partly cloudy

9-29-99

John called me last night around midnight. I'd gone to bed way early and couldn't quite muster up a conversation. I think he was asking me to tape "Beverly Hills 90210." For a friend? I just don't understand....

I've practiced two days in a row. Yay! Not for long, but it counts. God, I just needed to get started.

Yesterday I just sank a mute in the bell and played scales and arpeggia while watching TV. I sounded awful, but it was easy to blame that on the mute. Today I practiced earlier, right after work, so I decided to leave the mute out and bug the neighbors. I was afraid I'd sound like hell and get discouraged, but I sounded fine. Great, in fact. I'm a little rusty on the technique, but my sound is there. I'm so relieved.

Usually it's not a bad thing to take some time off. Really shouldn't do it very often, and definitely not for as long as I have. But after a break of a week or two, my mind is fresher. Sometimes it's easier to identify problems in my sound when I'm not tied up in making the problems.

I was afraid it would have been too long, that I'd have miles and miles of lost ground to make up for. I got lucky. I played etudes for a half hour or so and quit while I was ahead.

Work today started out the same as yesterday. I jumped once when Tara, on the low end of a mood swing, slammed the door behind my desk. My paranoid nerve went off and I was sure she was slamming that door at me. I scribbled furiously in my Pooh journal (that's the paper version) about how my relationship with T has dwindled to crappy coworker tension, how she irritates me and picks at me and slams the door. Half an hour later her mood swing-o-meter crawled back up and I realized what a dolt I was. Huh! To think I have any influence over her moods!

I can't decide whether that last paragraph was stupid, egocentric or bitter. Let's go with stupid and move on....

Work, after I got over myself, was fun. Someone picked up tons of Halloween-y decorations and we spent the afternoon spreading cobwebs and giant bats around the office. It ended up looking incredibly tacky, worse than the worst kindergarten classroom.

Most of the people in this office are growing old together. When the planners kidded one fifty-ish woman about "gettin' feisty" in her old age, she told them about her recent grocery store adventures.

One was standard, I've heard it many times: a head of cabbage didn't make it into her bag, so she called and bullied the store manager into delivering it to her house.

The other sounds familiar, though I can't remember any specific instances in my own experience: She was making a custard, but lost her recipe. She called the store and got someone to run back to the shelf for a box of Nilla Wafers, and then read her the recipe from the side of the box.

That one was pretty creative. As a rule, grocery employees don't bitch as much if the requests are unusual. Come in and complain that your eggs are crushed and I'll say, screw that, get another goddamn carton. But call in and ask if your pornographic photos will be confiscated by our developing service and I'll be happy to explain child pornography laws to you. Keep in mind that you'll be the main topic of discussion at the breakroom lunch table.

Random Southern Term: Frinch Bride. That's what Tara had in her hair today. Also known as a "hogtail."

This entry is totally scattered. I suck