29 May 1998: Slow News Day

Friday, 29 May 1998:

Slow News Day

A slow day today, mostly because I felt decidedly slow. Several people from work had their last day today, including one of my direct cow-orkers who's moving to Ireland with her husband. I think she's hoping she can get a job at Apple's plant over there. I wish her luck. We had a going-away lunch for her, and after work was a happy hour at a local bar for all the folks leaving. I stayed for a little while, but eventually it felt like Too Many People for a Friday afternoon.

Unfortunately, the departees include one of the more attractive women at the company - what a pig I am!

Tonight I finished Pat Murphy's The City, Not Long After, which seems in many ways to be the flip side of David Brin's The Postman. Both are post-apocalyptic novels. In The Postman, the United States is a symbol of hope, while in The City it's a symbol of corrupted power and obsolescence. The Postman is fundamentally about the responsibility of those good men with power or authority to use their position to help make things better for everyone, while The City is a starkly pacifistic novel, with strong art-vs.-war overtones.

I'd say The Postman is the better of the two (despite a flawed ending), but the City is still quite good. The City is a more romantic and poignant novel.

It seems like there's too much I'd like to do this weekend. Bill Humphries is coming over tomorrow to help me with a problem with the SF3 account. I'd like to go into work to play around with a project I want to start working on. I'd like to go out and spend some time at a state park. I want to do some reading, and some writing, and play with the cats, and watch some Batman cartoons I have on tape. Can I fit it all in? Should I try?

On top of all this, I learned today the problems that the "job action" at Northwest Airlines is causing, and realized that my plane tickets to San Francisco in two weeks are on Northwest. I hope I make it! My friend and cow-orker Charlie, who travels a lot, recommended I get our travel agent to issue me printed tickets to replace my E-ticket, since that will make it easier for me to switch to another airline if necessary I just hope there's room on the other airlines' flights, if necessary! Aagh!

It's always something, isn't it?

Michael Rawdon (Contact)