Some Days in the Life - June 1, 1999
But it's Powerbook Turn-In day, so here I am.
Ah well -- it gets me outside and it's cooler in my office than at home. I need that air conditioner something fierce.
It's June. Post-Memorial Day. It's summer, for all intents and purposes. That wonderful time of year when the Earth angles towards the sun, causing massive amounts of harmful radiation to filter through the failing ozone layer and dangerously warm the planet, the fragile shell of life wincing and retreating, but there's only so far you can go....
I remember being twelve years old. I loved the summer then. Mostly, I loved water. I mean, loved it. I would go to the town pool and swim from the time it opened for free swim to the time it closed. Wolfeboro doesn't have a town pool, as far as I remember. I spent the entire summer trying to be underwater. I would simply enjoy that other world. That magic that came from blurriness and the illusion of flight as you bobbed and turned. The water was my friend.
We'd sometimes go out to Eagle Lake, where Louis, one of my better childhood friends, had a camp. Louis and I would go swimming as well -- I'd spend from ten in the morning until dark in the lake, whether Louis was there or not. Just swimming. Enjoying the water.
I suppose it was the Summer of 1988 when that all changed. I was twenty years old, and I went to Ithaca for a two week long party. We went swimming a lot, at the base of the Ithaca Falls and in Lake Cayuga. We even formed a group -- the Large Manly Men in Wet Clothing, mostly made up of Kevin, John, Frank and myself posing dramatically in bathing suits, while "Dusk," our Moll, looked embarrassed. It was a lot of fun, but I got swimmer's ear something fierce. I could feel the Eustation tube (which I just misspelled and who knows if the spellchecker will pick it up) through my skin, it was so swollen. I lost my sense of balance because it screwed up my inner ear so much.
Lots of things changed in my life because of that trip -- but one of them was my relationship to water. Water stopped being my friend. I became phobic about water in my ear. After a couple of years, I mostly got over that, but the chain was broken. I just don't swim any more.
And without swimming, what's the point of Summer? Well, besides agriculture. I mean, we could just keep having Spring straight through to Labor Day, and wouldn't everyone be happier?
The work front progresses. I have a couple more people to talk to regarding the Webmaster job, and we're finally ready for the next step -- the sending of mockups out to people to see what they can do with them. Then we have the Calling of People In (the only people we've actually interviewed are the ones who are within ten minute's drive of us. We have qualified applicants we're interested in as far away as Florida). On the other job front, we've had a second round on a couple of people and we're looking to resolve it and any outstanding issues this week. We will see. We Will See.
MacWarehouse is being evil. Remind me to tell you the story tomorrow.
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