Time Flies

My sabbatical is coming to a screeching halt and I'm coming full circle. 9 ½ years ago I was dying to go from contractor to full time at my company and now I'm returning to that company—after 9 years of salaried employment—as a contractor. It's been a fabulous 8 ½ months off. I did some of the things I wanted to, didn't get around to some of the things I did, but overall got a good mental rest and restart.

Why am I returning to work? Technically speaking, I don't have to. But to not work would require certain sacrifices I'm not ready to make. I don't care how inane or vain those reasons sound, they still exist. Despite cutting back significantly in spending and being OK with that, there are things I'm not quite ready to give up unless I have to. Such as:

• I hate yard work. To be able to hire someone to do what I hate is the ultimate luxury and a reason—at least right now—to return to work.
  
• Despite its many wonders (and more of that to come), Costco cannot supply a good body wash to save its life. I want my Kiehl's body wash and I will not do without!
  
• Over five hundred channels and there's nothing to watch? There's always Law & Order and there's always a rerun of Big Love. I will not give up my massive cable or Tivo.
  
• Organic food. Yes, today I spent $3.99 today for a yellow bell pepper vs. $1.49 for a conventionally grown one. But I'd rather not poison myself with god knows what when I don't have to. I may choose to poison myself with cigarettes, but food should never be poison and I'm bound and determined to support the organic food movement regardless. Again, more on Costco later as I love rewarding them by buying whatever new organic product they stock.
  
• In Vino Veritas: Not that I ever gave up wine, but I'd like the occasional splurge on a bottle over $10, something I've denied myself these past eight months. There are great bargains for under $10 and I intend to continue to patronize those, but there are amazing wines out there for more that I want to treat myself with now and again.
  
• Not caring about the dry cleaning bill! There's no point in dry cleaning when you aren't working to justify wearing those types of clothes. But when fashion is something that makes your mornings creative, having to care about how much it costs to clean vs. the value of wearing said item becomes annoying. I want to wear what I want!
  

But in addition to gaining these little luxuries back when I return to work, I'll have to give up some things as well:

• Privacy: For eight months I've seen who I want, when I want and have been able to spend as much time alone as I want. In going back not only do I have to interact with many people on a daily basis, I have to carpool. Yes, I realize I'm a liberal and I'm supposed to embrace such green living, but I hate carpooling. I adore the privacy of my car and my NPR or CD and singing badly at the top of my lungs. Because of the location of the office and new parking costs, we all have to carpool which puts restrictions I'm not used to on my time and privacy. Plus the new office has open space rather than offices. I'm OK with that, but will take adjustment given I've spent eight months spending the majority of my time alone. Time to finally invest in an iPod I guess.
  
• Freedom to spend my days as I like. Regardless of what anyone thinks I've done or not done well during my time off, it was still all MY time. Now my time during the work day belongs to someone else (though they are paying me well for that). I don't see a problem in transitioning to that, but it is a loss of something I've enjoyed quite a lot.
  
• Managing my household: I don't care how Desperate Housewives it sounds, or how much you might want to make fun of me for it, I've enjoyed being a "housewife." I've enjoyed having the chores get done and not pile up into mountainous problems; I've enjoyed cooking every night; I've enjoyed doing little household projects like painting a wall or installing new switch plates or putting in a new kitchen floor. I like channeling my inner Bree (except for the aforementioned yard work). There simply won't be time—despite how well I've set up the systems—to do it all as well as I did while not working.
  
• Make up free: I love make up, I really do. But it's been wonderful to go days, even weeks, without any on my face because there simply was no reason to. I've grown used to a face without makeup. You might say then why start putting it on just because you're returning to work? Don't you work in an uber casual environment anyway? You would be right, but it still isn't going to happen. I go to work, I wear makeup. It's just my way.
  
• Spending hours in a day delving into a single issue in the world (economic, political, social, etc.). Not just reading one story, but reading ten or twenty to figure out exactly what happened and what it really means. That takes a lot of time and the average person's inability to do so is a detriment to society.
  

