00:11 - 25.08.05
Sing-A-Long
Anther cold and pouring down rain day today. Weather warnings in effect about it until tomorrow. More flooding all over the province. Not as bad as in Europe though. I love rain; hate umbrellas. Too many people lose their ability to gauge the space they fill. There is no acceptable reason to have them open on the very narrow stairs we all have to climb from the bus to the train platform. They block traffic going the other way and put the people in front and behind the offender at risk of losing an eye. I know, I sound like a mother. Rode into work with one of the young women I like to talk with. Discussion was about the realities of childbirth and parenting. When we got into the gritty details I noticed that all the other travellers around us were male and they had that deer in the headlights look. The merits, or otherwise, of circumcision at 6 in the am just wasn't what they had in mind, I guess. Teach them to eavesdrop though. I'm guessing that the co-traveller must be contemplating pregnancy in the near term, because she was mining the conversation for as many insights into her options as possible. Hence the details.
The coding work has gone well the past couple of days, in terms of being able to focus on just that. My supervisor and the second in command took a field trip out to the proposed site where I'll be working, when I actually go and dig through the boxes themselves - somewhere out in the boondocks. All I'm hoping is that it is on a bus route that doesn't require two hours travel to get to from my home - oh, and a good coffee shop would be nice. That little trip generated a lot of curiousity among some of my co-workers. A lot of questions were directed at me while the boss was off site. I know nothing. At least not yet. The one thing disturbing me today was a pattern that was becoming apparent in the records I was working on. I mentioned in some earlier posts that my supervisor had found it necessary to switch the drive my work was saved to, because there was evidence that someone else was accessing and even changing some of the records, both that I had worked on as well as ones in the series I had left for further research. The proof of the tampering for me was finalized when I noticed the date stamping for some. They were for days when I was absent with the pneumonia. One of the other bits that has become apparent the past couple of days is that someone was also pre- or post dating some of their changes. The second in command had mentioned that was possible about a month ago, but I really hadn't clued in until today. A whole series of records I reviewed at the end of March had been tampered with - about the time that Fred, the friendly ghost, had really made his presence known. You know the incident with the cut strap on my shoe and such. The reason I know that those records were altered? I have a certain sequence of tasks I carry out that can be tracked for changes. There was very strong evidence of changes in those records when I went back to complete them the past two days. All treasury records. Uh huh.
Stair climbing was interesting today. Until this lunch hour, I had never met anyone else on my private gym in a stairwell. Today one male running up full tilt as I was sauntering down. He in shorts and nothing else. He was going at a really good clip, so it was apparent that this was a regular activity for him. He had a great tan, so I guess maybe I hadn't met him before because he's been on vacation. He cracked a joke about the smells of cooking coming from some of the levels we were passing as he continued on his way. I guess the motivation for me becomes that sauntering isn't a good enough pace. Need to look like I at least am putting some effort into the cardio training - right? On my return trip back up though, reality bit a might. You see, when I reach ground level I continue out the door to the street so I can get some fresh air on my break. Need that since the thermometer wars have turned our work area in to a sweat box topped off with the two perfumed ones dueling it out for aromatic supremacy as well. Bleagh. My inhaler is getting a real workout notwithstanding that meeting a couple of days ago. Maybe the building operators should try the solution Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II has found for heating and cooling her castle. I'm not quite certain I understand the process completely, but it seems to be modelled on the same practices that were used in Britain during the Roman occupation nearly a couple thousand years ago. The roman baths that are still being excavated at different archaeological sites. The old saw about an ignorance of history means we are doomed to repeat it, sometimes also means we lose benefits our forebears worked hard to achieve, because we've lost the knowledge they gained too.
Anyway, I walk around the circumference of the block, then head up the outside stairs leading up to the second flor and then re-enter the stairwell so I can do the return climb. I'm only going up 11 floors right now, but I still have to take a break about half way. It isn't anything to do with the muscles - it's my lungs that are still crapping out. Between the pneumonia, the dust that was stirred up when we deconstructed my home over those three weekends and the perfume wars, they just have lost a lot of their ability to function. Hope that warehouse has some equivalent built in exercise opportunities, so I can regain some lung capacity in a less challenging atmosphere. When I paused on the one landing to catch my breath half way, I suddenly felt as though I was being observed. Glanced up and realized I was looking right in to the lens of a surveillance camera. No big deal, because I was worried about personal safety in such an isolated setting anyway. The cameras and the fellow stair climber are a bonus, as well as good motivators. Anyway I waved at the monitor and went back to work.
When I get to the point where I can sing as I climb, I'll know that I've reached a good state in terms of aerobic health. Remember, dear diary, I didn't say anything about having to be in tune either, those surveillance cameras hopefully don't have sound on them too - that's another story entirely. When I was singing in my school choir, many years ago, we had a teacher who had voice training a l'opera. That meant we learned a lot of techniques for getting the best out of our lungs and our voices, but talent is always useful too. There were three young black teens on my bus on the way home. There was some reference to Jamaica, but I would guess from their accents, that they were Canadian born themselves. They took a shine to a couple of young ladies of, I think, a Phillipine heritage and decided to entertain and serenade them. Two of them provided the bass background, while the other rapped. He was excellent, though a bit on the rude side. No problem there. The girls' parents were sitting right next to me and they were laughing at the lyrics this young fellow had created too. The only weakness he had was that he sang from his throat instead of from his diaphragm. I was tempted to point out he would get more volume and depth that way, but the operatic teminology likely wouldn't have flown with him. By the time I realized that what I needed to translate it to was "If you really want to bark, dog, you need to breathe from the bottom of those ribs" I was already at home. Good advice - maybe I should listen to myself once in a while or whale as the case may be. Think whale bone corsets here - uh huh. And that's my story dear diary.
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