Well, the real Christmas Eve is upon us. We're only 9 hours away the Macworld keynote speech. I'll be asleep for most of that time anyway.
Today wasn't quite what I was hoping for to break out of my funk. I had planned for a quick inventory this morning as I was well prepped. I had a nice productive little afternoon of my own planned out. But then someone else's inventory fell apart. Guess who ended up getting their back. Next thing I know my day is gone. I'm hoping for a little better of a day tomorrow.
I don't feel much like writing tonight. Like most days before inventory my thoughts were dominated by work and the store. I had to force myself to write in my journal tonight and now I'm here forcing myself to post on my blog. To tell you the truth I wouldn't even think of it if I wasn't working on two good streaks of writing in both formats every day. So the question of the night is, is it better to write something trite and weak just to be writing or is it better to write your way out of a day's funk? I'm going to lean toward doing the writing. Interesting or not it is still a chronicle of a particular state of mind. Besides you can never be completely sure of the value or lack thereof until you've put the words to paper (or screen). I guess I could say the same for taking pictures. If you don't click the shutter you have no idea if you have a picture or not.
I watched "The Agony and the Ecstasy" tonight. I hadn't seen it in a great many years. Decades probably. I'm pretty sure I had read it sometime my in my Freshman year of high school. It fit right into what I've been thinking about lately. Over the last couple of days I've put some pictures up on flickr. Some of them I like very much. You could even say that I'm proud of them. Tonight my photostream views on flickr passed a thousand. All of this served to remind me of the fact that I generally approve of my photography far more than I do of my writing. That despite the fact that I would probably strongly consider trading my eyesight for being a talented writer. Watching Michelangelo struggle with his talent as a painter while his heart lay in marble seemed fitting somehow tonight. Of course he had that whole greatest artist that ever lived going for him.
I had an errand to run this afternoon at the wharf. I took my camera with me and before I went home I set myself up in the plaza in front of the Ferry building and took some pictures of the people coming in and out. I switched sides of The Embarcadero to get a couple of different perspectives. I don't know if it was the grey day that did it but when I came home and started working on the day's photos I found I liked all of the people shots in black and white. I've got some other pictures to put up, I'll try to do that tomorrow. Anyway, check them out on my flickr page or it looks like the tumblr feed picked them all up too.
Well, I listened a little too much to the tracking polls and got caught up in a little bit of Obamamania. In typical fashion for me just when I'm thinking about switching allegiances because of electability questions my first choice comes roaring back. Hillary is going to end up beating Obama and Romney is suffering his second straight loss to a different opponent. Romney is on the ropes and the "front runner" in the Republican field still hasn't been able to break 10%. I was disappointed that Ron Paul didn't beat Giuliani. Still not a bad showing from the libertarian side of the party. I think that New Hampshire was probably his last shot to show off. Paul has got some money in the bank so he's not about to disappear but his chances to break into the top three are pretty much over.
Last night I got into my first political fight of the season. It made me feel horrible and reminded me that I had promised not to pay too much attention to this presidential race. Yea, I'm doing a good job keeping that promise. Anyway that fight plus the results in Iowa and what's going to happen in New Hampshire have got me taking a new look at Barack Obama. I've always liked him but I lean a little more towards the center and the Clinton candidacy. But I'm finding more and more that I'm alone in the center with that attitude. Iowa got me looking at an electoral map again. Obama makes the Republican's unable to take the south for granted. They will have to spend time and money there. Not so if Hillary is the candidate. Barack wins some midwestern states that Hillary will have some trouble competing in. I am still hoping that they join forces it's just that now I'm wondering who I really want at the top of the ticket.
I've had the blahs for a couple of days now. The weather is on the dreary side and I've been having trouble getting any kind of groove going. Tonight I turned to an ancient cure. RKO's own counter to the depression, Astaire and Rogers. I watched Shall We Dance with dinner and now I've got Top Hat on. It's helping chase the blahs away.
I've been trying to post every day. Tonight feels like one of those times that I probably shouldn't. Nothing is coming to mind about the storm, or the coming Macworld events, or the New Hampshire primary. I'm sure there is something in there on all these subjects they just don't seem to be coming to the surface tonight. I was thinking about maybe starting a website named www.anybodybutrudy08.com but that is for another day.
They tell me a bad one ripped through the Bay Area today. I heard a little bit of it. But I was ensconced at home on my computer for most of the day. Meanwhile a million people in Northern California lost power, nearly eight inches of rain fell in the Santa Cruz mountains, 101 got closed for five hours, and 100 mile an hour gusts were recorded in the east bay. For a little while I was feeling bad about not really enjoying my first day off since Christmas while working on a project all day. Reading about the storm is giving me a pretty good, "it could have been worse" feeling. I'm ready to pull the plug on today though. I'm going to finish this up and crawl into bed with my book and read till I fall asleep.
