Daily Life: My Restive Mood Continues

I woke this morning in that same restive mode that I ended yesterday in. It dawned on me this morning that there may be a correlation with the weather. Over the last four days our temperature here has gone from 95 (Monday) to low 47 last night (Wednesday). That is a pretty impressive 48 degree temperature swing. According to the weather channel we are going to spend the next couple of days, through the weekend, in the high sixties and low seventies, but with sunshine.

I wrote extensively about Sunday earlier in the week - that was just a dang good day, all in all. I think that day has cast a shadow that is flowing across the entire week (in a good way). My restive mood is not a bad mood, it is just a restive mood and I can just roll with that. I think part of what may have fueled the mood as well was the deliberate decision on my part to not do very much as we moved through the heat wave. In life I have certainly learned that you do not fight the weather - you roll with the weather, you respect the weather, you accept the weather. The weather is the tiger and you are the tail as far as that relationship goes.

My thoughts were wondering all over the place as I started the morning and made that commute in. I drove down Williams and stopped at the coffee shop near Williams and Moorpark and saw a near collision between a big white truck and a small car. The small car was moving along at a good clip and the truck make a turn into a parking lot, but the driver of the truck made the turn without hitting his brakes - he just kind of slowed down in the lane and let the truck roll down to a slow enough speed to make the turn and the small car never noticed until they were right on the truck and then they did a hard brake and a sharp jolt to the side to dodge it. It would have been one of those pointless accidents where both drivers contributed. The truck driver should have signaled and the car driver should have been paying more attention.

I got my coffee and headed up Lawrence Expressway, listening to NPR for part of the while (the troubles of the auto industry), and then I switched over to the CD player and started listening to the Indigo Girls new album "Poseidon and the Bitter Bug" (which was released a few weeks ago - March 24, 2009). I really like it. I have listened through it a couple of times and plan on plugging in the ear phones and listening to it some more when the morning meetings pass by and the afternoon calm settles in. The commute in was mostly smooth, but my mind was all over the place, for a wide variety of reasons, having imaginary conversations, musing on things that often had nothing to do with nothing.

There was one particularly beautiful sight this morning. As I came up Lawrence (which runs north-south) I could see the mountains to the north-east of San Jose. They had clouds spilling over them in dark shades of gray. It was quite striking.

Then, just past Lawrence and 101 there was a three car accident that had traffic a little tangled. Once I got past the accident I got stuck behind a mosquito fighter of a car that was leaving a wonderful blue trail of gasoline smelling smoke behind it. Then I drove by the Sunnyvale dump, with the wondrous scent of methane filling the air. It was a short tour of bad smells!

I am spending most of the morning in teleconferences (of the type that I refer to as "listen meetings") where my primary role is to listen to the teleconference and keep an ear out for any interconnecting pieces that might impact my operations and to serve as an information resource if any questions in my sphere of influence arise. I am going to spend some time today (and perhaps tonight) exploring this restive mood I am in. Though I suspect the primary drivers behind it are the physical restrictions due to the bad foot and the changes in weather, there may be something else underlying it. Either way, it is a good excuse to be introspective today.

Daily Life: Liszt Variations

The phone woke me at 4:00 a.m. this morning. Fortunately I had fallen
crisply and cleanly to sleep last night, so I was relatively bright
eyed this morning. I logged on and worked virtually for a pair of
hours as I had my morning cup of coffee and a hot bowl of oatmeal. I
spilled milk on my shirt, which necessitated a change of clothing and
a second shower.

The crisis of the day was resolved, so I ran through the shower and
then started my morning commute. I was early enough that traffic was
mostly light and the commute was smooth. I was listening to Melissa
Etheridge as I drove through the morning darkness and I thought of the
vast "commonality of the commuter". All of those millions of people
who were doing exactly what I was doing - with minor variations.

For some unfathomable reason it made me think of Liszt's Variations on
a Theme of Bach. If you are unfamiliar with it, Liszt takes the
descending bass lines from the opening of a Bach sonata and expands on
it. It is a beautiful, if tortured, piece of music.

Once in the office I have settled in for the day, which should be
fairly routine. One of our customers is out for a three day meeting.
My boss and a couple of my analysts will be attending and I will be
holding down the fort while they are meeting so my day should pass
briskly.

I've been struggling against a bit of writers block the last week or
so and it is starting to feel like it is going to break free this
week, so I am looking forward to that - I am curious as to what is
going to pop out.

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