Don't judge my sabbatical on the above (or do, I don't care). I've had plenty of deeper philosophical insights than the relative merits of body wash or dry cleaning. But those are going to take time to internalize and articulate and in many ways, I need to return to the structure of a working world in order to do so. At least for a time. In the meantime, I relish not feeling guilty about buying skin care products and I relish that I don't really care so much about shopping anymore.

More to come …

Slow Starts

I’m not much for New Year’s resolutions. If I ever do any at all, I usually wait until my birthday in February. That’s more of a “new year” for me than the Gregorian calendar. But I did take the new year to review what I’ve done and not done since I quit working, and get cracking on a few projects (yay for new kitchen floor!). And amongst those is actually keeping up the writing.

Which doesn’t mean I have much to ramble about every day, or rather that I have the time and inclination to formalize what’s rattling around in my head into what I consider worth publishing. But practice makes perfect so I’m going to start—again—posting something every week day at least just so as to get in practice.

That said, Battlestar Galactica this Friday! Heath Ledger won a posthumous Golden Globe for Dark Knight! I have a new kitchen floor! 2008 is fucking over! Obama gets sworn in next week!

Lots to start on.

Have a Smoke and a Smile

Some may say it’s perverse to quit you career when it appears that you’re on the cusp of hitting the next big step. The problem is, I don’t know how to make that step. I mean, I guess I do, but I don’t want to. So after stepping up the ladder, stepping sideways on the ladder, getting stepped upon, I didn’t just step off the plank, I swan dived. And I don’t care. But somehow I have to get from here to the end goal,

You know you need a manicure when typing the above paragraph took way too long due to typos. That and I’m really tired, so it’s all inanities today.

I could spend the next four years looking at Rahm Emanuel. He’s so good looking. Oh yeah, I get to!

I’m watching an entertainment tonight-type special about the election. Anyone remember Fred Thompson? Without the da dumb?! But seriously, this is on CNN, and it is totally playing like a Entertainment Tonight! episode. Wait, there went Kucinich and the UFO. This brings back memories.

There’s something quite contemplative about just sitting and relaxing in a hotel room. I took a red-eye from Seattle to Philadelphia last night. I will endeavor never to do a red-eye that isn’t a non-stop flight again. I normally do red-eyes to the East Coast ‘cause I can sleep through it (gotta love xanax) and bypass the whole time change. But when you have to layover, it disrupts the whole process. So rather than wandering around Philly today, I stayed in the room waiting for my gal friend to arrive. Nice room, and I can smoke and drink wine and write. That’s something you don’t get to do in many places anymore, all at the same time. I need to do this periodically, with knowledge aforethought, just to write and think. Not that this post is a good example of that, but like I said, knowledge aforethought.

Now they’re talking, on CNN, about stabilizing consumption. I have really dropped the ball on this one. I used to be highly consumptive (that does not mean I have TB) and obviously since I’m not working, I can’t buy as much as I used to. Which I’m very fine with, surprisingly. Own one Von Furstenburg coat and you own them all? Nah, not really, but one has turned out to be plenty.

Ooh ooh, up comes Palin’s return attack on the McCain campaign. Wait, I’m already done talking about her. I hope. There’s a reason my political blog is called Pandora’s Politics.

Krugman! On CNN now. With Tivo there is little to stumble across. So I would have missed this at home. I love Krugman.

BTW, for anyone who sends me the little people things rather than plants on Facebook’s Lil Green Patch, I turn around and sell them. So thanks for the greenbucks! What a useless but addictive app.

Ew, Arnold is talking about getting expelled from the bedroom with Maria. TMI!

So how do I get from my mini-retirement to a driveway moment on NPR? Updates to come.

All In a Day's Play

My pilates instructor is an ethnic American. By that I mean that she looks ethnic, but is American born and raised. She is so scared by the rhetoric of the McCain/Palin rallies that she called the McCain campaign twice to try and let them know that what they were doing is scaring her. She’s an “other” by their own tactics.

Folks, do you have any idea what you’re doing when you call Obama as Osama? When you stress his middle name? Is this really how you want your country to behave? To be run?

Sigh.

I really can’t comment any more on this until/unless someone is hurt by it. Those of you who are perpetuating it by insinuating that Obama is an Arab, a terrorist, etc., I hope you are happy. You have descended to the worst of this country. Your candidate has no ideas so must resort to the most fearsome scare tactics. If someone gets hurt, it’s your fault.

