Copious Free Time

writing, not reading

2008-05-02T15:22:52Z

.
Grabbing some access at Panera's. Sarah and I are out and about. Cathy cleaned up the house as packing went on, and I took Sarah to the motel we would stay at for our last night in town. Sarah and I had a final sushi meal at Oishi, and said our goodbyes to Mr. Dong, our sushi friend. He made us egg rolls for a treat, then at the end of the meal, as Sarah was clamoring for green tea ice cream, he said he would make her a fried banana. "But I want ice cream," she said to me a dozen or so times. Finally, I said that Mr. Dong was making her a special dessert and she could have ice cream later. When dessert arrived, it proved to have fried banana segments, chocolate-drizzled whipped cream, and -- with a candle burning on it -- a big scoop of green tea ice cream. Sarah was so excited, she put the whole thing on her fork and gestured with it, over the floor, of course. Mr. Dong was nice enough to clean it up and give her another. Then we went swimming at the hotel pool, which was middling cool.

Next morning, we went in again, and this time it was warmer. Then we poured into two cars (mine was so full of stuff, including all our computers, scanner, printer, and my piano, that nobody could ride with me) and drove about 300 miles. There was wi-fi in our motel and I could still read newsgroups and my mail. There was wi-fi in the service plazas, and I could read email but not groups. There was wi-fi in the motel room in Pittsford, but I couldn't read newsgroups. If anybody knows a way to read newsgroups without having a provider (comcast, warner, that sort of thing) and without using Google Groups, which look like a huge tangled mess of headers, all alike, I'd sure like to know. I found a page of supposedly free services, and not one of them was there when I clicked on it.

We went to the apartment that will be our home for the next two weeks, and the key wasn't there. I tried calling the number they posted there. Then we took Cathy to work and went back to the motel, had breakfast, and swum in the pool. It was warmer than it had been the night before. I conclude that motel pools are warmer in the morning. We spent an hour in the water. Sarah can do flips in the water. She is almost swimming.

At noon, having not gotten a response on the phone, we went back to the apartment. By this time, the office was open, so I asked the guy there for help, and he took us to the front door of the unit. We had been at the back. The key was at the front. I thanked him profusely. We got lunch from Wegman's, then I moved all the stuff from my car up the flight of stairs into the apartment, and took a nap with Sarah. I was awakened by the phone, which was the lady we were renting from. I had called her phone to let it know we were in the apartment, but she wanted to find out why it had taken so long. Then it was time to get Cathy from work.

Today we both have cars. There's a parking space and a garage unit for us. We went to the library, to the school district, and to the Y. When I have proof of residency, I can finalize arrangements with these worthy institutions for future services. Now we'll drive around a little and maybe look at an amusement park (from the outside). Pittsford, we are here.

Kindergarten, by the way, turns out to be half-day only. I won't be getting a lot of work done, it appears.
.

the time has come, the walrus said

2008-04-27T01:41:20Z

.
We'll be living in an apartment with no internet for two weeks after we move up to Pittsford. My connection in that time will most likely be me taking the laptop to the public library to check my mail and such. It seems farcical to expect that I'll be able to read LJ in that time -- it takes hours each day to plow through my FL -- so I won't be keeping up. I'll maybe be seeing some journals or some entries in that time, and maybe posting and commenting here and there, but at this point I'm expecting something like radio silence.

Tomorrow is the last day for me to pack boxes that I don't want the movers to sock away. Monday, they'll start boxing things up. Perhaps this is just my general feeling of hopelessness speaking, but I guess I might as well just get an early start on the black hole and give up on LJ now, and get back on track later by the simple expedient of pretending that the intervening weeks never happened.

I hope nobody will evaluate my performance in those weeks and decide to drop me because I've been incommunicado. Remember, if you friend somebody, let them go, and if they come back, yatta yatta yatta.

Meanwhile, we've been doing some stuff "for the last time," as it were. We finally nipped up to Brattleboro, which is one heck of a sweet place -- lots of neat old brick buildings perched on sloping streets, and several book stores. The proprietor of the first one I dashed into said there had been nine at one point. I guess that means there are eight or fewer now. I've wanted to go up there and spend some money since I learned about their jihad against Bush and Cheney. While we were at it, we also ducked into New Hampshire for about fifteen minutes so we could add it to our list of states we've been in. Then I played miniature golf with Sarah at the course in Westfield, which is open for the season again, and we finished the day with what might be our last meal at Oishi Sushi, and our (possibly) last visit with Mr. Dong, who Sarah adores.

