Alewife Bayou: December 1998
sunshine, yams, and snowy scams
one twelve thirteen
I went out in the sunshine today. It was the first time in nearly a week that I'd seen the outdoors without looking through some sort of window. It was a nice morning, marred by the fact that I haven't yet bought a subway pass for December (hey, I've been inside for nearly a week) and I didn't realize this until I was already in the station.
I feel absolutely rotten. I'm in that in-between state now; I can no longer reasonably call myself incapacitated, but I'm still too muddled to accomplish any real concentration.
I got a little mail about my experiment yesterday with the turkey entry. Anita liked it, although she noted that even in a laundry-list entry I can't avoid introspective digressions. Guilty. Sally, on the other hand, said (more or less) "Since you bored me with the list of what you had for dinner, I'm going to bore you with mine." I can't tell if she was teasing me, but if she wasn't, it backfired -- I actually thought her list made interesting reading. Except that she won't give me her sweet-potato recipe. I adore sweet potatoes.
Days like this are dangerous. I'm even more random than usual; no telling what I could think of next. On the way to work this morning, for example, I was thinking about the movie Fargo. (This was spurred by some email about it from Sally the night before.)
The comments below are oblique enough that they don't really count as spoilers. On the other hand, if you haven't seen the movie, they won't make much sense.
Sally wanted my ideas on what happens to the barely-buried money Steve Buscemi's character stashes. I'm not so concerned with that; I am more interested in some explanation of Lundegaard's (William Macy's) motives. I've seen two schools of thought on this. One says he's running all these various cons at the same time -- cheating the auto lender, trying to get his father-in-law to give him money for the real estate thing, and the kidnapping.
I prefer a more conservative approach. I think he cheated GMAC, taking out loans to buy cars which never existed; that the real estate money was meant as a scheme to pay back the GMAC money, and that he cooked up the kidnapping when his father-in-law didn't seem likely to go for the idea. (You'll recall that when his father-in-law actually seems likely to go for the real estate deal, Jerry tries to call off the kidnapping, without success.)
The problem is that the dollar amounts don't seem to match; if the real estate amount is higher than the GMAC amount, Jerry's just trying to add on a little extra margin for himself, but if it's the other way 'round ... ah, shucks, I dunno. And it still doesn't explain why he scammed GMAC in the first place.
I refuse to see the film again just so my brain can speculate more on something which is insoluble, because the Coens haven't bothered to explain it and would probably be amused that it's distracting anyone this much. And I wouldn't be this distracted, if my head weren't idle and full of snot. It's really a dumb thing to think about.
I could wish, though, that they had cut the movie's only really useless sequence - the section with McDormand's psychotic ex-schoolmate -- and used that time instead to explain Macy's character a little better. He's a heel, but we don't know why he's a heel.
I guess speculating idly about unimportant things is better than speculating idly about real things. Everytime I think about AOL and Netscape I just get a little more annoyed. I have to clamp down on this. I refuse to let AOL shorten my lifespan. [Dec 04: There was a dead link on the word "annoyed" -- it was, as I recall, someone else's rant on "why the AOL-Netscape deal sucks." You have to remember that at the time Netscape was the only decent browser in the universe. Fortunately that changed, because the part about AOL dragging Netscape down with it came true as prophecied.]
I'm not staying at work a full day. Forget it.
gas drugs lodging this exit
two twelve eleven
After muttering about Mobil and Exxon in the business section for several days, the Globe finally moved it to the front page today. Whoop-de-do.
You may wonder why I'm so concerned about AOL and Netscape but could care less about the potential creation of the largest corporate entity on the planet. Here's why:
1. It's not the late 30's anymore.
2. John Rockefeller, an all-time finisher on my list of Top Ten Evil Magnates (you'll know how bad this list is when I tell you that Bill Gates is not on it -- yet) is long dead.
3. The merged entity (let's call it Bilxon) will not have anywhere near the dominance of the entire American petroleum market that Standard Oil did.
4. So they get together and squeeze up gas prices unfairly. Big deal. Crude prices are in the cellar right now. When gas gets cheap, people forget it's a non-renewable. They go out and buy lots of SUVs (the most useless, wasteful, ego-gratifying vehicles known, unless you count those stretch limos, which probably get better mileage) and take needless car trips and so on.
If I were ruling the world (and aren't you glad I'm not? Me too) gas would be heavily surcharged, you would take mass transportation to work, because it would be there to take and would be safe and reliable, and if you had a car at all you'd only use it to schlep groceries and visit the relatives in Weehawken every year.
Oh, and we'd all live in castles made of spun sugar and fairy cake.
- - -
Two new candidates for the Thinking Aloud ring have been contacted. Stay tuned for details. Thanks to everyone who sent their favorites!
- - -
Been thinking about drugs again. Partially this is because I've been sick, of course.
One of my favorite Stay Tuned pieces was about cold medicines. All cold medicines are made of the same four or five basic drugs, in a mix-and-match sort of system where the packaging deliberately obscures what you're getting and how much of it.
Unless you read and compare the backs of the packages, and arm yourself with a little advance knowledge of the chemicals involved (i.e. which drugs are secretly stimulants, and therefore allow packagers to say "non-drowsy formula" on the package, et cetera et cetera) you're probably getting swindled a little bit on cold medicines. If you don't buy generics (they all use Exactly The Same Drugs) then you're definitely getting swindled.
I didn't get a lot of comment on that essay, back when, and it was one of the few times when silence has really disappointed me. I'd love to write a book about the kinds of things Stay Tuned was supposed to be about -- the many ways that marketers try to deceive you, and how to be a smarter consumer ... but here's the problem:
By definition, I am preaching to the choir.
In the same way that a person who read and loved Stay Tuned was probably already the kind of person who looked at the back of drug packages, a person who'd buy a smart-consumer book is the kind of person who is least likely to need the advice.
That's rather discouraging. So I don't preach anymore -- I just take notes quietly for myself, and vent here every now and again.
somber sides and food failures
three twelve twelve
This has taken a while both because the morning was a mess and because the ISP decided to hiccup for a few minutes. I noticed; you probably didn't. The joys of being compulsive about one's web sites!
A new face has been added to the Thinking Aloud ring -- Rob, our field agent in Kalamazoo, is hopefully in good company. Stroll on over and say hi ... or, if nothing else, admire the lovely Thinking Aloud graphic he decided to make.
I was commenting on that (maybe even to him, I forget). The ring has a logo -- you'll see it if you do a site list -- but no one uses it except Dianne. I don't even use it anymore; it's hard to fit into my new layout. It's also a little somber -- what can I say? I design somber. Look at the top page of Alewife Bayou. My beautiful new logo (which you probably all hate) is rather dark and gloomy, isn't it? It's not because I want you in a bad mood -- it's because I'm lousy at sunshine and rainbows. My best art is the morbid stuff, and it should not be taken in any way to imply a dark sensibility.
[Dec 04: The logo was later replaced with a much better one from Cat.]
