Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I've mentioned before that my employer reuses a lot of material, especially art and tables. (They've been treating a lot of tables as display art.) This afternoon, looking at a book we're going to reprint, I noticed that one of the entries in a table was a problem. I've looked at that table a dozen times at least, and not registered that problem.

The tendency is to think "How did I keep missing that?" rather than "Aha! Got one." Fortunately, my boss thanked me, and we are going to fix it for this reprint, another reprint (where I let it past a week or two ago), and on the art server for future use.

I'm not the only person who missed this, obviously: they've been using this table longer than I've been working here. And I am the person who caught it, and will get some (small amount of) credit for doing so.

I hadn't been to the gym in almost two weeks, largely because of the Farthing Party--the very minimal exercise room at the hotel failed to tempt me away from my beloveds, the city, the con programming, or other good socializing and conversation. By yesterday, cattitude and I were both noticing the effect on my mood. I went today, and did a bunch of the usual stuff, plus one unusual: after seeing someone else do it, I did a rotator cuff strengthening exercise I had been doing (or, more accurately, not doing recently) with a piece of red elastic. I took a few other things slightly easy, since it had been 13 days.

( details, largely numerical )

At the moment, the state of the Vicki is "somewhat stressed," of the sort where I realized from physical signs and then stopped and figured out (at least most of) why. Much of it is self-limiting: both my menstrual period and my pre-con jitters will be over soon, no matter what I do.

This afternoon at work, I wound up explaining to my officemate why "what does the graph of e^dx/dy look like?" isn't a well-defined question, after he asked me what said curve would look like. (No, this had nothing to do with anything either of us was working on, and next time I'll let him re-teach himself calculus; I had to explain to him that yes, derivatives are calculus.) He was willing to accept it when I wrote down four relatively straightforward equations, the relevant derivatives for each, and how different e^{those values} were. Nothing weird, just stuff like f(x)=x², f(x)=x-3, and f(x)=cos(x). And then I went back to fiddling with grammar and typos, and looking up the diameter of Betelgeuse (which was work-related) and the area of Florida (ditto).

I've also been to the gym, which helps some with the stress. ( numbers cut, as usual )

I had an annoying couple of days recently (Friday and a recurrence Sunday, with Saturday spent largely restoring my equilibrium before Sunday broke it again). I figured that part of the problem was lack of exercise; fortunately, today was a gym day.

It was a pretty good workout, lots of different exercises and I got myself back on the leg press, which I'd been missing (to spare the right heel), though at a slightly lower weight than I'd hoped for.

After the workout, I went down to Chinatown for one of my usual lunches, and a pot of tea; then over to the West Village, where I bought a half pound of golden Assam tea, had a "killer chocolate" cone at Mary's Dairy, and discovered that Varsano's is closed on Mondays in the summer. Thence home, air conditioning, and possibly further over-scheduling this week.

The over-scheduling is the result of several different people who I want to see being in New York briefly (three Californians and a Londoner), and my having cheerfully bought theatre tickets for this coming Sunday before I realized this. I will cope, but it's just as well that there's nothing at all scheduled for the following week.

( gym numbers/details )

I did a fairly thorough workout this morning (numbers below) and then went down to Chinatown for lunch. Afterwards, I started walking east. After a few blocks I realized that the vegetable stands weren't tempting me, and that I didn't want ice cream. I was feeling a bit down, it was drizzling, and what I wanted to do was walk. Hence, over to Elizabeth Street, north to Grand, and then east again, to Kossar's. If I don't have rye bread, I can have bialys--and pumpernickel bagels.

Heading back west toward the subway, I saw a sign that said "The Pickle Guys on Essex Street," and walked over. They have lots of kinds of pickles. The man behind the counter greeted me with a cheerful "Hello, young lady, what can I do for you?" So I said "Hello, young man, do you have half-sour pickles?" [I've never liked being called "young lady," but that rejoinder works better at 42 than it would have at 16.] They did, and he offered a gallon. I said that was too much, and described having had a container of half-sours recently go to full-sour while forgotten in the refrigerator for a week. We settled on a quart, which the other man working there filled, and the counter guy suggested putting some "new pickles" at the bottom, so they'd be half-sour by the time I got to them. I said maybe next time, paid for my quart of pickles, and accepted one to eat as I went. It was good.

