This is the muse I thought of last week and almost lost due to the brain suckage at work. I seriously think I’d be better off if I moved into the stairwell with just my laptop and a recliner. Anyways, I’m having a discussion with someone last week and something occurs to me. There are lots of people, more and more every year that are going into science related fields. Things like Comp Sci, EE, ME and even things like chem., bio and medicine. That’s fine, don’t get me wrong, but the thing that worries me is an almost complete disregard for what might be referred to as ‘classical studies’ – How many people do you know that majored in History? Anthropology? Archeology? Right. And how many of them serve you fries on your way home? I wonder if our society is becoming so technically slanted that classical studies are in jeopardy of being lost. I know, there are a few stalwart holdouts that still believe that 17th century poets are worth of study, but by and large, I worry that in 50 years, we’re not going to have people digging in Egypt, piecing together lost civilizations in the Amazon, or poring over ancient latin texts by candlelight at Miskatonic U. Do you think that’s a valid concern? I mean, I don’t specifically have a use for someone to translate ancient greek and Aramaic texts to me, but I feel content somehow knowing that there are people out there who can. The next time I’m confronted with a star vampire, or a copy of De Vermis Mysteriis, I might need that person, unlikely as such an occurance would be. And if that person doesn’t exist… then what?

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I swear, the train is like my muse. If I ever get around to having time to write on a regular basis, I’m going to move to Toronto and just ride the subway all day. Stop at union station and get a bite to eat at lunch, then go down south, take the bloor/spadina transfer to the e/w train and ride it all the way to eglington station and back, every day, I’d love to ride the underground in London too, especially after reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman There’s so many interesting names.. Earl’s Court, Blackfriars Bridge, Angel Station. Anyways, back to my inspirational thoughts. I have these two books, both by an author named Roger Von Oech, and they’re great, they’re about getting out of your rut (mentally speaking) and thinking creatively. And in it, he talks about one of his clients who, upon entering the shower every morning, had a 20 minute mental dump of ideas. It was the time of day when he was most creative and generated his new ideas. So he purchased a piece of Lucite and mounted it in his shower, and got a grease pencil so that he could note down all of his great ideas. Now, all the great Ideas I have come either when I’m a) asleep, or b) drunk. I remember the time I thought of sending out for teryaki wings on new years. Man, that was a great idea. But my brain seems constantly stuck in idle, especially once I get to my entropy pod at work, except when I’m on the train. Then I get to wondering and thinking and looking. Sometimes I do the crossword or one of those mental puzzles in the paper, that’s cool, expand my mind a bit. Sometimes I just stop and stare. But always I’m alert, feeing good and mentally there. I had a thought that I wanted to blog about last week and I filed it away to do so, but of course, I got to work and IT got to me. If only I could exploit a handy tesseract and find something interesting to do with my day. I’m available to save the world if anyone needs a hero, Monday-Friday, 7:30-4pm, Saturdays by appointment. Enough rambling.

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It’s a bright and early Monday morning on the train and I’m already stressing about all the things I need to do this week. I have a ton of stuff that needs to be done, and a ton of stuff I want to do and I seriously dout that I’m going to have time to do it all. One of the cool things about knowing my laptop so well and being able to touch type and being able to keep track of all my thoughts is that I can still watch the people on the train and type at the same time. I even get a remarkably low error rate without looking at the screen. I’m also annoyed at this guy who is next to me on the train. He’s some little dude wearing a Cisco jacket and carrying a cisco backpac and he’s yelling at people on his phone, sending out bad vibes to me and everyone else on the train. I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t need anymore bad karma in my life J.. I know too, that karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos, but I still feel like Osmosis is one of the really under-researched phenomena on the planet. I can remember taking Science in grade 9 and learning about it.. Osmosis is the process where something moves from an area of high concentration into an area of low concentration. so like if you put a half of a potato sticking out of a bowl of colored or acidic water, then over time the color or acid will be drawn up into the parts of the potato that aren’t actually touching it. Most of my high school and college career were spent learning by osmosis.. I’d go to classes and lectures, and carry around incredibly heavy texts with a ton of information, and somehow it seeped into my brain. I finally flunked out of college when I stopped going to class and buying textbooks, so that could indirectly prove that my theory is correct. Anyways, back to the dude on the train. I don’t know what it is about someone who pollutes my noise-space with angry phone conversations that bothers me so much, but I guess I always look forward to the train ride as being relaxing, restful and some time to just collect my thoughts for the day/week. And when someone is really loud and rude next to me (not even to me) it still gets my goat. I may have written previously about my job and the desires and guilt that go along with it. Sometimes I dislike my job, and sometimes I love it, but I think that if I moved my family to Patmos and became a goatherd, there would be a lot less pressure in my life. As a penguin aptly puts it.. “Time, Heat and Pressure… the same things that make a diamond, also make… a waffle?” That’s me. A technogeek waffle. Another prophet of slackerdom, a disciple of Zen-iPodism and a seeker of new knowledge.

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When my daughter comes in to our room at 4:40AM and says ‘Daddy, I’m poopie’ and it turns out that her explosive diharrea has struck again, you just give sleep a passing ‘goodbye’ and climb out to meet the day, since things can’t get any worse. If I never have to deal with an expelled bodily fluid again, it’ll be too soon.

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So I’m giving the bean a bath last night, and I’m sitting on the toilet reading, and she slides open the door on the tub and says “daddy”. I turn and say “What honey?” and she opens her mouth and proceeds to projectile vomit all over the bathroom. Suspicious since all she had for dinner was 1/2 glass of milk and about 4 bites of a sandwich. Then I notice a LOT of multi-colored candy shell bits. Like a couple handfuls worth. I keep a gumball machine filled with Peanut M&M’s in my office.. and she apparently helped herself. then drank some bathwater. Ahh, the joy of a 2-year old with a belly ache.

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