Monday

1.
I guess it’s possible to have too much faith in this modern age. For example, I keep expecting YouTube to be better than it is. I’m not really interested in watching funny “mashups” or, um, someone’s video diary… Well, never mind that, but what I’m looking for is a complete cataloguing of every minute of video/TV/movies I’ve ever seen, so that I can drop pop-cultural references here like they’re hot and then give a link so you’ll know what I’m talking about. But alas there was no footage of the Simpsons reference to tethered swimming – at least not “tagged” as such – for me to drop in yesterday, and now I can’t find that scene from the second season of The Wire where a highly amused McNulty is burning the midnight oil in the marine unit office to which he’s been banished, almost chortling as he sends a fax to headquarters that he knows will displease his nemeses at the top of the homicide department very, very much.

Because – in addition to that scene perfectly expressing my mood as I worked on “something” yesterday – being able to send you to that scene would help make up for the fact that I can’t really elaborate any more than that, this web site being a top result for a search of my name and given the seriousness with which I take client confidentiality agreements. But let’s just say I’ve checked and rechecked my math, and the body definitely turned up first went in the water on this side of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Not only did I work all the way until 12:48 p.m. before even thinking about lunch, I could hardly restrain myself from making victorious little noises and dancing in my chair as I plugged away. Good thing I’m not in a cubicle farm…

2.
Around dawn, the air was still fresh and cool from Tropical Storm Barry’s after-effects. My morning routine ran like clockwork. Up at 5:10, into the Y just as they were opening the doors (which they seem to do at about 5:20, ten minutes earlier than their advertised opening time), a quick weights routine, and then back out for my run. And then what a treat: near the corner of Chestnut Hill Avenue and Yolando, up in Ednor Gardens, I saw a red fox crossing the street. It wasn’t pleased to see me and took off up Yolando, running for about twenty yards along the sidewalk before crossing to the other side of the street and vanishing into someone’s yard. Good possible solution to the rat problem?

Oh whatever, there is no solution to the rat problem. Those things are humankind’s adopted sibling; they’ll be around at least as long as we are…

3.
Just as I was getting ready to quit for the day and walk home, a huge thunderstorm swept in. I called my brother for a ride, and it was sunny by the time he got there. Riding along was a friend of his who does ESOL work with kindergartners while he works on his M.Ed. He said he’s so sick of the city school system that he will squeeze in three master’s level classes this fall just so he can finish his program and move on to a system that, you know, functions and treats its staff and students like human beings. He told a story of getting in trouble for missing a staff meeting the other day so that he could meet with his academic advisor, despite the fact that his principal had waited nearly six months after first observing him teaching to give him feedback. During his first year, mind you. And oh, those time-thieving meetings… “Remember that new system that was going to save education that we told you about last time? It turns out that we discovered “incorrect thinking” in those binders, so throw them away and memorize this new stack. And search and destroy missions will no longer be called ‘search and destroy,’ they will be ‘sweep and clear, sweep and clear.'”

[See again, no sign of that briefing scene from Full Metal Jacket that I’m referencing. How will you know how hip I am if you haven’t seen the movie?!!!

Oh, well here’s another amusing clip. Guess there’s something to these mashups after all:

These guys really do talk/sound like that, by the way. I had cadences from boot camp stuck in my head for years.]

4.
The Safeway.com order came. Missing most of the actual staple items. Milk out of stock?!?! Okay, it was soy milk, but still, I’ve never been in a Safeway that was out of the stuff before. And English Muffins? I asked the driver and he said that maybe the “shopper” who had filled my order had just been lazy. Huh!

I took delivery and grabbed all of the bags at once to carry them into the kitchen. I dropped one bag on my way. Once, on my way through the checkout line, a cashier looked at the eggs I was buying, you know, the “I’m saving the world” allegedly cruelty-free eggs that come in the clear plastic container with two layers of lid that fold over on each other, sort of like a trifold wallet?

“Is that the kind of package where you can drop it and the eggs will be all right?” she asked.

Actually, no, as it turns out.