Copious Free Time

11:37am: re: re-re-re-re-reading
re: re-re-re-re-reading

.
Every day, I read just a few more pages of Jules Feiffer's America. This is the 25th anniversary collection of his comic strips. Inimitable, though often imitated, they are amazingly concentrated and powerful stuff.

Feiffer was already an experienced professional who had worked for Will Eisner by the time he hit the ground running during the Eisenhower administration. His drawings shimmered from one style to another briefly before settling into a style so direct and unvarnished it sometimes seems like no style at all. Though famous for his talking heads, his action drawings are full of life, especially his dancers (male and female), caught at moments of poise and release, like key drawings by a great animator.

Typically existing for about eight panels, his characters breathe nervous life. He sets up small slices of them speaking to us, panel leading to panel, until they have unwittingly revealed their hearts. Sometimes they are us, and the recognition is not always comfortable. Sometimes they are the evil others, only they look and sound a bit more like us than we would like.

They are history lessons for moderns who think the 50s were a sitcom, the 60s were a love-in, and our current problems are something entirely new and novel. His Eisenhower-era strips are insightful, and I'd read many of them so often before that I can't recall them being a revelation. His Kennedy strips are a jolt of cold water to Camelot fantasists. His JFK was vital, sharp, alive, and also shallow and poll-driven. Feiffer stuck it to him mercilessly, depicting him as a choreographed dancer "doin' the Frontier drag." LBJ was a shining knight until he revealed too much of himself; then he was a particularly disappointing political hack. Nixon -- well, we all know Nixon. So did he. Jerry Ford? "Shut up and ski, Jerry." Carter was Jimmy the Cloud.

I haven't been quoting (except for Jerry) because if I start, I won't stop. It's all too good.

I can't recommend this 25th-anniversary collection too highly. It's been more than 25 years since it came out, and I wish he'd do a follow-up. I don't know if reading all his strips in order without the filter of the creator choosing what to include would match the impact of this set, but I'd be willing to find out. Fantagraphics has started the ball rolling, and the volume they've done calls to me from the store shelves. Would that I were wealthier.

originally posted at The New Pals Club Web-Log
.

11:34am: ahhhhh, YES!
.
Before it vanishes, as it has other times, do yourself a favor and spend some entertaining time immersed in the scholarly pages of The Warner Brothers Cartoon Companion by Eric Costello.

I can't mention it without bragging that I -- yes, I! -- once had the privilege of serializing this groundbreaking reference in the pages of a monthly cartoon APA (private magazine that went out to the contributors). Once I learned that Costello was doing this, and having seen it, I got his permission to run a few pages of it each issue, with the intention of turning the text files over to him afterward, so that he wouldn't have to type the thing over another time, and could get it published somewhere reputable. My term of office expired before it was completely finished, but by then (or soon after) he took the show to the net where it could be appreciated by a wider audience.

So. You might ask what this wonderful thing is? (I pause while you ask.) It's a guide to all the puzzling references, in-jokes, catch-phrases and ad jingles that enlivened the classic Warner Brothers cartoons, and which now confuse and confound audiences, even as their kids are shouting "TURN OUT THAT LIGHT!" or asking "Was this trip really necessary?" Radio jokes, ration coupons, opaque slang, Texas trivia, aspects of Hollywood stars, and other detritus of the collective unconscious are aired and explicated herein.

A note of caution: It comes and goes. It seems that no sooner has Mr. Costello found a home for this indispensable repository of knowledge than something happens leading to a 404 NOT FOUND message. A Google search will show you all manner of no-longer-viable WBCC locations. We recommend saving the whole thing to your hard drive, and maybe converting it to some format in which you can carry it with you wherever you go. It's that good. Samples:

SOPHIE TURKEY

The Last of the Red-hot Gobblers. A caricature in The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos (Tashlin, 1937) of Sophie Tucker.

“SO ROUND, SO FIRM, SO FULLY PACKED -- SO SMOOTH AND EASY ON THE DRAW”

One of the many advertising slogans for Lucky Strike cigarettes. Daffy-Duck-as-Danny-Kaye mentions the slogan in Book Revue (Clampett, 1946). The Christopher Columbus character in Hare We Go (McKimson, 1951) yells the phrase in exasperation at King Ferdinand while attempting to prove the Earth is round. Henery Hawk also used the expression when confronted with a fine specimen of alleged chicken tail.

SPARKS, NED
(1883-1957)

Cigar-smoking character actor with a dour face who was well-known and often imitated. His movie appearances include 42nd Street, Golddiggers of 1933 in which he playeed the producer, the live-action Alice in Wonderland as the Caterpillar, and Wake Up and Live.

Caricatures of Sparks appear in:

• Hollywood Steps Out (Avery, 1941) greeting the table of stonefaces
• Malibu Beach Party (Freleng, 1940) being buried in sand by Baby Snooks/Fanny Brice
• Slap-Happy Pappy (Clampett, 1940) indicating his joy (?) at the news that Eddie Cackler (caricature of Eddie Cantor) is going to be the father of a boy
• Fresh Fish (Avery, 1939) as an old crab

It is quite possible that the Rip Van Winkle character in Have You Got Any Castles? (Tashlin, 1938) is a Sparks caricature as well, given the character’s voice.

These are three successive entries, taken from the page I had it open to when I started this. I can't promise that the internal links work, but it gives you the names and the meanings -- there's enough there to satisfy your curiosity and make you want to watch all the cartoons again.

originally posted at The New Pals Club Web-Log
.

10:04am: a step forward
.
Everything's temporary. I mow the lawn, it grows back. I wash dishes, they get dirty again. Don't get me started on the cat litter.

Sarah and I went out to Target so she could show me bikes, and she pleaded for a single-speed model that was marked $65. She offered to put in $20 of her own money. I countered that I'd get it if she put in $35, and she agreed. Then we got a new helmet to replace the other new helmet that dropped off the earth, and once again, she's happy to leap on the bike and go off in search of playmates and adventures.

She brought Julia back to the house, and we all jumped on the trampoline for a while. When it was almost time for Julia to go home, her dad showed up to collect her, and before I could see them off, her mom showed up to get both of them.

