Gurgle

I have a co-worker who has school-aged kids. The kids bring home all sorts of exotic germs, which my co-worker then brings to work to share with me. So today I am home fighting a cold. Symptoms so far: congested lungs, earache, headache, sore throat, fatigue. I thought about gutting it out and going to work anyway - showered and dressed and everything - since all I do is sit in a chair all day, but just the thought of climbing the stairs to my cubicle wore me out. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The more I learn about the project I am newly supporting, the less it appears I will have to do. It's a slick app with a finite set of requirements, a clean interface, plenty of functionality. My job is to support the released versions, but there are three more releases due out this year, so any problems that crop up will probably be fixed in one of the subsequent releases. And then, after the final release, support will segue to another department. So, what is it I am supposed to be doing here? I don't know, but everyone seems happy that I am on board to do it. Corporate IT - gotta love it.

Regarding the previously blogged about coat search, I did return to Kohl's to look over the men's coats, but I had the same problem there that I have with women's clothes: by the time they are on sale, my size is so picked over as to be non-existent. Is everyone in this city the same size as me, even the men? Hard to believe, but it's true.

In other random information, I think my dog's dreams and my dreams are starting to intersect. The other night I dreamed that she kept peeing in the house, and when we got up in the morning, the dog wanted out before eating. Unheard of.

Reading: Finished Anne Tyler's latest, Noah's Compass. Working on Trauma Farm. Maybe if I get energetic about it, reviews may be forthcoming. Or not. The short version is, thumbs up on both.

Movies: Watched "The Band's Visit". Thumbs up here, too. Now I have "The Thin Man". Yes, that movie. One of my fb friends has been watching them, which reminded me of how much I enjoyed them. So why not? Beats Mel Gibson.

Take your golf ball to work

My right heel still hurts, off and on, from the plantar fasciitis. My SO's daughter suggested rolling a golf ball around with my foot, so that is what I do at work when it is bothering me. At home, I use one of the dog's toy balls, a nubby thing that won't slide on the carpet. Hopefully, it will continue to improve because the latest health news says, it doesn't matter how healthy you eat or how much you exercise if you sit on your butt all day long. So now I am making a point of getting out of my chair at least once an hour at work. We'll pretend that is not affecting my productivity.

Speaking of work, this week I heard the final nail in my career coffin driven home. The short version is, I no longer do software development, since that has all been outsourced. Now I am doing product support, which is more like business analysis. Instead of writing code, I get to study the requirements and research defects and validate modifications, all those things I HATE. The only worse thing would be code reviews. Right now I am at the "study the requirements" stage, which is really difficult for me because I keep dozing off. I don't know how BAs do it. The software developers are in Riga. Maybe I will have to go visit.

What else is new? I broke down and bought some jeans. The only ones I had that I could still fit into were growing a crotch hole, and it was just a matter of time before they became indecent.

An aside: There is something about entering a clothing store that just makes me lose heart. I don't know if it is the plethora of unflattering choices or the fact I have the fashion sense of a doorknob or what, but it is all I can do to not run out of there in tears.

Anyway, I bought these jeans at Kohl's. They are Lee's. They are incredibly LONG. After washing, they are better but still too long. Maybe "boot cut" now means you are supposed to wear them with stiletto heels. They have some Spandex in them but don't feel like they have Spandex, if you know what I mean. Very comfy. But long.

While I was there, I also looked for simple, inexpensive tops to wear with my pj bottoms. I have looked for these multiple times in multiple stores. They don't exist, at least in the women's department, unless you want something that looks too stupid to wear even to bed. At Target, I had purchased some long sleeved T's in the men's department, but despite being 100% cotton, they were unwearable. They must have left the bolls in the cotton when they created the cloth. I gave them to the Goodwill; was that wrong? Anyway, at Kohl's I picked up a couple of waffle shirts from Men's Underwear. They are soft and warm and comfy!

I am in need of a new winter coat, too. I tried Dick's, where I discovered those nice insulated coats with a brand name I can't remember (North Country? North Face? North Something. Or maybe I am thinking of Columbia) are EXPENSIVE! So I looked for women's coats at Kohl's. I looked and I looked and I looked. They had a gazillion men's coats, but I could not find the women's. I finally asked someone - the coats were behind the bathing suits. There were not very many to choose from, they each weighed about ten pounds, and they were so puffy I could not get my arms in the sleeves. FAIL. But my SO purchased his coat at Kohl's last year, for a song, so I plan to return and check out the men's coats. And pick up more of those waffle shirts.

