The Aerie
So I've got my micromini laptop with me, and it seems to work for blogging on the bus. The hard part so far is the bounciness. I end up hitting keys multiple times as the bus goes over bumps.
I'm riding the 24 lately, the thrill of riding the light rail having worn off when my car was booted a couple weeks ago for parking one space outside the area reserved for light rail park and ride passengers. I'm not complaining, I did the crime and I paid the fine. But I will point out that the majority of that mixed-use parking lot sits idle. And, okay, do they have to stick the bright orange boot notice onto your window with the same adhesive used to hold the insulating tiles on the space shuttle? It's been two weeks and I still have a stripe of paper across my driver's window.
The bus came up to the intersection of 25th St. and 26th Ave, one block north of where a red-light runner totaled our minivan. The light was turning yellow, so the bus driver slowed to stop. From behind our bus, a sedan pulled into the oncoming lane and accelerated madly. The light turned red so long before he reached the intersection that the crossing vehicles (including the one on the right which was blocked from his vision by the bus) had to lurch to a halt as he roared through. I was astonished. The light changed, and the bus began to pull into the intersection... and had to lurch to a halt as ANOTHER car ran the red light, across our path. Two cars running the red light at one intersection in one light cycle. Insane.
The Madness of My Life continues, as we attempt to add a bathroom to our home while simultaneously replacing our family car. One night we go look at bathtubs, the next night we go look at Fords, the next night we go look at flooring. Or at least, my spouse looks at floors. I have managed to convince her that I have no opinion on the shades and colors we use to decorate our new rooms, because it's true. I can think of few endeavors more frustrating and pointless than trying to choose between different shades of gray tile. It reminds me of Democratic primary voting.
Last night we were supposed to go look at the Toyota Highlander Hybrid, but I was just too exhausted. A friend had given my spouse the contact information for a car dealer that she knew, so I didn't mind putting off our freelance exploration of the Toyota. I can use the as-yet-unseen Toyota as an excuse to be noncomittal when the dealer tries to get me to decide on another regular-engine Grand Caravan. I wish the car had not been totaled until NEXT year, when the hybrid minivans are due to come out. So far the Toyota Highlander is the only seven-passenger hybrid vehicle I could find!
On top of all this, I'm also shopping for a new cell phone, my Treo 600 having apparently given up the ghost. There
is a bewildering array of choices, none of them that use the PalmOS that I've become accustomed to. I don't really mind moving onto Windows CE, or something, but cell phone technology is yet another place where even my vast experience and expertise only serve to confuse rather than enlighten. It might be easier to buy a cell phone because it's quad-band GSM with an MP3 player and camera - instead I'm exploring the OS, the processor, the operating system, the memory, etc., etc. It's like trying to find a girlfriend based on her personality and beliefs rather than her looks. As if!
And of course, the [obscenity-deleted] phone company makes you wait 11 months between phone changes, so whatever I pick I'm stuck with for a while. I took a look at the latest Razr phone, but honestly the keypad seemed to be made of tinfoil and I doubted its durability. And without PalmOS, I have to figure out how I'm going to do scheduling all over again.
Not that I ever really got it figured out under Palm: I could never get the sync process to work the same way twice, and rectifying my home/personal schedule with the inevitable corporate Exchange server schedule was a torture, especially if I didn't have administrator rights on my corporate client desktop system.
While I didn't go look at any cars last night, I did help build one. About 1:30 a.m. my wife and I were awakened by a weird sound... "Brrrr... brrrr... brrrr...." coming from downstairs. Investigating, I discovered my eldest son, sawing a thin,stiff piece of wood with a keyhole saw. At 1:30 a.m. What I learned was that he was supposed to have completed a mousetrap-powered model car by the next morning, the last day of the quarter. He didn't look petulant, he didn't complain, and it was clear that he was prepared to work on it alone all night if necessary.
So of course I pitched in to help. We put the car together in fairly short order, about an hour. It helped that we have built one of these before. What an opportunity to spend some time with a fine young man.
Okay, it ain't worth it.
Trying to eat a bit more healthily, I have been checking out my lunch choices NutritionData.com. We have a Jamba Juice right next to my building, so I have inevitably wandered in there to try one of their smoothies. Checking out my selection online, I was happy to learn that my choice was moderately good for me - it just had too much sugar. A drop-down box offers "better choices," the top entry of which was carrot juice.
Never being one to settle for fourth place (except when graduating from high school), I decided today that I'd try the carrot juice.
It was not worth it.
