Still have this low level flu. Tired in a weird way, as if every other molecule in my body had turned to lead. You wonder, well, is this the flu or old age or maybe some trapped in the same rut for too long time to crash and burn business? I hope it's not the crash and burn business, cause that will be scary and require serious effort. Have I felt this way in the past? Maybe. Probably. Hard to say. Not sure it matters.

The company has recommended to those of us with banked vacation days that we take as many as possible between now and the end of the year so they can reduce this liability on the books. Seems a bit desperate, but I could use five days, starting, say Wednesday. Five days of puttering around the apartment unpacking boxes, taking naps, writing short bursts of deathless prose to go with the photographs that I take during those leftover hours, you know, when I wasn't unpacking books. Naturally, to bring it all back into focus, one of our people mentioned they'd done this very same thing when he'd been at Lotus just before a massive layoff. No need then to pay an unnecessary number of vacation days when they hand you the package.

Too much talk of layoffs. Too many rumors, too many people feeling pissed. Most of it because there's no communication from the top. We work in a top down information only if you absolutely have to tell them business where people are not much more than a job description in an HR computer, as interchangeable as grains of rice, bought, as needed, by the pound on the open market.

Hard to say how all this affects the flu, if it's the flu, of course, AND NOT A DREADED ANTHRAX ATTACK, (dear God)!!! The paper had a story about that today, how people are getting psychological symptoms every bit as potent as the real thing from reading the news. Could play a part. In the old days when somebody sent you white powder in an envelope you rolled up a banknote, put it up your nose and took a deep breath.

Speaking of news, this piece caught my fancy. It came attached to an email that's been out there making the rounds.

Later. Three years today, my goodness. An arbitrary number, but a reasonably good place to take stock. At least a mini-stock. No reason to go on and on. I've spent the day putting up books and unpacking boxes. Washed the bedding. Went to the store and bought picture hanging kits. I didn't hang a single picture at the last place, thinking, well, the owner's coming back pretty soon, why mark up the walls? Here they spackle and paint when someone moves out. Time now to actually move in, I think, hang pictures, go through the moves. So I've got the flu? So what? Feeling better, one day at at time. So I may lose my job. More likely not. Get on with it. Go forward with the web at work. Practice. Photograph. Enjoy it. While I can.