Entry the Four Hundred and Thirteenth

04 March 2002

Burn Out

I am feeling a tad burnt out with regard to my online life. Between the need to constantly "keep up" with my online friends, lovers and acquaintances, stress in my life (professionally and personally), and an overriding need to back off and spend some time on personal development, I find that I need to stay away from reading other journals for a while. I am simply tired at the moment, my body is dealing with the effects of caffeine withdrawal from the wedding weekend, the resultant loss of sleep (ah, the joys of that vicious cycle!), and continued blows to my physical and mental/emotional health.

I am spending too much time reading and not enough time doing. I've said I'm going to do things to improve my life, and I've not been doing enough of them. And that frustrates me a great deal.

I can be my own worst critic, and in this tired state that critic gets to control a very loud part of my inner voice.

Anyway, I'll try and sort out some of this in the near future, but until then what I need most is downtime and some extra sleep.

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Entry the Four Hundred and Fourteenth

05 March 2002

ANC/Caffeine

02/3/5 8:16 a.m.

Despite having cut out of the ANC meeting last night, I am still considering a run for a seat on the commission. I looked up the dates for filing, etc. and if they keep to the same schedule I'll have until August to decide on a definite run. One only needs 25 signatures from within the single member district (SMD), which is not terribly difficult, especially when the Board of Elections and Ethics will give you a list of registered voters in your SMD.

I can feel the withdrawal headache coming on already, and I refuse to surrender to it this morning as I did yesterday. No caffeine today, no matter the shape in which it will leave me. You'd think I'd have learned better by now, to simply avoid my vices. But that would be to easy, no? ;-)

...

Well, the demon caffeine finally got to me mid afternoon and I gave in and had a Coke. :-p Wasn't happy about it, but 'twas better than the headache that threatened to kill my afternoon. After that I whipped out a memo that called into question a rather small part of a rather big project my BGA does. Nothing quite like dropping something in your boss' lap when you don't know if it'll be a small pebble or a large bomb within the organization. Tomorrow morning should prove to be interesting.

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Entry the Four Hundred and Fifteenth

10 March 2002

Off again

Another "off" day for ye olde body. Was a tad nauseous this morning, almost thought I was going to lose it, but the feeling passed after a bit (and after a mad dash to the bathroom!).

No caffeine at all this weekend, so this may have been the worst of it. Also decided not to head home this next weekend but to surrender the Les Miz tickets to my brother and his new wife. With just having been down there I don't want to put more on my credit cards. :-/ I'm headed down in May for a wedding for Doug's brother, so I'll be there soon enough. And perhaps I can pay off the last visit somewhat before heading down so soon! I hate that this is a consideration, and they're going to think it's because of their marital difficulties (they may or may not, but probably will, be divorced by the end of the year), even though it's not. Ah well.

Did get to see a comedy tonight, "She Stoops to Conquer." As always my favorite actress in DC was wonderful. Too bad I didn't get to go on stage this time to get a kiss from her like last year. ;-)

I dislike constantly sounding so down when I write, but that seems to be the times I find to sit and do something. When I'm happy I'm usually out and about doing something, or seeing someone (or doing someone *grin*), so am not here writing. At least that's been the case lately. There have been some very good moments the past two weeks, despite the ankle (which I think I'll test tomorrow morning), and the healing metal.

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Entry the Four Hundred and Sixteenth

14 March 2002

Hair

The curly locks are gone.

I had the experiment of the past several months shorn off this evening in an effort not to look like a shaggy beast with a white boy afro when I go running in the mornings. It's finally getting warm here now, so 'twas time to go back to short hair.

I enjoyed the longer hair, don't get me wrong. I thought it was quite fun to actually indulge my hair in its natural desire to curl up when it gets a tad longer, and the overall effect, once Meyanne got done with it, was quite good. The women in the office loved it, the boyfriends expressed that they liked it as well, and other folks generally thought it looked pretty cute. But Sunday morning just did me in for the former 'doo.

Sunday I got up and I just wanted to be scruffy. Didn't shave, did shower, didn't want to do a damned thing with my hair. But when I got it semi-dry, it was just too damned long to simply leave all over the place without some sort of paste to hold it all in a semi-ordered state. And that was when it had to go.

Any hair styling that won't allow me to just get up and ignore it when I get the urge to be scruffy just won't do. Add to that the aforementioned white boy afro effect when I would get up and try to run (not a problem when I could put on a cap, but now that it's getting warm...), and the nails were hammered down quite firmly.