Today we drove to Boston. First we stopped at Radio Shack, where the kindly and knowledgeable fellow inside had opened the store ten minutes early, to replace the stubbornly missing car plug-in for the DVD player we got to keep Sarah pacified on trips. The obvious unit cost $35, but he located one for $9, and found the proper tip for another buck. Knowledgeable and kindly both. We proceeded along 90, exited and made our way to Alewife and took the T to South Station and walked to the Children's Museum, which was insanely full of great stuff for Sarah. After about three hours of it, they were starting to close the place up and we left, pausing for our second meal at the station. The trip home was marred only by a fresh side scuff from some adjacent car in the parking garage and the mysterious intersection where two lanes of traffic pouring into one road apparently get green lights at the same moment.

So ends the week of Spring vacation. Well, it's still on tomorrow, but it's going to be boxes, boxes, boxes, and not so much of the non-box activities, so it sort of feels like it's over. Just about time to dive down the rabbit hole. Speaking of which, I found out what the holes in the back yard are for: ground squirrels disappear into them. Better that than snakes, I guess.

If anybody needs to reach me and doesn't have my current address, I believe LJ messages should get to me. Dig you cats later.
.

originally posted as a comment elsewhere

2008-04-25T03:58:57Z

.
27 years ago, Cathy and I lived in Statesboro, Georgia, below the gnat line, about 50 humid miles inland from Savannah. We didn't have much money. One day, at a garage sale, I saw a sweet little yellow chainsaw for just $10. Ten Bucks! She didn't let me buy it.

Five or six years later, we were doing better, and living in a nice apartment in Newport News. One night, some yoyos were honking their horn outside the less-nice apartments next door. After putting up with it for a while, I went outside and, using my words, indicated that they should go in and see why nobody was coming out, and that people were trying to have their lives. They seemed surprised by these revelations, but they weren't hostile to them. I turned to go back in, and the guy in the apartment in front of me -- a nephew of Frank Lloyd Wright, he once told me -- said I was pretty brave to go out there like that with nothing in my hand. He cleared up my brief mystification by showing me what he meant: there was a large pistol in the back of his jogging shorts. My recollection of what happened next is a little fuzzy, but some of our other neighbors were standing around by then, and I got the impression that some of them also may have had something ready to go in their hands. I drifted back into our apartment and told Cathy what I'd just seen.

It was then that I realized I had missed out on what might have been the best argument for buying that chainsaw -- the chainsaw I still think about sometimes. A man's gotta be able to defend his home.

And I am pretty sure that any burglar, hearing the sound of a chainsaw being started up in the next room, would simply leave my home with no additional fuss.
.

a story for inkstained technopeasant day

2008-04-23T20:56:20Z

"He's dreaming now," said Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?"

Alice said, "Nobody can guess that."

"Why, about you!" Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands dramatically. "And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"

"Where I am now, of course," said Alice.

"Not you!" Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream!"

"If that there King was to wake," added Tweedledum, "you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!"

SLEEPLESS KNIGHT

"How's he doing?" the White Knight asked Hatha in an undertone.

"Sleeping quietly. He turned on his side a minute ago, and Haigha replaced his blanket for him."

"Good. He has a light touch, I dare say. I shouldn't touch him for all the tea in China. I'd be sure to make a muddle of it." The White Knight spoke quietly to the Hatter, though the object of their conversation was snoring peacefully -- quietly -- under a tree a hundred feet away. "Where are the Tweedles?"

The Hatter shuffled nervously. "I sent them away. You can't trust those two. One minute they're talking to you in a civil manner, the next, they've taken up cudgels and begun to belabor each other again. If they put their armor on, they sound like a railway collision."

The Knight nodded absently. "Ah, good. Yes, quite. Nothing else for it, I'm afraid." He ran out of words. "Well," he said, then sat in silence.

The two of them stood in uffish thought for a minute, looking at the distant tree and the two figures near it. One, a humble enough looking little King, lay asleep on the ground in the shade of the sheltering leaves, with a child's blanket incongruously but comfortably arrayed over his shoulders. The other, a Hare, hovered over him -- figuratively, that is -- watching solicitously for his comfort. As they watched, a large Wasp approached, trying to interest them in some magazines he was selling. The Knight immediately clapped the Hatter on the back. "Go over there and help him if he needs help," he said. "Quietly, for heaven's sake!"

As the Hatter dashed over, he could hear a whining hum, which turned out to be the Wasp talking. "But I'm sure he'd be interested! Every issue is packed with articles of lasting interest -- there's one for every day of the month, you see? Rib-tickling jokes, anecdotes about regular folks... why not just let me talk to him?"

The Hare was trying to dissuade the pushy insect, but his efforts seemed only to hold the Wasp at bay. The Hatter arrived.

"Shove off, you. He ain't buyin' what you're sellin'. Now take the air before I find a rolled-up newspaper to swat you with." He snarled these threats quietly, taking his hat off and swinging it as a weapon. The Wasp took a step back.

"Well, now, sir, you look like the sort who'd be interested in what I have to sell. In your eyes, I see a man who cares deeply about his fellow beings. Am I right? What would it take to set you up with a subscription to this fascinating periodical? I don't care who I sell to, but once I've made my quota, I'm away."