Cathy had Friday off from work, so we officially wrapped up last Christmas by putting the grill together that I'd bought for her. She unboxed most of the pieces and helped with the one piece of heavy lifting, and after that I made Sarah happy by letting her help with the fiddly bits. Then I hauled out the outdoor table and umbrella, finding Sarah's next-to-newest helmet in the process. It hadn't dropped off the earth -- just behind the freezer. I set it all up, tested the gas lines for leaks (using soapy water and watching for bubbles), and just after 9:00 pm, all systems were go. Cathy made a cheeseburger for Sarah and hot dogs for everybody. I don't know about the burger, but the hot dogs I had were super, on buns toasted over the grill.

Just before I finished, I ran in and got a little bottle of Coke for us to share, because THIS is AMERICA, buddy!

This morning, I looked out the basement window at the patio. It's all still there, as is an equal volume of cardboard packing material in the sun room. Progress.
.

6:17pm: day zero
.
I greeted Sarah as she got off the bus, taking a picture of her last trip of the school year. I chatted briefly with bus driver Brenda. Sarah headed off to play with friends at the far corner of the rectangle formed by three sides of Round Trail and one of Stuyvesant. This morning I had reset my alarm to a later time.

The long weekend has begun.

Sarah brought her yearbook home, and it's a nice little volume full of color pictures. I couldn't see any I had taken, but there are at least three in there with Sarah in them. I also located various members of her soccer team (which played its last game on Saturday), the Purple Dolphins.

Cathy pointed out to me that Sarah has a coupon good for a free game of bowling (and shoes) every day, all summer, with a reduced rate for my games and shoes. This is a sweet ticket which I plan to use.

Previous summers have consisted in large part of Sarah telling me she's bored and demanding entertainment. I expect some of that, but she is able to hop on her bike and go 'around the block' (it's actually two blocks) until she runs into somebody to play with. She has a watch now, so I can tell her when to be back.

I'm expecting a jolly season, with mini golf, bowling, Sea Breeze Park, and other activities.
.

5:57pm: mission accomplished
.
Sarah's friends Ishan and Sonali were over here looking for her. She was over at #36, playing in a sprinkler. They went to the swing in the tree, and that's when I looked up and saw another partly detached branch up above. I told Ishan not to stand under it, and five minutes later, he was standing under it. Remembering the fast service we had gotten from the tree services we called (I think we called them in October, and we're still waiting), I sighed and got out the saw I bought for the last branch, which I hadn't had to use yet.

Unbending and setting up the ladder in the usual shaky way, I took the saw up and picked a spot. It was tight, being adjacent to another branch. I sawed, now with the right, now with the left, sometimes with both as my fear and caution turned to impatience and fatigue. When I was most of the way through, the branch (aided by my arch enemy, Gravity) slid imperceptibly into a position that clamped shut over the saw. I pondered the situation, and also realized that I was supposed to peel the labels off the saw so the Teflon coating would be somewhat helpful. I also got the rope (also purchased for the previous branch business) and spent some time tying it near the partial cut, threading it through other branches, unsticking it from its favorite wedging place between the ladder and the trunk, and after much time had been consumed this way, finding that the cut had indeed opened up enough that I could get the saw back in there and cut away until the branch made a creaking sound and moved four inches.

After this, much time was spent trying to get it to move some more. It was held in place by a half inch of twisted bark at the high end, and at the low end a forking branch nestled over another horizontal member of the tree, and it seemed quite content with the arrangement. I moved the ladder here and there, pulled the rope to little avail, and got some movement by pushing up with the shop broom.

Bit by bit, the tree yielded its broken lumber. I plied that saw wherever I could, cutting off the leafy ends of branches (which took less than a minute each), then going after the part that overlay the branch that was now supporting the wreckage. I used the rope to lasso the small end of the thing, and discovered another senior branchlet I hadn't suspected, which helped keep the whole thing trapped despite its topological disconnect from the tree proper. One by one, I removed the obstacles. One time there was a big crack and some shifting above as I was mostly done with a cut. I let go of the saw and left it to the tree while I scrambled down the ladder and stood away. After a minute, I went back and finished the cut.

In the end, I got the whole thing down. I also cut off another low branch that liked to mess with me when I mowed the lawn. Perhaps I'll go out another day and take off more of those low branches. For now, I'm glad to be on terra firma -- in the basement, in fact -- letting the fan tickle the flecks of sawdust in my arm hairs.
.

3:11pm: useless samaritan
.
I was coming back in from somewhere, and saw a woman sitting on the porch of a house for sale on Stuyvesant. Some weeks back, I had picked up a painting being given away from there (in a pile of stuff by the curb with a sign on it), and thought I would like to know something about the artist while there was still someone to ask. I stopped in my house long enough to take a phone picture and rode my bike over there.

She wasn't on the porch, so I rang the bell. I was answered by a vague voice from inside that I couldn't quite make out. I awkwardly tried to explain what I was doing there, finally opening the screen door to hear her better. That's when I saw that she was lying on the floor. I went right in.

She had fallen, of course. It couldn't have been long ago, because I'd seen her on the porch. She asked me who I was and I told her. I asked how she was, but she didn't quite know. She was bleeding a tiny bit from her lip and asked for some tissue, which I brought. I asked if she'd like help getting up, and she declined (each time I asked). She asked who I was again. We conversed briefly about the picture, which she didn't remember anything about.

I looked at the counter, at items of mail and so forth, looking for clues as to who I could call. I asked if I could bring her anything -- a small chair to help her pull herself up, if she didn't want me to help her up. She asked for a little stool that didn't look useful to me at all, but I brought it. I also brought her her phone and the card file with all her numbers. She didn't want a drink of water, either. We kept talking. She would ask me my name and I'd tell her, and she'd ask which street I lived on, and I'd tell her.

She seemed to want me to leave, so I finally did. I have to be here to get Sarah from the bus. I picked up a card from the realtor who's selling the house and called and left a message on his cell phone. I'll call again and leave one at his office. After I get Sarah, I might go by there again to see if she's up yet. Maybe I should knock on the door at her neighbors' houses to see if someone there knows her.

I feel like I haven't done enough. It was lucky that I could be there so soon after she fell, but now what?

Update - Things are better now. Thanks again for suggestions in comments. More details are in my comment in the thread.
.