Okay, so I did peg the little NutritionData graphic in the "healthy" category. Yay. But it was like drinking a carrot-flavored swamp! I mean to their credit, here is how they made the carrot juice: a fellow grabbed handfuls of peeled carrots out of a large bin, tossed them in a blender with some water, and set it on "high" for 30 seconds. So there wasn't a lot of question about the ingredients.
I'll continue to try to eat healthy, but I think that pure carrot juice is probably a bit more than I'm ready to do quite yet. Maybe it's like health-food hard-liquor, you have to work your way up to it...
Ugh!
Oy. Well here it is, a particularly busy Friday at the end of a particularly busy week. Let's recap...
Monday I started by visiting my contractor's office space, a former grocery store that she is ambitiously converting into a restaurant, an office for her company, and a residence for her and her son. And I think I've undertaken a big project when I resolve to sweep out the garage.
I also spoke on Monday to a strange person from a strange company that seems to want me to pay $250,000 for the privilege of working for some company somewhere. I don't know who they expect to sell this idea to, but they'll probably have better luck if they talk to people who have about $249,900 more than I do. Why would someone pay money to work for a company? I mean, even if they gave you a $250,000 salary, you'd basically be working for nothing and giving them an interest-free one-year loan of your own money.
My willingness to talk to these weird people is part of my current life-mode of "I'll talk to anybody about anything," regarding my career, seeing as I'm not sure what it is I'm doing with my life or why. Aside from earning money to pay the bills of course, and even that's optional if someone can offer me an alternative.
Monday I also set up my own Xbox-live account, rather than using the one that came with the Xbox when I bought it. That one could disappear any time. So I am a confirmed addict, at least for a year.
And Monday ended with one of my contractor colleagues being told that his contract was wrapped up a few months early. Scuttlebutt is that his suggestions that our client actually take effective steps to increase security were not well received by a corporate culture that specializes in dodging responsibility and ownership. Honestly you wonder how anything ever gets done around this place.
Tuesday I did NOT go to the "Gay Marriage Amendment" protest at the State Capitol, although I ought to have. But I had to be at work at 9:00 etc. etc., the usual excuses. I also had a 90-minute conference seminar at work. As a contractor, I'll take all the paid seminar attendance that any employer is willing to offer me - it's BETTER than a free class, it's a class where I'm getting paid! Usually these are dreadful bores or, in my case, often restatements of things I already know. This one, however, was exceptionally useful - it was information which I was actively researching for my client, so it was timely, interesting and engaging. Nice!
On Tuesday the contractor sent some guys to our house who excavated some space in our attic by cutting away portions of the old roof. I would have done this myself at some point over the last five years, but I was afraid all those studs and beams were holding something up. Apparently not! So now we have the space hacked out into which our new bathroom will be installed.
And on Tuesday we learned that the guy who totaled our car is an idiot of the first water. Apparently he's invented a whole series of fictional events regarding the accident, involving my wife fleeing the scene, calling a friend on her cellphone to be a witness, and being chased down by him. And he's calling our insurance company asking when they're going to cover his insurance deductible. The man is a solid fruitloop, particularly since my wife called the 911 operators and received assurances that their records showed that both he and the witness called 911 at the same time. And my spouse had no cell phone with her during the accident. Really what is with these people?
Wednesday I had a very unusual meeting with someone at work regarding the aforementioned cultural resistance to doing or accomplishing anything at the workplace. We agreed that sometimes the best thing you can do is stop trying and wait for more favorable circumstances to effect change - like right after a massive reorganization. Additionally the replacement moved in for my colleague who was sent home. Turns out to be a guy I know from a few years back, when he screwed over his business partner by secretly taking clients and employees away to start his own company. I don't think he remembers me, but I am not sure, he hasn't tried to talk to me yet.
I also met with my accountant who informed me that she had done HER job perfectly - what else can you say to a federal tax bill of exactly one dollar? - but that I had screwed up and underpaid about six months of my taxes. So I have to get that paid before the end of next week to avoid penalties, and then I get to reorganize my budget.
Thursday we met the contractor in the early morning to review the excavated space, and she informed us that we needed to order a bathtub ASAP in order that it be available for the start of the construction. So my wife and I hopped in the rental van (the insurance companies are still fighting over the accident) and zoomed around the Twin Cities. First in Plymouth, then Mendota Heights, we pursued a bathtub showroom with some semblance of variety.
In Plymouth we were - I can't say "served," more like "tolerated" - by a skinny little receptionist with a perfect complexion and a piercing nasal voice who informed us that we needed an appointment in order to shop in their store. She informed us that the store had no staff available to sell us anything in the kind of "you're so old and stupid" tone that suggested that the idea of a store that just sold things to old fat people who just wandered in off the street was as unwelcome a heresy as the idea that she herself might someday get old and fat. As if!
