Spot-on

Much relief--father's surgery went swimmingly. He has a new, improved pacemaker which is supposed to stimulate the damaged part of his heart. I've been telling him I expect to see him chopping wood next week.

Must admit, my guilty reality-show pleasure this summer has been Hell's Kitchen. I've really only seen a handful of episodes. They're always on right around the time I'm eating dinner. I don't have a TV guide, but they don't even seem to be on the same night. Maybe Fox is doing that "encore presentation" crap. I really don't know. See how it's all left to speculation when you don't have a TV guide?

But, the show is mildly interesting. Mainly, I like the food aspect. I also liked it when they had to set a super-fancy table after not paying attention to the maitre'd's detailed instructions. Serves them right, uncouth bastards. When I was in college, the one well-known aspect about our career counseling was that, when you were a senior, you could sign up for a program on business lunch etiquette. You had to come to the cafeteria in business attire and they would tell you which utensil was which. The program was called "Best Fork Forward." The main draw was that you actually got to eat the catered food from the cafeteria, which was miles above the regular fare. Ten years later, and they still do that program. I don't know if it's still met with as much enthusiasm as it was in 1995. The food is a lot better in the cafeteria every day, so the draw may be smaller.

BUT ANYWAY, getting back to Hell's Kitchen, I've noticed the rude chef guy's catch phrase is "spot-on," which is a hell of a lot better than Emeril's "bam." Those Brits, even their one-liners are better-spoken than ours. I saw part of Notting Hill the other night and wondered if it was written by Brits because Julia Roberts' lines were way to articulate for a Hollywood actress character. She sounded like a buffoon delivering them, too. She can do spunky and sassy, but not articulate. Sorry, folks. (Remember Andi McDowell in "Four Weddings and a Funeral," a very British film written by Brits who can't write American dialogue? It was that bad. Hey, Hughie was in that one, too.)

I'm going to start saying "spot-on."

Crankiness beyond proportion

Remember that Siouxsie and the Banshees song that started with the clip about how more murders happen when it's a certain tempature? The magic number in the song is 92 degrees. Any hotter, and people are too sluggish, cooler and they're not maniacal. Well, I beg to differ. I think when it hovers around 97, 98 with heat indices into the 100s, we've reached fighting times.

Or maybe it's just the thing that happened this morning. I was fumbling for keys to let myself into my little office, and someone cornered me and talked 15 minutes about her project and concerns. I didn't tell her my dirty secret, which is that her project has as much importance to me as a gnat smudged on the windshield. I do, however, have issues with the project. It's amazing how much money people will throw away on grandly conceived, bad ideas rather than focusing on the solid basics. It's procrastination, except with money.

At the end of the conversation, she said "oh, I'm sorry to accost you first thing in the morning." No you're not, I thought. You think this is perfectly acceptable. We have lunch together once, and you think we're friends. This is why I sometimes hide from people, especially in the parking lot. Turns out some of my colleagues do the same.

This is one of numerous moments lately when I find myself trapped in very boring conversations with self-important people. I need a new exit strategy.

This weekend, I am going to clean my house and achieve deep relaxation, which may involve cloistering myself with several pizzas and a gallon of ice cream.

More libraries that hurt you

Another thing about our fancy new library. The main entrance contains a combination ramp/step that could only have been designed specifically to cause people to trip and break their sculls against the slate flagstones. There is one wide, shallow step that rises out of the middle of the otherwise gently sloping walkway.

It gets you coming and going. If you're walking up, the slope is gentle and the stones blend together. Unless you're looking for it, you catch your foot under and splat! The classic falling up the stairs. If you're coming out, you don't see the ledge until you fall off it. After everyone bitched about it for two weeks, they've now marked the corners very artfully with orange plastic road cones.

Libraries kill -- or at least maim

This morning, late for a meeting, I rounded a flight of stairs in our brand new, multi-million dollar library and gouged my shoulder on the pointy brass bannister. It hurt like a motherfucker and scraped a bit of skin off.

Apparently, I'm the fourth reported case of bannister-gouging. My boss nearly impaled himself through the chest last week (he would have demonstrated the nice progression of his bruise for all of us in the meeting, had he not been in full business attire). Others have similar bruises and scabs. I got off light.

