August 17, 1989
Dear Everyone:
We had a lunar eclipse last night. Very interesting. The moon was a dark, orange circle hanging over Mount Diablo; you could barely make it out. Then, gradually, it got brighter as the earth’s shadow slide away.
I’ve added up the totals and I didn’t spend nearly as much money in Ashland as I thought I had, considering the fact that I went wild in the souvenir department. But then, I’ve been meaning to get new place mats for over a year now; it was just a coincidence that they had all kinds of mats, hot pads, coasters, etc. (all made in England, of course). Now I have a complete set. And I was planning on buying a new cup as insurance for the one I have now. As long as I have a replacement on hand, the current cup will never get broken, right? And one always needs one or two extra T-shirts, right? All that other stuff was just impulse shopping. I must have been hungry or something.
I even bought a coaster (not to be confused with the other coasters which match the place mats which match the hot pads, etc.) to bring into the office and put under my cup. I showed it to “Murray Olson” and explained that the emblem was a Tudor Rose. He said that he was glad that I had told him, otherwise he might have mistaken it for a 4-door rose.
In other news…
You will remember last week, I was working on the Leahy Boxes. These are boxes that were cleared for destruction back in 1986, but the stack of printouts (5”+) have been sitting in a box in “Alma’s” office for a while. I have been going from one printout to another, trying to match the boxes from the “old” owner (i.e., “That Other Company”) to the “new” owner (i.e., “Company” PM – Post Merger). This, I have accomplished, as of yesterday. It took 5 solid working days, plus a 1 pound bag of Peanut M&M’s to get through it all (about 2800 boxes, each of which had to be checked in at least 2 or more places, but I managed it.
However, while I was doing that, “Murray” was busily running jobs that transferred the majority of these boxes to new owners. So now, we have to match the boxes from the “old, new” owners to “new, new” owners. I say “we” because “Murray” is going to help whether he knows it or not – that’s if he wants to live long.
Going through all of these reports was tedious, frustrating and extremely boring (hence, the M&M’s); but I got help from an unexpected source: “Melanie” brought in a book called Anguished English. It’s full of examples of how students (and others) screw up the language. Whenever the going got too tough, I’d take a quick break and open the book to something like “The World According to Students”: “King Solomon had 300 wives and over 700 porcupines.” Think about this. What do you suppose he did with them all?
(As an expert in the Middle East, I am prepared to tell you that modern Islamic law allows a man to keep up to 4 wives – as long as they’re treated equally – and as many porcupines as he comfortably support. Think about this: how many porcupines CAN a man “comfortably” support?)
“Sir Francis Drake circumcised the globe with a 100 foot clipper.” Well, it would certainly take a big one. Just before I went on vacation, I bought myself a world globe. I’ve wanted one for years and Costco had them for what looked like a good price, so I bought myself a late birthday present. It looked like an even better price when I saw the same globe downstairs at Ran McNally for about $15 more than I’d paid for it. America loves a bargain.
No regular Thursday morning meeting today because “Alma” and “Holtz” have to prepare a budget for the department for next year, something that seems to have taken them completely by surprise, although I don’t know why. Around “Company”, everyone knows that August is Budget Month.
Last night was the monthly Association of Records Managers and Administrators Workshop and Dinner Meeting. The workshops are OK, but the dinner meetings go on until about 8:45. When you add the amount of time that it takes to get home (BART only runs every 20-30 minutes at that hour), it makes for a very long work day. This month, I only signed up for the workshop (Color-Coding: Pro’s and Con’s) and skipped the dinner which is one reason that I was home in time for the eclipse.
One advantage to these meetings is that they take place in the Stagecoach Restaurant, which is in the basement of the Wells Fargo Building. What this means is that you can duck down into the BART system and come out at the restaurant without ever have to cross Market Street (you go under it instead). Market Street is being “beautified” i.e., ripped to shreds. At first they closed it to cars, then cars and buses. Now they don’t even allow bicycles – they’re afraid someone will fall into one of the chasms they’ve dug.
I once saw a science fiction movie about a giant octopus attacking San Francisco. The fiction part isn’t the giant squid – it’s the part that shows all those people running up Market Street to escape it. You can’t run up Market Street!
Love, as always,
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