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Alone, even doing nothing, you do not waste your time. You do, almost always, in company. No encounter with yourself can be altogether sterile: Something necessarily emerges, even if only the hope of some day meeting yourself again.
-- E. M. Cioran
Sunday, July 13, 1997
This was a comfortable weekend, spent mostly by myself. I went the post office on Saturday morning and picked up my mail. I hadn't intended to have my mail held at all, but when I opened my mailbox on the Wednesday evening before I left on vacation, I found a little billet doux from the letter carrier, saying that zie had taken my mail back to the post office on account of my letting the mail accumulate till the box was over-stuffed. I was alarmed because I wouldn't be back in town at the stated deadline, so the threat was that they would send my mail back to the sender!
I was able to call the PO before taking off to Delaware (I actually made the call from the airport) and convince them to just hold the mail till I got back; another crisis averted!
When I picked up the mail, there didn't really seem to be that much! The party list for Clarion, and the last issue of Apparatchik and the first issue of Steve Swartz and John Berry's new zine. One era ends, the next begins.
So I went to McDonalds for lunch, then back home to catch up on online stuff. In the evening I took the bus to the University District to see Men in Black. Parking is so tight at the Metro Theater that I always prefer to take the bus to this venue if time allows. What a fun movie!
It was when I was getting on the bus that I first got an inkling that I had lost my work cardkey. Microsoft gives us a bus pass, and when I went to show mine, it wasn't in the usual place in my pocket. I searched at home that evening and the next morning, but no joy. I was sure I had left it at the PO or McDonalds, but it didn't turn up.
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On Sunday I went in to work in the afternoon. My lost cardkey meant that I had to call security from the phone in front of the building and ask them to let me in. There was trash and beer bottle caps all over the lobby, remnants of the celebration from handing over the beta release they'd been working on and had handed off Saturday afternoon.
I had about 500 email messages waiting, despite haveing unsubscribed from some aliases (internal email lists) and setting up inbox rules to delete mail from others. My mail file was over the limits allowed, which has the effect of notification mail arriving in my inbox telling me so, thus making the mail file even larger! Shades of the Sorceror's Apprentice!
I worked my way through the mail, reading, sorting and deleting. This will make Monday morning much easier!
After some hours I went to see Contact. What a great movie if you like science fiction! Real science fiction, that is, not sci-fi monster movies. I haven't read the book, since I had never heard great things about Sagan as a fiction writer. Jodie Foster is just always very appealing, and her cow-orkers seemed very real. Just the kind of geeky guys I know!
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A few days spent quietly like this recharge my batteries. Some people really don't like to go to the movies alone, but I don't mind it. Am I making a virtue of necessity? If I only went to movies when another person is available to go with me, I'd see a lot fewer movies. But I like seeing people and doing things with them too.
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