Early Departures

I seem to have discovered this week that I can leave work at a decent time. For 2 days running I've managed to leave work before 5:30 which gets me home at a decent time. A decent time for me is anything before 7 PM. The reason for today's early departure is the spillover from yesterday's productivity. There were plenty of meetings today but I didn't need to get much real work done due to being ahead.

My thoughts are continuing to turn to this fiasco of an election process that we are in. It seems like these candidates have been running for better than two years now but we probably know less about them than we ever did.

The really sad part is that whoever loses will probably never run again. The process is so grueling and so empty of substance that its got to drain whatever souls they have. I'm all for a single national primary with a runoff of the top two votegetters if no one gets more than 50% of the vote. Who's with me on this? It seems like all we are waiting for now is the scandal (real or perceived) that will finally relegate one of the democrats to loserhood. Is this anyway to choose the leader of the United States?

April Showers

It's really been a dry April so today's drenching rain is welcome. It makes very little difference to me being at work. There are probably people who don't like it but overall it is probably a good thing. From where I sit, 11 floors above 8th Avenue in New York City, New Jersey has practically disappeared and there are ominous clouds rolling across the Hudson River.

Passover ended last evening here in the Jewish diaspora. This was one of the easiest Passover weeks that I can remember. I often find myself wanting to munch continuously but not this year. I think that it was good planning and plenty of leftovers to bring to work.

Work has been productive today. I did not have a single meeting which gave me enough time to concentrate on tasks. Tomorrow and Wednesday are littered with meetings but I should have gotten enough done today to coast for a few days.

Mid-Passover

We're half way through the Passover holiday and I'm thinking that it's been pretty easy so far. I was not looking forward to the seder dinners but they were a lot better than I expected. The second one might even qualify as one of the better ones that I've experienced over the past few years. I think drinking the full complement of wine helps.

While I wasn't looking Spring happened. The tree in our front yard exploded in color. The petals all fell to the ground in about a week and we had fun tossing them into the air and getting showered by pink snow. The temperatures have been mild but I haven't been able to organize myself enough at work to get out and enjoy it.

I'm feeling disoriented at work. That's not really unusual but I never get sufficient direction from my management to really get a good feeling for what I'm supposed to be doing. I'm pretty sure they don't know either and most of the time it's not a problem since I can cobble together enough projects so that it appears that I'm being productive. Lately, I haven't felt driven. There's lots to do but I'm bored with it. Someday I hope I'll figure it all out.

Old Friends

Tonight I'm going to see a performance downtown where a friend of mine from my Camp Kindervelt days will be performing. I recently made contact with her because of a list server that a former very gung-ho camper set up to share photos and reminisces. She had posted a picture of me, how weird is that? We've written a few times and exchanged more recent photographs and met for lunch too. To some extent it was just like picking up where we left off. We stopped being friendly back in 1970 for no particular reason other than she lived in The Bronx and I in Brooklyn. When you are 15 there doesn't need to be more of a reason than that.

There are some people that when you see each other again you just sort of pick up where you left off. I can think of others from that time period that I wouldn't want to see again. I don't really care what happened to them. There are others that I would love to or hear from . I suppose a lot depends on how you felt about them the last time you saw them.

Writing

Last night and tonight I sat down to write. I've had a short story rattling around my head for a while that I've wanted to get down. It's been fun. It's a story that is loosely based on a guy that I know at work and his journey from totally secular to totally orthodox. I've done 6 pages in the past 2 days and I expect another 3 before it's done.

I've gotten a new laptop computer and, for now, it's a pleasure to use. It's free of all of the quirks that the other one had. I know as a computer professional that all that's necessary is wiping out the operating system and installing the programs for a machine to be as good as new. Windows in particular gets clogged up with junk and starting from scratch is really the only way to clean it up. Getting a new machine is a faster way to accomplish this.

Writing like this has made the evenings pass quickly. I originally thought that I'd dedicate each evening to a different activity but I think that I'd like to get this story finished before moving on to something else. Next week I'd like to get involved in the darkroom again. Stuff needs to be sorted out and I need to decide what negatives I'd like to work on. It feels good to be creative in the evenings when the days are so taken up by unproductive meetings.

Another Week Begins

I'm trying something a little different this week. I'm attempting to set myself a goal or two each day at work and at home. I'm hoping that this will alleviate some of the frustration that I've been feeling. At work I decided to get all of the administrative chores done today and then spent the rest of the day setting up my new laptop computer.

At home I tackled filing my Mom's stuff, paying any outstanding bills, and putting together a new spreadsheet of her assets. She's going through her money at an alarming rate. I've been procrastinating about getting her on Medicaid but the time has probably arrived.

The last few days have been relatively uneventful. Nothing in the news has excited me but I realize that I should be. The election, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan should be motivating me but they aren't. I feel powerless to effect any change. Even the continuing saga in Israel gets my attention but not my action. There was an aliyah fair in NYC over the weekend but I didn't even think of going. For now I'm in a holding pattern and I guess I should just accept it.

It's Not Getting Much Better

We seem to be back in a silly season at work. By that I mean that my days seem to be consumed by meetings. It's a little hard to actually do anything when all you do is meet about doing things.

Yesterday we had a bit of a systems failure. The procedure is now to open a general conference bridge so that everyone can be kept up to date on what's going on. At one point I realized that there were only 2 people on the call who could actually do anything about the problem but there were 6 "pointy headed bosses" that were asking for status. It was an outbreak of management!

Thursdays are generally my worst day of the week followed closely by Fridays. Everyone seemed to have a bad day today. Lenore had an argument with Raisa and our neighbor who I fondly call "Big Mike". He's not really big but his name is Mike. I just like the way it sounds. At the end of today I realized that I'd done practically nothing. It wasn't that I was just sitting around but the breaks between meetings were so short that I couldn't get to anything on my "to do" list. Tomorrow I have a vendor coming in from 10 - 1 and 3 hours of meetings after that.

Maybe next week will be better but I doubt it.