Crusty Old Thursday Thirteen

13. Early evening phone meeting with the fellas in Taiwan. With all the background noise (someone’s wife and small child), heavy Chinese accents at that end, miscellaneous Asian accents at this end … I cannot follow the conversation. Makes me feel like an irrelevant old yankee and considering how my country acts in terms of maintaining its technological lead (i.e. doing nothing), that’s not inaccurate.

12. Mid-afternoon ice cream. Some work group had a celebration and overdid the catering. Emails went out: Come and get it! Countless Dilberts emerge from their holes and converge on the scene. The hired staff with their temporary badges are surly. Ice cream is melted. Big bowls of nuts and cherries and crumbled cookies and chocolate ants and rows and rows of whipped cream cans. No wonder we look like we do. But it’s a fun chance to catch up with that random person you know and aren’t sure from what past intersection of careers you know them. Catching up consists of vague expressions of doing good and polite nods.

11. 3 ½ mile lunchtime run. Talking with the other runners, old white guys like me. Political sentiment is often driven by where you live. In California, as you go eastward from coast through farm country and into mountains, you get more conservative, and these guys live in the foothills. They think Bush betrayed the country by starting the bailout, and Obama is going to finish the job. They’re not sure he’s smart enough to know that destroying the country is what he’s doing. They are sure Bush wasn’t. I don’t disagree but I don’t really know, of course. One thing’s sure, we’re fucked, and it’s been awhile since we had a real chance to avoid being fucked. Hope and change? Please. A cheesy advertising slogan.

10. Mid-morning energy burst. That brief but blessed time of day when it seems as though questions are answerable, problems are solvable, the company has a good future, and my boss isn’t figuring out legal ways to get rid of me.

9. Morning shower and breakfast. Our hot water heater died the other night so I showered at the workplace rec center. (Put the new one in today.) Immediately after, time to meet my breakfast club, get my tea, stir hot water into my little one-serving bag of instant oatmeal, and sit around a table talking about manly home projects while watching attractive female fellow professionals pass through.

8. Early morning rounds. Bad night of sleep but no worries, I don’t remember dreams, something to do with helping my mother water a garden. Crawled off the mattress wondering whatever became of waking up refreshed. Went out the laundry room for boxers cause I’m way behind on folding clothes. Weird music from upstairs, choir music, and that’s weird for six in the morning. Went up and found several teenage boys asleep and oblivious, cast about the floor and furniture like discarded underwear, the menu screen for “Boondock Saints” playing over and over and over on the TV.

7. Late night reading. A book is a must if one is to crowd out the real world and actually sleep. Enjoy tremendously Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel. I love it when good scholarship and good writing converge to make sense of huge questions in a rational and believable manner. Put it right up there with Breaking The Spell for putting reality into context. Every night the same instant of crisis: Eyes won’t stay open, sentences run together, time to stop, put book and glasses on nightstand and hope to god that simple act doesn’t wake me all up again.

6. Evening miscellania. Haul dishes back and forth to the alternate dishwasher that’s fed by the other hot water heater. (Yeah, we have two of each, long story.) Admire puppies. Watch mama ignore them long time, then grudgingly sniff around, lick all their little heinies clean and wake them up, then lie down with a sigh and roll over and let them squeak and crawl all over her and suck away at her spigots. Get sleepy.

5. Okay, I.

4. Ran out.

3. Of time.

2. For any more, so.

1. Goin’ now. Got a restaurant date. We got married twenty one years ago today. Goodness.