February 2005 Archives

My dad dropped in to visit me today. It was nice, as it generally is; we went to eat vegetarian food at West Lynn Cafe, then came home and had a long, rambling conversation on Buddhism and reincarnation and DNA and spirituality and uncomprehensible connections and profound moments in life.

And then, just before he left, I took a look at him and realized that we were dressed almost identically: hiking boots, jeans, gray t-shirts. We were semi-facing each other in identical positions, as well: slouched, with our arms on our knees and our hands clasped. And through my mind, though I didn't mention it to him, was the spooky voice that he always uses to tell my sister and me, "DNA..." It's the key to genetic immortality, and I'm way more like my dad than I'd generally want to admit.

The rest of it, I need to process a bit longer.

February is almost over, and I have written not once this month. It's a short month, so I've got that excuse, but we're up to the 26th day of it, and that's hard to excuse.

I'm not in Mexico. I haven't been in Mexico since December. That's all unfortunate -- I really wanted to go, and goodness knows, I'm overdue for some travel. The class I had planned to take was cancelled for low enrollment, and I was unable to reschedule to an alternate class because of work conflicts. And maybe that's alright -- I'm a bit overwhelmed, what with the work conflicts and running a project and short timelines and the distractions of a certain person.

Which has all culminated in my sitting on my couch on this rainy Saturday, working on my work laptop with the SXSW mix playing on iTunes. I'm pretty effective at distracting myself in the best of situations, but I forget how many distractions I have at home. If it isn't surfing the wireless internet I've stolen from some neighbor or other, it's having a cat come sit on my laptop or perching on four very pointy feet on my hip, or watching the water drip down the window, or watching one cat stalk another as casually as possible, trying to disguise it as a stretch.

I find it astonishing how appealing housework looks, compared to refactoring Java on a Saturday afternoon, or writing up documentation, or writing official e-mails to IT folks at other colleges, but there you have it.

Liam managed to turn one of his front paws all sooty gray. I'm not entirely sure how he achieved this, but I found a leaky pen in the kitchen that might hold the answer. It's cleaned up now, but his paw is still black. Ani can't tell the difference between me typing for work and me typing for play, and she can't understand why I can't pet her right this second and lose patience when I Just. Need. To. Finish. This. Paragraph.

Crazy cats. Dumb work. I'm still looking for the key to independent wealth.

...And there go the cats again. I'm out.