Grey Matter

I have been listening to: David Gray - White Ladder (which I bought on Saturday - which I would not have bought if not for mp3 song sharing).

For the office: "Don't bother me, I'm living happily ever after."

I'm glad I have it. It is one of the things I like about myself. I often take it for granted, but every now and then it reminds me how useful it can be.
Yesterday morning I wrote a little program. I tested it with some dummy data. It worked exactly as expected. Today I fed some real data to it and it produced strange results - very strange. It seemed like it was possessed. I had no source code for the program with me at work, so I mentally filed away the symptoms and made a mental note to debug it this evening.
About an hour later, I paused from my work for a moment to review the problem symptoms. Within 30 seconds, the reason for the strange behaviour clicked. I won't have to do any debugging this evening, after all. I shall make one tiny change to the program and it will work.
I like my brain. It's my wetware pal who's fun to be with.

The clock radio alarm is going off. brrrring-brrrring... brrrring-brrrring...
No, it's not an alarm. That's the phone. "Hello? Half the team has dropped out? You need him to play tennis... now? Yeah... I'll get him to the court in 20 minutes."
I was lucky. SonOfVirge entered the waking world in a positive mood. We got there by 8:30. I returned home.
Breakfast. Coffee. Blob. Browse. Muck about with camera. Chat.
Half the household had left before 7am on a peer-group-aided extreme shopping binge. A quarter was playing tennis. This remaining quarter was taking it easy.
I tell myself it was good that I had been forced to wake up and get out of bed. Sleeping in would only have left me with a headache. The tennis coordinator really did me a favour by ringing at that hour of the morning. It's strange that I didn't fully appreciate it at the time.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter and supply a new definition. Some winners. This sounded like a fun word-game for me to play. I tried my hand at it:

infartuation: a whirlwind romance that breaks when you least expect it and leaves you feeling deflated.

sanguiner: a goth performance poet.

immatune: the contrived excuse sung on the day after the office party

lens flaying: the practice of focusing extreme heat on newbie artists who resort to the use of filters.

igtolerance: I don't care what it means. We don't do that sort of thing around here.

palindrone: A friendly parent-to-child speech that would be just as useful if spoken backwards.

It looks like Thursday 12th decided not to go through with his apocalyptic plans. Today is a bit of an anticlimax. Nothing to see here. Move along please.

The sensitivity of the human mind to criticism is extraordinary. Having someone say "I think you're good at X" should never be interpreted as "I think you're wasting your time doing Y". Even if you're proud of Y and Y never gets mentioned, a compliment on X shouldn't provoke negative emotions.

Tonight is gold class, drinks and nibbles, mingle with the bosses, Matrix Reloaded, being-seduced-by-the-suppliers-of-big-expensive-tools night. All I have to do is look intelligent and avoid signing any binding business contracts. I think I can manage that by the time-honoured method of keeping my mouth shut (except when inserting food or drinks - nobody looks intelligent trying to eat or drink with mouth closed).

Signs a Boy Band Member is Depressed:
"I got gloom! Yeah! Girl you know it! (Uh!) Wooo, melancholy!"
Changes name of new single from "Oh, Baby Baby Baby" to "Oh, Baby Baby."
Doesn't want to play his guitar or write music anymo-- er, never mind.

For the office: "Sarcasm is just one more service I offer."

Ég er ánægður. I am happy. I am calm, relaxed, and arguably a little absent minded. "What?" I hear you ask, "Surely Virge can't be absent minded. He's a ---Manager---. He can't be absent minded."
I agree. I'm not absent minded. Most thoughts eventually get around to wandering through my head. It's just that they wander through via circuitous routes. Some of them must be stopping for a quiet daydream in the park on the way. Maybe they took time to stop and smell the liquorice bullets.
I had been at work for about an hour this morning before a particularly tardy thought meandered through. When it slouched up to the control deck it announced: "Captain, there is a gap in the ship's log. We seem to have no record of today's lunch packing drill." I remember making my lunch, a sandwich - shaved salami on home-made bread - a vegetable and sliced peppers soup, a golden delicious apple and a just-perfectly-ripe banananana. I remember going into the study to check email and get my bag. I even remember cleaning my teeth before grabbing my bag, waving goodbye and marching out the door.
There is no court in this country that would declare me absent minded. See how clear my memories are. See how reliably my failure to pack my lunch was noted and brought to my attention, a mere hour and a quarter after the slip.
In fact, now that I think about it, it wasn't a slip at all. It was me being very thoughtful. Yes. That's right. I was being thoughtful and making a cut lunch for my wife to take to work. I can almost remember the warm inner glow that suffused my intestines as I performed this sacrificial act of kindness - knowing that I would be denying myself the chance to taste the golden banana of scrumptiousness. Pah! How could anyone be so cynical as to describe my heroic devotion as absent-mindedness?

Did I describe today as Thursday the Overlooked? What else could it be? It's the overlooked sibling of the world-famous (or should that be world-infamous) *cue sinister pipe-organ chord* Friday 13th. One must always be wary of the overlooked sibling. He is dangerous. He doesn't like living in the shadow of greatness and he can only take it for so long before the pressure builds up and up and up and he doesn't know what to do but he knows he doesn't want to be anything like his sibling so he has to latch onto anything that will help him define his existence and raise his head above the legacy that threatens to choke him in suffocating unfair comparisons and SNAP.
What will this Thursday bring? If Friday 13th is known for bringing bad luck, satanic masses, grave desecrations, and moon-lit cavortings, then how should we expect Thursday the Overlooked to react? With random acts of respect and senseless acts of quiet conservatism? How can poor Thursday 12th hope to be noticed?
Thursday 12th seems to be doomed to frustrated anonymity. He's looked deep inside himself and knows that upstaging Friday is impossible now... unless... maybe... the ultimate trump card; the way to be remembered - forever; the way to get rid of all Fridays because there won't be any other days after
"Apocalypse Thursday!"