Fortunately the Mendota Heights store was very good and even had good service, so we were able to narrow down our selections to two or three candidates to place before our contractor's plumber. He'll help us select the best one for features and price.
I got to work hilariously late and stayed until about 7:00 p.m. trying to catch up. Then I went home, comforted my spouse who was feeling stressed, stirred the soup for dinner. chatted with a friend who's having some trouble in Canada. Then I headed over to Prof. Barker's, only to spend the entire night trying to "fix" his computer for him. Got to bed at 1:00 a.m.
Oh, and the other thing was, I am considering returning to college to complete my degree. To that end I procrastinated very hard all week in putting together my application for the fall term. Fortunately I had set myself a meeting today in order to have a deadline, and with that in mind I started writing my six-page application essay last night around 8:30 p.m. So I squeezed that document out in about half an hour.
Got up this morning, stumbled through dressing and biked into work with the intention of being wildly productive. Instead I edited down my application to the appropriate number of pages, introducing a slew of typos along the way, then headed over top the U for the lunchtime meeting. Afterwards I stopped by the bank in order to pay my credit card bill, and then back to the desk.
This weekend we're going to see So Kiss Me Already Herschel Gertz by Amy Salloway, a sometime member of our church. My wife and I tried to see it during the Fringe Fest last year but were turned away because it was sold out. So it should be fun to finally see it.
And of course I'm planning on playing a little Xbox! In between writing my book of course. Oy.
I wrote the following entry last weekend while on Dad-N-Kid Day with my youngest boy. There was no connectivity at the time so I saved it, and then of course forgot to post it.
Interestingly, after I wrote this, youngest and I went to the Uptown area to wait for the movie: he read manga while I caught up on the latest chapter of Stirling's "The Protector's War," which since it is not out in paperback yet I am reading in the bookstores in hardcover. Anyway, after an hour of this we left to walk over to the movie theater. At about the same time about three blocks away a mugging was turning into a murder. Needless to say my wife was a little freaked out later on when she saw the story. Me, I try not to think about it too much: I mean, the whole thing about random violence is that it's random - so how can you avoid it? Stay in the house forever?
Heck, where I'm sitting now, in the Borders at 6th and Hennepin, is the physical location of Block E, and while the history has been torn down upscaled, the site remains a strange attractor for the wierd, the hopeless, and the testily violent. As if to testify to this, three cops just walked shoulder-to-shoulder down the sidewalk outside the window.
Anyway, here's last Saturday's entry. My boy loved the movie, BTW. I found it largely incomprehensible.
I'm out with my youngest on Dad-n-Kid-Day. He doesn't know it, but our eventual destination is the Dragonball Z movie at the local artsy-theater, the Lagoon in Uptown. I have no idea why the Lagoon has decided to show this film but I'm grateful: sometimes the boy and I have a hard time finding things to do.
He's very singleminded: if it hasn't got a screen, he isn't interested. Videogames, movies, etc., are all fine with him. My wife often criticizes my judgement in letting the kid pick the destination, but I don't want to make these outingscontrived or forced. Taking the kids to places that they don't want to go isn't something I want to do often. Not never, but not often. These trips aren't about the kids learning about opera or visiting a museum: these are a chance for me to get to know who they are, not about me making them into something else.
Unfortunately who my youngest is right now can be deduced by the fact that I'm sitting at a Chuck-e-Cheese.
He has taken a break for the moment from video games to explore the elaborate climbing tubes perched precariously over the central atrium of the circular building. He's eleven so this will be one of his last trips. If he's like his brother he'll shoot up in height soon and lose interest in such childish affairs. But presently he's mugging at me from the top of the structure as I pretend to throw away his remaining game tokens.
Chuck-e-Fargin'-Cheese, as Lileks call it, is a complete zoo. There was a line to get in and if you can believe it a wait for a table. And no, I wasn't inclined to bribe the maitre d'. The noise is a true cacaphony, electronic bleeps mixed with the pounding of the Hungry Hippo and Whack-a-mole game, overlaid squalling babies and shrieking children. I donned headphones and I'm playing the iTunes at max volume, and it's just barely enough to balance the dreadful noise of this place with a barely-recognizable musical overlay.
But someday, in not too long, he won't want to come back here anymore. And sometime after that he won't be going on Dad-n-Kid days anymore. Maybe someday he'll take his own kids on these little trips.
He'll use his last tokens soon and we'll go find something to do for a couple of hours until the movie starts. Maybe hit the Border's Books in Calhoun Square or something. In the meantime I'm trying to make a little progress on my novel, which considering the circumstances would be quite an accomplishment.
