Tour de Vermont

At last, a travelogue from our recent trip to Vermont! It was a four-day cycling tour, about 25 miles a day, through some of the most ridiculously hilly terrain I’ve ever ridden. We stayed at two different inns, one nice, the other extra-swanky, and had breakfast and dinner included.

So the day’s routine was: crawl out of bed at 7 a.m., breakfast at 8, start cycling at 9, a sandwich in a tiny Vermont town for lunch, cycle until about 2, lengthy shower and lengthier nap, dinner around 7, collapse in bed and fall asleep around 9:30. It was like being in the bike army, but in a good way—no uniforms or discipline. Also, there was the all-important support van. Driven by one of our two guides, you could flag it down at any time for food or snacks or a rescue. It also came in handy when I bought a quart of Grade B maple syrup from Plummer’s, since I wasn’t about to carry that on my back for the rest of the day. (Speaking of tiny towns, this next photo shows the actual, official U.S. Post Office in Jamaica, Vermont.)

Now for some details. You might be aware that Vermont is kind of hilly; in fact, one might call it downright full of mountains. And just about every day there was a hill of such staggering proportion, with a grade approaching 6 or 7%, that I did end up walking some of the way in lieu of feeling my heart explode. But then on the other side of most of them, there would be a descent for the record books: my max speed was clocked more than once at over 39 mph, which is definitely the fastest I’ve ever traveled on a bike.

The scenery was fantastic: totally bucolic, lots of chattering streams, mountain peaks and valleys, covered bridges, cows, cute little towns with nothing in them except one country store (where you could always get potato chips, the most essential cycling food there is). Not one whisker of cell phone service. And I only realized after we got back that I didn’t see a traffic light the entire time we were there. Another thing which I didn’t know beforehand is that most of the secondary roads there are still unpaved, which made for some seriously hairy moments on my road bike. There was one stretch that was so unbelievably muddy that we had to take the van for a couple of miles because it was just too dicey. Amazingly, I did remain upright the entire tour.

Before we went, I was completely unsure of whether I’d be able to take four straight days of riding, but it turned out to be just right. The third day I was pretty sore in the morning, but the itinerary centered around a three-mile hike to see this fabulous waterfall. And then on day four, I felt great. I think maybe my muscles just gave up complaining when they realized I wasn’t going to give them a break.

All told I logged over 100 miles in four days, improved my mad skillz at climbing, descending, and off-roading, and purged all thoughts of my mundane life. And in a true stroke of fortune, it never rained on us during a ride. I would definitely do it again. How soon can I take another vacation?

P.S. See more pics at my Flickr page.

Stormtrooper True

One of my fondest internet-related memories dates back to April 2000, during the whole Elian Gonzalez debacle. Soon after the raid during which Elian was seized from his family’s house in Miami, this little Shockwave movie found its way onto the Net. Sure, it’s dated, sure, it references a stupid Bud commercial, but I laughed so damn hard at that thing. And the best part was, it got pulled almost immediately because it used a copyrighted photo, so it quickly faded into obscurity. (Here’s a story describing the controversy at the time.) Now that the moment has long passed, though, I’ve found it online again and I can relive that classic moment. Good times, good times.

Sporting news

Well, I owe everybody a long account of my Vermont vacation (in one word: excellent), but then I got caught up in watching the Tour de France, and then I got caught up in the ridiculous doping scandals that have marred said Tour, and as a result you poor souls out there haven’t heard from me in a while. I’ll try to get to the Vermont recap this weekend, although I ain’t guaranteeing anything. Also, the Swami and I signed up for a doubles tennis league, and our first match is tomorrow morning. Wish me luck—I love playing doubles, but haven’t done it in ages, and I also have a tendency to lock up with anxiety in pressure situations on the court. So I don’t expect anything but a debacle; hopefully I’ll be proved wrong. (And yes, if I just stopped being so competitive it wouldn’t be a big deal, but to that I say right, as if.)

Tune in again soon. At least I can say with confidence that there will be no doping scandals in the tennis league...right?

Please leave a message after the beep

I hope all two of you loyal readers can handle it, starting tomorrow I’m away to Vermont until Friday. It’s a cycling tour, so we’ll see if I can handle four straight days in the saddle. Next time I post, it might be while sitting on a big ice pack or something.

While I’m gone, here are some study questions:

1. Exactly how awesome was Keith Olbermann’s demand for Bush and Cheney to resign?


2. Exactly how awesome was that Federer-Nadal Wimbledon final?


3. You are watching the Tour de France too, aren’t you??


4. Write a 10-page essay on the Jungian subtext of the Transformers movie.

See you next weekend!

Crazy moon language

Like anybody’s, my day is mostly filled with routine and sometimes with outright drudgery, but every once in a while I remember why I slogged through grad school and took this crazy job. Here’s an excerpt from something I’m editing:

That’s part of a text in Glagolitic, an alphabet used in the Slavic-speaking world before the more familiar Cyrillic was used. (They were used contemporaneously, though—the exact chronology is a little fuzzy on which one was invented first. At any rate, we’re talking ninth century AD.) I’ve always thought it was the coolest looking script, all loops and impractical forms that look like they’d take a while to draw. But then again, monks spent their entire lives copying books out by hand, so maybe those curlicues kept them from getting bored.

I can’t read Glagolitic freely by any means—one of my professors in grad school actually could, which makes her pretty much a god in my view. And when I had to retype this particular Glagolitic passage using a Unicode-compliant font, it took a good while before I could get any speed going. Here’s a picture that shows the Cyrillic equivalent, just to give you an idea:
Working with Glagolitic is cool, and it definitely keeps me from getting bored when I get to do it.

Use your illusion

Just picked up this link to some fascinating illusions off the SDMB. Ah, so this is why it’s so damn difficult to choose colors for book jackets—you can thank the sheer orneriness of the human brain.

P.S. I am hopelessly addicted to the SDMB. I mean hopelessly. I feel so proud of myself today, I held out all the way until 1:30 p.m. before I surfed over there!

Tag, I'm it

All right, I got tagged by kaskasero last week and it’s high time I got around to responding.

Instructions: Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their seven things, as well as these rules. At the end of your blog, you need to choose 7 people to get tagged and list their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them that they have been tagged and to read your blog!

1. I am completely hopeless for the rest of the day if I don’t get breakfast (usually some healthy kind of cereal drowned in a huge bowl of milk).

2. I used to sleepwalk when I was a little kid. I’d walk downstairs and talk to my parents while asleep, or engage in my favorite sleepwalking activity of trying to flush my pajamas down the toilet.

3. In 1988 I won tickets to a Howard Jones concert in a radio contest by correctly identifying a lyric from Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me.” In 1993 (or 1994?) I won tickets to a Cracker concert by identifying the difference between a reflecting and a refracting telescope.

4. Despite my rep as a worldly, cosmopolitan chick, I’ve never been overseas (not counting Canada, here).

(Editorial comment: This is a lot harder than it looks!)

5. My pie-in-the-sky dream job would be professional musician. My somewhat-more-feasible-but-still-unlikely dream job would be book designer or editor at a saner place than where I am now.

6. My first single was a 45 of Thomas Dolby’s “She Blinded Me with Science.”

7. Last but not least, in the spirit of kaskasero’s revelation, my Halo gameplaying handle is Fang. Although I haven’t played Halo in ages, too busy with Morrowind!

Now my true confession: I don’t know seven bloggers to tag! But I’ll call out Lifton, Danielle, and Frantix. Make me proud, guys. (TJ, if you’re reading this, you could always post your 7 to my comments if ya want.)

A always, B be, C closing

Tomorrow’s the closing on our old place, and thus an era will finally come to an end. I don’t have kids, so I can safely say that buying and selling a house (especially both at the same time) is by far the most stressful thing I have ever done. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to permanently curling into a fetal position, that’s for sure.

However great it will be to close the book on that place, the memories are poignant. The first stab at home ownership, the first annoying neighbors, the first flooded basement (thanks to the annoying neighbors, no less), the first smoke alarms going off for no reason in the dead of night, the second and third flooded basements. (Did I mention those neighbors yet? At fault for every instance of basement flooding. Everyone, make sure your washing machine hoses are either younger than five years old, or better yet, get a damn shutoff valve that works.) There were good things about it too, though. It was the Trekette’s first home, for example. And I’ll definitely miss the beautiful rosebushes in the yard; I love any plant that responds well to stern and remorseless pruning.

But anyway, it’s time to look forward. I love our new place, next month we’re going on vacation, Erin and Keith are coming back for the summer soon, and two Crowded House concerts are on the schedule for August. Lots of good stuff ahead!

