Cook Again

I'm still monitoring the dogs who have come down with some kind of  intestinal disturbance - a condition that has me following them around trying to collect samples of their poop. Its not too different than usual, actually, except that now I'm tagging it and saving it for later. Still no word about my job and even though I'm technically being compensated, its making me feel a little freaked out about money, like I'm unemployed again. I've decided to add "send out resumes" to my daily to-do list. I'm also trying to figure out what I should be doing with my time. I feel like I should be taking more advantage of this break and also keeping very busy helps to prevent my mind from dwelling too much on how much I don't know about what is going on with my job.

The Good Life

The first book I pulled from my multi-foot "to-be-read" stack was The Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. I actually came across this book when I was reading Back from the Land, about the back to the land movement of the 1970s. The Nearings' book, along with the Whole Earth Catalog and Mother Earth News were highly influential in spurring a significant portion of late Sixties counter-culture types to head for the forest to live like pioneers. Of course, optimistic as they were, those happy-go-lucky hippies couldn't make a go of it out in the wilderness and gave up on their dreams of a better life in the fresh air out from under the thumb of "the man" and eventually became "the man" themselves. Growing up sucks in every era, I guess.

Tomorrow Comes Today

OK so its been like two-ish years since I last wrote in a blog. I've done some tumbleblogging and some tweeting  but I've been avoiding trying to crank out actual paragraphs. I've been on leave from work for going on four weeks - mandatory leave - while some kind of investigation is being undertaken at my office. Its got me on edge wondering about my job security and fairly intermittently bored with the unexpected leisure time which, as you can expect, I've mostly squandered .

I've been trying to spend some of the time reading. I started unpacking all the books finally after having moved last month and realized just how many unread books I had stacked up. When it comes to books, I frequently enjoy collecting them more than reading them - a habit I'm trying to break myself of so I have made a vow not to buy or paperbackswap any more books until I get through the stack. After that I plan on rewarding myself by buying a new book on googlebooks and trying to read it on my laptop screen, something I've never bothered to try. I signed up for and was chosen to participate in Google's ChromeOS test pilot program and they sent me a CR-48 laptop to beta test. Its been really fun and couldn't have come at a better time as I have lots of spare time and have gotten pretty tired of my old laptop which is in dire need of an OS re-install.

In the mean time I'm trying to unpack and get us moved into the new apartment that neither Sam or I am particularly happy about living in although it does beat having the leaky kitchen in our last apartment (although side-by-side our old place was much better). I'm feeling antsy and am reading books about chucking it all for a farm and some chickens and have been inspired to work on my homemaking skills. We'll see how that turns out. Probably bad.