Much of the time it’s true- I can’t stomach religious persons or their stupid beliefs. It’s not nice of me, but it’s true. I heard a middle-aged woman with frosted hair and a loud voice talk at work about how she loves tattoos and is planning her fifth, but she just hadn’t decided where on her body it would go. “Oh, what have you decided upon?” someone asked. Answer: A cross with the text of a Proverbs 3:??-??, which she then dutifully recited. Yuck.

Last night I went to a concert of the Eastman Philharmonia. I sat near the front, just to the left of the conductor. In general I had a very nice time. It was an excellent program, from start to finish. It’s just that I’m never quite happy about the people I sit near. People are never as invisible as I’d like them to be. There was an aged woman sitting alone a few rows in front of me and to the left . Dressed very presentably, in a long black skirt and nice sweater, proper shoes. She seemed the perfect no-nonsense companion to a concert . . . except… throughout the entire performance of Wagner’s Liebestod she never stopped nervously flapping her program in front of her face, as if nearly overcome with heat. It was October. It was not hot. I fixated on it. I couldn’t focus on anything but the flapping. I tried to shield her from my view, but it was hopeless, impossibly distracting. She might as well have been waving a giant flag, or holding an enormous bird by the legs as it tried to fly away. I wanted her punished for ruining my first piece on the program. Moving to the second piece, mid-way through the slow movement of the Mozart piano concerto, I heard a clatter near my feet as something fell to the floor. Again with the audience noise! To myself I cursed the man behind me for this second distraction. After intermission, I milled around in the hallway for a while. When I finally returned to find my seat, I looked down and saw beside my chair my own cell phone, which must have been the clatter I blamed on the man behind me! So much for my blamelessness. I don’t know why I even brought the damned thing. For the second half, and third piece of the evening, I held my cell phone in my hand, wrapped in the program so as to conceal from the man behind me that it was my cell phone that fell on the floor earlier--and also to make sure that no one in the audience confused me with those cell phone people who bring their noise makers into the concert hall, unable to sever ties to the wireless world. But somewhere in the middle of the Brahms symphony, as I clutched the phone in my right hand, I accidently pressed the On button, which caused the phone to intone its start-up ring pattern. Good god, what have I done! Well, there was no concealing it. I’d become one of them. Mark my word, though--I’ll never bring a phone to the concert hall again. It’s unforgiveable.

A week or so ago Ann and I went to the Adirondacks for the weekend. She’s now a board member of a not-for-profit organization, a summer camp in the Adirondacks, and so attendance at periodic meetings is necessary. This actually has an unanticipated benefit for me, which I realized during this past weekend. It was on the early side of the fall season up there. We arrived on Saturday morning, after a pleasant drive, gorgeous weather, sunny and warm. The camp was relatively quiet, with only board members and, in some cases, their families, in attendance. (I say relatively quiet because it was still annoyingly difficult to find a spot where one could sit without surrounding noise, or wanderers, small children running about with parents following behind, etc. It’s one of those things about the camp that I always forget about until I’m up there—a most gorgeous spot but for all the damned people and their communal ideas and habits! If only I could have the camp to myself. The location is everything there—all else detracts. But enough of this short rant….) Anyway, we arrived on Saturday morning. After a brief period of greetings, I realized I had the entire day free to myself in this wonderful location, in this wonderful weather, while Ann was trapped in day-long meetings. After bouncing around for a while trying to find a place where I could be alone and read in peace, I finally settled into a long Adirondack chair facing the lake, wrapped in a thin blanket to keep the breeze off of me, and a book in my lap. There I sat completely alone and undisturbed for hours, a little coffee resting on the arm of the chair, the occasional boater passing by, and the sounds of geese in the distance. I sat for hours reading my large tome on the life and paintings of Van Gogh. What could have been finer? It was an exquisite fall day in perhaps the most beautiful place to be at that moment. It’ll stick in my memory for years as one of those times that comes rarely and without effort. Such times can’t really be repeated or recreated , even though on this day I wanted to buy a cabin in the Adirondacks and relive that day over and over again-- much as I wanted to buy an apartment in Paris after similar experiences in that beautiful city a few years earlier. I think one of the important factors in this day was the forced exile from all concerns that intrude. I had hours to kill with few options for distractions. This is part of the problem even with time of my own during weekends. Sure, there are no work distractions, but still an entire laundry list of activities presses upon me, a list of things that I must sample, an agenda of things I must move forward. It’s tiresome, my mind and its goals-orientation.