The Hatter wordlessly jammed the hat back on his head, covering his eyes, and tilted his chin up to the heavens, shaking his fists in silent rage for a moment or two. Then he sagged and turned back to the waiting Wasp. "Where do I sign?" he asked in an undertone.

"Right here, sir, and you won't be disappointed! I'll deliver it to you right here every month, and if you have any..."

The Hatter almost shouted, then seized the insect by the collar of its coat and frog-marched it a few steps away from the tree. "Absolutely not! I want you to consider this a non-delivery subscription. Just take your money and leave here. In silence! Go!"

The Wasp looked like he had more to say, but shrugged at the prospect of a sale he didn't have to deliver on, and turned to go, humming tunelessly to himself. The Hatter longed to kick viciously at his departing posterior, but thought better of it.

"Th-thanks," the hare gasped. "I just couldn't get rid of the pushy beggar!" He looked at the still-dozing King and reached down to adjust his pillow imperceptibly.

"Think nothing of it," said the Hatter, wiping his brow with one arm, then replacing his hat. "Just keep doing what you're good at, and we'll be watching." He walked back to the Knight, looking back two times to be sure nothing else was happening. He sat down on a log next to where the Knight stood watching. "A pushy magazine agent," said the Hatter. "We got rid of him."

"Yes, well done," said the Knight. "He passed here on his way. I seem to have taken a subscription to something called Scragford's Farthing. Anyway, I'm waiting for another dispatch to see how things are going in general in the two kingdoms."

The two kingdoms, one ruled by the Red King and one ruled by the White King, occupied 64 acres of land arranged in a grid 8 by 8 of squares in alternating colors. The White King and his observers were in a dark square in the middle of one end of the land. A couple of minutes after the Knight spoke, he and the Hatter were joined by a Bishop, who had arrived from a neighboring dark square of land. He handed the Knight a scroll of paper and departed the way he had come.

"This is it," the Knight told the Hatter, commencing to read from the document. "'From where I sit, upon this height, the world's gone wrong, within my sight.' Hmmm. Doggerel, you see. 'The Queen's gone mad. It's in her face. She runs and runs...' Yes, yes... will he get to the point? Trains going off the tracks and across fields... Dum and Dee at one another again... increasing restlessness of the fish... a strange girl disturbing the flowers... 'The signs are plain, as you can see. Your Correspondent, Humpty D.'"

The Knight and Hatter shrugged at one another. "Dumpty's mad himself, you know," said the latter, "Perches himself on the tallest wall he can find -- nobody knows how he got up there -- and he bores anybody who passes by with what he calls his elevated views." The Knight looked gloomy and waved the paper at nothing in particular.

"It's just as I feared. It's as if his dreams are getting stranger." He sighed and waved to the Hare, who looked at him with his large, sad eyes. The Knight pointed at the king and then at his eyes, finishing with a gesture that looked decidedly queer. "A query," he explained to the Hatter. "About the King's eyes."

The Hare, apparently understanding, put two furry hands before his own eyes and twitched them from side to side. The Knight interpreted to the Hatter. "His eyes are moving rapidly. This is a dangerous time. He could wake up at any moment, and if, as we fear, he is dreaming of us, we would be gone like yesterday's fashions."

The Hatter nodded. He had heard this explanation before, but had lost the desire to keep telling the Knight of the fact. He was tired, as was the Knight. Tweedledum and Tweedledee were almost certainly mad, but they had made a persuasive case when they one day decided that everyone was a figment of the King's dreams. Even the occasional appearance of the King had been explained away. "We've all dreamt of ourselves at some time or another, so why shouldn't he? That's just good sense."

The Knight wasn't entirely convinced, but he was a good and loyal servant of his country, and couldn't take any chances. He'd been watching the King sleep for a couple of days now, and his mind was starting to wander. What if he followed it and deserted his post? What if the sleeping King under the tree was just another part of the dream? Did any of this matter? What if all of them were part of someone else's dream?

What was life, anyway, but a dream...?
.

inkstained technopeasant day

for Earth Day

2008-04-22T16:24:02Z

Featuring the famous Corsican-American actor, Iron Eyes Cody.

In the later days of the National Lampoon, there was an amusing cartoon with a picnicking couple: "For God's sake, Harold, pick up your Twinkie wrapper! There's an Indian crying over there."
.

independence

2008-04-20T21:19:38Z

.
Sarah sits on the seat, feet on the pedals
Hands on the handlebars. I steady her.
With a gentle push on her back, she starts
And off she goes, down the street of houses.
Her legs pump, her arms hold steady.
Her shirt's a dwindling spot of yellow
Down the sidewalk. She wavers confidently
Passing one house, two houses, ten houses.
How long, I wonder, will she keep coming back?