In other attempts to spend money, I have been trying to upgrade my DSL to FIOS (FIber OpticS). The Verizon website is a nightmare to navigate, but I also find all the deals they offer to be confusing. Brand new customers get the best deals, of course, but I doubt it would pay to discontinue my existing service long enough to become a new customer. I used to get an offer from them almost everyday in the mail. The offers trailed off during xmas, but they are starting to arrive again. I'm trying not to get obsessed with getting the best deal, but I would really like a free Netbook when I sign up. My SO bought one and it is so CUTE!

What else is new? Not much. Same-o same-o. Plan to spend the day making a butt dent on the couch while I watch football and knit. Sounds like a plan. Go Colts!

Brrrrrrrrr!

I'm having a difficult time summoning any enthusiasm for cross country skiing this morning. The snow is lovely, just perfect in fact, but it is NINE FREAKIN' DEGREES OUT! Never mind that skiing always warms me up, just the idea of being out in it is daunting. It's cold enough INside the house, let alone OUTside.

The only "resolutions" I came up with this year were to practice yoga every other day, and walk on the days in between. My goal was (notice past tense - heh) to do one or the other every day and not substitute other activities for either. I haven't done too badly, but again, this cold weather is difficult to overcome. And now I have plantar fasciitis.

The good news is I found out that my weight problem may not be from eating too much, but from sleeping too little. Someone somewhere did a little study (and if I weren't so lazy, I would look up the facts here), asking a group of women to change nothing about their lifestyle except to get at least 7.5 hours of sleep a night. After six weeks, every one of those women lost weight, between 6 and 15 pounds, I think. I know I eat more when I am tired, so this makes perfect sense to me.

More good news (depending on how you look at it) is the discovery that the calorie counts on packaged foods and restaurant menus are frequently off, and are allowed to be off by up to 20%. (Again, too lazy to find the article, but it's online somewhere, so Google it, folks.) And the errors always seem to be calorie counts that are less than they are in reality. Why is this good news? It explains how I can count calories and still not lose weight. I'm drifting away from packaged foods and restaurant dining more and more these days, anyway, and now I have added reason to.

Hmm. It's 15 degrees now. I'm running out of excuses.

How I spent my xmas vacation

I can't believe I have to go to work tomorrow. I've been on vacation since Dec. 23, and that week I worked from home quite a bit, so it feels like I have been away from the office forever. As usual, I started my hiatus with a laundry list of Things To Do, and some were accomplished but most weren't because they were things I really didn't want to do, so why should I spend my vacation doing them? Today I will probably try to cram some of those chores in; even if I don't want to do them, they really need to be done.

Yesterday I got dressed for the first time in days. Wore a bra and everything. Not that I have been lounging around in pjs or (worse) cooking naked. Sweat or yoga pants, a sports bra mostly for nipple protection, and sneakers have been my uniform. Once dressed, I actually drove out of town on an errand to the middle of nowhere. I'm not a total hermit.

When I have an extended staycation like the past ten days, I try to pretend that I am retired, but the paradigm doesn't really shift. I can't make any long term commitments or completely abandon my sleeping schedule or let everything go to hell if I want. I do a lot of thinking, though, which sometimes is a good thing but sometimes not.

One thing I have been contemplating is what to do about this blog. Lately it has degenerated into movie reviews and whines about work. I have two readers who are not spambots. I maintain two other personal blogs, one about knitting and one about my home and garden, and I sorta maintain blogs for two non-profits, which should be enough but it's not. I can't decide what to do, though, so I guess I will do nothing. For now.

1000 Journals

“It's more important to do something personal than to do something important. That's what I think now.” — 1000 Journals

My SO and I watched this documentary last night. In a nutshell, a graphic designer who calls himself SomeGuy took one thousand blank books, added artwork to the covers, stamped the inside with instructions - keep for two weeks, add whatever you want, pass it on, send it back when it is full - and launched them into the world. His goal was to spark our innate creativity, that fresh way we looked at the world when we were young. "1000 Journals" contains interviews with some of the contributors and how the project impacted their lives. No one was "saved" but everyone gave something and gained something from participating. According to the website FAQ, only one has come back, but in the movie, I think more like two dozen did. There was talk about a museum exhibit - not sure if that ever happened - and a book about the project was published and obviously this movie was made. Oh, and another project, 1001 Journals, came into being.

