Jan 23 2006
The Truth About Truancy
Since you can’t ask me for a note from my mother, you will just have to accept my excuse for my recent and rampant absenteeism:
Work. And lots of it.
I feel as if I were buried in work, only now digging out from underneath it like Punxsutawney Phil, making a hesitant appearance in the outside world, and blinking at the unaccustomed sunshine while looking around. Look at those horseless carriages! Women in pants! My goodness, how things have changed since the Work Avalanche of Ought-Six!
Every quarter, I research mutual funds for a client, notifying them if there are changes in management, fees, etc. Every quarter there are more, and for the quarter ended 12/31/05, there were 1,000. Count ’em (and I did), 1,000. It’s a positively Sisyphean task, though since it actually did have an end, let’s just call it Suzy-phean and be done with it. I’m already afraid of next quarter.
So after spending hours on the internet and phone researching this stuff, I couldn’t bear to even look at the computer, hence the lack of blogging and emailing. To quote the great Mark Twain, the reports of my death have been much exaggerated.
But Real Life (not Work Life) was seriously curtailed the past couple of weeks, though as previously mentioned, I did retreat to a friend’s house for a couple of days, where I did not touch a computer or even think about it for two whole days. Freedom, I’m telling you. It’s great.
Other Real Life events: Went to the dr., and she reduced my dosage of the Evil Effexor. So far, so good. While waiting to see her, enjoyed the following exchange between a mother and her young son in the waiting room:
Kid: Where are the crayons?
Mom: They don’t have crayons here.
Kid (reasonably, but perplexed): Why not?
Made me wonder why there aren’t crayons everywhere.
When taking out the trash, I went through the labyrinthine hallways of the main building (I missed the regular pick-up and had to rely on the Dumpster out back). On the way, I encountered:
The sound of Wilco’s I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (possibly my fave song ever);
The smell of weed;
An exhausted-looking hairnet, as favored by food service workers and certain tough guys in the Mission; and
What seemed to be part of an exploded set of dentures. I hope.
One Response to “The Truth About Truancy”
Do you remember the ruckus over “flesh” coloured crayons? They had to be taken off the market. The saga featured for a while in that wonderful comic strip “Bloom County”. Opus lives!