everytime someone goes through to the staff lounge, the door bangs loud enough to hurt my ears. each collegue is good for two bangs. none are kind enough to close the door gently. the UPS guy comes by once a day and loads and unloads large numbers of boxes of ILL books. he scans and beeps each friggin box. to the right of my desk, between me and the loudly and constantly banging door is a free standing, metal, double-sided shelving unit with all the books that belong to faculty for this semesters course work. people stand on the other side and whisper loudly enough for me to hear their gossip. for some reason they think these books make me deaf and dumb. i find this strangely amusing. this may also be why they don’t think that a loudly banging door is a problem. a lot of people think that since there is no fourth wall and door separating my desk and equipment from them, they can take my supplies and not return or replace them. i do not find this amusing. even though there are only three walls and no door defining my space, there is no airflow — just people flow.
it’s sort of like working in a fishbowl resting on it’s side.
Category: Uncategorized
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if so, i’m gonna start cheating.
my dad is descending into the depths of dementia.
my second son’s heart is broken to pieces.
and then last night, my first born called. my darling son loves to talk on the phone for extended periods of time. everyone who knows me knows that i hate to talk on the phone for more than brief, utilitarian intervals. i do not see the phone as an instrument of social interaction, but rather an implement to waste time or transmit bad news.
anyway…
as the conversation progressed, i became aware of the fact that michael’s thinking was becoming somewhat rigid and a little scary. it was as if he morphed from my brilliant, open-minded child into a irrational stranger who could think only in absolute black and whites. it was rather frightening. his speech got somewhat slow and slurry and it started to sound as if the words were forced through gritted teeth.
then the phone went staticky and we were cut off.
i waited a bit then called back. his girlfriend answered and said he was in the midst of a migraine seizure. i told her to call 911. i called back 10 minutes later and michael had closed himself in his bedroom with the phone so she couldn’t make the call. i convinced him to open the door and call 911.
at the emergency room they checked him out, gave him a CT scan, and sucked out some spinal fluid to see if he was bleeding in his head.
i don’t know the end result as the horrible and mocking woman who works in the ER refused to tell me anything on the phone. michael finally called around 1AM to tell me that he was ok and waiting on the results of the spinal tap but that the CT scan showed nothing remarkable.
i have not heard from him since and there’s no answer on his home or cell phones.
so…
i don’t know what to do since it is apparently against the law to ease a mother’s mind and it now stands that there is not one person in my family who is ok.
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jimbo wales, the guy who created Wikipedia was interviewed (not happily) on CNN. he was a major contributor in the early days of the internet on the politics list(late 80s, early 90s). i knew the guy virtually, but today is the first day i found out what he actually looks like! we both share stories in a book that some other friends wrote, Internet Explorer’s Kit for Macintosh by Adam Engst and William Dickson (also big contributor to the early politics list).
here’s the story on CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/12/05/wikipedia.rules.ap/index.html -
so dad called me tonight, he excitedly asked,”did you miss me?” and then proceeded to tell me about the 2 day camping trip he just got back from. there were 30 people there, camping and fishing in the high altitude hills of new jersey. he told me about the phone they had hooked up to a tree but the tree was blown down so he couldn’t call me. he told me about using safety pins as fishing hooks but they didn’t catch any fish. he told me that his toes were still cold from being out in the weather.
all this, despite the fact that i talked to him on the phone yesterday and was over his house the day before that apparently didn’t enter into his adventure.
what was that silly thing i wrote about time not being linear?
well, you can only take that so far. is this a test? there’s a certain amount of 3 dimensional reality that just doesn’t get shifted quite as far as he’s taking it.
i don’t really know what to do about all this. i can’t get him in to see a neurologist or get him a geriatric assessment until after the hollydaze. but maybe his daze will slow down a bit til then? one can only hope.my father is crazy.
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they figured us out. they know we’re monitoring via the message machine. last night and again today, a call came through. i didn’t recognize the name on the caller ID thingy. when the machine came on, the person said, “linda? are you there? linda?” now i didn’t recognize the voice, but thought, omy! could be a real call. so i answered. it was a goddamn magazine subscription solicitation! i quickly made my escape. tonight, same caller ID, different person yelling into my machine, “hello — hello — [switched from speakerphone to handset] — HELLO!”
be ye all warned. they are getting desperate and devious.
Croneswood Art 