The next stop was one of several little Chinese shops, for a whole roast duck. This particular one has them for $8, $9 if you have the store cut them up for you. I took it home whole, a chance to play with the cleaver lisajulie gave me, or maybe to carve it as if it were a roast chicken. Either way, that means no silly metal container, no tiny things of soy sauce, and I get all the bits in case I have the energy to make soup.

If, come suppertime, I really don't think Chinese roast duck goes with half sour pickles and pumpernickel bagels, maybe I'll steam some white rice.

I'm still congested, and not feeling as up as I normally would after playing with weights for an hour or more. Ah, well. It's good for me even so, and I did enjoy the lifting while I was doing it.

Phenology side note: there are pink roses blooming in the little triangular garden at Seaman Avenue and Isham Street. One open flat, another with the petals still curving inward.

( gym numbers )

I'm feeling quite a bit better (than earlier today) thanks to a good meal cooked by cattitude and some IM conversation with adrian_turtle, even though we're mostly discussing our various woes.

I'm trying to believe that it's okay to have done almost nothing this weekend. A little of that nothing was of the do-and-then-undo sort, with regard to the computer (mouse/trackball stuff). It would be easier if I hadn't intended to write an apazine.

It would also be easier if I weren't, having been stood up by my GP, worrying about the state of my lungs. Mom called this afternoon, and I told her that yes I'm better, no I'm not well, and that yes, I have medication for the breathing, but it's an asthma inhaler and we don't know whether I have asthma, so it may be completely useless.

The odd part is that yesterday evening, chatting with adrian_turtle, I had a strong feeling of having accomplished a lot, though without anything in particular in mind.

I can tell I'm feeling down because I'm looking for excuses not to go to the gym.

I did that on Monday--well, on Monday I decided "I don't want to" was sufficient as long as I don't do it too often and went on Tuesday. But if I make excuses and don't go to the gym today, I probably won't go until Sunday, which I really don't like.

Walking around outside is good for me. Walking around outside on bright sunny days is especially good for me.

I was feeling down in the dumps this morning, for no particular reason--just reacting strongly to minor irritations and unhappiness. I finally put together a sandwich, got some clothes suitable for walking around outside (it's a few degrees below freezing, no big deal, but my apartment is warm enough that I tend to wear almost nothing when indoors), and did so.

It's gloriously blue outside, that fine color when the air is below freezing and the ground albedo is high, but warm enough to stop and look at the shining sky, instead of hurrying for shelter. The mallards are spending most of their time on the land.

I saw three kids (age ten or so, I'd guess) starting to climb down the slanted concrete wall of a narrow channel between two bridges. One of them saw me looking at them and said "Good afternoon, ma'am." By then I'd concluded that it was basically safe--even if they broke the ice, that channel is never more than a few inches deep, and had probably frozen clear through--so I smiled and said good afternoon, and wandered on. It may take a village, but part of what that involves is respecting other people and their capacity for judgment. Sure, they might have slipped and maybe bruised themselves, but that's no big deal. As I wandered along, they were starting to go hand-over-hand, hanging from a pipe that I think carries power and phone cables out to the Urban Ecology Center. They made it across with no mishaps; by then I was breaking random bits of ice and tossing them into the mostly-frozen inlet.

After that, I walked around the ballfield. That path is now entirely passable: some bits are narrow, but this time I didn't have to walk on ice. I did, a bit, just because it makes fine crunching noises when it breaks. I ran into Heather, who offered to make me a "walking tape"; I declined, because I prefer to focus on the park when I'm walking there, but it was a kind thought.

On the train this morning, I noticed an ad (for some diet program) which had the tagline "Be envied".

My reaction was "I don't want to be envied. I want to be healthy as well as beautiful." Meaning I am beautiful, and any exercise program, or choices of foods, will be for health. And I don't want to be envied, because that's a brand of dislike.