May 15, 2001 — These pleasures a wayward distraction

I took out my copy of Touching from a Distance, Deborah Curtis' biography of Ian Curtis and of Joy Division, today. And I've listened to Closer over a half-dozen times since yesterday. I don't know what it is about the summer that makes Joy Division seem an excellent soundtrack to life. Perhaps I'm trying to find some balance, what with all the sunlight and whatnot...

And on that note, I'm happy to announce the it was one year ago today that I posted my first journal entry on antigreg. I've been thinking about posting some of my pre-antigreg journal entries, too, but I've yet to work up the courage. I don't know if I could post them without substantial editing, anyway. But we'll see. I wish I'd planned a bit more in advance, but alas...

So, 256 journal entries later, was it worth it? (I don't know that I want to think about it too much.)

In any case, I rewarded myself for the one-year anniversary by waking up at 5:30 am and sauntering to work in a daze. I'm going to be spending the next three or four weeks making templates for French HTML pages. (They claim it will only be one week, but I think I'm being optimistic at four weeks -- things are looking pretty grim at this point.)

Instead of working with my normal view of the Albert Street exit of the Queensway, Ottawa's major highway, I was working at the far-from-downtown location for the day. And just so that I could be even more distracted than usual, two construction crews were working within my range of vision from my desk. My favourite game for the day was hoping that the workers digging a large hole the road would make a mistake that would cause a passing car to fall into said large hole. Like a cartoon car into a cartoon pothole. Well, that game and the, "I wonder if that large crane across the street could reach far enough to destroy the building that I'm in if it fell down" game. As I said, I preferred the former.

I had a subsidized bagel sandwich for lunch and then went for a walk in the woods around a nearby military hospital. There were signs up saying that it was a restricted zone of some sort, and I remembered having vague worries of being summarily cavity searched while walking through that area a couple of summers ago. Judging by the number of joggers that I always see in that area, though, I don't think that there was much to worry about.

After leaving work, I had fifteen minutes to scurry to the HMV in the Rideau Centre and to gaze at the wonder that is the first official Bran Van 3000 release in just under three years. I know that you probably all have your copies by now, but I still recommend that you too scurry to your nearest retailer of fine audio discs to purchase backup copies of the Astounded remix EP before they've run out.

It's getting late (10:30 pm marks a full hour after my bedtime), so I don't know that I want to go off on too many more tangents.

I'd never thought of the mathematics behind the phrase, "go off on a tangent," before. I think my life might finally be coming together...