And in the meantime I'm enjoying what I've got. Soon there will be a break in this pattern, and then I'll have to wait. And wait. And wait. But someday, someday...
Grandpa-'n'-Kid Days!
Biked to work again today. At the last minute I dashed back into the house to grab my scarf, which turned out to be absolutely necessary. If I hadn't, I suspect I would be frozen solid somewhere long the bike path into downtown.
There was a wicked wind out of the northeast, a slightly unusual direction for Minnesota. Our prevailing winds are usually from some flavor of west - southwest, northwest, etc. Not that it made a tremendous difference today - it was simply my right eye that froze shut rather than my left one.
Downtown Minneapolis has tossed a bone to the bicycling community by defining a few bike lanes here and there throughout the city. These bike lanes are mere paint on the pavement: they aren't going to help you if someone driving an SUV while talking on the phone and drinking a latte suddenly drops their bagel. You're still going to be road pizza. But I was trying to find a set of lanes that would take me diagonally across the grid of downtown to the building where I park my bike.
I have yet to find these lanes, although I'm sure they're out there: from the farthest corner of the Metrodome to Tenth and LaSalle must exist somewhere as a set of bike lanes. However the only lanes I've found take me far out of my way: the diagonal travel problem means that I am traveling around the perimeter of downtown, and where the lanes might meet there are various buildings and streets that interrupt them.
The problem, see, is that downtown Minneapolis is crooked. The original town was laid out on along a northwest-to-southeast diagonal that paralleled this portion of the Mississippi. But as surrounding villages were laid out, they were set to a north-south axis. When Minneapolis grew to engulf the surrounding hamlets, the collisions of streets made for some confusion.
When biking to work, I am attempting to go directly east across a grid of diamond-shaped city blocks. I arrive where the crude "A" is marked on the map to the left, and I'm trying to reach the crude "X." But if you follow the streets, you will see that the street running southwest past "A" runs into the tangle where the diagonal streets of downtown crash into the north-south streets of the rest of the city. Where they run together my bike path turns to follow the southern path, leaving me with no way northwest to my destination. I can't go northwest from "A" because that's the Metrodome which is on higher ground - I'd have to carry my bike up two flights of steps.
The only thing for it is that I will have to go northeast tomorrow, towards Washington Avenue. There's a bike path a couple of blocks further up, but that takes me well out of my way.
The only other thing is to do what I did today, which was to ride up and down sidewalks in a crazy zig-zag to reach my goal. That's slow, particularly since I wait for the light to change to green before crossing these streets. Sorry, but having been hit by a truck once I am not eager to repeat the experience. Although at that time, I actually was crossing with the light, but still, why push my luck?
Slowly, slowly I'm building up a safe way to get to work on my bike. Hopefully I'll live long enough to tell somebody about it. If I don't get hit by a truck, I may freeze to death.
It's weird where you learn your lessons sometimes.
I've been playing a lot of XBox-live Halo 2 recently. What this means is that I run a little computerized person around a playing field - a valley, an underground cave or something, and I fight with other computerized people. This is live over the internet, and the other players are real people elsewhere around the world, usually grouped in two teams, blue and red. The kinds of fights range from simply shooting at each other, to carrying a bomb from your base to their base, arming it, and letting it explode. There are vehicles like cars and flying motorcycles and tanks to drive, a variety of weapons, and an audio channel over which everyone can speak to each other. It's very realistic and engrossing, although extremely violent.
This is not the kind of environment that makes one think of kindness, and for the most part there's nothing kind about it. But when kindness has reared its head, it has been all the more notable for the setting. I remember one time I had been part of the red team which thoroughly beat our blue-team opponents, a real humiliation. After each game is over a results board of sorts is displayed, and the audio channel remains open. And this time, one of the guys on the losing team came on the channel and said, "Good game, red team."
Sportsmanship. Good natured sportsmanship, but it really stood out among the whining and complaining among both the losers and the winners alike. I remembered that, and have tried to be equally sportsmanlike, frequently failing.
Last night I was playing and the game was going very poorly. The two teams were supposed to carry their bombs into each other's bases, but my blue team was not interested in playing. Instead my team immediately started shooting at each other. Everyone was yelling and laughing on the audio channel, spinning the computerized jeep in circles and repeatedly shooting each other. Whenever your character is shot there is a short pause and then the character is recreated in the game, so this process went on indefinitely.
Meanwhile the other team had no such problems. While my team laughed and shot each other up, the red team just ran right into our base and set off their first bomb. In frustration, I tried going up against them alone, but that was even more frustrating because I'm frankly not very good at this game. Mostly I'd run towards the enemy base for about fifteen seconds and somebody - from either team - would shoot me and the game would restart me in my base.
