We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Is to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot
Those lines could be the epigraph for my day today. ( Read more... )![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zigzitsa
writing journal - I feel obliged to make updates, even if, as far as I know, no one is reading it, because no one except me of the people who asked to read it is commenting on it. Anyhow, I kept on writing about the Imperium, and figuring out where my characters are going to go next, and who is going to kill who, and who is going to have sex with who (at least, I think I know this, but those are some of the most real characters I have worked with, and they may quite possibly head elsewhere than I thought. In some ways, it was easier to work with my alter ego.) So, your ladyship the Countess of Strange Tongue went to bed at half past one, for methinks the second time in a row, and this time I had to rise for Urban Di in the morning - to walk to it. (My bike had a flat, you will remember?)
Naturally, I was late. But just the right kind of late to encounter and say hello to Oakenshield on the way past the Arts building. This encounter, though brief, left me grinning at remembrances of things past as I proceeded to acquire some tea, and then headed up to Urban Di to sit in the back of the room, listening to analysis of narratives and dourly drinking said tea and spilling it on the Metro rag reporting the condemnation of Saddam.
At work, I discovered that, unlike the editing I have been doing for the last - two months? Three months? - I will actually have to transcribe. Ah-ha, pure CLAN work, for once, doing it right the first time and making sure it is done well. In Spanish. Then I went to read for Reach. Lady Mollweide's classroom was occupied by her doing summative assignments with someone or other (if you don't know what summatives are, you don't want to know what summatives are). So Lady Mollweide and I called favours on Lord von Colonnade, and we borrowed his classroom, with the kids having to put everything back straight, on pain of death.
Then came more work. I can now talk dirty in Spanish. Please do not ask me to, for I am feeling very lonely.
And then came the Long March. Several kilometres thereof, to head to Singing Pebble Books to pick up the math department's Fractal Cosmos calendar. It did give me a chance to explore the controversial but lovely new footbridge across the canal, and achieve several other events, after which I crossed said footbridge, and proceeded into the school, for 'twas an even-numbered day.
The Dark Lord's classroom was apparently being used for math help with Lady Cauchy, but the Dark Lord was there, typing, and I came to him.
"May I bother you to let me into the Mac lab?" quoth I.
"Of course you may bother me."
"For you and I have not spoken in a while and I have kind of missed you," I said with the airy boldness of one who does not mean it truly, with the airy boldness of one who is indeed trying to heal a broken heart, and so will mindlessly flirt with anyone showing male secondary sex characteristics, joying in being twenty-one and not seventeen.
I sat down on the desk opposite his computer, and tucked my indie bookstore bag up. "That's your Christmas present," I grinned, adding at the startled look on his face, "for the math office, so shh! I had to walk a great deal for it today, because now you cannot get it anywhere for love or money." Yes, I have given up on waiting for Collected Works' special order. And I had to search through Singing Pebble's cache, and barely found the last three remaining calendars, with the assistant's help. I was seriously believing the fractals were gone, and my mind was entertaining the idea of getting the math office an astrological calendar, or one with mandalas, instead (I do not think the Gustav Kiimt will do inside a high school) when the cache was unearthed.
"So how is life?" he asked.
"Busy," I gave my standard reply. "Lots of work."
"And what's wrong with that?" came the contrary answer that made me remember that I have, indeed, kind of missed the Dark Lord.
Gee, I actually have to think when talking to you? "Because many of the things I have to do I find boring, unchallenging, and unproductive, but they have to be done. But it is part of getting a degree." He moved to say something else and I added, quickly and laughing, "Please don't ask me what i am doing next year, because I don't know! And how are things with you?"
"Getting there," he gave his standard reply.
"You have been saying that for five years. Has it ever got there?"
"Well, <i>there</i> moves farther away as you get closer to it."
A student came in and the Dark Lord questioned her as to when she would like to write the test, as I watched with interest at this unusual sight. Once she left, I remarked, "Now if she didn't have proper documentation, this would have been a lot more interesting."
"Yes, but she did, and so the Dark Lord has to give her flexibility and all that," the Dark Lord sighed. We spoke of other things, and the Dark Lord found out that the trivia night IS going to take place in the cafeteria.
*DAR: They do know that (they have to lug tons of equipment down, they have to lug the sound board down, there are no sight lines worth speaking of...)?
*TOU: I know. I told them several times.
Repeat. Several times.
*TOU: Well, I am trying to not be as involved in it as I was last spring, I don't want it stealing all of my sanity. I have been delegating things.
*DAR: Well, I hope the AVA knows what they're doing. I told them.
*TOU: Why aren't you in the AVA?
*DAR: Because I am doing enough around this school already. I don;t want every teacher running to me going, "How do I do this?" "You push this button."
