07/29/98

Dear me, it seems the anger and frustration of last week may have been due entirely to the horrid antibiotics I was taking for an infection. I stopped taking it over the weekend and noticed right away that irritations no longer seemed like personal insults and life was full of sunshine again. A consultation with the doctor about the infection and my increasingly severe cold leads me to believe antibiotics can have the same effect as steroids, i.e., one is prone to become a Marvel comics character, turn green, double in size, and lose one's temper at top volume. I am back to herbal pills, aspirin, and lots of healthful liquids. No alcohol, not for a while. Even my puny one beer a day was probably exacerbating things.

Office excitement never stops: our receptionist, she of the recent wedding, has given notice. I'm afraid we're all rather relieved. She's a very nice gal (deadly words, aren't they?) but she tended to wear shorts and tennis shoes to work, spent hours on the phone on personal calls, was never once, in the four months I've been there, on time, and had an unfortunate tendency to not do anything she didn't feel like doing. In the two weeks she's been on her honeymoon we finally got a chance to overhaul the storage room and the brochure room, two jobs she felt were hers but didn't want to do and wouldn't let anyone else do. The rooms are finally cleared out, everything's in a labeled box, and the fire department can once again be allowed to inspect us. If the boss hires an administrative assistant instead of a receptionist my happiness will be complete.

So I am not to go anywhere exotic, after all, this autumn. I compromised once again and now I'm a bit disappointed in myself. The offer of a free week was too alluring and once committed to using it I had to take what was available. The availability, it turns out, is for Sedona, Arizona. This is not a bad choice but it's not what I'd been hankering for. Eh, well, I'll just have to save up and do something exotic in the spring. Besides, it gave my father great pleasure to arrange it for me, and that's worth a lot to me right now. Sedona is supposed to be astonishingly beautiful and I do love the desert. We'll be able to do several things I've wanted to do for years: visit Anasazi ruins, go to the Grand Canyon, drive some of the routes mentioned by Tony Hillerman in his Navajo mysteries, and photograph some of the great American southwest. I think I can stand it.