But one guy on my team was actually playing the game. While the rest of my team goofed off, this guy picked up our bomb and successfully snuck past all the enemy players. So instead of a humiliating abject loss - which my team deserved - we lost by a respectable 3-2. People tend to drop out of bad games, so by the time the game was over the other team still had seven players, but our team was down to three: me, the other serious player, and one goofball driving around in a tank shooting randomly in all directions.
"Good game, red," I said in to the audio channel, trying to be sportsmanlike, even in abject defeat.
"Good game Doompickle," said my single, serious teammate, using my online handle. ("Doompickle - the Pickle of Doom!")
I launched into the next game feeling a bit better for the exchange, and found myself in a capture-the-flag game with the very same fellow on my team.
This game went better - my other teammates were normal people, not braying fools, and the game was close.
Now, mind you, I stink at these games. I'm a crotchety old man up against eighteen- and fifteen-year-olds with lightning reaction time. So for me, I'm happy when my team wins, and I spend most of my time just getting in the way of the enemy hoping that the two or three seconds that they spend shooting me allows my teammates to advance. That's all I can do. So I never actually captured any flags or set any bombs or any of that stuff. I just ran around and had fun.
The game was even when I returned from being shot and saw my teammate from the previous game running across the field, carrying the enemy flag. He was being pursued by three of the enemy. Now, this isn't a tale of how I singlehandedly saved the day. I basically ran across the field and got in right behind my teammate, so that the enemy's shots were hitting me, sparing him. Maybe I prevented him from getting killed, maybe I didn't, but some other teammates showed up and delayed the enemy so that it was just he and I running towards our base with the flag.
"You know what," he said over the audio channel, "I'm gonna let somebody else score this." And he dropped the flag right in front of me.
"What?" I said, and quickly picking up the flag, "Why, thanks! You da man!"
"No, Doompickle, you da man," he replied, as I ran the flag into our base, tying the score 2-2.
The final round started, and my teammate jumped into our team's jeep. I jumped in the back and we roared across the field to the enemy base. I leapt from the jeep without waiting for it to slow down, skidding to a stop right in front of the enemy entrance. I ran in, the round so new that the two people inside didn't suspect that an enemy could already be arriving, grabbed the flag, and ran out the opposite side before they could react. My teammate had driven around the building and pulled up as I exited. I leapt into the jeep with the flag, we drove back across the field and I ran into our base to win the game, 3-2. The whole round took about 20 seconds.
I had never captured the flag before. Never even come close. And because this fellow had a sense of teamwork, and was willing to drive the car so that I could score the win, I had a chance to do something that otherwise would probably have eluded me for who knows how long. It was very kind, and I really appreciated it. He was perfectly capable of scoring those wins without me, as he had shown in the prior, chaotic game of seven-against-three, but he was happy to help me do something I couldn't have done alone.
"Great job, Doompickle," he said, as I signed out with my own thanks.
It was just a fictional game, but it was real kindness. And it was a lesson for me about how a little kindness can make such a difference. In a competitive, impersonal game of violence and conquest, a small gesture of kindness transformed the entire experience into something real.
Went off through the downtown Minneapolis skyway system for lunch today, determined to pick up some sushi from the new sushi place in the Habitrail south of the IDS building. I had seen this place in passing and since the half-life of a restaurant in the skyway system is shorter than that of Lawrencium I figured I ought to get there quickly.
Sushi Combo Tray 2 and a can of cold green tea in hand I headed back to the office through the IDS Crystal Court, having arrived from a different route. As I walked through the Crystal Court, a resounding BOOM sounded overhead....
Along with everyone else in the crowd I looked up, the better that the potentially razor-sharp shards of Crystal might find their way through my eyeballs and into my brain. Fortunately catastrophe was averted, the plastic (not crystal) domes overarching the interior plaza held, and nobody died.
But I flashed back on my friend Steve F., who was in the Crystal Court in 1996 when a man leapt to his death from the 30th floor (referenced in linked discussion). The man broke a window and then spent ten minutes being persuaded by those in the office not to jump. Steve was working in the building and saw glass fall past his window, so he went down to the Crystal Court to see what had caused the broken glass. His timing was perfect, he arrived just as the man slammed into the pavement.
My wife and I were astonished to see Steve on the news that night. Since I know Steve, I know that his conversational delivery style sounds very effusive - anyone who didn't know him might have thought he was cheerful about the incident seeing him speak on the air. But from speaking to him later I know it affected him very deeply and he ended up seeking counselling.