11:51pm: happy birthday
.
Six months ago, Sarah and Cathy gave me a cat (Frances) for my birthday. Frances was said to be six months old. Logically, then, she'll be a year old on the 15th. Sarah decided to celebrate her birthday today, and she went shopping with Cathy and brought back a scratching rug and hidey tunnel for the kitty. They also got a tiny cake and more cat treats.

We had the party somewhere around noon, with Sonali and Isham from down the street. They gave Frances cat treats and her presents while we ate pieces of cake. We sang that song. It's also Ishan's birthday, though his party is tomorrow, and my sister's birthday (hipy papy bthuth thuthdy, gixhaix!).

It's also a day of celebration for the town, which has a wing-ding in the library parking lot, on the bank of the canal. Sarah was reluctant to go, but as soon as we got there she started running into school friends, so we hung around with their parents.

We even ran into Sonali and Ishan.

Since it was a midway, we ate some stuff. I had a cup of gumbo and a tray of fried alligator from a vendor and topped it off, a while later, with a nutella crepe (including strawberries, banana slices, whipped cream, and vanilla ice cream) from Simply Crepes for dessert.

I also encountered the local historical society folks. I'll probably join the group. It'll be another way to meet people older than myself.
.

11:35pm: coins detected in pocket
.
Been doing fairly okay since the return. I finished a second job that not only will put some money in the (well, read on), but it was sort of absorbing as well. I kind of had that feeling that I was working and enjoying it, all at the same time.

Sarah's been hustling on the soccer field. At Thursday's game, she kicked one from in front of her own goal that went all the way across the field and into the other goal. It's a small field, but then they're pretty small goal nets. Today was a real game, and though the Purple Butterflies looked pretty formidable and kept the ball on our end of the field much of the time, their goal kicks just didn't go in as much of the time, and the Purple Dolphins won 5-2, ending with a goal from our Sarah (as opposed to the other team's version of Sarah).

But I see I have skipped Thursday evening and Friday. Thursday evening, the battery light was showing when I drove home from soccer. Friday, I decided to have lunch 'out' (having consumed most of the luncheon items here), and forgot all about the battery. The light wasn't on, though, and I didn't think of it again until after the radio went septic. Then the turn signal stopped working and I decided I'd best head right home. The odometer went. I tested the wiper, and it worked -- very slowly. A mile from home, the fuel gauge and tachyometer had conked out. I had one traffic light to cross, but before it could turn, the car stopped running. I'd made it most of the way, anyway.

I hopped out and told the truck behind me that my car had died, without even the blinker working. They nodded and went around me. A guy in an SUV asked if I needed help, and watched traffic to the rear while I took the brake off and coasted backwards into the side street, then gave me a lift home.

I must have said something out loud about having earned that money. The car managed to take about half of it away from me.
.

12:20pm: pretty vacated
.
After some days of hopeless worry, I joined Cathy and Sarah in lugging bags to the airport, and then we all flew to Colorado. We were all together on the first leg, Rochester to Chicago. Then we were on two flights, with nothing much to be done about it. Small error; shouldn't recur. I hit the deck, got my large bag and a rental car (a Prius, at no extra charge) and got back in time to reacquire my family. Also to attend to other needs, one of which was food.

The drive up on I-470 and I-25 was calm and scenic, though I had the impression someone in the back seat was bored. Fortunately, she slept until we were almost to our hotel. Then we checked in with my sister Martha, had a tasty supper at Vern's, and turned in for the night.

All in all, a good trip. Sarah was frequently bored, but seems to have managed to enjoy aspects of the trip. She particularly doted on her cousin Liberty (Bonnie was suffering from a sore throat, so much of our interactions with her involved not tiring her out, and not breathing too much in her immediate vicinity). In many ways, we were on separate vacations, as I had friends to visit and also spent some time in family activities like music and work.

Music? Oh, yes. I got to play trios by Telemann and Pez with my sister and a family friend. Martha played violin, Jan played recorder, and I accompanied on Jan's nice harpsichord. I also got to jam with elements of the old gang two times, and guested on Excursions, Randy's radio show over KRFC (simulcast on the web every Saturday night from 9 to 11 Mountain Time) twice. I also got to play my old upright piano, which is at Martha's house. After mine, it felt in tune.

Work? Well, yeah. It's not like I've been working here all that much. She had a near-indigestible mass of Bible verses to proof, so we worked side by side for a few hours and got it taken care of in about three sessions. I pretty much paid for my part of the trip with that, plus the car. I also brought back another job that I will return to after some food.

Regrets? Always. I never got in touch with pal Jim, and I really wanted to see pal Steve one more time. Weather kept precipitating just enough to rule out a keenly anticipated trip to Signature Rock.

Joys? Packing. I didn't bring way too much stuff. What I brought got used. I was requested to pack up old artwork and strips to show to Randy's friend Mike (who writes comics), so we had a pleasant hour or two at Mike's kitchen table passing photocopies around. Even when I had everything together, including the man-sized suitcase, I could carry/wheel it all by myself and still open doors.

We came home separately -- Cathy and Sarah on the 1st, then I came back on the 7th. Seats were narrow, but I dug in with a crossword puzzle and iPod and the time went by. I'm thinking of marketing a bungee strap to keep one's legs more or less parallel on a flight, though the sprawlers who really need them probably don't suspect a thing. All was in order at home (though the lawn insisted on continuing to grow in our absence). The cat was fine; the basil was dryish but still alive.

I just came in from mowing the front half of the back yard, which means everything back to the hill has been trimmed since my return. The fan is still blowing on me at maximum, but it's now possible to think of a time when I could even turn it off. In the breeze it makes, a small America flag wags from side to side, and taped a bit lower at my eye level is a piece of paper from my desk pad decorated with the words "Dear mom and dad you are good parents to me. Love Sarah."

I saw my friends. I visited family. I made music and got some work. My daughter writes me notes. At times like this, it's too bad I don't ever seem to fill out the "mood" line below. Music either, but I was listening to Debussy.
.

4:29pm: still ticking
.
We're counting down to Thursday, when a nice airplane will take us off to Colorado so I can visit friends and family. The original plan was to go out when Dad was there, but he would not commit to a schedule until it was too late. It's been five years since I got to go home, though, and any reason is good enough for me.