A turkey runs through it

Here's an action shot of the fabled Kendall Square wild turkey, shot by the Swami with his Palm Pilot (hence a bit of blurriness, sorry). I’ve never seen the turkey in person, so I was a complete skeptic about his existence until presented with this photographic evidence. The turkey’s been around for a couple of years at least, judging from links off Google like this one and this one. Given the total lack of she-turkeys in the area, dude’s got a pretty dull existence. But he’s apparently still pretty feisty, gobbling at people if they get too close. A typical unfriendly New Englander. I still agree with Ben Franklin, though, how cool would it be to have the wild turkey as the national symbol?

Squonk

Last week I was both shocked and pleased to find a lot of Genesis-related stuff on VH1 Classic; they were part of this year’s Rock Honors concert or somesuch. Let me tell you, I never thought I’d get to see Peter dancing around in his Slipperman costume while flipping channels. There was a long show on their history, which fortunately spent more time and attention on the early stuff than the superstar/sellout phase from the late 1980s. The live footage was amazing, partly because I never expect to hear such obscure music on TV, partly because Peter was such a freak onstage at that time, and partly because I can’t believe live shows were ever like that: all the musicians sitting down, one lunatic jumping around wearing bat wings on his head, and eons of dead time between songs while the band set up the equipment for the next song. Totally alien to the modern pop era in every way. And then they showed an hour-long show of live footage from the Seconds Out concert, where a pre–pop slimeball Phil sang Lamb songs while sporting a beard of mountain-man proportion. I mean, you can’t beat that with a stick.

Unfortunately, my Genesis buzz was totally killed later in the week, when the Rock Honors concert was aired. It was all has-beens: Heart, ZZ Top, and the boys in Genesis, who reformed this year in order to fund the pensions. I watched about two minutes of “Turn It On Again” before I had to look away—man those guys look old, and Phil sang with absolutely no energy. They also knocked the key of the song down a few steps, I suppose in order to spare Phil’s voice, but it was a move that thoroughly sucked the life out of the song. Ugh. I guess I’d better pull out Three Sides Live if I want to experience the full, glorious spectacle that was Genesis.

Oh, and one more thing I must gripe about: at one point during the history show, they interviewed Phil talking about the fact that their early fans were almost always male. Bastard made some idiotic comment about men being better able to handle the complexity of the songs. I know, I know, Phil is a complete tosser, despicable in many ways, but I always held off with my own contempt because of what he was part of, what he accomplished when he was just a drummer in a band. That kind of statement indicates that I should probably give in to the scorn, what a sexist asshole. No more slack for you, pal.

Why I dislike LeBron

Besides the fact that he should have gotten his ass handed to him by Gilbert in the first round of the playoffs, there are these two lovely moments in the public eye:

• Lebron on not trusting a gay teammate who’s in the closet


• James Refuses to ‘Be a Witness’ against Darfur Genocide

What’s next? Well, I hope it’s getting his ass handed to him by Detroit. Not that getting beaten in the playoffs improved his public persona since last year’s defeat by, hey, Detroit. By the way, here’s a link to Amaechi responding to what James (and others) said. Classy dude.

New and improved

All right, it’s Monday, which means one of two things: either (1) time for a fresh start, or (2) why not blog because it’s a good way to kill time at work! I survived my move to the new place, although there is still some stuff at the old place (isn’t there always?). Now I would like everything to magically unpack itself. As for the old place, after more fraught negotiations we finally signed the Purchase and Sale agreement with the person craz—I mean, discriminating—enough to want to buy it. Meanwhile, the few times I’ve gone back over there to get more stuff, those heavy-footed moose upstairs have been engaged in vigorous bowling tournaments as always. In other words, good riddance to them.

Once things get a little tidier in the new pad, maybe I’ll post some pictures. So far, I’m warming up to its charms fairly quickly, which is good because I’m usually pretty squirrelly in new surroundings for a while: everything smells kind of weird, things creak in unfamiliar ways, and I’m not settled into any routines. I’m not a huge fan of other people’s dirt, either, so as it gets overlaid with my own I should be fine.

Many times during the last few months I’ve wondered why the hell I put myself through this. But now that the whole process is in the final stretch, maybe, just maybe I can start to feel optimistic about it. Hey, that’s pretty positive from Dr. Cynical over here. Did someone spike my drink?

This offer is unrepeatable

All right, after closing on our new house last Monday, I started getting seriously worried about whether anyone would want to buy the old place. I’m not too keen on carrying three mortgages at the same time, that’s for sure. And since the move date is May 12, I was also getting antsy because I’ve been holding off packing so that the place will show as nicely as possible.

Fortunately, after a small price drop, we got another offer this past Friday, and unlike the first one it’s solid and reasonable. So everybody’s signed off on it, and we’re now under agreement! Fingers are crossed that the home inspection goes well. And now there’s no excuse, I need to start tearing this place apart and stuffing it into boxes. So, enough screwing around on Blogger, heh.

Those are some shoes

I’ve been reading a lot of other people’s writing recently, and that’s led me to misplace my own voice a bit. Some of it’s jealousy, some of it’s fatigue from the house-selling saga (I don’t feel like writing much about that, so for now let me sum up in two words: “lead paint”), some of it’s my intrinsic laziness. But I notice I don’t have much in the scriptorium category lately. Hopefully the house crap hasn’t completely dried up the creative juices.

Anyway, here’s a little story about a shoe. A very expensive shoe. I was minding my own business at the local bike shop, killing time while there was an open house at the domicile. And I’d been thinking about buying clipless pedals for my road bike sometime this spring, since you’re cool on a bicycle only if you have clipless. I mean, being physically connected to your bike conveys a special blend of hardcoreness (“I want to maximize my pedaling efficiency so I can bike just that much further before collapsing on my face in exhaustion”), dedication (“I’m serious enough to have special shoes just for cycling”), and masochism (“I plan on falling over and scraping up my knee with nasty road rash at least once because of a panic stop where I can’t detach my foot from the pedal in time”), and I was just about ready to sip that hot and zesty blend.

So I’m looking at the pedals. There are a few different brands with slightly different means of snapping onto the cleats on the shoes, but not too different. I figure I’ll go with what the Swami has, what the heck. Plus that was the cheapest option, and I don’t feel hardcore enough to spend a hundred bucks on friggin’ pedals. Having made that choice, I move on to the shoes. Here the salesperson takes a laudable position: she starts with the cheapest shoes. So I try ’em on. And of course, they’re terribly uncomfortable, too tight, bleah. Next price point up: nah, still kind of tight and chafing in a couple of places. Next pair: same dif. (Although I’m glad, because that particular pair was metallic silver, and I really wasn’t interested in looking like either Neil Armstrong or a breakdancer from 1985.) Hmmm, we are really climbing the ladder in terms of benjamins. Another pair goes by, and I’m starting to worry less about the money and more about my actual feet. Are they freakishly wide? Not in any universe I knew of—until I entered the European tiny-footed female cycling universe. It’s funny how trying on clothes that don’t fit can lead you to question your body rather than the clothes. (I think I just summed up a lot of neuroses with just that one sentence.) And then, just like that, we were at the top of the stack. Aaaaaah, that one felt awesome! It was like Cinderella with the prince, except with lots of Velcro and snappy clippy things to screw onto the bottom. And of course that shoe turned out to be so nice, as I turned it over and looked at the price tag: $230. Well, well, well.

And that’s how I bought the most expensive pair of shoes I’ve ever bought by far, for wearing maybe two or three hours a week at the most. And which will probably lead me to at least one scraped knee and a fair amount of beginner’s anxiety. But damn they are comfortable, and they make me want to ride. Sounds like a good deal to me.

Virginia Tech

As someone with some family ties to VTech, just wanted to say, well, something. I’m completely speechless but thought this unbelievable awfulness should not go unmentioned. The worst thing that should ever happen to someone in a classroom is being called on.

Open house

The last couple of weeks have been a rollercoaster ride, to say the least. I haven’t even found the time to upload pictures of our short trip to San Francisco, or inform you loyal blog readers about it! (Summary: lots of fun, great food, great to see Erin and Keith.) But all the news these days is on the home front. Yesterday was the first open house to sell the condo, and I’m still not sure whether to be optimistic or not. I took Friday off work and spent a Herculean effort getting the place staged—that’s real-estate-speak for hiding all personal items and making things as empty as possible while still projecting a homey and lived-in appearance for your gracious dwelling. And apparently, despite the insanely wet nor’easter that blew through the whole thing, there were a lot of people looking around and looking interested. We even managed to cajole the moose cloggers upstairs to go out somewhere and not stomp around and drop things.

