30 May 2006
Taking Five

Filed under love + music + work

Funny scene from an episode of M*A*S*H.
McIntyre (just outside the operating room): I’m taking ten minutes.
Nurse: I’m on ten minutes.
McIntyre: Between us, we got twenty minutes. Let’s go! (takes nurse’s hand and they run off for some privacy)

I have a set of Scrivener’s Sudokus nearly ready to email to the Bulletin, but none of them is exactly how I want it. I’m afraid I’m going to have to just turn them in, solvable but not particularly elegant. I’ve been working on new ones to send in their stead, thus allowing me to take more time with this particularly troublesome set, but I’m just having a killer time making anything work. I’ve spent three two-hour sessions over the past three nights, and haven’t produced a single solvable puzzle. It is a puzzling situation. I’ve been at it for two hours tonight with nothing to show for it, so I’m taking a little break to reset my brain before diving in again.

I just got Spock’s Beard’s most recent studio album, Octane, in the mail, and don’t even remember when I ordered it. At first, when I saw the envelope with its return address, I thought maybe I was getting bonus stuff (a man can dream, can’t he?) but then I had a vague memory of ordering it online. I just don’t remember when that was.

Anyway, it’s quite good. I think Nick D’Virgilio is a very good singer, but without the range of Neal Morse. My first impression is that it would be a lot better with Neal. That’s just on one listen, though.

You know what’s a really good song? Aerosmith’s “Train Kept Rolling.” I had the Greatest Hits cassette when I was in high school, but it’s been ages since I’ve listened to that older stuff they don’t play on the radio much. Heard “Train” today and was really turned on by its groove. Nice guitar work, too.

I miss R. It feels like a strange friendship divorce we’re going through, and I don’t like it one bit. I feel empty without her in my life. When I’m alone, I’m constantly wondering how she’s doing. When I’m with others, I frequently wish she were with us, too. In Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, dragonriders who lose their dragons go through life in a kind of dazed state of shadowy incompleteness. Dragons who lose their riders just vanish into the mysterious area known as “between.” I love life too much to wish I could just cease to exist, but I truly understand the temptation. Walking the earth incomplete, great Italian meals aside, feels like crap.

“She got a midnight voice like some beckoning saint;
She got something special, but you she ain’t.
See how I miss you?”
(Bruce Cockburn)

“Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”
(Ecclesiastes 7:3)

“I would never hurt you, Jenny.”
“I know you wouldn’t, Forrest.”
“I wanted to be your boyfriend.”
(Forrest Gump)

2006-05-30  ::  me