While I was intrigued by the idea and entertained by the movie, I'm not sure what to think about it all. I am one of those many adults who would not answer "YES" if asked whether I were an artist. In the not so distant past, I tried to keep a journal like these, something that contained more than my daily whine, but could not sustain any interest in it. But now that I am approaching the end of my 50's (GAH!), my interest in this sort of thing is increasing, not as an expression of creativity but as an exploration of my inner life, the real me, whoever that may be.

In the era of the Internet, keeping a journal of any sort on paper seems like an anachronism, but then how to explain the popularity of scrapbooking? In A Year of Cats and Dogs, the protagonist complains about how life has no plot. Maybe journals and scrapbooks and photo albums are our attempts to capture events and apply a storyline of some sort to our existence.

Julie and Julia

Back in my teen years, my mother grew a bit bored with the roast beef and meatloaf meals she had been cooking for decades. We were less than gracious about what we called her "gourmet cooking" but I don't recall refusing to eat what was served. I think she favored the Galloping Gourmet over Julia Child, but it was impossible to be alive in America back then and not to know who Julia Child was. Her style was as unique as William F. Buckley's.

Meryl Streep's Julia ranks right up there with Philip Seymour Hoffman's Capote and Kate Blanchett's Dylan and Hepburn. It would have been so easy to paint Julia's large personality with ridicule or farce, but that line was not crossed.

Briefly, the movie is about Julia Child's path to becoming a famous chef juxtaposed with Julie Powell's blog about cooking every recipe from Julia's first book in the course of a year. Quite frankly, I would have been happy with more of the former and less of the latter. While Julia is a cultural icon, Julie is a pop phenomenon, and a not very interesting one at that. I have to give her kudos, though, for being able to bone a duck.

Amy Adams played Julie. She is one those actresses who morph enough with each role that I don't pick up on the fact that I have seen her in other movies, including important films like "June Bug" and "Doubt". Ditto Stanley Tucci as Paul. I raked over his filmography, trying to figure out just where I've seen him before. It appears I've seen him all over the place, but not in any roles that stick in my mind.

This movie could have been the story of a great romance. I wish someone loved me the way Paul loved Julia. And I wish I loved someone like Julia loved Paul. Maybe I need to cultivate a big personality, a grating falsetto, and a love of French cooking.

Religulous

A few weeks ago, my neighbor called, wanting to foist some Mad Ants basketball tickets onto me. I told him I had other plans, but I did not elaborate, because those plans involved a butt dent in the couch and watching Bill Maher make fun of religion in "Religulous". Some people would not think that was funny.

But I did. Religion, and the people who practice it, are easy targets for ridicule. I just don't understand how an individual can reject scientific evidence that supports the concept of evolution and yet believe in talking snakes, virgin birth, and raising people from the dead, without suffering enough cognitive dissonance to make his/her head explode.

I confess that I lack the capacity (or the imagination?) to make the leap of faith that religion requires. And I have tried, I truly have. I can get excited about becoming a believer for about 15 minutes, but then it all just fades away. Consequently, while I found "Religulous" to be entertaining, it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. The movie was obviously edited for comedic effect as well, so any insight it might appear to provide should be taken with a grain of salt.

Not a movie review

Not that I don't have a movie to watch from Netflix. I have a bad habit of not watching my Netflix movies in a timely fashion, a habit I was trying to break - hence, the sequence of movie reviews - but now I am back to my old wastrel tricks.

So what have I been up to? Well, I went on a business trip last week. I complain a lot about my job and I don't always agree with how I am managed, but there are very few really bad things I can say about my employer, especially when they own what amounts to a time share in private jets. And that is how found myself in this...



... eating this...



... with a view like this.



