In Sic Transit Again

It seems like I’ve been working nonstop for a couple of months now, although it’s not really true, I ‘ve mostly taken weekends off and had a nice long Thanksgiving break. It’s just that I’ve gotten so many projects going, I’ve started to be haunted by them, and feel like no second is totally my own. Which, I realize, is a fuck of a lot better than not having any work, and I dig it when I do my billing.

Still, I haven’t had much mental space for reflection, and these pages have fallen a little fallow. Just, coincidentally, as I euphorically told several neighbors about the blog at a New Year’s Eve party, and just after my mom got DSL and started developing an appetite for internet content, and looks expectantly at Perils as the jumping-off place for all good things with an IP address.

As I do every month, I’m just finishing up a week working in Milwaukee. The week started in a deep-freeze, going to 8 below on Monday night before warming up to a balmy 20+ the last couple of days. It started snowing in earnest about an hour before my plane left for Minneapolis, a snowstorm that had actually hit MSP first, so that, as we approached Minneapolis, we were slowed down, sent to a holding pattern, then on final approach waved off of the runway because snow removal equipment hadn’t quite finished clearing it. The upshot: a 40-minute flight ended up taking 2 1/2 hours, maybe longer because, once we landed, we waited another half hour or so as the gate areas were plowed.

A picture named IceBergletsLakeMichigan.jpg



Ice berglets forming on Lake Michigan as I flew into Milwaukee Sunday.


Benevolently, my Seattle connection was also delayed, and I believe (and fervently hope) that there was even enough time to transfer my luggage, so I’m aloft and headed for a 1am arrival home.

One benefit of the elongated flying schedule is that I’ve read over 100 pages of a book I’ve been carrying around and making empty promises to for a week or so - My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk. It’s a selection of the
online book group I belong to, and I might have gained enough traction and momentum to actually join in the discussion. I’m a really slow reader, and undisciplined at that, so I seldom finish a book in time to lend my peculiar brand of erudition to the discussions. That would be ok if it were just my own interests I were disappointing. However, I’m also a flagbearer of sorts for the male sex in this venue, and my protracted silences serve to dash the hopes of those in the largely woman-dominated book clubs that there actually exist men who read and appreciate literature. Of course, when I DO participate, those same hopes sustain equal or worse violence.

So, the weekend approaches, although delayed and truncated.  I have a slug of work to do, both for deadlines approaching and deadlines I’ve missed, but I’m gonna take a little time for personal decompression as well.  The trick is always to use the time well, so that I actually feel like I did something pleasurable or meaningful.  Since, in my purview, blogging falls within those categories, watch this space!