Let's All Meet Up in the Year 2000

I hate my doctor's office.  I don't hate my doctor.  I don't even hate the secretaries and receptionists.  I do however hate the antiquated inefficient system that allows appointments (like, say the one I had this morning) to fall through the cracks and not get booked.  I stood at the receptionist's desk back in October, made today's appointment, and wrote it down in my calendar.  I show up today, nope, not in the system.  I feel 100 percent certain the receptionist screwed up, but I'm not that mad at her personally--the system makes it easy, likely even, that mistakes will be made.  This was for my last foot shot and I really wanted to have this done by the new year, for a symbolic new beginning.  Now I have to wait until January.  Waiting for the train to go back to work, I was so frustrated by this I was ready to cry, but luckily I stopped myself, otherwise my eyeballs would have frozen.

I have no exciting storm stories, other than my bus hitting a snowbank yesterday morning and the T being so screwed up last night that I gave up on the buses out of Alewife and walked home, to the apparent horror of some random stranger who joined my conversation with the randomly-encountered fudjo .  Even though it was very cold, it ended up being quite pleasant, much nicer than being on a jam-packed bus full of cranky people sitting on Route 16 going nowhere.  The night was clear and quiet, no sound except the snow crunching under my feet--not quite as good as snow squeaking under your feet, but still pretty good.  I didn't see any bunnies, but I did see their tracks.  The Minuteman bike path is plowed in Arlington and I believe also Lexington, for those who might use it.  There's a bit of black ice in the spots that get partial sun, but the full sun areas are bare pavement and the no sun areas are nicely packed snow, all in all in much better shape than the sidewalks and even many of the roads.  I walked again this morning and expect that will have been the most pleasant interlude of this day.  Not many people were around and I was reminded of cutting through Parc Mont Royal to get to McGill's campus when I lived in Montreal's Plateau.  Weather like we have been having over the last few days is par for the course in December in Montreal, just an average weekend, and the city doesn't shut down or go into panic mode or do anything particularly out of the ordinary.  I miss that stoicism.  Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver.

One night this last weekend as I lay in bed reading before falling asleep, Ianto climbed up into the bed all on his own and curled up under the covers next to me.  Fluffy noodley sweetness!  Sisiutl's been doing this for a while but it's new for him.

Much work to do at work.  I should do it.  Then cookies to bake tonight.  And maybe a pie.
 

Stupid Tribe.net >:-(

You know why it is going to rain?  It is going to rain because I left my yoga mat out to dry on the back porch this morning, that's why.

And while I'm complaining about things, some of those new Emans at Dahlal are downright fugly, not to mention cheap-looking. My Eman knock-off will be much nicer. If I ever start working on it.
 

Today I missed a bus, discovered that my umbrella leaks, rode on the slowest Red Line Train ever, was dripped on by the person in the seat next to me and got my wrist caught in a Green Line subway car door at Park Street and had to painfully yank my hand out of the door.  The day has pretty much started out fired.  I am glad that I already have lunch here at the office and do not need to leave the safety of these walls.

The production of last night's SYTYCD was a mess, and not even a very hot one.  I really don't think we'd seen some of the final top 20 at any point during the previous two hours, and in general the editing was odd.  I have no idea if some of the top 20 were good choices or not, though there were a few I was definitely happy to see make it.  They seemed to represent a pretty good cross-section of dance styles, from what I could tell.  The judges were pretty harsh, judging people not only on their dancing but on their overall attitude.  I think that's good though.  The message was don't make excuses, don't go into belabored explanations, just do it, and have the faith that you will be able to do it so that your audience believes that you are in fact doing it.  Can't argue with any of that, even if I felt bad for at least one of the contestants who got a dressing down over excuses and explanations.

Supposedly they are going to have the contestants do dance styles that have not been featured on the show before.  That is intriguing. I hope we get to see them do a Bollywood number :-)

Five hours of sleep three nights in a row (do the math, I'm down a full night and it's only Wednesday!) results in faint hallucinations at the corners of one's eyes.  If I were a cat, I'd be jumping at hazy trailing lights.  Since I'm not a cat, I say "oh, that's rather interesting" and try to resist the temptation to close my eyes.  I am aided in this by the loud leaf blowers operating outside my window.  But I am also hampered in this by the fact that it is still 80 degrees in my office, despite all the heat being turned off for two days.

