Summer Doldrums

Yes, doldrums. More in the maritime definition than an emotional state. Just nothing happening. What a great time to write a blog entry.

It's been hot. Not hot-hot (that will come this weekend) but hot. There are only a few hours out of the day when you just don't want to move or go outside, and by five o'clock in the afternoon things are getting comfortable again. Still, no air moving, the sun beating down, the roads and sidewalks baking, everyone looking for shade; after all, it is summer.

The Emmy nominations came out this week. It was a mixed feeling for me: one the one hand, I was so grateful for not having to go into work early and hassle all day with the extra pages this generates, but I was also feeling left out in a way; this is no longer something that concerns me beyond general interest, and I don't have much interest in the awards as a fan. I was more interested in the effect they have on the industry, the political positioning, when I was part of covering that show biz. Now I'm just kind of adrift, not knowing what my specialty is any longer. And so, the doldrums once again.

Nothing happening on the job front. Day by day I'm going through my tutorials online. Finished the introductory course on Flash, now I'm taking introduction to writing ActionScript 3.0. After this comes intermediate Flash and then intermediate ActionScript. By the time I get through those titles, I should have a fairly good handle on the interactivity of Web sites. Then I just have to marry that knowledge with the Dreamweaver tutorials and, voila, a Web site should be in the making. I'm not sure Cousin Rick's server will be able to handle the bandwidth, though, so I'll probably need to move it to another server and get my own URL once I mount the site.

Part of me wants to rush through all this, and part of me knows that, at my age, all the information will go in one ear and out the other unless I spend my time on this stuff, take notes and play around with the programs as I go. I have to keep reminding myself that I have never taken a formal class in any of the programs I work with now; they just appeared on my computer at work one day and I was told to learn them. In the early days, I'd just take the user's manual home and read through it. Now there are no user manuals (except help sites online), so the tutorials are the only way to go.

Todd Perkins, the guy doing the one's I'm taking now, doesn't do enough of explaining the syntax of the programming language, so you have to kind of guess at it as you go along. At some point it will become obvious, I'm sure. There is a point in learning every new program where you have a digital epiphany and you understand the organization of the program and how to get things done.

On Sunday, Steve and I went over to Robin and Evan's in the Hollywood Hills to visit with Aunt Kit, who was down for a visit. She looked as well as could be expected, but she's definitely slowing down and takes a while to get anything accomplished. Robin is so loving and attentive without being overbearing. It's really sweet to see. I keep meaning to go up to Arroyo Grande for a visit, but there doesn't seem to be a week yet that I can completely free things up. And until I hear from the Employment Development Department about my unemployment, I kind of have to stay close to home for the initial interview. And in August comes the jury duty.

One bright spot this week was a call from Gerry Hiken, my friend up in Palo Alto. Last week, in a fit of social regression, I sat down and actually wrote him a letter using a pen and a piece of paper (remember that?). Well, he got the letter and called me to say congratulations (on our wedding last August). When I got the call I was trolling the employment sites on the Web, and all I could think about was he's congratulating me for being unemployed. He might just do that, as we are both old hippies. Back in the '60s and '70s, breaking away from the establishment was a thing which was encouraged and congratulated, not dreaded and avoided.

He's doing fine except for some problems with his eyes, which are slowly improving. He's going to be working on an old Cole Porter musical which he describes as being well ahead of its time. It closed in Philadelphia back in the 1930s, never making it to Broadway. But he says the score and libretto are excellent (it's an antiwar theme), and he thinks its time is now.

Finally, today, one unnerving development: the direct deposit of my severance pay did not show up in my bank account this morning. I left a message for Sara Rogers, Nielsen's HR person at the Reporter, and hopefully we'll have this cleared up by the end of the day. Hopefully. I'm not panicking about it ... just yet.

An awful long entry for a week where nothing happened. But then, things did happen; just not very interesting things.