Last night Jen and I drove to D.C. to visit with my sister Renie, who’s finishing up the first of several business-related training courses and staying in Crystal City. We got some Thai food and caught up on the events of the last couple of months, then retired to the hotel bar for an aptertif. Her job seems to be going really well, and it looks like she’ll be down this way some more in the coming months, which is good news. During the evening, my already sore throat began to hurt more and more, until it swelled up disturbingly on the ride home. This morning, I woke up almost unable to swallow after a long night of terrible sleep. In a decision that’s pretty rare for me (usually I need to be spurting blood from a major artery to seek professional medical treatment), I called the doctor and made an appointment. I’ve always been able to shrug off most illnesses, and injury is something that just gets in the way of finishing what I’m doing, but this was different-a friend of ours is just getting over a case of strep, and I didn’t want to nurse along a dose of that for two weeks without checking it out.

So I went and filled out the same damned form, got weighed and measured and prodded, and had a test run, and it came back negative. Most likely this is some viral thing. While I was there, I asked about the pain that runs up my forearm after a long day at the mouse, and she told me that it’s not carpal tunnel, but most likely a tendon strain, and she gave me a referral to a physical therapist to get a brace for it. So, good news on that front.

So I apologize for my ‘B’ game last night, Ren- I was feeling more under the weather than I thought I was. We’re looking forward to seeing you again in two weeks.

This afternoon Jen and I had the pleasure of attending a baby shower for Todd and Heather, who are expeting triplets, for those folks who haven’t been keeping score. Because of some on-again, off-again scares where she visited the hospital, the whole thing was up in the air until Friday, so we put off going to pick up our gifts until yesterday afternoon. There’s a chain baby superstore right down the street from here where they were registered, so Jen and I grabbed a cart, printed out a list, and dove in.

As we drove through the aisles, picking out items and checking them off the list, I realized just how much I don’t know about having children. There are breast pumps which look like devices out of a Dr. Seuss nightmare, and retail for $300. There are child seats with more straps, restraints, safety devices, and knobs than the ejection seat of a modern fighter jet. (And the selection of child seats seems to parallel that of luxury automobiles: there are Eddie Bauer, Jeep, and John Lennon strollers, each with its own coordinating accessories. Yoko, you whore.) There is a special “line” of nursery linens that coordinate and match named after some woman WASPier than Martha Stewart, and which cost more than the sheets on my bed.

After wandering through this array of capitalism for about half an hour, I was beginning to lose focus. I happened to see a little girl following her mommy wearing a shiny green frog raincoat—the one with the eyeballs sewed into the hood—and matching froggy boots. And I found myself wanting a little kid for myself. Jen and I continued through the store, and I think we were both doing the same thing: shopping for the triplets but making a mental list for ourselves. More than once, I found myself looking at something and thinking, “I want that for our kid. I’m gonna buy us one of those.” One of the good things about not having any kids of our own yet is that we get all soft and mushy over our friends’ kids. We kind of went a little crazy, but as we left, we knew it was worth it.

As we walked in the door this afternoon, one thing suddenly became clear: we were the only couple present without children. I have to extend apologies to anybody I didn’t introduce myself to, as I got into people overload very quickly. We got to visit with the Heazletts and see little Stellan, who is growing bigger (is it really eight months? Jeez) and catch up with some old aquaintances from the MICA scene. All in all, we had a great afternoon with everybody, and I think Todd and Heather had a good day.

Whew. After a productive meeting with our accountant this evening, we learned we are filing jointly and only on the hook for something less than $500 total (which is pretty remarkable given the amount of untaxed freelance income we generated last year. Don’t worry, though, Uncle Sam is definitely taking his pound of flesh.) The irony of meeting to discuss one’s taxes on this auspicious day was not lost un us, but luckily she made it painless and easy. (Email me if you’re looking for a fantastic CPA in the Baltimore area&mdashI’ve been with Laura for going on ten years now, and if she can make sense of my convoluted financial situation, she should be the new head of the World Bank.)

