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Mexican headphones
Thursday, October 11 2018
Early in the afternoon, I snuck out of work briefly and drove to the Red Hook Hannaford, mostly hoping to buy isopropyl alcohol to clean off some schmutz on the base of one of my workplace monitors. While I was in the Hannaford, there was a sudden roaring coming from the roof overhead. A torrential downpour, supposedly the remains of Hurricane Michæl, was passing through. It was so relentless that I was forced to walk through to get to my car and then to get from my car into the office to continue with my workday.
Today for the second workday in a row, I made myself a lunch meal of Gardein fish patties and untoasted bread. If there was a toaster oven available in the workplace, the sandwich would have been much better. Fortunately, today I had pickled hot pepper rings from Hannaford to add to the sandwich, which provided a certain necessary vegetational component.
Soon thereafter, I successfully finished a fairly complicated migration and had no real tasks to do, though that changed near the end of the day, when I finally got some more tasks assigned to me in the Jira system. It's good having a little direction in my life.
By the end of the workday, the clouds were gone and the sun was out. Temperatures had dropped into the 50s, and it felt like a nice autumnal day. I usually find this time of year depressing, what with all the death: suicidal squirrels and raccoons crushed in the streets, and leaves whitering and turning brown in the trees and on the ground (this rainy weather hasn't been good for Fall colors). But there was something about the cool crispness in the air that seemed refreshing, maybe just because of the contrast with all the muggy humidity of late. So when I got home, I took the dogs for a short walk south down the Farm Road and back. They were quickly distracted by a hole excavation project, so I returned home without them.
This evening there was a diaspora happy hour, and for the first time since he went off to rehab (which he jokingly referred to as "summer camp"), Cameron joined. He wasn't drinking, and I tried not to draw too much attention to the fact that I was. Later we were joined by David in Wisconsin and then Allison, and then, when he was done with his relatives, Dan. [REDACTED]
Other subjects of conversation included whether or not Allison was banned from coming to the West Hollywood MFA office for multi-organizational meetings. She'd written to various people on staff and not gotten a reply. In disgust, I said, "Typical Californians!" Cameron was more helpful, saying he'd ask around and find out. We were all pretty sure that I actually am banned from the office, if only for my all-staff email comparing Mercy For Animals under Matt Rice to North Korea. According to Cameron, there have only been two times when the keycodes on the office door were changed: when Nick Cooney was pushed out (technically, though, he resigned), and when the backend team was mass-fired on that Thursday back in June.
I was having fun, so as usual I drank much more than I should've. I managed to put away a frightening amount (about 250 mL) of Lismore Speyside Single Malt Scotch, and that wasn't the only thing I drank. You'd think that when I'm hanging out with someone in recovery, I could show a little more restraint. Gretchen later noted (after visiting the happy hour briefly) that everyone else in the happy hour (with the possible exception of Allison) looked like they knew how to handle to drinking. But not me!
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