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Not Reading
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature.
-- Henry Miller
Monday, February 23, 1998
We finally had the team meeting I've been working on the last week or so. I walked through the woods with my former officemate Kris to the building where the meeting room was. It was a beautiful day, sunny, cool and crisp. We have been incredibly lucky in the weather this year.
I was glad that the marketing and management hoo-ha was kept to a minimum. The overall leader of the team had offered to get a haircut if all teams met their goals for this "demo day." I guess this is a compromise step, less drastic than getting your head shaved or dyed blue. Sure enough, his hair was very short, but not so short as to be conspicuous on the street.
Our group program manager has a good "presentation" manner! He ups the energy level about thirty percent from his normal way of speaking. My current boss did some of the demoing because she is the only one who is used to the touchpad on her laptop computer.
The funniest part of the whole meeting was the two guys from another part of the team. They gave their presentation in Infomercial format; one was sweaterboy, and the other was Dr. Web! I was howling! What incredible benefits the next version of our product will bring to users! It will even get stains out of your carpet!
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I had some time before my bookclub meeting, so I grabbed a careware telnet program and handled some personal email. I've been doing this from Jason's place, and liking it! It does sort of defeat the purpose of having email filtering on my home machine, though, since I usually end up stepping through all the messages. I was partly looking to see if I had any non-list mail. There may have been one message that was for me personally. But I'll try and keep this home email at work to a minimum, perhaps by not putting a shortcut in my "tools" menu so I won't remember it so easily. I certainly don't need more distractions at work!
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We had a meeting of the MS Bookclub tonight. This was our second attempt to discuss Cold Sassy Tree. Last month only Christina and I had shown up, and I hadn't read the book! And sure enough, I didn't get it read between then and now either. Next month for sure! I told Joan and the others that I had been a bit distracted the past few weeks. Truth to tell, they didn't seem to have much to say about the book.
We had one new person, a friend of Joan's called Jennifer. Whether she'll be back is still up in the air, but we let her preference sway us in choosing a book for April's meeting. I presented several books, including Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and Ann Beattie's Chilly Scenes of Winter, but the book chosen was Elizabeth Hand's Waking the Moon. She is an excellent, truly strange writer. Sexy, eerie and baroque.
But I swear a sacred swear that I will read our book for March! Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before.
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