*TOU: But you have the magic! You did make some robots work by your mere presence, if I recall correctly.
Just then there was an announcement for him to get the phone. "Somebody needs a switch pushed?" I quipped.
Let's just say he took a long enough time that I wondered whether it was his wife or his accountant on the phone, but hey, if ya miss the Dark Lord, the many minutes and hours you spend waiting for him come as a package deal. I waltzed to a tune only I can hear, and then leaned against the windowsill, pondering the things that steal my sanity. Who was it who remarked that sanity is highly overrated? But I remembered the dance rehearsal when one of our best dancers ran out in tears with a nervous breakdown, and I realised that it has been a long time since I myself have had a nervous breakdown. And I do not miss them at all.
The Dark Lord came back. "Well, that was interesting."
"Someone you love or someone you hate?" I joked.
I agreed to a long detour through the math office and helping him carry some of his stuff (particularly the rocket launcher; yes, didn't I mention the rocket launcher?) I will not cite much of the rest of the conversation; I am sure everyone has figured out by now what I have remarked before, that, *shrug* for all conversations and arguments, the Dark Lord and I are pretty much married.
I felt a strange sense of familiarity upon entering the math office, but I knew the Dark Lord would die of embarrassment if I had joked it felt like coming home. So while the Dark Lord and Lord Metternich argued over digital cameras and the printer (it was that famous printer in the Mac lab misbehaving that caused the long phone call, apparently) I helped myself to Skittles, discovered a math teacher and a gym teacher are married, made Skittles live up to their name, and finally headed over to the Mac lab with the Dark Lord, arguing about digital recorders all the way. Digital audio recording technology is one thing I do have crammed into my brain.
So...yes, the presence of the Dark Lord does skew my Keynote work and make it slower, as the previous trivia night reported - I SHOULD have the brains to click on the right master when I am working with master slides, but this time I did not. However, everything ended up working out, the Dark Lord installed the right software to make his printer print on CDs in RGB (someday I will figure out why the BPAL Forum Tarot recommended CMYK and not RGB) and in the end some Gungans died, some ships blew up and some pilots fried, I exported some Keynote files to PowerPoint and some of them back again.
And I walked home, thinking that some things, at least, are constant in my life. Like the Dark Lord's unpredictable predictability.
I came home to find my two BPTP shirts arrived. Yay!
And the end of all our exploring
Is to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
- T.S. Eliot
Those lines could be the epigraph for my day today. ( Read more... )
zigzitsawriting journal - I feel obliged to make updates, even if, as far as I know, no one is reading it, because no one except me of the people who asked to read it is commenting on it. Anyhow, I kept on writing about the Imperium, and figuring out where my characters are going to go next, and who is going to kill who, and who is going to have sex with who (at least, I think I know this, but those are some of the most real characters I have worked with, and they may quite possibly head elsewhere than I thought. In some ways, it was easier to work with my alter ego.) So, your ladyship the Countess of Strange Tongue went to bed at half past one, for methinks the second time in a row, and this time I had to rise for Urban Di in the morning - to walk to it. (My bike had a flat, you will remember?)
Naturally, I was late. But just the right kind of late to encounter and say hello to Oakenshield on the way past the Arts building. This encounter, though brief, left me grinning at remembrances of things past as I proceeded to acquire some tea, and then headed up to Urban Di to sit in the back of the room, listening to analysis of narratives and dourly drinking said tea and spilling it on the Metro rag reporting the condemnation of Saddam.
At work, I discovered that, unlike the editing I have been doing for the last - two months? Three months? - I will actually have to transcribe. Ah-ha, pure CLAN work, for once, doing it right the first time and making sure it is done well. In Spanish. Then I went to read for Reach. Lady Mollweide's classroom was occupied by her doing summative assignments with someone or other (if you don't know what summatives are, you don't want to know what summatives are). So Lady Mollweide and I called favours on Lord von Colonnade, and we borrowed his classroom, with the kids having to put everything back straight, on pain of death.
Then came more work. I can now talk dirty in Spanish. Please do not ask me to, for I am feeling very lonely.
And then came the Long March. Several kilometres thereof, to head to Singing Pebble Books to pick up the math department's Fractal Cosmos calendar. It did give me a chance to explore the controversial but lovely new footbridge across the canal, and achieve several other events, after which I crossed said footbridge, and proceeded into the school, for 'twas an even-numbered day.
The Dark Lord's classroom was apparently being used for math help with Lady Cauchy, but the Dark Lord was there, typing, and I came to him.
"May I bother you to let me into the Mac lab?" quoth I.
"Of course you may bother me."