After a somewhat tense evening of anticipation, an offer did come in today, although it’s a little lower than we were hoping for. So now the chess game really begins: counteroffers, sizing up the offer, deciding how to act and when. This is where our agent will make her dough, because I definitely don’t have the fortitude to play that game. If I’m not careful, “The Gambler” will start playing in my head and that could seriously drive me over the edge. So the game’s by no means over.

Speaking of games, I must add a postscript that the NBA regular season is over on Wednesday and I’m about to repeat as super duper champion of Andy’s league! I am the greatest! Go me! Just had to woof a little, there.

Tagged in a good way

Whoa, this is a new thing for me, I’ve been tagged by my man Lifton. (Edit: To my embarrassment, I see I missed one last month. Sorry, man.) And I say, why pass up a chance to blab about myself? To pass it on, I hereby tag Raoul, Frantix, Sashe, and Danielle. Maybe this will inspire those slackers to get back to posting.

And now on to the Q and A.

FOODOLOGY

Q. What is your salad dressing of choice?
A. Bleu cheese

Q. What is your favorite fast food restaurant?
A. National? Chipotle. Local? Boca Grande. One might sense a theme.

Q. What is your favorite sit-down restaurant?
A. Of all time, the Galaxy Cafe in Columbus, Ohio. Sadly defunct.

Q. On average, what size tip do you leave at a restaurant?
A. 20% on small checks, 16% minimum on large checks.

Q. What food could you eat every day for two weeks and not get sick off of?
A. I actually eat the same Kashi cereal every morning, but breakfast is a special circumstance. Chocolate for when I'm wide awake.

Q. What is your favorite type of gum?
A. My parents’ deep hatred of gum has taken hold in me as an adult, alas.

TECHNOLOGY

Q. What is your wallpaper on your computer?
A. Right now, a Japanese postcard. Alternates with a still from X2 and Neil Armstrong on the moon.

Q. How many televisions are in your house?
A. One. Don’t despair, Raoul, someday there might be two!

BIOLOGY

Q. What’s your best feature?
A. Aw, I don’t know. It sure ain’t humility.

Q. Have you ever had anything removed from your body?
A. Wisdom teeth, the occasional vial of the red stuff.

Q. Which of your five senses do you think is keenest?
A. Taste, not to be confused with the abstract version thereof.

Q. When was the last time you had a cavity?
A. God, what a tragedy. My first and only one was in 2004. I am mildly convinced that the dentist scammed me. A thing about myself I was so proud of, crushed like a stale cornflake.

Q. What is the heaviest item you lifted last?
A. My suitcase, coming back from San Francisco on Tuesday. Metaphorically, the burden of being one of the two competent people at work.

Q. Have you ever been knocked unconscious?
A. I almost fainted once. And they knocked me out to remove the aforementioned wisdom teeth, thank the gods.

BULLSHITOLOGY

Q. If it were possible, would you want to know the day you were going to die?
A. No way, no way.

Q. Is love for real?
A. Yes, no doubt about it.

Q. If you could change your first name, what would you change it to?
A. I love my name, although there are times when I’ve been tempted to switch full-time to Fang.

Q. What color do you think looks best on you?
A. Good question. There are some shades of blue that make my eyes look even bluer.

Q. Have you ever swallowed a non-food item by mistake?
A. Oh man, when I was a kid I once collected a single dime for Unicef at Halloween, and I was holding the box above my head, shaking it, when it dropped down my throat. Sorry, Unicef.

Q. Have you ever saved someone’s life?
A. No.

Q. Has someone ever saved yours?
A. No.

DAREOLOGY

Q. Would you walk naked for a half mile down a public street for $100,000?
A. No.

Q. Would you kiss a member of the same sex for $100?
A. If her name were Uma Thurman, or Kate Winslet. Actually, I kid, I’m easier than that.

Q. Would you allow one of your little fingers to be cut off for $200,000?
A. No way.

Q. Would you never blog again for $50,000?
A. Tempting, very tempting. How would you enforce it!

Q. Would you pose nude in a magazine for $250,000?
A. No.

Q. Would you drink an entire bottle of hot sauce for $1,000?
A. No, man that stuff is too much for me. (See taste question, above)

Q. Would you, without fear of punishment, take a human life for $1,000,000?
A. There are a couple of people who tempt me, but I doubt I could actually do it.

Q. Would you give up watching television for a year for $25,000?
A. I can’t live without my Stewart and Colbert, unfortunately.

Q. Give up MySpace forever for $30,000?
A. Hey, I’ve never gotten into it! Start writing that check.

DUMBOLOGY

Q: What is in your left pocket?
A. Empty! My left pockets are, as a rule, terribly underutilized.

Q: Is Napoleon Dynamite actually a good movie?
A. I haven’t seen it, but my spidey sense says it sucks.

Q: Do you have hardwood or carpet in your house?
A. Hardwood with some rugs.

Q: Do you sit or stand in the shower?
A. Stand. What a goofy question.

Q: Could you live with roommates?
A. I have in the past, although I imagine I’m not an easy roommate. My misanthropy doesn’t help.

Q: How many pairs of flip-flops do you own?
A. None, plastic shoes are evil!

Q: Last time you had a run-in with the cops?
A. Never, as a matter of fact.

Q: What do you want to be when you grow up?
A. In Neil Finn’s backup band.

LASTOLOGY

Q: Friend you talked to?
A. Erin, though I already miss her.

Q: Last person you called?
A. Swami, of course.

RANDOMOLOGY

Q: First place you went this morning?
A. Bathroom. Outside the house, it was to work via the bus. Ah, suck.

Q: What can you not wait to do?
A. Get my damn condo sold and move into my new one! Not in that order.

Q: What’s the last movie you saw?
A. Theater: The Queen. At home: The Sting.

Q: Are you a friendly person?
A. Not in the least, until I warm up to you. If I do. Watch out!

Mark it up, sell it off

Well, mark it down, I mean. The current condo goes on sale this weekend, and I’m vacillating between anxiety and complete freakout. Will anybody want to buy this place? Will I manage to get all of the sensitive personal items locked down and/or stowed in the car in time? Will my thoroughly noisy neighbors keep a lid on it for the two hours of the open house? Will some crazy kleptomaniac steal my toothbrush? I’ve been advised to “de-clutter,” and I do appreciate that things shouldn’t be stacked to the ceiling or spilling out of closets, but anyone who knows me can imagine that the place is pretty low on clutter as it is. Blah. I’m just feeling lazy. The real challenge will actually be trying to continue living here for another month, and somehow get packed up, while it’s staged to woo those elusive buyers. Maybe I should bury that statue of Saint What’s-His-Face in the yard. It would help if I remembered which saint was the relevant one.

Arrrgh

Small frustrations all, but they add up.

• Nasty head cold for the last four days


• Arenas and Butler out for the season


• Elvis Costello tickets weirdly out of reach because eeeevil Ticketma$ter wants me to pay with a Visa


• Ridiculous $8 “convenience charge” per ticket should I ever be able to actually buy the damn tickets


• Cut my vacation short to try to make a deadline that I ended up not making, and that it turned out I didn’t even need to try to make in the first place!

Arrrrrrrgh!

Rasheed at the buzzer

What a shot!

Encounter at tvsquad.com

Thanks to Danielle for pointing me to Wil Wheaton’s reviews of ST:TNG. They’re awesome! Can you believe it’s been almost twenty years? Yikes. And TNG is still the best Trek series, however craptacular that first season was.

Purchase and sale

Yes, I’m still alive. We signed the Purchase and Sale agreement on Thursday and wrote a big check. There are now no more ways for us to back out (unless the mortgage application is denied, which better not happen). The seller has to fix the things he agreed to fix, and assuming that he does, we are going to have a new place! So on the buying end, things are now quiet until closing (scheduled for late April). On the selling end, things get started now. I’ve done some cleaning today, and we’ve started formulating a plan on Making the Basement Look Decent. That may or may not be possible. If we’d really worked on it this weekend, we could have gotten this place on the market by next weekend, but thanks to us being usual lazy selves, it’ll probably be the weekend of April 14. Might be a flower or two blooming outside by then, that should help! And if I could only get the knob screwed back on to one of the kitchen cupboards—it’s defying all laws of physics and refuses to stay on. I’m gluing the sucker on if I have to, dammit.

God give me strength

I don’t think I can write coherent sentences as this point; time for a list. Here’s what’s been going on since the last update.

—Nerve-racking home inspection
—Most things fine, a couple not fine
—Tense couple of days waiting for the seller to decide whether to fix stuff
—Transferring large amounts of money around
—Meeting with lawyer
—Hashing out the details of the mortgage application
—Scheduling the pest inspection
—Seller agrees to repair major problems
—Meeting with other unit’s owners
—Signing approximately 17,000 places on mortgage application
—Hashing out the details of the Purchase and Sale agreement
—Not sleeping particularly well at night
—Neighbors’ racket continuing to provide only motivation for this crazy plan
—Considering alcoholism

That about covers it!

Why blog?

It’s an efficient way to keep the peeps informed, and a forum for their hollers back.
It’s a good way to work shit out; writing encourages fuzzy ideas to form coherent shapes.
It’s a record of your life, for when time passes and you forget the rawness of the immediate moment.
It’s another way to kill time on slow afternoons at work.
It’s a window into your tiny, tiny slice of the world, and a precious link to exotic other slices you might not have known about otherwise.
It’s navel-gazing with cool cascading style sheets!

Happy birthday to me

Well, I didn’t plan it, but the first house to meet all the criteria finally presented itself today, and in a stroke of birthday luck our offer was accepted. Better location, top floor with the attic redone, and everything done well. No wondering how soon I’ll have to take a sledgehammer to something, no hitting my head on the ceiling in the bathroom shower, no sloping floors, and bonus items such as air conditioning. Aaaaah. Now I can take a deep breath and prepare for the sprint that happens after going under agreement: home inspection, punch list, lawyering up, mortgage mobilization. Oh, and getting ready to put the current pad up for sale. And if I ever have moments where I wonder if I want to go through the hassle of moving, I have a morning like yesterday’s, where the lovely upstairs neighbors vacuumed at 8:30 a.m. I mean, for chrissakes that’s practically a violation of my civil rights.

Makes up for the peeps who forgot my birthday. You slackers!

Good riddance

Looks like Diebold might drop their voting-machine unit after, I guess, finally noticing all the bad press from the last few years, and due to the number of states now noticing how useful it might be to have a paper trail for voting. I’m sure election fraud will happen whether Diebold provides the machines or not, but I’m not crying a tear when that business unit bites the dust.

Home is anywhere: Week 5 recap

Week 5 has wrapped up, and it was quite a roller-coaster ride. As of midweek there still wasn’t a single interesting prospect to look at, but then one came on late in the week that promised all kinds of magic. It has all three things we’re trying to improve: location, one more room, and top-floor placement. Seeing the inside on Sunday, however, was a bummer. The kitchen sink was the same kind that I had in my semi-crappy apartment in grad school—that is not a selling point. And the all-important third BR upstairs turned out to be just okay, with a bathroom off of it that only a person under five feet tall could comfortably utilize. In fact, the shower was nestled under the eaves such that the curtain rod was at an angle—you had to hook the curtain at the tall end so that it didn’t slide down to the short end via the cruel pull of gravity. Since I still feel the bitterness of that first rush of disappointment, I almost want to reject the place outright, but that would probably be irrational. So I think the game plan is to wait and see if it languishes on the market. And if someone is willing to house only munchkins upstairs and offer the asking price, I’m not interested in competing with that.

A far happier report on the weekend would focus on the sporting angle: the weather was actually warm enough for cycling (yay!) and we managed to play tennis even though Swami’s back is not 100%. Another successful round of calorie burning to offset all the consumption.

Home is anywhere: Weeks 3-4 recap

I’m conflating the last two weeks into one post because nothing happened over last weekend, except the place that might have been The One went under agreement to somebody else. Ah, well. This weekend was a survey of places fitting the cramped city-living description, none of which really sang to me. I mean, I can’t argue with location, location, etc., except when it means slanty floors and ceilings so low that I could touch them. One of the other places had balconies with views of downtown Boston, but also of every ugly billboard and smokestack in between. I would dearly love to get this part of the process over with and just make an offer on something, but nothing is hitting the sweet spot yet and I don’t feel ready to compromise yet. Meanwhile, I’m trying not to get frustrated as I am awakened every day by the clog-dancing moose upstairs, and I could have gone cycling this afternoon if I hadn’t been tramping around gawking at flawed real estate. I guess there has to be a darkness before the proverbial dawn, but bleah. Current keyword: angst. Will something pop up this week that works? Man do I hope so.

Best haiku ever

We famous! Swami and I have collaborated on Wizards/Bullets haiku, posted for posterity on the completely insane fan site Wizznutzz. Click here and scroll down to the contributions by “Steve F.”

More Hibachi love

It seems kind of pointless to watch the NBA All-Star Game, but then you realize you get to see Agent Zero dunking off the stunt trampoline!

Also, speaking of dunks, Dwight Howard’s dunk during the competition, though cruelly underappreciated by the judges, was the best. The best.

Home is anywhere: Week 2 recap

All right, week two of house hunting has just wrapped up after today’s viewing of four places, and I can happily report that the trajectory is definitely beginning to form the desired spiral shape. Two of the four places seen this week were solid contenders, and one of those would be worth an offer if I didn’t have so much to do at work and plans to go out of town next weekend. So now the game plan is: decide whether we want semi-cramped city living, or more spacious but more car-dependent near-suburb living. And if the one place doesn’t have an offer on it by the time we get back on the 20th, then that might very well be The One. The most memorable thing seen? Not a tacky wallpaper pattern or a munchkin-sized closet, which make for good blog material, but a gorgeous, friendly silver tabby cat who made me feel very welcome in the semi-cramped place. I think he's on the list of exclusions, though.

Girl Scout Cookie conspiracy

It’s Girl Scout cookie time again, usually a source of joy and calories that I have always looked forward to. But there is a dark side to those disc-shaped delectables. When I moved to my current state of residence in 2000, I was surprised to find out that the old familiar names were gone from the boxes I saw for sale. The most majestic and tasty kind, the Samoa, was suddenly called a “Caramel Delite,” although everything else about the purple box seemed to be the same. In need of my cookie fix and willing to keep an open mind, I bought a couple boxes and took them home.

Well, despite them looking almost identical to the Samoas of my fond memory, they didn’t exactly taste like them. And a lot of the caramel had oozed out of the cookies and stuck to the inside plastic tray of the box, so that it was a huge pain to pry them out in order to taste their inferiority in the first place. “Egad,” I lamented, “They changed the name and the recipe too!” And I thought I was screwed.

But I was mistaken. When I complained (okay, whined) to my sister about it, she said that they still sold Samoas where she lived. And she sent me a box. (This has assured her entry into heaven, if there is such a thing.) Imagine my relief when I opened up a box of those Samoas and found the same delicious coconut and caramel extravaganza that I’d always loved.

So what gives? Turns out there are two different companies licensed to make Girl Scout cookies, and I can say with confidence that one of them produces lousy-ass cookies. Unfortunately, in my area all the councils seem to contract with the purveyors of demonic Caramel Delites, rather than the bakers of wondrous Samoas. So now I have to rely on my sister every year to send me boxes of the real deal. And whenever I walk by a table of Girl Scouts selling, I take a look at the purple boxes. Delites? No dice.

Home is anywhere: Week 1 recap

Okay, Week 1 has ended and here’s the score so far. Places visited: 7; places with potential: 0. The number of horror stories is sadly very small, although I did see one Pepto-pink bathroom and one place that was so 1980s, I swear I saw Sheena Easton in the living room wearing those huge geometric earrings. The nicest place had had an offer on it within the previous half hour, so hopes were deflated before they’d even had a chance to rise. Plus, that one had a tang of Wretched Excess, what with the special wine refrigerator in the kitchen. I don’t think I could in good conscience keep my wine at 54F and whatever percent humidity while children are eating tree bark in Africa. And so the search continues. There are two or three more prospects that didn’t hold open houses; hopefully we can check them out sometime this week.

Speaking of Sheena Easton, I still remember her guest starring on Miami Vice. The love of Crockett’s life, cruelly struck down before her time. I think we can all learn a lesson from that tragic tale: make sure to upgrade to the bulletproof shoulder pads.

Home is anywhere you hang your clogs

In the midst of the chaotic and angst-filled move at work (D-Day is coming up fast, Feb. 23!) it now becomes apparent that the once-hypothetical plan to find a pad with more space is coalescing into reality. The main reason for wanting to buy a new place? Well, there’s the rational, and the emotional. Rational is that it would be very nice to have a third bedroom, for hosting all our nonexistent guests that come to visit, or perhaps for stashing all the guitars and the keyboard and amps and other music-related stuff. Rational is that it would be very, very nice to have more than one bathroom. Rational is that now that prices are sliding, why not upgrade into Swankitude, Mark II. And that’s all good in theory, but it’s the emotional that has me practically running out the door of the place I’ve been happily living in for the last 2.5 years: the upstairs neighbors.

I can even narrow it down further: the female upstairs neighbor. Sure, she seems like a person of normal weight and height, and in possession of the normal amount of empathy toward fellow humans, but in reality she stomps around like a drunken overweight moose at a clog dance. And it’s back and forth, back and forth, all the damn time, starting at a ridiculously early time of day.

