Friday Evening

You know, if three people volunteer for an extra shift of work on a Friday evening, it would help if all of them would show up. Because when one of them never even bothers to show, then I am left holding the bag. I, as the person in charge, am left taking up the slack and trying to salvage a situation where we are suddenly and unexpectedly undermanned.

A shift that was not strictly necessary, nobody had to take it on, it was simply an attempt to catch up and get ahead. Turned into an attempt to scramble and keep afloat due to being shorthanded. I'm sure all of us were thinking there was a better way than this to spend a Friday evening.

All Googled Out

Lately I've been realizing that I've looked up just about everything on the Internet that I'm interested in looking up. Which is obviously not the same as looking up everything that's out there, not by a long shot. But it's just that I have certain topics, interests, hobbies, pursuits that I've been in the habit of googling on over the years. You know, you eventually become familiar with the top search results on your limited little fields of interest. And in time you realize that it's not easy to turn up a significant new site on your interest, something you haven't seen already. It gets so every time you search on that familiar old topic, it feels like deja vu all over again.

And it's maddening. How do I break out of this limited little circle of topics I've googled a hundred times already? Google on something new? But on what?! Any topic of interest that would naturally occur to me, I've already googled to death.

It's like asking, how do I see beyond my field of vision? Because beyond my field of vision is precisely beyond the sum total of what I'm able to see. So how can I see it? How can I come up with some new interesting topic beyond the usual rut my mind is accustomed to move in? If only I could. If only it would strike me, like a meteorite of inspiration, out of a clear blue sky...

Masonic Eye Signals

There's a friend of mine who has a mannerism that drives me nuts. Whenever he's talking, he'll punctuate a sentence by making eye contact with me. You know, making significant, knowing eye contact with me. As if, just you and me in on the secret together. As if sending a secret signal that I'm supposed to acknowledge and reciprocate, a private visual handshake, almost like a Masonic eye signal.

And it wouldn't be so bad, I mean, it would almost be clever of him if he did it every once in a great while. But he doesn't. He sends me this Masonic eye signal every sentence or two. It's just all the time. And it really drives me crazy.

He's a good fellow, I've been friends with him and his wife now for many years. But I must admit, that line-of-sight due-guard of his does drive me right up the wall.

Morning Coffee

In the morning after breakfast my habit is to pour a cup of coffee, Starbucks Sumatra if you please, and retire to the living room where I settle down on the sofa beneath an old wool Indian blanket with that cup of coffee between my hands.

And then I just lie there, drifting in and out, warmth of coffee, mind wandering, taking a sip of coffee when I please, mind wandering, thoughts expanding through formless expanses and wastes and lumber rooms of the universe. Woolgathering, I think on nothing, or on whatever tumbling images may cascade in slow motion through my mind's eye. Memories of old, incidents that come drifting up from somewhere deep within, fantasies, lazy daydreaming verging on lucid dreams...

The warmth of the coffee sends a shiver down my spine. I'm more than half asleep. Soft old wool blanket. Gaze drifting across the same few knick knacks and wall hangings on the far wall of the living room. Lazy in the early morning with a cup of coffee.

Blankets

Below zero again last night. But here in the house I'm warm. Here in the house, lying in bed at night, I'm snug and warm beneath two heavy wool blankets.

Don't know how many years back it was that I got onto wool blankets. Insist on 100% pure wool. And get thick, heavy wool blankets. And pile them on, one on top of another. There is nothing quite like wool blankets on a bitterly cold winter night.

Fatigued

When we get into the depths of winter I find that I'm strangely fatigued. Tired. It's hard to resist going to bed early. Early in the evening. And then I sleep long hours, sleep like a log. Of course this leads to getting up early the next morning. And so it goes.

I suppose someone might try to slap some fancy name on it, like seasonal affective disorder. I don't know, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. It doesn't feel unpleasant at all, quite the contrary. It feels good, relaxing, like a hot bath. I only know that at the nadir of the seasons, for some weeks, I feel slow, fatigued, as if I ought to be hibernating. Now the early sunsets and early darkness are receding, and I find myself feeling not quite so tired so early in the evening. Before we reach the end of February this annual lethargy will have passed.

Empiricism as Mummery

empiricist n One who repetitively makes an angry, hectoring claim that every claim must be based upon "evidence." No evidence for the claim that every claim must be based upon "evidence" is ever submitted.

Rationalism as Mummery

rationalist n One who is adept at passing high pressure rhetoric off as "reason."

Dreams

Fragments of various dreams I've been having the past few nights:

• As if I am a priest, I am rinsing out and drinking a mixture of wine, water, and milk inside a chalice. I am wondering why a strip of fur runs down one side of the interior of the chalice: won't that soak up the wine, and defeat the purpose of rinsing it out?
  
• I am sorting through stacks of uncut sheets of $2 bills, which I unwittingly purchased through eBay.
  
• A contest is announced: a reward will be given to the person who turns in the last US Army canteen, which was left behind in Haiti.
  
• Sitting upstairs in my house, I am overhearing some workers at the bank (which is somehow also located in my house) discussing a DVD which was produced by someone in a nearby small town, but is being offered for sale by mail order through a company over in India. "How can he offer it for sale through a company way over in India?" Meanwhile I am watching the DVD, bored out of my skull: in an endless interminable scene, a snow fort is being built in the middle of an ice pond, while people skate around and around it on the ice.