A week of progress for the youngest Williams finds a number of benchmarks. She has played Sudoku. She has swung and grasped all seven hanging rings at the playground, lighting securely on the far side. And her bike riding has gone from one to sixty.

In previous parent-child exercises, I have pushed her up to speed in our driveway and let her stop herself in the soft grass of the back yard. Then I have run down the block, awkwardly guiding her and the bike until I could let go and watch her wobble along, sometimes bringing herself to a successful stop, sometimes crashing and wailing. Then we let it rest a while.

This week, she had the urge again, and this time it was all easier. No long running, just a grip on the center of the handlebars for balance and a soft, firm push off, and she has headed off down the block, stopping three houses down and waiting for me to come give her the next push. At the end of the session, Sarah seemed to be able to start herself once in a while.

Friday was the night of the sleepover. Sarah invited five friends over, four of whom couldn't sleep over, but they had good, noisy fun until bedtime. They tried a sort of indoor baseball while I moved the Hummel music box out and tried to redistribute other breakables to better spots. They pummeled each other with floor pillows.

At one point, nobody knew where Cathy was. Sarah got increasingly freaked out, while Colin made helpful suggestions. "We know she wasn't murdered, because we would have heard the gun, or the sound of stabbing," he said. "We can call the police." Cathy turned up shortly, after we'd searched the house and sheds. She had thought nobody would notice if she took a walk, but had reckoned without the needy daughter.

Then it was over. In a pig's eye.

Colin and Sarah kept each other up and making noise until 1:30, and then Colin got everybody up at 6:30.

After a while, Colin and Sarah wanted to go to Mittineague park, so I accompanied them. As usual, whoever was in front wanted to keep going, and whoever wasn't wanted everybody else to wait. Colin justified being blocks ahead of everybody else, as he does everything, with a barrage of words. "I was going a hundred miles an hour and I couldn't stop." That was my favorite one.

We got to the park, and Sarah wanted to play on the swings, and Colin wanted to race ahead to Block Brook, so we ended up at the brook, where Colin encouraged whichever behavior was the least safe at the time. He egged Sarah into crossing some water on a log while I was locking her bike and mine to a post (leaving his as an offering to potential thieves). I got there and told them to come back, because it was about time for me to get Colin home to go to his swimming lesson. Sarah, predictably, was less eager to return on the log than to go over, and froze up partway. Colin offered encouragement. "Just don't think about the current," he said. "It could pull you away and you would drown." Taking his dad's advice, I told him to shut up about it.

At any rate, the stimulus of going to the park got Sarah starting herself on the bike quite well, and she was getting good at it. I told her that next time she wanted to go to the park, I would remember that she was making me bring her bike back, and not go. She eventually got the message and rode the rest of the way home, though by that time, of course, I was the mean daddy who never ever did anything for her. Ever.

Around 11, per previous arrangement, the electrician came to replace the breaker boxes in the basement with one that was up to code and had all the same kind of breakers in it, and to restaple most of the wires. We left him working -- he said it would be about four hours -- and headed off to Southwick's Zoo (which is in Mendon, down near Rhode Island, and nowhere near Southwick). We drove and drove, trying to follow the directions I got from the recording on the zoo's 800 number. ("Step one: take 90 to 146S to 16. Step two: ??? Step three: Profit!") We saw some interesting parts of Massachusetts and Woonsocket, Rhode Island. We looked at animals, ate some food, watched Sarah ride a pony.

We drove home, pausing for dinner at a 99 Steak House, and got in about 7:15. The electrician was still at it, the job having turned into a nightmare from hell. Part of the meter housing fell off and had to be rebuilt. He got shocked three times (which, he says, never happens). He finally got out after 8, leaving us with power, and came back this morning to finish the cosmetic parts of the job.

Sarah has been enjoying her new-found freedom, which (for now) extends to the other side of the street at the end of the block away from the highway. With good behavior and observation of safety rules, she'll extend her territory. I've been enjoying it too, sitting at the computer catching up on LJ and not having to listen to Nickelodeon.
.

movement

2008-04-16T03:07:08Z

.
It's been exciting. We're in the paperwork stages of shedding one house and getting another. Our trip up to NY had us looking at seven houses in a day, choosing two to look at again the next day, making a bid on one, having that countered, making a counter-counter bid... and then being told by our agent that the seller's agent had been putting us off so that someone else could get a cash bid in that we weren't even allowed to bid against.

The next day, we looked at our second-favorite house again, and a new one, and decided on the new one. We did the bidding thing again, and this time had one accepted, so now we get to do more paperwork and stuff.

Sarah and I spent a lot of time in the motel pool between meals and bouts of house-looking. She has shown improvement in aquatic activities, including holding her breath, jumping into the water, ducking under the water, and pushing off from the side of the pool. I managed to swim underwater most of the pool length, or at least keeping my face under when the rest of my body wanted to float back up.