I really want to write a play. Someday I will. A good one, I hope, but if not, then multiple plays, many efforts. Coincidentally, I was just listening to the radio. The announcer commented that Brahms didn’t complete his first symphony until he was 43. I’m 43, so I took comfort in that, momentarily. But of course what one must understand is that by the time Brahms was 43 he’d already written several masterpieces. By his early 20s Brahms was already being called Beethoven’s successor. So take no comfort, my friends.

I have great friends. [One always says so just before the zinger. Hopefully they’re not reading this. Of course they’re not.] But often I tire quickly of them. In truth I often don’t feel like they share my interests, or that they have a clue what I’m thinking most of the time. It’s not a new feeling. I’ve felt this way about my friends throughout my life, even as the friends have changed. The only difference now is that I have Ann to compare them with, for how little they know me. So it’s not about my friends… probably. I wonder sometimes, though, whether I’d feel differently if I had a friend who truly shared a passionate interest with me. Maybe what I need are a collection of niche friends —e.g., someone I only get together with to play poker, an annual camping trip companion, a friend who only goes scuba diving with me (if I scuba dived), deer hunting friends, friends who only help me move, the friend whose phone calls I always dodge, the fuck me buddy, the fuck you buddy, the resourceful guy, the creative guy, the bore, the guy I keep on deck for when I eventually take up jazz, or bridge.

Last week our chief operating officer visited Rochester. I’ve seen this guy via his many video web casts on the company web site. He always seemed to be a bit of a tubby dolt, likeable but not particularly sharp nor able to inspire confidence. He rolls his head back and forth too frequently, like a bobble head that’s slowly coming to rest, a white and visually able Stevie Wonder, someone who knows he should turn his head from time to time to cover the crowd but who hasn’t quite acquired a natural rhythm for it. When he spoke to the full Rochester crowd of several hundred people, however, he was pretty entertaining, and he had more of a presence, a presence befitting a man who heads a multi-billion dollar company. In the afternoon after his talk, he toured the buildings, bringing his video camera with him. (In prior visits to other locations he’s created videos of his trips which were then incorporated into his video casts to the company, typically funny little pastiches of various characters from the company and his encounters with them.)

I happened to be coming out of a meeting when out of the elevator steps the COO with his entourage, camera rolling. I tried to slip around him unnoticed, as surely the last thing I wanted was an encounter with the COO of the company … while being videotaped. I found my way to my cube and believed that I’d avoided disaster. But of course my cube is right next to the heavy foot traffic patterns, and here he comes, turning the corner to face me in my cube, camera pointed at me as he begins commenting on what he sees. I smile as my mind races. What am I to do? There’s some very brief chatter, perhaps an exchange of some words between us, none of which I remember now. Then he comments that I look like the type of person who says nothing but intelligent things. Frantically my mind searches for something witty to say, something that could both live up to that expectation and yet deflect attention from me so that he moves on. Of course these two are antithetical to each other. Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I can think of neither. What I manage to say is, “I don’t respond well to such pressure.” At this he says something like, “Well, ok, let’s move on,” and he turns his camera to the women in the cube across from me and begins to question her about her shrine to the Red Sox. That man’s no fool. Well, I’ve since thought of several ways in which the whole episode might have come out better for me. Yesterday his video web cast was sent to the company, and I was not in it. But there was the lady across the way, and her Red Sox memorabilia.

Following are some random thoughts collected over the last couple of weeks.

I haven’t been motivated to write anything for quite a while. But I thought recently that I’d just begin writing some lists, since I’ve always enjoyed listing things. It’s a way to clear the mind, of ridding the mind of clutter, instead of mining the mind, which is painful. (My mother always used the phrase “ridding up” to mean cleaning up, as in ridding one’s room. I thought it was no worse than Ann’s “neatening up,” which I was certain was not a real word until I checked a dictionary and indeed found it.)

