Random Thoughts

I was just out in the kitchen, doing something, when the phrase 'Not in this incarnation, anyway' drifted through my mind. Comes from a book I'd been reading. I had a quick microburst of the angst that I felt a few months ago, contemplating almost nightly about what happens when you die -- do you go out, does your spirit survive, do you get reincarnated -- and then it went away again. Still wonder, though. I'd like to be reincarnated. And not just because my friend said she believed in it, a week before she died. I'd like to see her again, sure, but even if it happens, what's the chances you'll know its him/her when you meet up with them again, if you do? Only in fantasy novels. But the idea that you grow in experience, and with luck in wisdom -- that'd be cool. Of course, I suppose that you also have to accept the downside: your next life might be a function of how you did with this one. I don't think I'll be a worm, next time.....

I have the work laptop up and running next to this one -- I had been doing some things, going through the torrent of email that arrived -- things to do! people to answer! inventories to review! audit stuff to puke at ! -- and right now it's cycling through its screen saver display, which is made up of backgrounds I've put in for wallpaper. There goes an SR-71 -- man, but that is a beautiful flying machine. I got to see one take off, years ago, while they were still operational. Gorgeous. There's Yoda, in an illustration that some one did of him and his glowing Macintosh. A countryside in Vermont. T'pol holding a phaser and looking sexily dangerous. Four colored marbles. I remember seeing the Elgin Marbles at the British Museum. I knew they weren't marbles like the ones you play with, but I didn't know what they were until I saw them. I liked that. There's wallpaper made to look like water droplets. And the Martian landscape -- not someone's idea, but the actual landscape. Man, that's awesome. And there's a suited-up astronaut walking through a corridor on the spaceship from 2001. Open the pod bay doors, HAL. And Jed Bartlett. And two Muppets in a Photoshopped pose, leaning against a fast car, guns casually cradled: Sesame Vice. Darth Vader's helmet. A sketch of the original Batmobile. Cool stuff.

I sent my resume to another manager in the Big Company where I work. She's looking for someone to do what I used to know how to do, about twenty years ago. Probably nothing will come of it, but nothing ventured.... I am seriously ready to stop doing what I'm doing now. The secret, I think, is to keep isolated, not take the audit frenzy personally. But I do, I want to scream that they're letting the damn auditors get away with murder, and worse: they're mutilating themselves on the off chance that maybe thats what an auditor will want. And I do know what the current audit environment is like. But I don't think we should make it easy for the auditors, because auditors don't know the meaning of Enough. But the environment isn't going to change, so I have to, somehow. I have a target date for stopping. If its intolerable, I leave in about six months. If its bearable but not great, one to two years. And if something magical happens, four years and three months. The smart money is betting on the middle range.

Hah, there goes a composite picture of Albert Einstein and Mr. Spock.