She was somewhat far from being a saint on the trip, but she was pretty good a lot of the time. Coming home, I got her a book of simple sudoku puzzles, and we worked out a couple of them together. She's doing really well on that! We got a DVD player she could watch in the car as a way of keeping her a little quieter on the road, and on the return trip, Cathy only let her stop at half of the rest stops.

Today she was back in school, and after school we went to Mittineague park, where she showed improvement in another area -- swinging on the rings. She used to be able to grab the first ring and that was about it. Now she can go about five rings! This is the progress of one day. Tomorrow the good weather will continue, and we'll see if she can do six rings.

I need to try and pack some books and sheet music this week. Sarah and Cathy are off next week, so there might be less time for packing as we go see local stuff for the last time (more or less). I still haven't made it down to Hartford to see the Mark Twain house and the Charles Ives house. We have tickets for a local zoo that we haven't used yet. I got a free movie ticket for giving blood earlier in the month. So many things, so little time.
.

lights, camera...

2008-04-09T19:00:18Z

.
Flickr now allows the posting of movies. So, what's the first thing I would put online, I hear you ask...

April 2003. She's been with us less than a month, and can't walk unaided, so I showed her that she can hang on to this cart and get around. She gives it a shot.

April 2003. She also can walk around if she gets a pair of index fingers to hang onto. I was mystified by the sounds that came from her when I did this. When I shot this movie with Cathy walking her around, I realized that I was hearing the sounds of unalloyed joy. Alas, the camera only took silent movies.

June 2003. Cathy called me into the living room to see Sarah walking by herself. These are minutes after her first steps. One happy girl.

September 2003. Another all-time favorite video as Sarah (still shy of two years old) finds herself separated from me by a glass door, and for 33 seconds, uses all her wiles and facial expressions to get me to rectify the situation. Be assured that I opened it up as soon as the camera stopped.

There are also three parts of a sound movie at my Flickr page, showing Sarah's class singing a snowman song in December of 2007. I'll probably put it up later, in a separate entry, lest nobody look at any of the movies. Please let me know of any technical problems you might have -- I set all of these to be public, for instance, but you never know.
.

our H. Allen Smith reading for today

2008-04-06T22:14:55Z

.
From Let the Crabgrass Grow, H. Allen Smith writes about the Pinhole Audience of people who watch TV shows of live events, not to see the event, but to catch a glimpse of somebody they know or have met in the audience or somewhere in the scene:

SPOOKY. A cocker spaniel, Member of the Vincent Goff household in suburban New Jersey. Several years ago Spooky had the honor to romp for a full thirty minutes with a dachshund named Ballyhoopin Gaylord of Soapstone during a visit to a public park. Since that memorable day Ballyhoopin Gaylord of Soapstone has been entered each year in the dog show at Madison Square Garden and during the telecasts of this event, the Goffs gather before their screen, with Spooky, and watch intently for the appearance of the aristocratic dachshund. When he does come in view, even in a group of dogs, there are cries of delight from the Goffs, and Spooky is seized and lifted to the screen. One Goff holds him, another twists his head toward the screen, and the others cry: "Look, Spooky! There he is! You played with him! Remember? Oh, darn it, come on and look!" Unbiased and cynical observers of this scene believe that Spooky has never once recognized his old friend.

To think that this man lived in the same state as my parents in his final years, possibly less than a hundred miles away, and I never knew it until it was too late. It'd be interesting to see if there's a record anywhere of the interview Ed Murrow did of him on "Person to Person." Probably have to go to a museum and watch it in a booth, if it exists, but it would be worth it.
.

read the rest

2008-04-06T19:26:20Z

Me know. Me have problem.

Me love cookies. Me tend to get out of control when me see cookies. Me know it not natural to react so strongly to cookies, but me have weakness. Me know me do wrong. Me know it isn't normal. Me see disapproving looks. Me see stares. Me hurt inside.

When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can't stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don't think me is monster. Me just furry blue person who love cookies too much. Me no ask for it. Me just born that way.

thanx to mind_hacks
.

those dam' dirty apes have won

2008-04-06T16:52:47Z

.
Charlton Heston made some good movies. They'll be burying him just as soon as they can pry the rifle loose.
.

guest lecturer

2008-04-05T00:23:40Z

.
I went to Sarah's class to talk about my job, which is sitting here at home doing graphics and desktop publishing on the computer. I showed them hard copies of some of the things I'd done -- a couple of book covers, some Christmas cards, and coloring pictures for Sarah based on photos I'd taken.

I opened up the picture of Sarah on the slide (see my March 24 entry), and showed how I put the photo in one layer and faded it back, then traced over it in another layer, where corrections could be made, bad lines undone, and other wonderful features of Photoshop could be used.

