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desperanceSo some days are not easy, as we know. In despite of sunshine and everything. Yesterday, f'rexample. Was not an easy day. I made it through, mostly by dint of things beginning with W - "wife" would be in that list, and "wine" too, plus of course whining and whimpering and other makeweights (I am a disgrace to my nation, in the matter of stiff-upper-lippery), plus a whole lot of watching-the-Olympics. I have even forgiven them beach volleyball: I still say it's silly, but hey.
Today I'm doing better, I think, by and large. Karen's working from home, which always helps; and I had a scary encounter with the immigration service, where they fingerprinted and photographed me and took my word for it about height and weight and eye-colour and hair ("bald" was rather pleasingly an option, but we decided to go with "gray"), so that's behind me now. And lunch involved a lot of chillies, which is kinda like self-medicating (on the whole, I have found hot foods here to be disappointingly not-hot; the stand-out exception so far is good Chinese, where they have a very liberal hand with the whole dried chillies: in this instance, Chef Yu's orange-peel beef, om nom). And any minute now I get to open my first beer, which is nothing like self-medicating at all, oh no, it's a purely professional act. I drink, therefore I work.
And. Of course I have strategies, evolved almost unconsciously over four decades and more. Little things, reminders. Perspective. I once made it through two tough years by reminding myself daily that Jeffrey Archer was still in jail. Totally put a skip in my step, every morning.
Today, perspective is even easier than that. Who needs sacrificial lordships, when you have Curiosity? I lovety-love-love the fact that we've dropped a small smart car onto Mars, to pootle about and discover stuff for us. If you catch me being gloomy any time these next years, just point me to the skies.
Today's factoid: Gale Crater is named after Walter Frederick Gale, an amateur astronomer from Australia who totally believed in canals on Mars. I love that too, and do not care whether he recanted in later life. (Steampunk Mars: of course it has canals. And airships. Has anyone written it yet?)
Today I'm doing better, I think, by and large. Karen's working from home, which always helps; and I had a scary encounter with the immigration service, where they fingerprinted and photographed me and took my word for it about height and weight and eye-colour and hair ("bald" was rather pleasingly an option, but we decided to go with "gray"), so that's behind me now. And lunch involved a lot of chillies, which is kinda like self-medicating (on the whole, I have found hot foods here to be disappointingly not-hot; the stand-out exception so far is good Chinese, where they have a very liberal hand with the whole dried chillies: in this instance, Chef Yu's orange-peel beef, om nom). And any minute now I get to open my first beer, which is nothing like self-medicating at all, oh no, it's a purely professional act. I drink, therefore I work.
And. Of course I have strategies, evolved almost unconsciously over four decades and more. Little things, reminders. Perspective. I once made it through two tough years by reminding myself daily that Jeffrey Archer was still in jail. Totally put a skip in my step, every morning.
Today, perspective is even easier than that. Who needs sacrificial lordships, when you have Curiosity? I lovety-love-love the fact that we've dropped a small smart car onto Mars, to pootle about and discover stuff for us. If you catch me being gloomy any time these next years, just point me to the skies.
Today's factoid: Gale Crater is named after Walter Frederick Gale, an amateur astronomer from Australia who totally believed in canals on Mars. I love that too, and do not care whether he recanted in later life. (Steampunk Mars: of course it has canals. And airships. Has anyone written it yet?)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-08 02:29 pm (UTC)