Anyway, here’s a list of things I do nearly every day—things of no particular significance.

• I remove from the refrigerator my lunch parts and assemble them into a little brown paper bag tower—everyday the same things.
  
• I avoid pigeon shit as I step down the top flights of the parking garage, and I avoid conversation in the elevator up to my office floor. Please don’t make me talk in the morning.
  
• Upon reaching my cube, I immediately turn on my computer and wait until it boots to a login prompt. I log in and take my lunch and my coffee cup to the kitchen, placing the lunch in the refrigerator, cleaning out my coffee mug, and filling it with strong coffee. We have one pot of regular, one pot of “strong,” and one pot of decaf. I often have to make a pot of strong. For me, strong means using two packets of coffee; others often use one and a part of another. This parceling of packets is irritating to me. The partial packet will often be sitting beside the coffee machine for the next person to make strong coffee. Usually I ignore the open packet and use two full packets. Why must I adopt their nervous parsing of such insignificant differences, the uptight twits. If they’ve already broached the divide between regular coffee drinkers and the greedy others who need more, then why bother to acknowledge the difference between 1.6 and 2 packets? Just throw the damned coffee in there and stop this nonsense of partial packets.
  
• When I arrive at the gym after work and find a locker, I mentally review a list of items I’ll need to pull from my gym bag before putting the bag in the locker. The items rarely change, but about half the time I forget something and have to reopen the locker door.
  
• When I arrive home from the gym, I pull from the gym bag my work shoes, my wet gym shirt stuffed in a corner and out of the way of other things, my work clothes folded on top, my leather work belt coiled inside my thick rawhide weight-lifting belt, and my work socks placed haphazardly anywhere inside. About a third of the time I forget my work socks. From my work bag, which hangs from my shoulder and carries my lunch and other junk papers I never seem to throw out, I pull my paper lunch bag, the spoon I’ve used that day, and the bowl which in the morning contained my rice and tuna mix. I place the bowl in the sink to soak, its inside crusted with the day’s food and the smell of day-old tuna.
  
• I’ve grown tired of this.
  

For the last several days I’ve been listening to nothing but Cherubini’s Requiem, over and over again. I particularly like its quiet, solemn ending, but the entire piece is a gem. I wonder why it’s not performed more often, given that it’s relatively short and requires no soloists. Instead, chorus’ around the country continue to force feed their audiences the Mozart and, for Christ’s sake, the Rutter requiems, ad nauseam.

A list of Latin phrases or words I like:

• Above all, mutatis mutandis. I have never found an occasion to use in which I don’t seem incredibly pretentious, but I like it.
• Sine qua non. Not as pretentious to use.
• None others come immediately to mind

I’ve been noticing that of the topics that I’m drawn to write about, the gym comes up much more than it warrants. I can go through long periods of eventful topics—including getting married, changing jobs, taking up new hobbies, etc.—but I never write about them. However, I do often write about the quirks of gym people. (I’ve been reading a biography of Samuel Beckett recently, and in it the biographer notes that James Joyce believed that poetry should be personal and particular—that is, written about what you know, and about the details of one’s life, not about big ideas. I absolutely agree.) Yesterday, a rather large young man was working out near me, a man in his mid-20s, with long straggly brown hair, a square jaw, and extra pounds around his belly. I hadn’t seen him before. He had the look of a football player, truly a rugged type, big, athletic, unquestionably strong, with a beefiness that I’m never really attracted to. But he did have a narrow ass for his big frame, tucked tightly into nylon shorts. He was doing push-ups, his feet elevated on a bench, which I suppose adds difficulty to the exercise. I haven’t done push-ups since I was a kid, and my impression is that no one who knows anything about body building would waste his time doing push-ups. So, I thought, he must be one of those who comes to the gym once every month or so, for an hour. I’d already dismissed him as not a serious gymer. Still, his physique suggested otherwise. Anyway, at some point he asked me to place a 25lb plate on his back while he did push-ups. Of course I would, I said, and of course I did. He got into position, hands on the floor, legs outstretched. And I laid the plate delicately onto his back and stood over him. In an odd way it was sort of sexy. Maybe it was just being that close. And so he began to lower himself, his hands splayed out on the floor from the weight of the plate, and then to push up, again and again, up and down, and I watched that the weight didn’t fall. But mostly I was watching his ass held tight to his nylon shorts, thinking to myself how very nice it was, this beefy guy’s ass, which I wouldn’t have given a second look at had I seen him passing on the street. And I wondered afterward, if I had been free to pull down his shorts and look (or lick) at his ass, would it have been a nasty white jiggly mound of tofu, or the deliciously hairy and muscular ass of an athlete that I had imagined. Maybe I’ll see him in the shower one day. Either way, it’s surprising to me that my tastes extend to larger, more manly (and older) men with fuller bodies. A good thing, I think.

