The Aerie
Hi y'all! Just dropping by to say hello from my vacation paradise...
my basement.
Well, I got my refridgerator cleaned last night. Let me tell you, I
know how to have FUN on my vacation! It wasn't as disgusting as some
legendary refrigerator cleanings -- no stinking pseudopods of glop
rose up to fight back when I pulled out the crisper drawers. But I
emptied the sucker completely, tipped it on its side, and blew all the
dust out of the coils underneath.
That's one thing that kills me: why do they put the coils under or
behind the fridge? If the idea is to vent heat, put them on TOP and
let the heat float up off the fridge, instead of just forcing it to
soak right back into the fridge? I've always thought houses should
come with places where you can connect the fridge, and the heat would
be dumped outside the house... but nobody ever listens to my ideas for
some reason.
Anyway, I'm doing my best to make the most of this vacation, trying to
balance chores-I-want-to-accomplish with writing with
having-fun-with-the-family.
Saturday and Sunday I spent in intensive chores mode, building a
computer and upgrading to the latest patch levels in order to have
something to work on when I rebuild my laptop. Did you know that in
order to take a Windows 2000 CD disk and upgrade to the latest
patches, it takes five hours and over 100M of downloads? Criminal!
Monday we spent at the Science Museum of Minnesota. It's a great new
science museum, and anyone visiting the Twin Cities is advised to go
there, especially if you have kids with you. Spacious, gorgeous, on a
bluff over the Mississippi, it's a real treat. We saw the "Science of
Magic" show, in which Penn and Teller show how to decapitate your
friends for fun and profit, and then we saw the Omnitheater movie
"Space Station." Oh, my heart was breaking watching that movie. I kept
asking myself "Why didn't I get into the ASTRONAUT program when I was
15 instead of starting with computers?" Sure the ISS is hardly more
than a Winnebago parked 250 miles away in space -- I'd still pay the
Russians $20M for a trip, if I had it.
Sunday night my wife and I had our date-night, which was nice. I used
birthday coupons to Applebees and then we went for a walk around one
of Minnesota's 15,000 lakes, and then we went for chocolate cake.
They served us caffeinated instead of decaf. I fell asleep at 2:30
a.m. Thank you so much, Victoria Crossing Cafe.
Tuesday I wrote! Whee! I need to get to my writing again now, but it
was so nice to sit for about eight hours and actually head-down write.
I think I may have finished this absurd rewrite of the latest chapters
that has been keeping me stalled for a while, and I actually wrote one
or two pages of new story.
Today, after brunch and more writing, we'll do a little shopping for
school clothes (it's raining today). Tonight wife and daughter go out
on various errands, and I'll be home with the boys.
Oh, and another thing we did on Monday -- picked up a DVD player. I
had a $40 coupon that my friend Steve gave me for my birthday, and
while we don't normally shop at Best Buy anymore (ever since the
infamous 'You know, your warranty is already 2/3rds up' comment
several years back), I figured 'what the hell'. I completely dismayed
the salesman by walking in, grabbing the cheapest DVD player off the
rack ($59), and paying for it with cash and coupon (so I don't get on
their mailing lists). So for about $23 out of pocket we got a new DVD
player.
And it works! It works fine. I haven't actually watched a whole DVD on
it yet, but I watched some of Harry Potter, and then I put in the
second disk and played a little of their built-in game.
The coolest thing, to me at least, is the ability to listen to MP3
CDs. I popped in one of the first one's I'd ever burned, and the
player worked fine.
I'd been anxious buying the cheapest Best Buy DVD player that it would
fail somehow -- and goodness knows it may yet, before the warranty is
even 2/3rds up! But for now it's a fun toy, one that was affordable
only because of the generosity of my friends!
Tomorrow... the Minnesota State Fair!
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Well it's vacation time! I can tell that I need it. Sure, it's easy to
say that one's brain is like unto porridge, and heart a wheel of
stone, but I'm happy to take the easy out. I sit and look at the work
that I have to do, and I stare blankly, unable to come up with the
first step towards accomplishing my goals. Yesterday I slogged
throught he process of creating and mailing some marketing letters,
and it felt like wading through congealed oatmeal. "Stamp? Sta-amp.
Find... a... stamp... Stamp. Lick stamp. Oh. Stamp is pre-glued."
So for the next week there'll be a drop off in the frequency of my
on-line diary posts.
Oh, stop laughing!
Actually who knows, I might post MORE. I know, I could hardly post
LESS. I'm hoping to spend the larger portion of the week working on my
novel. Being in a writing mode, maybe I can get more entries posted
here.
Maybe.
