It only gets louder when you cut off your ear

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Git along, little doggies

If I were going to evince the sort of humor so prevalent in my family as I grew up I’d say this is the end of an Ear, which is true enough.  But that pun was already claimed by a record store in Austin and anyway that particular form of joke-making is a rotten one anyway, so never mind.

I’m writing this on the morning of my last day in Texas, from the shore of a fishing lake in the far northeast corner that's close to Paris and even closer to the Red River.  In a little while I’ll finish packing up the truck – most of the work was done before the sun seriously began its ascent, the bank thermometer in Honey Grove yesterday read 100 at 4:30PM and every indication today’s going to be no better – and head east, then north, and in a very short time I’ll have done it.  I’ll have escaped.

A few years ago a woman in the Saturday morning writing group, one of the few people of color to attend on a regular basis, wrote that Austin, in spite of its benign appearance, is actually a prison in disguise.  You come there and at first you’re so busy with the town’s wonderfulness that you don’t notice it but just wait until you try and leave.  Things interfere - loss of money, legal problems, deaths in the family – and before you know it you’re back in town for another few years and no idea when you’re going to be able to muster up the resources to make another attempt at escape.

Now admittedly this is a rather dire view; the person who held it had spent some time in an actual prison awhile back and it no doubt colored her view of everything afterward.  But when I heard her read that it struck a chord within me because I was long past starting to feel really bound to the town myself and not willingly so – more like well into how I was going to make it out, and when.  That must have been back in 2007 and I had already started working at UT, which as you know changed my relationship to Austin for the next several years to come.

People in Austin are prone to making jokes about being stuck there – The Velvet Rut, and all that.  Mostly it’s out of fondness, because when it comes down to it you could find a lot worse places in this country to spend a quickly-passing decade in.  Some of them are just a few hours’ drive away, or so I hear – I managed to be in Austin over nine years without once going to Dallas or Houston or even San Antonio.  Shit, until yesterday I’d never been farther north than Bruceville and that’s not even Waco.

Yet this morning here I am, enjoying the gentle breeze in the shade and the absence of human-generated noise (have the campground to myself apart from a few fishermen who were out on the water hours ago) and farther from Austin then I’ve ever been in any direction except west and feeling blissfully free.  Sure, there are little things here and there wrong with the picture; last night was close to too hot to sleep (got to remember to stop in Paris and get a plug-in fan for the camper), and my neck and shoulders are locked up with residual tension of getting on the road and a day of driving manically while fighting sheer exhaustion every mile of the way, and the brand-new inverter I paid $30 for just doesn’t work except for the USB plug, and so on.  But it being the end of one phase means it’s the start of another and more often than not that’s a good thing, and better yet I’ve got a nice slow day ahead with relatively little ground to cover before I get into the Ouachita and find a spot for tonight.  I will relax, and eventually sleep (cut the Lunesta dose to half last night and plan to be off it entirely well before July) and get into the groove of traveling aimlessly before too long. 

Groove, not rut.  I’ve had enough rut to last me for a very long time.

So with this end and new beginning I’m signing off on this journal, which was essentially a chronicle of what I imagine I’ll come to call The Reluctant Years – my time at UT, staying in Austin long enough to get it together to make a break for good.  I don’t know what to call the new period – The Footloose Years, however apt, lacks flair and it’s too soon to tell anyway – but I’ll keep you apprised and when I start a new URL I’ll keep you apprised of that too.  As always, thanks for reading.  And for sticking with me.

The sun is fully out now, and it’s very bright.  Time to go.

Anyone with any sense had already left town

The free stretch when I wrote the last entry was pretty much the only such stretch this whole week and the little things have been breaking me ever since but finally – finally – it’s a day of rest.  Relatively.  All I have to do today is make a test run to the storage unit and a separate run to Goodwill to divest of all the crap I couldn’t at the yard sale and yet another run to the Academy for last-minute camping gear and then at home organize everything for the U-Haul to storage tomorrow and start cleaning the apartment and… fuck me.  Did I say recently I like being busy?  Fuck me.

