As Long as My Dinner Companion’s Nose Is on the Fritz, We’re Good

Now I’ll say what happened after Election Day: I worked for three days without the company of my co-worker who sits near me and has been following the election very closely, too, giving us plenty to talk about; I periodically apologized to the two guys who sit near us, who both claimed not to mind.

I had to work without her for three days because she took the rest of the week off for a self-designated Election Holiday; she figured she would need at least the first day to recuperate from staying up too late the night before. Now, that's self-care. (Or three days of PTO gone for good, depending on how you look at it.)

I was elated Tuesday evening and half of Wednesday. I have ordered 10 “Yes We DID!” buttons, yet to arrive. (So far I haven't received a call from Obama saying which cabinet position my campaign contribution is going to get me, though I did get a nice thank-you email signed "Barack." George never sent me an email. On the other hand, I never sent him $600, either. I was delighted to send Obama that amount.)

By Wednesday afternoon, the post-election crash was upon me, and by late afternoon, I was feeling so awful I was starting to wonder if I had food poisoning, but I think it was just indigestion from my S&M, I mean, S&S lunch: sushi (from Whole Foods) and a small container of Odwalla Superfood, a fruity green drink packed with algae or some such. One of these days I will learn that my stomach always gets upset when I introduce Superfood into it, and pairing it with sushi isn't exactly an improvement.

So instead of going to the Bike Coalition (it is henceforth going to be more of a struggle to get there, anyway, because my favorite person has stopped attending), I came home and went to bed early.

Thursday night was allocated to laundry, and last night I meant to do this:

5:00—Pick up book at library.
5:30—Get cat litter at Amore at 18th and Valencia.
6:00—Wash leftover dishes.
6:30—Have dinner.
7:30—Stretch.
8:30—Take a shower.
9:30—Watch a DVD.
11:00—Meditate.

Leaving a little leeway, I figured I’d be in bed by midnight, and therefore up by 9 a.m. today.

Here’s what actually happened:

5:00—Pick up book at library.
5:30—Get cat litter at Amore at 18th and Valencia.

So far, so good! Nice work! QBQ!

6:00—Work myself into a lather over annoying loud noise of helicopters immediately overhead; helicopter occupants are observing/reporting on pro-same-sex marriage demonstration making its way from Civic Center to the Castro. I’m one hundred percent for same-sex marriage, of course, but I get sick of having helicopters hover just outside, which happens extremely often for one reason or another; more on that later. I figure there will be three solid hours of being unable to hear myself think, but it turns out not to be quite that bad.

6:30—Phone rings. How annoying! I lift the receiver and gently replace it.
6:35—Phone rings. I lift the receiver and replace it firmly, and then consider: Should I turn off the ringer? But what if it's my mother, saying she’s fallen and can’t get up? Wouldn’t I want to know that? (Because once I turned the ringer off, it could literally be months before I got around to turning it on again; basically, once it was off, it would be off.)
6:40—Phone rings. I lift the receiver and slam it down; resist urge to yell “Can you stop?” into it first.
6:45—Receive email from my mother saying she’s having trouble reaching me on the phone; what’s going on?

6:50—Email exchange with my mother ensues. While sitting at my computer, I make the first really major mistake of the evening: I go to Audacity’s website to download the free recording software the very excellent Apple engineer recommended. Then I screw around with the installation; it doesn’t really take that long, but in the course of doing that—specifically, in the course of adding an icon for the new application to my desktop—I discover—oh, boy—that there is a chess game on my iMac!

I fire up a game, make a move, try to remember what those bland but powerful round pieces at the end, not pawns, are called. Before I can make a move on behalf of the opposing color, such a piece moves by itself! Hey! Does this computer seriously think it’s going to take me on in chess? Not only does it think that, it beats me handily, in moments. Why, I oughtta …

So: chess. I decide I can skip stretching and showering.

Another excellent discovery follows closely on the heels of the chess discovery: Photo Booth! This lets you take funny pictures of yourself using a variety of effects, including X-ray.

8:00—Try to figure out where Photo Booth is saving all the fab pictures I’m taking, and email the best one to a select group of associates: my mother, my father, Chris H., Tom, Steve, Ann, and David and Lisa. (I have added this particular photo to my Blogger profile. Finally, the right picture for that purpose.)

8:30—More chess. Ruing the day already ...

9:00—Wash dishes while eating hastily prepared but extremely delicious dinner standing up.

9:30—Jesus! I’ve got to start the DVD! Watch Grace Is Gone, about a man unable to tell his daughters their soldier mother has died in Iraq, instead taking them on a road trip to an amusement park. It was OK. The actors seemed uncomfortable—because they were good actors playing characters in discomfort. Very nice job—QBQ!—but kind of imparted tension and misery to the viewer, as well.

11:00—I guess more chess? It's kind of a blur. After awhile, I gave in and changed the settings so the computer would make lots more dumb moves. I Googled chess to help me remember the names of those pieces: rooks! And “knights,” not “horses.” I did once upon a time actually know how to play chess, no doubt thanks to my mother, who would have considered this essential, along with being familiar with Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky." 'Twas brillig!

Finally, at the computer’s dumbest setting, I can achieve a draw, as long as I move first. What does that mean, “draw”? It seems to me that I have won this game. Back to Google. Oh, I get it. Then I can actually win, if I move first. Then I can win even if the computer moves first. This is going to burn an unbelievable number of hours. Soon enough, it’s:

4 a.m.—Lights out. Definitely behind schedule at this point.

And there you have it. Crap, now it’s 2:30 p.m. already, which means I’m not going to do most of what I’d planned for today, so I’m in schedule triage mode again: I must get something posted, blogwise—done!—and I have to decide which restaurant to patronize for dinner so I can call Lisa M. back; I think she’s going to treat me to dinner, a belated birthday celebration (yes, I reached the august age of 46 five months ago).

I also have, besides this blog, a journal, where the top-secret most important and closest-to-my-heart stuff goes, but I never have time to add anything to it, other than notes. Later I go back and look at the notes and delete the ones I don't care about anymore. Sooner or later, every note falls into that category, if I wait long enough.

Which means everything I post on my blog would also fall into that category, and certainly sooner than the stuff for my never-updated journal, which is why I keep becoming ambivalent about the blog and stop posting anything. But then I think of something I'd sorta like to post, and the floodgate opens.

Which means that the most important stuff never gets written down anymore, only the stuff that's potentially for a general audience. That seems backwards, but whatever.

So, herewith a post or two, possibly more to come, and taking the long-anticipated shower would be nice, too. Wonder how good Lisa M.’s sniffer is. I’ll ask if she perchance has a clogged-up nose when I call her to discuss dinner.