So far I’ve read “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” which is quite good. “Motherless Brooklyn” and “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper” are still to go. I’ve got a couple of pieces of writing started, neither of them very far but not negligible either. I’ve taken the Mini out for a drive (a good time– reverse was a little tricky to find– on the other euro-style shifter I’ve driven it’s push-down-and-go-left, but this was just a pull off to the left, but there wasn’t some sort of trick aside from it being quite a lot further left than first. At any rate, I managed to have some fun turning around in a gravel driveway as I let out the clutch a little too fast and displayed just how much torque there is in that engine… by this point both my parents have managed to fall in love with it, so it looks like neither my brother nor I will get our hot little hands on it after all.) Lastly I’ve walked my grandmother’s dog for her quite a bit.
My parents’ friends Pat and Peter are visiting and I’m looking forward to talking with Pat a little more about finance; she’s quite knowledgeable about economics and business, and I’m curious what insights she might have into the software industry. Tonight’s discussion revealed the depths of my father’s loathing for the pharma industry and its stock-market-driven stupidity; his dislike of things can be quite contagious as you might know.
My brother and I shared our favorite sayings of his: never turn down a job you haven’t been offered, the fish rots from the head, assholes come in all shapes and sizes, there are cheats everywhere– some are rich and some are poor, never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence, the difference between an entrepreneur and a bureaucrat is that an entrepreneur says “nothing ventured, nothing gained” and a bureaucrat says “nothing ventured, nothing lost.”
In all it’s been really, really good. I feel a lot more relaxed and happy than I did just Wednesday. Tomorrow looks like exercise, possible leaf-related chores (amazing how you can forget about this sort of thing in an apartment) and more dog-walking and visiting with grandmother.
Secretly Ironic 