work

In which I plan a 3-day weekend, watch TV, write this post

Today is Friday. Yep, no doubt about that.

It was a quick week, all things considered, and I keep finding it tough to believe that it’s almost the end of May already. Somewhere, maybe in the week my mom was sick with pneumonia — she’s back at work and feeling better, by the way — I think I lost a couple of days.

I’m taking one of them back on Monday, taking an impromptu three-day weekend. It’s mostly because I have the days and not a whole lot to do with them. (I’m still mulling over the idea of an honest to goodness vacation before the end of the year.) And it may seem a little silly, but the day off will give me a chance to watch the series finale of Lost, which I probably won’t get a chance to watch live on Sunday.

Tonight, I watched the series finale of House, and I just don’t know. I think if the show didn’t have an actor as strong as Hugh Laurie at its center, it would just fall apart. Zach Handlen neatly sums up pretty much everything I felt about the episode, and he does so remarkably well. This part contains a pretty huge spoiler for the episode, so be forewarned. I just think it’s some great and insightful writing:

The truth is, that’s how it works. The benefit we get from decency isn’t something that can be demonstrated by flat algebra. It isn’t a barter system. Having Cuddy show up at the end is too easy, because it’s what we all want when we’re alone and afraid and miserable. We want the person we love but can’t have to show up at our door and change everything, and that’s not how life works, and we deserve better than to be lied to by shows like this that pretend to dig deeper.

You know what else had some really great writing? Last night’s season finale of Community. “Do you try to evolve, or do you try to know what you are?” I’m just saying.

A mid-May Monday

Back to work today, for a pretty typical Monday. I got into the office slightly later than expected when I missed my morning train. I was running a little late already, but then I got halfway down the block when I realized I had forgotten my wallet. I doubled back, but that meant that I wouldn’t be on the 8:15 train.

And that’s about the height of the excitement for today.

I did have a slightly weird experience when a potential reviewer, who I’d e-mailed earlier that day about an art therapy proposal sitting on my desk, asked if it was me who had posted something to Twitter that morning. This, specifically. I’d had at least two art therapists in quick succession turn down doing reviews, or I’d had e-mails bounce back from them, because they were on sabbatical. This reviewer found my post by searching for art therapy news, which she does regularly, and she thought it was funny enough to ask me about it. I don’t actively hide my weblog or Twitterings from co-workers and people I work with outside the office, but it is a little odd when they find them on their own.

The only other thing I really did today was finish reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It was okay. My opinion of it largely matches up with Betty’s, I think, namely that there’s stuff to like about the book, and the title character is certainly interesting, but it really does not live up to the hype. I think it’s incredible success is due to a number of things not entirely related to the contents of the book. It hits upon some current hot-button topics, like financial crime and faltering economies, and marries that to a procedural crime novel. The fact that it’s a translation lends it a bit of mystique and prestige, at least here in the US, as does the fact that it (along with its two sequels) were released posthumously. Again, the book itself has its fair share of moments, but I found long stretches of it slightly boring and thought some characters could have been easily excised. Its incredible success is also a little baffling.

Oh, and for those of you wondering about my mom, she’s feeling a lot better. She was up and around for the first time over the weekend, and she’s got the all-clear from her doctor. She’s still tired and not too hungry, but the worst of the pneumonia seems to be past. Thanks for the well-wishes, all!

Friday

I started off today with an early-morning dentist appointment, for my six-month checkup and regular cleaning. It went well, in so far as there’s nothing wrong with my teeth, no cavities or gum disease or even too much tartar, but the whole thing took considerably longer than I’d expected, or at least had hoped. I spent more time in the waiting room than anything else — although, admittedly, I spent some of it reading reading an interesting article in the latest issue of Discover, about the possibility that DNA-embedded viruses are the root cause of schizophrenia (as well as bipolar disorder, multiple sclerosis, and some other diseases).

I spent considerably less time actually in the dentist’s chair, except for the time when I was getting my teeth x-rayed, which seemed to go on forever. (I have a narrow mouth, the technician cheerfully informed me, as my gag reflex conspired against the both of us and made a couple of repeat attempts necessary. She also informed me that these were safer than medical x-rays, a lower dose of radiation, and we could take up twenty of them without it being a problem. I’m not sure about that math, even if in general she’s probably correct, but dear god, I thought, we’re not actually going to test this awful theory out, are we?)

