Fuzzy Week

When I'm in Philly, I have several hours a day of gloriously unstructured time... There have been some times when that unstructured time is taken up with nothing but work (leading to 16 hour days... which have certainly occurred). But when things are a little slower, I have more options.

This is usually when you'll see me updating the blog. It's time I could be spending on my novel (just getting started on that one), or refreshing a language... and some weeks have been very very very productive. This week, I have been struck with an overall feeling of fuzziness... I didn't feel like I was being effective in my off hours, and it frustrated me.

On the plus side, I did get a lot of exercise, so that should count for something.... But I still can't shake a mild feeling of not having been on top of things. Next week will be different.

As long as I stay clear of Expert Village.

Still, time for an Anecdote:
I ate for a seond time at a nice nouvell-mex place in University City called Zocalo. One of the waitresses had a very "Selma Hayek" demeanor - her voice was a dead ringer... but she was having a lot of trouble with basic communication in english - "ahmmmm vah-ree sorry baaaaht we don haaaahv daaaat". She tried to describe the wine list to a table near me, and literally couldn't say the words "Chardonnay" (Kar-DOUGH-nay) or Rielsing (Vee-sa-LINE). These were so thoroughly butchered, and she was so impervious to being corrected by her customers, that I grew to suspect that this is sort of a Borat-experiment for her Master's.

When I had her as my waitress 5 weeks earlier, I was convinced she was brand new, maybe pulled out of the kitchen to help out, and I tipped well in spite of the borderline ineptitude. And 5 weeks later she is exactly the same... Hmmmm.... I definitely think it's an act.

Speaking of language - one of my new team members who started this week is a Chinese immigrant who has offered to speak Mandarin with me. I'm very excited. On the other hand, we discussed what the expectations are for his first 3 months, and I discovered I had accidentally already done 3/4 of the sum total of his work expectations. So I forwarded him my work, and will be very interested to see how it evolves. Hey, we'll have plenty to time to work on my language!