The sale yesterday went well, netting almost $300 in four hours.  Many thanks to Rick, who took over while Brandy and I went to the bank to get her access to my safety deposit box; figure he probably brought in more money than I would have during the hour we were gone because he’s a much better salesman.  He also told me not to expect too much when I took the remaining books and DVDs to Half-Price and that was sage advice as that was where he was most recently a salesman, but it still didn’t prepare me for the slap-in-the-face reality of only $28 for five full boxes of reading and viewing material.  I spent more than that on just one season of the The Sopranos there last year.  Fuck me sideways.

Worse, I turned around and gave $100 of the day's proceeds to Joanie in recompense for the damage to my nice hardwood floor I discovered Thursday night – somewhere around 400 tiny diamond-shaped indentations in a perfect grid where I’d laid down that plastic floormat bought for $10 at the second-hand office store on Lamar, the mat intended to protect the very same hardwood floor from getting torn up by the casters on the desk chair.  Talk about good intentions gone astray… I could have covered it up with a shitty throw rug and left without saying a word but that’s no way to treat the people who didn't raise the rent once in almost five years. 

A C-note isn’t near enough but apart from the damn couch I still can’t find a buyer for I really don’t have anything else to offer and they won’t take the couch because of the cat-residue and the kid’s allergies.  Joanie hasn’t pressed me for more – yet.  They’re going to be tearing up part of the floor when they renovate the upstairs anyway but the room where the damage is was, prior to the other night’s discovery, the one part worth keeping.  I predict this is going to be sitting on my conscience longer than, say, any mistreatment of people at work.

On that subject, the less said about my last few days on the job the better.  A number of people made no effort to say goodbye to me nor me to them, Millie and Cathy included.  Millie stood right outside my door listening to someone else say goodbye, then laughed and walked off.  Nadine not only didn’t say goodbye but didn’t even let me know staff were let go early Friday afternoon for the holiday weekend.  She did, however, make sure to disable my ID card – three full days before my employment officially ends – which made for an unpleasant surprise when I took the bus home.

None of this is really that unexpected.  All it does is make me wonder why the fuck I stayed there as long as I did.

Oh, that’s right.  It was partially for the other people, the good ones: Freya and Dialtone and YF, who did make the effort to come by when they could just to acknowledge how much they appreciated my work.  Sarah, who kidnapped me my last day and took me to a 2-hour lunch at Chuys.  Audra, of course, and various other colleagues who told me “good for you for getting out.”  So never mind the Nadines and the Millies and the Nutjobs and Cherrybombs and all the other dung-throwing residents of that little zoo.  You take away a few good friends and/or testimonials, it’s all worth it.

So the job’s over, and with it my tenure (urgh… I will never again hear that word without cringing now I know what it makes people become) in Austin.  And with that this journal.  This is either my last or next-to-last Ear entry; I’ll start another one, as befits entering a new phase of life, when I figure out what to call it. I’ll let you know where, of course, although it may not be for a few weeks yet.  Once I return the home modem to Time-Warner on my way out of town Tuesday morning, Internet access is likely to be shall we say a little spotty where I’m going.

Wherever that is.  Well, good for me for getting out.

Kimchee and french fries

Sitting around on a Monday morning doing data entry and enjoying the quietness of the hall – no banging, no workmen’s shouts, no chattering faculty (yet).  I’m still congested as hell, hacking up green lumps in the morning and wondering if it might not be time for some antibiotics if I can get in to see the doctor.  It’s been almost two weeks now for this shit and since my medical coverage lapses like, real soon, and also since I need my health for the week coming up, playing it a little more safe than I usually do can’t hurt.  I guess.