In other, real commentary:

McCain wants to guarantee 100% of savings. What on earth does that mean? The Treasury dept. has already raised the FDIC insurance to $250K. Who on earth keeps more than that in a savings account? Who on earth keeps that much in one savings account?

• I love the web in presidential politics. Estimate your taxes.

• Electoral-vote.com and fivethirtyeight.com numbers:

Electoral-vote.com:

Obama 357 McCain 181

FiveThirtyEight.com:

Obama 361.4 McCain 176.6

Keep it up Barry!

In completely other news, i.e. personal, here’s what I’ve been up to (when not blogging about politics):

• Cleaning the basement, lamely.
• Cooking (well!): You should try the lamb sausage sandwiches I made tonight and the beef stroganoff I’m making for the debate-watching party tomorrow night. Marjoram and caraway seeds are the bomb.
• Hrm … blogging politics. I can’t wait for the debate tomorrow and the election so this CAN BE OVER!!
• Culture, for what it’s worth:

Ah yes, the reading list. Latest include: Stephanie Meyer (had to see what all the fuss was about; she’s a terrible writer with a very engaging story); Our Culture, What’s Left of It; Jane Eyre (re-read); Wuthering Heights (re-read); finished the Merde series; Vanity Fair issues; and Barak Obama’s Audacity of Hope. About to start on: Gregory MacGuire’s latest, A Lion Among Men; and Candace Bushnell’s One Fifth Avenue (yes, I read stupid chick-lit). Currently reading Stephanie Meyer’s The Host (yes, I read stupid fantasy stuff too).

TV: Bones, Law & Order SVU; Smallville, True Blood, Dexter, The Daily Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fringe, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, the presidential debates, random acts of political stuff.

• Web Sites:

Facebook and Live Journal

Pundit Kitchen, xkcd, and LOLCats

Google News, NYT, and CNN

• Movies/DVDs:

Nada, nothing interesting.

DVD’s: Ghost in the Machine, earlier Bones episodes, Neverwhere; The Wire.

Otherwise it’s all in a day’s work. Except I don’t work. All in a day’s play then. ;-)

Vaudeville Joe

I love this ad! I mean it. It’s freakin’ hilarious and only makes me love Joe Biden even more. My god, his recovery from asking the wheelchair guy to stand up … I forgot how wonderful that moment was.

Here’s Biden’s secret. He is what he is and he always has been. He’s a liberal, intelligent, experienced Senator who talks too much and has made a habit more addictive than smoking out of tripping over his own tongue.

And it won’t touch him! At least not where it matters. This ad doesn’t make Biden seem dumb, it makes him endearing. The people who watch it and are appalled were already appalled by his views and were never going to vote for him period. Not only does Biden have a “just like us” feel (who hasn’t said just the wrong thing at just the wrong time?), we can feel he’s just like us while also being smarter, more accomplished, and more experienced. We all know that if any one of us reached the rarefied air of power, that we’d promptly make idiots of ourselves. And Biden’s been doing that for years! While still accomplishing a great deal for this country.

There’s no fear in electing a Joe Biden type. You might fear his positions, but you don’t fear being surprised by him. The fear of McCain/Palin is that I don’t what they will do in response to an unscripted situation. And the world is an unscripted place. Palin’s gaffes are of a very different variety than Biden’s. They are gaffes born of a broad and deep ignorance of the world and this nation. They are gaffes driven by covering up what she doesn’t know, rather than just tripping over her own tongue. They are gaffes continued by her inability to laugh at herself (I can think of a million ways I could have turned seeing Russia from my house into a Biden-style endearing quality rather than mockery). They are gaffes unforgiven because she just continues to make them over and over again. Whereas with Biden, you know exactly what he means, he just has some twisted version of Tourette’s. Biden’s gaffes are more akin to puking on the Japanese Prime Minister (the gold standard for presidential gaffes) than invading the wrong country (the gold standard for presidential mistakes). Even the vaudevillian tone of this ad negates any seriousness of Biden’s misspeaks.

God I’m looking forward to tonight! Thanks McCain! This ad is the perfect teaser. Though I doubt you meant it the way it will play.