Good and bad.

Well, looks like the latest list of triumphs and tribulations is a list of fairly small things. Nothing earth-shaking, but then again, nothing horrific either. This is probably just as well. Riding the White Horse (please, please, please, before you assume anything about that, go back through my LJ entries and find the one where I explain about the White Horse) has a tendency to leave a body exhausted and useless. A little time for small things now and again is a good thing.

Small triumph: Got last night's drawing posted to the Pencils Gallery and successfully integrated a named anchor into the page so that people can click to jump to another drawing on the same site. I'd half forgotten how to do that.
Small tribulation: Found out that not only was my new suit jacket two inches too short in the sleeve (well, two inches short of my wrists, anyway - I don't mind 'em a little short, but that's about an inch more than I quite like), the place I bought 'em from is sold out of larger sizes. An attempt to exchange it for a larger size in a different colour brought the news that the other colour had sold out of everything except Small.
Small triumph: The fact that one of our donors has yet to receive a thank-you letter is not my fault after all, but that of one of our executives, who neglected to sign the letter a week ago when I gave it to him. This is bad for the donor, but at least I did my part properly.
Small tribulation: An inexplicably scratchy throat despite the best efforts of my last Tunes cough drop.
Small triumph: I had enough kosher cheese last night to make macaroni and cheese for myself. Damn, but I wanted animal protein. Nothing died to produce my dinner last night - well, maybe the wheat that became the macaroni did, but everything else came from seeds or was safe milk or eggs. Thank God for the rabbis.
Small tribulation: I was ten minutes late for work this morning because of construction traffic, a traffic accident, and a stretch where I was stuck behind a construction crane on the road.

Overall I think it's a good thing to have such little problems. I mean, I could be living in Afghanistan. I could be living in Angola. I could be living in one of the bits of New York City that my parents moved specifically to avoid. But when your biggest problem of the day is a suit jacket you bought on sale (thirty dollars off) fitting every other way but being a few inches too short in the sleeve, you know you've got it good. God bless America.

(Of course, having said this, I will no doubt go to check my PO box at lunch and emerge just in time for the first Richter 8 earthquake to hit the nearest fault line in over two hundred years. That's just how it works.)

Today's pulp survival tip is #127: Cutlasses belong in scabbards or in your hand, not between your teeth.

More small things.

1. Executive still hasn't signed the letters. Oh well. Will talk to him before I leave.
2. The tailor says there's not enough fabric in the seams to lengthen the sleeves or the cuffs appreciably. He did, however, indicate that something might be possible were I to buy about a quarter of a yard of fabric of approximately the same weight, texture, and colour.
3. The craft store nearby sold me said fabric - relatively soft canvas rather than stiff heavyweight linen, but approx. the same texture and weight and definitely the same colour - for $1.50 at lunchtime.
4. The craft store is three stores over from an Emack and Bolio's run by a Chinese family. I don't know how much custom the store gets - it always looks empty when I glance at it on the way to other stores - but they've got a wide menu of things you don't see all that often in shops around here. Including something like fourteen or fifteen different kinds of bubble tea. The peppermint green variety tasted very good and was very kind to my throat. I may have to go back soon.

All in all, a good day so far, even if you include the realization that I had this morning. Namely, that I have more disturbing thoughts before 8:45 AM than most people do all day. (It had to do with VicMage.Asia, and a particular song on the radio. An awful lot of stuff that ends up in my games or fiction comes from songs I hear on the radio. I don't mind having a half hour drive or longer to work, because car time is music time and music time is inspiration time.)

Someone saner than me has taken over my brain.

Around four this afternoon, I got an email at work. I won't give the details; suffice it to say that it was a criticism of a particular Red Cross chapter's implementation of Red Cross policy, and it was written by someone who was evidently angry enough that they felt proper use of English grammar was not entirely necessary to their point. Ordinarily when this happens I get upset, but at the time I was bemused by the whole prospect, as I had no idea what they were referring to. I forwarded it to the right people at the chapter, sent a 'please clarify' message back to the sender, and went home. I changed my shirt (I was wearing one with Red Cross logos), set the oven to 500 degrees to preheat the pizza stone and thaw the frozen dough my dad bought, and went upstairs to my room. My sister seems to have hijacked the computer at some point this afternoon, as Instant Messenger was back in the system tray, but that was all right. She didn't do any harm. I went back downstairs and put up a pot of tea.

I'm going into New York tomorrow, and I"m going as me. As a civilian. I'm not going to do anything involving Red Cross stuff. I won't wear any logo clothing, not even the baseball cap. I'm just going into New York, and I'm going to the Asia Society museum, and I'm going as *me*. Tonight I'm going to watch my shiny new copy of My Father Is A Hero, which is more than happy to play in my DVD drive. I'm not gonna think about any more Red Cross foo until Sunday, when I'll be marching in a local St. Patrick's Day Parade as a 9/11 volunteer... that's Sunday. Tonight is tea, and making pizza, and Jet Li kicking bad people in the head and swinging a kid around at the end of a rope or chain of some kind. It's all good.

Even the best and most seasoned of soldiers can only last so long in the field before they need a break, or else they break. I'm taking mine this weekend.