To make it worse I expect to start burping soap bubbles any minute because last night I ran out of dishwasher detergent and rather than buy more I would never use tried substituting the Dawn that someone had left under the sink and it made a huge (though clean-smelling) mess and this morning my oatmeal tastes suspiciously of nasty commercial dish soap.  Next time it’s Dr. Bronners and I don’t care what I usually say about hippies, if it’s good enough for my skin it’s good enough for my Tupperware.

I used a lot of Dr. Bronners in other ways yesterday, showering three times over the course of the day because I was working in the truck packing the crevasses and installing small fixtures and it’s beastly hot and humid outside but especially in a camper-shell even with the windows and tailgate open.  The truck now looks pretty good though, ready for the main cargo with lots of small stuff tucked away around the edges.  I love fiddling with logistics almost as much as I love poking holes in the lumber with a drill.  Even if I do leave a small lake of sweat for the plywood to soak up when I’m done.

The cat has become slightly crazy lately.  After years of near-silence she’s already gotten quite talkative in the week since Malcolm’s departure – I figure that now she doesn’t have to worry about giving away her location she’s enjoying the freedom – but with the full moon approaching she’s both noisy and restless, following me around the house and taking up her vigil at the food-bowl three and more hours before feeding time and just generally being high-maintenance in a way she hasn’t since… well, that last time we moved, almost five years ago.  She’s happy to be rid of Mal, that’s obvious, but she also knows something’s up.  Something big. 

I bought a 16-foot retractable leash yesterday but haven’t tested it on her yet as she’s enjoying her high spirits way too much.  The “Come With Me Kitty” harness is humiliation enough, and come next week she’s going to be wearing it a lot.  Weeks at a time, even.  I love Sadie, of course I do, and I hate to do this to her but she’s not getting snarfed up by a coyote on my watch if I can help it.

Little things like this make up my life these days.  Remember to pick up the last refills of two different BP meds at the end of the week.  Mail that package to my mother.  Copy every last creative thing I’ve produced on the job to a flash drive so I can later see how I did that poster or those 3-level pure CSS flyouts after months on the road have wiped my mind clean of anything computer-related beyond how to use the Gmail and iTunes interfaces.  Sort through two years of Photoshop Creative magazines for articles that will similarly help jump-start me, scan the fuckers and upload them to Evernote.  Organize everything in boxes to be sold Saturday morning at the yard sale I’m holding (having largely given up on Craigslist as an effective selling tool) and buy signs and price stickers and who knows what the fuck else because I’ve never held a yard sale before.

And so on.  When Sharene returned to San Antonio right after we had lunch Saturday she said she'd get out of my way because she was sure I had a lot to do.  I said I didn’t necessarily, most everything important was done, but now I’m not so sure.  A week goes by quickly when you’re not paying attention and even sometimes when you are.

It’s the little things will break you.  Doesn’t matter how much time you have to prepare, there’s never enough during the last stretch.  But I’m enjoying it.  I like being busy, especially when it’s in aid of something I’m looking forward to - like a very long vacation.

Sharene and I ate at the Korea House and last night Hanna and I had dinner at the Hyde Park Grill, almost certainly my last meal at each of those two favorites.  Rick and Brandy promise to take me to the Salt Lick next Sunday for my birthday/going-away meal.  Sarah says she’s taking me to the Clay Pit Friday.  One thing I obviously won’t be is poorly-fed, especially since a project this week is cleaning out my freezer of all those chicken pot pies and mac-and-cheese piled up. 

I don’t even mind missing my birthday proper, which is tomorrow.  I’ll almost certainly be spending it at work, pretending it’s just like any other day – my earlier comment about preferring eating ground glass to doing so notwithstanding, I’ve really got too much to do to take the day off.  Self-indulgence like that is how the little things break you.

No soap bubbles yet though, and still fairly quiet on the hall.  Even the data entry doesn’t go down so badly considering how good the big picture is looking right about now. 

