bartender for squirrels

August 28, 2006

Between late August 2004 and mid-July 2005, I wore my contact lenses each and every day and went through less than 8 ounces of saline solution. I know that because one of the first things I did after my plane landed and I learned my baggage was 4000 miles away was to buy a bottle of saline solution. The bottle was 8 ounces, and when I went back home some eleven months later I hadn’t used it all up.

In contrast, over the past two months or thereabouts I’ve used over 24 ounces of saline solution, and I haven’t even been wearing contacts every day of that time.

L’Estate

August 9, 2006

In the past week I’ve learned a couple of neatly complementary things:

  1. There’s more to life than just work.

    I never really expected to be in a position to learn this, given my track record of being a lazy underacheiving slacker in everything I do, but that so-far-steady paycheck I’ve been getting for a little while now makes me feel like I should be earning it, and not just because if I’m not earning it it will dry up pretty quick.

    At my current employment status and pay scale ranking and whatnot, I’m legally barred from taking any unpaid overtime. Shockingly (to me at least), there have been times already when I’ve wished that weren’t so because I just know I could get a lot done if I stayed an extra hour or two that day. And while it does feel great to get the fuck out of the office at the end of the day, especially when you’ve used what meager annual leave you’ve collected to get yourself a 3-day weekend, I’ve never been tempted to leave early, even though I could probably get away with it. I mean, that would just be stealing.

    And anyway, more often than not the only thing I do once I leave for the day is to go back to my apartment, watch a little teevee, and eat dinner before going to bed and wishing I felt like doing some cleaning or working on one of one of my pet projects I keep meaning to begin and/or finish (see “slacker”, above).

    Often, the high point of my day is pressing Ctrl– to insert a soft hyphen in a word, so I can use justified text without the spacing being all wiggy. Nobody has complained, so I intend to keep it up.

  2. There’s more to life than just drinking and debauchery.

    The punchline to point #1 above is that this past week-end gave me some perspective on things. I got together with a bunch of friends and had time enough and the right surroundings where I could just fucking relax and spend several hundred dollars on alcohol and various related expenditures. Silly or petty as it might be, I felt reminded of the reason I’ve been doing all that work in the first place. I don’t mind doing it, but I’m not doing it for its own sake.

    Of course, anything can be taken to excess. And if you’re running on five hours of sleep over the past two nights, and you know damn well you have to go to work tomorrow, maybe you should take it easy that day instead of spending another day at the Tiki bar downing oyster shots and daquiris. Maybe you should relax and maybe get some rest instead of making sure you’re fit for nothing but falling comatose in the passenger seat next to your friend who’s going to drive your wretched corpse three hours closer to home.

    Because part of that whole job-responsibilities thing includes showing up in a condition where you can actually, you know work.

So what ended up happening was that on Monday I actually felt pretty good, until I spent 3 hours in a very very air-conditioned room. If I hadn’t already been overtired I’m sure it wouldn’t have done anything, but then yesterday I woke up with a head cold and feeling like shit. I made my way to work, albeit later than usual, and finished up the document I’d been working on for a while. I submitted the draft to my supervisor, who told me to take the rest of the day off.

Today I woke up feeling a good deal better, but certainly not 100% yet. I thought I was in good enough shape to get some work done, but I went downhill pretty fast and got sent home again after a few hours.

I fucking want to work, and it’s bugging me that I haven’t been able to, and it’s bugging me that I’m so worked up about it. That it’s entirely my own damn fault I got sick, though, is a beacon of hope. Because maybe, just maybe, next time I’ll learn from this.

Fuck I hope I feel better in the morning.

GEHA ning keha

August 2, 2006

It’s a good thing I finally got my health insurance card, since this promises to be the kind of weekend where I might end up needing it.

Solid state, 2

August 1, 2006

I’m well on my way to becoming everything I’ve always hated. I’ve got some vinyl records, I’ve got a turntable that spins and is connected to an amplifier which is driving some speakers…. So as soon as I actually get a needle I’ll be ready to progress to the next level of being an asshole audiophile. I imagine that’s something like Bulbasaur evolving into Ivysaur or something.

Which poses the question, why in God’s name is the wikipedia entry for “Bulbasaur” a good 25% longer than the one for “Iran-Contra Affair“? For fuck’s sake.

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