I am now reading Apollo's Fire - A Day on Earth in Nature and Imagination by Michael Sims. I am mildly ashamed to admit that I'm reading this book partially due to the cover, which I was attracted to. (I claim that occasionally you can tell a book from its cover.) And it's by the author of a book I haven't read entitled Adam's Navel, which is certainly a provocative title. By the way, we Mormons believe that Adam did have a navel. Consider that, ye masses.
It's a book about, well, days - specifically the wonder of an individual day. How light waves are scattered to provide blue, red and orange skies, sunrises, midday, sunsets, dusk, the dead of night, etc. Sims is described as being a scientist who writes like a poet, so we shall see. I have only started the book. Rest assured, if there are any passages I come across that I think are exceptional I'll provide excerpts for you.
As you may or may not know, I am a federal employee - an engineer. My cheap legal counsel (my pal Bob at work - a paralegal) always advises me not to write about my workplace in this blog, so exactly where I work in the great federal monolith I'll keep to myself.
However, yesterday I did something that has been long overdue. I am a compulsive organizer, and since 1993, when I first hired on, I have kept all of my SF-50s (a personnel action form - whenever you get reassigned, or receive a raise or something like that you get one) and performance appraisal paperwork in binders. Which is fine... but reading the retirement articles on an e-mail newsletter for feds that I receive, I have taken the additional step of better organizing these into a chronological file. I am wary of the cases I have read where some hapless federal employee plans his retirement, files the paperwork for the expected date - and then finds out that due to a mistake in an SF-50 he received but didn't examine, he cannot retire when he wants. Horrors! So I'm not letting that happen to me. When my time comes (27 August 2022, age 66 years and 4 months) I'm high-tailing it out of Dodge, pronto.
Unless I die of a heart attack at my desk, of course.
By the way, did you know that statistically, most men who die of heart attacks at the office perish Monday between the hours of 8 AM and 11 AM? I read that somewhere. So, when my employer allowed me to telecommute from home one day a week, guess which day I selected? You won't get me, you grinning, scythe-wielding shade! Well... not at work on a Monday, anyway.
My other pal Bob, that is, Bob I, my high school chum, flew into the area with his family last night, and so I'll be playing the Washington D.C. tour guide. It'll be the usual thing: the Smithsonian (assuming the government doesn't shut down), the monuments, perhaps a battlefield. Fun! Not London fun, but fun.
Yard sales Saturday morning. Even company can't keep me from that. I may take Bob with me.
Have a great weekend!
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