I live!
25 Apr 2005 
just before lunchtime 
Matt Winckler
Despite various wagers to the contrary, I do in fact remain alive, if not well. I am now endowed with greater knowledge, an expanded view of the world, and 4 more experience points in the Roofing skill (Physical/Hard). On Thursday after lunch I bid my new workplace goodbye and set out to do what no man had done before: replace the roof on my house. It was gruelling work, but not as difficult as Robinson’s roof was two weeks ago, and certainly not as difficult as pruning suckers off of 6-year-old apple trees on a thirty-degree grade all day long. The upshot of the latter, years ago, was that it must have added an inch and a half to my vertical jump (six thousand squats will do that to a fellow). As it is, I’m just sore as a bone after doing the roofing, with no perceptible physical benefits.
The other downshot of the roofing is that it now shows up the peeling paintwork on the exterior of the house, which means that I need to get right out there and do something about it. I was planning to anyway, but now I want to do it sooner than later. There’s just something distinctly incongruous about a new roof and old paint. The old roof matched the old paint, so you didn’t tend to notice either one. And thus we learn that all things in the world really are one big interconnected system.
I continue to bing along at work, though not very productively. This is primarily because I still don’t have a clear idea of what I should be doing. Some smart body ought to come up with a way to assimilate new talent into an organization effectively and efficiently. (That process does not include reading eight hours worth of nigh-valueless HR detritus.) If there is one thing I have learned, however, it is that this organization produces about four times the volume of email above and beyond what is necessary. How anybody gets anything done with all this email is beyond me, though now I begin to see why a certain small percentage of email I send, no matter how important, gets ignored by its recipient. It’s probably just lost in the pile of useless trash in their Inbox. Effective system.
My bones ache for a monthly poker outing, which has been put on hold until all our various roofing fol-de-rols were completed. Said roofing done, it’s time to get back to the important stuff. Right after painting.