A Little Woman
(4-13 October 2003)

13 October 2003
-This is an all-out bulletin:  if you can or want to be in the Bay Area on 6 November of this year & have a fair bit of money for the concert of a lifetime (Simon & Garfunkel), please let me know ASAP.  This ticket, after being offered directly to people who might potentially enjoy it, is going to be sold on EBay in a few days if I get no potential takers.  This makes me sad, because the concept of just EBaying things off is very capitalistic & annoying to me.  But it's better than trying to sell the ticket at the gates of the Arena in Oakland, where it's not allowed.  Save the ticket from EBay & see the show of a lifetime!
-I haven't read anyone else's webpage in just about 10 days, & I've only now typed in the updates from that span of time anyway.  So I missed Segal's comments of 4 October about my questioning of Wesley Clark.  I guess the only real gripe I have with Segal's response is that he portrays me as calling Clark "fascist" when I merely said "If he takes fascist actions..."  Admittedly, this is a subtle distinction & I use the word fascist extremely loosely... often I will describe any military use or advocacy of military use as fascist, since it embodies the doctrine of force dominating all other interests, which is more or less the definition of fascism.  Point being, I don't know if Clark would behave this way or not, but I have good reason to believe he would, since his upbringing is wholly within the military.  & most of what I've heard about his career is that he has backstabbed his way to the top, lying & deceiving other generals while trying to grab promotions.  He's ambitious for the sake of being ambitious.  Now which recent Texas Governor does this remind you of?  Probably not Ann Richards.  Finally, Segal doesn't respond to why I think Clark could be worse than Bush, since he fails to engage the argument that even if Clark's actions are better than Bush's, he will have fewer watchdogs & more sweeping support, thus creating the perspective that the Democratic Party can also be militaristic & gun-toting.  Sure, he could beat Bush, but he would do that by more or less being Bush.  The question of 2004 is whether the Democrats want to fold up their tents & become indistinguishable from the Republicans in order to oust Bush, or whether they want to draw some actual lines in the sand & try to look different.  Obviously, if you're a moderate, you probably think the 2-party system is an overly diverse expression of multifarious thought.  But I'm an extremist & I believe the USA has an extremely long way to go.  I'm not so interested in ousting Tweedle Dee that I'm willing to support Tweedle Dum.

12 October 2003
-Night driving, despite my late aversion to driving, is still a wonderful time.  Especially when filled with conversation.  It's just so focused.
-Another Sunday, more exhaustion than usual.  However, a calm sense that I'm really getting the hang of the job is also coming over me.

11 October 2003
[from Clovis, California]
-Kaitlin is actually not smaller than I expected, which is what they always say about 6- or 7-pound infants.  I guess my main frame of reference for newborns is newborn rabbits, which are really excessively small.  She didn't exactly have her eyes open ever, but the world's a pretty bright place for a 3-day-old.
-I suppose some people derive as much or more comfort from proximity to people as from actually conversing with them.  This is extremely foreign to me, since I'm such a verbally oriented individual... I would almost always rather talk in great detail to a friend in Malaysia on the phone than sit in silence with a friend in the same room.  But such is not a universal case it seems.

10 October 2003
-More spinning of wheels.  & maybe that's okay.  It's frustrating, but it's not like I'm not doing anything worthwhile with my life this week.

9 October 2003
-Didn't do much of anything, & that's a trend that I'm not sure how I feel about for Thursdays.  Certainly the ultimate vision for this schedule involves becoming more disciplined about projects (writing) so that I have some time in long blocks to work on it.  But Thursdays always seem to be a day I need to wind down from all the activity of the days prior, to really realize that I will not have to be a disciplinarian today.  This still sets up a full normal weekend in the 2 days following, but I wish I could have just a little more energy on Thursdays first.

8 October 2003
-Welcome to the world, Kaitlin Dean.  While I can't say I promote the spelling of your name at present, I hope everything in the future works out for you.  It can't be easy to be born in 2003.
-Weeekend!

7 October 2003
-Arnold is in.  He fell a little shy of the 70% I predicted for him a month or so ago, but somehow surprised others with his high percentage.  Even in a wide-open 135-person election, Americans will stick their tongue out at democratic choice & instead go with the glory-hound sports-fan approach.  All the polls prior to the election said that Arnold was going to have the edge.  So lots of people have to be able to sleep at night knowing that they "picked a winner".  & thus they make it happen.  I almost believe that if credible sources released a poll saying that Pete Camejo (perhaps my favorite politician in America right now after his rousing defense of generally good principles in the recall debates) had a 5% lead on all the candidates in the recall, he would've won the actual election.  It looks like some act along these lines is the only hope we will have in our nation of real political change.
-On a dime, things have sine curved up in my job.  My boss actually retracted some of his prior comments & replaced them with better ones, based on actually working a full shift with me.  It seems that much of the criticism was based on hearsay, or even a negative interpretation of neutral comments.  Things should be improving from here.

6 October 2003
-Great frustration with my job, stemming almost entirely from my boss & some negative comments he's been making.  I maintain that while he's great at the general jobs of Seneca, he's not really cut out for managing Seneca workers.  He's brash, abrasive, & tries to motivate by telling one everything one's doing wrong rather than much of anything one's doing right.  He's like the teacher that gives everyone in the class an F on the first paper to "motivate" them to get A's.  The only class I ever took with a teacher like that is my only lifetime final grade of F.  It's not motivating.

5 October 2003
-Exhaustion is the order of my Sundays.  & mild frustration with certain things, despite generally feeling good about my job.  Compared with my much shorter Saturday shifts at Chapman, I'm glad to be doing this on this schedule.

4 October 2003
-The world always seems a little more vivid & a little more vibrant in October.  When one is trying to find a random Starbucks, gets directions, heads for the locale described, parks nearby, & ends up parking squarely in front of where a set of good local friends have just started moving in that day without ever knowing the location before, it's October.  It also makes the night even more fun in the end.

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