Eerily quiet on the floor this morning, with every indication it’ll stay that all day. Millie and Cathy are both gone for a week and with them the bulk of foot-traffic in the hall. Even Smelly Gal is nowhere to be olfacted as Thursday’s her day off. So far the only evidence of other life has been the alarm going off on some distant floor and Nadine calling to ask if it was on mine too and if so why the hell wasn’t I down on the street with the other evacuated folks. But I knew it was just a test because I could hear it getting progressively fainter down the escalator well as it went off floor by floor, and now she knows that too, and once again I’m left to my own devices.
Nutjob wants some piddly little adjustments made to her website but she didn’t say when. She never does because being constitutionally unable to think in terms of deadlines, or to fathom the passage of time at all, is a chief Nutjob characteristic. So I’ll get to it when I do; it’s really the only thing on my plate at the moment and it’s good to have some legitimate work up on the screen to rapidly switch over to in case Somebody Who Cares does unexpectedly show up.
It’s been a pretty good week so far. Al Franken is in (finally). Another Republican hypocrite (Sanford) is hopefully headed for the toilet. U.S. forces are starting to pull out of Iraq, sort of. It rained yesterday and the day before, lovely lovely rain, and while we’re looking at a resumption of the heat wave tomorrow or even today it’s been a wonderful relief to have it just that little bit cooler at night. All in all, things are looking up.
UT staff don’t get a day off because the 4th falls on a weekend, but hey. With things this dead at work it doesn’t make much difference to me if I’m at home or not. I’m out of Rick-lent Joe Lansdale books there anyway.
Still waist-deep in the Evernote project. According to a note I processed yesterday, I’ve now been out of therapy just about two years. That must mean I’ve been on Lexapro two years also. It doesn’t seem that long in either case, but as you know by now I have a bit of trouble fathoming the passage of time myself.
I’ve put the new-therapist search on hold until at least August – I’m always filled with resolve to get up and make things happen after a trip to CA, even when I haven’t spent part of it out in the desert writing. And as of this moment I can’t honestly say I feel two years on my own are enough. I know that I’m kind of stuck - not going much of anywhere in terms of personal growth, rampant fatalism and bitchiness and ebbing faith and all - but as a rut it’s not the most uncomfortable one I’ve ever been in. We’ll see if anything changes during that week in the eastern Sierra.
Or after. Because it’s easy to make resolves while you’re away from the familiar setting and a lot harder to implement (let alone maintain) them when you’re back in it. It’s just the usual struggle of the exceptional vs. the everyday, no big deal. Some even go so far as to call it life. All I know is I never really have a reasonable idea what the next year is going to bring.
Or even today. I imagine I’ll be seeing FNG at some point before noon, though she rarely does much on her own to interrupt the quiet. Right now the only company I'm expecting is Pete The Dud intermittently waddling up and down the hall acting like he has something to do. When he’s here he comes into my office about every hour to check his mail, regardless of the fact that I only retrieve it from downstairs once a day. Also regardless of that he never gets any, because he’s just about the last guy on campus to know how inessential he is to pretty much everything. Fortunately he’s not here all that much and when he is he remembers after a few hours that he has nothing to do and then disappears.
“If you can’t do, teach.” Ah, how cruel the truth is sometimes. I’d almost feel sorry for Pete if he wasn’t such a pompous, insubstantial, useless bastard. We really need more here like FNG and Millie but we can’t get them while entitled white males like him refuse to get off the pot.
Of course, the fact doesn’t escape me that if Pete were to be replaced by a female I’d have the men’s room entirely to myself. They say that in academia the struggles are so vicious because the stakes are so pitifully small, and here’s proof.
Anyway, back to my own devices. Days like these were made for booting up the ‘Pod and letting loose with a little wild bellydance music and that’s what I think I’m about to do. This eeriness will not stand.
Comments