Where the hat is

The Force-Air is gone and the wall is down but the noise continues.  What lies behind the wall is a 2-story gym and they’re doing some radical conversion there though what exactly I don’t know because, once again, nobody tells people at my level these things.  Nadine complains they don’t tell her either but I think they do and she just forgets.  People do a lot of that around here.  They should write shit down.

The noise from next door has plenty of competition from my own in the form of the constant cough I’ve had for a week now.  It started as a bronchial infection and morphed into a head cold and thankfully the worst seems over but my breathing apparatus is left much-abused in its wake.  All I can say is thank the FSM for OTC decongestants or I’d be sleepless in addition.

What else?  My quarterly check came in on Tuesday at around 70% of what I expected for this time of year, which doesn’t bode well for future mobility.  I sold off the composter yesterday which helped offset that at least a little.  I joined AAA – didn’t want to, but they have the best maps.  (As of next Tuesday I’ll also be eligible for AARP membership but let’s not even go there now, please.)  At work I designed and posted the first draft of a site I’d been worried I wouldn’t get to in time. 

And that, I’m afraid, is about it.  It’s been a surprisingly slow week for one so soon before I leave town; my to-do list for the period ending Sunday is still largely blank, which seems unnatural.  Good planning on my part and plenty of time to have already accomplished the important things?  Say it ain’t so.

I’ve conferred with both my brothers in New England and they’re expecting me towards the end of June, so no worries there.  Some friends along the route ditto, though I do need to contact a bunch more.  Before Facebook I wouldn’t have thought much about this because I don’t keep in touch well and wouldn’t have known where everybody was.  Now I have a nationwide network, or something like it.  Hooray for progress!

Tomorrow is my final acupuncture treatment, then a swift drop-by at the AAA office to get maps and camping guides for the entire country (except Florida, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi – I want nothing to do with those states on general principle) and after that lunch with my friend and former Lilith board-member Sharene.  It’s quite possibly the last time I will ever see Sharene, who far as I know is going to remain Texas-bound for her life. 

It’s odd to find myself considering this more and more: who of my friends here I will ever see again.  Audra said the other day we probably won’t, though that’s because she plans to move to Ireland and return to the US only rarely.  But of my other peeps, how many of them are likely to ever leave TX?  Not bloody many.  It’s just that kind of place.  For my first four years here I was pretty sure it had me for good too, even if I do wonder now what the hell I was thinking.

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Oleanders growing outside her door

In the hall more or less right outside my office door is a machine that wasn’t there yesterday, something called a ForceAir that is I presume vacuuming air from the room on the far side of the wall into a tube that’s got to be at least 2 feet in diameter and pumping it who-knows-where; I’m not curious enough to follow it up the escalator.  The sound of the machine is OK, it’s a steady whisp like a humidifier, but the accompanying noises have got to go.  

They’re knocking part of the wall down, with sledgehammers it feels like, and the machine is (I presume, and hope) taking away all the nasty concrete dust and whatever to somewhere we won’t have to breathe it.  The frame of this building is entirely cinderblock and taking out even a small portion of it is likely to be a time-consuming, noisy and generally disruptive process.  At least it sure as fuck is this morning.  And, as usual, nobody had the courtesy to tell us it was about to happen.

Yet another reason to be glad I’m just about out of here.  I forget that every summer workmen swarm over one or more parts of campus, tearing them apart and rebuilding before the students return.  My first summer here you’ll recall they took out the acoustical ceiling tiles on several floors after classes ended and didn’t put them back in until the week before the fall semester began.  That just plain sucked, along with all the drilling in the wall that accompanied whatever work necessitated such wholesale tile removal (oh yeah, something about the sprinkler system...).  Faculty can flit in and out all summer long, and they do, but 8-5 staff have to grin and bear it.

Or not.  As the case may be.

What I’ve learned in four short years at UT is that if you work with faculty nothing ever really changes short-term.  They do the same damn thing every damn year, or maybe on a two-year cycle, and for them one year rolls into the next and it’s not conducive to developing much of a sense of time and unfortunately it’s contagious.  Even for staff your job is never really going to change unless someone retires and the replacement is modern-minded (true to some degree of FNG) or someone gets a whole lot of grant money and decides to spend it on things that are going to affect you.  Otherwise it’s drone city – just like the machine out in the hallway.

