Head 'em up, move 'em out

I have spent the last few months figuring out how to wrangle the monthly volunteer reports into shape for data entry and accounting purposes. And I think I've finally got the whole thing down pat.

I deserve a cookie.

I wish I were really ropin' dogies up on the high meadows. Sadly, such things now exist for me only in metaphor and memory.

Vegetable Love

Ah, more studying today. Hitting the "A List" from the Princeton Review's recommended readings. I feel as though I have forgotten everything I have studied so far, and my exhaustion from a busy weekend isn't helping matters. Even a hard workout this morning and a Diet Pepsi by my side can't keep me running strong.

I'm not sure that I really like Wordsworth. Those damn Lucy poems seem like weak cousins to some of the other poems I've been reading: Herrick's Julia poems, Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard," the Marlowe and Marvell I wrote about yesterday. Wordsworth has no sense of humor.

Next up: Tennyson's Ulysses & a return to John Donne.

Today's Reading, Vol. 2

1) Scads of bargaining-related documents. I feel more than ready to purchase a used car. Or negotiate a a frillion-dollar raise.

2) My union's new blog. Not much reading involved here, but please note my bold taming of technology in the name of labor solidarity.

3) "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," Christopher Marlowe. I memorized this on my own in sixth grade. Yes, I was an unpopular nerd who read her grandmother's college English textbooks. But look where I am now: writing about it on a semi-anonymous blog. That no-one reads.

4) "To His Coy Mistress," Andrew Marvell. If you don't like this poem, you don't deserve to live. The last six lines alone should make you weep for the inadequacy of every lusty proposition you've ever delivered, or received:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life;
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.

Other projects: Greek-Style Potatoes with Lemon and Thyme, from A New Way to Cook, by Sally Schneider (Artisan, 2001); Honey-Glazed Carrots with Lemon and Thyme, from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (2005).

Mother, May I Drive with Danger?

I've become so nonchalant lately about Legy, Ye Olde Subaru. About six months ago, the right front tire started leaking very slowly, so that I had to put air in every two weeks. Two trips to the Sears Auto Center confirmed that the tire was fine, all was well, please pay $35 and leave quietly. I was not to be deterred.

"So," I asked the mechanic, "why is the tire leaking?" Note my keen investigative skills. He seemed surprised by the question, but set off to find the answer.

"Your rim is corroded," he replied, ten minutes later. The rim? Corroded? "Yeah, it's made of real cheap aluminum. The seal won't hold when the metal's pitted." I drove away in a panic over how much I would have to fork over to repair yet another of Legy's aging parts.

Silly me. Hear I am, months later, and my only expense is a couple quarters every 14 days to put a few pounds of pressure in the tire. Problem solved. Of course, one day, the rim will crack in half and sparks will fly as I careen down the Dan Ryan!

The truth is, Legy is holding it together like a real trouper. She's an aging showgirl with great gams whose first facelift is just starting to crinkle, but hot damn! she's still got it. I wonder: should I get her the tummy tuck and laser hair removal she really wants, or should I let the old girl age gracefully?

I suppose that this is all rather sexist, but having chosen a feminine persona for my car, I'm stuck. If it bothers you, picture me as Catherine Zeta Jones, and Legy as Michael Douglas, and we can all sleep easily tonight.

The gold medal in assholery goes to...

...Dick Button, ladies' figure skating commentator. Seriously, someone needs to take this old horse behind the barn and put him out of his misery.

Dick sez (of an OLYMPIC ATHLETE): "Well she's a nice-looking girl, with a lovely figure, and nice costumes." Is this supposed to be some consolation? "Sorry you fell three times, but at least you gave some eighty-year old a hard-on!"

Take 2: "Take a look at her; you'll understand why she's done some modeling in her home country of Finland." Uh...

Take 3: "You'll find with female athletes who are young prodigies that when they mature, their bodies just don't work." Yeah, you big Japanese fatty. Go stomping back to Tokyo.

The hills are alive...with my self-indulgent whining

These are a few of my least favorite things:

1) People who feed pigeons. This defies the laws of logic and sanitation. You are not the Bird Lady in Mary Poppins, nor are you a charming oldster on a Central Park bench tossing popcorn to docile birdies. You are dumping a loaf of bread onto the sidewalk, causing an unholy swarm of overfed winged rats in front of my building. I will hunt you down and make you lick the be-shatted sidewalk under the 90/94 overpass on Western if I catch you at it again.

2) People who read newspapers while standing on crowded trains. Yes, I understand that snapping the paper before you fold the page back is very satisfying. Balance that pleasure against my surprise as your fist whizzes past my face in the packed aisles of our morning commute. Shitting my pants in fear really detracts from the intense pleasure I derive each morning from stewing in my own sweat and the fetid breath of the seven people currently sharing six vertical inches of germ-covered pole.

Today's Reading

Intro to the Restoration and Early 18th Century: Norton Anthology of English Literature
Author bios: John Locke; Samuel Butler; Samuel Pepys
Works: "Hudibras," Samuel Butler; "The Epistle to the Reader," from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding," John Locke; a little bit of the diary of Samuel Pepys

The Economist - Just flipped through this one. The aging workforce cover story is somewhat applicable to my job.

Works I avoided: "Absalom & Achitophel," John Dryden. It's one of my longstanding nemeses, though none is greater than Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

Back in the saddle, with relish.

So, all those "how to be a blogger" pieces go on and on about how you shouldn't let your blog lie fallow for too long so that your readers don't lose interest...not much of a concern to me, as I don't have readers. Well, maybe two or three. I'm doing this for you, lonely readers!

This blog isn't an entirely altruistic endeavor, though: I don't have enough creative outlets in my life right now, unless you count cooking--which I don't, at least not these days, when dinner consists of foods from cans and boxes. But I am insanely busy, and perhaps overcommitted. I'm spending tons of time as a union officer trying to prepare for collective bargaining (fair contract by March 31, or we walk!), and, as the treasurer, I'm preparing various financial reports for those government bastards. It's all very interesting still, and quite cool to see how everything happens here at my agency.

I'm also studying for the Literature GRE, which is unfortunately scheduled for the very day upon which we may call a strike: April 1st. I cannot discuss this happy coincidence without a hysterical waver in my voice, though a rueful laugh and a glass of wine usually calms me back down. Studying for this test has been unexpectedly pleasurable, actually, which I take as a good omen. Surely it will be no worse than the LSAT. Strange thing: the LSAT studying actually held my interest for a good two months, due mostly, I think, to the weird satisfaction of learning how to game the system of standardized testing: Y'know, the trick is knowing how to take the test, not actually knowing an iota anything useful or beautiful.

With the GRE, however, I get to read Milton, Eliot, Poe, Marvell, Woolf--not necessarily as deeply as I would prefer, but enough to keep me in mind of what is good about this decision to go to grad school.