My Room

"Everyone carries a room about inside them. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one's ears and listens, say at night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall." -Franz Kafka

Monday, April 27, 2009

Monday, Monday

Today at work was a day of computer issues punctuated by meetings. Not fun. I'd love to go into detail, but unfortunately, somebody reading would surely know the person I complained about or lampooned mercilessly, so I will simply leave it as I hate meetings, and I prefer for my software to work the way I need it to. But given the state of the economy, I am happy to have a job at all, especially one that I can (for the most part) leave at the office.

I also appreciate that my job can be done while listening to audiobooks, which is how I connect my current work life with my degree in English. A few weeks ago, I started listening to Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Having just read (and loved) Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, I thought this would be a good follow up. And I'm sure it would be. Unfortunately, the book was read by the author, and while I've heard she's a great writer, she is not a great narrator. So I gave up and brought the book home and asked Christine to return it to the library (she was studying there on a regular basis -- she is not simply my book courier). When she got to the library, she noticed that the first CD was missing and asked me to bring it home from work.

I didn't have it at work. Neither did I have it in the car, in my backpack, or in the case of any other audiobook. Now, in addition to my overdue book fines' single-handedly making up for my library branch's shamefully low funding (I would support a candidate who wanted to raise taxes for libraries and museums, but that's not a popular platform right now), I have had to purchase two books in as many years due to water damage (I carry them to work in my backpack with my coffee thermos and water bottle). So far they have been books that I liked, so it seemed worth it to me, but I was now faced with having to purchase most of an audiobook whose narrator made me want to eat my own head. And I had nowhere else to look for that disc.

When our department's IT guy finished installing the correct software on my computer, I remembered that my computer had been reimaged last week. I recalled the IT office at college and how the shelves were always full of CDs and DVDs that students had left in their computers when they turned them in or had them fixed. So I e-mailed the IT guy and asked, on the off chance, if my CD could possibly have gotten mixed up in some of the software used on my computer. His reply seemed a bit defensive (I realize that I should have stated more explicitly that I do not think anyone in IT would maliciously steal one disc of an audiobook about sustainable agriculture), and he said that he had not worked on my computer in quite a while before today. I replied, conceding his point, and admitted that he was the only IT person whose name I knew, and so might he know who reimaged my computer?

Five minutes later he showed up at my desk with disc one of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I could have kissed him. Well, not without losing my job, but whatever. I thanked him profusely and threw the disc into my backpack. I'm sure it's a great book, but Barabara Kingsolver certainly has a voice made for print.

I can wholeheartedly recommend In Defense of Food, however, including the narrator, Scott Brick. As you may have noticed from previous blogs, Christine and I are very interested in real, sustainable, and organic food. In the next couple of weeks, the farmers' market will be opening and, we'll be buying a share in a CSA. I look forward to updating this blog with our culinary adventures.

And while I don't have any pictures, tonight's dinner was a sandwich on the homemade rolls with cheddar cheese, avocado spread, lettuce, alfalfa sprouts, mayonnaise, and Dijon mustard. It was quite tasty.

2 Comments:

  • At 11:46 pm, Blogger Chris said…

    Tuesday, Tuesday?
    Wednesday, Wednesday?
    KEEP WRITING!
    I didn't mean to shout, I just want to keep reading but that means you have to keep writing.

     
  • At 8:01 am, Blogger Unknown said…

    Sorry, sorry. It's been a busy week.

     

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