Tis the season to be jolly
Fra lala-lalaaaala la la la…
Deck the Halls and bash the Paulies
Tra lala-lalaaala la la la…
The astute reader may have observed a mild dash of euphoria in the Hammy scribbles today. And the astute reader wouldn’t really be far off on the observation. I wouldn’t go so far as to say onlookers can find me dong brisk somersaults on the front lawn, but I’ll confess quite freely that the day seems quite pleasant.
As some of you know, my day job as a market researcher has been gobbling up my free time like my time were the star attraction of an all-you-can-eat buffet. On one side, due to unforeseen cost-cutting measures that eroded a sizable chunk of the workforce, the survivors are bound to face more pressure (“What? You think you heard your lung pop? You have another one of those. So pipe down and get back to work.“)
On the other side, we are under artillery attack from within the ranks… inbound missiles from within the company; from the tactical squad in charge of work obstruction, the infamous department of Anarchist Cost Cutting Operatives to Undermine Necessary Tasks and Services (I may be a bit off on the expansion. I was never any good with abbreviations.)
Add to this a commercial dip in the wake of a global recession and, for a brief period of time, an imminent threat to pack me off to Pakistan at a time when thoughts of war hung in the air and an uncomfortably large number of soldiers and civilians in Pakistan and India had itchy trigger fingers.
And add insult to injury with what happened right here last week… I am referring to the curious incident of this blog last week.
but…. but… nothing happened on this blog last week.
Precisely. THAT is the curious incident For the past several months, no matter what the official workload, I’ve always put in at least one article every week. When I had to work nights, I stretched myself, but I still wrote it. When I was sick and kept in the hospital for passing doctors to poke at will, I dragged my laptop into the room, deftly defying hospital protocol, but I still wrote it. During that time I had to stay awake 52 hours at a stretch, I had to fill my mass with black coffee and had to punch myself awake, but I still wrote it. But last week, zilch. Nada. Nothing.
Last week was more trouble than it was worth. The blog got shelved behind the madness, the chaos, and the mayhem of last week. I couldn’t even find time to respond to comments. Hopefully, this won’t happen again.
With all these crises aimed right at the bulging vein on my forehead, you may ask, how do I accommodate euphoria? And I have to say it’s precisely for these reasons that I’m euphoric. I, Hamish Joy, have now earned a week long parole from the incessant killjoys of office life. In a rare moment of surprising weakness, the powers that be granted me a week off from work. A week away from the drudgeries outlined a couple of paragraphs up above.
This means that I get to spend Christmas at home (read ‘wu hooo!’), where the only calamity that plagues me at the moment is the ongoing interrogation about why I’m skipping around the subject of marriage like it were a razor edged skipping rope.
So here I am, sitting at home, whistling Christmas carols and watching an incessant torrent of movies on dad’s home theater system, the DTS 5.1 channel digital surround audio muffling the sound of buttered popcorn getting crunched between my teeth. When you know the extent of my movie craze, you’ll learn how euphoria is mot juste here.
Of course, this won’t last. Nothing ever does. Dad and mom already have plans to tear me away from the movie screen, though I can tell you right now they won’t be doing that without a fight. Dad still nurtures a glimmer of hope that someday, somehow, he can inspire some level of level-headedness and maturity; maybe even involve me in work around the house that does not involve a DVD player or a computer. So I guess his years of disappointment are not completely over yet.
But in any case, this euphoria cannot last. I wish I could have pulled it along till Christmas, but that’s really pushing it. When ‘pulling it along’ tend to be associated with ‘pushing’ it, things tend to get muddled.
Anyway, wish you all a merry Christmas. Hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed today.