Speaking of beefier men, just last night I walked into the locker room, placed my bag on the bench and looked around quickly to survey the room, not to look for pleasant scenery, but just to get my bearings as I would when entering any room. And there, turning the corner to enter the public shower, was another man, perhaps 30 years old, with golden, Mediterranean skin and dark hair, and a wonderfully rounded ass, hairy and full like the other man I had helped earlier in the week. This man had a full beard, which you don’t see much these days. I didn’t mind it, once provided with a visual of his butt. All things can be overlooked with such an image. I got dressed for my workout and necessarily passed by the shower room again on my way out, hoping to get another glimpse. And I did—a quick, fleeting glance. It seemed , though I wouldn’t swear to it, that he had the start of an erection. A shrunken dick (as one might expect after a strenuous workout) that was just popping outward a bit as if he’d just begun to get aroused. At least that was my fantasy reading of the scene. Probably it was nothing. But it reminded me of another image that’s remained with me for years now. I was in a bathhouse in Toronto once a few years ago, and had just entered the public shower area where there were perhaps 6 or 8 shower heads lined up. Standing about half way down, all alone and with his hands on his head shampooing his long dark head of hair, was a man in his early 30s, about 6 feet tall, very fit, hairy with a tanned complexion. No reason for this to stick in my mind except that he stood there with a full and impressive erection. The visual was stunning--mostly because there was no one else around, and he wasn’t touching himself. There was no stimulate for his arousal except his own fantasies, which, my god, was sexy. He was probably turned on by being naked in public, where other men could watch and examine him. I looked discretely, and showered beside him as if nothing was unusual. And frankly, in the bathhouse, this was not so notable. In that setting little is out of bounds and nothing is unexpected… well, except that I was surprised just then. The sexually explicit is not surprising there, but the sexy still often is.

I really dislike all those people who bring their toothbrushes to work and brush dutifully in the restroom after lunch, their little plastic toothbrush holders and tubes of toothpaste, and sometimes even a little toiletry bag, lying on the sink beside them. Can’t we keep our personal hygiene habits confined to the home? Why is this so necessary? Neither do I want to see people clipping their nails in the gym locker room, or even shaving. You can apply deoderant and comb your hair. That's all. At the office, you may wash your hands, look in the mirror and adjust your hair... with your fingers. No combs or brushes. These rules apply only to men. I don't know what you ladies do in there, and I don't need to know.

Earlier this week I had an eye exam. The receptionist, optician and optometrist are all women, each very pleasant and friendly. The same is true of my dentist’s office, but for some reason I always find the eye exam somewhat erotic, or not exactly erotic, but serenely pleasing in the way a non-sexual massage can be. I often have the same sort of sensation in the office, or in other settings where hushed voices are talking in controlled tones and volumes. There’s something about subdued voices talking that can make my hairs stand on end, which is a sensation I love. In fact, often in the afternoon, when I’m bored with my work or in need of a diversion, I’ll hone in on a quiet conversation among the cubes, or on a telephone call across the way, and let the voices wash over me without listening to the content. I can almost invoke on demand this odd primordial pleasure, like goose pimples without the accompanying chill. Anyway, my eye exam was much like this. The doctor or optician would talk to me in the darkened office with calming tones about medical tests and issues of the eye, while introducing bright green and white lights into my eyes, or positioning my head this way and then that, or lifting my eye lids and placing droplets into my eyes, blurring my vision and caused the external world to recede further from me, or me to inwardly withdraw into a silky, solipsistic cocoon. It was well worth the co-pay price of admission.