Sarah's off school until Tuesday. We were waiting for the plumber to come and put in a new water heater. He called to say he'd be late, so we went out. First we hit Target, and we went to look at watches. Sarah found one she liked -- it has blue highlights, and that's her favorite color just now, and it doesn't have any princess stuff on it or anything like that -- and it was a mere ten dollars, so we bought it. Now she always knows what time it is. We'll see if this helps her stick to any sort of schedules, like when to be home.

We had a family lunch. Cathy joined us at Subway. I had my usual BMT wrap, and since it was a special occasion, I had bacon added. Instead of the smidgen of lettuce I usually let them put on, I asked for spinach instead, plus some onion. I can't believe I haven't been having onion put on there. My recipe has been changed for the better. And of course, I had it in a wrap. I keep thinking they don't have wraps any more, because one place told me they had been discontinued. Lucky for me everybody else still has them.

Subway is on the same strip center as the place I got my glasses, so I stopped by to see if they could do something about the spots that have shown up the lenses -- one on each. Turns out they can't. Apparently the earpieces rub on the lenses when I put them in the case. I have been putting them in the case almost every night in order to protect them. No worry; they'll sell me another pair for $350 or so. That's only $175 a spot.

We came home and Sarah wanted to ride bikes. I wanted to look at the computer for a while first, so she went out to go around the block. I wrapped things up and waited for her to return. Then I got on my bike and went around the block (it's two blocks, actually, but it's what we mean in this house when we say "around the block," which is about a half mile ride). I didn't see her or the scooter she took. She eventually showed up again, having managed to run into a friend from school, so we never rode our bikes to the playground. Now I'm waiting for the plumber to appear, which was going to happen about 45 minutes ago.

Cathy just got home. The weekend has truly begun.

UPDATE to our readers named Kate Schaefer: Please read the comments for a message from someone who may be your old classmate Julie. Thank you.
.

8:37pm: fink
.
Yes, I feel like a fink for not posting in so long. For a while, this was my main activity every day, reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, and posting, and in my continuing efforts to carve out time in which to do useful things, the reading went, and then the posting. Friends on facebook will notice I'm over there to some extent, but only because I can do it with a minimal investment of time. All the blogs I used to read have been trimmed down to three or four, which I ignore for days or weeks and then feverishly chop my way through with a weed whacker.

And what do I do with it; all this time I save? Beats me. Days feel about the same length, with me staying up late every night to finish whatever it is I do. I have some concrete achievements: I've ripped all five of my Herman's Hermits albums to iPod. Well, the last one is in process now. Two of them I just got last Friday at a garage sale. As always these days, I get a momentary twinge when the record is in a quiet spot and I hear a kind of quiet intermittent grunt of effort coming from the turntable, which we've had for thirty years now -- it was the first major purchase Cathy and I made together. Awwww.

Do I watch TV? Some, but I mostly omit turning it on until about 9 pm, and then I watch some stuff on Comedy Central. I have a TV Guide page set up with the channels I don't care about amputated, which saves time, and sometimes cues me about movies on Turner Classic Movies. We had another free movie channel, but they dropped off our cable, and they replaced it with something up in the digital tier that only comes in in the living room, also known as the room I'm hardly ever in. I do my living in the Office/storage chamber.

The other achievement is watching the new Star Trek movie. Sarah went to someone else's house today on the bus and was taken to watch her friend Sean in a swim meet. This gave me all afternoon to ponder getting out of the house. After I got the clothes into the dryer, I finally did go out, and got two new camp chairs (with arms!) for Cathy and me to sit in while we watch Sarah at soccer practice. While I was at the sporting goods store, Cathy called and said she was going to the movies, and I had just enough time to get over there and sit with her.

In a couple of weeks, I'm heading home for a visit. Cathy and Sarah and I are flying out to Fort Collins for a week, after which they're flying home while I -- get this! -- stay on for three or four more days by myself. Then it's back to New York where I'll be helping with one more art project for Sarah's class (the whole school is doing a running fence thing).

I might have some stuff to do before the trip. I got an inquiry about possible book work. At the same time, my sister might have a job to subcontract to me. As a rule, I can only get work if there are two or more things at a time, so whatever it takes.

At the same garage sale, I also got a turntable that handles 78s. I tried it out, and wasn't really satisfied, so now I'm back to square one with ten fewer dollars than before. Still, you have to try things from time to time, and ten dollars is a pretty inconsequential sum these days.

I'm rambling. Anyway, Sarah got back while I was maundering, so time for me to knock off. I'll try to post again when I remember what I forgot to mention this time.
.

11:20am: so let's see
.
Sarah's going to be home all next week. She insists she has nine days off from school, though I prefer to think of it as five. At any rate, we'll be together for nine. The pool at the Y should be open again by then, and she'll probably be in a mood to go back. She's been going to the Adventure Center there several times a week, which is good, as she gets to run wild for a while. I now sit in the lobby and do crossword puzzles, but have excavated and washed my jogging pants, thinking I might take her suggestion and exercise instead.

I exercised yesterday, at about this time. Went for a walk around the neighborhood, roughly a mile's worth. Dogs called "Hey! Hey!" after me, and once in a while, a car went by. I miss sidewalks. After lunch I went to the music store by the canal and bought an inexpensive piano tuner (Korg CA-30). In the afternoon, I spent some time on the middle octaves of the piano in the living room, with some success. I played through the Durand Valse that I have recently boiled down from five pages (with some awkward page turns) to three pages (with one easy turn) by notating when to play what. It comes down to Intro, A1, A2, B, A2, B, A2, C1, C2, D1, D2, C3, A2, B, A3, Coda (the different numbers mean that the last measure differs -- in the case of D, it's a repeat that does four measures for D1, and eight measures for D2). Printing it was harder, because the HP gives me more than I ask for, in the form of ghostly repeats of stuff from higher up on the page.

(Anybody know how to make it quit that? It's a Color Laserjet 2605dn. If I run a cleaning page before each page I print, the copy is clean until the last two or three inches, but there's always some ghosting at the bottom of the page when I print in black. One web page said you have to dismantle the machine and clean a mirror inside. Please don't make me do that. Sliding the cleaning slider back and forth is good exercise.)

