Journal of a Sabbatical

November 16, 2000

where does the time go?

Today's Reading: Autumn from the Journal of Henry David Thoreau edited by H.G.O. Blake

Keeping an online journal is turning into a full time job. The China trip entries are taking way longer than I thought to put together. Between transcribing my paper journal (which ends at the beginning of the Tibet trip), adding in observations and stuff that I posted on Charla's blog during the trip, deciding which photos to include and then messing with them in Photoshop, scanning in bits of ephemera (those Chinese really know how to do souvenir tickets), undoing what Wilbur types with his tail, and just my own slow stilted writing style the time just vanishes. Today's big accomplishment was finishing two installments (5 and 6) of the China trip journal. This took about half a day. Maybe longer. I lost track. Then of course my ISP wasn't answering for hours on end so I had to wait to post the ones I did finish.

The other big project for the day was printing kitten pictures for the MRFRS donation cans. The pictures disappear from the cans regularly. So I said I'd print out some of the cute ones of Cliffy and Mandy. Of course I realized I am out of Kodak paper so decided to use the remaining packet of Epson 4 x 6 paper that has been hanging around. Well, no matter what I did to those pictures in Photoshop they looked awful on paper. They look great on the screen and suck on the page. I decided I was making them worse by operating on them in Photoshop and figured I'd try different paper. I have a package of Avery photo postcard forms. Two postcards per sheet, basically 4 x 6 ... why not?

I carefully read the instructions for how to setup the page in "your word processor" so the margins would be right and the image would line up on the form. Well, Appleworks (formerly Claris Works, which I used to like) does something strange that I do not understand. I used the table tool to set up the page and set the column width in inches no problem. Then I tried to set the row height in inches. No can do. Despite the fact that the help file says you can set points, inches, or millimeters, I keep getting an error message that the size has to be between some number of points and some other number of points. Darn where's my Pocket Pal. I have no idea how many points to the inch. Some days I really miss troff and tbl. I'm so confused.

So I gave up on the postcards totally and decided to pick up some 4 x6 Kodak paper tomorrow. And then the day was practically over. If I wanted to get dinner before my meeting I had to get dressed and get out of the house. I decided to leave here early and have a nice dinner in Central Square and take a walk before the meeting. I ended up having dinner at Shalimar, an Indian restaurant I used to like. For some reason tonight the malai kofta was dry and bland (how can something in that much gravy be dry?).

After dinner I discovered a bookstore previously unknown to me. The whole used book scene has been in the process of moving out of Harvard Square to lower rent spaces in Davis Square and Central Square, which haven't been yuppified yet although I did notice a new Gap store going in in Central Square. How long will it be before Abercrombie and Fitch moves in the resulting sky high rents drive out the Indian restaurants, the Marxist theory centers, and the used bookstores here? Anyway, I spent the remaining time before the meeting browsing used books at Rodney's Bookstore. I didn't buy anything but had a great browse leafing through books on every imaginable subject and some unimaginable ones. So I ended up feeling like I'd gotten out today after all.