"For you and I have not spoken in a while and I have kind of missed you," I said with the airy boldness of one who does not mean it truly, with the airy boldness of one who is indeed trying to heal a broken heart, and so will mindlessly flirt with anyone showing male secondary sex characteristics, joying in being twenty-one and not seventeen.
I sat down on the desk opposite his computer, and tucked my indie bookstore bag up. "That's your Christmas present," I grinned, adding at the startled look on his face, "for the math office, so shh! I had to walk a great deal for it today, because now you cannot get it anywhere for love or money." Yes, I have given up on waiting for Collected Works' special order. And I had to search through Singing Pebble's cache, and barely found the last three remaining calendars, with the assistant's help. I was seriously believing the fractals were gone, and my mind was entertaining the idea of getting the math office an astrological calendar, or one with mandalas, instead (I do not think the Gustav Kiimt will do inside a high school) when the cache was unearthed.
"So how is life?" he asked.
"Busy," I gave my standard reply. "Lots of work."
"And what's wrong with that?" came the contrary answer that made me remember that I have, indeed, kind of missed the Dark Lord.
Gee, I actually have to think when talking to you? "Because many of the things I have to do I find boring, unchallenging, and unproductive, but they have to be done. But it is part of getting a degree." He moved to say something else and I added, quickly and laughing, "Please don't ask me what i am doing next year, because I don't know! And how are things with you?"
"Getting there," he gave his standard reply.
"You have been saying that for five years. Has it ever got there?"
"Well, <i>there</i> moves farther away as you get closer to it."
A student came in and the Dark Lord questioned her as to when she would like to write the test, as I watched with interest at this unusual sight. Once she left, I remarked, "Now if she didn't have proper documentation, this would have been a lot more interesting."
"Yes, but she did, and so the Dark Lord has to give her flexibility and all that," the Dark Lord sighed. We spoke of other things, and the Dark Lord found out that the trivia night IS going to take place in the cafeteria.
*DAR: They do know that (they have to lug tons of equipment down, they have to lug the sound board down, there are no sight lines worth speaking of...)?
*TOU: I know. I told them several times.
Repeat. Several times.
*TOU: Well, I am trying to not be as involved in it as I was last spring, I don't want it stealing all of my sanity. I have been delegating things.
*DAR: Well, I hope the AVA knows what they're doing. I told them.
*TOU: Why aren't you in the AVA?
*DAR: Because I am doing enough around this school already. I don;t want every teacher running to me going, "How do I do this?" "You push this button."
*TOU: But you have the magic! You did make some robots work by your mere presence, if I recall correctly.
Just then there was an announcement for him to get the phone. "Somebody needs a switch pushed?" I quipped.
Let's just say he took a long enough time that I wondered whether it was his wife or his accountant on the phone, but hey, if ya miss the Dark Lord, the many minutes and hours you spend waiting for him come as a package deal. I waltzed to a tune only I can hear, and then leaned against the windowsill, pondering the things that steal my sanity. Who was it who remarked that sanity is highly overrated? But I remembered the dance rehearsal when one of our best dancers ran out in tears with a nervous breakdown, and I realised that it has been a long time since I myself have had a nervous breakdown. And I do not miss them at all.
The Dark Lord came back. "Well, that was interesting."
"Someone you love or someone you hate?" I joked.
I agreed to a long detour through the math office and helping him carry some of his stuff (particularly the rocket launcher; yes, didn't I mention the rocket launcher?) I will not cite much of the rest of the conversation; I am sure everyone has figured out by now what I have remarked before, that, *shrug* for all conversations and arguments, the Dark Lord and I are pretty much married.
I felt a strange sense of familiarity upon entering the math office, but I knew the Dark Lord would die of embarrassment if I had joked it felt like coming home. So while the Dark Lord and Lord Metternich argued over digital cameras and the printer (it was that famous printer in the Mac lab misbehaving that caused the long phone call, apparently) I helped myself to Skittles, discovered a math teacher and a gym teacher are married, made Skittles live up to their name, and finally headed over to the Mac lab with the Dark Lord, arguing about digital recorders all the way. Digital audio recording technology is one thing I do have crammed into my brain.
So...yes, the presence of the Dark Lord does skew my Keynote work and make it slower, as the previous trivia night reported - I SHOULD have the brains to click on the right master when I am working with master slides, but this time I did not. However, everything ended up working out, the Dark Lord installed the right software to make his printer print on CDs in RGB (someday I will figure out why the BPAL Forum Tarot recommended CMYK and not RGB) and in the end some Gungans died, some ships blew up and some pilots fried, I exported some Keynote files to PowerPoint and some of them back again.
And I walked home, thinking that some things, at least, are constant in my life. Like the Dark Lord's unpredictable predictability.
I came home to find my two BPTP shirts arrived. Yay!