Although, come to think of it ... I've said this before, but you definitely get my grumpy side here. In person ... well, it depends on whether I'm comfortable around you or not. If I don't know you well enough to be silly, you get this tall forboding creature, a little like Frau Blucher [whinny] in Young Frankenstein.
If I know you well enough to relax -- which is to say, about five people on the planet -- you get my real self, which is more akin to Harpo Marx. I've just build a lot of layers of shielding over the years. Don't forget, silliness is socially unacceptable.
Last night I had a fit of energy. I made a big pot of a Puerto Rican recipe a lot like jambalaya - a rice casserole, basically, with tomato, garlic, shrimp, and ham. The book I was using as a basis for the improv, though, didn't give quantities. When it said "Use a three quart pot," I didn't realize they meant it would fill it, literally fill it to the brim -- and I omitted two of the late-addition ingredients because of that. If I had added the pound of peas the recipe calls for, who knows how much there would have been? As it is, I'll be having leftovers for two days.
I also made Congo Bars, which I have now made so often from our beloved recipe that I can do it in about fifteen minutes. The recipe has been copied out and taped to the kitchen cabinet door so we don't have to get out the cookbook every time -- that's how often we make these. But the last two times, something has gone wrong -- they've been soupy and gooey in the middle. The first time, I suspected bad baking soda or the eggs (old and small). The baking soda tested fine, so I assumed it was the eggs. But it happened again this time, and upon tasting, I realized it wasn't an ingredient problem -- the bars simply had not cooked enough in the center.
So, given that the oven was preheated and handled exactly the same way I've done it every other time, and given that the oven is coming up to temperature (we have a thermometer hanging from one of the racks), what has caused the last two batches to cook funny?
It was a good meal anyway. The rich food was cut nicely by sharp Portuguese vinho verde, which seems to be becoming one of my new favorite things of late.
But I had to have some chocolate chip cookies in the middle of the night, since the Congo Bars were clearly unacceptable.
carol me this
four twelve fourteen
[Dec 04: An updated version of this entry was posted later.]
Christmas, when you think about it, is the only holiday that has its own separate genre of music.
Oh, sure, we usually trot out the patriotic songs for the Fourth of July, but that's an American affectation (we love our parades). You don't see an album of Songs For Guy Fawkes' Day in the London stores every November, and you don't see Julio Iglesias Sings the Songs Of Bastille Day selling all over the place every Juillet.
Walking through the webring and other journals, I have made a shocking discovery: Some of you like Christmas music. Some of you actually start listening to it voluntarily when December rolls around.
I never bother to actually play Christmas music of my own volition -- my CD player is currently holding the same Louis Prima collection that it's been holding for about two weeks, because every time I try to replace it, Buona Serra comes back into my head and I have to listen to it again.
I figure I'll get force-fed so much of it during December -- in stores, in the place where I get my morning coffee, in airport lobbies -- that I shouldn't seek it out. On the other hand, those places hardly ever play the kind of Christmas music I do like. Maybe it's time to go build my own personal stash of the Good Stuff, just as a countermeasure.
I am normally a very eclectic listener -- I guarantee I listen to at least one thing that would horrify each of you (I mean, a different thing for each of you -- one of you would run screaming from my ABBA collection, another from my Bach fugues, another from my They Might Be Giants CD's -- you get the idea). But at Christmas I turn into a deep-seated traditionalist. Here are my Categories of Christmas Music, beginning with the worst and getting better.
1. Rearrangements, or any other attempts to modernize or regroove any original versions of Christmas songs. These are almost always scary.
2. Covers, where the music has not been substantially altered but someone new is performing it. In general, the bigger the time gap -- that is, the older the original -- the more likely it is to be scary. I'll listen to Hanson cover White Christmas before I'll listen to them cover It Came Upon A Midnight Clear.
3. Any Christmas songs written after about 1900.
4. Everything else. Not that there's much in this category.
Basically I like traditional English and German carols, the things people actually sang in the streets, not something Bing Crosby wrote to sell some seasonal records. From a time when people dared to write Christmas songs in a minor key (like two of my favorites, the creepy-sounding Coventry Carol and God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. The latter is my absolute favorite, actually, because the lyrics are so great -- name me another Christmas song that talks about Satan).
The English ones tend to be about revelry and religion. German carols tend to be pastoral songs, songs about nature or sensory events, such as _Leise rieselt der Schnee (Softly falls the snow). Remember that in Germany Christmas is still much more strongly connected to the Yule (i.e. pagan) tradition. Gentle, subtle songs. I think that's the problem with current Christmas music, in a nutshell -- lack of subtlety.
But composition may be an issue too.
I was in the mall yesterday, buying a new camera bag, and they were playing Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson. Now, Anderson gets a special exemption -- he was a weirdo genius who also wrote pieces like Syncopated Clocks, and even though Sleigh Ride is from the early 40's, I love it. (As long as no one actually tries to sing the words, which are stupid.)
Another piece which is generally played without words, which dates from after my 1900 deadline -- I think; I seem to recall that it was written later than I thought it was -- is the Carol of the Bells. Now, this piece is really annoying to some folks, because of its repetition. Tell it to Poe. I love its fuguelike structure -- this is like listening to a piece of real music.
Then it hit me. The older carols have better composition. Most of them were written by church composers and organists and choirmasters and the like. They're choral music, not popular songs.
Not that I usually dislike popular songs, but as I say: At Christmas, I become nastily traditional. Or maybe just plain nasty.
verily i may scream
four twelve twenty
I am useless.
I have been in front of a computer all day long and I haven't done one damned thing of merit. A little fiddling with tasks around the edges, a lot of email ... nothing that I can look back on today as a genuine accomplishment.
Not that I didn't enjoy the email, if you were one of the people I replied to today ... but email doesn't count. It doesn't matter beans if I wrote Iain-Padraic 2500 words on the spur of the moment about Solomon and the Bible last night. I mean, it's nice for Iain-Padraic, but ... oh, hell, that makes it worse. That makes me sound unappreciative.
OK, look. I haven't written any fiction for nearly two weeks. I started a story based on a dream I'd had, last week, and the spouse made me realize I was going to have to rip it apart and start over, and it wasn't that great an idea in the first place. Then I got sick. I have been home, idle, a great deal in the last ten days ... and I have written nothing permanent, nothing.
I am thinking of stopping this journal. Stopping mouth organ. Stopping everything, just vanishing for a while until I write. Never at any time in my life have I written so much and had it matter so little.
I have spent nearly the entire day typing, except for the last two hours. And none of it, none of it, will be relevant the day after tomorrow. These postcards are a lot of fun and very helpful to me and they have the lifespan of a mayfly. Email vanishes even faster. Ephemera.
I cannot draw. I spent the last hour or so completing a mixed-media painting I've been working on. It's a drawing of Lust. You know, like the deadly sin? I got a mental image the other night, clear as a bell, of what each of the deadly sins would look like if they were personified. And I can't get it out, because I can't draw well enough to bring it to fruition. Just like the fifty million graphic-novel-style ideas I've visualized. Forget it.
