Work is continuing – what more can I say?

Happy Solstice! Either it’s today (the 20th) or tomorrow the 21st which is probably today when you’re reading it so either way I win.

Anyway, All right, all right!!! I’ll do an entry, already. Geesh. The answer is no I haven’t been hit by a truck, absorbed into corporate America I’ve just got everyone here and not much time these days. As it stays light late in Michigan – like 10:00 at night since we’re at the western fringes of the eastern time zone Paul doesn’t really get to sleep early enough for me to do anything but hang out with him between getting home from work and getting to bed as while he finds that he’s happy to stay up until 10-11:00, I’m usually a noodle by this point.

We were home over the weekend of June 1st and had a great time at Poke Salat days – a local festival where we had a booth for Nesting Tyrtle as well as to sell some of Kite’s hats. While we didn’t get any business for the web design company we sold a ton of hats mostly to 10-12 year old boys who seemed to have deemed them the cool thing to wear for the day. So Paul, Kite, Sage and I had a great time just hanging out at the booth (Sage and I got quite sunburned but everyone else was fine) and chatting with friends and strangers alike and feasting on the homemade ice cream that was being made at the booth across from us. We’re definitely looking forward to the next festival coming up for us in September.

After a whirlwind time of packing up the booth for Poke Salat days and putting all that away we unpacked the booth out of our car and filled it with our things for the trip the next morning. The next morning after breakfast we all loaded the car, said our goodbyes and went to pick up a friend of ours who was to drive us to the airport to pick up a rental car that was being provided us in lieu of the two airfares we’d have been entitled to this month. About 10 miles outside of Springfield the sky went dark as night and a huge storm came blustering in. We finally sloshed to the airport and after a bit of a wait and a few hoops to be jumped through (including our friend’s driving the car around the councourse several times as security said it was “5 minute parking only” despite there being no others waiting) I got the keys and we all drove over to the car lot and unloaded our ‘78 Malibu and loaded our ‘01 Focus. Talk about time travelling. It was bizarre to go from such an old car to a brand new one with so far no quirks we know of. (The speedometer works, it has a rear window defroster, the interior’s pretty, it has a muffler…) We drove a few miles to a restaurant where we had lunch as the downpour got worse. Then as soon as the lunch was done the downpour stopped completely.

So we got on our way and made it about 3 hours before Paul decided that he didn’t want to go to Michigan but wanted to stay home. It was really heartbreaking and continues to be. He’s having a good time here and is finding things to do the longer we’re here but he really misses his “Cat house” and his granny.

Anyway, we drove on until we were tired and crabby and the rain started pouring down again until we got to a small town in Illinois called Highland which sadly didn’t seem to have a bit of high land to speak of. I ran into the Holiday Inn to ask if they had a vacancy and she said that indeed she did but she also had to warn me that they were tracking a tornado towards the town as we spoke and she suggested we stay there where it was safe. So, nervewracked, we took the room and went inside and waited for the “run and hide downstairs” alarm that never came. The tornado warning was over and it was fine. Well, except the storm was still raging and did so most of the night giving me nightmares about tornados and making me feel as if I were sleeping with one eye and one ear open all night.

Work is continuing. What more can I say? I’m still not particularly fond of corporate culture (he says after reading the better part of a book on corporate organizations viewed as cults) but have had a good time. I think the turning point happened for me in the middle of the night a few days after we all got here Paul had a cough (more on this later) and needed someone to stay up with him. Sage volunteered saying that I had to get up for work the next day and I felt terrible – I knew that it wouldn’t be a good excuse for me to call in the next day and so I went back to sleep knowing that had we been at home I would’ve been able to help out.

[it's now the 22nd - so much for finishing the entry in one day!]