On a totally different subject, I was thinking recently about the phenomenon we’ve all experienced. We hear some music that we haven’t heard in a while, and it suddenly evokes a vivid memory or sensation from the past. That’s occurred to me a couple of times recently, songs that brought back powerful memories of my childhood. I don’t have many memories of my early childhood, which makes it all that more remarkable when this happens to me. They were good feelings, though. They made me think, my god, I was alive back then, but yet it was another life. At the time, I meant to make a note of the song and of the memory, but I’ve forgotten them. I suppose it’s just as well. Otherwise the association in my mind of the memory and of the song might be muddled, and it wouldn’t happen again. I was reminded of these recent episodes when I was poking around my computer at work looking for something different to listen to. (I have a bunch of music files on the hard drive.) I found David Diamond’s balcony scene from his music for Romeo and Juliet, which I’ve written about before. Such gorgeous, satisfying music. For me, this music will always be saturated with memories of Ann and me during Thanksgiving, as I worked on a piece of glass, and of our wedding last year. Tendor feelings that one only feels for one's lover and life-time partner, memories that run deep to what it means to share a life with someone. I had really wanted to work the music into our wedding, since the other music was American, and since I was wearing Diamond’s suit! But it didn’t work out. No one would have really heard it anyway, as it turned out. Nor would they have felt what I feel when I hear it. Ann wouldn't either, for that matter, so it's a private thing between me and the music.

Note to self: Things to write about, maybe for next time.

• One small change I’ve noticed about my life with an SO (now wife).
• How difficult it seemed to get laid when I really wanted gay sex back in the day. The yearning. I hadn’t a clue.
• My first gay sex. Not THAT notable, but it’s worth a paragraph or two.

I recently read the same book as Ann just wrote about—Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. I really liked it on many levels. It was exquisitely written, with poetic prose that did not get in the way of the story. That’s a very rare thing. While reading it, I was always engaged in the story, yet the language was beautiful throughout. I also really liked that the story was bare. The characters bounced from incident to incident, without subplots and without a host of minor characters or a sense of carefully crafted development. There was no sense of inevitability about it. It felt like anything might happen to the characters, and that the novel would have been equally good no matter the particular events that unfolded. It was how the characters lived in the world McCarthy created for them, rather than the events themselves.

This novel was, to my reading anyway, a well executed thought experiment in the way my philosophy professors used to talk of such things. Imagine the world gone hopelessly wrong—a world where life truly is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Now consider what your view of life would be. What gives life its value for us? This is what the novel was about. And I agree with McCarthy’s conclusion. I suppose we all would agree with him in the abstract, but minds change when reality hits.

The world McCarthy creates evoked for me at some points the same sort of feeling I had when watching the recent movie “28 Weeks Later”—a momentary but powerful sense that I wouldn’t want to be alive if I had to live in such conditions. In both the movie and the novel, life for the characters has been reduced to bare survival. All of life’s joys, pleasures, and goodness are gone. McCarthy’s novel seems to argue that life stripped of goodness is not worth living -- that we can loose much and still find purpose in living, but that there are limits beyond which life isn’t worth it. I certainly agree. There’s a kernel of insight here that I feel the need to tease out and to clearly articulate, but I think it’s probably just bullshit on my part—always trying to reduce everything to philosophical principles. But still … hehe … still, I feel like often there’s a dichotomy of beliefs or values out there—those people who feel that there’s something about life that is sacred and of inherent worth. I don’t believe that. And then there are those who think life’s value lies somehow in how it is lived. If you loose all of the things that make life good—human dignity, the joys of everyday existence in the world, whatever—then there’s no particular value in life. And it’s not worth living. I myself don’t feel like I must live at all costs. There’s nothing special about my life. And I like how McCarthy’s book challenges us to think about how we’d react to a fundamental disintegration of our lives. For me, I think it comes down to the fact that I simply don’t have a tenacious spirit in the face of severe adversity. If I can’t have my sunny Saturday mornings looking out at the garden with a cup of strong coffee in hand, I don’t want to go on!

