a good meeting

A good meeting (even if it lasts two and a half hours) is one where you make at least a couple of useful comments, where the actions you get noted down for aren't too unreasonable, where most of the meeting is of interest and interesting, and where you can make notes for your current fiction project without being noticed in the remaining part of the meeting that isn't of interest or interesting.

Not that I would do any such thing, of course.

Generally good day. Having got permission (I love the past participle) and being thoroughly fed up of our current document reference file, a great monstrosity of a table in a Word document, I shifted the whole thing to an Excel workbook and broke it down by year. While I had to do a certain amount of reformatting by hand, the whole thing is so much better now, and doesn't hang for five minutes when you try to open it. Go me.

Also some work.

Also got the springkink prompts I wanted. Excellent.

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An Astrologer’s Song

To the Heavens above us
O look and behold
The Planets that love us
All harnessed in gold!
What chariots, what horses
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

All thought, all desires,
That are under the sun,
Are one with their fires,
As we also are one.
All matter, all spirit,
All fashion, all frame,
Receive and inherit
Their strength from the same.

Oh, man that deniest
All power save thine own
Their power in the highest
Is mightily shown.
Not less in the lowest
That power is made clear.
(Oh, man, if thou knowest,
What treasure is here!)

Earth quakes in her throes
And we wonder for why.
But the blind planet knows
When her ruler is nigh;
And, attuned since Creation
To perfect accord,
She thrills in her station
And yearns to her Lord.

The waters have risen,
The springs are unbound —
The floods break their prison,
And ravin around.
No rampart withstands ’em,
Their fury will last,
Till the Sign that commands ’em
Sinks low or swings past.

Through abysses unproven,
O’er gulfs beyond thought,
Our portion is woven,
Our burden is brought.
Yet They that prepare it,
Whose Nature we share,
Make us who must bear it
Well able to bear.

Though terrors o’ertake us
We’ll not be afraid.
No Power can unmake us
Save that which has made:
Nor yet beyond reason
Or hope shall we fall —
All things have their season,
And Mercy crowns all!

Then, doubt not, ye fearful —
The Eternal is King —
Up, heart, and be cheerful,
And lustily sing: —
What chariots, what horses,
Against us shall bide
While the Stars in their courses
Do fight on our side?

-- Kipling