Indecision 2008

HELP!

I've been afflicted with a terrible disorder.

It's interfering with my life.
Robbing me of my sleep.
Doing away with my appetite.
Making me question my sanity.

I'm watching the prices fall on airfares. $539 return to London. It's fallen $15 dollars since Monday and $49 since Friday.
I'm obsessed with it and have put off buying a ticket.
I'm like Ebenezer Scrouge here.
Ebenezer Scrouge and Hamlet, a combination of the two. A Victorian miser and a Danish prince who may or may not have been insane but certainly couldn't make up his mind.

This is no good my friends. No good.

Do I bite the bullet and just buy the darn ticket, falling prices be damned?
Do I fly into Gatwick or Heathrow?Do I leave bright and early Monday morning (as is my custom) or do I take an afternoon/evening flight and give myself another day?

Please, give me insight oh wise ones. Or just, you know, make the decision for me!

8,760 Little Hours

A film came out a while back, I’m not sure how long ago, entitled Things We Lost in the Fire.
I never saw it, I think I may have seen a preview, but I’m not sure.
In any case, I have the impression the film is about more than the material goods that burned.
It deals with the “everything now is different” experience. Life was X it is now Y and it is Y because of Z; the fire in this case being Z and providing a line of demarcation between X and Y.

I am, given my general personality, inclined to view lines of demarcation in a negative way. Before I got sick. After my grandmother died. After I crashed my car. Rarely do I highlight the positive changes. After I moved to London. After I redid my apartment.

This summer was, of course, filled with change. For that matter, so has this year. It’s puerile, I think, to mark this change as “new job” or “family death.” It doesn’t capture exactly how different my life feels in now from before, the exciting and (mostly) positive ways in which it is different. Today though, I think I stumbled upon it.

It’s Thursday. The Thursday before pay day. I asked my assistant if she was going out for lunch and rolled her eyes and said, “nope, brought.” Then it dawned on me. Of COURSE she brought her lunch. Tomorrow’s payday who has lunch money today?

So that’s it. I’m now living AFTER I stopped worrying about having enough money to buy lunch.

This feels good.

Extemporanious

In 4th grade my mother gave me a book of poetry by Judith Voirst (she of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day fame). If I Were in Charge of the World was the title and my mother inscribed it with the message, "Don't you wish you were!"

What can I say? I like to hear myself talk. I also like to tell people what to do. That I am the eldest daughter of 4 children is not unrelated. But, I digress.

I especially like to hold court as it were (ed., perhaps that's why I have a blog). Give me a drink or two and well, my usually loose lips come unhinged.

Fortunately for me, my roommate adores these ramblings and calls them my “Dr. Seuss’s Guides.” As in “Doctor Seuss’s Guide to Having an Affair and Managing a Business,” the title of one of my more recent monologues (ed., I am neither having an affair nor running a business). I make pronouncements, give advice and make commentary on a variety of subjects. Monday’s subject was, predictably, relationships. The details of these lectures are always fuzzy for me, but apparently the phrase “corn-fed thighs” came up, several times.


Corn fed thighs. Just the phrase makes me laugh.

Tune in Tokyo

Hi hi hi!
How are you?
Sorry for the radio silence.

Things have been....I don't know, nutty? I hate to use work as an excuse because, really, do you want to know how much time I spend goofing off? So, yes, while I am working harder and longer and more diligently in my new position, I still have plenty of time to write goofy emails.

I'm kinda pre-occupied. Still trying to find my place during a time of upheaval. Whereas I spent last summer jetting off each weekend to the beach and loving every minute of it, this summer I'm just trying to get through it. Not in a bad way, really, but more in a, "if I put my head down can I just wake up at Thanksgiving?" kind of way. There's still so much left to learn, so much about which I am unsure, I just want this part of the job over and done.

Make sense?

Soon enough,though, it will be fall and I'll have 3 months under my belt. Don't know why that sticks in my head, it's just, well, 90 days is long enough to not be the newbie.

It's more than the job, though. I feel like I spent the past year or so preparing for a big change. I don't know what it is, but I feel something coming. Not in a scary way, in a good way. Like I'm being carried along by the tide and I'm not exactly sure where I'm going but I know it's somewhere good. At the same time, however, I'm in a stream of moving water so it's, you know, a good idea to be braced for things like rocks and driftwood and the occasional beer bottle.

Hey Ho

This weekend's festivities (ed: Flip, need to have another linking tutorial) have left me with a bit of a let down. A bit of a "morning after the night before" feeling, as it were.

I look at marriage much the way I view, oh I don't know, buying a house. It's something I want to do. Something of which I approve whole-heatedly. Something to which I look forward.
But right now?
At this stage in life?
It seems about as likely flying to the moon. It's out there in the nether world of my consciousness. Part of my yes, SOMEday, but certainly not TOday.

And yet, ever since the weekend, it's as though "If Love Were All" is my soundtrack:

If only...
Somebody splendid really needed me
Someone affectionate and dear
Cares would be ended if I knew that he
Wanted to have me near

I just.
Well.
It would be nice to have a buddy, a partner. Share the load. "For my yoke is easy and my burden is light" kind of thing.

I had dinner with a friend last night. He, S.J., is studying to be a Jesuit and thus, while he'll preside over numerous marriage ceremonies*, will never marry. As the conversation wound it's way towards the subject of marriage, I shared what I shared above. While I take a certain "everything in its time" view of things, and I'm certainly not gunning for a husband, I'm beginning to see the benefits of a partner in life.

Then S.J. shared a story of an old Jesuit. This Old Jesuit said that while he loved presiding over marriages, they always left him feeling a bit wistful. The bond, the union, what God has joined together etc etc.

It's quite nice, really.
Quite nice indeed.

--
*For Catholics at least, the couple marrying perform the sacrament. One does not marry a couple. The couple marries each other and the celebrant presides over their union.

Found the Funny!

Actually included on the bottom of a report:

"The actual [redacted] number is unclear. Indeed, [redacted]'s number remains an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in mystery."

This is what happens when you hire a history major to do an econ major's job.

A Puzzlement

Is it redundant to say "Such a narcissist?" Is it similar to describing one as "most unique?"

Discuss amongst yourselves....