As an aside, Ann had a few quibbles with the book. I don’t share those. She makes a very good point that the narrative slide by unnoticed. She’s absolutely right, and it’s part of what makes the book so compelling. My only quibble is that in a few spots it seemed like the narrative poked through—a jarring first-person “I” when the reader doesn’t expect it. It seems like McCarthy should fix those few occurrences (listen to me giving McCarthy advice!), and he’d have a near perfect novel.

First a few old things I never posted:

Toward the end of Sartre's novel "The age of reason" there's an exchange between Mathieu, the protagonist, and Daniel, the unlikeable gay. Mathieu has gotten his mistress or part-time lover, Marcelle, pregnant, but after failing to secure the money for her abortion, he refuses to marry her. Daniel steps in and promises to marry Marcelle himself. “Homosexuals have always made excellent husbands—that’s well know,” says the homosexual.

Then later, Mathieu says, “Look here, what you are is none of my business. Even now that you’ve told me about it. But there is one thing I should like to ask you: why are you ashamed?”

Daniel, the homosexual, responds, “ I am ashamed of being a homosexual because I am a homosexual. I know what you’re going to say: ‘If I were in your place, I wouldn’t stand any nonsense. I would claim my place in the sun, it’s a taste like any other,’ and so forth and so on. But that is all entirely off the mark. You say that kind of thing precisely because you are not a homosexual. All inverts are ashamed of being so, it’s part of their make-up.”

“But wouldn’t it be better--to accept the fact?”

Daniel replies, “You can say that to me, when you have accepted the fact that you’ve a swine. No. Homosexuals who boast of it or proclaim it or merely acquiesce—are dead men. Their very sense of shame has killed them. I don’t want to die that sort of death.”

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Much of the time my mind feels like it’s deteriorating. Maybe it’s just my imagination. But I can’t seem to focus or follow complex material. I constantly forget what I’m doing or where I was. And it’s not just at work. As I work on my house, I’m always having to retrace my steps. Why did I drop what I was just doing and set out for the stairs? What did I need and what was I going to do? This doesn’t happen after I’m half way down the stairs. It’ll happen just as I’m dropping my hammer to rise to my feet before approaching the stairs. It’s as if I’m slowly leaving my life of interweaved memory for a new life of countless unconnected moments. Will Ann be driving me to the park ten years from now, to walk the dog in silence, dementia having finally overtaken me. The prospect makes me sad for Ann, but I’m oddly ok with losing my wits. It seems like a painless way to fade from the world. I don’t feel a driving need to keep up with others--those sharp, young whipper snappers who can complete entire tasks and then later recount it to friends. Cohesive mental function is overrated. Of course the real sign that I’ve lost my mental facilities is that Ann and I are walking a dog in the park. So far I’m still able to recall from day to day that I do not want a dog to care for.

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Our neighbors have hung a single string of white lights around the top of their otherwise unattractive enclosed porch. These sorts of all-season lights give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, sending me back to childhood days vacationing at campgrounds, or at my family’s musty cottage along the Allegheny River. These lights, or strings of similar lights covered by cheap plastic globes, would often decorate the dingy pop-up campers parked at summer camp sites, lending the sites a sense of enviable permanence to those of us vacationing just for the week. How were they so lucky to be on vacation all summer at this get-away spot? Often when I looked at these seasonal sites, with their strings of lights, wooden decks, and lawn ornaments, and the deflated camper tires, I wondered if perhaps they weren’t going anywhere at the end of the summer season. That prospect, even for a kid of 10 or 11, was not so enviable. At our river site getaway, the cottage was actually owned by my great grandmother. We kids would only be allowed to enter on Sunday mornings at her invitation, to sample the greasy bacon she had just fried. It’s funny to think now how that spot had any appeal for the adults. There were little cottages all along the river, and probably still are. It seems so depressing now. I remember going there a lot as a child. My aunt and uncle had a place further away from the river, almost a second home, with an in-ground pool, which seemed to me soooo very special, something one could only dream of. Sometimes my siblings and I would be asked if we wanted to swim. Or course we did. I can remember going in the pool in my underwear on at least one occasion, having arrived unprepared. What was my mother thinking, arriving without swimming suits? Once the field between the river bank and my uncle’s second home was plowed shallowly in preparation for some construction. Much of that day I spent combing through the dirt looking for arrow heads and other relics. We found many things, those of us kids who were excited by the buried past. I remember finding a couple of fine arrow heads and keeping them among my other treasures through much of my youth.

