Does anybody really know what time it is?

Last night during one of the commercial breaks of Dirty Jobs, I stumbled upon a show on the Science Channel about the concept of time (with Brian Cox, noted author and physicist).

The segment I caught discussed the fact that due to a variety of things, not the least of which is wind patterns, the earth turns either more slowly or more quickly on any given day.  Meaning, as we all sort of knew, that not all “days” are 24 hours.

The point made at the end of that segment was that because of this, the age-old method of using the sun or other celestial object to tell the time is not particularly accurate, and so that in order to really tell the time, you have to stop looking up to the skies and start looking down, to the atom.

I presume then that the next segment went on to talk about using regularly decaying atomic matter to tick off time and therefore to have a standard that is universal.

But I’m thinking that well, it depends on how you need or want to tell time.  Do I need to know what time it IS, or do I need to know how much time has passed since  a specified event?  Because the latter doesn’t really tell you anything about what time it is unless there is a universal “event” from which all subsequent elapsed intervals are measured (Greenwich Mean Time for example).

If you need to set a schedule for something that applies to all people everywhere, then sure, you need a mechanism that accounts for the regular passing of measured intervals.  But if what I do and the people I interact with base what they do on the relative time of day (say, dawn to dusk, or mid-day) then I need to know what time it is RIGHT NOW. A point that has nothing whatsoever to do with how quickly time (or our concept thereof) passes.

Taking it one step beyond that (as I switched back over to Dirty Jobs), I was thinking, the idea of time then really provides a significant differential between the worker (the one who does a job) and the employer (the one who pays for time worked).

This eventually led me to why I get all bunged up about the idea of space-time and the notion that “as we peer into space, we are actually looking back into time.” Something I never really agreed with, but maybe I’ll look more into that later.

I dunno.  Just thinking.

Music and Heroin

Do you think it’s any coincidence that the most famous of Malcom McLaren’s protogés, The Sex Pistols and Sid Vicious as well as Boy George ultimately succumbed and failed because of heroin?

I Love Macs

I just bought an iMac. I’m a fan of Apple products and have been since my friend Marc got a Macintosh SE or something back in 1986.

So this thing arrives on Saturday and I spend Saturday night and Sunday setting it up. It’s replacing my Dell desktop which my husband uses primarily. So since I’m sort of foisting a new OS on him, I want to get it all set up and ready for him to use with no problems and no guessing. Make everything as obvious as I can (not that Macs don’t already do that for me).

Furthermore, I want to see how he feels about this thing after it does what he wants it to do every time he does it; that when he turns it on and wants to use it, it just works.  Fantastic.

Well I sort of dorked with some stuff and forgot that you can’t change the “home” user name once you set it up. And when it asked me for my name, I blindly clicked Continue.  So I discovered that that the main user name on Finder was mine and not something more general, like our last names, or his name or whatever.

Well I tried to change it but of course I couldn’t and just ended up kind of screwing some things up. And in the process of trying to fix them, I was getting to bed at midnight and waking up at 4 am obsessing about this stupid thing.

So I decided at 430 am this morning when I couldn’t sleep, that I was just going to reinstall the OS and start again – it would take me less time to reconfigure and reinstall stuff than all this fretting and obsessing over trying to fix it.

But I’ve installed and tried to fix Windows machines on several occasions and failed miserably because the OS gets all tripped up over itself, particularly because Windows is a memory hog and tends to suck it up wherever it can find it, with no real rhyme or reason. So I was concerned that it wouldn’t want to install the OS, or it wouldn’t remove the stuff I’d already put on, or any number of other lousy possibilities.

So I pick up the little guide that came with the iMac and it tells me that if I want to remove the information on the drive and reinstall the OS, that I have that option – select Erase and Reinstall.

Well How-De-Doody!  How often do you find a program that does exactly what you want it to, and documentation that tells you how to do it so clearly!

My god I love this thing.