I have a bunch of new self-portrait photos the spousehelped with. I can't stand any of them. The makeup photographed poorly because it's so hard to take well-lit indoor photos without pro lights, and ... and I hate the way my face looks. I'm so upset that I'm thinking of ripping them into tiny pieces, just for catharsis.
I hope you weren't interested in any of my unfinished projects, because you'll never know how any of them come out. I know -- I know how all my stories come out -- but it'll be a cold day in hell, apparently, before I finish any of them.
Did you ever read Flowers For Algernon? Of course you did. I feel like the main character in that. I was brilliant once. Really. I was a kid genius. And now I'm only thirty years old and I can't find any of it. I don't want to write code, I don't want to write poetry, I don't want to write fiction. I just want to sit here and play games and talk about my life and read email.
Which is just fine and dandy except for the part of my brain which contains all my creativity, and which is getting ready to secede from the rest of me in frustration.
I am consumed with sadness and guilt and self-loathing and I think I will just roll in it for a while. Because god knows I am not getting anything else accomplished.
I don't even write anguished rants well.
calm after the storm
five twelve twenty-four
[The dateline can be 'six twelve zero' if you prefer - midnight is so tricky.]
If my previous postcard really worried you, relax. I'm not stopping any of my web projects, and furthermore I wrote about 3000 words of A.D's story last night, and will probably have 4000 more by the time I stop tonight. So I feel much better.
Sometimes I need a dose of self-flagellation. Only by telling myself repeatedly how worthless I'm being am I able to get anything accomplished.
I recognize that's probably a sign of some deep psychosis, but I'll stick with the method I know, at least until a better one comes along.
I still can't draw, but I'll live.
Obligatory plug: It's midnight on Saturday (or Sunday, if you prefer -- midnight, as noted, is tricky), which means that this week's Twenty Questions is up ... including the all-important answers from last week. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell your cat.
[Mine's sitting here, telling me that nothing I am doing on this computer can possibly be as important as paying attention to her. Cats are like that.]
wait five minutes, it'll change
seven twelve one
It is extremely hot today. Well, for December. High sixties. (That's Fahrenheit, for all you overseas types and metric fans in the US -- like the spouse, who somehow managed to grow up in this country without knowing how to think in cups and quarts and ounces.)
People are walking around in shorts, for pity's sake! I tried to leave the house in my coat, which would normally be required -- nuh-uh. Even the overshirt I am wearing is too hot.
Now, here's the punchline: It may snow tonight.
In Louisiana there are two seasons: midsummer and February. OK, that's an oversimplification for humorous effect, but in general it is hot nine months, and rainy and icky for three. Don't forget: Aside from the Everglades, Louisiana is the closest you will get in this country to actual rainforest. It's jungle. Wooden porches decay in a single season. Bugs swarm in black clouds. And the weather, though often obnoxious, is fairly predictable.
I'm only now learning to realize that. In Louisiana the big surprise was whether it would rain or not. You might get a five-minute thunderstorm without warning, but the temperatures were pretty regular.
Here the rain isn't much of an issue -- you can usually see it coming, unlike there -- but the temperature fluctuates, and the winds come in and change everything. I have walked outside on a fifty-degree day and felt like my coat was way excessive. I've walked out on the next day -- also a fifty-degree day -- and gone back inside and put on another layer. The difference is the wind.
This isn't exactly a complaint. I like the weather here. It makes life interesting.
I just find it amusing that I actually have to devote some thought to a phenomenon of nature which was mostly beneath my notice for most of my life -- that I actually have gotten in the habit of checking the paper each morning to try to guess what it's like outside -- something I never did in Louisiana, never.
- - -
No email yet today. Slackers! You have an obligation to shower me with brilliance on a daily basis! (Of course, I was so busy this morning that I didn't post this until one, so perhaps I shouldn't cast stones, eh?)
I see that Sam is writing again (and not studying -- tsk, tsk), and that the other new Thinking Aloud member, Rodney, has pasted the ring code in. So we have an intact circle once more, and you should go say hello to him too.
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I'm really happy with these two new gents, and I hope they don't feel like they've moved onto the street with all the weirdos.
Now, if you're so good at brainstorming, tell me if you can come up with a good way to publicize Twenty Questions -- bearing in mind that it has a budget of exactly zero. Got to tell people it exists, somehow.
- - -
I was going to try to analyze why a Joe Haldeman story I re-read last night disturbed me so badly, but on second thought I'll wait.
By the by, not that you care, but by the time the dust settled on A.D.'s diary this weekend, I had written about eight thousand new words. I expect the total word count of the revision to hit twenty thousand this evening. See what a little self-flagellation can do? I'll be at fifty thousand (which is where I expect it to end up, putting it squarely in the banana republic of Novella) before you know it.
confessions of an addict
eight twelve eleven
I was bad last night.
I had received my new issue of my computer game magazine, and armed with a certain amount of mad money, I walked to the mall to buy some of the new computer games that had gotten favorable reviews.
I don't mention this often here, but I am absolutely mad for certain types of computer games, which annoys all my relatives immensely, because it's one of the few things they know they can buy me ... except they can't, because if I want the title, I've already purchased it. (CDs and books are almost as bad. That pretty much covers my leisure purchases.)
I like "urban planning" simulations, such as Sim City and its ilk, Caesar III (which is devilishly hard, because they have a new AI and your citizens are consequently quite fickle), and Afterlife, which is the same sort of thing except you're running Heaven and Hell, meting out rewards and/or punishments -- heh.
I like "exploration" style sims too. Anything from Sid Meier (Civilization, Colonization, Railroad Tycoon) is a good bet. His game Alpha Centauri has been pushed to the beginning of next year -- alas.
On the other hand, maybe that's a blessing in disguise. I don't play sims as much as I used to, because of the time investment. Civilization II, the best non-twitch computer game ever made, is so good that even after several years the game has not exhausted its possibilities for me. I can still sit down, start a new game, and look up from the computer in surprise six hours later, wondering where that time went. Which is why I don't play sims as much as I used to. I have played exactly two games of Ascendancy, which is a really good game, because once I start I have to finish, and the game isn't designed to be played in a single session -- you are literally exploring an entire galaxy, meeting and interacting with other races, and it can take many, many hours. That isn't healthy.
I do not like strategy or exploration games which take place in real-time, with a clock ticking while the enemy is also building up forces. Forget it. If I thought thinking under pressure was fun, I'd enjoy work more. I try these occasionally, and they're fun until the real battles begin. Then I can't keep up.
The only one I've managed to get anywhere in is Dungeon Keeper, and that's because you can dig your dungeon in isolation and get it running smoothly, build up forces, et cetera, before you open a tunnel to your opponent and start the combat part. Nothing is worse, for me, than being focused on resource management -- digging enough barracks, worrying about what I'm going to feed the critters -- and then suddenly having to defend myself against an attack. One thing at a time, please.
I think this is a gender thing. It means I have a boy brain. I continue to maintain that men think serially -- one task at a time -- and women think in parallel. Or maybe I just think that because I envy that ability.