The problem is our fair city is very expensive and difficult to fly in and out of, and the company's solution is NetJets. This was my first time on board, and it puts commercial flight to shame. There is no security to pass through, none of this get-to-the-airport-hours-ahead-of-time. In fact, I was late due to an accident on the highway and THEY WAITED FOR ME. And the steward brought us coffee and breakfast when we took off and hot towels when we arrived(!!!)

The time at HQ was not very interesting. We were seated in the "basement" with the contractors, and this was our view:



Believe it or not, there is a deer in that picture. My travelling companion and I were so excited, you'd think we had never seen wildlife before. And, for me, that was the highlight of the trip. That, and getting to watch "Monday Night Football" and back-to-back-to-back reruns of "Law and Order: SVU".

The low point was getting sick from the salad bar in the cafeteria - the shrimp cooties in the mango and shrimp salad must have jumped across to the asparagus (I'm allergic to shellfish). The upside was I missed the company party, bowling followed by a meal in a shrimp-infested hibachi restaurant. By the time I felt better, it was time to go home.

Gran Torino

I like Clint Eastwood. I like most Clint Eastwood movies. "Gran Torino" is no exception.

Basically, the story involves recently widowed Walt who lives in a changing neighborhood. Walt likes to growl and complain. Estranged from his own family, he unwillingly gets involved with the Hmong family next door. There is gang violence involved, and Walt decides he has to do something about it.

Like most Clint Eastwood movies, it is best not to examine this one too closely, or you will notice that there is only one multi-dimensional character and that the rest of the cast is there to move the plot along. And don't think too much about how good-natured the Hmong are about being called a wide variety of racial epithets. And don't get caught up in wondering if your own death will have meaning.

Instead, laugh out loud when Walt decides to "man up" his teenage neighbor Thao by teaching him how men talk to each other (it involves a lot of profanity and ethnic slurs) and cry a little about the need for some to drag down the others and nod approvingly at the surprisingly satisfying ending.

Mystic River

Many years ago, I watched "Mystic Pizza" so I assumed "Mystic River" took place in a southern Connecticut port town. But no, it's Boston based. A second level of confusion resulted in the fact that one character is named "Sean" but not the character played by Sean Penn, who is "Jimmy". Just as I can't keep track of who has the ball when the Vikings play Green Bay, I had trouble keeping the names straight, except for "Dave". And I did not realize this was a Clint Eastwood-directed film until the end, when the credits rolled.

This was one long, slow-paced, dark movie. I don't think there was a moment of levity in the whole thing. And a certain amount of knowledge had to be inferred from the dialog. Fortunately, my daughter was on hand to keep me up to speed.

The basic story line is, three eleven-year-old boys are deeply affected by what happens to one of them, Dave. Flash forward 25 years, and we see that one is a cop and one is a petty thief turned local boss of his own little fiefdom, while damaged Dave acts kind of dumb but is smarter than we think. Jimmy's nineteen-year-old daughter is brutally murdered, and Sean the cop works the case. He and his partner focus on one likely candidate after another, but by the time they nab the perpetrator, one of their suspects becomes fish food.

This movie reminds me of "Unforgiven" - another Clint Eastwood movie - which I "got" but could not explain. Things are not tied up in a neat little bundle in the end. If you can stand that kind of uncertainty, this may be a movie for you.

To Joy

I'm a fan of Ingmar Bergman, but I found "To Joy" a bit difficult to watch. The acting seemed overwrought, even for 1950, and the story a bit disjointed. Fortunately, it was a short film.

But there were some solid themes running through it:
* What happens when we find out we are not as special as we thought?
* How do we parse out freedom and responsibility?
* Where does love go when it takes a holiday? And how do we lure it back?

I watch (read) a lot of foreign films and wonder about the nuances of the translations. And I'm not very familiar with most of the classical music that punctuated this movie. I think I would have appreciated the movie more were I better educated.

Bored and boring, but it's a grand life

Falling back on memes for blog material is a telling marker that my life (and me) are rather boring. Join me in my boredom!

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
If it weren't for my job, my neighbors, and other people, I would be perfectly happy. Actually, my neighbors aren't too bad, except for the one with the five (FIVE) barking dogs.