But before I get too far afield, I do have to say, "MAN, what a great
party!" My birthday party was a great time. I would have enjoyed it if
more folks showed up (although we got pretty much as many as we
expected) because of course there were lots of invitees who I simply
hadn't seen in a long time. But it seemed like everyone who showed up
had fun. The party went til 1:30 a.m. and I wasn't holding anyone at
gunpoint, so certainly someone was having fun...
But of those who did show up, MANY people were folks I hadn't seen in
some time. Val the archaeologist, Jen with her broken arm, and others.
And Michelle and her husband did show up, along with many neighbors.
Everyone seemed to have a good time, except when Professor Barker got
bonked in the head by the swing. The kids weren't swinging on it -- my
son had decided to climb the swing rope, and the lower end of the
swing was flailing wildly.
However if I'd known everyone was going to bring real, actual gifts, I
probably would have put a "no gifts" or "no gifts over $5" note on the
invitation. I don't know why, it just never occurred to me that I'd
receive such generous present. Actually I didn't think of presents at
all: I was mostly just hoping folks could show up (we didn't get
invitations out until quite late).
Not to look gift horses in the mouth! I certainly enjoy all the great
gifts.
But all in all it was a great weekend. The weather was especially
cooperative. They were threatening rain on the day of the party up
until the 10 p.m. news the night before. Instead the weather ended up
being absolutely perfect: sunny, cool, and dry. What a deal!
So anyway my 40th birthday party was fantastic, it was great to see
everyone again, and to those who missed it, well, shucks, too bad for
you!
Now I'm off to do fun things. Like clean the refrigerator.
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Ever since our party line became a private line out in Bethel in the
mid Seventies, I've had a certain possibly naive expectation of
privacy on my phone line. When I place a call, there's a certain
intimate relationship: it's me, and the phone. You place your call,
and then a moment follows, a moment when you are being judged, both by
yourself and by those you're calling upon. What will I say when they
answer? What if they don't answer? What if somone else answers? Why
aren't they answering?
And at that vulnerable moment, when you're waiting either for the
anticipatory ringing or the beep-beep rebuff of the busy signal,
something new happens...
...Ms. Cheerful shows up! Stepping in between you and the virtual
front door of your friend's telephone steps this saccharine voice,
that announces with a kind of victorious glee...
"The LINE is BUSY!"
Then there's a brief pause during which it's easy to discern the
gloating smirk on her virtual face, which fades into a slightly
seductive moue as she suggests, "For only 95 cents, we'll keep
trying..." She's twirling a lock of your hair just above your collar
as she says this...
So... right there, in that moment of defeat, when your expectations
are dashed and your plans are all changed -- because the line is busy
-- here is Qwestoi Jane, playing off your disappointment with her
95-cent propaganda.
I couldn't tell you how Qwestoi Jane's busy signal pitch ends, because
I always hang up. I'm not willing to have my busy signal automatically
queued up by Qwestoi Jane for 95 cents. On the other hand, I'd be
happy to pay 95 cents for one thing...
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They are 11 today! Eleven years ago I was driving around when the
pager that the hospital loaned me went off. When I looked at it, it
was all 9's the sign that the time had come! It was two months sooner
than they were due, but they had arrived.
I pulled into a gas station, called my wife quickly to let her know I
got the message, then gassed up and drove the 20+ miles to the
hospital. Why, with five world class hospitals within two miles, we
ended up 20+ miles away, I don't know, but I'd been driving there
after work every day of her six-week hospitalized bedrest for
premature labor.
I zoomed up there in record time, flew into the hospital...
...and waited. I even had time to set my watch to the atomic clock in
Denver.
Finally they were ready for the C-section. I got some photos. She came
out first, squalling and healthy at 4.5 lbs. He came out second, and
he hates for me to relate this, but the first time I saw him he was
upside-down, bloody, and urinating all over the place.
He was 4 lbs, and needed help breathing for three days.
They brought her over to mom so that she could see her daughter, then
they whisked them away to the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit)
where they were put in incubators. They stayed there for a month while
we visited to feed, hold, and clothe them.
When we finally took them home a month later they were hooked to apnea
monitors that weighed as much as they did. We'd wake up to feed them,
and it would take them 20 minutes to eat 2 ounces of formula. During
that time they would become so engrossed in eating that they'd forget
to breathe, and the apnea monitor would go off like a smoke alarm. We
were supposed to shake or stimulate them when the monitor went off,
but we usually started awake from the feeding doze so sharply that the
kids were plenty stimulated by that.
Now they're tall, preadolescent, mouthy, smart sweet kids.
And we went through twins just to prepare us for our third...
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