duck-shaped pain

I acquired some new CDs -- not as many as I could have bought, but I have to save some for my next trip over there or to somewhere else with decent record stores. I bought the new Wilco CD, Albert Ayler's Love Cry and the long-delayed Beat Happening box set. The box set was supposed to come out a year and a half ago, and I had finally just given up on ever seeing it, but I went to Twist and Shout and there it was. They had only the one copy, and it had only arrived the day before, so I'm convinced that it came just for me. Seven CDs, though -- that's a lot of songs about hot chocolate and holding hands.

The best part about being on this trip was driving the rental car. It was much more powerful than the 1989 Honda Crapmobile that I drive, and if it made a noise, I didn't have to worry about it. My desire to get a new car is now stronger than ever.

I ate at a lot of restaurants, most familiar, some new. The best meal I had was at this vast suburban Mexican restaurant named Hacienda Colorado. It doesn't look promising from the outside, and the area that surrounds it (it's on Wadsworth near Southwest Plaza) is famous for its cheesiness. Yet, it had very good food -- I had the spicy vegetable burrito and was very happy with it. It actually had flavor -- it was a bunch of assorted vegetables combined with chipotle peppers in a tortilla, then covered in tomatillo salsa. A lot of vegetable burritos out there are nasty and flavorless, like they were afterthoughts placed on the menu under duress. But this was very good. The restaurant itself was huge: the booth we sat in was bigger than the kitchen in my first apartment and not too much smaller than my car.

Today was my first real work day of the summer. Of course, I didn't have anything to do. C., my coworker, didn't have anything to do, either, and amused herself by rearranging the shelves on the bookcase and alphabetizing the phone books. I proofed some data for a while, but couldn't get into it. It just seemed so dreary. After three years working in the same place, after seeing datum after datum pass by, my enthusiasm for each single one is very low. No one ever reads the reports we put out -- they just get put on a shelf down in Houston and then are quickly forgotten. It's hard to summon the enthusiasm needed to effectively edit something when you know that its total lifetime audience will be you, the person down the hall, and someone's file cabinet. I kept telling myself, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well, but it just didn't work.

The worst part is that I finished all the work I had to do for the week in a mere three hours this morning. Maybe it's time to look for a new job.

Grades are still not out, dammit.

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