What is your greatest fear?
Being old and sick and diagnosed with dementia when all I really need is a stiff drink and a cigarette.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Gee, so many to choose from. I'll say, the eating thing. When stressed, my eating is out of control. Although last night, when I was feeling particularly weepy about city services (or the lack thereof) and discovered the makings for s'mores in the cupboard, I limited myself to two. I don't like marshmallows that much, and they are so sweet they killed my taste for more chocolate. Now, if I had had some milk in the fridge, the graham crackers would be history.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Again, so many to choose from. There are the usual - intolerance, ignorance, selfishness - but most days what I really hate is how other people drive.

On what occasion do you lie?
In general, I don't lie, except to myself, e.g. "I didn't eat THAT much today."

What is your greatest extravagance?
Define extravagance. Others might judge my yarn stash an extravagance, or the fact that I buy organic food, but even in those areas, I have my limits.

What is your current state of mind?
Boredom. (Editor's note: I wrote this at work.) I'm almost always bored. Me and Flaubert.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
I like a guy who says what he thinks. Also, is willing to make the phone calls to solidify the plans.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
I like a gal who says what she thinks. Also, is willing to make the phone calls to solidify the plans.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
"Asshole" and "shit". But usually they are so appropriate! Especially when on the road!

When and where were you happiest?
In college. Freedom without responsibility! And while nursing my babies.

Who are your favorite writers?
This changes all the time. Lorrie Moore and Michael Connelly come to mind, although I am reading Marilyn French right now.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Metaphors. I cannot come up with a halfway decent metaphor to save my life.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
My family, as in my kids, or family, as in my siblings? My kids are perfect, and my siblings are okay. I do wish my mother had lived longer, though.

If you died and came back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
A cat or an otter. Or a tree. Or a wiser version of me. I like to think we learn something in this life that will help us in the next, assuming there is a next. Otherwise, what is the point?

What do you dislike most about your appearance?
The extra 30-40 pounds I tote around. Since it is mostly around my waist, it really gets in my way.

Where would you like to live?
I like where I live, but we could use a bit more snow in the winter. The summers have been kind of dry lately, too. And then there are those barking dogs.

What is your most treasured possession?
Well, my kids are most treasured, but they are not possessions, and any pet owner will tell you that it's the pets that own US. If the house caught on fire and the pets were safe, the only things I would grab would be my laptop and my purse, because each contains huge portions of my life.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
The loss of a child, even though that goes beyond misery.

What do you most value in your friends?
I like a friend who says what s/he thinks. Also, is willing to make the phone calls to solidify the plans. (Ask me something different!)

What are your favorite names?
First American names, because they say something about the namee. Mine would probably be Grumpy Bear or Dances with Beagles.

What is it that you most dislike?
Besides the usual - intolerance, ignorance, selfishness - the way people drive.

What is your greatest regret?
Not following my dreams when I was young. I can still follow those dreams, but it is so much more difficult with a mortgage.

How would you like to die?
First, I plan to live forever - don't we all? But if I must die, let it be in my sleep. But only if the house is clean.

What is your motto?
Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Moderation in all things. It's a grand life, if you don't weaken.

Vitus

This Swiss film is the sweet and funny story of a boy genius who wants to be normal. Vitus is a prodigy who truly loves music, but doesn't like how people, especially his parents, treat him because of his gift. Grandpa is the exception, as are a few others who realize he is fine just the way he is.

It is telling that, after viewing one too many Hollywood movies, I kept waiting for something bad to happen - a tragedy, a molestation, a prank gone horribly wrong. But instead, the story progresses along a natural timeline. Along side the plot are questions of parentage - dad is a workaholic, mom becomes overly invested in Vitus's success - and questions about just what is "normal".

The storyline gets a bit fantastic toward the happily-ever-after conclusion, but the ending fits the story. A pleasant, intelligent movie appropriate for most ages.

P.S. All my blogs are getting spam from "anonymous" commenters. So I am going to disallow anonymous comments, to see if that eliminates this pesky problem. Not that anyone will notice.

Cleanliness is next to clean-limbed (in my dictionary)

Many years (actually, decades) ago, a group of us from college developed the habit of gathering twice a year, sans children and other significant others. We started with a stolen Saturday afternoon (some of us were nursing babies), which later grew to an entire day, an overnight, and eventually a whole weekend. It gave us an opportunity to smoke, drink, eat chocolate, watch R-rated movies, play cards, and discuss whatever subjects were pressing at the time. Thirty (30?!?) years later, we smoke less and drink less and eat less, but we still gather and gab.

