How Do It Know?
2005-10-24, 15:07

Witness the inauguration of good tea at work.

The coffee/hot water machine at work, frankly, sucks. It seems like there's someone in every other day working on the thing for one reason or another. And this one we just got recently to replace the really bad one we had before. I truly do not understand why it is we keep this company from whom I assume we rent the machine. There are a lot of tea drinkers in the office, so hot water is a priority. Unfortunately, the hot water we get only fills half a mug, and what's there has an ever-so-slight brown tinge to it and has floaties in it from previous coffee-making processes. I can only imagine what's in the coffee itself that you can't see. Blech.

So on Friday I finally broke down and got myself a Thermos - one of those briefcase-style metal ones that holds about two cups of water. Now I'm premaking an extra batch of tea in the morning and carrying it with me to work. And since I still have a travel-like-a-college-student lifestyle, the side pouch on my backpack holds the thing nicely. Now I just need to remember to wash the thing out after I empty it, lest it get funky and less desirable to use. Once it gets to the point where the water from the coffee machine is preferable, I will have known my failure.

I also need to remember that a Thermos has one of two specific tasks - to keep things hot (the other being, of course, to keep things cold - which brings up the age-old question, "How do it know?"). Thus, when one pours one's self a fresh cup from said thermal preservation unit, one should not try to gulp down a swig immediately and, thus, set one's head aflame. Not recommended. I'm sure the tip to my tongue will regain its ability to taste in a few days.

I've been toying with the idea of trying to get myself caught up in something next month called NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. The idea is to, starting on the midnight of November 1st, to write 50,000 words of novel before midnight of December 1st. While the concept sounds daunting, when you break it down to the idea of needing to just write 1600-2000 words, or 2-3 pages, a day, it doesn't sound so bad. And since there's no judging of what exactly it is you're writing (the text isn't read, merely words counted up at the end of the time period), it could literally (pun not intended) be about anything. This sounds fun in the short term, and I'm sure that, like a lot of people who do this, I'll crank out a bunch of pages at the outset and fizzle out half way through the month. And I'll also feel guilty about potentially neglecting other things I should be doing instead of exploring a creative outlet. After all, who am I to let art interfere with my daily routine and responsibilities to others?

Oh, that's right - I'm me. I could use a little more me occasionally, instead of what passes for the 'me' that oozes up in the cracks between What Must Be Done.

Poor little one's teething again. Poor us, too. She's stuffy and has been having trouble falling asleep because of it. If she can' suck on her woobie and breathe at the same time, it spells doom for the lot of us. We broke down and gave her some decongestant and it seemed to do her some good. I'm pretty sure she only woke up once during the night, that I can remember. Luckily it wasn't my turn to get up. The whole tooth issue made her a pretty unfriendly monkey for most of the evening. It makes it more frustrating because, with time limited by work, you want every moment spent together to be meaningful, special, amazing and whatnot. But days like that will happen. I find myself trying to keep myself from wishing her past her teething, because that in turn wishes her older, which in turn makes it that much less time that she will be my precious Little Monkey. Trying as these times can be, I don't want to wish away one second.

-- End Transmission --