(I’ve been doing my best not to mention the 1-year-old toddler, by the way, who is far too young to do anything but the Frankenstein Walk and certainly can’t be blamed for crashing to the floor and/or dropping things at unpredictable moments. Not that it ain’t annoying.)

I can blame the unparalleled ruckus directly on Ms. Clog-Dancing Moose (CDM) quite easily, because last summer she was gone for three months and it was absolute bliss. Mr. Moose, despite being not a small guy, walked around more like Felt-Slipper-Wearing Mouse—and I would also like to point out that he is eminently considerate in general, always apologizing after flooding the shared basement or flooding our bathroom or flooding the basement a second time. Meanwhile, the swami went up there last week to beg for a minor concession, that the clog dancing be moved to a room other than the one above our bedroom in the early mornings, and found out that CDM is not only heavy-footed, but also bereft of all empathy and conscience.

So we’re starting to look at the listings and got in touch with the Realtor (tm) that helped us buy last time. It looks like there is a lot of good stuff out there, and hopefully it’s not the usual hyperbole of exuberant and semi-unscrupulous selling agents making shit up. I’ll try to provide updates as things happen, and hopefully will have some good horror stories regarding other people’s decorating ideas (though it will be hard to top the Cheetah Wallpaper Bathroom of 2001).

Wish me luck, fair readers, for this way lies madness!

Talk to the hand

For the Star Wars fans out there (though you must face facts, Trek is much much better!)

More Finn newz

Remember how I mentioned Neil recording a new album back in October? Well, turns out that Nick Seymour was also in the studio with him, and now thanks to this news article and confirmation/clarification from Peter Green (see this post from the Gryphon himself) we now know that it’s going to be a Crowded House reunion album, complete with Mark Hart! I would be sorely disappointed if Mark hadn’t been included, by the way. And there aren’t really words to describe the lack of Paul. I still can’t believe that I never even got to see them live until after Paul had quit back in 1994.

They’ve also rereleased the Farewell to the World DVD and it’s finally out in the US; I have got to stop putting off my next Amazon order and get the damn thing. (Actually, I almost ordered it straight from Oz earlier this month before seeing in the fine print that it was a Region 4 disc! Disaster averted.)

Could it be true? Solo Tim and Crowded House all in the same year?

A damn good idea

Wish I’d thought of this one: a mitten that has a pocket on the back of the hand that you can put your Charlie Card in. The card scanner can read the card through the mitten, and your hands stay warm. It’s a win-win! Read about it here, and here is another blog that links to the article about the mittens that ran in the Globe last week.

Time won’t give me time

When am I going to grow a spine and cancel my subscription to Time magazine? My major complaint is that over the years they’ve been subtly and gradually changing the tone to one that is less like reporting and more like advertising. I even got torqued up enough last September to send an email accusing one writer of being a shill for a business whose product he reviewed. In the offending “article,” which I don’t feel like identifying because it will just name the damn product another time, was about a new cell phone. After gushing about the phone itself, quoting the manufacturer’s own description of the phone, the writer actually advised buying it now rather than waiting for other providers to offer it because one “may never again find a monthly rate this good.” In this era of uber-crass commercialization, does this kind of plug bother only me? For what it’s worth, I did get a reply to my email, but it was not in any way apologetic and rather defended how cool he thought the phone was. So be warned: Time magazine now carries bought-and-paid-for ads, as well as masquerading-as-articles ads.

The latest misstep is, of course, the now infamous “Person of the Year” issue where it was Us, the DIY You-Tubers who lurve to use teh Internets as our new medium of navel-gazing. Far be it from me to ignore the irony of bitching about it on my blog (and of course I’m also a couple of weeks late and the Eye of the People has certainly moved on by now). But come on. Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-Il, maybe someone involved in that Iraq thing going on, hell, even Vladimir Putin and his growing fondness for trying to bully the world through manipulation of the energy supply. I mean, do I matter even a tiny bit in the grand scheme of things in contrast to the aforementioned dudes? Sure, I love YouTube, sure I dig keeping up with the peeps blog-style. But it ain’t the most important shit that happened last year. Get some perspective, hmm?

So why do I continue to subscribe to this damn mag? Well, there’s certainly inertia at work. And they do a decent job in the front third of the mag to give me the lowdown on the week’s happenings. Hey, maybe I should just cancel until the 2008 presidential campaign starts to heat up. Uh—wait a second...

Hibachi!

Well, it seems as though the last few days have been dedicated primarily to sports in one form or another. First off, the Snorklewacker/Swami household has been consumed with Gilbertalooza, after Arenas sank an unbelievable game-winning shot on Thursday night, then had an insanely expensive birthday party on Friday night (not that I was invited, snif), and in general showed off his phenomenal swag.

Then there was an hour and a half of tennis on Saturday, where we were one court over from Thomas Blake, bro to James and a Boston Lobster. (It’s pretty daunting to play your own crappy game of tennis, involving lots of hitting it into the net and other unforced errors, while the dude next court over is thwacking the ball at a billion miles per hour. Although I did hit an ace, boo yah!)
Finally, today, it was a 19-mile bike ride in the amazing sunny weather. As righteously pissed off as I am about global climate change, I can’t complain about sneaking a cycling session in during January, of all months. Although I do miss the snow and cold weather.
Now, I need a weekend to recover from my weekend. Woof.

I Hate Christmas, Part 2

Well, the annual holiday fiasco is finally over and I’m safely back in the Snorklewacker Cave. Actually, the fiasco rating was quite low this year; much lower than it’s been in the past. One major reason for the relatively low level of stress was that we flew down to the family homesteads instead of driving—no 10 hours of slogging down the East Coast Megalopolis through holiday traffic. Just a couple hours of JetBlue entertaining me with XM radio. Why have we not been flying every year?? Also, the family strife and drama was at a minimum this year for some reason. Overall I managed to see three siblings, three nephews, the new(ish) niece, three siblings-in-law, one parent, one step-parent, two in-laws, and four friends over six days. Whew.
As for gifts, I simply must call out these two hideous apple figurine things for special mockery. Aren’t they awful? Egads. Anybody who wants ’em, they are yours, yours, yours. I ship internationally.

Justin Timberlake in a box

Thanks to Danielle for dropping a dime on this one! NSFW. What are you doing surfing my blog from work, anyway, ya slacker?

I Hate Christmas, Part 1

I need to buy a generic gift for the office Yankee swap on Thursday. At the moment I’m nearly homicidally irritated with half of my co-workers, and therefore not interested in giving any of them a gift, and friendly enough with the other half to know that they are dreading the swap just as much as I am. Blah, what to buy? At this point I think the default is food, although that just screams uninspired. Last year somebody tried the ultimate tacky move and unwrapped his own present. (Although he didn’t count on me taking it from him, heheh!) Hmph, I’m not feeling the holiday cheer over here. Christmas is such a pain in the ass. Well, except for the proliferation of chocolate. But I refuse to look for an upside while I’m in this cranky mood.

Number nine, number nine

My oldest nephew turned nine years old yesterday. Nine! Hell, I vividly remember being nine.

• My oldest sister went to college (I drove down with my parents to move her into the dorm)


• I was in fourth grade, which was when I met my first real best friend


• My 27-year-old (!) somewhat hippie teacher read The Hobbit to us in class


• I learned long division—I remember being so crushed when I found out remainders were just a crutch we’d have to learn to live without


• I procrastinated so long on my science project, which was to build a model of the solar system, that I ended up with one of the crappiest ones in the class


• One of my classmates would solve your Rubik’s Cube for a price (geek hustler!)

The week of my ninth birthday, the #1 pop song was “Centerfold” by J. Geils Band, and E.T. came out three months later (I never saw it, though, can you believe it!). And I should mention that Elvis Costello’s Imperial Bedroom also came out that summer, although I didn’t become hip enough to notice that one until around eight years later.

Nine! So old, so young. Freaky to think about it.

Hieronymus Bosch in a down parka

It’s been cold outside today. Cold in an empty-void-of-outer-space kind of way. I was out there wrapped in my warmest coat, two hats, hands inside gloves inside pockets and I could tell you exactly which square inches of my body were not covered in enough layers. (Ankles, bridge of the nose, toes.) And it’s times like that when you begin to grasp the speck-like insignificance of humanity, that the very air around you is not your friend as it tries to suck the life out of your body and the heat out of your skin. It makes me glad that medieval artists didn’t know about physics, because if they had, the center of the most ghoulish painting or carving depicting the horrific depths of hell would not have Satan at the center, but Thermodynamics, represented by a blank-eyed quadruple-fanged serpent with an empty belly drinking the warm life-force right out of its innocent victims, diamond-studded eyes staring with the cruel impersonality of a relentless, mindless force. (Or maybe I shouldn’t have watched any of Queen of the Damned on basic cable last night, a truly awful movie by one of the more awful writers of paperbacks I loved when I was a teenager, because it’s making me feel Gothic and tragic and positively overwrought. Moreover, to expand this parenthetical aside past the point of reason, Van Helsing was on basic cable tonight and I can confirm that it really sucks. I mean, you can’t even watch it for more than a few minutes at a time because the pain in your head intensifies with every second. Normally good actors acting very badly, bad actors acting badly, special effects that look completely cheesy, David Wenham’s appallingly terrible haircut, etc. Yeesh.)

