Roses in Bloom

I had a post in mind as I was on my way home from work but all thoughts have vaporized now due to sheer exhaustion. There is a light at the end of the tunnel now though and overall it has been a successful week & weekend. Only one more day until I get my life back from work.

It's not worth explaining what I do. No one understands it no matter how I explain it anyway. I am a consultant. Great. Consultant for what. Blah Blah. It is a weird job. I've just been working for 8 days straight, on average 16 hour days so I can probably only say nonsense anyway. We try to push the limits of what several hundred people can do in a few months starting from scratch and starting as strangers.

Between the travel, the weird hours and the tendency it causes for me to disappear into the great abyss for months at a time it makes life a little schizophrenic. There is 'weekend Michelle' and 'weekday Michelle'. Two strangers passing in the night with completely different priorities, hopes and dreams. It is not such a big surprise that M. is from the same company. No one else would tolerate this lifestyle from a girlfriend.

A friend passed me this last week and it is all too true:

Consultant
Have gun, will travel

$$: Entry level grunts may begin in the high five and low six figures. If you're a graduate of one of the huge consultant factories that leach humanity out of students and turn them into guns for hire--Wharton, and to a lesser extent, the somewhat squishier Stanford School of Business--you could be making an executive's salary almost immediately.

The upside: It's a pretty easy job, with great travel benefits, nice hotels, drinks on the companies you are soaking.

The downside: Your kids can never explain what you do to their friends.

The dark side: You are a ninja, a samurai, a lone traveler on the road to nowhere. It's a very opulent nowhere if you're good at it. But somewhere in your heart, you want to come in from the cold.

Now I remember what I wanted to post about. The roses in Basel. They are surreal. Great climbing roses, immense bushes, wild roses and garden roses. I have not seen such spectacular roses anywhere. I'm not sure, but I think April is absurdly early for them. They are stunning. Red, Pink, White, Yellow and Orange. When I was going to work at 6 on Saturday morning, there was one that was a pink-peach color that was nearly luminescent in the gray blue light. Combined with massive vines of wisteria all over the place, the city looks amazing.

Posted from Basel