Very secure...

I had to change a password yesterday. It’s a password for a system that I use daily so I’ll remember the new password after a few days of daily log-ins, but I just hate to change a familiar password. It's a disruption. It throws me off my game. 

The system rejected my first attempt to create a new password because it recognized it as an old password. “We’ve seen that password too many times before” the pop-up message read. Who’s “we,” I thought? Who’s seen it too many times? Not me, I tell you what. I’m very happy with that password. I like it just fine. In fact, it’s one of my very favorite passwords, which is why I keep trying to recycle it. Here’s an idea, Mr. Enterprise Solution: Suppose you let me decide when I’m tired of my password? 

The system didn’t like my second attempt either. “Choose something harder to guess.” Harder for whom, genius? If it’s hard for some hacker in the Caucasus to guess then it’s going to be dang-near impossible for me unless I write it down, and if I have learned anything in decades of yearly cybersecurity training, it’s that writing a password down is not a good idea. 

I finally came up with a new password that was acceptable to the very discerning password approving software or whatever it is, and bonus: The new password is hilarious. I cracked myself up with that password. I’m still laughing. I'm going to laugh my silly head off every time I log in now. 

Then I remembered that I had done the very same thing a few years ago in another enterprise system, and I laughed and laughed until the next day when I couldn’t remember the number and special character combination that accompanied my hilariously funny password, and I had to start all over. Determined not to let this happen again, I wrote down a hint for the new password (which is pure comedy gold I assure you). This is what it’s come to. I need a password for my password. It's a great system. Very secure. Very mindful. 

The prairie dogs on Main Street howl

I was going to swim tonight. Earlier today, I thought that I might have to work late, and then I didn’t.  So I drove home in the sultry early June sunshine, just imagining the first plunge into the cold water (yes, the water is cold again) and then the quiet and cool of the lap lane for 600 meters or so. 

The thunder started just a few minutes after I walked in the door. Thankfully, I hadn’t changed yet. I was a little disappointed but then I thought about all the things I could accomplish with the extra hour that I’d save by not going to the pool. 

I started folding laundry and paying bills and prepping dinner and watching the news. Yes, all four things at once. Then Senator John Thune showed up on a news broadcast, helpfully explaining that his North Dakota constituents need AR-15s to shoot prairie dogs and other pests. “What?” I thought.  “How big is a fucking prairie dog? Are they armed? Do they shoot back?”  South Dakota, I thought--who knew that it was so dangerous there, what with Tony the Prairie Dog Montana brandishing an assault rifle and screaming "Take a look at my little friend" to some poor innocent landowner of the Plains. And so I made this: 

Yes, I know. That took 15 minutes. In 15 minutes, I could have crossed off a whole bunch of to-do list items. On the other hand, I literally cried laughing when I was making this, and that’s 15 minutes well spent. No one laughs at my jokes like I do.  

Forecast tomorrow: Sunny, low 80s. It should be a good swimming day. 

Downtime

Monday: Christopher Columbus was a terrible person, and Columbus Day is a stupid, stupid holiday. But after years of 1099 contracting, I am grateful for any paid day off. I didn't do any work today. This does not count. Nor does the laundry.

Some of my friends have been urging me and other friends to do less. Reject chronic busy-ness, reject overwork and overscheduling, and just be. "You're a human being, not a human doing," they say. "You're a person, not a productivity machine." "You're allowed to exist without having anything to show for it."  All true, I suppose, but that's not how I live my life. It's not how I roll. Like Toad, I'm a veritable slave to my to-do lists; and when I'm not doing something, I worry that I should be.

But I didn't do any work today. I went shopping and bought some new things. I went for a walk and waved to Running Lady. I took a nap while my kids watched "The Office" on Netflix. I did some housework. I read a book. It was delightful.

Tuesday: The best thing about an officially sanctioned weekday off is that no one else worked, either; so you're not behind. Everything was just as I left it on Friday. If not for the password reset debacle, it would have been a good day.

But there was a password reset debacle, and I have only myself to blame for it. Last week, I had to reset my password for the timecard system. Yes, that timecard system. I was sad that I had to reset the password, because first of all I hate resetting a password like I hate rodents and invasive medical procedures. And because my old password was awesome, comprising a sharply worded insult to the company that invented the timecard system and the required capital letter, number, and special character. It made me laugh every time I logged in, and that's worth something.

But I had to change it. And I decided to outdo myself and make an even funnier password. And so I did. I created a funny funny password, and I confirmed the funny password, and I completed the captcha, chortling with glee the whole time. What could have gone wrong? What could I have possibly have forgotten?

Yes, the super-creative password is the Internet version of hiding something so well that you'll never ever find it. I played chicken with the log-in screen, refusing to click on the stupid stupid "forgot your password?" link, knowing all the time that it would lock me out after too many unsuccessful attempts. And I made too many unsuccessful attempts, and it locked me out. And that was the end of that.