We were going to print it at the school so the kids could color it, but the inkjet printer did the lines in a rather dotted fashion that seemed inadequate to me, so I took it home to print, and redrew most of the parts, one by one, in a heavier brush than the one I'd chosen at school. I gave it to Sarah to take in today, and they ran off copies and everybody got to color it.

She brought home thank-you cards from all the kids in the class. Each one drew a picture of me showing them the laptop, and many included Sarah's image on the screen, going down that slide. I have a soft spot for Harrison's drawing:

As you can see, he captured my inner essence, as well as Sarah on the slide. Harrison's dad is an artist, and Harrison is well on his way. Sarah brought home a drawing of the genie from Disney's Aladdin that was, admittedly, off model, but which showed that he knows how to give a drawing personality.

I also gave blood and broke a tooth today, but I think I've mentioned both of those. Time for bed or something.
.

surprise

2008-04-05T00:00:41Z

.
I tried something new at the sushi place tonight -- tempura California roll. A basic Cali roll is a bit passe for me, but the tempura thing was intriguing, so I forewent the black dragon roll and ordered the t.C.r. and half a crunch roll in addition to the customary shrimp and unagi nigiri.

I picked up a piece, dipped it lightly, and popped it in my mouth. The unexpected warmth and the tempura batter were a pleasant surprise. I began chewing, and the back bottom tooth that's been complaining lately whenever I bite on anything (however soft) gave its loudest twinge yet. I carefully finished the bite. When I started my next bite, I realized that the tooth was no longer all there. No fragments remained in my mouth, so apparently it went down with the previous piece of maki.

I told Cathy what was happening. Mr. Dong came to the table and asked if I was okay, and I told him about the tooth. Not your fault, I told him. Sarah solemnly advised me to chew on the other side. I thanked her for this advice. I finished the meal in a subdued way, resentful that my anticipated enjoyment of tasty sushi should be spoiled by dental inadequacy.

Driving home, Cathy opined that for a broken tooth, they should have comped us at least one roll. I didn't say much.
.

memorial miscellany

2008-04-04T20:21:32Z

.
I stopped off at the nearby Lutheran church to give blood today (what the heck, I had some) and saw something interesting from the parking lot.

It's a shed. But not just any shed...

...it's a shed with a lovely stained-glass window. There's something you don't see every day.

I've also been taking pictures in and around local cemeteries.

This is a design I haven't seen before. It has a metal frame (on a stick) with what appears to be a concrete inner piece (the back -- not shown here -- had the look of something that was poured, rather than pried from the earth) with carving on it. There are two side pieces that may have held something. Lanterns? Planters? On either side, there are raised curved stones (one of which has fallen off and become embedded in the soil).

On the way home from something I'll write about later, I also went through the Jewish cemetery again to look at some things that I saw from Google maps. They turned out to be nothing much, but I happened to see another grave with a photo of a young boy on it, which has suffered from the ravages of time.

Another thing I was able to get a decent shot of at last is the rosette from the first harpsichord Dad made. This was carved by his friend Dick Summerfeld, and includes the family initial in the trees, Dad's Roman numeral in the fence the faun stands on, and a reference to his bowhunting held by Diana. He replaced this with a new rosette he carved himself before he sold the instrument.

Interestingly, two of these photos have already had one view each. Either people are fast out there -- perhaps Flickr shows photos as they go up? -- or else Flickr notes sadly that nobody ever looks at my pretty pictures and, from time to time, assigns arbitrary "pity views" to my page stats.

Gotto go now. I have to watch TV with Sarah. Yay, Sponge Bob!
.

where are they now?

2008-04-04T15:38:47Z

.
Happy birthday to casheeish, who posted a few times and vanished.

Here's to bygone days. Write if you get work.
.

for a good time

2008-04-03T20:53:35Z

.
There are worse ways to pass the time than going to YouTube and searching on the word "automaton." It brings up some amazing 19th and 20th century lifelike mechanical simulated humans, like the charming harpist (she's missing her harp and some other things, but still has her personality) or "Nancy," who could teach today's CGI artists a thing or two about realism.

harpist

Nancy

Chinese magician

the silver swan

cat in a milk can

lady with a fan

Well, that's enough for a start.
.

there is hope for America

2008-03-31T23:43:18Z

.
Pat Paulsen is running for President again.

thanx to Mark Evanier again (video link at Evanier's site)
.

variant

2008-03-31T03:01:50Z

.
One of the last dreams before being awakened the first time by Sarah was an interesting variant on the "nude in public" dream. In this one, I was in a restaurant with no shoes. Oh, the shame of it. I pulled my pants legs over my feet (you can do that in a dream) and walked back to my table, where the shoes were. Lots of people in the place seemed to know me. There were several shout-outs to themes in waking life. Moving house, check. Public radio station, check. Graveyard, check. The graveyard, by the way, had an interesting grave marker in it -- a full-size piano. If it didn't actually work as a piano, it at least seemed to have some sort of mechanism or speaker inside.