We'll probably be going to Colorado at the end of May/beginning of June. First time in five years. It kind of grinds on me that I don't get out there more often. I'm getting old, and five years is too long to go without seeing my friends.

Sarah's roller skating has improved wonderfully in just two monthly sessions at the Y. The first time, she couldn't stay on her wheels for a half minute, but she persisted. The second time, she started off about the same, but by the end of the evening, she was good for a few minutes at a time. When they started dancing, she joined right in, doing the gestures for YMCA and the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey (for our UK readers, that's a version of the Hokey Cokey, which somebody apparently got paid money for). I am so proud of that kid sometimes. We looked for a roller rink here, but the one in Macedon is closed because a pipe burst and warped the floor, and the one beyond Clifton Springs takes 45 minutes to drive to. Sonali's mom says there's one in Henrietta, and I plan to go out and look for it, because Sarah and I have rollerskate fever.

I keep meaning to put some of the 1979 photos I've been scanning where the "Lost Fort Collins" web site can get them. I think I'll put them on flickr and send them a link. (Some time goes by. Lunch is eaten. Photos are uploaded.)

( I think I'll show some slides. )

11:04am: tips on how to do stuff nobody cares about
.
I keep looking for this one book I saw at the motel we stayed at when we moved here: The Roger DeCoverley Papers, a collection of pieces from The Spectator about this squire fellow. I've even thought of going back and seeing if they'd sell it to me, because the used book stores here don't have it. (Oh, sure, I could buy it online, but do I? Do I??) So I finally gave in and downloaded one from Project Gutenburg and formatted it for my iPod "notes" function. I did this in what seemed to me a more clever and faster way than I have in the past.

First, I looked at it in Notebook (TextEdit, for you Macsters). There were line returns after each short, short line. Next, I took it into QuarkXPress, where I set up a document in half-sized pages with two columns and let it flow to see how many pages it wanted. The filesize was 168k, and since you get just under 4k per "notes" page, I wanted to get it into 45 to 50 pages. I did the usual find-and-replaces to accomplish the following:

• changing all hard returns to soft returns
• changing two soft returns in a row to two hard returns -- I decided I wanted a space between paras
• changing remaining soft returns to spaces, so those lines would flow together into paragraphs
• putting a space at the beginning of each paragraph just for format niceness

Then I started highlighting text and exporting it to .txt files in a folder. I named each one dc0##- followed by the number of the article (with an initial that revealed whether it was written by Addison, Steele, or Budgell). I had to break up articles across pages, so I used hyphens to indicate whether it was continuing. Work it out yourself; it seems silly to take the time to explain this part.

I closed everything on the desktop and kept the Quark file and the folder I was putting files into open, so I could alt-tab between the two places. If the file showed as 5k or more, I took out lines. If it showed as 4k or less, I put lines in -- arrowing up and down in the Quark file to highlight more or fewer lines (making sure to end between sentences). If the filename was highlighted in the folder, the exact size showed at the bottom, and after a while, I knew that a column line was about .03k, so I could more quickly get near the limit of my allotment. If I had to break up a paragraph (as so often happened with these wordy fellows), the first line in the next file had no space before. On the few occasions I had to break up a speech, I put a quote mark in square brackets at the start of the file.

When I was done, I made a table of contents that gave the title for each number. It took me a couple of hours, which is less than some of the jobs I've taken on have taken. I need to get back to the Gilbert & Sullivan plays, but they're a mess, with too many little paragraphs here, and too many speeches jammed together there.

So I read the first couple of pieces last night in bed. Not too hilarious so far, but at least (unlike other humor I've read from the late 18th and early 19th century) you don't need to know who was famous then, and why, and what kind of hat they wore and what sort of dog they had in order to make any sense of it.
.

5:20pm: power point post
.
Sarah and I
• went miniature golfing in an indoor links with black light
• went roller skating at the Y (where her improvement in two sessions earned my admiration)
• keep getting all these days to spend together: March 20, this Friday, all the week after next
• haven't killed one another yet
• go to the Y several evenings a week, where she plays in the Adventure Center
• haven't been swimming as much lately since she hurt her knee (scab)
• went with Cathy to the Easter shindig at a garden center in Victor -- egg hunt, petting zoo, bounce house...
• stood in line so she could ride a pony at the aformentioned event
• got to pet a three-week old baby bunny
• tried three times to get to a birthday party on Saturday that turned out to have been on Friday
• visited the friend with the birthday on Monday instead

I
• have had a couple of jobs, neither of which pays much
• have been digitizing LPs again, diligently filling up the iPod
• just had a power failure here
• am glad my central computer is a laptop, or I'd have lost this session
• am glad we have a cat so I don't have to talk to myself all day
• seem to be able to minimize or give up many time-consuming activities without actually having more time
• like the Reuben crepes they have at the crepe restaurant on Schoen Place
• like their desserts even better, but only get them once in a while

Cathy and I
• are getting nearer to the glorious day when we get a bunk bed for Sarah
• just told Sarah her friend James can ride the bus here with her tomorrow after school
• are starting to plan a Colorado trip this year; the first since 2004 (@%#^!!)
• have been reading a little Toronto guidebook I bought a while back and saying "hmmmm"
• hope that the washer, dryer, and fridge in the laundry room can be removed from there some day
• friended each other on Facebook
• sort of take turns making supper
• called out for Chinese food tonight
.

8:24am: family day
.
Six years ago, on the other side of the planet, they handed us a baby. I am still awed that such a thing could happen, no matter how many forms we filled out, biographies we wrote, pictures we took, fingerprints we allowed, interviews we underwent, and months we waited. They gave us Sarah. Thanks, China. Thanks, everybody.

( my family in 2009 )

Thanks, Cathy, for your diligent and committed work on getting it all done right. Thanks, Sarah, for being a great kid. Thanks, Frances, for being such a kid-tolerant cat.

My heart, as they say, is full.
.

8:09am: a billion AND ONE blistering barnacles
.
Georges "Herge" Remi passed away with one last Tintin book loosely sketched out. It has been finished by others. Canadian fan Yves Rodier made the art, and it has been scripted, colored, and translated into English.