So after the system administrator bailed me out of Internet jail, I created a new password. And I wrote it down.

Which is good. Because it's hilarious.

*****

Thursday: I didn't actually skip a day here; I just wrote something that is becoming a little too long to be just a daily journal entry, so I'll expand on it a bit and post it next week. I'm sure you're all agog waiting to read it.  

Dum-Dums and Bolsheviks

My husband, as my sons and almost-5-year-old nephew settle down to watch "Guardians of the Galaxy 2": Be careful with this movie. It might not be appropriate for him.

Almost 5-year-old nephew, loudly, about five minutes in: Showtime, A-Holes!

Me: Too late.

Next time I have to run a meeting for the government client (oh my God, the meetings and the PowerPoint presentations), I think that will be my introduction. In fact, "Showtime, A-Holes" might be my first PowerPoint slide.

*****

I work in a pretty large office building that sits on the edge of the Twinbrook neighborhood in Rockville, Maryland. Twinbrook was built just after World War II, as the flood of returning soldiers gave rise to a housing shortage, which was mitigated by construction of what used to be called "tract houses." The streets are named for World War II sites and battles and military figures: Ardennes Avenue, Marshall Avenue, Farragut Avenue, Halsey Road, Midway Avenue.

Most of the houses in Twinbrook are small; 3-bedroom saltbox-style houses on 1/4-acre plots. After 60-plus years, the neighborhood, filled with mature-growth trees and shrubs and flower gardens (some better-tended than others) is a riot of growth during a rainy spring.

The residential part of Twinbrook gives way very suddenly and abruptly to a burgeoning business district surrounding the Twinbrook Metro stop. For people who don't live in Rockville, I suppose it's just the opposite--the place where they work turns very suddenly into a mid-century residential neighborhood filled with the kind of homes that some journalists would condescendingly describe as "modest." I don't live in Twinbrook, but I live just 15 minutes away in a neighborhood not unlike it. So for me, it's the former--it's as if I'm out for my usual walk and I turn the corner and there's a 10-story office building two doors away from a neighbor's house.

Oddly enough, the business district doesn't appear to encroach upon the neighborhood, nor the reverse. A residential neighborhood is very peaceful during the middle of a weekday, and I like to walk for a few minutes at lunchtime, both for exercise and to gather my energy for the afternoon. Just a few steps away from the building, the street feels completely suburban and residential, so much so that more than once, I've turned around to return to the office and feared for a moment that I walked too far to get back in time for an afternoon meeting. It's the trees--the curtain of green completely blocks the view beyond a few steps, making it impossible to see the rest of the neighborhood beyond the block where you're standing. It's like you can't see the forest for the trees; or more accurately, you can't see the trees for the lack of forest.

*****
All of that? Apropos of nothing. Description for its own sake.

*****
Me to coworker: There's a big basket of candy in the kitchen.
Coworker: I saw it, but it's just a big pile of Dum-Dums.
Me: There's a lot of good stuff in there, too. You just have to dig past the Dum-Dums.

And is that not a metaphor for life itself?

*****
I'm reading A Gentleman in Moscow, as my friend recommended. She didn't steer me wrong. I'm only about 20% in, and I'm all agog. It's like reading a Wes Anderson movie: A quirky Russian nobleman befriends a sassy 9-year-old Ukrainian girl, and the two of them explore every corner of the huge Moscow hotel where the nobleman is under lifetime house arrest. It's all fun and games now, of course, but I'm afraid to keep reading. No good ever comes of a Russian nobleman once the Bolsheviks get hold of him.

It's Saturday morning now. I watched some of the royal wedding, though not live. In 1981, I watched the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana live, but I was a teenager and it was summer. Full-time working mothers don't wake up at 4:30 on Saturdays unless we have to. Anyway, it was lovely, and the gospel choir singing "Stand by Me" made me proud to be American. If pressed, I couldn't come up with a single reasonable practical justification for the existence of the royal family. But not everything is meant to serve a practical purpose.  If the Bolsheviks had understood that, then a lot of suffering could have been avoided. But as Isabelle Sallafranque tells Princess Luba Couranoff in another of my favorite novels, there had to be a revolution.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic: The Holy Roman Empire--Neither holy, nor Roman. Discuss.

I have reached a novel-writing impasse.  I had to skip a chapter and start an altogether-new one, completely out of sequence, because I just can't figure out what's supposed to happen at the end of the last one. I don't know what that means.  I'm going to just keep writing stuff.  It'll turn itself into a novel.  That happens all the time, I'm sure.