This past weekend, the group met up at my house, which meant I did not have to drive anywhere but I had to clean everything. I'm one of those people who cannot see the dirt in my own home except through the eyes of others, family members excluded. After executing a rapid "spring cleaning" in anticipation of this weekend, all I can say is, Oh. My. God. It was gross. It was inexcusable. It was embarrassing. My house was filth personified.

But now it is clean! And I would like to keep it that way. Occasionally, I consider hiring someone to clean, rationalizing it would take only one or two hours a week to keep things under control. Then I think, surely, SURELY, I could spend one or two hours a week doing just that. But for some reason, I don't.

Not that I don't create a cleaning schedule for myself. Living alone, if I did an abbreviated spring cleaning in one area each week, my house would always be presentable. Week 1: bedrooms. Week 2: bathrooms. Week 3: livingroom, diningroom, West Wing. Week 4: family room and kitchen. This would be beyond the weekly laundry and vacuuming and toilet swishing. This would be the mopping and the decobwebbing and the dust bunny roundup. Not everything would need to be done every time, but each area would receive a bit of individual attention, to keep things from going to hell and to forestall a cleaning marathon such as the one that occurred last week.

What usually happens, though, is when it comes time to execute the plan for week 1, I think, Well, it's still clean from the last cleaning and I'd rather do such-and-such and I'll do it next time. And that is usually the end of that.

Actually, if I could just keep the breakfast bar clear, I would be happy.

Auntie Climactic

I'm not a holiday person, and in the past, I have complained bitterly about the extortion of Halloween. But I really do get a kick out of the kids. Well, most of them. What's up with the "Happy Halloween!" greetings? What happened to "Trick or treat!"?

Ordinarily, this plastic bag adorned with a jack o' lantern face and stuffed with packing peanuts is all the further I will go re decorations. But for some reason, this year I went wild and plopped down $4 for the above window treatments. So I was stoked, in my own pathetic little way.

\

So where were the tricky treaters? I started with a 90-count bag of "fun-sized" Starburst and Skittles (chosen because I don't like either). At the end of the evening, I still had 72 left. (Despite my distaste for them, I ate three). Were the kids sick? Were their parents afraid of germy candy? Because it was a Saturday night, were there parties in place of canvassing the neighborhood? I don't know. At least the ones who did show up were wearing the best costumes ever.

And I have the best daughter ever, as evidenced by these birthday flowers:



(No, my birthday is not on Halloween. I'm just late in posting this pic.)

Doubt

Last week I watched "Doubt", starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman.

And what a well-written, finely-directed, superbly-acted movie that was! The story of a priest of questionable character, an old crotchety nun and a young naive nun could easily have slipped into stereotype and predictability. But the priest is not so easily categorized (nor is his supposed victim), the old nun is tough but covertly caring, and the young nun turns out to be stronger than we expect, plus she reflects our own confusion about the truth.

The dialog, where delicate topics are disguised in oblique vocabulary that those of us who experienced the '50s and early '60s will recognize, contributes to our own doubts about what exactly is going on. The best scene is the conversation between the old nun and the child's mother. Deliciously complex!

Highly recommended.

Big slice of crazy pie

This week was one of those crazy-making weeks at work. One application I support quit working for one user, but not the others. Another application I've been modifying starting generating never-before-seen errors. But later in the week, both situations resolved themselves without any apparent effort on my part. Software development used to be fun, but now it is so complex that it has become inexplicable.

My little bug turned out to be a mini-cold. It has hung around all week, making me tired and snotty but not providing enough symptoms for me to call in sick.

Otherwise, not much going on. At least, nothing I can report here. Don't you just hate it when something particularly blogworthy occurs, but you feel constrained from blabbing about it on the 'net? Maybe this particular misadventure can be reported in the future, after time recasts it as an amusing anecdote.

Sleepless in October

It's not that I have been having trouble falling asleep the past few days. Instead, my dreams wake me up, mostly as a result of a new home improvement project. My philosophy is that the likelihood of bad things happening is in an inverse relationship to the amount of worrying I do. In other words, the more I worry, the less likely things will go wrong. The work is supposed to be done by the end of the month, though, so it shouldn't be too bad, right?

