Surreptitious Opinionation

I worked out this morning. Then I made up for every calorie burned at breakfast. Typical.

Yeah, I was having trouble keeping up with LJ (I don’t see why, it’s not like I have hundreds of subscriptions…. Oh wait, I do) so adding a regular diet of news hasn’t helped matters. Especially since I stopped reading the news at work. I need to trim my intake again, and having done that in the past, there’s not really any non-painful trimming to be done. Sad.

I just caught up to J K Rawlins. This book is better than some of the preceding ones. Though who could read it and not see the repeated, if not completely unambiguous foreshadowing of Snape’s loyalty, I don’t know.

People ask me from time to time where I’m from. I usually tell them that has a complicated answer, and the typical follow up is “Well, where’s home?” Typically I respond “I don’t have one.”

But in the taxi heading over to chateau d’ and , I had another thought. I have many homes. With that interpretation, it’s literally true that I don’t have *one*, so I wasn’t precisely wrong before. But whether home is where the heart is, or it’s the place where when you have to go there, they have to let you in, I have multiple homes. And that is a vastly more uplifting answer.

I still don’t know what I want to do, which makes the path forward considerably less clear:

There are so many things one can do that are ‘environmental jobs’.

One can work in R&D…
• …on technology, figuring out how to make the next new wizbang gadget that will get you to work, consuming only dung and producing sparkly fresh pixie dust.
• …on ecology, monitoring the state of things as they are. Figuring out the relationships between different organisms and the functioning of ecosystems
• …on policy evaluation, figuring out what the implications of current policy are, and based on some set of criteria, what the optimal outcomes are.

One can work in implementation…

• …policing the behavior of the individuals currently following or not following policy.
• …helping corporations clean up themselves and their reputations.
• …working to educate and inform. Being a cheerleader for sustainability.
• …implementing systems to praise the worthy and/or condemn the unworthy

I think the ones that really appeal to me are policy evaluation and helping corporations clean up their acts and reputations. Additionally, I really want a good reason to keep up on the dung to pixie dust converters. And then there’s the actual activities I want to do a combination of talking to people, dealing with significant analytical challenges, and playing a heavy advisory role.

Sounds like consulting to me. And sounds like some sort of environmental MBA type degree. (there’s an environmental management program like 10 minutes walk from my office, which fills this description pretty nicely. And they offer a part time program as well. Only about $45k to see it all the way through…)

I shouldn’t try to be nice when filling out class evaluations. The training for C3 sucked. It was interesting and all, but not terribly relevant. It was 90% history. They had to add something to the training material to let us know the basic divisions within the department of the environment. it was sad. And there was no volunteerism component to the training.

They say the goal of this program is to teach you to plug you into a network of environmental activists and develop your leadership. They sure do have a funny way of doing that. Sitting in a room being lectured to definitely makes one a better leader and more connected to a community. And now, a week after the training, they want a filled in project proposal form. Yeah. Right. Community organizing by multiple choice tests. They have some serious delusions about this program.

I’ll probably do it around lunch time or something.

Moving to Lincoln Park was perfect. Awesome location. It lets me have a social life on weekday evenings, without regretting it in the morning (too much). And the place is a great size for having people over. Yay for the new place.

Spider man 3 was awful, but the company was great. First words out of my mouth as the credits began rolling: “Well, thank god that’s over.” It wasn’t really that bad, but it was fun to say. Nick, Rick, Jo(h?)n, and I sat around until the lights came up ripping the movie to shreds, and all the way back to the L, waiting for the L, and half the ride home. Until we drove Rick away with our excessive dorking out. Still, good times.

When I got home, my peapod food had arrived. And it was in the house, meaning my roommate must have let them in. Thank you, roommate. The produce is very fresh (fresher than I can get at a grocery store). The selection is modest. The convenience is top notch. The cost is also high. But not outrageously so. I think I overbought. I’ll have to have people over for dinner next week or something.

Yay new place.

I’m over committed, sort of. But most of the commitment is in my head.

I dunno. Gymnastics is fun, but painful. Not sure where I want to go with that. Spanish would be cool. it’d be neat to actually see a language through to conversability for once. WoW is a time suck, but a net social one that beats the gay chat media establishments hands down. I’ve been neglecting lj lately, and it has been good to me in the past. Met some great people on here. Gym time would both extend my life and improve the quality of it. Plus, you know, rippled abs are hot (not that I’ll ever have them). A yoga class or the like would be good too. If I want to go anywhere with the environmental thing, I’m going to have to put time into keeping up with it. And for that matter, reading the news eats major quantities of time. It’s all just crazy.

(as an aside, I never ‘got’ why people put the “Not enough hours in the day” shtick on wedding invitations. It’s almost like saying “Well, my biological clock is ticking, so I guess this schmuck is the best I’m going to do”. Doesn’t fit with the rest of the flowery language, anyway.)

I’m thinking about taking a Spanish class in the evenings. As a way to get out and meet people in the real world, while doing something useful. I’ve also considered the aerobics classes at my gym, but I suspect those will be less conducive to social contact. We’ll see. It’s about $250 for 8 weeks of spanish. Anyone interested in being my study buddy? =)