Maybe if I stuck around longer I’d see there’s more to the picture than this.  I’ve heard rumors that the department head is going to step down in the next couple of years, which since Nadine’s his pet might have a major effect on staff management (or more accurately non-management).  I’ve also heard other rumors that the large and wealthy department we share the building with is moving to another building during roughly the same time-span, meaning when they're gone my soon-to-be-former department might be able to consolidate in one area rather than being scattered throughout four floors the way it is now.  This could conceivably mean (the rumormonger suggested) that staff could be repurposed from supporting isolated faculty groups, meaning mostly cleaning up the messes they leave behind, to concentrating on specialties by member – one person for purchasing for the whole department, one for the web, one for printed material, etc. 

Sound good?  Yeah, in fact it does.  But I’m sure it won’t happen quite like that, and I won’t be here even if it does.  My first day on the road I plan to bullet out of Austin so I camp that night somewhere, anywhere, on the far side of the Texas state line.  And not cross it again until I come get my stuff out of storage, whenever that’s going to be or if I even do at all.  My apologies to all my friends reading this who are staying put and to Austin-boosters everywhere, but (to clumsily mangle one of Donald Fagen’s more heartfelt lyrics): “California tumbles into the sea – that’ll be the day I go back to Austin-dale.”

That first day of bulleting is going to be a bitch, though.  Texas, in case you weren’t aware, is a fucking big state and any direction you go from Austin you have a long trip out of it.  I’m doing this mostly for the symbolic value, because that’s just the way I roll.  At least when I’m getting started.

After that I’m going to focus on a more leisurely average of 200 miles a day.  Got my route roughly mapped out and everything: OK, AR, TN, NC, SC, NC again, VA, PA, NY and some if not all of the New England states after that.  I love spending time with maps.

Not so much with budgets and projections, which I’ve also been doing a lot of the last few days.  Upshot is I see I’m not going to have as much financial latitude as I’d like, but I knew that already.  I’m going to get in at least two and maybe three good months on the road before starting to scrape, and that’s all that counts right now.

That and employing some protection against the pounding in the hallway.  It’s a good day at work when you can wear an iPod at your desk and nobody’s going to give you any shit about it.

One in the hand vs. two in the bush

Malcolm is gone; took him out to Allana’s in Elgin yesterday and left him and I’m still feeling sad even though it hasn’t totally sunk in yet that I’ll probably never see him again (and if I do chances are good he won’t have any idea who I am because while not exactly dumb Mal’s not exactly smart either).  He’ll be a lot safer with Allana than he would even if we were staying here, as she lives at the very end of a dirt-road that minimizes the risk of him getting run over.  And since her land is bordered by undeveloped fields on two sides he’ll have lots of places to roam  so hopefully he’ll go back to hunting again and be that much happier for it.  Malcolm is really getting the best part of the deal and I just wish he wasn’t too much of a cat to know it.

Sadie made the trip out with us and seems to understand he won’t be coming back, which was a big part of my intention in taking her along.  She’s already started wanting to go out more often, which she'd largely given up on because Malcolm would harass her coming up or down the steps.  I’m going to miss watching them tussle, though.  Having two cats is a lot of the time really much better than having one.

It was good to see Allana.  She looked pretty much the same as the last time I saw her, which as it happens was when I got Malcolm from her on Christmas Eve 2006.  She’s doing well, working at a bank that is absorbing, she says, increasing numbers of our former co-workers let go when our old employer got out of the mortgage business.  Camilia (known to long-time readers as Petulia) is there, as is The Boss and even now Lil, who I haven’t spoken to since she fucked up my birthday plans so last year.  As for herself, Allana has finally made the jump to Analyst from the Specialist/Coordinator ghetto she dwelt in for so long, and I’m very glad for her.  That’s a tough niche to break out of.  (It wouldn’t surprise me if I don’t for during the remainder of my working life.)

