A Change is Gonna Come

I heard two interesting things this morning:
1) Today is the most depressing day of the year. A guy on good morning America said this while I was eating cereal. Apparently studies have been done.
2) This is the warmest January Buffalo has had since 1938. I somehow thought that when I moved back to Buffalo, I would, you know, get some snow every now and then, but this is like Oberlin. We haven’t gotten any meaningful snow since before Christmas. Mostly rain. I hate cold rain.

Also, there are some shifting responsibilities and whatnot at work. I’m getting more responsibility and a receptionist’s desk, which means I’ll be right out in a high-traffic area where people, thinking I’m a receptionist, will attempt to ask me questions that I cannot answer. I don’t know where anyone sits. I just don’t. Don’t ask me. Not a receptionist.

Most depressing day, indeed.

Observation

There is a distinct grinding noise coming from outside the window nearest my desk. Like I am in the dentist’s chair, drill-in-mouth. I survey the situation by peering overtop the tallest of my cubicle walls, standing on my tippy-toes. Two men, standing on a narrow platform, sand away the concrete exterior of my building. Their platform hangs by a series of bright-yellow ropes that appear, based on my rudimentary knowledge of physics, to be alarmingly thin. A small cloud of concrete dust billows around them, leaving an off-white skin on the window. This, no doubt, will necessitate another feat of exterior high-rise maintenance by the Window Washers, the Concrete Grinders’ more civilized and precise brethren. The Felix to their Oscar, if you will.

Did I mention that they’re eight stories off the ground? Well they are. Eight stories.

Suddenly I remember the two small cavities in my mouth that I must have filled.

Post-Holiday Analysis

Christmas this year felt uncomfortably fleeting. This is in part due, I feel, to the whirlwind nature of my trip home. Next year I hope to counteract this through the purchase of my own Christmas tree, rather than relying the one my family gets and puts up in our family room. This, hopefully, will make the arrival and departure of the holiday season seem less sudden. Christmas was, on the whole, good. Got some good gifts, including but not limited a George and a couple kitchen carts (to supplement the meager counter space built into my kitchen), as well as some film-scoring industry related books and stuff.

New Years, too, was good, and what I feared would be pretty anti-climactic actually turned out okay due in no small part to the consumption of some champagne and my presence at a party to which I was not explicitly invited with a host gracious enough to overlook that fact. I also drank a lot of Glugg, a tart, fruity beverage evidently of Swedish origin (I picked it up at Ikea), which, served warm, can be mixed with alcohol, or not. I had too much, and I imagine that I will want nothing to do with the stuff until next year, if not after. Also from Ikea are three bottles of sparkling Lingonberry and Pear juices, which due to the previously mentioned party sit corked in the cabinet above my fridge. If I ever need to celebrate a special occasion with minors or persons of the straight-edge lifestyle, I shall be well-prepared indeed.

And thus we are delivered into a Winteryness entirely devoid of major Christian or secular holidays (nationally recognized birthdays excluded) that will be with us until Easter (April 16), on which it will hopefully not snow.

In other news, I may be going to visit Jill in Chicago sometime in the next couple weeks, thanks to some cheap airfares. Also, last night I talked to Keegan and found that he is back in Rochester for a spell, so I’ll probably get together with him at some point in the coming weeks, as well. After an Oberlin-folk dry spell lasting more than six months, I am quite pleased with both of these developments.

And, for lack of gig (gig as in paid musical engagement, Jill) prospects, I am looking into teaching piano lessons, and I may even have a couple students, in the form of my boss’s children. This will provide me with resume experience, as well as a much-needed supplement to my income.

One last note: Dan and I have been working on a song that could easily be a top-ten hit for Michael Jackson or Stevie Wonder, so if any of you know them, or someone who can sing like them, please get in touch. The future of a hip song depends on it.

Over and out.