Stayed up too late last night because I went grocery shopping after class, then decided to cook a real dinner, a Spanish tortilla.  My MIL gave me a five pound bag of potatoes (apparently when she did her thanksgiving shopping the supermarket was having a buy one, get one free deal) and I'm trying to use them up in ways that don't involved baked potatoes every night for dinner.  The tortilla turned out really well, with potatoes, a little onion, some broccoli (also a buy one get one free acquisition) and most importantly some black pepper goat cheese.  Usually when I make tortillas they come out a little dry as I'm always afraid of undercooking them, but the cheese (melted into the potato/onion/broccoli mixture before I added that to the eggs) kept things creamy.  Hooray the power of cheese!

I will get my foot x-rayed after work today.  I hope they let me see the x-rays.  Not that I can really tell anything from looking at them, but I'd just like to see my bones and know whether the metatarsals really are as shoved over as they feel.  In another two weeks I'll see the doctor again to get his interpretation and recommendations.  Pretty anxious about that, but there's not much I can do about it.

Decided to get a camcorder in the after Christmas sales.  I'm quite excited!

I got stuff to do, things to plan!  Very frustrating!

Called in sick yesterday due to tummy distress.  I felt better as the day went on and even went to dance class, and felt ok when I got up this morning, but now I'm not sure if I want to throw up or eat all the food I have in my desk.  Or possibly both by turns.  The headache I've had since Sunday afternoon is sticking with me as well.  I really, really don't want to be ill right now.

( Dance class stuff )

Can't decide what to dance to this Sunday.  I want to do more veilwork on Sundays, but in thinking about it yesterday I realized that I don't really know what my kind of veil music is, apart from gothic music that I would use for veil.  The slow AmCab stuff doesn't appeal to me, and I'm not into the whole unwrapping thing that goes with it.  But then I know classical Arabic music too well to feel right using much veil to that, and the setup at the ME doesn't lend itself well to the Arabic grand sweeping intros anyway, you can only malfouf your way around a small space so many times before people wonder when you are actually going to start dancing.  Time to listen to some music and think.  I did have this somewhat crazy idea of doing veil to a Rachid Taha song.  The thought of practicing veil right now though is not helping my general queasiness.

Dear sinuses,

any time you would like to cease causing me splitting headaches, please feel free to do so.  A solid week of this is getting to be a bit much.

regards,

me

My upper body is killing me as well, after 2 hours of yoga on Monday followed by 2 hours of double veil workshop followed by going out dancing at Ceremony, and then an hour or so of cane on Tuesday night.  Owwie.  I did want to increase my upper body strength though, so I'll look at this as positive pain.  The double veil stuff is fun; it's a little more in the realm of circus tricks than actual dancing for me, but I could see using that particular trick at some point, if I can manage some coordination while doing it.  I dropped off my double veils at the tailor's yesterday because the unfinished edges are *impossible* to grab on the fly.  A rolled edge will give me something that feels distinctive so I'll know when I've got the edge.  I don't trust my sewing skills enough to work on fine silk, but it will be worth paying for.  I sometimes use one of the veils as an entrance veil, so even if the double veil thing never quite takes off for me, I'll still benefit from having the work done on them.

It was very nice to have a few days off.  As usual, I didn't get anywhere near the amount of stuff done that I had planned, but all the important things happened and I did give the bathroom a long overdue cleaning.  It's sort of sad when you have to use vacation days to scrub the toilet.

Been watching City of Men on the Sundance Channel--it's a sort of follow-up to the film City of God, a half-hour show about kids in the favelas of Rio de Janiero trying to negotiate their lives in a very difficult place.  The social structure aspect of it is fascinating.  The drug dealers maintain their power not just through brute force but also by becoming neighborhood arbiters, resolving disputes and rendering judgments.  They are simultaneously resented and respected.  For a short half-hour show, City of Men conveys so much in each episode.  Many subjects are approached with humor (as last week, when one kid outlined the Napoleonic wars as though they occured between different hills in the favela), but there's always a seriousness (often a deadly seriousness) underneath it all.  One scene this week showed a kid trapped between a gang of his peers set on beating him and the police-manned boundary of the favela, and it conveyed so clearly how there can be no escape from the socio-economic-political factors that rule the poor.  I hope in some way this show can help the residents of the favelas who are trying to lead straight lives--it apparently was a big hit in Brazil.

Back to work...