Tuesday afternoon ramble

If this keeps up, I'm going to have to paint my bathrooms. Or something.

I did manage to get mulch this morning. For whatever reason, they've closed the place on weekends but left one gate open during the week. There was a guy loading up a large pickup truck; he said he didn't know when they'd close the mulch yard for the season. He expressed sympathy with regard to the shutdown and ensuing furlough.

It felt funny going into work in the morning. I had to go in--we're supposed to bring our offices to a state of orderly shutdown. On the Metro, I felt, for a second, like one of those people who doesn't have a job to go to but keeps dressing up and going nonetheless, out of routine and perhaps appearances. Except I was in jeans, as were the others I ran into.

I thought about how family-like my work environment was; the sense of community is extraordinary. My coworkers are my friends, beyond the water-cooler level. I was very, very tempted to do work, but that would have been illegal. Oh, but I have so much of it. All I could do was officially cancel a meeting (that it had taken me a month to schedule) and set up out-of-office replies ("I'll get back to you when the government reopens"). I also packed up any perishable food to take home.

At the Metro escalators, reporters were trying to snag furloughed interviewees, but most people didn't want to talk.