Reading: Franco Ferrucci, The Life of God (as Told by Himself).

Learning: which states have a corporate income tax. Thanks to James Burke in Scientific American, the connections between a Victorian railway bridge and Gustav Holst. How supportive CoolBoss really is--more, not less, than I thought before.

Listening: The Police, Regatta de Blanc, because "Walking on the Moon" appeared unbidden from my head this morning. "Bring on the Night" still makes me weak in the knees. Plus I put "Does Everyone Stare" on a tape I made for CLH (along with "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic"). She introduced me to the Police, after all.

Viewing: A very sliver of a waxing moon. Looking up at it, I reflexively thought of moonlore: marriages made in a waxing moon are fertile, and I was happy for RRP because that's what she wants. A taped "That '70s Show" later.

Moving: Hopefully, some Nordic Track if I feel inspired later. Housework counts, though, doesn't it?

11 November 1999: No Place Like Home

I should bring Babe to work every day.

Someone gave me a small blue beanie bear last summer that I later learned was a Beanie Baby take-off. I had thought only that he was a plain little blue bear. Dan'l (the bear) lives in my cube. Through work I was familiar with someone from Kentucky whose name was Blue, so the name Dan'l Bloone suited my blue bear very well. Since he is a work-gift, he belongs at work; since he is a work-gift, I am not so attached to him that I would cry if he were stolen. I worry about thievery as a fate for my animules only because we had a rash of thefts last spring. Someone stole everybody's variation on the standard promotional plastic cup. Mine was from the opening of the DPL's Children's Room in December 1995.

I've been meaning to get gargoyles for my monitors at home and work. Lyle has been living in my backpack, where he doesn't get the attention he deserves. I think he belongs on top of the Mac at home, since he's a personal animule. No more knapsack for him.

Monday I bought Babe in a fit of pique over personal matters, but those matters unfortunately cropped up while I was at work. Is Babe a work or a home animule? Yesterday I brought him with me to staff meeting and he sat on my DayRunner but didn't say anything. CoolBoss asked about that later: "You brought your pig to the meeting but you didn't introduce him." No. She perceived correctly that my "Talk to the pig" sign on Monday meant that my nonexistent door was closed; most people interpreted the sign as an invitation to talk to me, about the pig. But that was Monday, and my personal matters were all resolved that evening, so I had no reason to bring Babe with me yesterday but my love of stuffed animules, which I should really not flaunt at work. So he had nothing to say in the staff meeting because I remembered--after I brought him--that I should confine him and myself to my cube. But on top of my monitor, safely in my cube, he makes me smile.

Furthermore, perched there on top of the monitor Babe reminds me of Banzai. Ordindarily Banz lives in my car and I can't drive without her, but since I never had the car at school, during the semester she lived on the desk in my beloved single instead. There, she would peer at me with her beady little eyes while I was writing papers. Babe's gaze is, if anything, even beadier, but more mischevious and less measuring. A good work companion.

And anyone who doesn't like him can lump it. I could feel that a question just burst out of someone one day after quite a while of restraint. Pointing to a greeting card on my cube wall, he asked, "What is that?" [Note the pronoun.] At 34 he had never heard of Madeline, poor thing. But Madeline's my girl and one of the best times I've ever had in my life was dressing up as Madeline at a Children's Book Fair, and she's on my wall as a 2D icon in tribute to that. The questioner's strong implication was either this was weird or I was immature or something of that nature. Ha, I say to that, ha.

I also have the First Amendment on my wall, and the Preamble. I do not have the Tenth Amendment, which is the most Dot Org-related amendment in the Bill of Rights. I do have the Preamble, which, however, I have memorized by the grace of Schoolhouse Rock, posted on my wall as well; I also have a postcard from CLH of "Unpack Your Adjectives." In addition to the decorations I listed before, and the First Amendment, the Preamble, and Schoolhouse Rock, there is a postcard advertisement for Absolut Vodka, Absolut Hitchcock, with the bottle sketched in profile. I loved that show. And a Nation magazine cover that became so popular they sold it as a poster; what's on my wall is the postcard of the advertisement. It's from the fall of 1996 and illustrates the devolution of our presidents: FDR as a proto-mammal tipping his top hat at the top of a cliff, and all the presidents after him devolving to the point Bob Dole and WJC swim in primordial ooze at the base of the cliff. To leave no doubt of The Nation's politics, Jimmy Carter is the one exception to the devolution, a pteradactyl flying overhead. And a cover from a Macintosh magazine with Peter Gabriel, holding a sunflower, on the cover. Photos of Blake, of ABW and NKW, of me with MAC and RKC, of me with ZBD, of me with Blake, and of me, CLH, and BJW. Also the first iMac magazine advertisement and two back-cover Think Different advertisements. I would rather have a "Collect All Five" ad for the iMac, but I really like the Think Different ones.

The Dalai Lama was the first I put up. He twinkles with that wonderful smile of his, fingers together. After Girl Scout cookies came in last winter, I had the boxtop from my Samoas on the wall for a day as well, until CoolBoss noticed that and said I should give the Dalai Lama a cookie. What a great idea! I cut the picture of the cookie from the package and put it in his hands. The thing I really love about him as the leader of the free-thinking world is that he would pro'ly get a kick out of that. If I did that to a picture of the pope, John Paul II pro'ly wouldn't. The Dalai Lama strikes me as a much more effective religious leader because he's a man of the people and if he passed a passel of kids skipping rope on a sidewalk, he'd stop and jump with them, robes and all. So I like to think he likes the cookie.

The other Think Different ad is Richard Feynman. He worked on the Manhattan Project, yes, but I'm not going to Monday-morning quarterback Oppenheimer here. I wonder about the estimated casualty rate U.S. troops would have faced especially after I learned about the Gulf of Tonkin shell game, but anyway I loved Feynman's memoirs, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! and What Do You Care What Other People Think? Plus he figured out what went wrong with the Challenger, which is my generation's Where Were You When...? so there. Anyway, the other day I looked up at him, gesturing at a chalkboard with some impossible formula scrawled on it at Cal Tech, and I realized that his hands were perfectly spaced to accept another cookie. When Girl Scout cookies get delivered next winter, he gets a Thin Mint.

That cracks me up, me, but then I'm me. Dot Org is reëvaluating its staff assistants and I was asked what personal attributes someone needs to do my job, and in addition to this that and the other I said "A willingness to perform tasks that require fewer talents than one must possess to fulfill other, more interesting responsibilities," and CoolBoss attracted attention to herself with her giggle. That's probably why I like her as a boss so much. She appreciates me.

* Yes, I watch "That '70s Show." Eric Forman reminds me of PLT and Harold. His gait reminds me of both, and the way his glance skitters of PLT, and his deference of Harold. More of Harold than of PLT. And now that RDC has agreed with the comparison, I can say Steven Hyde reminds me of him. We have one picture of RDC from his skid days. (What did you call them in your school? In mine, they were skids.) He's in EJB's clubhouse, eyes glazed and half-closed, Led Zeppelin half-shirt peeking from the lapels of his denim jacket, hair heavy-metal shaggy, cigarette in the corner of his mouth. No mustache, though; that was later. Last time we watched the show, RDC said Hyde was his favorite character, which is when I told him of the resemblance I saw between Hyde and his former self. RDC was pleased. He was always the troublemaker. It is this photograph I loved to show people from now, just before I show the ones of him with a mustache (spew!) in his early 20s. The responses to these from friends who know him only from DU amuse me no end. So I watch "That '70s Show," but only because I have slept with two of the characters.

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