I am a sucker for certain kinds of adventure/exploration games, where you have to wander around and figure out what to do next. I like them if there's a consistent plot and not just a series of senseless "give the waffle to the rhino" puzzles. Most people writing games in this genre stole from Infocom. They stole the puzzles, but forgot about the plots and the sense of humor.
The one I'm playing right now is absolutely fantastic. (Not surprising; it is from Lucasarts, the one game company which does not release games until they are nit-picky perfect.) It's called Grim Fandango and it's like a film noir detective story set in the Mexican Land of the Dead. Honest. Really. It works. It's a very long game, though, and I have stopped temporarily, leaving poor Manny Calavera stranded, because sometimes you just want to dodge and hide in the shadows and shoot things.
It's not true that I like every run-and-shoot game ever made -- again, I like there to be some sense of, not necessarily plot, but a goal you're working toward. I like the occasional "how do I cross that chasm?" or "how do I get into that room?" puzzle. I like situations where the player can't just barge in and shoot everything that moves, but must snipe, pick people off ninja-style from the shadows, et cetera.
I realize that for some people, shooters are indefensible. What can I say? Lest you think this is also a gender thing, I should note that the spouse played Tomb Raider 1 and 2 compulsively, and is about a third of the way through number 3 now. And Lara Croft does a lot of shooting, although admittedly Tomb Raider is mostly jumping and movement puzzles, which is why it's one of the shooters I don't play. I can't time jumps to save my life.
Also Tomb Raider is "third-person" -- you can see yourself, specifically your backside -- which I don't like as much as the "first-person" ones where all you see is maybe your arm. On the other hand, two of the games I bought last night are third-person -- they're becoming more and more common. I suspect that the amazing success of Tomb Raider is partially responsible, but there may be other reasons. Jumping is easier when you can see yourself. Shooting is not.
babble babble babble
Anyway last night I bought three games. I have to return one game in three usually. I have a fantastic computer in all but one respect -- it has a built-in, non-replaceable, non-standard sound card. So games tend to skip like broken records and lock up. (Forsaken, a beautiful, brain-melting game, sits in my closet. I can't play it, and I bought it -- for once -- from a store with a no returns policy.) So I bought three, because I wanted two and I figured that I'd have to bring one back. I know, I know.
The gent at the software store looked at the three games I'd bought -- one of them, Half-Life, which people are calling the best game of the year, is absolutely enormous -- and said, "Not planning to come out of your house for a while?" I laughed. "We'll be seeing your face on the back of a milk carton in a few weeks."
"You don't know the half of it," I said. "I'm only a quarter of the way through Grim Fandango."
"We'll see you next year, then," he said.
still lost in gameland
nine twelve one
Not much to say today. I'm still trying to sort out my own brain about this Joe Haldeman story -- it's leading me into a deep well of darkness and I don't want to go there right now.
Tonight I am going to write a mouth organ about having too much information. That, plus the amount of work I am actually getting accomplished today, makes up for any guilt I might experience about goofing off every moment I'm at home.
Not to worry. Soon I'll be finished with Half-Life and I'll have a personality again. Thief is a much harder game and I have to take it in slower stages, so it will be less all-consuming than Half-Life is. Half-Life is so good, and draws me into the story so well, that all I want to do is keep playing -- which is both a testimonial and a real problem.
This is not a game for people who find the movie Alien too frightening to watch. You're walking around abandoned corridors of an underground research facility, by the light of emergency floods, and sometimes things will fall out of the ceilings on top of you ... brrr. There was a sequence last night with a creature which had no eyes, but extremely good hearing -- lashing out blindly with a sharp tentacle at anything which made a sound. I had to creep all the way around it very slowly to get to the door on the other side of the room -- I had no weapons which could hurt it -- waiting for one misstep to kill me at any moment. Every time I moved a little too far, I had to stop and crouch completely still as tentacles pounded the steel deck floor all around me, searching for me by Braille. Clang CLANG CLANG pound.
I had to stop the game for a while after I finished that part. My hands were sweating so badly I was having problems pressing the keys.
By the by, if you haven't heard from me in a day or so, it's not because I'm glued to the game. I can't seem to send email at the moment. So if you've written me, relax, you'll get a reply eventually.
doldrums, milo
ten twelve twelve
Far from the rhetoric and rancor of this week's House impeachment hearings and debate, Americans for the most part are minding their pre-holiday business, apparently weary of the hashed and rehashed Washington story and unalarmed that a moment in history is at hand.
That's from the Globe this morning. Yup. That about says it all, for me at least. I don't care anymore. They can leave Clinton in, toss him out, yell at him, tar and feather him. I no longer have the slightest emotional investment in the outcome.
In fact, I'm in a state of profound apathy about everything this morning. I don't want to answer email, I don't want to write, I don't want to think, I don't even want to play games. I just want to sit here quietly and wish that my headache would go away.
This is a bad state, but I've been here before and it usually passes within eight hours. Be patient.
half alive
eleven twelve eleven
I am still shaking and sweating. That's how good this Half-Life game is. The depth and complexity of the game amazes me every time I start to play, but it never feels like some big maze -- in fact, it doesn't feel like any game I've ever played, period. Last night I snuck out of a building, into a clearing -- and for the first time since I'd started to play the game, I saw the sky. It was night; there were crickets. I could almost feel the cool breeze. And then, of course, someone threw a grenade at me. -- Lileks
I got up from eight hours in front of the screen, eight hours with perhaps ten minutes away, ten minutes spent tending to minimal body function and minimal acknowledgement that there was another human in the house with me.
Eight hours. My hands get extremely cold when I work on the computer. You'd think they'd stay warm, since they're almost the only part I'm using.
Eight hours. I was cold all over, but it was nearly seventy degrees in the house. I looked at my cold dregs which used to be hot tea, and I couldn't remember how long ago I had made it. I was ravenously hungry.
My head was divided in half by a sharp agonizing throb from the bridge of my nose to the nape of my neck. Every time I refocused my eyes, I had to stop and wait for the pain to quit. Move. THROB. Blink. THROB. Two ibuprofen. I swallow pills without water.
Cleaned up a bit, tried to make myself look a little less like the pre-civilization Nell, or -- if you'd prefer a more accurate but less female image -- less like Ted Kaczynski coming into town on a supply run from my four-by-six shack in the wilderness. I hate it when people in the grocery store look at me like I might pull a shotgun from under my coat at any moment.
Midnight. Forty degrees. I was shivering so hard in the car that it was hard to hold the wheel steady. Why am I so cold? Why does everything look so distant? My body was numb and my brain wasn't focusing on anything useful. Fortunately no one else was on the road.
The supermarket was an artificially lit hallucination. I think the clerk thought I was under the influence of something. Well, maybe I was.
By the time I got home, carrying my bag of food and my gallon of milk, the forty-degree weather was no colder than it usually is, and my headache was gone. Painkillers don't work that fast. My brain was finally getting blood, that's all.
Eight hours. Eight hours with virtually no part of my body in motion except my eyes and my hands. Eight hours with all my other vital systems slowed to a crawl.
