Saturday Grab Bag

At work, I sit in the IT Help Desk room (long story, most likely coming soon in a future post) because it happens to have spare desks. This past week another one of the spare desks has been occupied by an IT guy from a different office, who is covering for one of our guys who is on vacation. New guy? He thinks out loud. And let me tell you, his thought process is NOT THAT INTERESTING. Yet he gives his mental meanderings full voice – not little voce sotto mutterings that I could easily ignore, oh no. He speaks his mind loud and clear, narrating such riveting developments as taking out his wallet to see what he can afford for lunch with insightful commentary like “Let me see how much I have in my wallet.” This would be a perfectly normal thing to overhear in a shared office space if someone were in front of New Guy’s desk and asking him if he wanted to come along to Quizno’s. But there was nobody there but me and he, and I was studiously avoiding eye contact. I never know how to handle people who think out loud – are they trying to draw me into a really boring conversation? Do they live very lonely lives in which talking to themselves is a defense mechanism that they don’t know how to turn off at work? This time I just ignored it and told myself it was only for a week. I am shamefully glad that the week is over.

In other work news, I got my final Secret clearance, which is a nice shot in the arm for my career here and my overall employability in the future, so yay.

+++

My wife read through the blog and I was pleased that she was amused by the family pseudonyms I’ve been using. She asked me if I had used “Galatea” for her because she had a poster of “Pygmalion and Galatea” in her dorm room in college, and Galatea is a redhead in said print (as is my wife). I had to confess it was a coincidence (I had no idea she used to have that print) and the train of thought that had led me to that name … well I gave it to her because she thinks my spaz-rule convolutions are cute, but I’ll spare the blogosphere. Then she asked why I used “Calvina” which, according to her, means “the bald one”. I trust her on the translation, of course, because she’s taken Latin and she knows Latin and Greek roots really well not to mention her father is a classics professor. I explained that, since it was a baseball post, I was actually referencing legendary Oriole Cal Ripken, Jr. (whom my wife holds in high regard for breaking Lou Gehrig’s ironman record after the players’ strike of the mid-90’s and “single-handedly saving baseball”). She approved.

+++

My brother – I have two, Little Bro (3 years younger) and Very Little Bro (13 years younger) – is coming to visit this weekend for the big First Birthday Party. Little Bro’s birthday falls in the coming week so he will be getting his present while he’s here. He suggested a copy of Dune, one of his favorite books yet somehow one he does not own. If I were a really awesome big brother I would have supplemented this idea with more crazy pop culture detritus, like a set of six Dune action figures on eBay (20 bucks? So worth it!) but at this point there’s just not enough time for shipping. Alas.

+++

Whoa, wasn’t this blog supposed to be overflowing with ruminations on my pop culture obsessions by now? It’s been over a week and there was one long bit about Flash Gordon and a few obscure references here and there but mostly it’s been baseball and babies. Believe me, I’m as surprised as anyone. A couple of factors have influenced the situation. One is that my pop culture consumption for the past week has been staggeringly low – I have a pile of comic books waiting to be read when I find the time (ha); I’ve been reading on my daily commute but it’s a Thomas Pynchon novel that doesn’t really lend itself to quickie blog observations; television is still pretty much in summer rerun mode and I’ve been watching a lot of baseball anyway because of the not-everyday circumstance of the Yankees being in the market. Another factor is that I wanted to build up a good head of steam on the blog and post every day about whatever was on the very top of my mind, and you see the results. The baby did some cute things and some troubling things and had a birthday (which as far as I’m concerned should be a national holiday) and was never far from my thoughts. Yet another factor is that I’m trying to ease into things but I feel like a lot of my obsessions need Grand Introductions so that I can’t talk about, say, a message board discussion I got into about Batman and Spider-Man without first providing the context of What Super-Hero Comics Have Meant To Me Through The Years. (I think it’s more likely that I’ll get over that particular hang-up and just start babbling before I generate the ultimate contextualizing essay, for what it’s worth.)

So, to sum up: still working on this blog’s identity issues, still trying to post every day, more comics stuff soon, less sports stuff (but never no sports stuff), fall TV is coming, and in conclusion, remember: