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Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Tex Messaging
A thick greeting-card-sized envelope that turned up in my snail mailbox a few days ago with a Crawford, Texas return address puzzled me. It isn't the purpose of this blog to air my political views such as they are; suffice it to say that anything coming from that particular location is of little interest to me. Still, it was hand-addressed, my name was spelled correctly and the envelope bore a "Love" stamp. What the hey, I opened it. Ah. An invitation to my cousin's daughter's wedding in a few weeks. In Waco, where my cousin lives. The bride-elect lives in Crawford, hence the return address. Last I heard from her, a few years ago, she was living in a different Texas town.
Alas, I won't be attending the nuptials. Not for political or any adverse reasons. Only the late arrival of the invite says "we're thinking of you but not expecting you to plan a cross-country trip on short notice." I'm happy for the happy couple and happy too that I let my curiosity get the better of me and opened what I had feared was a solicitation for a political donation and would otherwise have tossed. Now that I have an updated address I can make a nuptial donation instead. Yay, love!
P.S. My cousin's daughter is of course my first cousin once removed. If I had a daughter, she and my cousin's daughter would be second cousins to each other. This is of no particular relevance, but I took the time to learn this distinction upon meeting a slew of my dad's cousins a decade ago and like to air it out from time to time.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
9:21 PM
Brownian movement
Friend Marty treated me to lunch at Memphis BBQ today. While waiting for our tardy entrées we shot the breeze and sipped our respective drinks: unsweetened iced tea for me, pink(!) lemonade for him. Usually the restaurant serves soft drinks in ruby red plastic tumblers which render cola visually indistinguishable from water, but for some reason or another Marty's pink drink came in a see-thru container today. Not a problem, as he is very secure in his masculinity. I mention it only because it sparked a discussion of a mutual colleague who is a big believer in folk remedies, one of which is that ordinary water can be endowed with laxative properties by being stored in a brown bottle. Odd; I would have thought that a green bottle would be more appropriate to make you (heh, heh) go.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
6:56 PM
If I look drawn today, it's because ...
There was still some leftover migraine pain last night, so I took a double dose of Excedrin Migraine shortly before going to bed. Big mistake -- I forgot that the magic ingredient is caffeine. It took care of the pain, but left my brain wide awake long after I turned out the light. Hoping to catch at least a few hours of sleep before Monday morning rolled around, I tried a deep-breathing relaxation exercise to no avail and a tried-and-true affirmation/visualization trick, also in vain. Finally I resorted to the countdown method. That's where you imagine that you are painting huge numbers on a blank wall, starting at 100 and counting down. Usually I nod off somewhere in the 80s, although I have been known to make it to the 30s before dropping my imaginary brush. I sometimes wonder what would happen if I ever made it to 1 without falling asleep. Would it be like that falling dream, where it is said if you dream you hit the ground you die? I came close to finding out last night; I had sailed past 50 and was still as awake as ever. I tried "drawing" every set of 10 in a different style: chalk board, pen-and-ink, even finger paint. Thinking of new media to try kept me from worrying how fast 1 was approaching. Whether that did the trick or I finally just ran out of steam, I'll never know. I fell asleep somewhere around number 7. In crayon.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
12:48 PM
The shape I'm in
Wednesday and Thursday evenings my blogging time was taken up by attending two different types of comedy events. Wednesday was Open Mike Night at Wiseacres in Tyson's, where a cyber-acquaintance was performing. A few of us from the e-mail chat list we know her from went out and found ourselves exposed to a variety of standups with a variety of skill levels and a single theme: jerking off. Hey, at least there was no cover charge. Thursday I caught the ComedySportz show and was pleasantly surprised to find some of my favorite players playing. Thursdays of late have been given over to new performers but this was all-star night or something. Good show, good show. A few of them even learned what a trapezoid was, after I suggested that as an alternate hula hoop shape.
As if to be punished for suggesting "trapezoid", I woke up in the middle of Thursday-to-Friday night with one of the worst types of migraine I get: a VERY sharp pain in the right temple that hurts if I move any part of my body. Sigh. I hoped to sleep it off by morning but no such luck. I got up to take something only to be overcome by nausea before I could reach the medicine cabinet. Just as well, I suppose. Sometimes throwing up brings instant relief, but not in this case. So I stayed home and slept all day and all night, about 36 hours total. I feel 95% better today, but there is a phantom migraine bruise on my temple. That'll teach me to flaunt my knowledge of polygons.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
3:55 PM
Let a smile be your umbrella
Had I not been wrestling with a gust of wind for possession of my umbrella as I crossed the street to the deli for lunch today, I might never have noticed the sign in the window that gives the name as "Market Grrill." Ar, ar. Unintentional humor.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
7:57 PM
Starts with "f" and ends with "uck"
It's never pleasant hearing the siren of a fire truck when you're in traffic. It's meant to be discordant, to get your attention, to get you to move the hell out of the way. You miss a light because you had to pull over to let the firefighters by? Irritating, but too bleeding bad. You're just heading home after work and only a block away from your turnoff. Their mission is more important than yours at this particular moment. Your discomfort level increases when you see the trucks -- one is bad enough, plural much more so -- turn onto your street, which is a dead-end. You now know for sure that the emergency has befallen one of your neighbors or even you, if it's your building they're racing toward. You simultaneously pray that it's NOT your building and that even if it is someone else's building that it is a false alarm. When the light changes you follow the trucks down your street only to find that they are blocking the driveway to your accustomed parking area. Another irritation, but you note with relief that the trucks are offloading personnel who are heading into a building across the driveway from yours. You are also relieved to not see any sign of smoke or flame. After turning around and driving all the way back to the end of the street the way you came then circling around to park on the side street, you see three trucks' worth of firefighters milling around with a sense of purpose but not urgency. By the time you have parked and walked down the hill more firefighters are walking away from the building than were hurrying toward it. A passerby asks one of them if all is ok. Affirmative. "Well, bless y'all and thank you," she says. He responds with equal warmth, wishing her a good evening. I'll have to keep the gratitude expressed by the passerby and felt by me in mind when I climb the hill to my car in the morning. I'd be a hell of a lot more inconvenienced if my home had burned down and no one was there to put it out.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
10:33 PM
I guess that's why it's called histrionics
More shouting from next door woke me up yesterday, but it was mid-morning and time for me to be up anyway. This time it was definitely an over-the-phone argument and he was self-righteously angry instead of woe-is-me desperate. He sounded like such a spoiled little boy that it's no wonder he periodically has these fallings-out with whomever is in his orbit. Sheesh.
On a side note, there's a Jim tie-in here. Way back when, I lived in a different building and had a similiarly excitable and late-night wailing neighbor, a woman Jim and I quickly dubbed Screaming Mimi. I guess now I live next to Screaming Himi.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
10:17 PM
Sob Story
Until about 6 months ago the unit next to mine, the one that shares a common bedroom wall, was occupied by a couple with a baby. It wasn't as bad as I had feared, as most of the baby noise I heard was laughter, although she did go through a period where every night she would wake up screaming just as I was about to fall into a deep sleep on the other side of the bedroom wall. Apart from the sheer volume that kept me almost as sleep-deprived as her parents must have been, the crying was upsetting on a visceral level because one has a gut instinct to want to comfort the baby but that wall and the fact that it was not my child and therefore not my prerogative kept me from doing so.
The new occupant is a young man, probably in his 20s, has no baby living with him that I have heard and is presumably single. I've only seen him a few times in the hallway and once outside on the front steps to the building, where he was smoking a cigarette and having a cell phone conversation. When he noticed that my hands were full of grocery bags he surprised me by taking the trouble to open the front door for me although he wasn't going in himself. (In contrast, the neighbor on my other side has been known to let grocery-laden neighbors put down their packages and fish for their key while waiting behind them, nothing but his own key in his hand.) The "good" neighbor plays loud music occasionally but at least it is from his bedroom and in the late afternoon or early evening when I'm usually out in the living room anyway so it doesn't bother me as much as I could let it.
What does bother me about this neighbor is that on a handful of occasions now he, like the baby neighbor before him, has kept me awake with loud sobbing. My first thought the first time my sleep was disturbed by his wailing was "oh god, he's had a death in the family" until I deduced from the tortured one-sided dialog I couldn't help but overhear that he was being dumped over the phone. In the middle of the night. Sigh. Still, this sort of thing comes with the territory in shared-wall living.
After it happened a few more times, including last night -- or more precisely, early this morning -- I altered my conclusion to "this guy has some serious issues." Mind you, I think no ill of a man who is not afraid to cry, but this one sounds so unhinged in the throes of his nocturnal angst that I don't even dare bang on the wall to plead for a little peace. You might as well ask a baby not to cry. There is always one-sided dialog but I don't know if he's on the phone or alone addressing his demons. Part of me wants to listen to see if I can understand what it is he's going through yet I generally end up turning on the radio and covering my ears with a pillow.
I've also realized that being unable to act on hard-wired maternal instinct when someone else's infant is crying is nowhere near as upsetting as having to hear a grown man -- a grown man who is a stranger -- wail plaintively on the other side of your bedroom wall.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
10:48 AM
CDB
Sitting at a user's desk today to install some software, I browsed the "toys" on her desk while waiting for the CD to spin up. A pipe-cleaner flower with attached pipe-cleaner bee triggered a memory of Jim, the "JRW" referenced over on the left of this page. We had been browsing in The Nature Company and I tried on a glove puppet in the shape of a huge bumble bee. The glove part was black; that was the bee's legs, so I guess my knuckles were the bee's knees. The bee body was a huge stuffed puff that sat on the back of the hand. Jim admired it for a second then deadpanned "But won't that big bee block your view when you drive?" The combination of his timing, delivery and the fact that I was so completely in love with him tickled me into instant uncontrollable giggles. People turned their heads at the sound and smiled at us.