So my pledge to stay out of the political mess so much in the new year was tested by tonight's Iowa Caucuses. The pundits are going to be all over this one for awhile but here is my limited take.
I may be getting the next two days off! I still don't quite believe it. I've been at the store every day for the last two weeks except for Christmas. All but one of those open to close alone. While it hasn't been too bad I'm starting to dream about selling sunglasses. That's not a good sign. That's not a restful way to spend my off hours. Yesterday was good. I had two packets of sugar in the raw in my tea but other than that slight deviation on the sugar I was true to my new year's resolutions. I even started a book. I was going through my unread books with Colleen and when she heard that I had a copy of The Neverending Story she insisted I start there. It seems like a good story to get back to the basic's of reading books again. I forgot how useful reading myself to sleep is too. Of course there are those times when the book just takes over your mind and you force yourself to stay up just to find out what happens next. It will probably be a wash in the end.
So like a billion other blogs and journals and napkin scribbles today, my topic is going to be the new year and what I plan to do, get done or avoid doing altogether.
This morning I started brainstorming what I wanted to get done/do better/don't do at all in the new year. I'll do the same tomorrow morning and then parade them publicly here. I'm sure there will be some form of sugar reduction pledge on that list so tonight there was a fatal encounter with a pint of Ben and Jerry's American Dream ice cream. So far just fatal for the ice cream. Now I'm going to get a head start on my pledge to read more novels and try to get to sleep. Somehow I'm thinking the neighborhood isn't going to be all that cooperative with the sleeping part this early.
Tonight after work I took the bus to the Metreon and saw The Golden Compass. Although I've been meaning to get around to it, I've never read the Dark Materials books that this movie was based on. Tonight I'm glad for that. I enjoyed the movie although it seemed hard to worry about a girl who has a compass that tells the truth, a giant bear king, a gypsy navy, an air force of witches, a shapeshifting familiar, freaking Sam Elliott and, oh yea, James Bond on her side. I mean really what the hell can't she take with an army like that? Anyway it was good but I'm sure not as deep or complex as the books. Knowing me I would have been pissed as hell if I had an opinion of the stories going in. I mean I still would like to unleash an army like the one I just described on Peter Jackson for leaving out every single one of my favorite speeches in Lord of the Rings and turning Frodo into the whiniest little bitch in the history of cinema. So yea now I'll read the books and have all the cool special effects in my head while I'm getting what they are all really about. Cool for now but I'll probably want to kill someone by the time I'm finished watching the sequel.
I feel one of those Dante Days may be coming on. Today was supposed to be my day off but the person that was supposed to work today is in the hospital. I'm just not feeling all that excited about dragging myself to work this morning. I'll be fine once I get dressed and get out of the house I'm just not feeling it right now. I bought myself a new winter coat last night. It's wool and very toasty. I'm trying to dwell on wearing my new coat to get excited about getting mobile. So far it's not working. What I really want to do is go to work and find another employee there. This will be the eighth straight day that the store has been open and I'm the only one there. That is wearing on me. My desk is buried. The back room has miscellaneous piles of last month's marketing materials. I can't get back there to work on it. It makes me grumbly.
I did not do what I was supposed to, what I had been prodding myself to do lately this morning. I did not open up Scrivener and start writing before checking to see if anything horrible had happened to the world since I went to bed. Predictably something had and I spent the first part of my morning refreshing the front page of the New York Times watching as Benazir Bhutto had been attacked, was fine, was injured, was critically injured, may be dead, was killed, and finally was assassinated. Television does updates better because it is a very now medium. It is strange to watch the reports come in in the printed media. For a little while I was refreshing the Google News feed by time which laid out the speculation before giving in to the facts. As for the murder itself, what can I say? The winners are those whose only god is named pain and chaos. More people are going to die. More suffering is on the way. Freedom from oppression, corruption, fear and uncertainty are farther away for all Pakistanis. An unstable country in an unstable part of the world slips closer to chaos and lawlessness.
This year at the store we got what has to be our worst Christmas CD ever. I don't think there is anything that is more killing to the spirit of Christmas than the ever present holiday music everywhere you go. By the time the day actually arrives it only takes a couple of jingle bells to make me think about hanging myself. So, I can think of no greater endorsement for a piece of music than the fact that I just went to the iTunes store and paid for one of the songs that we've been playing over and over for the last 6 weeks. That song is the Flaming Lips "A Change at Christmas (say it isn't so)".
