and an unooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to paradise

(2 comments)
2005.12.20
Quote and Personal Observation of the Moment
You're inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age? A half minute before that you were stepping into high school, and an unooked brassiere was as close as you ever hoped to get to Paradise. Only a fifth of a second before that you were a small kid with a ten-week summer vacation that lasted a hundred thousand years and still ended too soon. Zip! They go rocketing by so fast.
Dunbar in "Catch 22"
Lately I've been thinking about how he he liked this other character Clevinger "because Clevinger annoyed him and made the time go slow" It also said he loved shooting skeet, because "He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years."

I definitely don't hate my new job, but I'm working a lot harder than I have for a while. And the funny thing is, it is kind of stretching time...especially the beginning of the week. It feels like it should be Wednesday or Thursday already. I'm not sure what's up with that, actually. But I appreciate that aspect of my job.

I still wish I could retire...well, nowish. I have this personal myth that my little projects would be the perfect way to fill the hours and have a meaningful life outside of work and family.


Service of the Moment
Boingboing mentioned a free 411 service, 1-800-FREE-411. I tried it last night! Worked very well, and the sponsor ad wasn' too bad at all. It was kind of cool, I've never used that much Voice Recognition software, it seems to do well at doing speech-to-text without any training. ("Cambridge Massachusetts" and "Fedex-Kinkos", in my case.) And then it dials...sure beats paying Sprint a buck and a half.