I'm reading No god But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, by Reza Aslan, and it is awesome. It's not just an even-handed, erudite book about Islam (those are rare enough), but he's a fine storyteller with an excellent sense of narrative history. Go read it.

I have a job! I remember why I stopped working. My body is a little cranky about being back in an office, and I'm working on how to care for myself when I can't do whatever I want every moment of the day. Also, meetings are bad. But there's an endless field of opportunities to do stuff--we often refer to this lack of structure and process as either "green field" or "Wild West", and in this case it's a bit of both--so today I figured out how to build some software so I wouldn't have to do the gross hacks they've been doing to make the software run. It's not that no one wants to fix these things, it's just that they've been busy with other things, and to some extent there's a need for the nudge of some ideas and direction. As it happens, I am bursting with ideas, one or two of which actually work, so that's why I'm there. After I'd interviewed with my boss, I sent him a followup email with some more information about something I'd mentioned; apparently that's going to cut some report processing time by 40-70%, for another $700/month. So I've been told I already earned my first paycheck. Go me.

It's hard to slow down and remember to breathe. Which is all I've really had to do the past couple of months, so I'm remembering the sense of chaos and rush and why it's such a challenge to be mindful during the day. I'm getting a rhythm going, though, and once I figure out how to eat light lunches and also not starve in the middle of the afternoon, I should be good to go.

And my iaito has shipped! I'm very excited. Not sure where I can practice with it, since I don't have a yard and I'm imagining that swinging a sword in a park is a bad idea; there's always the dojo, and actually several office parks around here that are deserted after hours.

          18:57 <odo> apparently if you have swords delivered to
                            google you get called down to shipping and
                            told to get the sword the fuck out of there
                            and you can't take it on the shuttle