So I thought about that as explosive booms thundered through the Crystal Court. Peering up through the windows I could see yesterday's snow falling off of the IDS. It was mostly coming lose in long bars as it fell off the base of each window, but even the smallest snowball-sized clump of snow hit with a significant WHOOM. The full-width window-sized bars of snow were the loudest: the impact sounded like a giant car door being slammed in a big echoing room.
For me it was merely unnerving, wondering if I was going to see one of these clumps of snow burst through the ceiling. But I wondered what it would have done to Steve if he had been there. Flashbacks...
When I got home from work today I passed out for a nap. As a result I'm now up at 1:45 a.m. blogging. That will teach me to nap!
Nobody was hurt when my spouse was in a collision that possibly has totalled our minivan.
She was crossing the intersection with the green light when a very nasty Somali fellow ran the red light, striking the minivan in the driver's side rear wheel. It remains to be seen if the damage is terminal.
The other driver immediately demonstrated his nastiness by leaping from his car and shouting at my wife, who was by herself, having just dropped off our kids at school. "Why did you do that? Are you crazy!?" he shouted at her, among other things.
Fortunately there was a witness, a very kind woman who saw the whole thing and could attest that my wife had entered the intersection on the green light. She stayed with my wife for over an hour while I made my way from work back to my car and over to where my wife was waiting.
So the crippled minivan was towed, I drove my wife home. The Somali fellow was gone by the time I arrived: in addition to striking our car from behind his car was also still drivable. But somehow this was supposed to be our fault. Some people's first defense is to attack I guess.
Aside from that what else has been going on? I have neglected my blogging for no good reason except that there always seems to be something else that needs doing. And suffice to say that I got nothing done at work today, what with leaving at 11:00 and returning at 2:00 and all the nonsense in between.
We went to see Ellis on Saturday at the Cedar Cultural Center. Terrific show as always. She was followed by Cheryl Wheeler, who a folk singer who was so damned funny it was torture. Explaining why she wasn't dressed any better than a T-shirt and jeans for the performance she said, "When I dress up I look like Will Ferrel doing Janet Reno." I felt like I would get whiplash swinging between her really lovely songs and her painfully funny commentary.
Sunday we went to see 'Hamlet' at the Guthrie Theater, the final play that will be performed at the old location. We had plenty of reminders as to why the theater is moving. We waited so long in the turn lane to reach the theater that the rest of the family piled out of the car and left me to park it. We waited so long to get out of the parking ramp that we were all starving before we escaped. And the crowding was so bad that I was unable to reach the front of the line for a cup of coffee during the intermission. The new theater will be two miles up West River Road from our home, so we're eagerly awaiting our chance to visit it on our bicycles...
And yesterday was the first and only blizzard of the 2005-2006 winter season, which should have warned me that there would be a car totality. The last time this happened was the winter of 1981, and I wrecked my Mazda RX 7 in that year's only snowstorm, driving back from seeing "Altered States" with the late Steve Moldenhauer.
We'll see about the car. The tire seems to have taken the brunt of the damage, so maybe we'll be lucky and the vehicle will be repairable. Otherwise we'll be adding a car purchase to the already expensive 2006 fiscal year.
It started off fairly predictably. Returning home from a hard day's work the house smelled like paint. A contractor has been here for several days painting the boys' bedroom, so this was not a big surprise.
What was a surprise was the smell of propane in the kitchen.
The first day this happened, I put it down to some unusual paint smell. After keeping an eye (or nostril) open to see that it didn't continue or recur, put it out of my mind.
The next day the contractor did not come by, but the same thing happened. The smell seemed to be related to the oven being run. The smell wasn't as bad as the previous day, so again I forgot about it.
Yesterday the smell came back along with the contractor. I was wondering whether to call somebody when I walked into my basement office and the smell hit me in the face. In the basement?
We called the Gas Company. It used to be called "Minnegasco" which pretty clearly said what it was and what it did. Now it's called something else entirely, I can't even remember what. But we called and very shortly they arrived.
The fellow looked things over and explained what was happening: paint fumes were getting into the return-air duct of the furnace, and building up inside the oven, and then when either of them lit up the fumes burned, producing a smell like propane gas. Nothing to worry about.
But while he was poking around, I asked him to check out the red tag hanging on a pipe above the water heater.
Oh, he said, that's a gas leak. Legally, I have to turn off your house now.
Clunk.
No gas.
No furnace, no water heater, no stove. Nuthin'.
So bright and early this morning we called the plumber, who I must say was also very prompt in arriving. By 9:30 he had identified the problem, and several hundred dollars later all was once again restored to normal. Since he was visiting, I also had him fix the leaky faucet in the shower, too.
