Just one day out of life

[austin_dern]

I suppose normal people know whether they have a day off. Even though I'm back at the Extruded Office Product (I didn't announce when I exited it, so don't worry that you missed something) I didn't know whether I would have Columbus Day (observed) off. The employer is a private company, but it mostly services state, county, and municipal governments, so there's not much to do when they aren't up to anything. But I didn't think to ask anyone last week and while I do think I was told ``see you Monday'' by people on Friday, that's the sort of thing people say whether they mean it or not. And of course I failed in my resolve to call this morning to see if I should come in.

The thing is you'd think I would have a clear idea whether I had the day off after going to the office too. The parking lot was mostly empty when I got in, but that happens sometimes. The few people there didn't seem shocked that I was in, but they only have a vague idea what I'm doing anyway. So do I. Two people with the same job classification as I have weren't in, but one of the two guys I actually work with the most was. Oh, and in the middle of the afternoon as I was coming to the end of a fun X Minus One episode, Steven Arr's Chain Of Command, about rather intelligent talking mice at a secret research lab and a nationwide problem which could have been prevented had the humans been willing to show the slightest initiative, the guy I work with most announced on the speaker that since it was a slow day why don't we all go home? And so we did.

I'd still like to know if I had the day off.

Trivia: Charles de Struve, Russian representative to the Washington, DC, Prime Meridian Conference of 1884 (which selected the Greenwich meridian) was responsible for the standard's denoting of longitudes as 180 degrees east to west, rather than 0 to 360 degrees. Source: Time Lord: Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time, Clark Blaise.

Currently Reading: An Outline Of Man's Knowledge Of The Modern World, Editor Lyman Bryson. This is a book, from 1962, of a kind almost extinct and I think undeservedly so: it's a compendium of essays about what's contemporary thinking in various subjects, from biology to architecture to modern theater. It's an enormous book, and with nearly three dozen authors means there's a new writing style every twenty pages, but I do feel like I should be smarter for spending time reading about subjects I ordinarily don't, even if the material in them is a half-century out of date.

Comments

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

a fun X Minus One episode

Eee!
Oh yeah, these things are so old they are public domain. :-)

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

They are, yeah, although they also were ignored long enough to sneak into the public domain. X Minus One and Dimension X are really wonderful for the adaptations of 1950s science fiction.

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

You probably didn't. Columbus day is not a New Jersey state holiday.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

But if it wasn't a day off then why were so few people on staff there? Why was I alone on my floor? It doesn't really add up.

[moonfires.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't know what you do :> I see my own Boro offices were closed Monday. Most companies' HR usually puts out a schedule with the official days off at the beginning of the year.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I sit around wondering if I've been completely forgotten and prod various Usenet groups.

This is not by any measure of anything a typical company. It's not even atypical.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

about rather intelligent talking mice at a secret research lab

Darn it, I'm in a quandry between using a Pinky And The Brain reference and the The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy reference.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

You may want to think The Secret of NIMH --- the mice are intelligent because of backstory experiments conducted at the lab. And if you have a half-hour and an MP3 player, go ahead and try the story. It's entertaining.