Making me Itch

1) An Isaac quote: "I can smell stop signs. They smell like roses. RED roses".

2) Work from home is a good thing this week. I'm already feeling more positive about things, and hey, things are happening too. One of the reasons I'm working from home (aside from the fact that I was unable to physically push the "buy" button on the plane ticket - I just COULDN'T) is that "The Man" at the work site shut us down.

See, we're all consultants, and the space we're in in temporary until June (and I may not be there then). They didn't get us desk phones, we don't have name plates, and we don't have computers. We were told to use our own, and we'd have desktops when we moved, eventually, though we ordered a dozen to cover, and they were going to arrive "any moment". So in the meantime, we were to use the wireless with our own laptops. Which didn't actually REACH to our space... so we improvised and plugged into the live jacks under our desks. For 6 weeks.

And last week, a network guy found out, and flipped his lid: "we're compromising network security" and he was going to send some sort of "remote self destruct" message to our computers if we didn't disconnect immediately. Now, of course, if such a self destruct signal was even possible, it would be transmitted every second of every day to every computer on the internet from hacker internet cafes in the former Soviet Union. The threat was lame, but the intent was real. Gotta disconnect. So where were our desktops after 6 weeks? The PO was still sitting on the CIO's desk unsigned.

This came down mid-week, and I suggested that since we don't have computers and can't get on the network locally, we could either fly in and dial in from our hotel rooms, or have an expense-free work from home week. He went for the work-at-home option.

And no sooner did we agree on that, then late Friday, the network/desktop swat team descended on our workspace... and installed computers. I just can't make this stuff up.

3) Anyway, the search for local work is well underway. Being home is wonderful, even if my hotel has a benihana-style teppanyaki grill right next door. It's great just to spend time in the house, with the family... holding conference calls with my dog on my lap... Isaac has been glued to my side, just wanting to be around me. Lots of shoulder rides and more than a few cuddles. Bella's also pretty thrilled. To say nothing of how nice it is to be around my dear Pamela too.

4) Was out last night with the Avengers at the residence of a guy with the St Paul Chamber Orchestra. Loved hearing orchestra stories... They combine good "road warrior" tales with "I'm an expert and they're idiots" anecdotes, as well as a lot of gear talk. I heard about cuban cigars being packed into the bell of a french horn, diva conductors who play the same program during every visit, and the nightmare of playing in one-off "period instrument ensembles" with authentically flat tuning.

My favorite was a long anecdote that I can't do justice to: The orchestra was playing at the Mayo clinic, and was doing a program of "difficult" 20th century stuff. They were launching into a 20 minute Alban Berg piece that our guy described as sounding "like the orchestra is warming up and tuning, and getting louder and louder for 20 minutes, until is just stops cold". In the front row was a man who had been wheeled in, who had been bandaged from head to toe, so we're guessing burn ward. He's sitting there in this sonic assault, as the crescendo builds and builds and builds, and it gets to FFFF and there's a sudden grand pause. And in the silence, the guy in bandages exclaims to his friend:

"THIS MUSIC IS MAKING ME ITCH".

The orchestra was barely able to finish the piece - everybody was just in hysterics. And it made me recall those many years of going to see that orchestra in the late 1970s, listening to "difficult" pieces by Cage, Xenakis, Berg, Schoenberg, and others, and it's a wonder I still like music, I think.