On the Verge Armed With an Instapot in Everyday Ramblings

Waiting for Mrs. Sherlock in front of my gym last weekend I was taken by the decoration on the lower part of the building. There are a couple of poem fragments and more fern designs there too. I am not sure how deep the marble goes, my guess is that it is cladding.

Back in the day, much to my surprise when I thought I wanted to be an architect, and took a year’s training, my favorite class was Building Materials. I think it is because I love color and texture so much. In the end I worked for three different architectural firms as a bookkeeper/accountant.

And later in a job at the institution that I am now employed by, in the built environment by one of the architectural firms. The samples and drawings were everywhere as they designed it and it was fascinating to find myself spending my days in that environment.

I had a bad week at work. I won’t go too much into it because a number of things are still uncertain but there is no doubt I am going to be stripped of all my team lead responsibilities and possibly forced to work with one of the main team members of the Evil Empire under yet another undetermined manager. The individual formerly known as Saint Joe will be moved into an area under our current manager with another young man working on something completely different. This could happen as soon as next Friday.

There will be no bonus, no raise, and no special projects. They are trying to get me to quit. “I am afraid I can’t do that Dave.”

I have already begun applying for other jobs and I have asked for a review of my resume with the counselor I saw a few weeks ago.

The place I live in is built into a hill and so to enter one goes through an outside door and then down some stairs. There is a roomy space down the steps and another door that leads to a space that the managers use as storage with one window. So basically I am down here by myself. A few years ago I put a little end table I wasn’t using out there with a vase with flowers (because of the cats, flowers in the apartment are not a great idea) and after that I moved my coat tree out there. That was the year we had a superabundance of rain. It was great to take my rain gear off out there.

Right after I had the meeting with my boss and the individual formerly known as Saint Joe I received an email from the manager of the complex that it was against my lease agreement to have personal stuff out there. She is not the best manager we have ever had.

She said it reflected badly when they were showing apartments. When I first moved here there was a huge waiting list for places but now they are having trouble renting as they have been raising the rent and the neighborhood is getting less safe with all the homeless and drug addicted and mentally ill folk out and about.

Last weekend Mrs. Sherlock took me to a Starbucks in the neighborhood I used to live in. I loved living there, just not in the specific place I was living. There are memories of Mr. Finch everywhere and I miss him.

There is a gorgeous new big natural food store there now too.

Here I love the specific place I am living but not so much the neighborhood anymore. I walked by one of the historic places on the next block I have been fascinated with yesterday in a messy ice and snow mix and a creepy guy was wandering around inside and a huge pit bull came out on the porch and growled and barked at me.

I realized I don’t want to live here more than a couple of additional years. Especially now that I know that the track is not going to be a foundational part of my life as I had so hoped. I was out trotting around on it in the UV rich cold gloom this morning.

But you never know. What I want to do is to be ready. Ready for opportunities as they arise. Teaching opportunities. Work opportunities. Living opportunities.

Whether I like it or not, the wheel of change is in motion.

We have snow in the forecast again. Mrs. Sherlock was sore from a hike she did yesterday so we decided not to get together today. I am provisioned (bananas, grapes and chocolate and various forms of protein) for the duration and I have a ton of stuff to do.

And a fabulous new book that I bought in hardcover called The Secret Lives of Color by Kassia St. Clair about the history and origin stories of many of the colors we love in our lives right now. And folks in the past loved back then.

Oh yeah. And I have a brand new Instapot that came yesterday (that I got as a prize for participating in our intrusive wellness program at work) that I need to take out of the box.

Last updated February 23, 2019