I see the plain strings of white lights now at the gay campgrounds I sometimes go to. The bears will string lights around their big-ass RVs and elaborately decorate their semi-permanent camp sites with lights, lawn ornaments and figurines. I've seen yellow brick roads, pink pelicans, disney characters, and leprechan forests. The gays are a fun bunch. By day they decorate their lawns with unpretentious whimsy, and by night you're find them pounding ass in the open fields, heads bobbing and voices groaning, as if just another pair of animated figurines in the larger spectacle of a fanciful dream world. I half expect strawberry shortcake herself to emerge from the misty fog, or perhaps some pastel unicorns with curly manes.

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Sometimes during lunch I walk down to the atrium of the B&L building and sit there for a few minutes, just to get away from the tedium of my desk. Often I feel like I want to lie down at the bottom of the indoor water pool and fountain , face up, looking through the still water, my arms folded on my chest as if lying in my own tomb, the silence of the water’s depth protecting me from life’s dull daily concerns. Wake me when something interesting happens.

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Once in a while at the gym, when I’m feeling uncharitable or am simply in a bad mood, I’ll survey the crowd of assembled people, in my head sorting through those that I recognize and those I don’t. I imagine approaching those unfamiliar souls and telling them simply, “I’ve never seen you here before. Get the hell out of here.” Hahah There is a sort of comradery among the faithful. Yesterday, as I was walking through the parking lot to the gym entrance, one of the most faithful blurted out to me, “New Years resolutions.” I didn’t know what he meant, so I said, “What about them?” He turned his head and waved his arm in the direction of the parking lot and said, “The parking lot’s full of people who’ve made New Year’s resolutions,” meaning he couldn’t find a parking spot nearby. I responded, “I know. Well, in a few weeks it’ll begin to die down.” He agreed. “True. It happens every year.” And so it does. To all of you slackers who show up for a few weeks after the holiday season and in the late spring … the rest of us at the gym secretly have the utmost contempt for you.

A few days ago I wanted to do my leg workout, but a new couple had taken over both squat racks with a marathon session consisting of every conceivable permutation of exercises involving legs and back. Special pulleys were used, as well as ropes attached to bars and other apparatus. I’ve never seen them before, nor since (and I hope I never do). But clearly they were determined to do in a single day what others can only do in months. On this singular day they were walking in as red-faced marshmallows but would walk out as tightly bound and shellacked fitness gods. The fools.

The other day in the gym locker room I watched as a young man in his late 20s undressed. By all indications he was straight. When he took off his socks, I noticed with a slight startle that his toe nails were painted with a dark blue polish. What a turn-off. Don’t do that. I suppose it’s ok if you’re gay, but please straight men, no nail polish. Yuck.

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Normally I don't like to write about work-related stuff, but here's an exception. The other day at work I was trying to use a new online system to submit my travel expense report. It was meant to replace our current online system, though no one really understands what was deficient about it that necessitated a change. We each quietly muttered complaints about cutting costs by outsourcing to offshore vendors, etc. And surely there is much to this. Little was given to explain it, which itself is rather telling. I didn't care really. I just wanted to figure it out quickly and get my report submitted. But I would quickly came to care.