Did you ever wonder what it feels like to be dead? I don't think I will, not anymore.
spun sugar
eleven twelve one
The following is presented as an example of the kind of strange brain dumps you sometimes get when you write me. If you have ever written me a two-line message and gotten back a two-page rant, you'll sympathize. If you haven't, let this be a warning to you.
Dearest Beth:
Mint "extract" won't make wintergreen bark. Wintergreen isn't mint. There's a spearmint flavoring versus the peppermint flavoring you were using, but neither is wintergreen. I'm thinking there is such a thing as wintergreen flavoring, but don't quote me on that because I didn't go check.
But -- wintergreen has a really unusual flavor that doesn't combine well with most other things (except some teas). So you might want to try a VERY small batch! I can't see the combination of whatever "white chocolate" you're using and wintergreen. Call me a cynic.
You may note the weird use of quotes above. This is me being overly purist. I'm finicky about terms when it comes to making sweets and working with chocolates, because that's the only form of cooking I do well, and my mostly-dormant compulsive personality kicks in.
"Extracts" are made from the actual botanicals -- i.e. to make a mint extract you put mint leaves in an alcohol solution and let them steep so the alcohol absorbs the flavor. "Oils" are created by crushing the botanical -- squeezing out its juice, so to speak. "Flavorings" are artificially created.
Now, obviously, I don't know what you're purchasing, but if you just got the McCormick bottle, then you got peppermint flavoring. The oils and extracts are pretty expensive and you often need to order them from a specialist, like Penzey's.
Note that this is really nothing more than a semantic fuss -- Cook's Illustrated did a taste-off between vanilla extracts (from vanilla beans) and vanilla flavorings (synthesized from wood pulp) and found that when used in recipes, even the best-trained taste buds didn't care. So big deal.
As for the chocolate: White chocolate, actual white chocolate, contains cocoa butter. You'll know if it does, because it will make that suntan-lotion smell we love so much. (Or, to be more prosaic, check the ingredients.) About seventy-five percent of what people call "white chocolate" is something which contains no cocoa solids (the part that makes regular chocolate brown) nor cocoa butter and is therefore not entitled, legally, to be called chocolate at all. The industry refers to it as "confectioner's coating." A box of Russell Stover pastel bonbons is full of it.
What can I say? I'm a sugar geek.
Do you really want some more recipes for Christmas goodies? I have a million of them, but I never make them anymore, because we're never here for the holidays, they don't transport well (too much to lug on a plane, broken into crumbs by the time we arrive in a car), and I have given up on bringing treats to the office for various cynical reasons.
- as ever,
columbine
a burp in the system
fourteen twelve one
My alarm clock failed me today. That is, it failed to wake me up. The alarm clock itself worked perfectly. Twice. I set it for seven a.m. and managed to turn it off without waking up. Then I woke up at eight-twenty when the spouse left, set it for nine, and managed to turn it off without waking up again.
That said, I guess I needed the sleep. I feel really good this morning. Or at least I did until five minutes ago.
I spent about a half hour writing a postcard about a number of significant things. The writing was going very well; too well, in fact. I got to the point where there was simply too much text in this little editbox for Netscape's tiny brain and my underpowered Sparc 4 to handle. When the machine finished its fifteen minutes of thrashing, my text was completely lost. Gone.
Now, of course, I have to remember the way I was structuring it and start all over again. Except this time I'll do it as a Circular Cruise. If I do it at all. My reaction after something like that happens is usually to say, Oh, never mind, if the computer's going to play like that then I'll just take my marbles and go home.
I have a low upper limit on the number of times I'll play the "if at first you don't succeed" game. Take these computer games. If I am confronted with a jumping puzzle, I will attempt it three or four times at most. After that -- pow -- straight for the cheat codes. It is no longer entertaining to me after four attempts. If it isn't fun, I won't do it anymore.
Now the thing is, I had nearly finished writing the piece -- I already had all the fun. Rewriting it is no fun. So you won't see it, and you won't get to share any of the fun, unless I am suddenly possessed of a fit of extreme patience. Isn't that a shame?
You have my permission to come blow up the computer if you like. If it makes you feel better. I would, but it's university property.
tuesday
sixteen twelve ten
All right, so I'm falling behind. I haven't read journals in two or three days, and this page is showing a number of cobwebs. But let me tell you about yesterday.
I woke up at eight -- earlier than usual -- to allow plenty of time to get to a nine-thirty meeting on foot. Unfortunately they didn't tell me that the meeting was a long way from the part of campus where I work -- this campus stretches along a riverfront, wide but not deep -- I ended up having to walk for twenty minutes instead of the usual ten, and got there a little late.
I was expecting maybe one rep from each of the two vendors we were meeting with, another person from my department, and the guy running the meeting. To my surprise each of the two vendors had sent maybe five or six people. A room full of identical clothing. I was the only person wearing a shirt without a collar. All of the vendors wore ties.
Then I had to get up and explain to these people what The Project was about and how they were going to need to adapt their servers to the new regime. I don't dislike public speaking, but when one is prepared to have a sitting-down, informal chat with two or three other people, and must make a stand-up presentation to twelve, it's a rude shock. Still I think I acquitted myself. Certainly I gave a better presentation than the other person from my department, who doesn't understand the idea of fitting your language to your audience. Or maybe I was oversimplifying too much; by the end of the questions and answers, I realized some of them were intelligent despite the fact that they were dressed like salesmen. (Oh, how I despise salesmen.)
Back to the main portion of campus. Ate lunch in a hurry. Stopped to say hello to Marc on the way back to my desk. He wanted a few additional photos of some of his pieces and was considering one of those little paper disposable cameras. I said, "Don't do that. Don't do anything about the photos until I talk to you again," and went back to my desk, where I realized I hadn't taken the five rolls of film (the photos I took for him) to be developed. Off to the photo place -- gotta leave them before five to get them the next day.
(If that seems slow, please note that I take them to this lab because humans develop them and don't use one of the ungodly one-hour photo machines which tries to process all film using the same meat grinder. Photos vary, often from shot to shot on the same roll, and the quality of a print is as much the work of the developer as the photographer. Certainly a careless developer can ruin a photo completely.)
By now it was nearly two and I realized that not much other work was going to happen, so I decided to do some shopping. Back home first, to get rid of my bag/millstone and pick up the little auto-everything camera I haven't used in over five years, so I could give it to Marc. (Again, with auto-everything, you get what the camera thinks is correct, not what you want.)
Off to downtown and the upscale malls in the hotel district. Looking for a ring. A specific ring. Picky picky. I had been looking off and on for several days. Finally I found the right ring at the right price -- and had to have it resized. Come back later. How later? A few hours. And bring me the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.
OK, so. It takes over half an hour to get out to Brookline. I'd go bring the camera to Marc in the clay shop and then come back and by then the ring would be ready.
Done -- and after all that fuss to get the camera to him so he could take photos that night if need be, he didn't use it. Nor did he contrive to finish and clean up until nearly seven, but he wanted to come with me, so I waited. Back across town then. Get the ring. Have a nice dinner.
