an offhand comment made by the person at MIT who i currently work for totally threw me off-balance for a minute today, but i'm fine. it's odd when you feel perfectly stable and on-course and then a thought is tossed like a wrench into the gears that forces you to check your position and think about what you've been thinking about.
it was nothing really - a response to comments that i made about not having studied a lot of useful things back in school, like, say, physics. it was just that, and how i regret it, to an extent. i made a lot of bad decisions back then, fed by naivete and a serious lack of foresight. we all know this. i'm over it. i am also lucky enough to have found a career that i enjoy. so i'm not losing any sleep these days, fortunately. but he was under the impression that i considered myself in a temporary 'job', not yet neck-deep in my career, and suggested that if i was serious about working in construction (which i'm not- it was a misunderstanding) that i really needed to get into the carpenter's union. it was a perfectly good suggestion, if i were hoping to go in that direction, and considering his perspective being influenced by his own background and experience. it has actually already come up in the past with other furniture makers that i know, and i have already figured out that i do not, in fact, want to join the carpenter's union. with the economy being what it is, in most cases it would be a very sensible thing to do. i got my experience, however, working with and surrounded by people who have been running their own small businesses, on their own terms, and though that type of working situation is by no means a smooth ride, it has its own upsides and possibilities that the union may not.

the point is that though i've been coming across more job opportunities than i have time for, the idea that i was potentially neglecting a major factor in the general sort of work that i do totally disoriented me for a few minutes, so that i actually had to step away from my own brain as much as possible and go over the things that i do and the choices i made, just to sort of take inventory and make sure i wasn't being a complete imbecile. i think it was partly because the idea of not being in the right place, itself, came from a person who is an integral part of the machine that is the school of architecture at MIT, which is naturally a great source of my recently acquired sense of financial stability. i was caught completely off guard and felt quite lost for a few minutes.
fortunately, i have not been entirely stumbling along blindly, and was able to regain perspective so that the earth stopped shifting under my feet within five minutes. crisis averted, no major introspection necessary today, thanks though.

ugh.

no real change with the pickle pots, so far. still very salty. i was away for a couple of days earlier this month, and had to put them in the fridge to hopefully forestall any going bad that might happen in the heat, and it seems to have worked, mostly - but since then, i've noticed a lot more gas production. if you have a solid ceramic or plastic bucket, you can't see through the sides, but since i'm using glass, i can clearly see all these little air pockets that open up between the daily stirs. it doesn't seem to be causing any problems, and the smell hasn't gone bad or changed, really, but it's still something... different. i have had a lot of green onions coming in my weekly csa pickups, so i tried halving a few of those and throwing them in - they were the first vegetables i was able to use and they tasted pretty good, actually. i did have to throw away a few of the outer layers, though, which had gotten overcooked and were kinda soggy. you really have to plan ahead with these things, since they definitely cross a line after a while - they're supposed to be softer and brighter in color, but only to a point. and once you take them out of the pot, they're only good for a short time. this is not something that streamlines well with the modern workaholic instant-gratification never-plan-ahead american lifestyle. fortunately, i think i can adapt.