The weather has been verging on acceptable this weekend, and Sarah wants to take advantage of that. Also, she has a new bat and ball, so we've been out in the yard, practicing. She's getting where she can hit the ball, provided I can throw it pretty much at the bat. Neither one of us is perfect, but the signs are encouraging. We went to the kiddie movie on Saturday morning, which was Easter in Bunnyland, an hour of unimagination. Sarah's seen it three times now, two of them with me. We ran into her friend David from the preschool and chatted a while.

Today, by contrast, we ran into her friend David from kindergarten. We're seeing Davids right and left. I took her to Stanley Park after breakfast this morning, where we didn't run into anybody at all. Cathy took her to Mittineague Park in the afternoon, and they saw Traigh (briefly) and Harrison (for somewhat longer). Harrison didn't do too well at baseball, but he's the best artist in Sarah's class. His dad's an artist too.

It's eleven o'clock for me. What sort of dreams will I have tonight? And how can I find out?
.

zzz

2008-03-29T13:32:01Z

.
I dreamed last night that I was back in first grade. Not that I was young, of course, just that I was sitting in the classroom with the kids, for some reason. Perhaps I was sent there by a judge for reasons I can't begin to fathom. Fortunately, I didn't have any problem with the seat.

It would have been a pretty unexceptional dream, but it had a little punch line. On the way out of the room, I stopped for a few words with Dad, who was there too. Only in the dream, it was kind of funny! (W-wah, wah!)
.

remiss

2008-03-29T13:29:34Z

.
I forgot to blog against torture, mostly because I don't regard myself as much of a blogger, and could add nothing of substance, but it's still worth repeating what others have said: It's immoral to drag the country down to the level of movie villains for the sake of something that, even if it worked, would negate the ideals this country supposedly stands for. It's going to take years to recover from the blot it has put on the soul of the nation -- and that won't start until we bleeding stop doing it.

And the kicker, of course, is that it doesn't work. Torturing somebody we picked up by mistake or to satisfy a fellow countryman's grudge never got us any worthwhile information, never made a ticking bomb get stopped, never saved a single life. So far, it's just made us more enemies.

Mission accomplished, geniuses! You didn't just torture a bunch of foreigners and Americans who were probably more innocent than guilty, you tortured the Constitution and the laws and treaties that explicitly forbade it with a bunch of sleazy lawyeristic nonsense. You tortured the language to pretend it was something other than it was.

I invite everybody who says waterboarding (only the most notorious of an array of nasty tactics used and perfected by a roster of our country's most pungent enemies) isn't torture to submit to it at intervals. See how it feels.
.

happy happy, joy joy!

2008-03-26T13:50:55Z

.
And a Happy Birthday to kate_schaefer! Who knew, back in those halcyon Azapa days, that we'd all be sitting at our computers contributing to an instant apa that collated 3600 times an hour? Have many more!
.

family day

2008-03-24T13:26:46Z

.
Five years ago today, on the other side of the planet:

Three people became a family.

Before.

After.

(Gee, I hope she doesn't do that again.)

The human blur.

Contemplative moment.

Guangzhou group shot.

She looks to us for rescue. One second later, Cathy obliges.

Not long after that, she has perfected the wrinkled lip and cold sneer of command.

Home in Virginia.

Making the rounds. "Ho hum, more presents for me."

Kid with broom, 2003.

The discovery of playground equipment. (England, 2003)

Every day, I got to pick her up at daycare. I love this picture. (also shown: Liam and Serenity)

Christmas, 2003.

Early 2004.

Cousin Verity, 2004.

"Bye bye, love you. Better step back."

Which brings us to Massachusetts (2005).

Chinese New Year, 2006, representing Year of the Horse.

Fall, 2007

Soccer champ, 2007

Slide!

We had a family hug this morning, then looked for her other glove for a while. I saw her onto the bus. Tonight we'll have Chinese food (Sarah's idea) and corn and potatoes (also her idea) for the special five-year celebration.
.

not on strike

2008-03-21T13:03:32Z

.
Best wishes to my friends who are, but I don't think it'll do much good. This is something I get for free anyway. As some have said, it was a good ride, and it didn't make sense to expect it to last forever.

I turned on the VCR to watch yesterday's tape of Crossfire. As often happens, the audio of an earlier recording started before the proper audio started to synchronize, so Tucker Carlson's face was showing as Tim Allen's voice welcomed us to "Tool Time." Well, that fits.

Cathy just said her farewell for the day, leaving Sarah and me at home for another fun-filled father-and-daughter day. Outside, the cold winds noisily fling stuff around. It's going to be a day to cling to the space heater.

Yesterday I managed to delete a message unheard from the phone. I called Best Buy on the off chance it was them with my iPod. By a coincidence, the thing had just come in and they said it would be ready in a couple of hours. A few minutes later, somebody called to tell me the same thing. They must not have been the ones who called. Was it a house buyer? Somebody looking for my services?

