Llueve

Rainy days give rise to rainy day thoughts. Funny how that works.

For years I thought that the Spanish for Its Raining was Esta lloviendo, and now I find that its not. So much for multilinguality.

The Pope is dying, triggering thoughts of mortality. I doubt strongly that 'the world waits', as the newsmen like to say; I don't think that the world collectively or even substantially ever waits for anything. As a friend of mine used to say, no matter what happens, there are a hundred million Chinese who don't give a damn. Nevertheless, it is a momentous occasion. I am sorry for him. I am sorry for anyone who is dying; with feeding tubes and hovering doctors, its even more distressing. When my father died, at home, he just didn't get up from taking a nap. People that I've mentioned that to have invariably said 'that's the way I want to go'.

In some cases, there is a strong apprehension that death will be preceded by much distress, physical and financial; they think of years of increasing fragility, doddering along, being afflicted by cocky pharmacists, impatient medical staff, harried 'social workers' , and other people who deal with the messier parts of life. I share that apprehension. I have even found myself wishing for a quick death sooner than a slow death later -- though not, you understand, too much sooner. I was amused by the title of one of Dave Barry's books, which I remember as 'Stay Fit and Healthy Until You're Dead'. As someone else put it, what's the point of keeping healthy if that simply means you spend more time in the Alzheimer’s ward? I wonder -- will my opinion change as I age?

On a different note --
Having some problems with my Lexmark multifunction printer, which is unable to do what I regard as a simple task -- print a fifty page document from beginning to end. I know that I should be pleased that it works at all; that is, that I can take a document which was created by someone at a customer location, emailed to someone in my company, stored in a Lotus database, and then pointed to by a pointer in a document which was pointed to in an email which was sent to me. I should be thrilled, amazed, delighted. Years ago they would be crying huzzah, dancing in the streets, roasting pigs, shooting off fireworks, all of that. But I am not, ingrate that I am. Instead, I bitch and moan about Word 2000 (which really does suck, in my not so humble opinion), and how it does not seem able to format pages correctly, and about the printer, which cannot get through ten densely formatted pages (the aforementioned 'someone at a customer location' did dearly love formatting) without either a) skipping a page entirely, b) printing just the last couple of lines on the pages, or c) stopping entirely. I want it to Just Work, and though legions of diligent people have toiled, yea, verily, through the ages to make it work At All, still, it does not, and so I am grumpy and irritated, and I know that it is the fault of This Damn Printer.

I've been going to a physical therapist for a problem with my shoulder. I dislike the concept of physical frailty because it means that I have to rely on someone else to fix a problem of mine, and while there are problems of mine that I'd love to just give to someone to fix -- here, take it, its yours, go away -- there are others that I can't do that with - I have to Be There while it is getting fixed, which means that I have to admit that I actually have a problem, and that it is one that I can't fix. I hate that. I don't think that I have much of the traditional guy thing of not being willing to ask for help (the classic 'won't ask for directions' thing isn't a problem of mine, or at least not much of one), but I don't like admitting to failures, even ones that I can't be blamed for. I feel like any problem with my body is somehow my fault, I should have foreseen it, should have kept it from occurring. It doesn't help that that sometimes they really are my fault, either.

I may -- probably not, but may -- get to go to England on business in the next couple of months. I know that if I do, it won’t be nearly as much fun as when we went the last time, and there will be actual work to do, not staying in a fine hotel, getting up late, toddling around to the Tower of London and Parliament, plus there will be the problem of food, picky eater that I am, and the flight accommodations will likely be Steerage Class -- but still, you know what? I hope I get to go.

Bought a new CD of piano music. Boy, does that phrase sound clunky. Pianner music.

I finished Walk on Water the other night -- a great book, it delighted me from beginning to end, with very few slow parts and a couple that were just magical -- and I read most of The Art of Literary Journalism, too, and that was fun, mostly. So now I'm looking for something else to read. My local library is pretty poor when it comes to finding interesting stuff on their shelves; I'm no highbrow, but I think of their stuff as being pretty much at the 'You Can Transform Your Life Through (fill in the panacea)" and Danielle Steele level. Its for that reason that I keep a file of books that I want to read, and I am surprised to find (why Mr. Webster, I am surprised....No, Madam, you are astonished, I am surprised) , as I look through the list of fifty or so books that many of them no longer grab my attention. Much of it is because a lot of the list is fiction, and I'm not much of a fiction reader -- I want fiction thats memorable, fiction I will care about after I've finished it, and I just don't find much of that. And I don't know anyone who likes to read the kinds of thing that I do, so I have no one to ask, either. Which is why I tend to reread books. Sigh. Po' me.

Maybe I'll do some baking. I like it. I'm no great shakes at it, but its fun, its creative, kind of, and when you're done, you can eat the results. Wonder if there is something Freudian in that?