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Five Things on a Tuesday Morning
May. 13th, 2008 10:16 am1. As I work on "Five Ways to Ruin a First Date" (which is about radio astronomy), I keep thinking, "Perhaps I'm not being subtle. Perhaps I'm merely being obscure." I keep putting in e-mails to people, "I can only do this as I can do it." Which is true but not perhaps ultimately helpful.
I refuse to do the kind of prose that jumps up and down and points frantically at its own subtlety, though. That's just not going to happen.
2. I woke up at 5:15 this morning. Since I was already tired from the weekend, this did not thrill my soul. We're trying a new method of keeping my back from getting quite so banged up with the falls in PT; hope it works. It requires an extremely high-tech solution: a larger rubber ball from Walgreen's. At least Mom got me the swirly sky blue kind.
3. I find I am really, really not emotionally attached to most of the library books I try being any good at all. Of the five I got yesterday, I have already discarded two unread. And this does not bother me even slightly. Go library.
4. I am trying, with moderate though not universal success, not to be cranky with people with the continuing vertigo ick, since it's not their fault. But inanimate objects are not receiving the same consideration. I have been cutting the tags out of shirts with wild abandon. There is one T-shirt I've been sleeping in for over a decade (because physics T-shirts are tough, apparently), with the tag in. No problem. Until this weekend when the Tag! Must! DIE! This seems like a harmless enough pastime, so I'm just going with it.
5. I am instituting a new policy. I am no longer going to listen to my friends making disparaging remarks about themselves without protest. If my friends were making disparaging remarks about each other, I would protest, so I don't see why it should be different when it's about themselves; certainly it doesn't make me any less uncomfortable. I certainly don't expect my friends to pretend that they are perfect and without flaw, but gratuitous self-directed nastiness is not the same thing, and not okay. I don't care to put one of you on the spot and say who it was that inspired this new policy, because it bothers me more frequently than just the one person; if it was just the one person, I would e-mail just the one person.
For handy reference:
X: "I'm worried about this thing, because I have such difficulty getting myself organized."
me: "I'm sorry to hear that. Do you think it'd help to blah blah, or etc.?"
BUT
X: "I am such a disorganized loser!"
me: "Kindly don't speak that way of my friend X."
I refuse to do the kind of prose that jumps up and down and points frantically at its own subtlety, though. That's just not going to happen.
2. I woke up at 5:15 this morning. Since I was already tired from the weekend, this did not thrill my soul. We're trying a new method of keeping my back from getting quite so banged up with the falls in PT; hope it works. It requires an extremely high-tech solution: a larger rubber ball from Walgreen's. At least Mom got me the swirly sky blue kind.
3. I find I am really, really not emotionally attached to most of the library books I try being any good at all. Of the five I got yesterday, I have already discarded two unread. And this does not bother me even slightly. Go library.
4. I am trying, with moderate though not universal success, not to be cranky with people with the continuing vertigo ick, since it's not their fault. But inanimate objects are not receiving the same consideration. I have been cutting the tags out of shirts with wild abandon. There is one T-shirt I've been sleeping in for over a decade (because physics T-shirts are tough, apparently), with the tag in. No problem. Until this weekend when the Tag! Must! DIE! This seems like a harmless enough pastime, so I'm just going with it.
5. I am instituting a new policy. I am no longer going to listen to my friends making disparaging remarks about themselves without protest. If my friends were making disparaging remarks about each other, I would protest, so I don't see why it should be different when it's about themselves; certainly it doesn't make me any less uncomfortable. I certainly don't expect my friends to pretend that they are perfect and without flaw, but gratuitous self-directed nastiness is not the same thing, and not okay. I don't care to put one of you on the spot and say who it was that inspired this new policy, because it bothers me more frequently than just the one person; if it was just the one person, I would e-mail just the one person.
For handy reference:
X: "I'm worried about this thing, because I have such difficulty getting myself organized."
me: "I'm sorry to hear that. Do you think it'd help to blah blah, or etc.?"
BUT
X: "I am such a disorganized loser!"
me: "Kindly don't speak that way of my friend X."
