9:07 PM - 23.12.04
Solstice Dreams
Happy Solstice, dear diary. Daylight starts getting longer from here on in - yeah! My transitional dream wa very unsettling. I was at some sort of monastery - cloisters I think would be the best description. There seemed to be a Bal Masque in progress. Fantastical and dreamlike costumes - veiled and yet revealing, feathery and insubstantial. People and reality fading in and out. Some intense conversations along the line of the one between the Caterpillar and Alice about Mushrooms, or between Alice and the Cheshire Cat about "all ways are the Queen's Ways - and She's Mad, you Know". At the one point three separate Boddhisatva's (buddhas)appeared in fiery garments. They transfigured (trance figured) many times over, danced and taught. All of a sudden the three gave up a cry like a battle cry and said they were required to wage war on the uncompassionate. Kind of a oxymoron or very strange paradox - oh yes zen puzzles - koans. They turned into three geometric thre dimensional shapes all coloured from the blue end of the spectrum and floated off at the speed of light. Another koan for you - and me - dear diary.
It was -27 C/-20 F during the WARM part of the day yesterday. It is a five block walk from where I work to the train platform downtown. Frostbite set in about three blocks in. Then there's the next walk to the bus stop. I needed to go out for supplies so I got off at the shopping center about a block from my home, then walked home. The reason that I didn't post to you last night dear diary didn't have as much to do with the flu as that the body went into hypothermic shock. It took itself into the bathroom for a hot shower, then turned up the thermostat and crawled into bed. I didn't wake up until 2:30 in the am, even though I was aware that my youngest tried several times to rouse me. At 2:30 all I wanted was something to eat and to check that I had adequate clothing to go to work in.
Today was -6 C/20 F - it felt so warm that I had to take a layer of clothes off at lunch. You see in the morning I had put on my black underwear (frame of mind reflected) then a second layer of undies (camisole et al) - all purple. There's likely some deep psychological significance to that, but I can't think what right now. Over all went the black skirt and sweater, purple scrunchie to keep the tresses back. It was the purple layer that got removed just because some of the other underthings just need to stay put. It is an interesting fact that the city of Calgary lies on the same degree of latitude as London England. Their day time temperatures are around 40 F and they have rain in the winter. Their island is also in the embrace of the Gulf Stream current whereas we get chinooks. They are fairly steady in their seasons but we never know what we will have in any given hour.
At work yesterday it seemed to be about tests. Contractors never speak about what they actually see where they work or what they do with that material in the industry in which I work. There were auditors working in the boardroom - my boardroom - and they became curious about what I was doing. Started asking questions. After the second one they became too probing so I went to the other work station. The phone rang. Outside caller - could they speak to so and so. Now we had had our weekly team meeting that morning and some rather juicy comments had been made about that particular employee's status in the company. I directed the caller to reception and just said I couldn't give out any information. The woman on the other end sounded disappointed, but I didn't know who it was calling. Could have been the auditors for all I know.
Then there was the male. Yeah another one - second contract in a row where it became a problem almost immediately. After the morning meeting and before the auditors had arrived, he wanted me to show him some material in the boardroom. Feigning helplessness. Made certain the material he said he needed was in a corner and boxed me in. He is one of those types who is socially awkward and just tries too hard verbally with females his own age. In the past week he has tried to flirt with me several times. I've made a point of talking about my sons who are just a bit younger than him. I've also made a point of not being anywhere near him or in a room alone with him. Yesterday he kept trying to find an excuse to touch, but I think my body language was clear enough about consequences - even for him. I dn't know what I'm going to do. I work to live and support my family not find mates, bucko.
The meeting was productive. I had copied some of the spreadsheet I had created and just went through the problems I was encountering one by one. Took about an hour. It was obvious the one male knew exactly what I was talking about. He seemed to feel vindicated by my comments. I'm guessing he was one of the people who spearheaded getting their records cleaned up and had had a rough go of it for the first while trying to explain some of his reasons. Now comes some proof. Since then he's been bringing me more treasures on a regular basis - things that weren't part of the project when I began. Trust is built - this is good.
Around 4 pm I realized that something had gone awry with my spreadsheet. At close to 200 entries, it appeared that one of the critical columns of data had disappeared. Now, I hadn't done any data entry near the top of the page for a couple of hours so I don't think I inadvertently deleted it. It's an old version of Excel so that takes several steps to achieve anyway. Hard to say what happened. For whatever reason I had started saving the spreadsheet to disk the end of the day before. I had updated that in the mid afternoon and was praying that that version wasn't compromised. It wasn't, so I cut and pasted the balance of the afternoons' work from the damaged spreadsheet. Always back up your work, dear diary - even when Mercury is moving forward. I had asked my co-worker for some help with it because, at one point during the pasting, an error message came up saying that process wasn't possible. He couldn't get it to work even by renaming and saving the file but he did manage to salvage it to the C drive for me in the end. Whatever it takes.
Today it seemed it was my co-worker's turn to be tested. I had a very productive, quiet day but everything he turned his hand to didn't seem to be going well. We are located in the space set aside for the finance people. They are the ones who have been feuding the past couple of weeks. At the end of today one of his snafu's intersected with one of theirs. All that anger they had been throwing at each other suddenly was all focused on him instead poor guy. The intensity of their reaction seemed to indicate to me that as a group they feel incapapble of addressing their own internal problems so they were looking for a scapegoat they could collectively agree on to offload some of their angst. Caught in the crossfire, he was.
In the news another indicator that the hockey strike is causing a significant sociological shift in our community Betting. Apparetly one of the Provincial governments - who control all gambling and revenue therefrom - was complaining that their take had dropped by 40% since the beginning of the strike. There is a pattern emerging here fellow citizens - obviously the root of vice and sinful behaviour is linkd to professional hockey games. First beer money now gambling money is being lost. Keep those players off the ice, they're a pawn for the Devil's work, they are. Speaking of such things I believe that my youngest is just about done making cookie dough. Can't actually let it make it to the oven can I? A demain dear diary.
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