Hippo, birdie...

To Alan Turing (who would have been turning 99 today), and to my esteemed brother Alan Savitzky.

Done the last two days (20110621 Tu - 0622 We)

( raw notes )

Not a bad couple of days; my mood seems to be improving slightly, and is now somewhere between ok and good. Still feels a little down relative to two or three weeks ago. Dr. Reed says that regular exercise is the equivalent of a low-dose antidepressant. We'll see; I did get in a full 3+ mile walk yesterday.

I only realized recently that my canned response of "working on it!" was shorthand for something like "I'm busy working on something urgent, possibly a task you've already asked me to work on, and I simply don't have the mental bandwidth to handle somebody talking to me right now."

There seem to be several things I say to deflect conversation (no matter how helpful it might turn out to be) when I'm too busy to pay attention. I haven't identified them all yet, much less unpacked them, but suspect that it would be a useful exercise.

I spent most of Monday up at the lab in Menlo Park catching up with people. Got my labwork done at Kaiser Santa Clara, which is roughly halfway there from home. Tuesday is the one day I don't have a meeting.

Monday evening I put in for reservations at the Herb Farm; they were confirmed for Thursday, September 22. Tuesday I started working on my set list for Westercon (complicated somewhat by not knowing how long my slot will be).

Up in the notes you will find not only links, but a recipe for gluten-free flatbread. There's a video for teens from authors & illustrators: It Gets Better -- I like the sentiment, though I'm not sure I'd have thought that it applied to me, way back then.

Thankful Thursday

Well. It's still Thursday! I'm thankful for:

• Continuing employment at an interesting, socially- and ecologically-conscious company...
• ... with interesting coworkers
• Tasty dead sea-creatures, and stores that sell them, conveniently close to the house.
• Sale prices at Southwest Airlines, just when I need them.
• Colleen's improving health.
• Friends and family (including family of choice)