Listening to: Christmas, Christmas, Christmas!!!
Reading: Jewels of the Sun Nora Roberts
Weather: 50, partly sunny
Trivia: Did Thomas Edison really invent the light bulb?
Not really. About half a century before Edison was born, Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) produced an arc lamp in 1802, which used an electric current "arcing" between two posts to produce light. Frenchman Jean Foucault (1819-1868) refined the process to light a massive city square, Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1844. Edison wasn't even the first with the carbon filament incandescent light bulb (the electric charge passing through a
narrow wire and glowing to five of light). Sir Joseph William Swan demonstrated a carbon filament lamp in Newcastle in 1878, about ten months before Edison made his "discovery."
Cool word: schadenfreude (SHAH-dun-froy-dun) - An instance of rejoicing at the misfortune of another. "There was a great incident of scadenfreude in the office upon
discovering that the competitor's new software product had shipped with major defects, including a fatal virus."
Lousy Timing
If timing is everything, mine is really lousy.
This is the night that I had girded my loins with the intent of confronting the director about the emceeing business and the unhappiness that I am experiencing as a chorus member.
I started trying to call her at about seven o’clock. No answer. I kept trying each half hour. This became increasingly difficult for me, as my fear of confrontation was escalating with each redial. I had this growing sense of dread.
I should have listened.
I finally got through to her shortly after nine. When she answered the phone I knew something was wrong. She sounded funny and was either sick of crying.
Unfortunately it was the latter.
She had just found out that her company is downsizing and she was likely going to lose her job.
I almost died.
Obviously I couldn’t go into any of my complaints. I may be witchy at times, but I am not going to add to another person’s pain at a time like that.
I tried to say things to make her feel better, but I know that there are no words that help at a time like that. I’ve lived through it myself. And even though you know that the layoff has nothing to do with you personally it still whacks your ego to the ground.
It also makes you freak over finances. I went into a panic over thirty thousand, I can’t even imagine what it’s like when you’re making in the vicinity of a hundred thousand and living the lifestyle that that kind of income affords you.
I also know that there really is nothing that anyone else can say or do to make you feel any better.
It hurts for a long time and it’s the same kind of process you go through when grieving the loss of a person.
She knew I had called to talk about the emceeing, and I did touch on a couple of things (only because she asked) but I didn’t get into it the way I wanted to. I will at another time, but when it’s more appropriate.
I really feel bad that I added to her stress.
I e-mailed Michael to remind him that I’ll be in NYC on Saturday. In that I haven’t heard from him this week I don’t know what to expect.
But for some reason I don’t have a bad feeling.
Which probably means that disaster is lurking around the corner!
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