Now I’ve lost my train of thought. Anyway, it was damn cold today and I’m someone who likes it cold. At the same time, for the next several days I’ll be the only person in this big house and that’s exacerbating this cold feeling. I’ve been blasting the TV and the music, and that helps. The next step is tossing this tiny stone into the giant ocean of cyberspace and causing a couple of ripples to remind the world that I’m over here generating heat, using electricity, and just generally being alive. Hey, remind me not to play “Log Cabin Fever” by Split Enz this week, okay? At least, not until Swami gets back from his trip to China.

Low cloud moving cross the sky

It’s good to know on a cloudy day that the sun is still up there shining.

And no George Clooney, either

I won’t go into any details*, but let me just say that I spent over six hours in the emergency room last Wednesday, and it was no fun at all. Remind me not to complain about car troubles again—medical troubles are far, far more nerve-racking! But all is well, nothing to report, I am a paragon of health. Bring on the leftover pumpkin pie and order me another four-day weekend, stat.

*Okay, if you want a little detail, you can read this.

Showdown at the Woodley Cafe

The night was dark. I was slouching through town, feeling unfamiliar in a crowd of strangers, trying to forget myself amid the crush trying to get noticed. I needed a stiff drink, there was definitely a stiff drink out there who was head over heels for me, and I knew there had to be a place where we could get acquainted. I walked into the nearest bar ’cause the farthest one was too many steps away.

Then I saw them, three goons that weren’t looking for trouble because trouble had heard they were looking and skipped town on the next Chinatown bus. That was trouble’s mistake, because everybody knows the Chinatown bus is as likely to leave you by the side of the road with your luggage on fire and soaked with antifreeze as drop you on a stinking street corner with a chopstick up your nose and a wonton up your ass. But never mind that. Back to the goons. It was like the Dating Game in one of Chuck Barris’s cocaine-fueled fever dreams: Bachelor #1 was probably the one they called the Kid, his innocent face all smiles after beating the latest murder rap with the help of a few guys named Ben Franklin. Bachelor #2 looked like he dug his bivouac next door to the Unabomber and made his own moccasins out of Ted Nugent’s hide. And Bachelor #3, well, he was the softspoken one, which means he might ask your opinion of Freddy Adu but shiv you even if he agreed with your take on the kid. I knew I should have kept on walking past that dive but then I caught their eye and it was too late to leave early.

The Shiv gestured to a seat next to him and I had to sit down. At that moment the waitron cashed in her years of training and asked for drink orders.

“What Scotch do you have?” the Shiv asked, and I hoped for my own sake she had whatever swill he was hoping to swig.

“We got Jack Daniels,” she responded, and then I knew it was all over for her and me both.

Then the Kid leaned forward. “They say you got quite an arm.”

“Do they,” I responded, playing it cool. If things went my way I might have a chance at getting out of there without it being feet first. “I wonder if they know what they’re talking about.”

Unabomber looked up from his half-sized glass of beer. I wondered if I was dressed as Dorothy because that bar was sure starting to look like Oz. “You see this nose?” He pulled a giant plastic nose out of his pocket and slammed it on the table.

Now I knew I was in crazytown but I thought it best not to point that out to the natives. “Yeah, I see that nose.”

“You beat the Kid at arm-wrestling, you get the nose. You lose, Shiv here gets yours.”

“Simple proposition,” I remarked. It might have confused the teetotaling waitron but it was crystal clear to me. “Let’s go for it.”

I clasped hands with the Kid and we planted our elbows on the table. At first, he was holding back on me, I could tell, letting me wear myself out early and then he could swoop in for the kill. So I kept it low-key, not showing off, knowing that the longer it went the more likely I would keep one of my favorite facial features. Actually, who am I kidding, I’m not a huge fan of my nose but I wasn’t ready to give it up for adoption to that bunch of jokers.

Time was ticking by and the Kid was looking a little less confident. I didn’t have him yet, though. I just kept my eyes on that nose and hoped that my arm didn’t leg out. At last I saw him start to crumble like Big Dig concrete, and finally I banged his arm to the table harder than Woody Hayes punched out Charlie Bauman in the Gator Bowl.

For a minute it was quieter than a room full of people sleeping through Elvis Costello’s North. Then I stood up, picked up the nose, and gave a salute. I figured I’d hit the road before their patience ran thin like Gene Keady’s combover. “Here’s to otolaryngology,” I said, picking up my drink and draining it in one shot.

That was one hell of a night in Washington, D.C.

Notes: cross-posted to Costello-l; visit here for a couple more pics!

Movie review: The Prestige

It’s been a long time since I went to a movie and walked out immediately wanting to see it again. (Maybe Kung Fu Hustle?) This was one of them. I’m not going to go into plot details, because there are a lot of surprises and I don’t want to spoil any of it. But I will tell you that this was one of the best constructed plots I’ve seen, every performance was excellent (due to my various biases I’m obliged to spend a whole paragraph later on one particular actor; see below for that), and there wasn’t a single moment where I looked at my watch. I also ended up thinking about it for the rest of the weekend, which is rare because I often slip into an irrational funk after seeing movies.

(By the way, over here I promised Frantix at some point that I’d deliver my verdict on The Departed, but in truth I was so lukewarm about that movie that I couldn’t really motivate myself to write a review. That is review enough, I think. Well, while I’m on the subject, I’ll just say that the performances were excellent, but the plot was botched in the last quarter of the movie and therefore I was terribly disappointed. Leo deserves Oscar consideration, though.)

In a rare girly moment for me, I must confess that this movie led me to believe that the best job in the world is probably designing costumes, and this film was a showcase for some great ones. There’s nothing like the Victorian era for waistcoats, ascots, corsets, and hats of various shapes and sizes. I wonder what the line-item in the budget was for top hats, for example. Christian Bale should be firing his agent, because he got majorly shortchanged by being stuck in prison greys for a large portion of the proceedings. I also loved the set dressing. Can you imagine being in charge of something so major, in that everything you do is on display and captured forever on film, but so minor, in that few people probably ever notice the vases on the shelf behind a character while he’s talking? It’s kind of mind-blowing when you think about it.

And now, the promised/threatened paragraph on Hugh Jackman. The first thing to say is that he has appeared in some of the most awful flicks that have ever been imposed on humanity (here of course I’m talking about Swordfish and Van Helsing, yikes). The next thing to say is that I’m nonetheless incredibly biased in his favor because of the X-Men movies. (That’s 1 and 2; let’s imagine that 3 was scrapped after Bryan Singer left.) But after that full disclosure I think it’s safe to report that the dude can act. Even in some very tense emotional scenes, he really pulled it off. Look, I got through almost the whole paragraph without mentioning that there is a shirtless scene (insert fangirl swoon here).

But I’m tiptoeing around the major points of discussion because I want you to see the damn movie, not read my effusive ramblings on it. Go. Go, already, if only so I can discuss the plot with you afterwards. And buy an extra ticket for me so I can go again.

Drop the thesaurus, pal

That word doesn’t mean what they think it means.

Wow

So the Democrats actually managed to do it. I’m amazed, surprised. When I went to bed on Tuesday night they were calling the House for the Dems, but it didn’t look like the Senate was going to happen. And that seemed to be confirmed on Wednesday, when the two states without a firm result turned out to be Montana and Virginia. I knew better than to think of Virginia as a blue state, after growing up there. But it actually happened! The change I’ll be happiest to see is one that seems minor, but could very well have a huge impact: now that each party controls a branch of government, I expect the media to stop playing GOP lapdog and give the Democrats the voice that they’ve been denied for the last six years. With Democrats controlling committees, they’ll regain some control of what the media reports. What a relief that will be after watching the media treat every despicable piece of GOP spin like actual news.

The other result that is close to my heart is in South Dakota. If voters in one of the most conservative corners of the country can vote down an anti-abortion law, then I can truly believe that this country leans pro-choice. Perhaps that’s asking for too little, but at this point even the smallest hint of affirmation means a lot. Way to go, South Dakotans!

Blogger says: no birthday for you!