*****
Sometimes, you think you know who's calling, so you answer the phone with a funny greeting.  And sometimes, the person on the other end is not the person you expected.  And then you feel silly.

That was just a general observation about something that happens sometimes.  Not a dear-diary entry about something that I actually DID.

*****

Random questions, addressed to no one in particular, and certainly not to anyone in my household:

1. Is the concrete floor of the not air conditioned and not especially clean garage the best place to store a watermelon?  Or any other food?

2. When you cook something with a cookie sheet, should you then clean the cookie sheet, or return it quietly to the oven, crumby and just slightly crusty?

3. If you have an extra $5,000 hanging around, because the Brinks truck is always backing up to your house and dropping stacks of cash in the driveway, is expensive jewelry not just as good an investment as a 36-year-old Mercedes convertible with a rust spot on the hood?

Purely rhetorical questions.

*****

But even rhetorical questions can be answered, right? In a purely rhetorical sense?

1. No.  Come on.
2. What the hell? I mean, COME ON.
3. Come on, man.

*****

I'm reading a book about the Rothschilds.  As much as I love history, I am terrible on details, especially details about European dynasties, and ESPECIALLY Hanoverian and Saxonian and Prussian kings and princes and electors and Thanes of Cawdor and whoever else ruled those itty-bitty Germanic roosts.  And there were a lot of Rothschilds, too, who were fond of a few family names that were handed down from generation to generation.  I'm going to keep reading, because it's interesting, but don't ask me details about which Rothschild advised which Wilhelm of Fill-in-the-Blank German hamlet, because it's all a little fuzzy.

*****
Sometimes, if you just stand in front of your computer and write about whatever pops into your mind, you'll clear all of the mental cobwebs,  and the resulting moment of crystal clarity will lead you to the solution to your writing problem.  And sometimes, you'll just end up with a pile of old cars, overripe fruit, inadvertent reverse prank calls, and Hohenzollerns.

I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name

Dear Claire,

We are potstickers.  Aptly named, we stick to pots.  Show us a pot, and we'll stick to it with a tenacity that would put a bulldog with a bone to shame. None of us even finished elementary school, let alone a university degree in the English language, but we're smart enough to know what something called a "POT-STICKER"  plans to do. 

Here's the thing:  We didn't deceive you.  We didn't try to conceal our true nature.  With our name, we made our intentions quite clear.  So when you cook a bunch of us and then leave us in a big bowl while you go off to chop vegetables, it seems rather foolish (one might even say "asinine" or "idiotic") that you would then react with shocked and outraged chagrin when you find that we have, in fact, stuck to the pot.  The name is not symbolic in any way; nor is it an ironic, postmodern challenge to would-be deconstructionists.  Honestly, we are just not that sophisticated.  The name "potsticker" was meant to be interpreted in the most literal sense.  "Potsticker" = "That which sticks to the pot".

We apologize for any misunderstanding.  In future dealings with us, do try to remember that when confronted with a pot, any pot, we will stick to it with single-minded determination.  Barnacles will be scraped off the hull of a shipwreck more easily than we will be separated from the pot to which we stick.  It's called a raison d'etre.  Look it up, genius.

Yours sincerely,
The Potstickers
(we stick to pots)

Version control

There's this thing, see, called NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month.  It starts on November 1 each year; the idea is that you should commit to writing every day during the month of November, and by the end of the month, you should have a 50,000-word novel, give or take.

November, first of all, is just a hideous month in which to try to do anything major.  I suppose that writing a book would fall under the heading of "Something Major."  It also falls under the headings of "What the Hell Am I Thinking?" "I Need My Damn Head Examined," and "Bad Ideas: Part Ten Million"  Since, however, easily half of the things that I have done in my life also fall under all these last three headings, I won't be deterred.  What could go wrong?

Perhaps, if you're reading this, you have looked at a calendar and correctly observed that it's not November just yet.  In un-typical fashion, I'm thinking ahead.   I started this project last year, on November 1, and ended up with many pages of draft material that in no way form anything resembling a novel, but which contain quite a few salvageable bits and pieces that I can work into this  year's magnum opus.  Silver linings are everywhere, and while I'm almost entirely lacking in focus and concentration, I do possess better-than-average organizational skills and an excellent memory.  So I can find, pretty quickly, the pages of dialogue and the street scene descriptions from early novel chapters from last year, and part of a story that I wrote for my last class at UMUC, all in different folders, each with several individual versions, and copy, paste, and rework the parts that will be useful for this latest attempt. 

Meanwhile, a POV change from first-person to semi-omniscient third-person has revolutionized the whole thing, and so now, I might have not only snappy dialogue, but an actual story, in which things actually happen.  If not, then at least I'll get to re-read some funny things that I wrote last year.  I should be ashamed of this, but I laugh uproariously at my own jokes.  I might or might not have a novel by the end of next month, but at least I'll be entertained by my funny funny self.  I really might need my head examined. 