Oh, I filled out the thing and submitted it without paying much attention to the details. When my manager received it, she noticed I'd used the wrong account number, so she sent it back to me. Except then I couldn't open it. Why not? Well, I consulted the online help. Of course you can't simply click on a help button and expect to be helped. You have to log in to access help! User name and password. If you haven't registered yet, please register and a password will be sent to you. When finally I get in, I can find nothing helpful--there doesn't appear to be regular help or a manual--just answers to common questions, and some "helpful tips." (Later I discovered an online manual, buried deep within the help system. It was actually somewhat helpful…. Except that it couldn’t be located.)

After wasting already over 30 minutes trying to figure out the system and then looking through help, I decide to call a help number. I dial the number and it begins to ring--with the now almost unfamiliar rotary phone dial tone. A man with an Indian accent from a distant land answers and immediately asks for my employee number. I'm feeling nasty at this point, because I know what will come next. I know that no matter what I say or how I say it, I'll have to repeat the number multiple times. I tell him the number in a slow, methodical tone, two numbers at a time, articulating and enunciating as if trying to communicate with the deaf. He gets the first 4 digits and I move on. But as I move on, am I repeating the previous numbers for clarity or moving forward? What were those next numbers? Seven three? So 1 - 5 - 5 - 0 - 7 - 3 - 7- 3? No. It's ..... I'm sorry. I got confused. Could you give me that number again? He's apologetic and a bit concerned that he's annoying me, which he is. But I understand the problem. We're talking across cultures and continents, and communication problems are inevitable. Still I'm angry that he can't get a simple sequence of numbers despite me being very conscious of the problems and making every effort to bridge the communication gap. I expected the numbers to be botched, and they were.

He got the numbers eventually. I tried to explain the problem—I can’t open the expense report I submitted. He wasn't sure what to do. He had me go into Internet Options and delete all my offline content as well as all cookies (Now all of the countless username/passwords for the many different applications I need for my job are lost). Now try. Nothing? Ok, did you refresh? No. Try to refresh. Still nothing? Ok, log out, close your browser, and log back in. Ok. Now delete all offline content and cookies, refresh, and try again. Now a different error, but still no success. I'll have to submit a ticket, he says. He has me write down a 12-digit ticket number, for what purpose I don't know. I hear nothing for over a day. I try again. I call again. Again my employee number is repeated four times. Again I explain the problem. I clarify and dismiss his suggestions as already unsuccessful. He explains to me why I can't open the report, but he can't fix the matter. He submits a ticket, and I take down a 12-digit number. The next day my manager receives an automated email message that the problem has been resolved. Please try again.

She tries, but can do nothing. I can do nothing. I call again, giving my employee number twice. Someone explains that my manager must fix the problem on her end. She should have rejected the report instead of returning it for more information. She must reject it for me to edit it. But she can do nothing, I explain. Did she delete all offline content and all cookies, and then refresh? I suspect not. I hang up, and I watch over her shoulder as she does this. Still nothing. I call back. Again the employee number. I explain that we have tried without success. They say the report is locked and will have to be unlocked by a DBA on their end. He will submit a ticket. He submits a ticket, and we wait until the next day. Nothing from them. My boss asks about the status, so I try to open the report. I can't. She tries to open the report. She can't. I call. They have to report the matter to the DBA to unlock. “Yes,” I think to myself, “that's what you said yesterday. I submitted a ticket. What of that?” But I say nothing. He tells me he'll report the matter to the DBA to have it unlocked. It may take an hour or so. We wait.

In about 20 minutes my manager asks, so we try again. Miraculously she can open the report. Finally! We’re almost to the promised land, the seas have parted, and our lives may finally move forward. In a swirling fit of ecstasy and awe at being able to open the report, my manager excitedly clicks on the button ... to accept instead of reject! When finally we’re able to act on the report, she accepts the defective report after days of haggling and fighting to correct it! All is lost. The report is submitted despite being allocated to the incorrect cost center. There's no turning back.

On this whole matter I spent about 3 or 4 hours in total, and I called 4 times to India--this for a new system meant to reduce costs and streamline our travel reporting. And all of this to submit an expense report for our team lunch at the Olive Garden, because my manager forgot to bring her Am Ex card with her, and because I was foolish enough to blurt out that I always carry mine. Many lessons learned here.