no more Frankie

• I was “un-friended” on Facebook yesterday. After the initial panicky shock, I set to figuring out who I’d lost. Weird how long it took. A good sort of weird, I suppose. Funny who the mind rushes to first. As it turns out, it was one of my first “friends” who was never really a friend at all – a guy from high school who I literally never remembered but who was sort of good looking and who our mutual friends said I would remember vaguely if I looked through the yearbooks...which I didn’t.... So, no big deal, right?
• I’ve been sleeping miserably. Can’t fall asleep, and when I do, my dreams are tormented and tormenting. I wake in the night and can’t get back to sleep. I prowl, seeking rest that will not come. My soul, I suppose, fighting back. Maybe I just got too much sleep while I was sick and my body’s equalizing things (if only that were so easy).
• I work with someone who inevitably makes things as complicated as possible. It’s not a gift–it’s a mission. It makes me completely nuts. You mention having seen a headline that read “solar flares,” and the next 6 hours are filled with neverending godawful questions. “What are solar flares? How do they work? Why does that happen? Are we in danger? Why do they call them that? Have you ever seen one? How does this affect my work? Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah???” It’s enough to make me wish that I never had to talk to her. Ever. EVER!
• I’m wearing pearl earrings today. These little dudes almost never make it out of the jewelry box. They’re beautiful, but not quite “me.” Even worse that they’re antique-looking, a vaguely yellow shade of cream. Further proof that my former spouse really didn’t understand (or listen when I very patiently struggled to explain) my taste.
• Speaking of the former spouse–I had a dream last night that he had died. It was VERY vivid. Very real. Very freaky. I’m not even sure that someone would let me know if he kicked the bucket, so it was creepy as hell. I woke up (at 3:15) thinking, “Dang. Is that true?” And who do you call at that point?
• The soap in the restroom at the place where I work smells strongly of coconut. Sometimes I think that it’s a toss-up whether that’s better than the alternative.
• The new UPS delivery person at my place of work is kind of a doofus, but I’m starting to think that might be preferable to the last regime. Quick-witted people have their own hidden dangers.
• I’ve developed a bizarre crush–more mental than physical–on this dude from this show. If you haven’t seen it (and who has, besides me?), ReGenesis is a Canadian [fictional] program about an independent science lab that investigates problems of a scientific nature, such as bio-terrorism, mysterious diseases or radical changes in environment throughout Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The show often addresses topical social, political and ethical issues related to the science at hand. It’s very liberal-preachy and almost unrelentingly dark. Two annoying facts: it runs at varying times mid-afternoons either Saturday or Sunday, so I miss it more often than I see it; and it is not available on Region 1 DVD. Still, I get enough of a fix now and then that I can’t help but love it. I’m a dork.
• I’m also becoming an even bigger fan of American Chopper. Who knew that I liked motorcycles this much? Well...that, too. There’s a weird sort of psychological–maybe sociological–motivator at work. It’s also a shockingly funny reminder of how the people that I know do not behave. Maybe we should, but we don’t. Anyway, if you can’t find me late at night, I’m probably glued to the activities of Rick or Paulie or Christian at OCC.
• There are certain specific ways in which my job is profoundly frustrating. Not the immediate circumstances–I’ve written about that part of it many times–but the greater issues of what I do and why it’s done this way. At the moment I’m struggling with the rationale behind two characters’ presence in my work life: ´ (acute accent) and / (Microsoft Word calls it ‘solidus’, which I’ve never seen before–I would call it “slash”). As with scads of other minutia, these two characters are imbued with meaning beyond their size and shape, and I wonder if perhaps something has been lost somewhere along the line. Does everyone who uses them understand how they are used, and why, and the incredibly important overall meaning behind their use? Why use one, why use the other, and why stay out of it if you don’t understand?
  And then I sit back and laugh, because I’m entirely too focused on two little punctuation marks. Sheesh.
• There’s been a meme questionnaire running around Facebook lately. You post a list of questions as a Note, and invite people (generally, or specifically by tagging them [linking to their profiles to draw attention to the post]) to answer those questions about you. It’s a way of figuring out if your friends really know you.
  It’s also a way of figuring out if your friends really give a crap. I was reluctant to post it because I’ve been feeling more than a little sorry for myself lately (just lately?) and didn’t want to heap more boo-hooing on the pile if I didn’t get the responses that I sought. I’m too much a fan of surveys and extracting information about myself from others, though, so I posted it Monday. Of the 8 people that I tagged, 2 have responded. (One additional person did, under separate cover.) Although the responses that I did get were wonderful and gratifying, I have to admit to some pique about the rest. I know it’s easy for me to bang out a response to something like that, but it isn’t exactly brain surgery for those that I tagged. I’m disappointed. I wonder if I can learn anything from this?
• What I’m reading: The Canal Builders by Julie Greene. Feeding my endless fascination with the Panama Canal.

Now, to sleep. Er, I mean, work. More work. Right.