I've Been Working

Let me just start with this Oldie But Goodie picture of Suresh and Fred. Even though the arrival of Suresh and Teena signaled the beginning of the end of our tightly knit group, they became very dear to us. It also signaled the beginning of a whole new life for me. A trip to India? Who would have thought of that a year before this picture was taken. Fred is still at The Times and I think that his life has not changed all that much. He is still programming quietly at his desk. I know the people who used to rely on his help have missed him. He was wonderfully soothing. Do those folks in Orlando do what Fred did? 

I am in the middle of a four week temp assignment. The woman I'm helping has been overwhelmed by work and I haven't helped her main problem. The first week she gave me a couple of mind-numbing jobs that took the week to complete.  One job was to enter all the contacts from her boss's old contact list into Outlook. Seems the boss just brought a hard copy with her, not a computer file. I listened to a book while I did this. I know, so unprofessional. But I was in an office with 95 pages of names. I found that I couldn't listen to anything that I really wanted to hear, or rather, remember what I was reading. So instead I listened to one of the Cat Who books, The Cat Who Wasn't There. I think this was the perfect book for entering contacts by. In other words, I just remember there was a cat in it and a man with a mustache. Perfect 

She went in to work on Saturday to get her act together and make a list of projects for me to complete. I am looking forward to going into work tomorrow. The second week was mind-numbing. I browsed the Internet a lot and wrote emails to friends. That is not as much fun as it might sound.


I have been reading other books in the past two weeks. Some I'd started long before and just decided that it was time to wrap it up. One of thease was Dead I Well May Be. I think this took a long time because it is very violent. It is about a young man from Ireland who enters the US illegally and leads a life of crime. Two things made this enjoyable. First, he is a very smart kid who reads a lot of interesting stuff. He is surrounded by people who are less clever than he and his interactions with them are enjoyable. Second, the reader has a wonderful Irish accent. I keep hearing "we'uns" in my head. I would listen to this book again, just for the joy of hearing the way Irish people talk. Fortunately, the author has written more books, so I will not have to relive this violence.

Another book I finished recently is Ghost. This was a pretty funny book, even though the author didn't suspect that it would be. The author used to work for the government in the Counter terrorism unit. He was not a spy. He was one of those guys who read the stacks of paper that comes into our government to be analyzed. He does get to leave the office now and again, but he is not a field agent by any stretch of the imagination. And his writing is very pedestrian. Someone told him he should use descriptive words, so he identifies every object he sees by brand name. If I cared, I would know the make of his watch, shoes, notebook, pen and cell phone. But I really didn't care. This one was not bad enough to throw across a room, it wasn't hateful. Just B O R I N G. 

 

Jack Reacher is never boring. This book, The Enemy, is a prequel. He is still in the military and from this we know why he hits the road to be the prototypical loner. Lee Child writes about a lot of events that don't move the plot, but help us to understand Reacher better. That could have been distracting, but as a fan I liked that. Funny, I hadn't thought about this being called The Enemy. I guess it refers to the old line "I've met the enemey and he is us." Reacher does have an issue in the book trying to figure out who the real bad guys are and why. I liked it.

And now the Civil War is truely over. Battle Cry of Freedom is an excellent book. That's not just my opinion. It did win the Pulitzer Prize, after all. McPherson starts with a long ramp up to the war, explaining all the factors that were involved with the disagreements between the North and the South. He covers much of the same information that I had read in The Waking Giant. Only this is better written. Points like the super-religiosity of the era are not belabored. But you can see how this whole fundamentalist streak has plagued us for more than a century. Battles are mentioned but not written about in the detail of the Foote books. That is actually a good thing. My suggestion is that you read this book if you want to know about that period.