A very low speed, high drag day at work yesterday with most
of the other management staff off for the day.
Since I had nothing going on other than recovery from the Maine trip I wasn’t
going to waste a day off. Instead I
spent most of it on the phone with one of our technology companies trying to
get the 1970’s scheduling software to mesh appropriately with the new
technology in our fleet. This is a
marriage formed somewhere in the thirteenth level of hell and always makes for
an entertaining session – at least it killed most of a day I did not have the proper
manning levels available for a First Friday celebration after work.
I think my liver was thanking the gods for that since it’s
been given quite a workout over the past couple of weeks. One can never underestimate the importance of
training though so I wasn’t going to let the Friday pass without some modicum
of celebration. In the earthshattering news
department my and wife and the PanaGal had spent most of the day shopping so I had
some quiet time after work awaiting their return. I realized this was the first time in a long
time I was afforded some actual time alone and was relishing that until I
thought about next week. With my wife’s departure
for a tropical two months I’m going to get all the solitude (and attendant
quiet) that I can stand – and then some.
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| PanaGal and Wife at Zorba's Last Night |
They eventually did wring the last of the shopping out of
their system (or so I thought) and we headed to Zorba’s for a victory
dinner. My wife and I are getting a
little too attached to each other so we remarked that this would be the last
Zorba’s date for a couple months and damned if some sort of dust invaded both
of our eyes at the same time. I told her
not to worry that the beautiful staff at Zorba’s were my weekly morale boost while
she was gone abruptly canceling the misty eyed interlude. We were finishing up dinner (and a tributary couple
of beers – obviously) when the ladies decided there was some additional
shopping required at a nearby plaza.
Since we were already halfway there at Zorba’s they wanted to take me
with them. My wife laughed while the PanaGal
tried a series of logical arguments on why I should accompany them. I told her the secret to my long marriage was
never going shopping together – it’s not a pretty sight. I was ready to walk home before subjecting
myself to that hated activity before they relented and drove me home before
heading back out to shop and I got some more solitude training.
I finished off a Christmas gift book from my daughter. It was kind of cool reading an actual book
again vice the kindle. She figured out I
kind of enjoy reading a little bit. She and
I love reading even more than movies which is saying a lot for both of us. She gave me a book she really enjoyed this
year and which was a little bit out of my usual wheel house – Station Eleven
by Emily St. John Mandel. It’s an apocalyptic
science fiction book but very light on the touch fantastical and focused in the
human story – the real secret to great science fiction. It’s also by a female author which I try to
avoid in science fiction because all too many spend most of their time writing
about the intense emotional reactions of characters instead of moving the plot
along which some people, not I, enjoy.
This book was a huge surprise in that I completely loved
it. A simple flu bug kills 99% of the human
population in a very short time and a series of survivors make their way across
the Great Lakes area of southern Canada.
Mandel jumps the story back in forth in time, before and after the flu,
and between some loosely connected characters which would be a distraction if
she wasn’t so talented. The reactions of
modern society having all the “things” we take for granted and depend on ripped
away from us rang very true. I liked the
message that we should really focus on the other people in our lives and human
interaction versus the siren call of television, internet, etc., etc. I cannot recommend this book enough – a truly
wonderful read.
I include some of Mandel’s words as one of her characters
finds himself stranded in an airport wioth a hundred other survivors. Station Eleven: “He’d lost his oldest friend, but if the
television news was accurate, then in all probability everyone here with him
had lost someone too. All at once he
felt an aching tenderness for his fellow refugees, these hundred or so
strangers here in the airport. He folded
his paper and looked at them, his compatriots, sleeping or fretfully awake on
benches and on carpets, pacing, staring at screens or out at the landscape of
airplanes and snow, everyone waiting for what came next.”
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