Had a relaxing day at work for once; what I've been reading

Friday

In Mid-July update, I alluded to a possible future in which one of my co-workers, Squirrel, would have time to help with some of my Work Product Units. That future has come to pass, and now, after a couple short weeks, we are completely caught up. I am at inbox zero. Except for a couple corrections that have come in, today I've had time to sit at my desk and just... exist. It's been nice.

I've been reading some. My main RSS reader, Capy, doesn't support folders, and I didn't want to fill it with a numberwang of posts. So I downloaded a different one called FeedFlow and imported owls' 2025 Blaugust OPML file (very helpful, many thanks for the compilation!) This contains all of the feeds for every registered Blaugust participant in one convenient package. It's an overwhelming number of entries, and I'd be foolish to try to read all of them, but I've been skimming the feeds and here are a few recent ones I really liked:

• Joel Chrono - An analog desk clock

• Jessica Smith - Cats

• Megan Carnes - I have nothing to write about today

• Jedda - Red's Java House

• J - On building a beautiful life

• Hollie - Holy cats, my doctor thinks I'm autistic

• Izzy - Ahem

I've also been reading the second Parker novel. It's a bit more engaging than the first one, because it involves planning a big single big heist with a number of compounding complications. Parker himself isn't any more of a compelling character than book 1, but the other heist participants he works with have personalities, and it's exciting to see how well the plan will come together.

I've also been reading Chomsky's On Anarchism. I was trying to find a quote I saw someone paraphrase about Chomsky's definition of anarchism (the actual quote is longer, but in essence it defines anarchism as "the opposition to unjustified hierarchies", which I think is a nice way to encapsulate it) and while googling found the book on The Anarchist Library, so I figured I'd go ahead and read it. So far what I've read is good. One chapter is just a collection of quotes from Understanding Power about anarchism, which I've already read and recommend. (That book doesn't seem to be on the anarchist library, so look for it in your local library. The chapter I just finished is a rebuttal to popular misconceptions about the Spanish Civil War c. the 1960s. It's good, but I don't know enough about the Spanish Civil War and should read a more introductory text about it first. The chapter talks about political factions assuming a prior knowledge that I don't have. I should find a good recent book about it.

Saturday

Most of the above was written at around 14h00 Friday afternoon. I was having such a relaxing time reading that I got a late start writing. Just now, in the laundry room, I spent most of a wash cycle compiling the list of Blaugust posts. I really should've bookmarked them or something.

In the middle of writing, I received about half of the new WPUs for the week, so I put my laptop away and worked on those. I think we usually get half on Tuesday and half on Friday. Idk, they don't usually come directly to me, and I'm so used to having a huge backlog that "new WPUs" didn't mean much to me. All I knew is someone would occasionally come and toss some more on the pile.

This is going to be an unusual work week. The 15th is Izzy's and my anniversary, so I requested that day off. Our work week runs from Saturday-Friday, so if I want to make up the time, I have to do it before Friday. So, I'll be working tomorrow. It should be pretty relaxing too, since I'll be at the office by myself. Now that we're caught up, I can work at a sensible pace. 25 WPUs per day, plus whatever corrections I need to deal with. Not a single U of WP more than that.

My excitement is modulated a bit by the fact that Cockatoo¹ is going on vacation next week, so I'll have to do her job. But it's fine. It's only four days, and only one of those days (Tuesday) should be bad. After that, it's smooth sailing.

Guess who's here!

It's laundry cat!!!