Flush with success (and the knowledge that the money we’d saved in the event of major tax catastrophe could be put to better, and more pressing uses), we walked down the street and treated ourselves to a mediocre dinner at an Irish pub in Bel Air that I won’t recommend.

Now I’m writing this, laying on our plastic-wrapped mattress in the middle of the living room, listening to the roar of the water falling from our roof to the ground below, and wondering if all the pretty flowers that have been peeking out this last week will get pounded to smithereens in the next 24 hours. The mattress is 2 for 3 so far-last night left us both in knots for some reason, so we made some adjustments to the frame and we’re giving it another night. Cross your fingers.

Well, I can’t say this news is a suprise. Going to jail as a child molester in a wheelchair with MS is going to really, really suck. In other news, I bet these people didn’t see this coming. I have all kinds of questions related to the morality of that decision, let alone the right-to-life argument.

In the Could-Be-A-Joke department, the Mobtown Shank reported last night that Atomic Books would be moving to Ellicott City, down the street from us. Which would mean that instead of never making it into Hampden to visit the old location, I’ll be shopping at the new one frequently for stuff I can’t afford.

As my lovely wife wrote yesterday, it looks like things are beginning to bloom for us here in Maryland. The tulip tree is about two or three days away from exploding, the crocuses are blooming in neat lines along our flowerbeds, and the daffodils sprinkled around the house are waking slowly.

Day two with the new mattress is going well; I’m not sure about Jen but my back has felt better, my neck doesn’t hurt anymore, and I slept with three cats stapling me to the bed. Putting the futon frame underneath didn’t make any noticable difference to me, but it might have helped Jen somewhat.

I talked to the project manager for the drainage project this morning, and among other things, he told me this process has taken the better part of twenty years to get going, and that it’s too late to tack an extra 40 feet of piping onto the end of the line. So that means we’re most likely going to suffer more drainage issues in the future; my guess is that the folks out behind us are going to have a swamp for a backyard (as their back lawn comprises the majority of the low land.) Swell.

Meanwhile, Jen got an unsolicited email this morning from some woman who suggests that a personal relationship with Christ will make her life better. While most of the Jesus-thumping letters I’ve seen have been of the ranting, poorly written variety, this one is at least spellchecked. I’m going to weigh in over here on unsolicited religious emails, especially the ones that are six paragraphs long and signed by “Sister Mitzi”:

Sister Mitzi

I don’t really care

I didn’t ask you to proselytize

about J.C.

I’m happy for you

and you’re tight with God

I don’t need you

to get all Fallwell on me today

okay?

You’re born again

what’s your fucking deal

if I want to talk to Christ

I’ll do it myself, alright?

Jesus is just alright with me, and I’m pretty sure he’s OK with my wife too. I’m happy that the carpenter made a difference in your life, but don’t try to bulldoze your beliefs on her or anybody else. If she wants to find God, she’ll do it herself—if there’s one person in this world who has a healthier respect for and understanding of religion than my wife, I’ve yet to meet them.

(special thanks to Night Ranger, for allowing me to bastardize a truly horrendous song.)

Addendum: I suppose I should clarify a little here. I’m not anti-God, or anti-religion. Actually, I’m the opposite: I respect the right of any citizen of this country to practice whatever religion they choose, just like I don’t care if somebody wants to marry a water buffalo—their beliefs are their own. What I resent is the overbearing way some folks push their God on other people. What I mistrust are the motives of large groups of people who believe their way is the only way. On the other side of the coin, we have a good friend who recently asked us to come visit his church and hear him play one Sunday. There was no subtext, no ulterior motive, and no proselytizing. The sermon was down-to-earth, the people were friendly, and the door was left open.

This, in my mind, is the correct (and polite) way to approach someone else’s faith. Especially in these times, when “faith” is such a loaded word. Thanks for giving me some hope, Dave.