Since otherwise I would have had to do it, that was worth half the price to me right there!
The CABINETS are here, the CABINETS are here!
Yes, the cabinets have finally arrived, so our kitchen looks more like a kitchen and less like an aisle at the Salvation Army. The pantry and counter will take a little getting used to, but their utility will make the effort worthwhile.
The installation occurred on the same day that our contractor began painting the boys' bedroom, so Sunday night was a fury of lugging, moving, packing, sweeping, dusting, washing, and shoving. The boys' bedroom was as usual a complete pit, dust and broken toys and candy wrappers and crumpled papers mixed with dirty clothes and books and unbroken toys. But we got it cleaned and moved and when I arrived home from work I was greeted by new cabinets and the penetrating odor of primer paint.
The cabinets are very nice. We managed to get almost identical style and countertop to the rest of the kitchen, so aside from lacking patina they integrate well with the existing equipment. We also got her to adjust one of the existing cabinet doors so that it doesn't droop anymore. Yay!
In the boys' room I repaired a broken closet door in a very weird way. I purchased a cheap track replacement kit (oh great, now I've gotten "Breakfast in America" stuck in my head) and couldn't make heads-nor-tails of the instructions, which appeared to have been written by Egyptian or Aztec iconographers. The long, thin cardboard cases were chock full of bolts, nuts, screws, and plastic bits of indescribable shape or purpose. The boxes had decorative panels cut out, which then exposed the sticky back of the vinyl label to the interior and held all the bits and pieces together so that they didn't slide around in the box. Clever!
Trying out a few replacement runners (the wheels at the top meant to slide along the track), I observed that the new ones had narrower bases than the ones presently in the doors, meaning that the holes were too big and extreme measures would be needed to make the replacement runners stay in place.
Then I had a notion, replaced the original runner, and knocked the wheel off the top. The result was a spring-loaded brass cylinder, just about the width of the new runner. It was a little tricky fitting the doors in, but once in place and adjusted they work perfectly.
Leaving 90% of the contents of the box unused, of course.
So the cabinets are in place, the room should be painted today or tomorrow, and that will leave the upstairs for the rest of the projects. Adding to yesterday's chaos, the contractor for the upstairs came by a couple of times to work on finalizing the design of the upstairs space.
It will be interesting to see how disruptive it will be to have to move everything in the attic elsewhere for a couple of months, and of course we haven't given a thought to where we'll sleep during this time. Maybe we'll just leave the bed upstairs, and I can come to work every day covered in a fine film of gypsum dust.
The next few days or weeks will be spent hauling the contents of our basement "pantry" (a pile of 20-year-old Target plastic tables) up to the kitchen and arranging all our kitchenware into the new cabinets. And then... the upstairs remodeling begins!
It's funny to recall the blog topics that got away. A lot of times I experience some event and I think "I'm going to blog this," and then when the time comes I can't think of anything to write. Later the situation recurs, and I go through the cycle again.
Then on the other hand, maybe there was something that happened that I blogged... and have forgotten. I do that with books all the time. Just the other day I managed to beg the guys at Uncle Hugo's to take back a copy of N. Lee Wood's "Faraday's Orphans," because when I got home to put it on the shelf, I found it alredy there. So too with blogs.
Have I already written about how some people seem to take up more space than they possibly can? I think I may have. But I was walking down a hallway at Marscon yesterday and it happened again. Huge hotel hallway, easily 15 feet wide. A single, skinny person, tottering slooooowly down the hall ahead of me, and I couldn't pass them. Part of it is their fragility - this person wasn't old, but he exuded an aura of unwellness. I got the sense that if I so much as brushed this person's elbow, he'd tumble to the floor and lie there helpless and crying out weakly. Then there was the totteringness, the slow forward course interrupted by these semi-random lurches to one side or another - not drunken, but as if their legs were too weak to hold them steady.
The end result was that one person in a 15-foot hallway controlled the entire space. About the only way to pass without risking knocking this person down seemed like I would have had to walk with my outside shoulder brushing the wall. So instead I babystepped along behind, waiting for this feeble person to take their expanded spacial configuration out of my way.
This happens all the time in the skyways in downtown Minneapolis, too. I could probably get a research grant to study it.
Then there's the other got-away topic - obnoxious people at theaters. Did I blog about when we went to the dreadful Lorie Line concert, and the drunken suburbanites behind us dropped ice on our head from their drinks and shouted "WHoooohoooO! Yeah!" when Lorie Line began torturing particular Christmas classics? Or the ear-piercing whistles? Did I blog about the two girls who sat behind my wife and I at the RiverivewTheater and champed on popcorn like the entire team of Budweiser Clydesdales being fed brittle plastic cups? My daughter had a similar experience the other day that brings it to mind.