Anyway – the next day I realized just how much a corporation imposes itself upon the personal lives of the employees in just such a simple thing as having a set of standards by which the validity of an absence is judged. So I just decided to do my best to not let myself be imposed upon in areas where I have control – in particular those of my beliefs. I resolved then and there to not just quietly sit and listen to things I disagree with but would instead speak my opinions and to say what was on my mind. Sage, too, did the same sort of thing and the result was fascinating. People mostly seem to operate like poorly programmed computers. There appears to be a set of expected topics of conversation and opinions to have about them and when conversation goes outside those lines, people freeze. I noticed it first when someone spoke against La Leche League’s encouragement of extended nursing – a person at a table of about eight was having a sort of breaktime monologue and not unlike a bad Las Vegas comedian said something like “And what wbout those La Leche League women – they just go to far encouraging their six year old kids to just come over, lift up the shirt, and get a drink from the tap.” I was shocked, I think in part because that for me was an unexpected opinion based on who I surround myself with at home. Anyway – I said that I strongly disagreed and that there was a great deal of literature demonstrating the numerous benefits of extended nursing to a child’s development.” The table got silent. Everyone’s social discourse program crashed. I don’t know if it was the presence of strong disagreement or the presence of an unexpected opinion but there was silence for nearly a minute until someone “rebooted” and started a conversation about old Hanna Barbera cartoons.

Sage and I together had the same experience twice with two different people here too. Both times we’d been asked how we liked it living here and both times we said that we didn’t really like it much and that we missed all the support of family and friends at home. This was not expected and there was a noticible pause while the peoples’ brains recovered from the shock of not hearing “We love it! It’s so great to not be in that dirty old yurt anymore. Hooray for indoor pools and money!” One person suggested that the answer to our lonliness might be the simple lack of hobbies – and proceeded to list a number of expensive hobbies. As if our problem here was not that we were missing friends and family and what I would consider the support that everyone needs but instead were just at a loss for how to spend our money.

I really have the abbot at the Tam Quang Temple to thank for this change in attitude. Just letting go of my expectation that it will either seem as fun as it used to to work or that the people here would be as fun to be with as the people at home has been helpful. Of course in many ways they have been fun to be with just not in the same way. I’ve enjoyed playing with peoples’ minds and doing my best to be as much myself as I can be in a corporate environment which throws people off quite a great deal. I also owe that attitude change to the abbot. He suggested that I find something to enjoy at work and also was quite fond of the phrase “so what” whenever I’d say that I was worried about confrontation or feeling embarassed.

About two weeks ago I was at lunch bemoaning the fact that public transportation is not considered “co
ol” or that it is considered a lower class mode of transportation. It wasn’t until the next day I realized how silly it was for me to have that conversation and not take the bus to work. So I called around and found out where the bus routes were. It turns out that 1/3 of a mile from the apartment is a stop that takes me to a stop (with one change in between) across the street from work. So I’ve been taking that every day now since then and have had a great time and get to read an extra couple of hours a day too. The past couple of nights I’ve caught rides with coworkers though as I’ve had to work late some.

The day after I started taking the bus to work I had an interesting wake-up. I was sleeping in the bedroom while Sage was asleep on the couch in the living room with Paul in her lap (Paul’s had a bit of a cough still that he’s just getting over now that was really helped by his sitting up when he slept). At about six am I woke up and groggily realized that there was a huge storm outside with great bolts of lightning with hardly any pause before thunder crashed. One bolt hit the garage about 50 feet from the apartment. But then, still half asleep and lying down I realized that there was another more distant sound not unlike an air raid siren. A few seconds later I knew what it was – the tornado siren – meaning that there was a tornado on the ground nearby and that we should take cover. I woke up Sage and asked her what she thought we should do. I looked around and saw that there was no really good place to take cover on the first floor (there’s only a glassed in hallway other than the first floor apartments) and so I went back to the apartment and figured the best place was the bathroom. Fortunately by the time I figured it all out the siren was off but the storm was raging. It was interesting, though – after several siren tests back home I was convinced I’d be really terrified to hear it but as it happens I was pretty cool headed in part, I think, because I just couldn’t believe it was happening.

So now we’re in the final days – seven days in fact – of the project. Several weeks back, when it was appearing that there would be project delays I gave my “notice” which consisted of letting people know that I was serious about honoring their commitment that I’d be here for only six weeks which would end on next Friday. They were disappointed as expected but have honored their side of the bargain more than willingly while at the same time asking fairly often if I might consider staying later or if more money might convince me (no way!!) But the work is really picking up as what I expected to start about 2-3 weeks ago just gets started today. I’ll be working every day between now and Friday and many of those are likely to be be in double-digit hours. I don’t mind though – just knowing there’re only seven days left makes me feel like I could do about anything for that long. And all the overtime will only make it that much less likely I’ll ever have to do this sort of thing again or at least that it’ll be a long time coming.

That said I need to get to bed soon – I still haven’t adjusted to it’s being light at almost 10:00 here but I need to get to bed soon to rest while I can.