When I was a kid, I had a friend in the third grade named Eric. We both liked to draw pictures of Smokey & the Bandit, the trucks from Convoy and the General Lee on tabloid-sized sheets of construction paper. (With the exception of the Dukes of Hazzard, we had never seen these other shows; I knew what they looked like from the 4″x5″ HBO program guides my parents got in the mail.) One weekend Eric invited me over to his house to sleep over, and we spent our evening watching Bo and Luke outwit Roscoe over a huge bowl of popcorn and ice cream. When it came time to sleep, I found that Eric had bunk beds—a novelty for me—and that the mattresses had a peculiar crinkling sound to them. Every time I shifted the slightest bit, the mattress made a sound like somebody strangling a Hefty bag. Later I realized that they were plastic-covered, which was probably a smart idea for a boy of nine, but my mattress at home was soft, firm, and quiet. Eric snored, and his room smelled funny, and between the smell and the snoring and the crinkling, I was ready to go home the next day. We continued our artistic pursuits at school, but I didn’t sleep over there again.

When we were at the IKEA the other day inquiring about a return policy on our mattress, the lady behind the counter informed us that there’s no official try-out policy for mattresses, and lowered her voice to suggest that we leave the plastic on to prevent any “accidents.” My first thought was to tell the woman that we don’t piss the bed, but I realized later that she meant something else. Now that I think about it, I’m kind of offended by that.

Regardless, we tested it out last night. Once I got over the novelty of sleeping on the living room floor again, and settled in, it wasn’t too bad. Besides Sage pacing the perimeter and complaining (he doesn’t like plastic bags) and the crackling as I adjusted my position, I didn’t sleep too badly—my main complaint is that our comforter is very heavy and it made me sweat. It’s still too stiff for Jen, so we’re going to try the futon frame underneath tonight to see if that will help the situation.

The list of things I’d like to have, but have been putting off buying for an indeterminate amount of time:

A new pair of sunglasses. My old pair, which made it through about three years of heavy usage, finally bid farewell in the airport van on our way to the hotel in Rome. Arrivederci, il mio amore!

A new cellphone. You’ve heard me complain about this before, and I think this will be the first thing to get updated. Most likely this weekend…

A usable car radio. The unit in the Jeep has been doing well in the cold weather, but now that it’s getting warmer, the important part of the NPR report I’m listening to fades into staticky oblivion. Crutchfield actually has a Blaupunkt CD deck with a removable face for something like $$130 right now.

A good high-capacity clothes dryer. Our little General Electric dates back to President Ford and uses more electricity than a Vegas storefront.

A new router for the house. The current model seems to be dropping in and out randomly; I’m still not sure if it’s the router or the DSL modem, however.

However, I did finally pony up $40 to buy a replacement power supply for my Powerbook after the old one bit the dust. If I can’t have a new laptop, I’ll make do with Ol’ Reliable, here. And while I’m at it:

NuPower G4 upgrade I’d love to be able to speed her up, and for $280, that ain’t a bad deal.

In other news, the bed was delivered this afternoon, which means we have a few nights of testing ahead of us. Cross your fingers, people.

Friday night Jen and I were invited over to Todd and Heather’s place to visit, but wound up waiting at home for the Accidental Tourist. I’m calling Jen’s Dad the Accidental Tourist because we’re never really sure if he’s going to stop by when he says he might or not. Sometimes he travels out of town on business or up to Pennsyltucky and drives within a half-mile of our house, and doesn’t stop in to say hello. Which is kind of perplexing, because there’s really nothing we’d like more than to sit and have a glass of soda with the Captain and shoot the breeze. More often than not, though, he zooms past and on to his destination like Byrd racing to the Pole at some ungodly hour of the evening, and Jen calls the house repeatedly to check in. (He has a cellphone, which I’m told is older than Methuselah and about the size of a luxury sedan. It is never turned on, and would probably explode if it was.) Usually he’ll have made it home at 4am and caught forty winks and then gotten up to go to work, and he makes this sound like it’s an ordinary day at the office. The man, I’m convinced, is some kind of Navy-programmed sleep robot.

