Journal Entries
Ascension Day (long) weekend
Posted May 28, 2003
Off to Sweden in about 2½ hours. No computer (no electricity in fact, though all other facilities are just fine), mobile phones mostly switched off...
Lots of quiet and relaxation and lots of 
...
Back Sunday evening 
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Latest reply: May 28, 2003
Blimey, we got out!
Posted May 21, 2003
The trade show exibition at the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology ended today at four in the afternoon. About six o'clock, about 6,000 people starting coming into the very same convention center for a fundraising dinner with no less than US President George W. Bush.
So all the distributors were packing up and wanting nothing more than getting out and away after a 3 days trade show - while a lot of people were pouring in. And at the same time, obviously, Secret Service was all over the place, controlling and ensuring that nobody was smuggling in any explosive devices.
Our problem was that we needed my colleague to get his car into the loading dock area of the Convention Center to get the stuff in the car so that we could leave. And late - very late - we were told that all car access would be disallowed from 5:30 to 8:30 (or 17:30 to 20:30 if you're so inclined 
). Did we want to hang around for three extra hours? No, not really...
John actually talked his way past one regular police guy ("with a cap about three sizes too big") and one Secret Service guy and managed to get into the loading dock at about 5:35.
10 minutes later, the stuff was in the car and we drove out - with a polite wave to the 3-4 dark suited guys now in attendance at the gates.
Phew 
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Latest reply: May 21, 2003
I have this problem...
Posted May 20, 2003
No, no - not *that* kind of problem
Thing is, my writing doesn't do well at the moment. Usually, whenever I experiece something just a bit out of the ordinary, I have the words starting spinning around ín my head, forming patterns, sentences, creating the flow of a story.
Actually, to me, that is the very difference between telling a story and merely reading out a sequence of events that happened, one after the other - that the words make up a natural flow almost by themselves.
And they don't at the moment.
There are lots of words - plenty, if not too many. But they don't connect well. I guess it's like the poem itch that Titania wrote about recently - only a little different
I have been walking up and down quite a few sidewalks in Washington these last few days trying to find out why. I mean, I have had impressions and experiences here that felt like they should lead to a journal entry right out of the hat, so to speak - but as I got nearer to the laptop and the keyboard, they got stuck in my throat or wherever it is words get stuck when you're supposed to start writing them. I didn't even get as far as the blank whiteness of the Journal Entry field.
The most probable guess I have as to what's blocking the precious words (precious in the sense that they mean a lot to me, not necessarily that the world are going to rejoice in hallelujas on reading them ) is that I have a couple of rather major decisions hovering, waiting to be made. Not life-dramatic ones but rather important and demanding ones anyway.
I hope it's that. Because once I figure out what to do with those, they can be squared away and leave the door free for the words. That's the theory at last.
Maybe this entry - which has taken a lot few more backspaces and empty stares into the stylistic orchid on the wall in front of me than an entry usually does - can be therapeutic and puncture the block.
That would be good
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Latest reply: May 20, 2003
Travelling again
Posted May 16, 2003
...this time to Washington DC. Leaving Saturday (tomorrow) morning, back again Fri 23...
If the hotel lives up to its promises, I'll have broadband Internet access
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Latest reply: May 16, 2003
A springtime sensation
Posted Apr 29, 2003
When my alarm clock went off this morning, I had not finished sleeping! From long experience, however, the necessary steps has been engraved into my brain so my body is completely able to go through the morning routines by itself. No amount of warm water was able to make any significant impact on sleepiness that lay upon me - so I was still yawning and stretching when I came down the stairs to take the dog out.
Whenever I come home in the afternoon, Castor jumps all over the place, pants maniacally, barks and whimpers, wags his tail starting from somewhere around the shoulders - a full, happy, high-energy welcome. That's flatcoats for you! In the morning, however, he just jumps to his feet, sneezes a few times and trots off towards the rear door. Maybe dogs also work on morning routine levels?
It rained. Not cats and dogs, just a very insistent drizzle. The kind that leaves you wet inside half an hour. The Rain God would have a number for it. 117, very likely...
Dog into the car, me into the car. Off to the nearby forest. A big yawn took me out of the car, the dog took off. A rainy morning forest contains all sorts of exiting smells for his nose. I really believe it's the equivalent to me reading the morning paper when I get back...
I started walking slowly down the regular path, looking a bit around for the appearance of spring proper - the light green colour of budding beech tree leaves. Surely, as for the last few days, you could see a few of the youngest, thinnest trees being green - and the large trees beginning to show leaves on the lowest branches. It seems as if the light and warmth of spring make the saps rise slowly from the ground, making the leaves come out slowly from the bottom to the top...
Through the pine part of the forest. No green leaves here - just the usual dark green of the needles. Walking through the next patch of beech, I realised that the birds were really at it. Larks, sparrows, blue tits - I don't know the voices of each of them well enough to tell them apart. But they were chirping away rather loudly - whether it was to lure this season's only one to their nest or to mark a hardly earned territory I don't know. Or maybe just to wake me up - anyway, I did allow myself a little warm smile.
Then, turning right down a different path - BANG! A bolt of sheer green jolted my retina and stopped me dead in the tracks. A big beech, by the size of it surely 100 years old or more, was all covered in delicately green leaves. Standing amidst all the other dark trunks with only a little bit of green here and there, the sight was spectacular enough to stop my breath for a moment. Wow...
I tend to think of the forest as My Forest - at least at that time of day. I see deer for a moment or two far more often than I see other human beings down there at that time of morning.
Spring has come to My Forest at last
Discuss this Journal entry [24]
Latest reply: Apr 29, 2003
Santragenius V
Researcher U62867
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