I'm happy with what she did this evening, and there is a slight curl along the ca'lick in the front to hint at it's potential. And the shorter hair tends to make one look thinner, too, which is always a good thing. ;-)

...

Other than the hair, life has been good. Spend quality evenings with both Doug and Richard this week, and looking forward to more in the next two days. The changing focus on being together and doing things other than just staring at each other and merely being together to be together (unless that's what we want!) is working well, to my mind. The time together seems better.

I ran on Tuesday, and I'm going to do so tomorrow, too. No pain, no soreness in the ankle. The knees weren't too happy (*grin*), but they'll come around pretty quickly. I'm glad it's back again, and I'm looking forward to getting back in shape for some long races this year.

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Entry the Four Hundred and Seventeenth

15 March 2002

Opportunity knocks

After receiving the second request this week from our Legal Counsel's office to do legal research on topics which he was better suited to answer than they, he decided to go down to talk to the Deputy Legal Counsel herself. She wasn't in, was off at a meeting, so he sat down to help one of the legal interns work on some ethics work for a brief while. The intern was a friend of his, so this was a welcome break from his own work.

While there, hunting down a definition in a poorly written regulation, the Deputy came by with the Legal Counsel. He stopped the Deputy, asking if she was available.

"I can't right now, is there anything in particular?"

"No, nothing specific, just a couple of general items I need to discuss with you. Shouldn't be more than 15-20 minutes."

"Okay, how about 3:30 then?"

"Sounds good, see you then."

He helped the intern complete the research, then prepared to speak with the Deputy. When the time came, he went down, finding her looking over some files with the office secretary. He waited patiently, and after a moment went back to her office. He closed the door after they entered and faced her across her desk.

"So, what can I help you with?"

"Well, I've gotten a couple requests to do research from y'all this week. I don't mind doing it, but I really should be down here, not up in my office, if I'm doing legal research for the organization. Hypothetically speaking, if you had a position available here, what would I be doing? What do your attorneys typically do down here?"

They launched into a discussion of ethics work, labor law, procurement and his specialty, appropriations. The Deputy allowed that there were two tracks in the office, a labor law track and an ethics track, and given his experience, he would likely be placed in the ethics/policy track rather than the labor track. This was not to say that he'd not be doing any labor law, but it wouldn't be the majority of his work. She also revealed that while the office was not yet specialized, it was going that way.

"You know we're still interviewing for two positions in our office."

"I saw those, but didn't apply because the ads so heavily emphasized labor law."

"Well, we do need that, but we also need the ethics and policy work that you'd be more suited to. All of the candidates we've seen thus far have been very good on the labor side, but very weak on the policy side. These are excepted service positions, so we're not bound to the normal civil service rules on applications. If you have a resume ready, why don't you send me one, and I'll talk to the Legal Counsel, see what she thinks, then we'll set up an interview."

He assured her that he had one upstairs that he'd check, then email to her. While doing just that, less than half an hour after meeting, he received a phone call from the Deputy asking if he were available the following Friday at 3:30. He checked his calendar, affirmed that he was, and the interview date was set, even before the resume went down.

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Ran 20 min in RCP

Entry the Four Hundred and Eighteenth

19 March 2002

Run/Hair Dryer/Exercise

Ran again this morning, gradually getting back into the grove of that. Missed it much!

Watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time in ages tonight. I've missed a tad much to really understand the whole thing of what's going on, though I've heard enough stuff to follow the basic premises. I've said it before, but watching commercial television is strange. The commercials and what not are so distracting. I can ignore pop-up ads online, but car commercials are like a highway wreck - you just can't look away.

Oh, and I think I discovered this morning why my hair never quite looks like it does when Meyanne gets done with it: I never use a hair dryer. So I tried it this morning. Lo and behold, volume. Oy vey. I'm not sure if I want to deal with it on a regular basis, but the effect was nice. I'll certainly use it on Friday for le interview.

Speaking of which, I told my boss I was interviewing (I like the woman and I'd prefer not to surprise her - that's just not fair). She took it well, and admitted she had been talking about me with one of the staff attorneys down there who had been singing my praises. *blush* Was nice to hear, and does raise my hopes for getting a position down there. God I hate getting my hopes up on something like this!

Anyway.

Met Doug for a light snack (for moi - dinner for him) at Barnes and Noble. He went off to the gym this evening, and I came home to veg and what not. I wish I didn't dislike evening workouts as much I do, but I'll adjust. In the meantime, I'll run, and will likely begin to bike in soon. I can store the bike at Doug's and Richard's places, so I can always bike in from their respective houses (not this week - too nuts a schedule!). Would mean I get at least that exercise, even if I don't run while I'm there in the mornings.