A bloop sound on the computer indicating that the CD was ready to start the installation process brought me back from my pleasant memory. I started clicking and installing. When I got to the part where the CD key had to be typed in, I turned the jewel case over to find it and was momentarily stunned to see that the first set of 5 alphanumeric characters in the code was CDJRW. He must have been remembering right along with me.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
9:01 PM
We're gonna need a bigger wheel, Part D'oh!
After posting the previous item here I submitted it as an afterthought to Gene Weingarten's Online Chat at washingtonpost.com. Scroll way down to nearly the end to see it and his response.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
1:21 PM
We're gonna need a bigger wheel
An AP story about a shark exhibit at the National Aquarium contains this astonishing statement:
"People are more likely to be injured by a hamster or killed by lightning than by a shark."
Lightning I can see as dangerous, but HAMSTERS? Possibly apocryphal stories of deviant sexual practices involving hamsters and body parts that never see sunlight aside, how much damage can those little fellas do compared to sharks? Being chomped on the thumb by a golden hamster isn't exactly on a par with being chomped on the body by a great white shark.
Feh. Trust sharks to have the public relations people all in their corner.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
10:11 AM
Auto biography
Bumper stickers can be counted upon to give the casual observer an idea of the owner's politics, preferred vacation locales, and their kids' academic standing. Oh, and around here anyway, nationality. This is information generally of no use to me, yet gives me something to read during red light waits. So I wasn't particularly surprised this morning to find myself behind an SUV bedecked with stickers suggesting that the owner was of Scottish descent, if not birth. Even the vanity license plate was an abbreviation of "Scotland Forever." A flash of sunlight reflected on the metal make/model nameplate showed just how patriotic this driver was: the vehicle was a Toyota Highlander.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
4:38 PM
Will the circus be unbroken
A couple of years ago my dad was seriously ill for several months. Perhaps feeling all too mortal, he started sharing stories via e-mail with me about his childhood. One in particular I saved, for reasons not quite clear to me, except for it gave me an insight into my own sense of humor:
The last time I was laid up for a long time was 60 years ago when I had all the childhood diseases in one year; Chicken Pox, Measles, Whooping Cough. I had to repeat the second grade. But, my new second grade teacher was Miss Barnum of the Barnum/Bailey circus people. She spent all her vacations with the circus and had lots of pictures and stories. So, there was some compensation for missing all that school. I've asked [your] mom to tell me circus stories, but she seems to not have any circus experience.
I even forgot that I had even saved it until an improv classmate mentioned recently that he was related to the Barnum family.
Dang. Now I've got a craving for some cotton candy.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
7:54 PM
Soup-y Sales
Co-worker Kitti giggled uncontrollably when I shared the following with her; I hope others get a smile out of it as well. Today I got lunch at a deli operated by non-native English speakers and noticed that they had new signs up advertising their soup selections. Today's soupy offerings included "Clam Chowder Soup." I had a sandwich, but will try the chowder soup on my next visit.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
6:59 PM
Well, duh
This Reuters headline appeared online about a week ago.
Sudden, Unexplained Death May Kill Many Adults
Death by death. Go figure!
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
8:49 PM
Note to self
Singing in the mall elevator is ok, as long as you're the only occupant. Singing Shake Your Groove Thing is permissible, if that's what makes you happy at that particular moment. But for pete's sake, woman, pay attention to the floor indicator so you can stop singing Shake Your Groove Thing before the doors open and you find yourself serenading 3 generations of mesoamerican shoppers!
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
8:40 PM
Good Riddance (The Timing of Your Life)
This afternoon I cleared my work PC of a bunch of accumulated bits and pieces, including some saved IM conversations with an ex. I read through them before deleting, to try to remember what it was like when I actually liked him and to see if I had written evidence of his promising to repay a few small financial loans I made to him and for which I of course have to date not been repaid. As usual I had MP3s playing in the background, just randomly ordered stuff to work or goof off by. I watched our IM conversations getting progressively less kissy-schmoopy and more detached on both our parts. I realized all over again how much better off I am without him, at which point my MP3 player confirmed this by playing Green Day's Good Riddance.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
5:07 PM
My-My-My Generation, Part Deux
A prolonged discussion on a mailing list comprising mainly 40- and 50- somethings centered around who was a Baby Boomer and who was not. As if being a Boomer was the be-all, don't you know. Someone stated that Gen-Xers' first memories had to do with television, whereas that was not the case with Baby Boomers. Born in 1960, I've always been labeled a Baby Boomer (not to mention the fact that I kick butt in Baby Boom Edition Trivial Pursuit), yet one of my earliest memories involves television, in this case the big ol' Twonky-type set that was positioned in our living room just to the left of the front door. When I was 2 or 3 my dad was the moderator of one of those boring Sunday morning roundtable discussion shows. Early every Sunday he would leave the house via the front door, turn left on the walk and appear not too very long after that on the magic TV box by the door. I spent a lot of time trying to find the trap door that he used to get into the box from the outside, with encouragement from my older, smirking, wise-guy Boomer brother.
I suppose there are those who would submit that my credulity stands as proof that I am really a Gen-Xer.
this piece woven by Sandra Hull @
9:13 PM