Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Quote of the day

Courtesy of the prof from my Economics of Decision Making class:

"If Alice can buy Bob's package, will she?"
--> "If she does, she's leaving with a smile!"
I'm pretty sure I would have found this at least as funny in high school as I do now, if not more so. Whether or not you think it's funny, o my three loyal readers, I suspect depends on how dirty-minded your high school classmates were.

Of course, it's all about the context ... almost anything becomes funny over the course of the third midterm-exam-related 8 a.m. breakfast meeting. It has to.

Non-Work Haiku

Chaos in focus.
Days and evenings both filled up:
nostalgia, content.

Tomatoes are ripe
Cheese & bread become dinner
No cooking needed.

Cats live down the street
Dark graceful forms yowl at night
All else is silent.

Fans blowing all night
Record highs through next Sunday
Heat wave here at last!

Work Haiku

My Calendar's full
Progress update requested:
All meetings, no work!

Best case? Four hours,
empty room, no distractions.
Unlikely daydream.

Design doc delayed
Engineers not committed
Tonight I stay late.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Odd

It's Sunday afternoon, and up till writing this post I have spent the entire day in the backyard. I have eaten breakfast, read a book, and written a letter to my Great Aunt Lee.

In the apartment building next door, there is a baby who amuses itself by crying in an "I want to talk but I can't yet and this is the next best thing so here I go WWAAAAAHHHA WWAAAHHHH!!!" kind of way. And this afternoon I noticed: on a sunny day and at a distance, a baby crying is a strangely peaceful, happy sound. It's right up there with the buzz of a fat tumbling bumblebee and the helicopter beat of a hummingbird's wings. Odd, isn't it: a sound I normally associate with distress (or at least angst) can add to a day's contentment.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Stratigraphy


On my way home from work, I stopped at the hardware store and bought a shovel. Then I headed for the backyard and started digging.

It's been years since I did this for a living, but digging holes is apparently like riding a bike: you never forget. My arms and shoulders still remember exactly the leverage and pressure it takes to dig a round hole, 18 inches wide and 30 inches deep, the size of a standard archaeological test pit. Conveniently enough, this is also the size of hole the Internet recommends using to seat a hammock-post.

After 10 or 15 minutes, I started to notice what came out of the earth. At first, it was just adobe soil: incredibly hard, the kind of soil I used to sharpen my shovel for. A foot or so down, the earth became softer and darker. I bent down and rubbed it between my fingers. It had the texture of ash. I slammed the shovel down again and again, chopping a straight sided round hole into the earth. I cut through tree roots and levered intrusive rocks out of my way.

Once upon a time, I would have made this hole perfect. I would have documented the changes in soil that marked habitation layers or fire pits. I would have screened all the dirt for artifacts, and saved the ones I found in numbered paper bags.

I feel incredibly smug that even without all that effort, I found three pieces of broken glass, a fragment of a flower pot, and a very rusted but still perfectly recognizable square-cut nail.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Resolutions for Thirty

August 15 is my birthday. My guy has planned some sort of overnight something as a celebration; I'm not yet privy to the details. Before he & I started going out, I never expected to like surprises - but now I do, much the way I have learned to enjoy multiple flavors of coffee, nature shows & CSI, and funny books about travel.

I have also made some resolutions. The first is:

1. Store a clean t-shirt, jeans, and underwear along with my always-packed toiletries kit. That way, when Friday afternoon hits and I abruptly decide to get in the car and drive for a couple of hours, I'll be prepared - rather than having to madly try to make it to the Gap before they close at 9pm, as I did a couple of days ago.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

You have reached the end of the Internet

This link is one of the funniest I've run across:

http://www.google.com/reader/next?go=noitems

What's the point of it? I have no idea. I just like it.