The past few days have been a flurry of work, work, housework, running kids around, and more work. I've been at cateringman's for three straight days. I'm off the hook today and tomorrow, today being Thursday and I must work with prof MF on her class so that means I can't possibly dedicate myself to working for him (he understands, his wife is a colleague of prof MF so he knows how much work I'm doing over there). Tomorrow I'm chaperoning a field trip for my daughter's class.
Hurricane Isidore should hit right as we are getting on the busses. We're heading to Portsmouth NH, and it's a mostly outdoor trip, so I'm wondering if they will postpone it.
If they don't, I'll need a good rain hat.
Anyway -- back to my life. Which is what this is all about, right?
I finished reading Microserfs, which I started this summer while in Chicago. It was on Scott and Sarita's bookshelf, so during the three days we spent there I read about three quarters of it. On Monday I took Geoff to get a new pair of glasses because his current pair was just constantly popping out the left lens. They actually gave that pair back, which they usually don't do, but the manager of this particular lenscrafters has been really good to us, and he's cool... so he handed them to me and told me that I should keep them as a back up just in case of emergency.
We went to the bookstore while waiting, and I grabbed three Douglas Coupland books. Microserfs, Generation X and Miss Wyoming. I wanted Girlfriend in a Coma but they didn't have it.
So in finishing Microserfs, I'm noticing that I think it will be a perfect novel to incorporate into the class I'm co teaching with professor CM this spring on Technology and Society.
I just started reading Generation X... and Amy, if you are reading this -- I think Coupland agrees with you twenty fold on your passionate life stance. You should check it out. I'm about 70 pages into it, but I think that what you and I both feel about a passionate life is a by-product of being born after 1960 and before 1970. It's not just your opinion -- I think the majority of people who at the time that particular book was written were were called "Twenty Somethings" feel.
Dave, the guy I knew from Oregon who went kinda crazy, carried "Generation X" around like a Bible. He quoted from it and Nietzsche all the time. I was reluctant to ever read the book, simply because I thought it would be a whole lot of crazy bullshit (just because Dave was crazy). But I finally broke down and am reading it... and enjoying it. But it does make me feel sad and empty.
And I know I'm never ever taking another McJob again as long as I live anyway. My resume has grown up enough to mean I won't have to. I've got that requisite 5-10 years experience at something. I guess that's because I had kids early and got forced into a settled mode, as opposed to so many people I know who work jobs to save money and then travel all over the place. They are perpetually poor, but they've seen the entire world. My friend Sara has been to India twice, is currently studying advanced yoga education with some swami yoga dude in like Nepal or some crap... but she works on an apple harvest farm every fall and doesn't own a car. She house sits for people, and teaches yoga, and makes more money than I do.
I don't know if she pays taxes.
It's funny because we're well into our thirties now. When does this lifestyle stop?
Well. I don't have enough time to continue pondering the status of an aging Generation X... I'm off to do the professor MF thing. Perhaps a little more later. There is other stuff on my mind, but I just don't have enough time in the day to really slam it in here.
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