under the weather, and a small chunk of wisdom

I almost called in sick today. Last night I has stomach cramps and a fairly intensive time in the bathroom. And no, I wasn't cleaning. Not sure if it was something I ate or just the latest in my winter long battle with a cold. The cold keeps coming up with new symptoms and I keep enduring them. It seems to have allied with my headaches - and last night was a tag team rumble.

But, I'm marginally better today and I've got a meeting - so, I braved the cold and snow to come to work. Can't really say I'm happy to be here, but I'm getting stuff done. Answered some emails - tracked down a problem with one of the systems. And when I say "tracked down" - I mean that I wandered around looking for the best candidate to fix it. The only person I could find was, ironically, the very person who could make repairs. And when I say repairs, I mean they could reboot the machine. So, problem solved.

I went to the student union yesterday for lunch on the first day of classes for the semester. Normally, something to avoid - but I went for a late lunch and the crowds weren't bad. There were a lot of people there and most seemed to be wandering around. Some of that is "new students" - a group that is, collectively, always slightly lost. And it's to be expected - they're new.

But there was also a group that - in some difficult to define way - was moving randomly, but with purpose. It was like they knew where they were going, but they didn't actually care about arriving there. There was also a large contingent of people standing just inside the main doors - talking on their cell phones. It was raining, so I'm guessing they were trying to arrange a ride. But, there were so many of them that they were actually blocking the doors so that the damp people - me included - had difficulty getting in the building.

Which gets me to my point - if I can actully focus long enough to come up with one.

Several years ago, there was a version of the Transformers on tv called Beast Machines. For those readers that live under a rock - Transformers are robots/toys that change into cars or planes or something. In this case, the something was animals - except for some reason they had trouble turning back into robots. So, the leader of the group with a name so ridulous that I'm not going to mention it - trains the transformers with him to, well, transform, again.

The series stuck in my head due to one line the leader said,

"Focus on the transformation at hand"

Now, clearly this is a play on the phrase "Focus on the task at hand". By saying transformation - the focus is not on the present, but on the transition from present to future. The "process" of change becomes the important part.

Now how does this apply to me being annoyed? Some of the people I encounted were focused only on their own small slice of the present. They weren't seeing the rest of their enviroment - or the consequences of their actions. Instead of moving through a sea of people, adjusting to their ebbs and flows - I had to plow through a log-jam.

And it made me cranky.

So, that's it for now... back to work