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Ran 20 min in RCP

Entry the Four Hundred and Ninteenth

25 March 2002

Fast Food

I've been reading Eric Scholsser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All American Meal of late. And where to even begin to comment?

Schlosser goes through, and in a very matter of fact style details the changes that have come over various industries as a result of their dependence or feeding of the fast food phenomenon. From potato farmers to ranchers, to meat packers, to the flavor additives, to labor unions, he covers a great expanse of materials, never becoming sensationalist, or raising his voice. The conclusions to which he leads the reader seem inevitable, and deeply frightening.

This is not to say that Schlosser has no politcal bent in this writing. His comments about Republican administrations and lawmakers, while leaving commentary on Democrats almost entirely out of the picture, show a particular political bent; I find it hard to believe that no Democrats ever did favors for any of the industries outlined in the book, yet there are few references to them. The overwhelming influence of the industries on the Republican party is particularly glaring, but the Democrats are not always the good guys.

That aside, the writing is superb. And if you weren't a vegetarian (at the least) before you read this book, you would be well on your way after it. He details the horrors of the meatpacking industry and the speed with which they process today's meat, leaving millions of consumers at risk of serious illness from causes such as e. coli, and the description of what happens when someone gets a particular virulent strain of that little bug was bone chilling - I had to drop the book into my lap and stop reading after reading the following short passage:

Her six-year-old son, Alex, was infected with the bug in July of 1993 after eating a tainted hamburger. His illness began with abdominal cramps that seemed as severe as labor pains. It progressed to diarrhea that filled a hospital toilet bowl with blood. Doctors frantically tried to save Alex's life, drilling holes in his skull to relieve pressure, inserting tubes in his chest to keep him breathing, as the Shiga toxins destroyed internal organs. "I would have done anything to save my son's life," Donley says. "I would have run in front of a bus to save Alex." Instead, she stood and watched helplessly as he called out for her, terrified and in pain. He became ill on a Tuesday night, the night after his mother's birthday, and was dead by Sunday afternoon. Toward the end, Alex suffered hallucinations and dementia, no longer recognizing his mother or father. Portions of his brain had been liquefied. "The sheet brutality of his death was horrifying," Donley says.

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Rest day

Entry the Four Hundred and Twentieth

31 March 2002

Cycles

[insert apology for not posting enough here]

[insert usual angst about privacy versus public posting here]

[insert comments about running program]

[insert comments about how much I love Doug and Lawrence and Richard]

Can you tell I'm feeling bored with the level of writing I've been putting out lately? All the same, all the same, all the same. Blech.

Anyway. Got Cook'N finally. The program isn't too bad. I still think Mastercook was better, but it may just be familiarity speaking there. There are some pretty klugey features that I plan to email their support folks about (can't share recipes, only entire "chapters" of a cookbook, so heaven forfend you forget and type the bread pudding recipe into "entrees" and not into "desserts" - do the programmers not make mistakes like that?). Otherwise it seems... adequate. I look forward to getting to know it better and (I hope) doing away with some of these misgivings.

The symphony on Friday was quite nice. I'm not terribly keen on live music when it comes to rock, I prefer the polish that a studio throws on the music - that and I prefer to hear the singers and understand the lyrics rather than be overwhelmed by the always-too-loud bass on the concert speakers. Classical music, though is greatly improved by being live. The vibrations, the sights, the feeling of the music (and even the occasional cough or shifting of patrons) all add to the experience in a positive way. The program (which I can't seem to find now - drat!) was Tschaikovsky's Pathetique symphony in the last half and two neat pieces, including a really good one from the '70s, in the first. I quite enjoyed hearing it all. Was glad RE dragged me out there.

Yesterday was shopping with Richard (yay!), and dinner with he and Doug (yay!), then watching Artificial Intelligence with Doug (yay!). Came home to sleep, as was not prepared to be out, and Doug's still unwell (though recovering). A nice bike ride down to Hains Point and back in the morning, too. The cherry blossoms were gorgeous, and the weather was actually cooperating, unlike today. :-p

So, altogether a good weekend. I've even been dragging boxes out and tossing things again from the main closet in my room (why am I saving the box for the printer? and the one for the stereo that's dying?). Need more room to accommodate the stuff I want out of the way now and not the stuff I wanted out of the way then, ya know? Acquire, store, toss, acquire, store, toss. ;-) I'll break out of the cycle, just not quite yet.

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Ran 45 min in RCP