The first time I found this online, it was still in French, and only the first few pages had been colored. This is a pleasant pastiche, complete with covers and end pages. I've often said that the trouble with some fan fiction is that they can get the characters properly dressed and standing around, but don't know how to plot for them. Luckily, in this case, the plotting has been done for them by the sole and singular creator of the entire milieu (no relation to Snowy). I still haven't purchased the published volume of the very loose version of this left by Herge, so I can't be sure whose idea it was to have various secondary characters pass through. I'm not complaining, though.

I wonder if the other completion of this, the one signed as being by "Ramo Nash" (a character in this tale), has been fully finished now. There were interesting differences between them, owing to the vagueness of the outline both started from.

Anyway, please enjoy this. It's a valedictory curtain call -- and a sort of gift to a Tintin fan who thought they already had everything.
.

10:56pm: before I forget it
.
This was my week last week. I was waiting for a job that seemed pretty likely to be coming in (still waiting, but hope springs eternal). I was watching the days go by, leading up to colonoscopy on the 26th.

So last Tuesday, my gut sprang a leak. Well, actually it was just diarrhea, but of a rather virulent and unremitting sort. Barfed a couple of times, too, but that was a mere distraction. Wednesday, still at it. I complained to Cathy that it was just like doing the prep kit early. So she suggested I call the med center where I was having the procedure and tell them I was ready early. Thursday, I was still spending most of the day lying down, though I felt well enough to venture out for some Immodium.

I kept referring back to the literature they sent me about the prep, because every couple of days, there was something else I couldn't take or eat. Cumulative jollity. On Friday I felt well enough to go out for lunch with Sarah, who was home from school all day because of teacher's conferences or something. We went to Simply Crepes, and I had another Reuben. No time for dessert, but she had ice cream that night.

On Saturday, she went to her Chinese class, attending about half of it. She's pretty tired of those classes and will probably make a clean getaway from them before too much longer. I was feeling more or less normal by Sunday, so we went bowling. I rolled a double in the first game (without hitting the bumpers), but that was as good as it got. By the end of the second game, I was getting bitter. We left without the customary round of Dance Dance Revolution; I was that dejected. We grabbed Subway sandwiches (they've stopped doing wraps, alas) and took them home to share with Cathy.

Sunday night was the big event for me: the long-postponed lecture by Art Spiegelman (or art spiegelman), which had originally been scheduled back in October or thereabouts. The venue was moved to RIT, so I Googled the location to be sure I could find it.

I would like to curse Google Maps for about five minutes now. They moved RIT to a location in downtown Rochester, many miles from the actual campus, and gave me a convoluted path to use in getting there. Once I found out (by frantically phoning Cathy) that all I'd needed to do was go out Jefferson, I couldn't even get back on 490 until I crept -- more accurately, I drove behind a car that crept -- through a series of detours and blocked-off on-ramps. I opted to take South Street down to Jefferson, and that worked fairly well, apart from the traffic lights and slow speed limits. RIT itself had obligingly posted signs that led me to a parking lot, after which a locator map showed me about where the auditorium would be. The likeliest-looking door, however, was some sort of religious center, so I apologetically hailed a student who confessed that he didn't remember where the auditorium was. I found it anyway, by going in the direction he'd come from.

I was only five or ten minutes late. He gave a terrific talk -- witty and understated, and full of love for the comic medium. After it was over, I stood in line for about an hour to get his autograph on MAUS and MAUS II. The time passed agreeably as I chatted away with the college guys in line ahead of me. It was the social high point of my week, if not my month. One guy in line runs a book store. I should have asked him which one, but things like that don't occur to me until much later. The reason for the delay turned out to be that Spiegelman was not just signing, but sketching as well, so now my books have spiegelmice in them. My copy of MAUS already had my name on the signature page, because when we got it (as soon as it came out), I had no idea I'd one day be getting it signed. He obligingly drew a thought balloon around my handwriting and had it coming out of the Maus's head.

During the seconds when he was efficiently inscribing my books, I was able to ask him how his brother's name had been pronounced. "Ri-shoe," he said, more or less. "I actually changed the spelling in the book so it would be pronounceable. In Polish, it's something completely different." I also told him how pleased I'd been to see Old Man Muffaroo in a crowd scene of old comic strip characters in one of his drawings.

It was good and dark by then, and I hurried out to my car and drove on home. Sarah was asleep in the downstairs comfy chair, as is her habit these days. I carried her up to bed and kissed her goodnight.
.

8:33pm: seasons turn
.
Signs point to spring. "TO SPRING," they say, with a futureward arrow underneath. The snow sometimes sprinkles, but doesn't stick. It sprinkles water more often. Today, the playful zephyrs shake the house. Playfully. This morning when I went out to the bus with Sarah, the driveway was full of worms again.

I stepped around them, thinking of the Peanuts cartoon with Snoopy chicken-footing his way around. I chatted with Sonali's mom after Sarah kissed me goodbye and the bus left. A struggling worm caught my eye, and I picked it up. This took a while, as it struggled. I tossed it into the yard for a better shot at survival, because at least it was trying.

Then my eyes got more attuned to the worms, and I could see that they weren't all moribund. Among the rubber bands and overcooked pasta curls, there were some still morphing along, trying to get somewhere. I bent down and saved as many as I could. I am become Life, as it were, the savior of worms. I wormed my way to the upper part of the driveway, where there were fewer candidates for a return to the welcoming turf (the green, green grass of home). I saved a dozen or so; probably no more than two dozen. I thought of the story of the man throwing the sea stars back into the water.

Then I was back on the porch, which was free of vermiform specimens. I thought back to a day in Massachusetts when I seem to recall the porch having red worms all over it. Now, how the heck did they do that? Did they work their way up the steps, one by one? Did they stand on each others' backs? Did they creep up the bushes by the porch and drop off of overhanging branches? Or did I imagine it?

Anyway, I did my bit. Yay me! Then I went inside and messed around at the computer a while before going back to bed for another hour and a half. I still feel like I have something I shouldn't. There's the cough and the overall malaise. Feh. I finally need my strength back, because I need to get the newsletter and a brochure done for the Friends of the Library so it can go to the printer, and then I hopefully have at least one paying job in the pipeline.

Sarah and I are back to the YMCA routine, getting in the better part of an hour diving for rings at the deep and, followed by some time in the Adventure Center, where she gets to run around vigorously.

