my sandbox

NZC quotes some other dude’s post on the topic of being accomplished.

The dude’s observation is both apt and apropos, though when I think of accomplishment (seeing as how my brain has been turned by too much 19th c. literature) I tend to think of it in the Jane Austen sense of the word.

This being the case, I didn’t pay as much attention as I might to the observation itself (as one might expect from the haphazard and dilettantish approach I take to so many endeavors). Travis has a far more considered and mature response to the whole thing, accomplished individual that he is (though not up to his own standards…).

I was far more entranced by Nick’s pithy invocation of Shelley’s poem Ozymandias. Sometimes his ability to coin a catchy phrase approaches the sublime.

And, while we’re about the business of admiring Nick, he’s also responsible for shaming me into this latest fitful spasm of blogging activity by chastising my slackfulness. Mom, thank Nick. Or not, depending on how you feel about that previous post.

Update:  oops, d’oh - forgot to give cred for the quote that’s entirely too long to be a post title.

I’d like to announce Victor’s and my intended schedule for our East Coast tour this year.

We’ll be flying into Boston Dec. 17, flying out Dec. 24, and we’ll be spending the bulk of the time with my folks in RI. Victor expects to have to work at Planet Pooch on Christmas (busy time for them) so we’re celebrating Christmas early. Or twice. Or something. If anyone is interested in rendezvousing, drop me a line. We’ve already booked Travis for Dec. 17, so that’s out.

Tangentially, when I first came to work at the Center, one of my coworkers said, “You’re from the East Coast, aren’t you?” (He hails from the Toronto area, incidentally). I responded in the affirmative and asked him why he was so wise in the ways of identifying natives of Back East. He said that he always found East Coasters to have a friendly and open demeanor, as opposed to the Californians he meets. This is the first time I had heard anyone make this observation, cause usually the opposite stereotype prevails: New Yorkers are obnoxious, New Englanders standoffish, and Californians are laid back and mellow. So it was nice to be appreciated. Go Back East!

From a review of a vegetarian joint in the Sunset in San Francisco:

I’m sick. I’m sick for the fifth time in as many months. This is not good. I don’t know myself to be immunosuppressed, so this ridiculous frequency of common colds can only be due to my body’s rejection of the processed animal fats I consistently force upon it. (The ball and chain refers to this thought process as “girl science.”)

My first thought upon reading this was “Heh. Girl science. That’s pretty good.” My second thought was “Hey…!”

link

It always amuses me when I’m driving, and I change lanes, and the person behind me speeds up so that he can feel like I cut him off. I generally imagine that these people do this so that they can feel a pleasurable surge of righteous indignation. Righteous indignation is indeed one of the most satisfying of emotions, so I can’t fault their taste, but I would think that the fact that the cut-off was self-inflicted would cause their righteous indignation to feel like an empty farce at the core. But perhaps not. A lot of people are quite capable of the small amount of self-deception necessary to make the illusion perfect, which I suppose is to their benefit if it allows them to feel righteous indignation frequently and with so little inconvenience to themselves.

This blog is not going to be primarily about driving. It’s just an artifact of small sample size that two of my three posts thus far have addressed issues pertaining to driving.

I’m not a napper but I’m increasingly of the opinion that most others are. It has only recently begun to dawn on me that this may be the case.

Nappers, of course, can’t say enough good things about napping. I think that napping is fine, but it’s just not for me. Midday naps leave me feeling disoriented and cranky. However, lately I’ve begun to feel pressure to nap. It may be because I’ve recently changed jobs, and most of my co-workers seem to nap, often during lunch. In a new environment, it can be difficult to find one’s place, and the temptation to succumb to habits that one wouldn’t normally adopt in order to fit in can be somewhat overwhelming. Will it take me longer to be accepted by my co-workers, because I don’t nap?

During a lunchtime conversation one of my coworkers alluded to a study linking napping with longer life spans. At the time I assumed that this must undoubtedly be a correlative rather than a causative relationship, since napping generally goes along with doing things like taking long strolls in the countryside and sipping a glass of red wine most days, and that this more laid-back approach to existence was the overall cause of the longer life span. However, a cursory glance over some web pages of varying authoritativeness (I won’t bother to cite them here, so as to perpetuate the dubiousness) indicate that napping per se may lead to longer life. There seemed to be something about natural dips in our brain functioning in the afternoon, and 20 minutes of sleep at that time being more efficacious than, say, sleeping 20 minutes later in the morning. This is probably common knowledge, since it’s one of those factoids that encourages us to do things that most already want to do, like eat chocolate. Or drink red wine, for that matter. Since I don’t watch the evening news, I’m often slower to pick up on these things than most.