Good as it was to see an old friend – and to grab a very tasty lunch at Meyer’s BBQ on the way back – it doesn’t change the fact that I’m now down one cat and I already miss the little bugger.  (OK, big bugger – he must be tipping the scales at 22 lbs by now, proportionately little of it fat.)  And with the departure of Mooble – for that’s what I called him, along with Booble McFooble and Butthead and the usual variety of other names that a middle-aged person living alone will bestow on a pet – it’s hard to deny that the final part of my endgame in Austin has begun.  Before yesterday I had thought it was giving notice at work that would mark that, but no - you don’t give away a beloved pet until you absolutely have to, even to the best of homes.

Canceling my Netflix account like I did Friday?  Not the same cachet to it.  Not at all.

My stuff continues to sell poorly on Craigslist, so my next-to-final act will be to have a yard sale with anything I think I can get even part of a dollar for.  That’s two weeks from yesterday.  My final act will be to place the stuff I absolutely can’t sell (best furniture, wall-decorations, books etc.) in storage and that’s two weeks from tomorrow.  Ulp.

Ulp because after that I’m effectively homeless.  By choice, of course, but every now and then when I contemplate my plans I get that sinking feeling when I realize that for the first time in my adventures I won’t have anywhere to return to, or more to the point, to retreat to in the case of unexpected catastrophe.  As Julian Cope once sung, I need security but I hate safety.  Now that, my friends, is truly a tough niche to break out of.

Well.  I guess we find out how truly resourceful I’ve become in my 18 post-divorce years of taking care of myself.  Either that or how much a PO box in Austin qualifies as a fixed address when it comes to official anything.  Which reminds me : put “file change of address with DPS” on my to-do list for the next two weeks.

Which are, in case you didn’t already guess, is going to be a very busy period.  At least I won’t have two cats underfoot during it.  Sniff.

One bullet in the cylinder

Here it is, finally, The Big Day.  Sent my notice to the department about 15 minutes ago, cc:ing all my faculty, and now I’m waiting for the reaction.  If there’s going to be much of one, of course – I don’t necessarily flatter myself that much.  I just hope the others are as relieved as I am, and if they’re not yet then they will be when they have a chance to think about it.  Me being in this job has been an increasingly unpleasant experience for almost all involved and it appears I’m the only one able to rectify that and I don’t mind a surgical solution as long as it’s me wielding the scalpel.

Whew.

But no response yet.  Most of the Shirts are in the conference room next door giving a series of poor graduate students the end-of-semester once-over, and in any case they’re not big on direct confrontation and might not say anything immediately if they think it might get stinky.  Don’t know where the Skins are; YF has been incommunicado for days and Freya’s probably still stoned on painkillers from her series of hip surgeries this week (not that she didn’t know already anyway).  Mostly it’s just another gray rainy Friday on the Forty Acres, everybody passing on the street below scurrying around trying to keep dry and wrap up whatever they were doing all semester so they can get the hell out of here for the summer.

Which is exactly what I’m doing.  When not writing a blog entry, anyway.

It’s been awful sticky humid for days now, so bad that just a 2-minute trip to take out the garbage will leave you with a soaked shirt.  I did several such trips last night – getting started in earnest on cleaning out the apartment, finally – and afterwards felt pretty damn good (again) about not subjecting myself to another summer’s worth of this particular torture.  

The heaviest work of the procedure-writing is done, at least first draft.  Doing the bulk of what remains will take up the rest of the day, and then next week it’s scrambling madly to finish up Nutjob’s site, redesign Freya’s project site, updating the Shirts site and putting all their documents on Blackboard, and doing a half-dozen other things to tie up loose ends and let me feel like I’m walking away and not leaving things in a mess I’d resent having to clean up if I were replacing myself. 

