5 February 2002

Obsessions. Today's topic is obsessions.

Case study #1: When I got home from work yesterday, there was no power in my neighborhood. I don't know why, and it didn't bother me too much. I went to the grocery store, then sat and read for a while until the sun started to set. If the outage had run an hour longer than it did, I'd have called K.T. and gone down to her house for the Hall, but it came back around 5:30.

But when I came back from the grocery store, one of my neighbors was running a gasoline-powered generator. I could hear it from inside my house. All I could think was, WHY? But I suspect I probably don't want to know what was so important to my neighbor that he couldn't live without power for three hours.

Case study #2: I was up Halling until shortly before 2 in the morning. 'Nough said.

(But it was a really good session!)

Case study #3: I came in to work this morning to find I had a message on my voicemail. It turned out to be from my project manager, who'd left the message at ten-thirty last night. Which ought to be plenty of obsession right there. But it gets better.

He was calling with some requested comments for the document I'm writing for him. I didn't think I'd get anything until at least Wednesday, so that's actually good. But one change he'd asked for was that I spell out some codes we'll be using to mark equipment. This is a very high-level document, and I'd said right at the start that I thought that level of detail was superfluous.

But he's back on the damn codes. I'm going to have to find a way to put these stupid codes into this document without spilling out every other miniscule detail. Gah!

Oh, well. I guess I'll go round up something hot to drink and get to work.

--Liz