Dove Chocolates

So if the foil wrapper on my Dove milk chocolate bite says “Patience is a virtue” does that mean I’m NOT supposed to shove the whole thing into my mouth at once?

The Trick

The trick to being a creative artist is that you have to learn to stop judging yourself and your work before other people get a chance to.

Or more accurrately, you need to learn to stop judging what you do before you do it. Nothing stops the creative process faster than the idea that whatever it is you’re about to do is stupid.

You gotta learn to just do it, and judge it later. And even then, maybe you’re not the one qualified to judge whatever it is on its own merit. You may not be your audience.

One of “those” women

I don’t ever want to be one of “those” women. You know the kind…rich white women in expensive cars, yapping on their cell phones while they cut you off in traffic because their lives are so much more important than yours. The woman who comes into a fairly rural Panera to meet with someone, made up to the point of clownishness, wearing three gold bracelets with her watch, silk jacket (in July) and stilletto heels.

Not that I’ll ever be rich certainly but my business is doing pretty well. As is my husband’s. And I find myself using phrases like “we went to the beach on vacation” or “we took the family to Disney over Christmas last year.” Stuff that I certainly never imagined as a middle-class (lower middle) kid growing up in the 80’s.

So I look around sometimes, thinking about these foreign phrases that I inexplicably utter, and hoping that I have sufficient self-awareness to not become one of those whom I disdain.

What’s that smell?

When it comes to the stairwells of public transit systems, I’m not sure which is worse: the smell of urine that typically permeates them, or the fruity (usually cherry or orange) deodorizer smell designed to cover up the smell of urine. I know the worst is when the smells mix. I’d rather just smell pee. Or bleach. How about some bleach. Just spray it into the air and make me THINK you’ve cleaned. How about that?

What I do know is that these attempts to make them smell better makes me think, unequivocally of deodorant maxi pads. Let’s just say that covering up one bad smell with another bad smell frankly doesn’t work and never has.

Quick Funny

So I’m sitting with my husband in our local IHOP at 3am. My band just finished a gig and I have a Ben Franklin in my pocket.

So I say, “Hey, we should take this $100 over to the slots and see if we can turn it into something.”

And he says, “$5? A distant memory?”

Funny guy that…

Did you hear that?

There was a definite “ping” in the universe today.

I heard it. Did you?

I’m not entirely sure if I can explain it.  Hell, I’m not entirely sure what I mean.  But something changed today and I don’t know what it was.  I wish I did.  I wish I knew if it had anything to do with me.  I suspect it does, even if only peripherally.

Because I heard the ping.

Something changed today.  I wish I knew what it was, but something changed.

To be continued…

What keeps me going…

Okay so I’m not any sort of exercise monkey or anything, and frankly I don’t like it very much.  But since I like food, I gotta do something.  So in order to burn calories, I strap on a headset and walk the neighborhood.  And I mean HOOF.  Between 3.5 and 4.5 mph the whole way.  And I live in the foothills of the Appalachians, so my neighborhood ain’t exactly flat.  I use the music to keep a steady pace (for roughly 3 minutes at a stretch) and find  good-paced music to work the hills.  Like Tush by ZZ Top. Or Prince’s I Would Die For U.  Or Lady Marmalade if you need to slow the pace but keep a long stride. Any of these will get you up a 10% incline without too much agony.

And I’m the kind of person who can just walk.  Point me in a direction, provide me with a music player, and I’ll just go. And go and go.

Anyway so I have the music going the whole time, but about 2/3 of the way into the neighborhood circuit I find myself turning up the volume.  A little more and a little more and a little more.  At first I was thinking it was because I was getting into a zone and really liked the songs on the playlist so I was using the added volume to zone into the music a little more.

I don’t think that’s it though.

I’m pretty sure that I turn up the music really loud so I can’t hear my hamstrings screaming at me.

As an addendum, I also realized that the last segment of today’s walk was entirely motivated by the hot dog I plan to eat for lunch.

Whatever gets you through the day I guess.