(The spouse, meanwhile, is home with a friend making holiday treats and has given me her blessing to dine elsewhere. Judging from the spoor later, I'd guess that she and her friend seized the opportunity to order Chinese. S'ok, I had fajitas. Ethnic night at the zoo.)
Then went home and changed "the person I've been living with for five years" to "fiancee," a much more compact phrase. The ring is gold with a white opal. I loathe diamonds.
After the rash of celebratory phone calls and so forth, I had to leave again to go set up a Christmas tree, a half-hour's drive away. My friends get a ten-foot tree every year -- they have the ceilings for it -- and every year I help them set it up, because I'm the only person tall enough.
Home to a snack and a bath. Drying off, circa one a.m, I wondered why I was so tired. Then I gave it some thought. Never mind.
And that's why there wasn't a postcard yesterday.
bombs and the mirror
seventeen twelve thirteen
I have sworn off Clinton, as you'll recall, so I can't write about him. If I were writing about him -- if I could work up the proper level of fervor -- then I would write this. [Link removed, see below.] Except that I probably wouldn't have done it as well.
Let's talk about Iraq instead, and leave Clinton out of it.
It is counter to my nature to wish death on anyone. I can't even wish death on my evil ex-stepfather anymore or any of the other people I despise. They're busy making their own hells, wherever they are -- any further venom from me would be excessive.
Nonetheless I do sometimes think that the only way Hussein is going to cease being a bad itch in a sensitive place is to kill him. If he isn't killed, then he needs to be reined in very closely indeed.
However -- and here's the point -- the United States is not the proper party to do that reining-in. It's not our job. We fancy ourselves the world's policeman. What we really are is the world's meddler. We are just as big a bully as Hussein is, except that we don't have a dictator and are therefore more quasi-respectable.
(Did you know that one of the conditions of EU membership is that you have a democratically elected government? Did you know that there have been good, well-run monarchies and plutocracies? Not many, but some. A monarchy is only as good as the monarch. This means dangerous instability if the monarch is nuts, but it means that the government can also act efficiently and with lightning speed. Pros and cons. Never mind.)
The reason the US shouldn't be doing this is because it makes us no better than them. We have an obvious agenda and we're indulging it at someone else's expense. The job of giving someone an international spanking needs to be done by an international coalition, one presumed unbiased. We have one of those. It's called the United Nations. But, alas, the UN has no teeth. And do you know why? Primarily because of the US.
The US has systematically short-sheeted the UN's enforcement arm for years, the same sort of thing they're presently trying to do to the establishment of a world court for crimes against humanity, a court for the Hitlers and the Pinochets and the Jim Joneses of the world. Do you know why?
Because the US is the world's meddler. The US government is scared -- justifiably -- that if they give the UN strong enforcement, some other nation will file charges against us. Oh, poor dears.
I love my country -- despite this rant -- but I have long since grown tired of the national assumption that we can get away with behavior, on the global scale, that we would never tolerate from others. That the rules don't apply to us, just because we're biggest.
This run won't get Hussein either -- a bomb will never kill him, the man is classically paranoid and takes all the precautions. If he's smart, the next thing he'll do is recruit a few people to come over here and put cyanide in the water supply or much worse things. He can't bomb us back, but who needs missiles? You can carry a nuke in a briefcase. And our domestic anti-terrorism defenses are a joke. So much for biggest.
Our relations with the other Muslim nations, never great, will become even more strained. We will never get along perfectly with the Muslims, because each side is too willing to believe the other eats babies for breakfast, but this isn't helping -- they point out that Israel has far greater capability for mayhem than Iraq, that Netanyahu is at least as crazy, and that we do nothing about Israel. They have a point.
We are making a mistake. The mistake is not in the actions -- I believe the bombing was an okay idea, but not if we're the ones doing it.
Remember, when the consequences begin, that we did it to ourselves. I don't believe in liberal guilt, but this is our own fault.
lacuna decembris
eighteen twelve eleven
I have been here since nine-thirty. I should be working. I have things I vitally need to finish. This afternoon I must go shopping. I won't be back at work again for nearly two weeks. It's vital that I finish. But I'm not working.
My brain has seized the quiet moment as an opportunity to go into total shutdown.
I've been running frantically for two or three days now. Too many things to do before I leave. And the next two days will be more of the same. Then, on Monday, the exodus begins in earnest, a car trip into the wilds to see the family. (You won't see any postcards for a while, although I may write one or two this weekend before leaving.)
This time, this morning, is perhaps the last time I will have for many days to sit and breathe. I should be working. I am not.
I got two emails and a mention from Mary Anne saying that they liked the Iraq comments, and no mail saying that I was full of pigeon guano, so I guess that's a good sign.
That was all yesterday. Very little email today. Not much in the way of journals either. Kymm's on the road and most of the other people are feeling the seasonal crunch.
The emailbox is recovering from the congratulatory messages people sent, anyway. Thank you all. To answer the most frequent question: The wedding is not soon; not for at least another year, probably longer. We have not begun planning for it.
Everything is so quiet. Nobody else is here, or if they are, they're not making any noise. I feel as if I stopped typing I could hear myself think.
If I were doing any of that, that is.
leave of absence
twenty-one twelve one
I've noticed that I have a problem with "one" where the datelines are involved. Sometimes I say "one" meaning one in the afternoon, which by my system is wrong; that should be "thirteen." "One" is one in the morning.
It's one in the morning. I never get it wrong the other way 'round.
Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
In case you didn't pick up on this from the subtle hints in the previous postcard (and you're also not a mouth organ reader or one of my regular email chums): I am going to be incommunicado for a while. Until the twenty-ninth or thirtieth, depending on how exhausted I am when I get back. Long drive.
I'm doing something which was formerly Against My Religion and taking my camera with me ... so who knows? Maybe I'll have some bizarre photos to show 'n' tell when I come back.
I may check in while I'm out -- I can probably find a computer with web access -- but don't count on it. Christmas is a time to see the family, not sit typing in front of a computer.
Here's hoping the holidays find you stress-free.
logistics and the massive mall
twenty-one december (retroactive)
Set Inu up with her special motorized cat feeder. It's like a circle with pie-slice compartments; the lid has a wedge cut out of it, so that only one slice is available at a time. The lid rotates, using a timer like one of those things you plug your lamps into so the burglars won't think you're not home. She's tried her best to break it; we've tested it on her the last few days. Inu hates it when you mess with her food supply. Food is her life. The other cat eats like a cat; we can leave a supply of food for him and he'll nibble it when he gets hungry. Inu eats like a dog -- she eats whatever's available until it's all gone, as fast as she can. Last night she pushed the feeder across the room and under the kitchen table with her nose. But it seems to be pretty catproof. We have someone coming to check on them anyway.
On the road early. Coffee. Sugary pastry. Gasoline. Batteries for the CD boombox in the back seat. All set. Eight hours to the District of Columbia.
In the interests of not having to stop for lunch on the New Jersey Turnpike (I won't get off the Garden State while I'm on it, for various reasons, and if I never have another cold Roy Rogers sandwich it'll be too soon), we stop at the Wall of Mall. This is Palisades Center, up on 87, barely in New York state. We've been noticing it for the past few trips. It's four stories tall but has almost no exterior windows, so you are greeted with a big white prison-like building with logos all over the outside. Very weird. Very imposing.