Something else to look forward to: tonight's going to be a new South Park. Yeah, I know, but some of us enjoy the thing.
.

12:04am: in the dark
.
I was back in a theater again today, this time for Puccini's "Madama Butterfly" broadcast live from the Met in HD at the local cinema. Tried to beat the line by buying from the automatic dingus, but went through several cycles of making all the choices and ending up with nothing before it finally came right out and said it was unable to help me. By then the line wasn't long, so I sailed through and got a coupon for a free small popcorn because of my diligent use of the chain's rewards card. This time, the number of the auditorium wasn't printed on the ticket, but I went the same way as someone who was picking up a flyer about the Met Opera and found the right room.

The joint was packed! I had watched the second showing of WATCHMEN in a house with six or eight other people, but this place had about that many empty seats, not counting the front two rows (from which the screen resembled a trapezoid). I found a seat all by itself at the back of the lower (front) level, next to the wall, and settled in with my popcorn and a large bottle of water.

This must be the first time I've watched an entire opera in years, and the first time I've watched one in a movie theater. It worked okay. I was wishing the colors were a little more contrasty, and for a while there was a wall light shining dimly down on me, so I felt like I was in a spotlight, but I got used to the first, and the second seemed to fade after a while. I had a hard time getting entirely into the suspension of disbelief. Cio-Cio-San is supposed to be fifteen. Well. During the first intermission, she made a joke about playing a character half her age and smiled impishly. But vocally, she was all over it. She had the range and the breath, and her acting was good.

She had good support from Suzuki as well. Dramatically, it worked better for me this way. I'm more vulnerable to a situation where somebody still has one friend on their side, somehow. The American Consul, Sharpless, was also a decent fellow stuck in a hard place having to give her bad news. Pinkerton was well performed, but I had a hard time clapping for him at the end because he was Pinkerton, damn him.

Two of the actors felt familiar. Suzuki reminded me of our Katisha from the CNU 2000 production of "The Mikado" that I was in. I was half-tempted to shout "Bikuri Shakuri O!" while she was singing. Okay, maybe one quarter tempted. I was at least tempted to think about it. Goro, the marriage broker, looked so much like our Pooh-Bah that I really looked at the program, half-hoping I'd see Eric Strong's name on it.

Aspects of the production were interesting. It was very Japanese (but not to the extent of casting Asian actors in major parts, I noticed). They had persons in black changing the spartan scenery, creating special effects, and working puppets. Yes, puppets. Butterfly's son was played by a puppet. This had pluses and minuses. The singers didn't have to worry about an unpredictable child every night, but I couldn't think of it as a human child without something akin to an effort of will. It was probably easier for the audience in the opera house, come to think of it. The puppet's acting was good, but it had a neck like a sausage, and that kept letting the air out of my suspension of disbelief.

One stroke of staging that almost electrified me came at the start of the second act, after Pinkerton has been gone for three years. It starts with him on stage. He sits in his chair, and she kneels before him -- the picture of domestic happiness. Then one of the moving paper wall panels glides by, and when it's gone (the blink of an eye), so is Pinkerton. Damn effective.

Anyway, it progressed to its usual ending, and by that time, nothing was distancing me from the emotion of the story. I sat in the dark with tears running down my cheeks, and not for the first time. I wish they hadn't gone to the curtain calls so soon, because I wanted to wallow in it for at least a few more seconds.

Outside the theater, I was somewhat surprised -- as always -- that it wasn't the middle of the night. It was raining a little, though, and that was appropriate enough.
.

11:22am: watchmen
.
I watched it, man. The Friday show at 11:30 am, since I'm not really the nite owl I used to be. Let's just hide this stuff, in case any of it is an unwelcome spoiler to someone:
( moore after this )

3:27pm: who spins the spinoffs?
.
Over at the Comics Curmudgeon, someone mentioned that PVP is serializing OMBUDSMEN, now in its fourth boffo daily installment. It's almost predictable, but then again, he draws the (syndicated) characters better than their own artists, and gets just about everything right. He spelled a word "acutally" today, which is totally a keyboard error.

Puts that in yer pipe and smokes it.

Also, in comments, alert reader agrumer pointed me to this Saturday Morning favorite featuring those jolly friends and their pro-social message.

Oh yeah, and Ces is doing his take on the strip over at Medium Large as well. It started back on Saturday.

Today's strip refers to "Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic," which I saw the same day I saw the MAD version. Apparently they have photographed the comic in its entirety and introduced camera motion, voices, and simple animation so that our non-reading friends can experience the story. What is there to say? Apparently everything you need to know about it is right here. Warning: audio starts as soon as you connect -- sounds like the beginning of the Moody Blues' "On the Threshold of a Dream." "Of course you are, my br-right little star..." Apart from that, it's one of the most annoying web pages I've ever clicked on, with icons spinning around busily -- too busily to notice that you're clicking on them and begging the spinning to stop.
.

2:14pm: first look
.
Is WATCHMEN out yet? I noticed that the latest MAD quarterly has a themed cover, so I took a look at their version of it. As far as I can tell from their version, the movie seems to follow the story fairly well. Sorry, I mean the 'dull, boring' movie seems to follow the 'dull, boring' story fairly well. Please forgive the furschlugginer omission. Anyway, if you haven't read the book and are planning to see the movie, be aware that the MAD version gives away central plot twists. There seems to be one change late in the movie, possibly to help keep it within the scope of a motion picture.

I've been pretty sure the movie will look good, as I sometimes follow the movie's blog (not as much lately, due to the same time constraints that keep me away from LJ a lot). Nothing in the satire causes me to think otherwise. We shall see. I know I will, anyway.
.

10:08pm: while I still remember
.
From this vantage point at the end of the week, I'd say there were some high points.

Nicer weather came. Snow melted. On Thursday I went out and kicked the snow piles down and scattered the white stuff around, and by the end of the day Friday, the last of the large plowed-up snow was pretty much gone. I also got a stick and putted the dog waste out of the yard. A thoughtful dog owner had left it in the gutter out front, and a helpful snow plow had deposited it (along with a certain quantity of snow) in our yard, where it was revealed by the melting.

