Because I am/have been/will be residing in a DC where I am not eligible to vote because I just moved in. I could vote in Virginia, they would never know that I have already moved. But I think to vote even though the outcome will not directly affect me is not in the “spirit” of the system. Sure I could go and vote just to keep the party I don’t like from winning, but then I would be playing party politics—something I despise (don’t we all?) So I will not be voting this year. First time since I turned 18, I even voted while I was in England!
Magic Mountain
Thomas Mann, Translated By John E. Woods
Magic Mountain is hard to read—dense and slow moving, but that is part of the plot, distortion of time. Mann follows Hans Castrop, “one of life’s problem children” during his stay at a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps in the years preceding World War I. The characters who inhabit the sanitarium and the valley around it are just that, complete characters displaying every possible aspect of all the varied cultures of Europe in the early 1900’s. A good book, but it must have lost something in the translation because at times it just did not hold my attention.
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler
Italo Clavino, Translated By William Weaver
I just finished If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, it’s absolutely amazing. The whole idea behind it is so unique and so engrossing that it’s hard to describe the book without taking away some of it’s charm to a first time reader. Calvino’s imagination runs rampant in If on a Winter’s Night, every chapter taking the Reader in a different direction and engrossing them in a new story. Just read it.
move in and first week of work
Well, first I apologize for there being no updates and no warning of why all week. I moved into my apartment on the 24 and 25 and started work on the 28. So. There will be very sporadic updates for the next few weeks till I get Internet service at my apartment.
The apartment is very empty. Nice but empty. I have only one real piece of furniture—my bed. Besides that I have lots of boxes of books and cloths. Everything else will have to wait for a while till I build up some more money. Oh well, I can always walk to Xando’s to sit down!
My job is cool—till I have clearance I have nothing to do. But they will pay for my masters degree so I guess I should fill out some paper work and get of my butt. I can also apply to do internal, non-classified work. But basically other than that it’s twiddling of thumbs till clearance—and that can take more than two years if you have been out of the country for a while…. Great!
My biggest problem this week was with cars… or rather with car—it died, in rush hour traffic on 66! Getting it towed to a service station and getting home that night involved lots of walking in the cold rain and cussing! And getting to work the next morning involved much walking. Ended up costing just over 300 to get fixed and towed, but I made it back to C’ville Friday so I can practice more with my new car and get the whole manual transmission thing down. Cross your fingers!
Anyway, I will try to update on a semi-regular basis till I get Internet access at my apartment. Then hopefully I can do it on a daily basis. Ciao!
homeland?!
I heard an ad on the radio today for a company looking for computer people from “the intelligence community” who currently have a Top Secret or higher clearance. The thing that disturbed me about this ad was the way in which the term “homeland” was used. They said; blah, blah, “continue serving the homeland,” blah, blah. Now does this strike anyone else as a bad thing? To start to refer to the US as “the homeland” scares me. It sounds like “fatherland” or something from Nazi Germany or Communist Russia. I have thought it before, with Bush’s warmongering and Ashcroft trying to suspend civil liberties but does anyone else smell nationalism here with shades of Europe in the first half of the 20th century? I don’t want to live in Fascist America under Herr Bush and Kommandanten Chaney and Ashcroft.