Just the Facts

I've been meaning to post a quick, little update here. The sticking point has been "little." I sympathize with Pascal, who was in such a hurry that he could not write a shorter letter. Brevity is the soul of wit, but Polonius could not have come to that conclusion from his own experience. Every time I start to write something, it veers off into story-telling. Story is how I understand the world, it's my primary form of organization. It has a great many flaws, in that I can infer dramatic necessity from random events, and force that construction upon situations which don't really warrant that type of narration. It can also find patterns and motivations that are invisible to other people.

Oh, dear, here I go again. I want to describe how I learned addition and subtraction as interactions between characters, and how playing Snood or Bubblet always ends up being a sort of story-reverie. And if I do that, we'll be here 'til the cows come home, and I'll be no closer to having updated my own story than I was before.

Provigil and I seem to have come to an understanding. I have had very few nap attacks since it settled down, and the jitters have backed off. It does seem to upset my stomach in the morning, but since I don't eat breakfast, that's not much of an issue. I drink coffee with heavy cream, which provides a good ballast -- and I suppose that amount of fat so early in the morning could also be responsible for mild stomach pains.

I have been turned down for a job that I would have loved, Title Examiner, because my experience is too old. It isn't, you know. It's nine years ago, but I learned it young and I learned it well, and title doesn't change much, unlike processing and underwriting. But, there you have it. I couldn't get my foot in the door. I've gotten a couple of other calls. Despite being told that "abstractors are golden" I haven't gotten any other interviews.

I lost another neon. I have no idea why. I found him trapped in between a rock (and a hard place, yes, yes) and the front glass of the aquarium. I freed him immediately, and he managed to swim off, but he was missing his tail, his color wasn't good, and he rapidly lost his orientation. I rushed to put him in the hospital tank, moving the clown pl*co (now named Garfunkel, and there really is a reason, honest) into the 20 gallon. Poor guy didn't make it 24 hours. I knew he wasn't going to make it the next morning, but my mornings simply do not have any slop time in them, so I couldn't stop to euthanize him. I hope its true that fish can't remember pain. I'm quite sure they can feel it.

I want to talk about what I've been reading, lately, but I just realized that this will doom me to paragraphs and paragraphs and paragraphs. I read We Keep a Light, which was set in an area of Nova Scotia where my family comes from, and Two Years Before the Mast, all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, took a break with Hoka!, and am currently reading Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson on the advice of PNH. Consider this a string around my finger to type more about this.

Oh, and my friend who's been crashing with us since mid-April is going to be leaving mid-September, which comes as something of a relief, although I'll miss him. The economy is bad, and he hasn't been able to find a job. I hate the Bush government, truly I do. I have endless political rants pent up inside of me. Gods, to live in the United States of America, again.

Enough, must go. I'm at work, it's hot, and I want to go home.