My post wishing Sashe a happy birthday, posted on the exact day and everything, has just disappeared. I have just spent the last half hour saving all my damn posts, in case the whole thing goes up in smoke someday. Fellow bloggers, if you have any interest in posterity, I guess this proves you don’t leave it up to Blogspot.

Autumn almanac

Thought I’d share the pics I took this past Sunday on a bike ride. This first one is looking downstream at the Charles River, with the Prudential Center visible in the center.

Thanks to the lovely and talented Erin giving us windproof vests, 45F is not too cold to go cycling, for the record! And thanks to the National Weather Service’s wind chill index, I can confirm that when you’re riding 20 mph in 40 degree weather, it feels like it’s below freezing. Hardcore, baby.

This is the Weeks Footbridge looking downstream, with both the Hancock tower and the Pru visible in between the yoogly concrete high-rises.


And the third pic is looking upstream at the same bridge.

For once, the Luddites are right

I’ve had my head down for the last few days trying to keep the workload at bay, but I thought I’d pop in long enough to comment that America is doomed. Of course I’m talking about electronic voting machines, which are not even a good idea in theory (does no one see the crucial need for an actual paper trail?) and a total nightmare in practice. I direct you to Ars Technica and Time magazine for hair-raising discussion.

I also have been gritting my teeth and scrunching my eyes shut over all the hoopla about the Republicans supposedly losing their grip on power—not because I wouldn’t want to see it happen, but because indulging in any exuberance before the actual results come in is, well, irrational. It’ll be bad enough if the supposed rout doesn’t happen, I don’t want to compound the pain by feeling giddy and expectant for this next week. Would anyone care to join me in this soundproof room?

Finn newz

This is rapidly becoming unbalanced in favor of Finn things, but anyway I just found Tim’s blog on MySpace. It’s kind of funny to see him writing on that site, it just seems like such a breathless teen hangout with all the emoticons, but hey, what do I know. I also am a little unsure of that first single, which seems excessively happy. (Watch the vid on YouTube) I’m going to have to offset it by listening to Nine Inch Nails or something.

I also heard that Neil’s finished recording his album at Real World in the UK—I’m just glad it isn’t taking him six years to do it, as it always does for the most habitual denizen of Real World.

OMG Neil r0x0rs!!1!!
Current mood: abliquafregious

Wheels on fire

The old Civic has had two incidents of running hot in the last four months, both of which seemed to be fixed by throwing money at it. But it did it again today. It already has a new radiator and a new thermostat—unfortunately the next thing to consider is damn expensive (head gasket). Maybe it’s time to buy a new car this weekend. Ten years and 164,000 miles is a good run for a car, isn’t it? But... I am so not in the mood to deal with car-buying schmack. And the new Civics are so damn ugly.

Newspaper reporters spoiling all the fun

Because TJ was scarred by watching Midnight Oil jump around in dorky coveralls, here’s a far more stylish video from Tim Finn.

Soup du jour

• Happy Birthday to Anne and Judy!


• Only two more days until the Fantasy NBA draft, and I am completely without inspiration. All I know is, I don’t care how high Kobe is ranked, I’m not picking his ass.


• I feel like my head is carrying around 100 good ideas but I can’t get a single one down on paper (or screen).


• Here is a very good picture to look at when feeling frustrated.


• In another rock and roll moment, Midnight Oil tried to burn down Alan Thicke’s talk show in 1984. Am I the only person who remembers Alan Thicke?

How soon one forgets the sticky floors

Tonight Steve and I were driving by Newbury Comics, and it launched a series of memories of seeing Neil Finn do an in-store performancethere, and the concert at the Paradise later that night, and it snowballed into recalling all the Finn-related concerts we’d seen here: that Paradise show in summer of 2002, one at Avalon the following February of 2003, and then the Finn Brothers in 2004 and 2005. It’s about time to have another visit, I think! But the Paradise one might always be the best to me. The venue is so small, the farthest away you can get from the stage is probably 20 feet. Even the annoying chick in front of me trying to push backwards the whole time couldn’t bring me down. Ah, GA shows are to love, and to hate.

There’s something so special about knowing that the guy standing in front of you on the stage came from the other side of the world and is probably losing money on the tour because he had to fly all his gear, but dammit, he’s in front of me right now playing his heart out. And Neil’s stage persona is half perfectionist, half laid-back dude screwing around. I don’t know how to explain it; it makes for the best shows. I love seeing Elvis Costello live, but not as much, because the venues are always large and so much more impersonal. Plus, 70% of the people are there to hear the hits, or discuss stock trades, and don’t really give a damn. At Finn shows that bunch of jackasses is closer to 10% or less of the crowd, I’d say.

In April 2001 Neil played several shows in NZ with a bunch of musician friends, and it was broadcast over the web. I was glued to the computer and that tiny, grainy window onto something that was happening thousands of miles away. I snapped the screenshot you see here; more are available at somethingsofinn.com (follow the left sidebar: Neil Finn > Live Shows > 2000-2003, scroll down to 6 April 2001). That experience is yet another reason why I can say, with a minimum of irony and cynicism, that the Internet changed everything. For the better.

How long til the next tour, Neil?

Cleanliness is next to craziness

So I’ve been spending my Columbus Day hanging out at home, cleaning various things around the house. My hopelessly overstuffed email inbox, the bathtub, the kitchen counters—hell, I just dusted the toaster, for heaven’s sake. And since cleaning doesn’t require much brainpower, I’ve been pondering whether or not spending time dusting my toaster means I’m crazy.

I’m reminded of the scene in Sex, Lies, and Videotape when Andie MacDowell’s character is seen scrubbing various surfaces in her kitchen, obsessively shining the faucet on the sink. Clearly this is a shorthand way of explicating her inner turmoil: she tries to restore precise order and cleanliness to the outside world as her inner world is being buried under giant dust bunnies and growing various species of mildew. So whenever I put on the rubber gloves (whose package always has a well-manicured smiling woman on it—shouldn’t it show a person, lightheaded from bleach fumes, trying not to hurl while clearing out the shower drain?) I start thinking about being crazy.

Am I crazy? I would much rather have things clean than dirty. I sincerely wish my whole house were a giant dishwasher-like device whereby I could walk outside, flip a giant lever, and come back in an hour to a sparkling, steamy, and well-nigh sterile environment. Although, think of the water bill. Then again, no one could accuse me of being obsessively clean. I’d rather wait until things get really dusty or dirty and then it’s so much more satisfying to see their transformation back into shiny things you might actually want to touch or walk on or whatever. That seems like a reasonable desire to have in one’s life. If I weren’t overwhelmed by liberal guilt at the thought, I might even pay someone to clean things for me once in a while, and I wouldn’t have the opportunity to ponder my possible state of insanity. So perhaps my behavior fails the crazy test, where I ask myself whether it’s affecting my life to the point where other people notice, or it harms my relationships, or I find myself curled into a fetal position when I realize that the mold on the bathroom ceiling spells CHENEY/HANNITY 2008. If that’s crazy, then I suppose the whole world is right there with me, and thus the asylum has become the whole world.

Have you ever noticed how much dust accumulates on desk chairs? It’s downright frightening. Remind me not to look down while I’m writing these posts.

Paging Stevie Wonder

I wish I had another person on my staff so I didn’t have to do the work of two people.
I wish Al Gore had been inaugurated in January 2001.
I wish JetBlue flew to WAS and not just IAD.
I wish the zipper on my briefcase wasn’t broken.
I wish the workweek was only four days long.
I wish all of my peeps still lived in the area.
I wish difficult decisions were more easily made.
I wish the people who live above me would stop stomping everywhere they walk (how do they not have shin splints by now??).
I wish X3 hadn’t sucked so much.
I wish people did what was asked of them occasionally, and not just what they felt like doing.
I wish politics in this country weren’t so mean-spirited and partisan.
I wish I had more time to be creative.
I wish I had a more cheerful blog entry to foist upon my dear readers!

Snorklewacker on Wheels

This morning—which was a Sunday, I might add—Swami and I got up at 6:30 to make it downtown in time for the Hub on Wheels ride. It’s a charity bike ride that starts at City Hall Plaza and tours the Emerald Necklace parks and cemeteries: Fenway, Jamaica Pond, Arnold Arboretum, Franklin Park, Forest Hills Cemetery, and the Neponset River. Then the ride swings up along the coast and back to City Hall.

It was a blast! We took the 30-mile loop (the longest route was 40) and managed to avoid crashing into any of the thousand other riders who were out there. Support was great: cops at every intersection, snack stops, and arrows indicating the route. (This was a real pleasure here in the town with virtually no street signs.) There was a blue heron near Longwood, standing in a stream and staring at all of the people crazy enough to go cycling at the crack of dawn in iffy weather; lots of patient motorists waiting for us to pass by (and of course a few impatient ones); the completely impressive JFK Library, which I had never seen before, much less cycled by; a Navy ship in drydock; and incredible views of Boston and the harbor from several angles. Sorry I don’t have pics, though, because it was a little too wet to risk the camera.

