Journal of a Sabbatical

May 1, 2001

doesn't everybody work on labor day?

Today's Reading: Urban Transportation by Zoltán Várnagy

May Day is a big holiday here. Very big. And everyone worked Saturday ('cept me - I went to Kaposvar) so they could have yesterday off and make it a big three day Labor Day Weekend. Mr. and Mrs. Entomologist think I am crazy for going to work at the Botanical Department today. They keep telling me over breakfast that it is a work holiday so I should not go to work. But this is the perfect time to upgrade to Mac OS 9.1 so that I can download the fix for the memory leak problem. I won't be keeping Karoly from scanning or retouching photos because he won't be there. And I really want to get rid of that memory leak. So, it's hi-ho hi-ho it's off to work I go.

The trams are on holiday schedule so the trip takes a tad longer than usual and then I can't seem to open the door of the Botanical Department building. I call from across the street at the Hotel Platanus where I'm having a refreshing second cup of coffee. István says he and Marti are the only people in the building. Maybe we are nuts.

A visiting Croatian dendrologist came by with some stuff for István on a Zip disk so I unplugged the scanner and plugged in the Zip drive for him. We gotta get a USB hub. However, he didn't have time to wait for me to finished downloading the upgrade, so ended up not using it after all. I forgot about having unplugged the scanner and went on with the upgrade.

On the tram on the way home I saw lots of people with red balloons and fake asters in their hair headed home from socialist and communist May Day rallies. The communists looked really old.

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