Well, that was fun! After feeling somewhat off-camber-wobbly most of last week, whatever it was that was chasing me caught up with me this weekend. So I spent it flat on my sit-upon-icus doing little more strenuous than flicking the pages of a digital book or two or three. Same for yesterday, until I started to emerge from the fog of the virus late in the afternoon. I'm supposed to be at a regional transportation planning breakfast thingy this morning, but frankly feel pretty happy just to have made it into the office instead. I'm pretty certain that by this time I'm on the down-side of contagious, but I can use today's schedule to largely self-isolate myself while catching up.
Today is Tuesday, according to my smart phone, following a weekend I didn't really have, and Tuesday is going to pretend it is Monday. Tomorrow will be Wednesday, if the usual patterns hold true, and this week is going to feel like it is moving too quickly to keep pace with. However, a briskly paced week is much better than the ennui of sitting around all day for days on end!
Yesterday was also Halloween. Melissa had papers to grade and I wanted to watch football, so we fell back on a treat-distribution solution we used the first year we moved into this house (when we unexpectedly had to go out for the whole of Halloween evening but didn't want the new neighborhood to think we were Grinches): Lit a large (life size) wax pumpkin candle at the foot of the front stairs, stuck an enormous Tupperware bowl full of the usual bite-sized candy bars at the top of the stairs, with a large sign that read, "Happy Halloween, please help yourself!" As near as we could tell we had two, maybe three, visitors (all polite, very little candy was taken) all evening (unless the dog-bells weren't paying sufficient attention to monitoring the defensive perimeters). That's pretty much been the body count most Halloweens here, despite this being a stereotypical suburban culdesac-intense neighborhood, with lots of kids of various ages.
One silver lining of being chair-bound for several days is the forced opportunity to catch up on reading. I had three books in play. One was work-related (Switch, and excellent book on change management), one was for a year-long workshop I am taking through Leadership Snohomish County (Positive Leadership, Adam Seaman), and like much of the Western World, I'm reading the biography of Stephen P. Jobs. While all three are interesting, the latter was the most absorbing. The story and characters are compelling, though I can't say I am finding the writing all that great. Good enough to keep the story flowing, but in better hands (or maybe with more time?) I think it could be even more readable. The research is good, though, and the author uses it to weave a multifaceted portrait of what was clearly a very complicated personality.
Today's playlist was similarly complicated and contradictory, and ended with Mark Isham's very electric tribute to the electrified works of Miles Davis' latter years: Internet. It would make a good soundtrack to the Jobs biography, come to think of it.
On the subject of music, Pink Martini has just popped up on the iPod (Ninna nanna), which has reminded me that Pink Martini has two new albums scheduled for release in the US today. Why two new albums released at the same time, I have no idea. Still, what a treat!
The full playlist:
- Fountains Of Wayne: Amity Gardens
- Leonard Cohen: Democracy (Live)
- Lewis & Clark Soundtrack: Heart of the Heartland (The Death of Meriwether Lewis)
- Moby: Shot In the Back of the Head
- Mark Isham: Internet
- Posted via Hermes.
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