01:28 - 23.10.06
Mercurial
I don't know if it was the very late night waiting for my youngest to find a safe way home or if it was the coffee I drank on the tour of the new communities for Elections Canada, but I woke up feeling really ill yesterday. As sick, almost, as just after the last election. Fever, chills and a rale in my breathing. Bleagh. Maybe it was a combination of the two, but it shook me up a bit. I'm enjoying feeling healthy for a change and I don't want anything to compromise that.
My youngest had gone off to a dance club on Friday night with his work buddies. He had to go to work the next day, so he wasn't overly late trying to return home. He had called a cab and waited about 45 minutes, when he ralized that something wasn't right. He called home to let me know what was going on and also to vent a bit too. We both started trying to call that company - and several others as well - just to get a busy signal with each. Not normal that. I speculated that, because it was Diwali (Hindu) and Ramadan(Muslim), that a lot of the drivers were likely at celebrations or prayers rather than working. Didn't help out in the short term though. My youngest had also chosen to designate a pick up point that was rather remote - something that most drivers aren't fond of dealing with. My youngest wasn't thinking of all those factors though. He decided he was going to try walking home since, by that time, all bus and train service was unavailable and wouldn't start again for at least three hours. The walk would have been at least an hour and a half even with his much longer strides than mine and it was snowing. Thinking of all the pedestrians being run down this past week in the city - at least one a day it seems - I suggested he try going to one of the all-night restaurants nearby, where the cabbies often go for a break. He had a ride within 15 minutes. Arrived home at 3:30 in the am. One of those handy life lessons I guess. Other than being rather sleep deprived when he left for work yesterday he was fine.
When I finally managed to pull it together yesterday I camped out in the dining room with all my maps and documents with the demographics I needed to do that final bit of tweaking. Because I wasn't feeling very swift and because the cats thought my presence in their playroom indicated they were invited to "help" me, it took a long time to get all the amendments, additions, corrections, deletions and supporting documentation - like the newspapers stories about development in my area and the developers' flyers too - assembled into a single box for return shipment to my counterpart in Ottawa. Then it took another couple of hours on the computer producing the final stats for said shipment. Finally got the thing wrapped up after supper and took a cab to the post office. That box was really heavy, it was snowing and I still felt as though the fever was going to fry my brain completely. It really felt good to wave good-bye to that project, even though that type of work is my favorite kind of detail analysis. Mapping and demographics. My youngest had ordered Chinese take-out to sustain us through the last part of the evening. It arrived just as I walked back in the door from the post office. Won ton soup and stir fry veggies went down very nicely.
Today was just clean up of the whirlwind that overtook the dining room. Filing things back so I can find them when I need them again. Spent a couple of hours writing a follow-up email to my counterpart, providing weblinks to the different on-line resources I had used and explaining some of the background and rationale for my decisions as to how to do the assignment, as well as for why certain items were included in that shipment. I also gave him the manifest's tracking number so he could determine when to expect it on his desk. Hopefully it will all make sense. After that work was completed, my youngest and I headed off to pick up groceries, since the cupboard was really bare. Stopped in for Pho on the way since it seems to have become a tradition where completion of anything to do with Elections Canada is concerned.
While I was talking with my youngest and waiting for him to arrive home on the cab-less night, I went though a lot of information on the internet. Two really interesting stories about astronomy popped up over the two days. The first is about an unexpected burst of solar activity including a sunspot bigger than the planet Neptune. Add in the Orionid showers - meteors - as well as this upcoming transit on November 8 of Mercury visible across the face of the sun and there might be an interesting convergence of the two activities. The last time Mercury transited the sun was May 7 2003. I went back and checked in my posts to you to see what was going on at the time. Oh yes, a grand cross in fixed astrological signs and a security breach unveiled at the work site I was assigned to at the time. I was quite sick at that time as well, but was having richly detailed dreams that are still playing out in real time now. There was a very strong interaction from Neptune at that point, that built to resolution in November of that year during a lunar eclipse. Hmmm. Is it an echo or phase two in world affairs - or as the Barenaked Ladies would sing "If I had a Million Dollars". You see, the last transit occurred just a month before that little "short term" military excursion into Iraq. I remember clearly because some of the material I was working on at the time was from the Middle East and the tension around that data was well, um, interesting. Some of what my work uncovered made it very interesting for me too, in terms of the response from some of my co-workers. Oddly enough, I saw the obituary for one of them a week ago and was stunned to say the least. Their children were named and that is what confirmed it for me. Just really odd. That was the assignment where even my supervisor told me that he wouldn't remain in the circumstances I was having to deal with. As always the problem was there was no other assignment to go to and I couldn't afford to not be working. It was also when the Harry Potter book - Order of the Phoenix - was released. Interesting that the movie of that book is just wrapping up it's production now. Eventful in a variety of ways. Time for bed now I think. Good night dear diary - I think with Neptune turning direct while Mr Mercury turns backward soon maybe I'll rediscover those dreams.
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