I was a little annoyed when I scheduled my next six-month appointment and the receptionist asked if I’d like another 8:30 appointment. “Well actually,” I wanted to tell her, “my appointment today was for eight o’clock. You just kept me waiting around for forty-five minutes.” (Doctors and dentists seem like the only people who can get away with this kind of thing.) But I just scheduled an appointment late in the day, some Thursday in November.

After that, I came home — my dentist is just five minutes away, actually — and killed some time before my late train into Manhattan. I took the dog out to pee, played around with the iPad, and spoke with my mother, who’s feeling considerably better. She’s still not 100%, but she’s much more alert, and she was even up and around a little bit today. I think the worst of the pneumonia is past.

I got into the office around 11:30, which is always a weird thing to do, and an hour later we had our annual — or semi-annual; I forget how often these things happen — recognition luncheon. It wasn’t quite as swanky as the one we had last September, which was on a boat. But there was good food, and we each got $10 gift cards for Target, so I can’t complain. Of course, I’ve never actually won one of these recognition awards…and those came with $100 gift cards… Oh well. There’s always next time. One lives (and works) in hope.

Beyond that, not much to report.

Wednesday

It was unseasonably cold here today. Maybe not as cold as in some parts — my father said yesterday the news was reporting snow in my old central Pennsylvanian stomping grounds — but chilly nevertheless. My mom is still sick, but with the confirmation today that it is pneumonia, we’re hoping that rest and antibiotics will have her feeling better soon.

Meanwhile, my day was about the same as yesterday, except for a “brown bag” lunch we had at work today. We have these on occasion, where they invite a guest speaker and give everyone who attends the talk a free lunch of sandwiches or pizza. Today was the latter, and a talk on book publicity. It turned out to be a fairly interesting topic, with an engaging speaker — neither of which are guaranteed when attending these things. Of course, it was helped along by visual aids that included a clip of one of his authors on The Colbert Report. But hey, that and free pizza ain’t half bad.

In other news, I stayed up much too late last night watching yesterday’s episode of Lost, which a lot of people seem to have really hated. Honestly, I can see where they’re coming from — it focuses on two (relatively) minor characters and offers a lot of non-answers (or simply more questions) as answers for the show’s central mysteries — but the truth is, I really liked it. There are plenty of answers I wish it had given, plenty of mysteries that I wish had been explained. But I keep coming back to something Noel Murray wrote in a comment to his AV Club review:

For me it goes back to the idea that the story keeps repeating. It doesn’t “explain” anything necessarily — if anything, it raises more questions — but in a show where incidents and images and lines recur, the idea that even the central “hero” and “villain” of the piece come from a fractured background just like the 815ers makes the endgame more meaningful. It’s no longer a war between Good God and Bad God. It’s just a continuation of an ancient struggle that makes even the people who claim to be doing the right thing into terrible, terrible people.

Lots of people, including Murray, have been insisting for a long time that the show can’t help but disappoint in its final season, that anyone looking for some perfect closure or understanding of exactly what happened is going to be let down. I think “Across the Sea” may be the first time that’s really sinking in for some folks.

Me, I really enjoyed the episode. I don’t know yet what exactly it means for the last few hours to come, but I’m eager to find out.

Tuesday

So it looks like it’s probably pneumonia, which will hopefully respond to antibiotics and start to pass. I think my mother’s been feeling pretty miserable the past couple of days, certainly since we got home from Maryland on Sunday.

My day, by comparison, was pretty standard. I got the okay for our company’s “summer hours,” whereby I’ll work from 8:30 to 5:15 four days a week in order to leave at one o’clock on Fridays. It doesn’t go into effect until mid-July, but I stayed until 5:15 today to make sure it still left me enough time to make my regular train. And it does, if only just. I probably won’t often get a seat on that train, but that’s okay. Standing is sometimes better for my back, and it does mean I get to read more instead of nodding off in the evening — which I do all too often. I’m still reading The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which is a weird mix of genres, not all of them super-exciting, but I am enjoying it so far, some three hundred pages in.

Other than that, not much to report.