Today

Well, that was a day.

It started with doing my taxes, always a thrill.  I should have done that over the weekend, but I tend to forget such tasks when involved in something more interesting, like the link round-up.  So I finally got it done this morning.  It's always more mentally draining than one expects, especially since they've redesigned the 1040 this year.  Getting a refund, by the way, is not actually a good thing as most people think it is.  It merely means you've been making an interest-free loan to the government all year.  Still, if I've got one coming, the sooner the better.

Then there was the snow.  Many of you who live in colder climates are used to the Devil's Dandruff, as I call it, but Portland only gets the damn stuff every two or three years and we are not geared for it.  What we usually get is an inch or so which melts when driven on and re-freezes into a thin layer of slippery ice which is hard to see -- and I leave for work about three-quarters of an hour before sunrise.  Today I started ten minutes early to allow time for cautious driving and a diversion to the post office to get those tax forms in the mail.

Things went fairly well to begin with -- the main roads had seen enough traffic that morning to wear away the ice in most places.  I had almost reached the post office and was just slowing down to let a bus pull out into traffic when there came a loud BANG and my car jolted forward about a foot.  The car behind had skidded on the ice and run into me.  There was no damage -- the speed of impact must have been pretty low, and the bumper did its job -- but it did not exactly contribute to a sense of tranquility.  That's the problem with situations like snow days -- no matter how careful you are, you're at the mercy of how careless everyone else is.

And they are.  Even on this icy morning, there were cars racing and weaving in and out, trying to get a few positions ahead at any cost.   I believe the technical term for this is "natural selection in action".  Or perhaps "please do that shit as far away from me as possible".

Anyway, I got to work without further collisions and settled in for eight hours of the usual charms of the modern office environment.  Half the people there do that thing where they lick their fingertip before leafing through a stack of papers -- some of which they then hand to you.  This has been the case at several companies I've been at.  Aside from being disgusting, it can't be hygienic.  No wonder colds and flu proliferate through these places like indictments through a Republican administration.

There were, of course, some people missing -- presumably stymied by more severe ice around where they lived -- and so I spent the whole day far busier than usual because I had to cover for one of them.  My arthritis seized the opportunity to stage a terrifically painful flare-up in my right hand, adding to the fun.  I survived the day by dint of as much ibuprofen as I could reasonably get away with (trading the pain for an upset stomach), finished what needed to get done, and set off for home.  The Devil's Dandruff, at least, was mostly gone.

A few minutes from the building there is a railway crossing which is very rarely in use.  Today, of course, it was down and flashing, stopping traffic for the passage of a freight train of exasperating slowness and unconscionable length.  On and on it flowed, car after car, like an endless industrial cosmic megaturd issuing eternally forth from some vast and unseen Gigeresque primordial anus.  There's no alternate route available which doesn't waste even more time, so I settled in to contemplate the passing glacier of rusted steel and graffiti.

But all bad things must come to an end, and eventually the train did, and I made it back home without attracting any meteors.  But, long story short, I am decidedly not in the mood for watching or analyzing whatever inane drivel Hair Furor Agolf Twitler flatulated out in his big speech today.  I'll be relaxing with a few art sites and Whitney Avalon videos and then going straight to sleep, and frankly I've earned it.