With any luck I won't even have to fend off any panic-stricken demands from Cathy that I show her how to do everything for her websites she’s shown no interest in learning how to do herself for almost four years now.  Not talking about coding or anything similarly intensive, just simple admin duties like adding users or generating canned reports or even just logging in – the sort of tasks that’ve been designed to be easy for the computer-illiterate but are beyond Cathy.  If she does come to me I plan to tell her that she’s had almost three years to prepare for this – a quick look in my archives indicates I informed her in August 07 I wouldn’t be staying around long – and I’m not going to waste my time showing her how to do things she’s going to forget as soon as one of us walks out the door. 

In other words, batten the hatches for one final round of warfare between me and Cathy.  It just wouldn’t seem right to leave without it.  But it’s true – showing her how to do anything is a waste of time.  She likes to have people do everything for her too much and believes that’s the way it should be.  Once again: fuck the Professional Tier.

Of course, if you subscribe to the concept that you get what you resist, by writing this I’m condemning myself to landing next time in yet another position slaving for members of the Professional Tier who will likely be equally unappreciative.  So be it… some will go so far as to believe you become what you resist, but I don’t think moving up a tier in class is in the cards for this lifetime.  I hope not, anyway.  Those people suck.  The only time I’ve ever liked them was when they were giving me money at the door for Greenpeace.

Anyway.  While I’ve been writing this Nadine emailed that she accepts my resignation.  So, it’s done.  I realized when I woke up that I’ve been waiting for this day exactly three months - it was the morning of 2/14 that I first conceived of just walking away from it all.  This quarter-year has gone by very quickly, the way time will when you have things to do and a goal to work toward.  I’ve spent so much thought and energy on simply preparing to sever my ties with Austin that I don’t have anything approximating a firm idea what’s going to come next – but I suppose that will take care of itself once I’m on the far side of the Travis County line.  It always does.

Forward, then.

[And now you faithful public Ear readers, if there are indeed any left, know why most entries have been only excerpted lately.  You want to keep a secret, don't put it on the internet... even under an alias.  Anyway, back to regular business from now on.]

Audi 5000

Started yesterday morning on writing out the instructions and procedures for doing my job and by the end of the day I didn’t feel like I’d made that much progress.  I’m working from an outline I compiled weeks ago so I’ve got structure, it’s not that – it’s just that despite being a competent writer and documenter, I just can’t be sure what part of what I know is going to be important to those who follow and what isn’t.  This is, I suppose, why people mostly put off documenting their job responsibilities until they absolutely have to.  (If ever.)

Like, uh, me.  I should have done this months ago.  Now I’m having to do it in a rush, and I don’t like it and I don’t like the results.  It’s probably not making it better that right now I’m writing a blog entry instead, but you know me – I’ve got my priorities.

Yesterday the entire college to which my department belongs, faculty and staff alike, were called to a meeting with the dean to hear the latest edicts from on high about looming budget cuts.  I didn’t go – what the fuck do I care by now if they cut my job? – but Audra says I didn’t miss much because there wasn’t much specific information disseminated, just that cuts are coming andt no one still knows how they’re going to affect our particular college.  Apparently though the simple fact of the meeting’s being held with only three hours’ notice had everybody, especially the college’s main operational staff, in a complete tizzy.  As in, panic. 

Which is another reason I didn’t want to go.  Being in a room with that much fear and upset means risking getting fearful and upset myself, regardless of whether I have any reason to feel that way or not.

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Got the ways and means but just won't let you be

A day spent dickering with people on Craigslist and I’m no closer to liquidating my possessions – or to having any extra dollars from it – than I was.  It’s discouraging, or would be if I wasn’t depending on Sunday being the big shopping day for Austin CLers.  Maybe I’m deluded about that – it wouldn’t be the first time.  We’ll see.  Some dude says he’s coming over in an hour for the Sopranos season 6-2 set, so maybe I’ll make at least $10 off the day.

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