Just Sometimes, I Love the Rain in Summer

I know I spend a pretty big proportion of my time in the winter complaining, to pretty much anyone who’ll listen, about the weather. I suppose we all do it a bit, but I’m very much more guilty of it than anyone else I know. That said, there’s an element of surprise that lends some charm to the kind of blustery, rain swept afternoon we’re having today.

I woke later than I’d have liked this morning, but it being a weekend that’s not of any real consequence. As I occasionally enjoy, I watched a movie before getting out of bed (Lucky Number Slevin - a bit predictable, but good fun) and then made myself a sandwich. When I sat back down to eat my sandwich (I don’t eat hot food at home, as a rule) and drink some tea, I glanced out the window and saw the heaviest rain I’ve seen in a very long time.

From the window of our piano room, across the tops of the hedges that separate the residential Ordnance Survey from the OSi proper, I can see the pale slate roofs of the offices. Even as I write, the rain is heavy enough to throw up a spray as it hammers the slates*, a cloudy white mist across the rooftops, and with every gust of wind, the spray ripples sideways from one roof to another. I’m not sure if it’s just that I’m in the mood for it, but for now it’s just a refreshing sight.

I’m not sure what I’ll do today, having been effectively immobilised by the whole meteorology affair. It’s been a very long time since I just sat at home and did nothing for a full day; I think it’s been long enough that I might very well enjoy that. I may read a comic, if the fancy takes me, or perhaps watch a film. There are an awful lot of films in my house that have been recommended (not heavily, as Flash pointed out in previous comments) but which I have yet to see.

I’m still not sure how I feel about work, but now that I’ve started to get to know the people I work with a bit better I’m having a bit more fun with it. The strange part is that I’m still not sure what all of the “social networking” parts of my job are for. I’m driving traffic to our “staff blog” – content provided by me – which is great. I’m also managing to engage people better with the Twitter, and using the combination of the work Twitter and the work Facebook to pull more traffic to… the blog.

The only real concern, trust me it is a concern, is that I have no idea what they’re hoping to make out of the whole affair. I mean, more traffic is great, but surely the people on the Twitter and the Facebook are already our customers – the kind of staunch supporters who wear it a bit proudly. It’s a strange thing to work as part of something you don’t think will succeed. It’s stranger still to work as pretty much the sole part of something whose success or failure you couldn’t recognise or don’t understand. This’d be fine if there were elements of Taylorism involved, but I’m the sole source of content here.

I once heard a woman say, “Well, this whole thing’s been a GDCF,” in description of an event. Everyone present knew exactly what that meant and it took me a second, but it comes to pretty much everyone quickly enough.

The rain had let up a little over the last couple of paragraphs, but it’s since started pouring out of the heavens again. I find the only downside to my voluntary semi-permanent headphone-deafness** is that I miss the sounds of the wind and the rain; when I’m at home on my own, I change to the heavy-duty speakers and listen to things at a reasonably enough volume that I can still hear the rain falling with the window cracked.

I should probably stop writing now, because I’ve run out of real concerns and will just continue to dribble nonsense endlessly into this text file to avoid making any real decisions about what I’ll do with my day.

Hopefully it’ll be fun.

For anyone still wondering, it’s “Goddamn clusterfuck”.


*So far there have been some good plurals in this update. I’ve always had a fondness for nouns ending in “f” that go against the grain and don’t ditch it in favour of a “ves” when pluralised. So in this case, I’m loving the word “roofs”. Similarly, I love the word “dwarfs,” though Tolkien has popularised “dwarves” – I believe some copies of The Hobbit still carry a note to the effect that “dwarfs” means basically “people suffering from dwarfism” while “dwarves” refers specifically to mining peoples.

“Slate” is also a good collective noun, meaning the list of people eligible to be voted into a particular position or positions.

** Having heaphones in, not having crippled myself :)