Inside it's even weirder. They've decided, for whatever reason, to keep the decor industrial. Concrete floors, exposed ceiling supports and ducts, metal latticework displays with garish neon. I dunno. Very scary place. Very big. There is a carousel, a ferris wheel, an IMAX theatre, a regular movie theatre, and two big entertainment places of the Dave and Buster's ilk. You can shop there too!
We eat and run, but not before sighting the Mister Bulky store ("Mister" in delicate red script, "Bulky" in fat purple block letters with white polka dots). Already made paranoid by the excessive weirdness aura of this mall, the Mister Bulky pushes us right over the edge and we giggle all the way back to the car.
It's a bulk-candy place, where you buy mix-n-match candy by the pound. You know. Mister Bulky.
Today is Yule, the shortest day of the year. It is already quite dim by the time we leave the Mall of Wall, and dark by the time we hit the NJTP. Joy. But the trip is uneventful.
The spouse's parents, in celebration of our engagement, have made lamb for dinner. I learn that the reason restaurant lamb is so bad is that they invariably overcook it. Do not eat lamb if you insist on having your meat well-done. In fact, don't eat meat.
Poked through an amazing and anal-retentive book listing all the battles of the Civil War in chronological order, often with battle maps. Whoever did this had too much free time, but it did make me aware of how little I know about the Civil War. Louisiana isn't one of those states where people care much about the Civil War ... not like Virginia, which seems to be gung-ho about it. On the other hand, about two-thirds of the fighting took place in Virginia, which isn't all that surprising since Richmond (the Confederate capital) and DC are so close to each other. Whose dumb idea was that?
names, food, and ski madness
twenty-two december (retroactive)
Wanted to go to lunch at the deli I'd been to before while in DC, but couldn't remember the name of it, so I didn't suggest it. No consensus on lunch. Rejected a number of ideas. Had already driven past the deli when the spouse said, "Hey! We could go to _____" (name of deli I still cannot remember). Well, shucks. Nice that we're in synch; wish I didn't have to turn the car around.
Got back to her parents' house and realized I only had one headlight. The other had been working the night before. Much cussing. Off to get a new headlight, growling about delays to get on the road, etc etc, even though this is the short leg -- only four hours or so to mid-Virginia, where the spouse's parents have a house in the mountains.
Interstate 66 between DC and Manassas gets crazier every year. I thought the business of letting people drive on the shoulder during rush hour (honest) was temporary until the HOV lane was finished. But the HOV lane now goes all the way to Manassas, and you can still drive on the shoulder in rush hour.
Passing through Charlottesville, the nearest town of any real size to where we will spend the night, we note that it keeps getting bigger and bigger. The chain restaurants are moving in -- always a bad sign. It's become a haven for young and not-so-young professionals who keep second homes in the mountains, or who keep farms in the Virginia countryside just to kid themselves they're rural, and who go to C-ville to do all their shopping and dining. There's something hypocritical there, but staying in someone else's mountain home for the night, I don't think I can cast stones.
As we are about to reach our destination and climb old Devil's Knob, we turn off and wind our way along the back roads to Rowe's, a fine restaurant serving fine Southern home cooking. Since our last visit to Rowe's, a Cracker Barrel has opened, a little ways up the service road. I like Cracker Barrel OK -- we'll surely eat at one along the trip, it's better than most roadfood -- but who would eat at a Cracker Barrel when Rowe's is right next door? People who don't know better, I suppose. Well, you know better now. If you're at the intersection of I-81 and U.S. 250, just north of where I-64 heads east from 81, don't bother with the Cracker Barrel. But get there early -- Rowe's closes at nine in the summer, eight in the winter, and seven on Sundays.
I occupy the drive along pitch-black roads to the mountain (good thing I replaced the headlight) by grousing about pronunciation. Rio Road, in C-ville, is pronounced RYE-oh. Buena Vista, a little town down I-81 a ways, is BYOOna Vista. Staunton is Stanton. Can't these people talk? Of course, my first tendency is to give names the Cajun French pronunciation, which gets me weird looks sometimes. Oh, well.
The mountain house adjoins a ski resort. We go down to the lodge to get a late-night hot toddy. They're making snow, as ever -- there hasn't been a real snowfall yet this winter there -- and the high wind conditions I fought all the way up the mountain are causing the snow spray from the machines to turn into an ice storm. It's like being hit with needles. Surely the skiing can't be great in these conditions ... yet a few crazed skiers and snowboarders are out there, under the giant lights, hurtling downhill through clouds of snow spray. I don't understand extreme sports. Then again, I don't really understand skiing either -- on snow. I tried it once and it seemed like a good way to get injured.
the ice storm
twenty-six december (retroactive)
The last leg of the trip down to Chattanooga was a mess. Freezing rain, freezing on the wipers and the edges of the windshield. The speed limit is seventy on most of the interstates in Tennessee. Wow. Got to Chattanooga and things weren't much better. The weather persisted. We had a blackout for about a half hour. Shortly after that, we looked out the window -- the house is up on a ridge, and you can see the lights of the town nicely -- and Chattanooga was gone. Poof. The whole city was apparently without power.
The trees and plants were coated in ice for the next two days.
Christmas itself was not especially newsworthy. I enjoyed it, of course, but I can't remember the things we all talked non-stop about, except that I shocked my aunt twice, both sort of "reverse shocks": once when she found out how late I had lost my virginity (and who the other party had been), and once when she found out that I have never tried "recreational" drugs, not once, not even pot. I don't know why people always assume I have, but this is not the first time I've surprised someone with this news.
Anyway, we talked about anything and everything, usually until one or two in the morning. When you only see your family once a year or so, and you come from a family of talkers, that's what you miss the most.
The children -- all my cousins who are really more like nieces and nephews -- are getting old enough to be human; that is, I can have a reasonably coherent conversation with them. Maybe the joy of having kids is slowly watching them turn from little crawling alien beings into something you're willing to admit you gave birth to. But it's a long exasperating process ...
The spouse, who comes from a small, quiet family, only had one major stress attack the entire time, and the next day she was recovered enough to go ice skating with the whole clan. The rink was horribly maintained, but at least I hadn't forgotten how.
We went up to Rock City -- I'd seen it, but the spouse hadn't. It's a tourist trap, but an unusually well-done one, and worth the ten bucks. We want to know who's doing their new ad campaign. They never had one before, really -- just "See Rock City" all over the place, an era which is dying. (I bought a book with photos of the old barns whose roofs used to be painted with Rock City messages.)