Our library has been ballyhooed as a gem of collegiate gothic architecture. It seems the architects weren't content with arches, and fieldstones, though. No, they went for the full Dark Age experience and made as many the fixtures as pointy and weapon-like as possible. If there's ever an earthquake, I fear for the librarians, who will be skewered by falling light fixtures with multiple dagger-like protrusions.

Also exciting: we're undergoing a massive spam attack, and the spoofed sender address happens to be an alias ("webmaster@...") that feeds into my inbox. I've gotten three angry replies from people not smart enough to realize they've just opened a virus, and hundreds of returned messages for recipients that don't exist. It is truly a joy.

So wrong

Weather.com reports that my local temperature right now is 89. In my neighborhood, 89 ain't that bad. It's livable. I might even be motivated to go out and work in the yard. BUT, the heat index, due to the humidity that's condensing on my windows at night and fogging my sunglasses by day, that heat index is 97. And it's supposed to be 101 on Saturday--temp, not heat index.

Dog days

Dear blog,

I feel I've been neglecting you with less-interesting-than-usual posts, or none at all. The fall semester rush is just around the corner, and everything is picking up speed in the office. Makes me regret the time I whiled away in June, because now my "summer projects," still not started (after all, we're only a month into astronomical summer), will be put off or done in a half-assed hurry.

Other news: it's really damn hot. This weekend it's going to be 98, which means the weedy herb garden will go un-weeded and -mulched once again. It has been storming almost every afternoon, though, so nature's doing a better job of watering than my sad little hoses ever could. Everything in so green and beautiful, and the dead spots in the lawn have just about healed over now.

I'm going out to a nice dinner tonight with my manfriend, who I haven't seen in a few weeks (he's been traveling). It's a quasi-date. Very excited. And that's all the news that's fit to print.

Killing time

Just cruisin' right now, squishing those last ten minutes before I can go home. Long day, very productive. In a rare event, I spent the entire afternoon working on a single project without distraction. Was off last Friday, and received numerous frivolous or half-baked requests for silly things (we want an internal contest, and link it from the public home page! we want five more useless pages of text in our site! we simply can't live without two updated sentences on our bio page! and we want it NOW!). Just goes to show, you never can tell when people will come streaming out of the woodworks.

But. All this is insignificant. I am going home in seven minutes, and my dad is coming to fix the switch that powers my disposal. It's a good thing in life to have a disposal.

My weekend was wonderful, although I ate too much. Sunday I actually found myself eating brunch, stuffing myself, when I wasn't hungry. Will be paying for that with many hours on exercise bike. Penance--it's the way of the world.

Also, I brought rain home with me, so my yard is incredibly green and lovely. Lightning struck very, very close to my house and knocked out the power for a while. I know it was close b/c I could see it vividly from two windows on opposite walls of the house--one facing front, one back. It was like it was in the room. Hard to explain, but you'd know what I mean if you'd ever seen it. It's a good thing in life when one's house is not struck by lightning.

What is the half-life of an assignment?

I have a meeting this afternoon for a software demo. I'm a minor player in this software, though it has the potential to make my life a lot easier (although probably not). Anyway, I had thought this particular project was dead, which may explain why I can't find any notes from the previous demos.

Or maybe it's because my office is a pigstye at the moment. Either way, I was looking through some other file folders, and once again confirmed my theory that, if you just let an assignment sit long enough, you have about a 75% chance that it will just expire. People will lose interest, or the Next Big Thing will come along and render it irrelevant.

I remember the first time I pored heart and health into a project, only to have it lose steam and then die completely. I was outraged that my bosses had proclaimed it the answer to our company's woes (this was a previous job, at a failing company that eventually folded) and then slowly, talk about the big project slowed to a trickle, until no one would give me answers.

The trick is to surf the project crest. Learn which ones are crucial, and which are pipe dreams. And when even some of the crucial ones die, let them go peacefully. Recognize that none of us really knows what we want, and we're allowed to change our minds. Life moves on.

Reality TV cannot replace Michael Hutchence

Now I remember what I'd wanted to say earlier. Last night I was at my parents' house and laid eyes on a tv guide for the first time in weeks. Not TV Guide the magazine, just the little rag that comes in the paper.

The guy on the cover looked vaguely familiar--his features rather feline and feminine, though he was clearly a man with facial hair, and not a bearded lady. Somewhere deep inside, my adolescent self stirred up strains of Jane's Addiction like heartburn churning in my stomach (I'm still deeply fond of JA, but there's no other band I associate more strongly with the terrible days of my heart-broken 19-year-old self).

