This is the left knee of my jeans. There be a hole. I don’t know how old the jeans are, possibly from high school or just after, long enough for the outline of my wallet to wear into the patterns of faded lines.
    I do a lot of kneeling at work; taking photos of objects from the side, putting things down on the ground, assorted groveling. I favour my left knee when only one knee is required. Several pairs of pants have lighter patches at the left knee. This is the first pair to get a full-fledged hole. (Alright, the cords have a hole in the top of the right thigh, and the linen trousers are wearing through in the seat, but the jeans are directly work-related.)
    I don’t really mind the hole, they’re jeans; hardly dressy. I don’t like factory-made holes as they speak only of simulacra, and everyone else who buys them has a hole in the exact same spot. This is a hole for a reason, a hole with a story, a hole that says something about how I move and what I do. I’ll still wear the old pair, for a while at least, but I think it’s time for some new jeans.

    Saw the University Symphony yesterday; Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet (so that's where that cliché romantic orchestral swell comes from, it's at about 8:50 in this YouTube video.), Arutunian's Trumpet Concerto, Dvorak's 9th. Beyond musings on the grossly warped social dynamics of orchestras, I also contend that there is no elegant way to empty a spit valve.

23.01.08
    After seven straight work days of a construction crew drilling through concrete directly adjacent to our studio, we were told that yesterday was to be the last day. Imagine our moods when we walked in this morning to find the building reverberating with the same grinding din we had been hearing since last week. After unsatisfactory performance by the headphone style earplugs we were issued, I went searching for a stash of other models I had seen in a different room. I found two styles and chose a long tapering model the swirled colours of raspberry and electric lemon sorbet. The colour was a selling point of the earplugs, it said so on the package. You did the standard roll-up and shove-in-ear thing, however these things seemed to burrow into your ear canal like that worm thing in the only part I remember of Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan. Despite the slightly disconcerting feeling, they worked a mile better than the previous ones. Sounds were still there, just… distant. The drilling might have been going on in a memory, or a dream. The visitors were a mute parade of bratty children (man, they were badly behaved today). The loudest sounds were yourself breathing and the muffled impacts of your footsteps as the vibrations carried through your skeleton.
    Of course, communication was a challenge. I was working with an assistant and did hand signals for “Okay”, “Turn It Over”, “Rotate Counterclockwise”, and we both had to unplug for more complex exchanges. Other people came in and had to get our attention before we realized they were speaking to us. Mostly it was a productive silence in our heads. I worked by myself with earplugs all day yesterday and shot double our normal quota. I exceeded quota today as well, but mid-morning the drilling stopped and failed to start again. The earplugs came out, communication returned to normal, and our productivity probably went down. Still, there are the numbers, then there’s not being subjected to unusual forms of punishment at work. I’ll take our lower shots and an enjoyable work environment any day.

20.01.08
    I'm sore.
    See more photos on my Flickr account. By the way, I have a Flickr account. I just discovered it limits free users to three sets, meaning I've already used mine and as far as I can tell, any more photos I upload will end up in an unorganized cespool of pixels unless I fork over some cash. I may have to reconsider continuing to use this service. Anyway, must sleep now, muscles demand it of me.

17.01.08
    I don’t like walking with my co-workers to the bus loop after work; or anyone for that matter. And for once it’s not (just) my general dislike for people. I don’t like waiting. I can make it to an earlier bus if I leave work at a certain time and walk bloody fast to the bus loop. I’m done; I want to get the hell off campus. If you don’t want to walk quickly, fine, stay out of my way.
    I happened to leave the building yesterday at the same time as one of our assistants. She waited for me outside and in the course of talking she mentioned she was staying on campus to look into the continuing education programs. “Alright, I’m going to the bus loop, bye,” quoth I, turning in the other direction.
    I set out along my favoured path to the bus loop, and walking in front of me was an entire class of students. I chose to cut along the parking lot instead and to try and pass them. I was handily beating them to the crosswalk when a woman coming in the opposite direction stopped me. “Is the museum still open?” she asked.
    “Until five.” It was four-thirty.
    “Oh, then it’s probably not worth going in,” she said, then continued to question me about the regular opening hours, student admission rates, discount night, the current state of the exhibitions, and the extent of the collection. The class passed by, various co-workers passed by, giving a wave as they continued home. The woman then elaborated on her distance education program from another post-secondary institution, and her future educational plans.
    “And are you almost done your program?” she enquired.
    “Oh, I’m done.”
    It went on. I guess I could have just cut her off, but as much as I don’t like people, I still think we should make an effort to be nice to each other. She was making noises that sounded like she was wrapping up anyway.
    “I guess I’ll go,” she said.
    “You could still go in the lobby and check out the admission rates and hours,” I suggested, thinking I could make a clean getaway.
    “Is the entrance nearby?”
    “Just past the fence and to the right.” C’mon, take it.
    “No, I’m kinda tired, are you heading for the bus loop?”
    Damn. “…yes.”
    It turned out she had taken the meandering community shuttle to get there in the first place and didn’t know how to walk back to the buses. She had other business on campus earlier and I got to hear about how she planned her trip through public transit’s phone service. Apparently much of that discussion involved a debate over relative walking times given that the phone operator’s height was 5’4” and the woman was 5’ even. I felt a sudden empathy for that phone operator.
    After an intro to her siblings’ respective subjects of study and several questions about the buildings and food services on campus (during which she misidentified Jerk as African instead of Caribbean and I refrained from correcting her and prolonging the discussion) we made it to the bus loop. She said she was headed for Skytrain, so I pointed her in the direction of an about-to-leave express bus while I headed for another with basically the same destination. I was one bus later than usual, but I still scored a good seat and with my karma intact.

16.01.08

14.01.08
    Today was not a great day. The weather sucked. I got soaked from the knees down on my walk from the bus to work, and my umbrella flipped inside out. At work someone was using a giant drill to bore through the concrete next to our department all day long. I used my work-issued earplugs, the kind that look like bright orange headphones with foam cones that forcibly press themselves into your ear canal. They don’t really work. They hurt actually, and they don’t block sound as much as they slightly muffle sound. Also, you’re supposed to wear the band under your chin, but every time you brush it the noise is carried directly into your ears. I ended up abandoning them.
    Yesterday I moved furniture between family members’ residences, which also involved wrangling the heavy seats out of the van so we could fill it up with mattresses. Whoever designed those seats decided handles were superfluous and instead edged them in sharp brittle plastic. The awkwardness of carrying them is probably what is caused my right arm to be sore whenever I used a mouse or typed anything.
    I had some late nights this weekend and was pretty tired as well. Between break and lunch I worked in a half-conscious stupor which involved closing my eyes for extended periods of time whenever I could duck down for a moment. I got ten minutes of couch time at lunch and with a handful of chocolate-covered espresso beans, I made it through the afternoon. My supervisor encouraged us to take off early so that we could all get away from the construction noise. I shot less then than usual and left a few minutes early, to be tossed around in the wind coming off the ocean.

07.01.08
    Everything is obsession. Everything is addiction. Why do it otherwise?

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