Hot & Cold

I don't know how it's possible to be as tired as I am after having only worked a three-day work week. I was in St. Croix this past weekend, for a much needed vacation coming on the heels of what was another much needed vacation. Vacation just breeds the desire for more vacation. It's kind of bad. How was the trip? Well...

As it is said, "nuff said", but here's a quick travel story. First off, there's nothing cool about flying these days. In St. Croix, going through customs is a pretty painless process, until you check the box that says you aren't bringing food with you, but when asked if you have any food you say you have a peanut butter sandwich. Well unfortunately I learned the hard way because this brought on a barrage of questions.

Are you bringing any fruits or vegetables? No.

Are you sure because you checked off you had no food but you had a sandwich? I'm sure.

Were you here for business? No, for vacation.

What do you do? I work in finance, it's not that exciting.

Where have you traveled internationally before this trip? Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand.

And they need finance in those countries? Uh, I suppose so, yes.

Listen, I'm happy to answer as many questions as they want if it means that I'll be safe. It was certainly less intense than flying El Al, where they ask you the kinds of questions that are simply going to elicit responses of "I don't know".

What was the name of your 3rd grade Hebrew school teachers? I don't know

When was your temple founded? I don't know.

What was the outside temperature the day you were circumcised? I don't know, pre- or post- turtleneck?

So now that travel/playtime is over for the moment it's back to the grind. I have another four days of work in my current rotation and then it's onto another rotation. I'm looking forward to the change. Let me just tell you that when it was October 1st 2009, February 1st 2010 might as well have been February 1st 2059. There was many a day where I would've paid a hefty sum to fast forward a few weeks. From what I've heard, the new rotation will be very different than the current one. I remain cautiously optimistic, because that's about as optimistic about anything as I can possibly be. And after all, the new rotation is in Corporate Treasury, which while I can't claim I know a whole lot about it, I do know that it's more exciting than shoveling shit and less exciting than spear fishing. Where it actually lands within that spectrum is anyone's guess. Fingers crossed closer to the spear fishing end though. This whole rotation-thing leaves a lot to chance and what the future holds always seems to be a bit of a mystery.

While I'm pondering some of the greater mysteries of the world, I've been perplexed, to say the least, about some of the more recent comments on my blog posts. I certainly don't understand the blog post that come across the transom in Japanese (any translation would be appreciated). As for some of the others...well, I don't think they come from readers that speak english, which is fine, because I'm all about spreading the gospel, but I just wonder how anyone might come across this blog if they don't already know about it. It's interesting to me though because somehow, some way, someone from another country is reading this thing and I guess that's the point of writing it. With all the brouhaha in China over internet scrutiny and access and freedom it would be kind of funny if there was some family somewhere in rural China that gathered around the computer once a week to read my blog and have a good laugh. I'm going to make myself a mental picture of that.

Lastly, I wanted to write quickly about an article in the NYTimes about people voluntarily keeping cold. You know, electing to not have heat, or living year-round with the windows open, or relying on fellow performance artists to drop by and using body heat to warm their apartments. Let me just say that I had some heating issues a few weeks ago, where basically my apartment had none. For those of us with heat issues and without an abundance of performing artist friends, having no heat simply ain't cool. Waking up in the morning and leaving a warm bed is cruel and torturous. My heat is back up and running which is great, but it just makes me appreciate small creature comforts even more, and makes me realize how truly awful it must be in Haiti right now. For all the bitching and moaning we all (I) do...jobs stuff, heating, airport security, whatever...at least we have a roof over our heads tonight.