A rainy night in a quiet city, nervous jitters. And, bless my soul, others...

BLOT: (28 Nov 2011 - 02:14:57 AM)

A rainy night in a quiet city, nervous jitters. And, bless my soul, others...

I feel nervous about rains, nowadays. Cold rains especially. This should not be a surprise since we are less than a full year away from The Leak, an event that has not yet resurfaced but much like a cheating spouse retained is always on short appraisal, well, this too. I do not suffer from SAD, not that I know of, and if anything I kind of like cold weather, dark weather, and wet weather, so a 1:30am rain shower should be a boon to my emotional state, and it almost is. However, between said above and some other bits from today, who knows. It feels weird.

Nearly the first act of today was me watching a couple of days old vlog entry by Wilum H. Pugmire: "Trying to Improve". He has had increasingly worse congestive heart failure and largely, it is sad to say, has come to think of it as "his time". My father went through a similar thing a few years back. Life had become almost unlivable for him. He was just giving up. My grandfather (as in, my father's father) I have heard a similar story about. When my father collapsed, around 2000 or so, he made it through some fast acting ICU work and after a year of hard recovery lived out life with a much more positive and active viewpoint than he had taken for a decade. Up until his sudden and fatal relapse in 2007 where his health declined so rapidly that putting off going to the doctor for only a weekend was too much. What I am saying is that congestive heart failure, the strong kind, seems to take your will as well as your health. Some of the things I have seen WHP write or have heard him say have matched the language I heard over a decade ago from my father. I am taking it as a precursor warning sign for myself.

Sadly, a day or two after making that post, Pugmire was hospitalized, though initially gloomy reports have been slightly more positive after some follow-ups. I'm rooting for him.

That double-whammy took out a chunk of what steam I might have had, and I did not have much, so today was mostly walking in a straight line while the rest of the world came through over an echoing void with occasional moments of warmth and sound. Overall, work was not too bad. We are nearing Finals, so it was busy and hectic and a bit draining, but on the positive side Finals are always a good time for a reference librarian to stretch his limbs a little. Very few actual reference questions, mostly of the sort that might be called "house keeping", where this or that is located or what to do with him or her. I spent a good deal of the time there working on a new system that I am not quite ready to go into, but will soon.

I have not talked about it much, but wanted to go ahead and let everyone know that to some degree the position I am currently working is being phased out. I am not sure how long I will work there, or if I will get a chance at a more permanent position, but for right now a lot of the tasks I am doing are akin to a tidying up. This unnamed project, if accepted, will possibly be the last big work I do for that library, a job that started out with a Big Task that I do feel I did admirably, but largely has been small things done correctly with much aplomb. Saying goodbye, assuming I am, is a bit sad, but I am enjoying the job simply in the moment. I have enjoyed it. Come what may, it is the job that showed that I work best as a librarian, though it is a shame to see the old reference and research branches of the profession being weeded out. I feel most alive when helping others find information they did not even know about. Heh, maybe I should form a company or something, a high class information research firm. I'm sure someone with more money and better brains has long beat me to it.

Speaking of things kind of like Sherlock Holmes, have made the shift from the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes TV series (1984-1985) to the Return of Sherlock Holmes one (1986). It is meant to be one series, along with the follow-up seasons and made-for-TV movies and such, and is even often considered the de facto Holmes as per Jeremy Brett's barely hinged but resilient portrayal, though the guy who played Watson has changed. They did a good job picking a guy (Edward Hardwicke) that looked just like the first guy (David Burke) except not quite. Almost an uncanny valley like response watching, which was a mistake, "The Final Problem" (last of the first series) immediately followed by "The Empty House" (first of the second).

I wonder now if Reichenbach, as they say, may befall the new Sherlock Holmes movie: Game of Shadows. Perhaps, perhaps not. There certainly is a lack of flowing water in the trailer, but neither is there enough Stephen Fry to satisfy, and all things Mycroft are good things, assuredly. I'll put even odds on A Final Problem occurring at the end to set up a trilogy. If anyone would like to take the bet, I'm sure we could find some amusing wager.

What else? I don't know. I'm sure there are dozens. I'll save them for tomorrow. Apologies for my blog being so weird and quiet lately, but I needed a week where my brain outputted basically nothing, just like I need this week for my brain to output a good deal.

Love and good happiness stuff.

OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: November 2011