No, I'm not sure what I've blogged and what I haven't. But I'm sure I'm out of time for today, so those topics will continue to have to wait. If they're waiting. Unless I already covered them.
Sigh.
George Bush isn't a conservative. Conservatives are people of principle and ideals whose approach to change differs from that of liberals, but both work towards the same goal of improving society.
Even calling Bush a "neoconservative" is an error. Neoconservatives are ideologues - they believe in something, in this case the Project for a New American Century. They're imperialists and power-hungry, but they have a set of beliefs however at odds those are with social justice and other mainstream Western values.
Bush is a shallow opportunist. Bush has no ideology beyond a twisted Freudian relationship with his father. Bush is the malleable sock-puppet of the neoconservatives. And, frankly, he's very stupid although possessed of a certain cunning that allows him to survive by depending on powerful people around him.
What I suspect most people see as the "cause" of all the evils in the world is not any one of these. The "cause," at least of the world's present evils, is rapacious greed and relentless cowardice.
True conservatives have allowed the Republican Party to be hijacked as a tool of power by the neoconservatives, and are controlled by greed (hence the Culture of Corruption) and cowardice (look at what the neocons do to anyone who opposes them). Only recently, when their fear of terrorism has grown greater than their fear of Karl Rove have Conservative Republicans begun to speak out against the plans of the Neocons.
The Democratic party is ruled by cowardice alone. No rich rewards to be had, since the Neocons only reward their immediate cronies (for the counterexample that proves the rule see Democrat Joe Liebermann, who has thrown in with the Neocons and is rewarded with press and airtime as their Democrat Quisling).
No, the Democrats are so afraid of losing what little power they have that they refuse to oppose the Neocons, nor thoroughly support those few who do. Democrat John Conyers is a rare example of a courageous Democrat, and Hilary Clinton is a typical example of a cowardly play-by-the-rules Democrat. With her ambitions for the Presidency, Hilary has a lot more to lose than Conyers, and she is therefore less willing to take risks.
So afraid are the Democrats of upsetting their flimsy political applecart that they have not contested the last two Presidential elections, despite ample evidence of voting fraud in both cases. Both nominees being by definition loyal Democratic Party operators, they consented to concede the elections as the Party leadership required rather than bucking their orders and pointing out that the elections had no clothes.
And We The People are ruled mainly by cowardice. Many have succumbed to neoconservative fearmongering propaganda (such as that which conflates Iraq with 9/11 in order to justify the war), and others are simply afraid to "get involved" in the political process at all.
It is the fear of getting involved that will allow the present decay of our Federation to continue. Examples from elsewhere around the world and throughout history show that populations will tolerate a surprising decrease in their standard of living (for example the Soviet Union during the Eighties) rather than risk taking action to oppose those in power.
So it's fear and greed, frankly, that are at the root of all our troubles. And it's only people of principle, Conservatives and Liberals together, people of principle with the courage to act who can save our nation.
Really? Already? A-yup, apparently. It was just over freezing when I rode my bike to work today, heading for 45 degrees F by mid-afternoon.
Yes, I have started biking to work, inspired by my hero, Condoleeza Rice. I know when I think exercise, I think the naked gap-toothed ambition of Condi Rice. That's naked ambition: please do not visualize Condi Rice herself in that fashion. Very bad.
Also, I've started using the free Fit Day service again to track my nutrition. Fitday is a good idea, although I wish they would let people share their custom nutritional definitions. The information at right is that which I have assembled for the Brueggers Western on a Square Everything Bagel which has been (up until I assembled this information) my breakfast for the past couple of months. Half my daily fat? Oy. At least it has no alcohol.
Of course this is all part of one of my periodic attempts to get into better shape. I found out that my consulting client provides a secure street-access room full of bike racks, allowing one to safely store a bike all day long. This is terrific! One of my worries was that parking my bike would leave me vulnerable to vandalism, and of course the weather would be hard on it. I found out about the room Monday, located it yesterday, and rode today.
It took about the same amount of time to ride in as it would have to train or drive, but the walk from the bike room to my office took an additional 20 minutes.
The next step is to add a stop at the gym to my commute. I would dearly like to get off the Lipitor and the blood pressure pills that cost me an arm and a leg and make me feel like a decrepit old man for having to take them. And frankly I'd like to stop being a pudgy middle aged white guy and settle for just being a middle aged white guy.
But don't get me started on my medical and weight woes... I'll really start to sound like a decrepit old man!