smithsonian on "Sloth and How to Get It." She wrote this book as part of the Oxford University Press series on the seven deadly sins. Essentially, she parodied self-help books and has an induction plan and a maintenance phase for her sloth program. It was a very entertaining talk, though I found her answers to audience questions to be somewhat uneven. She's far funnier when she's well prepared.
I also had a pretty busy weekend. Yesterday was the Folklore Society of Greater Washington's Minifest and I had a forty minute storytelling slot there. The event was in Takoma Park, which was a pain in the neck drive. I'm not surprised the Beltway was a mess (apparently due to an accident on the outer loop, with just rubberneckers slowing down the inner loop), but I never figured out why things were crawling so badly on Piney Branch Road. I'd left myself lots of time, fortunately, so was there in plenty of time for my performance, which went well. "Beryl the Baker" got a particularly good reception, as did "The Neglected Princess." I had planned to use slightly different material than I ended up doing, but it worked for the most part. In particular, I was going to end with "Clever Greta" but Bill requested "The Three Sisters" so I used that instead. All in all, it was fun and I was glad I did it. I also stayed to hear Tim, who told a wonderful personal story, after which one of his daughters requested he tell it again!
Today involved the usual Sunday errand running, as well as a phone call from Robert. We're communicating somewhat better, but we do really need time in person to work some things out. The afternoon included a storytelling guild meeting. I've agreed to be a director, which shouldn't be horribly time consuming.
Copyright 2005 Miriam H. Nadel