I think all that criticism from the rowing coaches awhile back has turned me into a bit of a control freak on the water. Egret and I were practicing racing starts and Yosemite Sam gave her some form pointers, while he said I was rowing well but needed to pull harder. I think I have the power, but was just sort of concentrating on form and not using it. Forgetting to row hard in a race is a bad thing, but I expect the adrenaline will kick in and help with that. There was probably a contributing fatigue factor, too, since he said this mostly in the later of our 15+ starts. Egret has far more endurance than I do, I admit.
It’s actually cloudy out today, which means it didn’t cool off as much overnight, but also won’t heat up as much today. (We hope.) This may also harbinger the beginning of the "monsoon season" we get every July and August, where temperatures a few (too few!) degrees cooler than June’s are more than balanced by higher humidity. This being a desert, "higher" is a relative term and may mean something like 40%.
We also get some wonderful spectacular thunderstorms, though more often it rains in the mountain and evaporates on the way here, so that we just get a dust storm. Those can be interesting to watch also, though not fun to be out in because dust gets in your eyes and mouth. Our dust storms can be almost opaque; I have a picture of the leading edge of one and the left half is crystal clear, while the right half looks like I had my thumb over the lens. (Yes, I’m sure I didn’t really have my thumb over the lens. Anyway, the dust is close to my skin color, whereas an actual thumb would have blocked the light and photographed darker.) We get at least a minor storm of some sort almost every day.
Morale at work is down a bit because of the ‘restructurings’, though everyone understands the need for them. Still it gets scary, wondering who’s next. I have little motivation to leave, since I like the company and the experience I’m getting, but I also worry about getting caught out unprepared. Also, I miss when we had a closeknit QA group. I enjoyed my office-mate a lot and loved having a group of people close enough to trade favors with (airport and car-repair drop-offs, for example) and to go drinking with. (This was back pre-rowing when I could stay up late enough to make drinking more worth while.) Now people didn’t even comment when I got 4" cut off my hair and the people I work with most are scattered over two buildings 10 minutes’ drive apart. At least, it’s still more social than when I worked at Big Airplane Company, a place that really did drive me nuts. And people here get my jokes. (I think sensitivity training had scared the humor out of people at Big Airplane Company.)
Posted by dichroic at June 20, 2001 04:31 PM