I realized quickly that the guy on the cover of the tv guide that came in my local paper was Dave Navarro. Oh Dave, I've only vaguely followed your hijinks with Carmen Elektra and all those feather boas and eyeliner, but I just have to say. You make me sad. And to think it was only in the last few weeks, when I was moving into my new house, that I finally dumped my old copies of SPIN magazine with you and Perry on the cover, as if I sensed your growing lameness.

And to make it all much, much worse, I read in the tv guide that Dave is hosting an American Idol-style show in which contestants will compete to be the next lead singer of INXS. Now, you may or may not be sympathetic to Michael Hutchence and the circumstances of his suicide. That's another blog entry altogether. But really, I'm fairly appalled that 1) the members of his former band would agree to a reality show contest to find his replacement (a little respect, please?) and 2) a reality show winner (and come on--don't they always suck?) will be fronting one of the much-loved bands of my youth.

INXS won't be 1/20th as great without Michael's sexy voice. I'm gonna go listen to "Need You Tonight" right now.

Actually...

I just noticed that in my previous post, I used the word "actually" or "actual" three times in one paragraph. I've heard this is a very L.A. thing to say, meant to signify "I'm not lying to you" when I really am lying to you. I read about it in Doonesbury a few weeks ago.

Gentle readers, I'm really not lying to you.

Death by pad thai

My browser is nice enough to try to finish my thoughts for me. Whenever I type something into a field, it tries to fill it in, based on things I've typed before. So, I was just reminded I had titled another blog entry "Death by barbecue sandwich." I see a disturbing trend here.

Had a lovely, if stomachache-inducing, lunch. It was actually cool enough for us to sit outside, which reminds me that last night the temp actually dipped into the 60s. What's the big deal, you ask? It was the first time since April that I can remember an actual coolness in the air that made me think I might need long sleeves. The sensation was highly unusual for mid-July.

Thought I had something more interesting to talk about, but it has escaped me.

Garden variety

I have managed to waste 78% of this day, and it doesn't look like I'm going to have a sudden burst of productivity in my last 30 minutes in the office (that does happen on occasion). Had a meeting this morning in which about 16 minutes were spent discussing work, and another 52 spent on Fiestaware and gardening. Turns out the data guy in Admissions is an avid collector and gardener. He had all sorts of tips about outlet stores and eBay. "You never know what people are into," he commented. Indeed.

So that leisurely conversation set the pace for the day. At one point I had one of those withering realizations--oh. It's still only Monday. It feels like I've been here for at least three days.

I blame the rain. It's still raining. Supposed to rain tomorrow and then a little less the next day, but basically it's going to rain for at least the next week. This is a dramatic turnaround from the brutal, sunny weeks we've had since May. Perhaps the weather pattern is shifting. Maybe our late summer will be gloriously rainy, the kind of year where everything stays green (instead of burned-out brown) and the trees start to keel over because the wet ground can't hold their giant roots in place.

I was poking around in the poke salad (actual name) plants yesterday, and discovered some unusual flowers--lots of individual petals and long, spindly stamens with leaves that look vaguely like cannabis. I'm still trying to figure out if they're elaborate weeds or something the previous owner planted. I've seen them before, growing near sidewalks. The ones in my yard were near some lillies, so there's no telling. A lot of stuff has migrated or grown together into inseparable clumps. There's gonna be some serious digging and dividing this fall.

I've loved potted plants and container gardening for years, but I can see that this whole yard thing is all-consuming. Every time I go outside, I end up pulling weeds for 30 minutes or more. Sprouting sweat droplets. I may still be dressed in work clothes, or jeans, or other clothes not conducive to gardening. Usually it ends with my accidentally spraying myself in the face with the hose.

Dregs of Dennis

We're getting the remnants of Dennis today, so it's windy and rainy. Everyone freaked out unnecessarily (at first I thought it was just my mom, but then I heard people at work admitting it this morning) about it. Somehow they had forgotten that we usually do get hurricane remnants in the form of heavy rain and some wind, but NO ACTUAL HURRICANE. (We're way too far inland for that.)

