It came from ISO Hell Week...
Quo Vadis
Whither Goest Thou? A Passing History of Money.
There's something appropriately symbolic about putting one's money away in a sock, considering they both share a proclivity for mysteriously disappearing; it ought to be considered a mythic archetype. Somewhere in the spinning clothes dryer of our collective unconscious there's an unwritten odyssey concerning the travels of socks and what they've done with our money -- particularly those occult fractions of cents (occult in the medical sense).
I can't get up the gumption to clean... On my more self-deprecating and intellectualizing days, I suspect it's a physical manifestation of my inability to process psycological wastes.
Mind you, were I ever to bother to excavate the deep in the fertile recesses of my subconcious mind (i.e., in "my messy place"), I would probably find firmly embedded in my Id the dream-image of my abode as a lovely compost, which only needs a bit of turning over once in a while.
Even though it goes against the international rules of good conduct insofar as sharing a space, I still get peeved when someone sees fit to tidy around me. "Hey - I know that shoes technically belong in the foyer, but if I take off my shoes in the kitchen and leave them there then that is where I have put them, so kindly stop moving my stuff."
In the same way that my cats leave their scent over everything, leaving stuff around is a subtle way of establishing territory. "Hey, this is mine. That's mine. All this is mine. I'm claiming all this as mine. Except that bit. I don't want that bit. But all the rest of this is mine." -- Cat
Just writing to say, yes, I haven't been writing, and I'm only writing to say I don't know how soon I'll be writing again.
We are preparing for our ISO audit; and frankly, just between you, me and the Internet, that means I'm going to have to fake a year's worth of paperwork, and then shred the evidence.
The Sixth All: An office clerk, with a sheaf of papers: "I shred all"
Here, you can look through The Garbage Bin while I'm gone.
John Todd, Research Professor & Distinguished Lecturer in Ecological Design (part of the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont), is bioneering the study of closed loop waste cycles with his Living Machines, courtesy of Ocean Arks International.
A Living Machine is a biologically diverse ecosystem modeled after nature* in which one element's waste provides food for another element.
Such an ecosystem can provide human sustenance without suffering harmful effects to itself from either an excess or depletion of its resources.
It also has exciting applications in the breakdown and decontamination of waste created by other human processes, for example, sewage and other wastewater.
"If one organization's "waste" becomes another organization's "food", then zero emissions become possible."
Mimicking Nature by Designing Out Waste By Cynthia Pollock Shea (link on same site)
*This reminds me of a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty."
The big boss lady (aka The Alpha Female, or The Red Queen) returned last week, and thus I have had neither the time nor the inclination to blog.
She usually does not come into the office until noonish, so in the morning I sort my workload into two parts: 1. work that is important and 2. work that is harmless.
Important work must be done in the morning to prevent her from interfering with it.
Harmless work is saved for the afternoon so as to look busy but not actually be busy, thereby allowing myself the wiggle room to drop everything to run a fools' errand when so commanded.
Harmless work is also defined by its non-volatility -- if it is unlikely to cause explosions upon her contact with it, then it is fit for the afternoon.
In the morning, blogging can be provender; in the afternoon it would be fodder...
... which isn't to say that I wouldn't do it... just that it's a bit ticklish, as in "to vellicate the posterior appendage of the legendary aligerous lacertilian
nemesis" sort of ticklish...