Meanwhile, the fall-spring bug I seem partial to has returned. It strikes about once a month, during the fall until it gets wintry cold, then again in the spring until it warms up. It feels like I am coming down with a cold or the flu, but after a couple of days, it goes away. Exercising my immune system, I guess.

I have given up on the new position at work. A co-worker of mine who also applied for one of the two openings was invited to a second interview (and I was NOT). They finally offered him the job, but at a lower salary. That is giving him pause. I would be willing to earn a little less if I could have more vacation, but I don't think I will have the opportunity to bargain.

More troublemaking, plus updates

My usual MO at work these past few years has been to keep a low profile. If they did not know who I was, what I did, or how to find me, they could not sever me. Now I have enough pension years and am old enough that technically I could retire tomorrow. There are some financial goals I'd like to meet first, like paying off my mortgage. However, I feel more willing to take risks these days.

My latest campaign is to whine about our development tools. I have no idea how the corp decides on what tools to use. I do know that the ones my team uses are archaic by technical standards. I also know that other IT teams within the corp use more modern tools. With a new, smallish project coming up, it seems like a perfect time to introduce a better development environment. And I am not afraid to say so. We'll see if it gets me anywhere.

I also asked the HR guy about the position I interviewed for (more boldness there). He says they still have not decided; check back next week. My interpretation is this means I am not on the A-list, but hiring me for the job is not out of the question, either.

As for my yoga class problems, I abandoned the Tuesday night "Yoga I" class in favor of Wednesday night "Core Yoga", which meant moving date night to Thursday night and rescheduling appointments with my hair stylist. See? I can be flexible not only in body but in psyche as well.

And my insomnia has taken a leave of absence! (Knock on wood.) One of the studies discussed in Insomniac involved the relationship between protein consumption and melatonin levels. My diet tends to drift toward vegetarianism, so in the spirit of experimentation, this past week or so I made a conscious effort to eat more animal protein other than the usual eggs and cheese. And I am sleeping much better. My question is, Is it the meat or is it something in the meat, like hormones? The book decries the dearth of studies linking insomnia with hormones, but most women will tell you that such a link exists. I guess I could further my personal experiment by switching to organically raised meat, but I have a difficult time forking over that kind of cash.

So. Is everyone getting an H1N1 flu shot? I have not had the flu for about 12 years (more knocking on wood). In that time, some years I have had flu shots, but not in the past eight or so. I am not inclined to get one this year, either. I am not in a high risk group, plus they may or may not protect me, plus I am reluctant to be a guinea pig for these rushed-to-market medical "solutions". But that's just me. What about you?

Casual business

Every year we have Breast Cancer Awareness week at work (although it boggles my mind that anyone can be UNaware these days). In recent years, this fund raising event has been dubbed "Denim Day" because we get to wear denim if we donate $5 to the cause. (Fortunately, the money does not go toward breast cancer awareness but to your choice of a research fund or a mobile mammogram unit; more about that later.)

This year the subject line of the memo announcing the event was "Denim Days start Sep. 29" and the memo ended with "Contributors are encouraged to celebrate Denim Days and Breast Cancer Awareness Month by wearing jeans, along with something pink, on Monday, October 5."

Well, I misinterpreted the subject line and the last sentence of the memo to mean, starting Sep. 29, we were to wear denim, and on Oct. 5, also wear something pink. Guess who the only person in the building wearing jeans today was? Well, not the only person. I saw one other who must have the same reading comprehension abilities as I have.

Re the mobile mammogram unit, I took advantage of its presence in our parking lot a year (or two?) ago. That will probably be my last mammogram. The technician managed to twist my right breast before applying tectonic pressure with the plates, and it was excruciating. It made me cry. My breast ached for a week. It seems counter-intuitive that treating breasts like this is a good thing. Plus I read (in a book the name of which I cannot remember) that, anecdotally, mammograms save lives, but statistically, NOT. For now, I will take my chances.

Almost two weeks and still no news on the position I interviewed for. I'm guessing that I am not their first choice, but if they can't find anyone better, they might give me a chance. Or they are negotiating with my boss for my release. Or they have made a decision but no one has bothered to tell me what it is. Or (fill in the blank)....