Showing up at the page

So I've been very ill this last week. It makes an impression when you pass out in front of all of your co-workers and your boss at a very important meeting. It's not good when they find you face first in the snow in the parking lot. Yep, that was me. Making an impression at the new job. The Superintendent took me to the emergency clinic where she was asked if she was my mother after my boss confiscated the keys to my truck. The Superintendent (aka Big Boss) asked me my phone number and I couldn't remember it. She asked my parents' number and I couldn't remember it either.

If I had been more then semi-aware of my surroundings I would have been worried about the doctor at the emergency clinic who didn't know how to spell the illness he thought I had and who looked like he was sixteen complete with black baggy pants draping off his boxers. It might have concerned me that he was focusing on things that didn't hurt. But I was not myself. Luckily my new co-workers rallied - the next day my boss called up two other co-workers and told them they were taking me to Los Anchorage (one was going anyway), another co-worker commandeered my pets.

I had been to City-of-Ice-Sculptures the weekend before for work and by the time the weekend had come had checked myself into the emergency clinic there. I thought the diagnosis seemed a bit bogus but was going to give the meds a shot. I thought I was fine at the meeting - really, I did. Then I crashed, spectacularly. So now, between the clinic here, the one in City-of-Ice-Sculptures, and Los Anchorage I now have three completely different diagnoses - and my symptoms don't fit any of them. Argh.

Just days before this the Disreputable Dog blew both his posterior cruciate ligaments (that's akin to a human ACL). He's scheduled for surgery next week. Last night Marlboro Man (my step-father) passed away - I can't absorb it. Oh, and that volcano (Mt. ReDoubt) is exploding - luckily the ash is not falling but it may prevent me from flying out of here.

Anywho, that's where I've been. Signing off for now....

Falling books

Monday morning I learned that the independent bookstore where I spent the year of 2008 is closing its doors, on my birthday no less. Sadly, the belt tightening that has people reducing the number of lattes they buy has caused them to reduce the number of books they buy and the place just can't stay afloat. So it will be closing. I'm having a hard time imagining the town without it - even though it was absent all of my growing up years. It was more then a bookstore, it was a social place, a comforting place, an escape, a place that blurred the imaginary and real. I feel for my colleagues there who now are joining so many of the ranks of unemployed. I also cannot help but reflect on how my personal fortunes seem to be in direct contrast with everyone else. I lost my job at the end of 2007. I lost my home. I lost my sense of direction. Etc. And then, just as everyone else started to lose their jobs I was offered a new one in the field I love in a place I love with people I truly enjoy. I am truly grateful for this fact. I feel like I have been experiencing this economic downturn a year ahead of everyone else and now I've gotten back on my feet.

Already I miss the bookstore. The smell of the fresh books, the fireplace with the big wing chairs, the big stuffed pillows in the children's section, the crisp displays, the rhythm of book selling, of browsing, and buying, and enthusiasm.

Happy Square Root Day!

Okay, on a purely nerdy note, today is square root day - a day when both the day of the month and the month are the square root of the last two digits of the year - a holiday that only comes around once every nine years. It is one of those oddly satisfying symmetries in the world.

On a related note, there's only 17 days left until the equinox! Woot!

(Edited on 3/6/09 to add: I made a mistake! I meant to say that square root day only occurs 9 times a century. NOT every 9 years! Sorry I didn't catch that earlier!)