reflections

today is the day after valentine's day, and the day after my great love (al franken) said good-bye.

luckily, i was busy enough at work for the last week or so to have gotten behind in listening to the al franken show, so i still had downloads from monday and tuesday to listen to... i listened live to the last broadcast yesterday... and now have about half an hour left of the tuesday show.

and then... that's it. that's it for me and friendship and comraderie during the workweek.

al franken got all choked up a couple of times this week on air. quite endearing of course. he got choked up over:

• goodbyes to al franken show staff and guests
• soldiers in iraq dying from lack of supplies
• soldiers singing an army song together while hugging in iraq

anyway, i am feeling pretty sad. about that.

boy am i going to miss him. you can see his announcement of his senatorial candidacy at: www.alfranken.com. at first, i thought he seemed a bit smirky and that that could be trouble, but by the end of the video i decided it was a pretty good video. i'll probably volunteer doing clerical work for his campaign, and give him money, and stuff. after that, i'll get a life.

well, today we interviewed a girl named megan for an internship. she was young, bright, and naive. i felt like telling her all the horrible things in store for her, such as unemployment and horrific office social situations and loss of love.

last night dork club did not happen, since it's going to be happening on thursdays for a while. the people seemed alarmed by this and everyone came over anyway, and we played a new card game called "nuts," which me and taya won. i have to say, mostly me.

then everyone left except taya and kai and we talked about futures and grad school and i expressed my usual quite depressing forecast, which is that graduate school will be lonely and isolating and that the glory days will finally disappear for good, and that at some point it just turns into a weird thing to continue living with your friends in college-style housing.

taya and kai had more rosy pictures of their futures and of mine, and tried to dissuade me that the future will suck. i remain unconvinced. at least about the near future. for whatever reason, i project for myself a happy mid-life and later life, though a less happy 30s and probably a mildly unhappy later-life decline. so that my life would look like this with happiness on the y axis:

h h
h h h h
h h h h h
youth 17-26 27-35 35-65 65-80

youth was bad for me in a lot of ways.

[ed note: my beautiful chart above apparently gets messed up in the publishing process. please picture the hs spread out in columns neatly above each age range.]

i have been very busy at work and am kind of stressed out that i am in charge of fundraisers for the students going with us to nicaragua. as it turns out, i don't like fundraising very much. i don't mind organizing things and making stuff to sell and this and that, but i don't like the actual getting money from people part.

ok, in better news: i bought a latte this morning and reheated the second half of it just now in the microwave, and drank it, and it was good.

also, the dining services committee, of which i am now a member, is kind of cool because i meet with people that i work with in this office, and it is breaking down some glacial barriers that existed between us before.

my room is spotless and inviting at home. my laundry is clean and put away. i have been productive in a variety of areas in my life, and also have been going to the gym regularly. my bicycle is working, with zero flat tires, and two working lights. my health is good. but, today i feel sad in sort of an unspecific and possibly nonimportant way.