I guess there could've been tornadoes, but as my tornado-alley friends will relate, tornadoes occur with thunderstorms, but not the sort of dumping rain we're getting now. Generally, once the rain comes you're pretty safe from tornadoes. Everyone's just a little edgy since the surprise straight-line winds (fondly remembered as "Hurricane Elvis") hit the city just about two years ago. What everyone conveniently forgets is that we're a catastrophic earthquake waiting to happen.

But some things are just hard to handle head-on. You can't sit around and contemplate your mortality all the time, however necessary it may seem. Though I never was a boy scout, I'm a big proponent of being prepared. I like to avoid surprises. I was reading a short story last night that was quite fitting, in that it observed we're all on the brink of death at every moments--the ways of expiring are many and often inconceivable. Still, your life could pass you by if you spent the whole time trying to anticipate the inevitable.

Good times on a Monday morning. It's just been a week's-worth of heavy stuff. My boss's daughter, who was my age exactly, died very suddenly last week. My friend's mother just learned she may have cancer, and my mom has had a bit of a warning sign herself (though the doctor has said the tests so far look ok and she's probably fine--sometimes "probably fine" sounds pretty dang good).

Rainy day = cloudy = frigid airconditioning in office. So I wore my favorite soft fleece jacket, muted blue, today. And it's giving me more comfort than anything else could, with the exception of a chocolate croissant.

And now to lighter topics: Patrick Dempsey! Woo hoo! Yes, I've talked about him before -- give me a break. I've managed to get JoJo hooked on his new, poorly written t.v. show. We agree that the actors are decent--they just get crappy plots and lines. But really, I'm only in it for Patrick. I still don't understand the continuum of hottiness from "Can't Buy Me Love" (probably the last thing I saw him in, when I was in jr. high and he was dorky) to now. That man has aged exceptionally well.

Time for lunch!

Where did the long weekend go?

My four-day weekend was fantastic, though as usual it went by too quickly and I do regret not making it to Baltimore for my friend's divorce party, which was to include "seven-year-old wedding cake baseball." Perhaps she will regale us with stories of the party here, or better yet photos!

Highlights from my weekend:

I made no less than three trips to the furniture store on consecutive days. My favorite Scandanvian supplier (kind of a local, more expensive Ikea) is having a big anniversary sale. I swear they know me by name, and every time they see me coming they see giant dollar signs, especially if I'm with my mother because she eggs me on to spend! spend!

It started with a modest, rectangular table. It had pocket leaves that stowed under the main table top and pulled out easily. Somehow I ended up buying a different, discontinued table (rounder, bigger, infinitely prettier, same price) AND a china cabinet. These things tend to snowball, but oh they will look great in my house.

Had a nice dinner with a friend Saturday night and then checked out a new Irish pub that opened in one of those cursed spots that can't keep a business, regardless of its great location on Cooper. Some of you will remember it as the dim sum place, three restaurants ago. A lot of effort was put into making the pub pubbish, and it had a nice atmosphere (helps that the building is actually an old craftsman house, so pub isn't too far a stretch).

Generally, I hate Disneyfied attempts at authenticity, but I am a sucker for anything publike. Also, there was a good-looking Irish bartender. I remember him from somewhere in the very distant past. Maybe we went to the same coffee shop in college, or he worked at some long-forgotten favorite restaurant. It seems like I should be able to recall, but those brain cells have died, or shuffled to the back of the bookcase.

I made Shorttina-friendly pesto on Sunday (because I am horribly allergic to pine nuts, and so must use walnuts as a substitute) from basil growing in my yard. It was the first use of the new Cuisinart, which gave me a rush not unlike riding a motorcycle. Such power! Such chopping and blending and liquefying! It's really very exciting. The pesto was excellent, though a very small amount resulted from so many basil leaves. A single dinner party could consume my entire herb garden.

Had a great time cooking and relaxing. I finally got some couch time in yesterday, and also did a lot of sweating in the yard. It was damn hot all weekend, and somehow I found myself pulling weeds once again. The yard is reaching that point in the summer where things start to go to seed, wilt, or fall over and it's really too hot to get out there and clean it up. Weeds are taking over the herbs, and I think the only recourse now is sheets of black plastic and better planning next year.

Now it's back to work. The bosses are gone, so the few people around are hiding in their offices, pretending to work. I think I'll spend the day throwing away old papers. Too hot to do anything else.