Mental Note

The time to decide you're not quite done with your shower is not half-way through the act of turning off the water. At least, if you have the kind of shower tap that turns off by twisting from hot to cold, that is not the time. Yikes. Brrr.

On a possibly unrelated note, Facilities Services have chosen today to shut off the steam heat for the year, so all the radiators are cold. I wonder how dorky it would look to sit at my desk wearing my coat?

Modernism Follies, Part 1,348,221

In a surprise move, the city of Chicago will become a unicorn, courtesy of Santiago Calatrava. Well, I guess it's not much dorkier than the Trans-America Pyramid. I wonder if it comes with wings and sparklies?

The Perfect is the Enemy of the Finished

I have been stalling at obstacles blocking my writing projects. Many of them are real claims on my time, but I wonder if I've adopted a pattern of self-sabotage. I realized this morning that part of the slow down is falling back into old patterns of editing before I move to generating new wordage. Itsy, bitsy iterative progress: it's too slow and prone to stalling out. It's time again to embrace the idea of the crappy-but-done first draft, remember how to power through to the end, and get some things finished.

Repeat the mantra: Crappy first draft. Crappy first draft. Finish it, and then revise.

Shoot Me Now

Went to the optometrist yesterday, and thus had the pleasure of doing the Giant-Amoeba-Pupils-Cannot-Read-Or-Do-Paperwork-Must-Shuffle-Like-A-Mummy mambo most of the afternoon. Bleargh. I don't remember ever having this much trouble with my eyes after getting them dilated. It was scary and horrible, feeling like I would never again be able to read my own monitor.

And, I ordered my next pair of glasses yesterday, too, and am therefore $300 poorer with nothing to show for it but a receipt. In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to pick out new frames so quickly after the dilation thing. If I look like a major fashion tragedy for the next three years, I'll know why. Well, why else. I'm not sure a fully rational, grounded, and un-dilated person would have acquiesced to rhinestones on the earpieces, even very small, discreet rhinestones. I guess if I really hate them, and can't swap them, I can pop out the lenses and consider it a Deviant Art Mods Opportunity. Bead-encrusted frames -- yeah, that's the ticket.

But here's the thing. They're progressive lenses. Shoot. Me. Now.