one thousand umbrellas upturned
hey. been feeling pretty stressed these days, i suppose a combination of project pressures, upcoming family trip, and money. hard to keep all that stuff in perspective.
i should be excited about traveling to hanover this weekend for our youngest niece's bat mitzvah, the fourth and final in a series of opulent coming-of-age celebrations (well, fifth and penultimate when our sons' confirmations are taken into account, which they should be, albeit there is less opulence in our household). instead i am anxious about having all the right clothes for everyone, and getting through all the airports with this latest escalation of security.
i should be excited about finalizing the calibration of the st. louis water quality models, with all their intracacies and subtleties. instead i am anxious about getting a draft of the report out near the end of next week, given that the models are not really calibrated, to say nothing of the trial runs without combined sewer overflows.
i should be excited about traveling to west virginia for the CSO LTCP workshops we are doing for EPA. instead i am anxious about the worthiness of the LTCP-EZ form we developed, and the time away from working on the st. louis modeling report (not to mention the models), and then there is the whole flying thing.
i should be excited about revisiting the calibration of the ECOMSED model of the upper mississippi river. that is some meaty work there, lots of delving into the model code and doing brainy thinking about sediment transport formulations. but i pretty much have to turn the job over to somebody else.
so yeah, there is anxiety where there should be excitement, or at least eagerness to get on with the day. but at least i had one of those moments, when first jumping on the bike and pedalling silently down the street, threading between the dead and dying ash trees and glancing up at the patches of blue sky appearing for the first time in days, the patches that a few hours ago were peppered instead with stars, the stars random on their own but my brain having no trouble filling in the missing stars to make the constellation orion, my brain knowing that it's time to start seeing orion out the front door in the morning when i grab the paper, orion no longer visible in the scattered blue light by the time i jump on the bike and begin the silent pedalling between the ash trees, silent except for that whisper of tire noise and possibly the slap of a wet leaf grabbed by the tire and slapped against the fender as it comes around, and in those moments of silence and whispers and blue and green and brown, and the occasional, possible slap, i remember that there is a perfection unaffected by my anxiety, if i can just get past it for those moments.
so yeah i like to ride my bike.
the trip to midland was epic, maybe i'll write about it another time. it was all rain and sky and long-legged birds, concluding with a broken rear spoke about three miles from the end, after riding 115 miles i break a spoke, so somebody's god must have been looking after me, even while somebody else's god was preparing to smite me for my history of moral turpitude, or to turn me into a pillar of salt, or yellowcake, or whatever material might expediently serve the needs of this particular god's most blessed and beloved children, the other children be damned.
=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=
i should be excited about traveling to hanover this weekend for our youngest niece's bat mitzvah, the fourth and final in a series of opulent coming-of-age celebrations (well, fifth and penultimate when our sons' confirmations are taken into account, which they should be, albeit there is less opulence in our household). instead i am anxious about having all the right clothes for everyone, and getting through all the airports with this latest escalation of security.
i should be excited about finalizing the calibration of the st. louis water quality models, with all their intracacies and subtleties. instead i am anxious about getting a draft of the report out near the end of next week, given that the models are not really calibrated, to say nothing of the trial runs without combined sewer overflows.
i should be excited about traveling to west virginia for the CSO LTCP workshops we are doing for EPA. instead i am anxious about the worthiness of the LTCP-EZ form we developed, and the time away from working on the st. louis modeling report (not to mention the models), and then there is the whole flying thing.
i should be excited about revisiting the calibration of the ECOMSED model of the upper mississippi river. that is some meaty work there, lots of delving into the model code and doing brainy thinking about sediment transport formulations. but i pretty much have to turn the job over to somebody else.
so yeah, there is anxiety where there should be excitement, or at least eagerness to get on with the day. but at least i had one of those moments, when first jumping on the bike and pedalling silently down the street, threading between the dead and dying ash trees and glancing up at the patches of blue sky appearing for the first time in days, the patches that a few hours ago were peppered instead with stars, the stars random on their own but my brain having no trouble filling in the missing stars to make the constellation orion, my brain knowing that it's time to start seeing orion out the front door in the morning when i grab the paper, orion no longer visible in the scattered blue light by the time i jump on the bike and begin the silent pedalling between the ash trees, silent except for that whisper of tire noise and possibly the slap of a wet leaf grabbed by the tire and slapped against the fender as it comes around, and in those moments of silence and whispers and blue and green and brown, and the occasional, possible slap, i remember that there is a perfection unaffected by my anxiety, if i can just get past it for those moments.
so yeah i like to ride my bike.
the trip to midland was epic, maybe i'll write about it another time. it was all rain and sky and long-legged birds, concluding with a broken rear spoke about three miles from the end, after riding 115 miles i break a spoke, so somebody's god must have been looking after me, even while somebody else's god was preparing to smite me for my history of moral turpitude, or to turn me into a pillar of salt, or yellowcake, or whatever material might expediently serve the needs of this particular god's most blessed and beloved children, the other children be damned.
=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=o=<~°~>=
posted by cicadashell at
8:44 AM
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