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solitary
December 29, 2011
Today I fought my way through early morning freezy rain, a blockade of salt
trucks running three-abreast on the tollway, and the usual TATTKMD crapfest,
only to arrive at the office and find that every single soul in my department
except me was absent. Either vacation or personal days, (almost) all around.
Gee, thanks, kids.
It isn't like it was possible to be productive, anyway--the entire building is like a
scene from The Stand. There's only about 10% of us here this week. I
could get a lot done if it wasn't for the fact that the stuff I'm working on
requires me to ask questions about every 20 minutes or so--and there is
absolutely no one here I can ask. Not just in my location, either--it'a like that
throughout the company. Boooorrrrriiiinnnngggg!
I just couldn't help feeling very Hamlet-ish all day. "How weary, stale, flat, and
unprofitable. Seem to me all the uses of this world!" Maybe because everything I
spoke was, by default, a soliloquy. So is this post, really.
Reading: A Chair on the Boulevard" (1921), by Leonard Merrick is a
delight, as is "In the Bishop's Carriage" (1904), by Miriam Michelson. Which I am totally NOT surprised to find out was like the #4 Bestseller of 1904. I am now
onto "Other People's Business: The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale"
(1916), by Harriet L. Smith and finding it pretty enjoyable so far, due to the
author's sly wit and wry turn of phrase. some favorites so far:
"What do you want now, Joel?" she asked, with the mechanical gentleness
of overtaxed patience."
"Like many people who have never made money by hard work, Joel believed
profoundly in making it by magic."
"She likes to shiver on the riverbank and think what a splash she'll make when
she goes in, but she hasn't got the courage to risk a wetting, let alone
drowning."
"Joel experienced the same satisfaction in describing the
pains in his abdomen or an attack of palpitation that a bride feels in
exhibiting her trousseau."
"I don't need glasses any more than you need a crutch." The denial
came out with a snap. Persis Dale, patient to the point of weakness,
enduring submissively for twenty years the thankless exactions of her
brother, proved herself wholesomely human by her prompt resentment."
"Just now Annabel preferred boys still young enough to be secretly proud
of the necessity of shaving every other day, young enough to swagger a
little when they lighted a cigarette. At her present rate of progress,
by the time she was fifty, she would have come by successive gradations
to the level of short trousers and turn-over collars."
"No man is so reluctant to recognize feminine superiority as the one who profits
most by the gifts of some woman."
Listening: Collective Soul, The Band, One eskimO
Surfing:
At Random:
click here
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