A Schrodinger moment

I had me a little Schrodinger moment on the bus last week. I got on and sat down behind a woman who had apparently just come from the animal shelter. She had a closed cardboard carton on her lap that said ASPCA on it and had air holes all around. My first thought was, oh cool, she just adopted a cat. But then I thought, hmmm, is the cat alive or dead? It must be both! My god, there's a quantum superposition happening right here on the #11 bus! And there's no way to tell which state the cat is in until she gets home and opens the box.

Hey, It thought it was pretty funny. Of course nobody understood what I was laughing about.

Ushering in the Season of Wretched Excess

Pass me that bowl of stuffing -- I don't think I'm sufficiently stuffed yet. All around the table, people on all sides of me are saying the same thing: "I'm stuffed! I can't eat any more!" And yet they all do. Remarkable, isn't it?

Somehow I manage to escape that particular state of being. And what's my reward? I feel unsatisfied. Not that I haven't filled my stomach enough but that somehow, my experience feels incomplete. It's not food I'm lacking but rather some sense of
festivity. I think I know the problem! It's not my empty plate that's the cause...it's my empty glass! Send that vino down to this end! But I'm drinking alone. Wow, that's no fun. Well, okay, it's a little bit fun. But not as much as I'd like.

Thanksgiving...in my mind, the giving of thanks should be accompanied by a convivial consumption of liquid cheer. These guys...these non-drinkers or timid drinkers, they have managed to suck a chunk of holiday spirit right outa here.
Maybe some more cranberries will do the trick. They're red and bright and perky. Sigh. I love cranberries but there's just no substitute for a companion to share that dandy bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau with.

Never mind...on to the next feast.

Go see this movie

I've been a Julie Taymor fan since Lion King (the Broadway show, not the Disney movie). She is a visionary designer and director. She really gets the fact that visual storytelling is a very textured, multi-layered medium. And she's not afraid to take risks. The result is visually stunning production where the whole really is more than the sum of its parts.

It's really fun to see and hear all those Beatle songs woven into a story and see how they all fit. It's also neat to hear how some of them are interpreted so differently than the originals and are so good. There are some great little cameo roles: Eddy Izzard as Mr. Kite, Bono as Dr. Robert, Joe Cocker as a bum and a pimp.

Watching her work is inspiring and at the same time discouraging to me. I say, "wow! look what's possible!" And then I say, "yeah, but I never would have thought of that." But I'm glad she did.

Anything to keep from working

Tough week. But before I get to that, I have to stop and wonder how many blogs devolve into whiny little litanies of miserable complaints...kind of like this one. This one is about pain. The physical kind. Specifically pertaining to the lower back. Sciatic nerve. Any of this sound familiar? Don't worry, it will. This is a misfortune that struck me when #2 son was a mere babe. (Never mind how old he is now.) But anyhoo, it hadn't bothered me from then until last week, at which point it came out of nowhere to turn life into a misery of pain. I did all the good things to make it go away, and it almost had, but then it came back. Ow is the understatement of the century. So today, I ditched work (hell yeah!) and went and got a 90-minute massage therapy treatment. Except for the time when Leo (the massage therapist) was making me almost cry in agony, it was wonderful. And of course the agony was for a good cause. Now, 5 hours and three glasses of pinot grigio later, I'm feeling considerably better. And in another day or two, I'll be way WAY better.

I also took advantage of the day off to go see a recruiter. No, not a military recruiter, but what we in the creative trades like to call a head hunter. Someone who can find me a new job. About 99% of the tension that caused this back spasm is due to my stoopid job which I hate. So that's another good thing. PLUS, I have a HOT DATE on Friday. Life is looking pretty sweet right now. Or potentially sweet anyway.

Has it really been that long?

I can't believe it's been two weeks since the last time I posted! Well, yes maybe I can. There's this weird thing that happens beginning at the end of October. No, I mean besides my birthday. And besides the end of daylight savings time, although now that I think about it, maybe it does have to do with that a little. This is why I know that time is relative. Because right about now is when time starts to speed up. Days get shorter and everything goes faster. Yesterday I realized that it's only three weeks till Thanksgiving. How did that happen? It's this crazy year-end time compression thing. And then, in about a minute and a half, we'll find ourselves snacking on leftover turkey and stuffing, starting to think that maybe we really ought to start getting organized for Christmas/Chanukah/New Year. And then we blink twice and we're all yelling Happy New Year and it's 2008.

I know what you're going to say, that the calendar is just an arbitrary human invention for keeping track of everyone's birthday so we don't forget to send cards and presents. (Hint hint) But I think it's more than that. I think there's some gravitational shift or maybe the year is not evenly weighted to begin with. Once you kind of crest the hill at Halloween, gravity takes over and we all just come tear-assing down to Christmas and New Year's, whether we plan it that way or not. I think an interesting experiment would be to investigate different parts of the world and see if there are some places where the gravitational pull isn't so strong. I'm thinking that Fiji might be once place. There's a good chance that non-Western countries near the equator that don't celebrate Western/northern hemisphere holidays might not feel it as strongly. But who knows? Maybe you take your gravity with you when you travel. This requires further thought.