Lookout Mountain, which hadn't gotten back power until the day before, looked like it had been bombed. Trees bent double from ice and many just broken in half. There's nothing like looking at a pine tree too wide for you to span your hands around and realizing that what broke the top half off was only frozen water.
losing stamina
twenty-eight december (retroactive)
Three days down, three days up. On the 27th, Chattanooga to mid-Virginia: Eight hours. On the 28th, mid-Virginia to DC: Four hours. Tomorrow, the old familiar leg home. Went out with the spouse and her sister this evening and drank beer. Beer is (it struck me too late) a really inefficient way of getting drunk, which is what I really wanted to do. With my trick metabolism, I have to drink fast if I want to feel it. I can't drink beer fast enough. What I should have done was imbibe a couple of shots of something.
It had been a really exhausting two days. On the leg up from Chattanooga, my knee and shoulder were hurting from the falls I had taken ice skating (I said I remembered how; I didn't say I was good), my back and neck and hip were sore from the cumulative effects of driving, and several days in a strange bed had left me running on limited sleep. So I was mostly concentrating on the road, not the roadside weirdnesses. However, we did note a few goodies.
For example, we saw a McDonald's billboard which gave several exits/locations and had the words "Sooner or Later." Isn't that ominous? Sooner or later, McDonald's is gonna get you. Resistance is futile. Later, at a McDonald's (yup, we succumbed, but only so I could get more coffee -- although I'm not sure their dishwater qualifies) I noted that the strange little stirring rods they provide for coffee were in a bin labelled "Styx." Cute terminology, but, um, haven't they read any mythology in the Tennessee Valley? By the by, have you ever heard the rumor that those stirring rods used to be tiny little spoons, but McD's changed the design because people were using them for cocaine?
We also saw a really grimy eighteen-wheeler which had "www.washme.com" scrawled in the dirt on the back. Ah, internet penetration.
Went to Rowe's again, badly shaken after a near-death experience on the highway. (I went around a slow car on the left; someone else went around the car on the shoulder, and we both tried to occupy the same space as we finished passing.) We each ordered the meatloaf plate, and as one of our two vegetables, we each ordered turnip greens. The waitress commented that we were "eating healthy tonight." Ah, yes. I have a plate of meatloaf with gravy, mashed potatoes with more gravy, and super-buttery dinner rolls ... but a little bowl of greens makes it automatically healthy.
I love the South.
I was in a state of near-exhaustion by the end of these two days, and after the beer, I went to sleep around nine p.m.
trolls, ducks, zebras, and armadillos
thirty december
The last day of the trip, which I thought would be the most routine leg since I have come back from DC a buncha times and can do it in my sleep (sometimes almost literally), was hellish. This was mostly due to the weather. Rainy, but rain half-mixed with roadmud so the wipers smeared it all over everything.
I hate buying gas in New Jersey. There's no self-service. I rail about it every time, and I go out of my way to avoid it, but sometimes you just gotta get gas on the Turnpike.
We noticed a sign that warned of a "gridlock alert" in NYC on the 31st ("expect severe delays"). What I want to know is, how can they predict that? What makes them so sure?
We ate lunch/dinner at Palisades Center again. It was even scarier when we saw the cavernous underground parking. I had joked that the only thing it was missing was an ice rink. This time, wandering a little further down the mall than we had before, we learned that it had one.
Travelling this road as many times as we have, we have developed an unusual language. When the spouse said she was accumulating change to "feed the ducks," I knew exactly what she meant. On the Garden State Turnpike, they don't use a ticket system. We pay four tolls of thirty-five cents each. The first time we took this road, the tolls took us by surprise, and I commented that it was like being pecked to death by ducks. Now it's become "Time to feed the next duck ..."
We also tend to refer to tolls as "trolls," which relates back to the section of a Jack Chalker book about the Troll Bridge (fee: one goat, one pig, or three chickens).
A slightly more cryptic one is the "Zebra" -- the signs for the Tappan Zee crossing all refer to "Tappan Zee Br" (exact spelling), which to my benumbed mind becomes "Tappan Zebra" when you try to say it aloud. So now we cross the Zebra, with the spouse always alert for her beloved Barrier Machine.
The Zebra is about when the road conditions got really nasty. 287 is under construction and it was raining heavily; people were acting like lunatics, unsure where to drive, some going dangerously slow, others dangerously fast. Lack of lane markings didn't help. I don't understand why in the north, the Land of Trolls (toll roads are unknown in any Southern states except Florida), they can't use some of that money to keep the lines in the road painted. I don't want to hear any sad stories about winter weather and snowplows.
Then when we rejoined I-95 in Connecticut, traffic came to a halt. The rush hour exodus from NYC. Took us an hour to go about fifteen miles.
The traffic ebbed, but the weather kept getting worse -- rain and fog and everything, as I kidded, except armadillos falling from the sky. The spouse kept hoping that the weather would somehow magically change as soon as we hit Massachusetts. She got her wish! It began to snow.
Honest. Blizzard variety. It didn't last long, fortunately. (Me, looking heavenward: "You forgot the armadillos!" Spouse: "Please don't say that.")
When we finally got home, we found that in our absence Inu had managed to dismantle the automatic cat feeder. Never underestimate your cat.
And now we're spending the day recuperating. After reading these five entries, you probably need a little recuperating too. Well, I felt I owed you some words after my absence.
how to catch up
thirty december (later)
One of the problems with the weird format here (30K pages, newest at the top) is that when I post a lot of entries at once, as I have just done, it makes it difficult to read them in chronological order. I apologize for that. The format is still the best one for day-to-day updates, which is why I decided on it to begin with.
[Dec 2004: I changed my mind on that not too many months later, primarily because of problems just like this.]
If you'd like to read the tales of my holiday hegira from the beginning, you want to start with the entry dated 21 December and work forward from there. There are five "trip entries" in all: the 21st, 22nd, 26th, 28th, and 30th (not this one, the one before it).
Whee! I apologize for the inconvenience. I should be back on a regular schedule by the first.
Hope you all had a good holiday while I wasn't here to natter at you.
film night at the homestead
thirty-one december
This is a little later than I expected to write it, but what the heck - you surely haven't finished reading the roadtrip entries already, have you? Some of you probably don't even know I'm back yet.
Rented Kiki's Delivery Service last night. This is a Japanese animated film, but it's not some horrendous anime where the facial expressions are overemphasized and the mouths don't move right. It's like Walt Disney meets Tintin. It's about a young witch who comes to a large city to learn to fend for herself. It is fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Go rent this immediately, assuming your video store is not a thrice-damned Blockbuster and actually has something more on its shelves than fifty copies of Armageddon. It might be in Children's, it might be in Animation ... but more than likely, at the moment, it will be in New Releases.
Also watched Desk Set, the only Hepburn/Tracy film I haven't seen, unless you count Guess Who's Coming To Dinner - is that really a comedy? I haven't seen it because some reviewers I trust, notably Ebert, think it is an utter waste of time. Others like it. I dunno. It's the mixed reactions which are the most dangerous -- if everyone loved it, or everyone hated it, I'd know something.
I almost rented The Awful Truth, which I also haven't seen. I need more screwball comedies. Hollywood won't make them anymore. If I could only find a copy of Destry Rides Again, my life would be complete. [Dec 2004: I eventually found one. My life is at least somewhat more complete.]
Off to finish more odds and ends at work.
17 May 2026