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Some Days in the Life - April 25, 1999

 April 25, 1999

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It's a scosh warmer today, but still chill. We're getting brisk Canadian air right at the moment, that also happens to be breezy and dry. There are a few wisps of clouds but that's it. I'm wondering if we'll have to go to the water rationing stage around here. Which seems silly when we have this gigantic lake right next to us, but hey, do I understand how these things work?

I'm not usually obsessed about weather. I just want spring. Specifically, I want bursting leaves and flowers and budding plants. I want the April Showers to bring May Flowers. Heck, I'd even take the traditional Mud Season over this kind of drying.

Remind me of all of this sometime in August, when the humidity's trying to kill me.

That being said, it's a gorgeous day in Wolfeboro. Short sleeves are a bit cool, but it's worth it. Besides, I'm from Maine. Cold don't bother me. I got up around tennish, washed up, checked stuff, and walked over to Sunday Brunch at the Academy. Now, the food at the Academy is astoundingly good. It's full of variety and vegetables and it's well made and you don't have to pay for it. But Sunday Brunch? That's special. It goes most of the morning, so no matter what time you push your lazy butt out of bed they have food ready for you. It's the usual things -- lots of scrambled eggs and bacon and sausage and a spiced grilled potato which I can't really call hash browns, or cold cereal, or bagels, or toast, or a station where you can make eggs to your own specifications, or a waffle iron with batter next to it... but they also have... the omelet station.

I'm the world's worst cook. I'm culinarily impaired. I need special ramps to get to the toaster. Heck, I once managed to toast a plate instead of bread. I can scramble an egg. I can do it with cheese and vegetables if I want. But I don't have the necessary magic to turn that into an omelet.

But at Sunday Brunch, I don't need it. I select all the vegetables and ham I want, and the cheese, and I watch trained professionals turn it into the best omelet I've had since I last had an omelet at the Hurricane in Seattle. It's lovely.

Today's omelet had the works -- namely, peppers and onions and ham and bits of broccoli and cheese and mushrooms, lovingly overstuffed into egg. That, plus orange juice and coffee, is Sunday Morning in a nutshell. The short but cheerful walk there helps. A brunch like that puts a positive spin on the whole weekend. Ah, Sunday brunch.

Yesterday was nicely lazy after I finished up my Parent's Weekend responsibilities at the Academy. I'm also on duty this weekend, so I'm kind of stuck in Wolfeboro, but that's okay. Duty means I have a pager, but it's not like the last job I was given one of those evil things. This pager has gone off once in all the times I've been on duty this academic year. Which is one more than it's gone off for any of the other techs on duty. And then it was a faculty member who accidentally left her computer in the Tech Office and needed to pick it up.

My last job, where I worked at a hideous Credit Card Processing Provider Company (remind me to tell you what one of those things does -- it's not what you think), gave me a page one week out of three. The thing delighted in going off at two in the morning, leading to the following conversation on the phone.

"Hi -- I can't get my card machine to work."

"Have you slashed the card through the slot?"

"Um... no."

"Try it."

"Okay... but... now what?"

"Now, enter the amount of the sale."

(Now would follow a long pause)

"How?"

"The buttons. Push the dollars and cents of the sale."

"Oh. Right. Okay...."

"What's it say?"

"Approved?"

"Good night."

"Wait -- I have thirty others...."

Now, if the network goes down, I need to go fix it. That's fine. I can appreciate such a reason to have a pager. It doesn't go down as a rule, but when we have little bobbles I'm just a few minutes away. But then, the difference of working at Brewster Academy and working at the Evil Credit Card Processing Provider Company are roughly the difference between having a moderately attractive member of the opposite sex give you a friendly neckrub and being hurled into a printing press.

The rest of the day I watched some bad television (Just where are they now?) and did some writing, and hung out online. It was a totally nonadventurous Saturday, and that just makes me proud. It'll be one of the last I have for a little while. I've got to go into the office again next Saturday, and likely I'll use that as an excuse to go out and do something after noon. The Saturday after, my friend Mason Kramer's a'comin' to town and I expect to be busy the whole weekend. The weekend after that I'll probably go home to Maine. Then perhaps a lazy weekend, and then Memorial Day weekend is graduation. And then we're into summer.

My parents have a Bowrider and there's at least one summer spot on Sebago Lake in Maine where they serve breakfast... and you can only reach it by boat. I'm going to be a hint busy in the summer.

So, given that I said I wouldn't be working on this journal on the weekends, because I didn't want to transfer the files back and forth, Pagemill didn't do it intelligently, and besides I wanted to have a life, why am I doing it?

Because I'm an idiot. The journal files are on my work computer, which is a G3 Powerbook.

So I can do this whereever I like. Literally. I can bring the thing home, type stuff up when I get up, and shoot it in. Not A Big Deal.

Aren't you lucky?

A couple of changes to the journal site -- I've set it up so that only direct links for a Sunday to Saturday period appear on the front page, added an archive section, and put an excerpt from a Wallace Stevens poem on the same front page. Let me know what you think.