The only question mark was, as I mentioned, the iffy weather. It showered on and off on us a few times, and it wasn’t anything close to warm, but at least the real rain held off until after. (And then it freaking poured.) But next year, I gotta try for the full 40 miles. Hm, this is turning into a cycling blog, isn’t it?

Dancing out with the moonlit knight

My undying gratitude goes to Brent for sending me a link to this video on YouTube:


Even with my overdeveloped sense of irony, I can’t resist loving early Genesis. But I won’t blame the rest of you for giggling through the vid, especially if you make it to the part where Peter Gabriel starts playing the flute. Knights of the Green Shield stamp and shout!

This week in WTF-land

Okay cats and kittens, here’s the latest list of things that are irking my jive.

Location, location—what was the third thing again?
My place of employment is engaged in a half-hearted (and half-witted) attempt to relocate from the place it’s been for the entire 33 years of its existence. The current prospects are: 1) a lovely, spacious, modern building in the heart of the Square that’s close to all kinds of stuff and actually has room for everyone on staff; or 2) a cockeyed, ramshackle dog of a building that is about 40% of our current size and perhaps 20% as charming—if you keep one eye closed and a bottle of vodka handy. But the hard fact here is that option 1 isn’t even a true prospect, because there’s no money to pay the lease that would come with it. I wish I’d never seen it in the first place, just to have my hopes raised and then summarily squashed flatter than hammered shit. And to the university whose name we bear, I ask: Where is the love, comrades? How about offering us a space that’s larger than Khrushchev’s shoe?

PeopleSoft and Safari: Can’t we all just get along?
So I’ve never been able to access PeopleSoft with Safari, for no damn good reason. Now I get a memo stating that as of next week, PeopleSoft will no longer work with Internet Explorer. They claim it’ll work with Safari, but then they reveal that it’ll work only with Safari 2.0. Which I don’t have. Which I’d have to buy Tiger to get. Can someone remind these chuckleheads that the whole point of web-based interfaces is a little concept called interoperability? Platform-freaking-independence? Land of the free and home of Steve Jobs? Ah, never mind, I didn’t want to view my paycheck anyway.

Expletives available upon request
It’s been almost a year since I left my last post and moved “up” to manager, and my former position is still vacant. One year doing the work of two people. At this point I’m tempted to tie the Chicago Manual of Style around my ankles and jump into the Charles. And why, why are there no scholars/authors who know how to properly construct a bibliography? I know, it’s esoteric knowledge, but at least pretend you care. Maybe spell “USSR,” or Stalin’s first name, correctly once in a while.

Happy Birthday, Kaskasero

I know it’s almost over where you are, but here in EDT it’s just getting started. I hope your day has been bitchin! Have a big plate of calamari tempura on me.

Hail to the teach

I got an email out of the blue today from one of my students from Russian 101 back in 1994. Of course I remember her, since there’s so much personal interaction in language classes and the students spend the first couple of years just learning how to talk about themselves. It’s definitely flattering that she remembers me. That was my first quarter teaching, and I was probably a pretty lousy teacher. Then again, 101 students always have the best impression of you. You’re like the Oracle at Delphi, writing mysterious characters on the board and speaking in tongues. The students are all optimistic and fresh, and everything is fun and games. By 104 three quarters later, they’re completely demoralized by the strangeness of Russian grammar and beaten down by complexities such as motion verbs and verbal aspect. It was at that point that I was hearing one girl lean over to another and utter in a stage whisper, “She hates me!” And how could I forget the student who wrote with unexpected candor in his instructor evaluation of me that he didn’t work very hard in the class because was just trying to pass. He did—just barely.

Today was the first day of classes here at the ivy-encrusted university where I work. I sure don’t miss grading workbook exercises every night, or trying to figure out an engaging way to introduce the dative plural. (I don’t think there is one.) But it’s nice to know that somebody learned something because I was there to help.

Ten years of bliss

Just like the date-stamp says, it’s September 14, which means it’s the tenth wedding anniversary for Steve and me. It’s a standard assumption that getting married changes things, but for me I don’t think it really changed anything. Steve was my best friend and the most important person in my life before the big day, and he has been the same ever since. Maybe getting married actually changed everyone around us, since the government and the law and the people around us had to acknowledge what I had already known.

Anyway, that day back in 1996 was a great one. A fun party, perfect weather, my stepbrother-in-law taking my sister’s dare to roll all the way down the grassy hill outside the reception site. And of course, the magisterial trashing of one of the crappiest cars I ever drove. I’m still grateful to everyone who took pictures, especially Laura who captured the best one of all, the mobster shot (email me if you want to see the pic).

By the way, silly string harms the finish on auto paint. In case you ever need to know.

I love you, Swami!

Bicycling, blueberries, and booze

With that threesome it can only mean that last week was our mostly annual trip to Maine. If you don’t know anything about Acadia National Park or Bar Harbor, start Googling. This year was the fourth visit, and it was great to be back. Now let’s break down the three Bs.

Bicycling: Most of the cycling potential in Acadia is on unpaved carriage roads, so we usually rent mountain bikes so it doesn’t matter when they get outrageously dusty and banged around. But this year we brought our road bikes with us and had ambitious plans to ride the Park Loop Road. That’s a 20-mile loop that rings the eastern part of the park, with fab ocean views and more than a few serious hills. This is the first year I’ve been fit enough to ride that kind of distance, so I was looking forward to seeing how tough it would be. We tackled it on Day Two, and it turned out to be fantastic. There were three climbs that totally kicked my ass, but they all paid off with amazing views of the ocean or one of the lakes at the top. People driving by us were giving us the thumbs-up and calling out encouragement, which was really great. And I hit my fastest speed ever on a descent: over 33 mph.

On Day Three, which was supposed to be recovery day, we rented the aforementioned mountain bikes and hit some of the more difficult carriage roads. I’d been on some of them before, but we did two sections that we hadn’t done before and that had some great views. It’s really satisfying to dog up a hill and realize that it’s the same one I had to walk the bike up a couple of years ago. And we went much farther in terms of distance than anything we’d tried before.

So all in all, because we had gone on a ride the day before we left for the trip, it was a week with over 60 miles of riding. Boo yah!

Blueberries: It’s not a trip to Maine without those little blue things appearing everywhere. I think the breakfasts at the B&B managed to include them every single day. Then there was the always divine Blueberry Oolius smoothie at Gaucho’s, and the blueberry-lemon tart at Eden that rocked my world. Somewhere in my head I hear Yosemite Sam exclaiming, “New England boiled blueberries!” Of course, right now in the fridge there’s still some Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale—which leads us naturally into the third B.

Booze: The best part about biking (or
hiking, since we did some of that, too) to exhaustion every day is that you have no guilt when it comes to dinner. And man, dinner was way over the top every single night. The mood was international: a South African sauvignon blanc, a New Zealand pinot noir, California merlot, a viognier from that largish country in Europe where they make a lotta wine, and oh yes, the Cuban mojito. There was food paired with all of those beverages, but frankly, the details are a bit hazy. I raise my glass to restaurants that let you recork your wine and schlep it home, by the way. And another toast (hic) to New Zealand for making screw-top bottles, which facilitate schleppage.

So now the real question is, should I quit my job, move to Bar Harbor, and become a mussel farmer? Because as I drag my carcass back to my damn desk job, that’s looking mighty appealing to me...

Nothing but love for Andre

Andre Agassi played his last professional tennis match today. He’s an interesting chapter in my interaction with sports figures, because he’s the only one that I used to passionately hate, but now completely love. How did it happen? After much self scrutiny and analysis, I can only conclude that it must have been the hair. He used to have that nasty, nasty mullet. Going bald was definitely the best thing that happened to that guy. But I kid—it was also his transformation from cocky asshole to gracious sportsman.

I also marvel at the fact that the dude is only 36—yes, I wrote only, even though he’s an athlete, which means that he’s about 100 in regular human years—and his back is hopelessly screwed up. I guess I should be glad that the fates didn’t see fit to make me a professional athlete. I’ll still be playing tennis when I’m 60, while Andre is going to have to hang up that oversized racket unless they invent the bionic spine. That made it all the sweeter when he managed to beat Baghdatis on Thursday night. Too bad he couldn’t survive today, he would have had a shot at Roddick!

Anyway, I hereby dedicate my next double-handed backhand to the man, Andre. I hope he recovers enough to play again someday.