Mise en scene

Among the occupational fantasies that I occasionally have (A teacher!  I should be a teacher!  No, I should have been an actress, but it's too late now.  Maybe an accountant!  I'm OK at math, and I'm very detail-oriented, but I do bounce checks...), jobs involving food almost never appear.  I don't really mind cooking that much, but I do hate to plan menus.  I think that I lack food imagination, and this is why it's always so hard for me to figure out what to make for dinner for today or for the week.

My husband came shopping with me one day last week.  This is rare.  I was happy to have help carrying the bags, but even happier to have help with dinner ideas.  "What do you want me to make for dinner tonight?"  I asked as we walked through the store.

"Oh, whatever you want is fine," he said.

"Wrong answer,"  I said.  "I need specific ideas."

"I don't know.  Whatever you make is good.  I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Nope," I said.  "Try again.  Remember: SPECIFIC."

He sighed.  "OK, how about tacos?  And that shrimp thing you make sometimes.  Can you make that this week?"

The tacos and shrimp dish idea gave me an idea for a third dinner menu, and I left the store with the very satisfying knowledge that I had dinner menus planned and supplied for the next three days.

The next morning, planning for how to manage work, volunteer work, and kids' activities, while still getting halfway decent meals on the table, I thought of doing several days' worth of prep work all at once.  Having cleaned out the refrigerator during the previous week, I had a beautiful cabinet full of clean and well-organized containers with matching lids.  45 minutes later, I had a beautiful refrigerator shelf stacked with containers filled with chopped red and green pepper, diced onion, chunks of cantaloupe and watermelon, sliced tomatoes and avocados, and neat little fluffy broccoli heads.  So pretty, in fact, that I hated the thought of having to use any of it, because it was so nice to open my refrigerator and see something that I could proudly show to any visiting nutritionists or diet experts.  That happens all the time.

"Prep cook," I thought!  "The perfect job!  Just me in the kitchen with my exemplary hand-washing habits and my outstanding knife skills!"

Two days later, I had more onions to chop.  This time, I couldn't summon the project-related energy and excitement.  I was no longer an expert prep cook, presiding over a perfect mise en place.   I was another sucker stuck in the kitchen, wiping away onion tears.  So much for occupational fantasies.  I'll stick with what I know, and what I know is that I am very good at cleaning the house.  I could probably turn that into a business.

Biology Insults

1. "Stick that in your thylakoid disk and photosynthesize it".

2.

Well, that's one, anyway.  Use it the next time some smug, supercilious specimen of plant life offends decent people everywhere with its insufferable autotrophic boasts.  Autotrophs, are you? You can create your own food out of nothing, can you?  So if I just switch off the sun, and then take away your CO2 producers, you'll still be as green as the day you sprouted, will you?  Let me know what your ficus has to say to that.  Nothing, that's what it has to say.  As it sits there, rooted in its soil, speechless in the face of the hard truth you've just laid on it, that's when you say "so stick that in your thylakoid disk and photosynthesize it,"  Then tell it it reminds you of some algae that used to grow in your pool.  BURN!

Well, maybe you don't want to descend to that level.  (Not that I'm worried about the plant's feelings. That ficus is no better than algae, and I can tell you that I'd sooner associate with some decent algae I've met than with some of the trash I see at the plant nursery.)  But if you have your own pool, do you need to tell the whole damn world about it?  Tone it down, One Percent.

Higher Education and Suits in Chancery

I'm studying Biology now.  I've spent about 30 minutes distracting myself online, and now I have to update my blog (because my reading public, left hanging since mid-December, anxiously awaits a new installment) and then I'll fold the clothes in the dryer and maybe run the vacuum, so that after a full 70 or so minutes of thinking about preparing to study, I'll have actually begun to study.

Full disclosure: I abandoned that last paragraph in mid-sentence, studied for a while, did who even knows what else, and then returned to finish this post about 8 hours later.  Adult ADD is no joke.  This is why it has taken me 27 years (which, in fairness, includes a 20-year total hiatus) to finish my undergraduate degree.  But finish I shall, in about 3 months.  I'll take the CLEP Biology exam in February, then I'll take my very last class.  This is official; my adviser has confirmed that I correctly interpreted my most recent degree audit and that I'm really and truly almost done.

I'm reading Bleak House now.  I don't know if Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce will ever settle but I know now that at least some things come to an end.  I'm just not sure what I'll do when it does.

(Full diclosure #2: I went back to read a post from my old blog and found a tag that, when I wrote it, made me laugh myself silly.  Having forgotten about it for 3 years and seeing it again, I laughed just as hard.  At least one person thinks I'm HILARIOUS.)