Earlier in the week, I purchased a length of rope (two, actually -- one is for a jump rope for me) at Home Depot and took it out to the tree in front along with a ladder. I tied it around the large vertical branch that has been sitting loose up there for the last four months or so, got a good distance away, and pulled. I was able to make it swing back and forth, but it had a hold on something up there. I tried changing the angle, tying the rope to it in different places, and combinations of the two. Finally I extended the ladder to its fullest and took it to the other side of the tree, clutched the trunk with one arm and reached as high as I could to reach the parts of the branch that were hooked over another branch. After I broke those off, I went back down and pulled the rope again, this time wrapping it around another piece of broken off branch, and I got the whole mess down. Later on I'll clean it up again. This, incidentally, is where I got the putter for the first paragraph.

Between the warm weather and the rain, just about all the old snow was gone from the front, and most all from the back. Today it snowed again, but that melted off as well, leaving only a couple of snow clods where the biggest of the plowed piles was.

I've been scanning old negatives, mostly from November 1979. That's when I walked all over Fort Collins, taking black and white photos of stuff I liked, most of which seems to be gone now (but not all). A lot of these photos had never even been printed, as I was mostly getting contact sheets back then to save money. I'll be sharing some of these with Lost Fort Collins, a web site that seems to have been made just for me. Or at least it might as well have. The Northern Hotel??? Wow! I lived there!

I've also been converting some of my LPs to mp3 format for iPod listening. One difficulty with this has been that I use the PC for that, so I can employ SoundForge for the recording and cleaning up, but the PC has its problems. It wants only to shut itself down. Since the day I took the case off, things were better, and I came within about a week of having my first Mozy backup completed, but this week I hit another wall, unable to find a save point in Norton GoBack that would let it come up. [Tedious detail ahead.] With experimentation, I found that I could interrupt the startup with the space bar as if I was going to GoBack, then cancel out of that and have the option of picking much farther save points than GB was giving me. January 2 has become my standard fallback, and with its judicious use, I've been booting successfully with only the occasional lost day when it decides to update Windows while I'm asleep. I'm somewhere between 6 days, 5 hours and 1 week 1 day from finishing the first Mozy backup.

Also I have to keep a close watch on the power supply fan, which doesn't always start up with the computer. I've found that I can start it up by poking it just so with the skinny straw from the compressed air I use to keep it dusted (thanks, Shelly!). When the whole thing is backed up to my satisfaction, we might see about getting it fixed. I think I'd rather keep this one working than buy a new one. I like its audio-visual features. I can turn video output into files, and I can use SoundForge with it.

I haven't been swimming at all this week, because I banged up my right knee last week (my left knee, which I hurt slipping on ice in the driveway, was just about finished with the pain cycle) trying to show Sarah something interesting at the YMCA Adventure Center. So I've been taking her to Adventure Center to play instead of swimming with her. We had a very active time of it this evening. I chased her around, then we threw soft blocks to each other for a while, and finally played on the slide until closing time. She went right to sleep tonight.

I keep trying to find time to play the piano more, and have done so here and there. Last week we went to Borders because I had a 40% off coupon for one item. I bought the one-volume BONE collection, as I have been thinking for many years I should read that. 40% off is what it took. The only copy they had was flawed, so they worked it out that I'd buy it and it would come to me from another branch. It came in the mail a couple of days ago, and I've been enmeshed in it. I'm around page 900 now, and will finish tonight or tomorrow. I'm just as glad I could go through it all in one shot, as each chapter is a quick read. Gotta go. Bone calls me.
.

8:59pm: technical difficulties
.
There's been a race going on, between me trying to back up my hard drive to Mozy (online storage), and the computer, trying to perish first. The computer gets closer whenever it needs to be rebooted: Will Norton GoBack find a bootup that works? Helping it in its efforts to reboot a lot are all sorts of updates that find their way on and, invariably, require a reboot for proper installation. If I don't reboot them, they reboot themselves.

Sometimes it freezes up. Sometimes it chokes and falls over. A day or so ago, the error messages were coming fast and furious. I still need two weeks or more to finish the backups, and if the computer won't stay up for five minutes, two weeks is a long way away.

There was a lot of fan noise one time. Another time, I got a message about the power supply fan. That's when I had at least 2/3 of an idea. I took the cover off the computer so it maybe wouldn't get so hot.

It's been at least a whole day since the last problem. It hums along merrily, backing up as it goes forward.
.

3:54pm: "This is stupid!"
.
Sarah's out of school this week, so it's the Dad show all week, starring me as the source of all entertainment. She has videos that she watches, but she'd so much rather watch them with somebody. I'm hoping she'll grow out of that, but I accept about half the time. We went to the Y yesterday to swim, but they unfurled the inflatable slide almost as soon as we got there, which completely takes up all the usable space in the pool. I was rather disgusted at this development.

She started having a sore throat last night, and today she was advised to take it easy, drink tea, and suck on hard candies. Well, she did have some tea. Anyway, she's doing better now. She was in this room watching my TV, so I started watching FLYING DOWN TO RIO in the living room. Of course, she came in right away and wanted to watch her DVDs, and when I said no, she got somewhat tantrumish, so I told her no TV for an hour. She melted down at that and apologized, but I said she needed to think of that first and insisted on the hour. I kept on watching RIO, which she opined was stupid.

She was sulking in the red chair, but her eyes were on the movie, which she assure me she wasn't watching. She was just taking a rest, she said. So I invited her to come sit with me, and she did. Her foot twitched rhythmically during the Carioca. She asked if she could watch her video at three, and I said if she was good she could, and I'd watch the movie in another room. By three, she'd decided the movie was okay, and we discussed it a bit and watched it to the end. She didn't feel like continuing on to ROYAL WEDDING, but I was content with the progress so far. RW has some better dancing in it, but the music might not appeal to her as much.

I saw, with surprised recognition, the name of Skip Martin in the opening credits of ROYAL WEDDING. I have two LPs by him where he combines classical standards with crazed, brassy 1960-vintage Hollywood jazz, as well as downloaded tracks from a purely jazz album based on TV detective music. I sometimes wonder if he's related to Freddy Martin, whose band recorded "Bumble Boogie" and other crossover sides (including a set of "Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite in Dance Tempo -- because I guess ballets are written for something else, y'know).

So the week's going okay so far. Made it to Tuesday. If we're still alive on Friday, Cathy's staying home from work so we can have a family day.
.