fog and thunder on Mt. Oread
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if only I hadn't already bought my sink and toilet this princess pink pair would be very tempting...
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You all know that I'm fucking nuts, so this will come as no surprise.
On Monday, I was at work, bored, staring down an afternoon with little to do. I did what anyone with a serious mental illness would do: I faked a headache and left work to go work on the house!
I put in a good five hours, feeling pleased that I was getting closer to being ready for my drywall contractor to work next week. The next morning, it occurred to me that I already had an excuse in place, so I called in sick. Good thing I did.
At about 9:30, my drywall contractor called to say that his schedule had changed. He could either start on Wednesday or he wouldn't be able to get to it until the new year.
My people, you know what I did. I said, "Start on Wednesday," and then I threw my ass in gear to get ready for him. I knew I had at least two more days of work to do, so I figured on at least 16 hours. It ended up taking a little longer than that. It was my first and hopefully my last home remodeling all-nighter. Because it's one thing to pull an all-nighter, sitting around eating pizza and studying. It's another thing to spend all night standing on a ladder, scraping, peeling, sanding, and priming.
At about 8 pm, I broke for dinner and went down the block to the nearest fast food place. In the shape I was in, I would normally have gone through the drive-thru, but the bathroom in my basement is sooooo cold. I was willing to face a little public humilation in order to put my ass on a toilet seat that was not glacial.
I took my pee break and went back out to order some dinner. People stepped away from me in line. At the counter, the cashier recoiled. Now I knew I was dirty, but until that moment I hadn't realized just how dirty. I had a cloud of dust and debris around me--the pulverized particulate of fifty years of bad wallpaper choices. And probably not a little in the way of lead paint chips. The cashier didn't even bother to ask if I wanted my food to go; she just bagged it up and handed it to me from arm's length. Only then did I notice the little semi-circle of dust and detritus that I'd left at the counter where I'd been standing.
But wait, there's more. At midnight, about 15 hours into my ordeal, I was dying. I could see I had at least 3 more hours of work and maybe 5 hours. I went out to the local quickie mart for coffee and another pee break in non-artic conditions. An elderly man stood by the counter chatting with the college age cashier. Clearly the old man had reached that point in life where he no longer really needed sleep, so he'd taken to hanging around pestering cashiers at all-night quickie marts.
When I approached with my coffee, the old man smiled at me and said, "Why don't you let me get that for you?"
I was already in a slightly stunned state, but I managed to say, "No, that's okay. I got it."
He persisted, but I already had my money out on the counter.
Having failed to buy me a coffee, the old man said, "Do you have some place warm to stay tonight?"
Yes, that's right, my people. I was so bedraggled looking that I was mistaken for a homeless person. I schlepped my crusty, dusty self back to my 2 bedroom gulag, and went on with the work. At 4:30, I put the last strokes of primer on all the cut wallpaper seams, and dragged myself home to shower and sleep for a few hours.
For the record, I do not recommend this, but I do now have sheetrock on my walls.
plus pumpkin lasagne.
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Sometimes technology empowers me. Things work smoother and faster and I can write, connect, watch, create and generally do and be more, as result of magic of technology.
Then there are times when technology thwarts me at every turn. Things break, slow down or just become ridiculously complicated. When that happens, technology can suck the energy out of just about every task big and small.
After months of everything working relatively smoothly, I seem to find myself thwarted by machines, captive to electrical conundrums, bogged down by bad connections and generally wading through the muck of technology gone wrong.
The televisions have had memory cards replaced, firmware upgrades and new panels installed. The cordless phones have taken to randomly deciding to let me know who's calling or not, as it pleases them. The programmable thermostat seems to want to decide for itself when the heat should go full blast or completely off. Bulbs in my bedroom and the backyard refuse to power up and provide light. My Blackberry's trackball has developed a sluggishness and a stickiness that makes me suspect that some of that nasty green goo from Ghost Busters is oozing just behind the faceplate.
But the most vexing problems are with my computer and its relationship to programs and the Internet. It's slow. Really realley sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-w. Which is maddening enough, but it loses things. It forgets things. It doesn't want to connect to sites and people it should connect to. It misbehaves, acting like it doesn't care to help me do the things I need and want to do. This defiant, sluggish laptop was purchased in May of this year.
I've tried all the usual (but not extreme) remedies that those of us with an above average comfort level with personal technology know to do in these situations. I've tried them two and three times or more.
It might be time for more drastic measures. But before I go that far, one of my business partners offered up his "Technology Cleansing Ritual".
I think it might be worth a shot.
When you are in the snowy cold of Minnesota, take your laptop, remove any jewelry and do the following:
1. Gather freshly cut parsley and place it in a pan of distilled water. Let it soak for nine minutes. Sprinkle the water throughout the house while visualizing a calm environment.
2. Go outside, face Seattle and chant the following: I will uphold the Redmond creed. High in spirit, I shall succeed. Power of the Elements Five, will help my data stay alive. From grains of earth to the moving air, past the burning fire that magic flares, flow with water, lakes, and streams; around the spirit's aura and dreams. Keep my karma high aloft and let me play with Microsoft.
3. Avoid eating any liver or organ meat for one month.
You should be good to go!
J
UPDATE: This is house across the street from our apartment. It set the house next to it on fire as well. It drew quite a crowd and they were out there working on the fire from about 8pm-2am. It's amazing how fast fires will spread. I sure hope everyone is okay. Losing everything in a fire, one of my biggest fears.
Watch this stunningly beautiful, breath-taking vision of Picasso's anti-war masterpiece Guernica animated by Lena Gieseke.
A hotel room bigger than my apartment definitely makes traveling on business a whole lot easier! Oh and I got upgraded to first class. Yep, job is working out pretty well!
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
“This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.”
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