I skimmed LJ some more and then headed for Best Buy (ominous organ music here). When my turn at the counter arrived, they brought my machine out. "Has it been fixed?" I asked. No, I was told, they couldn't find anything wrong with it. I guess their guy who told me to get it fixed was just mistaken, and that's why I haven't had an iPod for the last four weeks. Just one of those things. Then they asked if I was ready to pay for it.

Pay?

Yes, there's a diagnostic fee.

But they didn't do anything!

Well, according to the eight-point greyed-back print on a sheet of paper I signed, they could charge me. My recollection is that the talk of a fee was applicable to people who hadn't paid extra money for the wonderful service plan. I said they'd taken it from me for two weeks and not done anything because they couldn't find my SKU in their own records, and then they took it away for two more weeks and didn't do anything with it at all, and I didn't think I should have to pay for that. A supervisor was sent for.

I repeated my tale of woe, not even remembering to mention the part about how I just came by to ask a question and was told by the desk guy that I should let them take it and work their magic on it. Nor did I voice my theory that they looked at it and estimated that it wouldn't break down until after June, when the service [sic] plan would expire. But at least I kept a degree of control over my voice and didn't flail my arms. He gave me a form to sign that said I was satisfied with the service I had received. It mentioned a $34.95 fee. "Does this mean I'm paying thirty-five dollars?" I asked. He said it didn't, so I signed and thanked him. I wandered off and looked at videos for a couple of minutes, but didn't feel like spending any money there.

I paused before leaving to put earphones in and make sure it worked before I was out of the store. Whoever worked on it had deleted the contents of the hard drive, changed all the preferences, and renamed the machine, but it functioned. I limped on home and proceeded to refill it with my own material (having earlier solved my own problem of the mysteriously empty iTunes).

Oh yes, I limped. Not a lot of pain in the toe, but my morning visit to the podiatrist had resulted in some toenail work and a bulkier bandage. If that relatively minor trimming doesn't make the rest of the infection go away, they'll do something slightly more drastic next Wednesday. Heal, I say! Heal, toe!

That evening, Cathy introduced a program at the library by a woman from the Mass Audubon Society, about the changes in wildlife in Massachusetts over the last 300 years. Sarah wanted to go, and Cathy said I could bring her. We sat in the front row, and Sarah stayed interested until we finally made her leave at about 8:15 (although she played quietly with a toy near the end). The woman cleverly kept Sarah involved, posing easy questions for her. I was impressed.

When we got home, my iPod was almost done refilling. It stopped because it was out of room -- I'm guessing new photos overfilled it. I deleted stuff (a down payment, perhaps; I'd like to delete more, on principle) and then everything fit. Things were back to normal. Before going up to bed, I put the Rio Volt player away. "You done good," I told it, placing it in a drawer.
.

I'm a broken tooth, darling.

2008-03-19T16:40:55Z

.
As bibliotrope points out, tomorrow would have been Fred "Mister" Rogers's 80th birthday. Anyone inclined to celebrate the day could do worse than to go to Way Out Junk and download the totally amazing circa-1960 LP "Tomorrow on the Children's Corner," which is a self-contained musical fantasy starring Josie Carey and the many puppet voices of Rogers. (Note: there are two download links. The first one seems to be the one that works at the moment.) The songs go from touching to downright silly. My favorite is Lady Elaine Fairchild singing a reprise of X the Owl's "You're Special," only in her case, it's all about herself.

"I'm a leaky pipe.
I'm a garlic bud.
I'm a soggy match, I'm a burlap patch, I'm an itchy scratch,
I'm a sea of mud!
I'm special..."

I was happy to furnish the site's proprietor with mp3s made from a cassette that I pulled from my cousin's girlfriend's copy of the LP when we lived in Houston in the early 80s. I've never seen another copy of it, though a university in Indiana seems to have a piano-vocal score of the show. (They also have another Rogers musical, which might be out there somewhere on LP. Oh, man!)

Special note: on Friday, PBS seems to be showing bibliotrope's favorite episode, which highlights a performance of an opera about Daniel Striped Tiger (also on the LP). My friends in Colorado are big fans of the operas they used to make up for this show. I'm going to try and set my VCR for it, and I'm phoning my friend before I forget.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, we'll start the day tomorrow with a song or two. Happy birthday, Fred!

update: redaxe points out in comments that tomorrow's "Wear a Sweater Day" in Mr. R.'s honor. A cardigan, if you have one.
.

"The wise man learns things, but the fool does not."

2008-03-18T17:15:54Z

The working man is fit and fed, and stabs the sluggard in his bed.

For every pound of sand you eat, another shilling's yours to keep.

A heavy ship cannot sink.

He who dines on human meat, shall never want for things to eat.

...these and other bits of The Lesser Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin, can be found at Something Awful.
.