Wrapping up

This is the last night before my last day of work for my current employer. I've got meetings from 8am to 6pm. I'm on the useless side of being burnt out & amped up. I'm on my work laptop, finishing the doc sort & cleaning up my desktop.

I've been a bit of a zombie at home lately, no energy for anything. That's too bad, too, because J's been working with folks on a dishy plan for this weekend's Solstice Parade. Something, something kazoos & "When the saints go marching in". I'll photograph it, found out I'm free on Saturday. That'll be fun, but in the meantime, I've been dodging all of the hubbub at home & pensively smoking on the front porch. After Sunday's dazzling wine spectacle, I'm leary of finding an exit for this tension. I want to do the right thing & this is nothing - no poke in the eye with a sharp stick, no juror duty on the MJ case, it's just not that big of a deal.

I made a tactical error, photo-wise. Took hundreds of shots & expediently plopped them on my work computer. They total almost a gig of space, so it won't be easy to shift them from one computer to another. I tried e-mailing them and it added up to 4 images per mail...

Waiting for the images to load, dum de dum.

I'm distracting myself with macabre web sites. Yesterday it was the Rwandan & Armenian genocides - Romeo Dallaire's story of his struggle to save 10's of thousands of Rwandans was eerie & distinct -- the story of the Turkish atrocities against Armenians was quoted by Hitler as justification for targeting Jews before the Holocaust. I've always marveled and mourned at our ability as humans to destroy each other.

Tonight's content gets back to nature, animal attack-style. Being from a urban-outlying suburb, I was raised with little experience with nature - so little that my first trip across country was marked by constant comparisons to a local amusement park. "It looks like King's Dominion!" I would say, over & over again.

I'd like to think I've exposed myself to enough of the outdoors to forever shift that limited view - but I have quite aways to go. Recent conversations with folks who have spent plenty of time sailing (around Hawaii, Alaska & Washington) have brought up fascinating stories about sailing by grey whales (when they blow the plumes of water, it's really snotty & fishy smelling), watching orca attacks & even being the focus of a potential orca attack. It's not a direct shot from those stories to my curiosity about, say, crocodile attacks... it acts more as a remedy for that lurid tendency on my part.

I am no different than the folks watching America's Funniest Home Videos. A much more productive investigation of the animal kingdom happened earlier this week - or last week... Saturday, E & I reviewed the painted vulture, various dinosaurs & many monkey types. He's 5 & kept me company while other folks worked on a float & banners for this weekend's parade.

Well, I'll have to finish the photo project tomorrow. Browsers are closing down for the evening.