Anyway, he did actually stop by Friday night for a slice of pizza and a glass of water, and we caught up for an hour, and then he beat feet out of here, and we were left with the rest of an empty Friday evening to deal with. Which we filled with some PBR and the A&E Biography of the Bee Gees. Now before you go telling me that the Bee Gees weren’t punk rock and all of that shit, consider:

They were the only band in history to have five #1 hits in the top 10 at one time.

They were one of the only acts to have #1 hits in four consecutive decades.

Barry produced something like 14 #1 hit songs.

Robin had teeth almost as bad as Shane McGowan. That’s punk, motherfucker.

Before you think I’ve gone all Neil Diamond on you, I hated that song Barry did with Streisand too. But some of that mid-70’s Bee Gees stuff is killer. This evening, Jen and I were discussing the soundtracks our lives, and there’s a period of time in my life scored by both the Grease and Saturday Night Fever albums. (Particularly, the theme to Grease for me is driving in a brown Duster across New Jersey with my mother, sister, and the Greame kids, all of us singing along with Frankie Valli at the top of our lungs. It turns out Barry wrote and produced that song.) There were a lot of things I learned about the Brothers Gibb, and after the show finished, I had to throw down some mad props to the boys. (I forgot to pour out a little on the ground for Maurice, though. Rest in peace, my man.)

So it was pretty humorous to have heard about four Bee Gees songs while we were out today. (I think it was) “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart” was playing in the local garden store, where we bought a gardenia to plant somewhere in the yard to remind us of Savannah. “Tragedy” came on in the warehouse section of IKEA, as we were trying to decide whether or not to buy the queen size mattress we saw there, which was suprisingly firm but forgiving. (It’s being delivered on Tuesday. Cross your fingers for us.) “To Love Somebody” was playing while we ate dinner at Matthew’s and tried to ignore the basketball spectators.

It was a good day, and we’re hoping that the protective shield of the Bee Gee’s falsetto harmonies will bring luck with the purchase of our new mattress.

My sister Renie sends our family links every once in a while from the newspaper that covered the Putnam County area where we used to live. One of the ongoing stories has been that of my high school music teacher, who’s currently on trial for sexual molestation charges. The story is a sad one, and something that makes me feel conflicted for several reasons. Now, I should point out here that he never tried to touch my willy (girls were his target) and that he had a reputation when I met him for being inappropriate with students, but there was nothing that was proven—all was strictly hearsay.

I should back up and provide a little history here. When I was in sixth grade at a school in Conneticut, the music teacher asked any of us kids if we wanted to learn to play an instrument. This was during one of those excruciating sing-alongs where she would bang on the piano and we were all supposed to sing with her. I hated that class, and somewhere in my logical brain (which admittedly was’t firing all that well until I was in my late twenties) I made the leap: If I take instrument lessons, I’ll get out of this damned singing class. Besides, I was bored, and the idea of being different appealed to me. (This was before the regrettable incident where I wore camouflage pants into school one day and was forever tagged “G.I. Bill” by the Young Nazi Republicans In Training. But I digress.) Honestly, though, I think this was one of those rare moments where a higher power made me raise my hand, because I can’t really explain why I volunteered. This decision would change much of my life after that point for the better, however.

We were given a choice of instrument: the French horn, viola, or the bass violin. Anybody who’s played any of the three will tell you that they are love-hate relationships, for different reasons: the French horn is a big round honking thing, sort of like squeezing a duck to make it sing soprano, and only those with superior control, chops and practice can coax out a beautiful, melodious tone. The viola is (to me) kind of feminine and whiny. The bass violin, on the other hand, is relatively easy to play, but it’s the size of your Uncle Ralph and about as difficult to move. And it sounded cool. For obvious reasons, I decided on the bass, and was quickly issued a half-size model to take take lessons with. (Later I found out the choices were determined by desperation: they had nobody to play those instruments in the band.) I was taught by a piano teacher at school and a guitar teacher in town, both of which involved shoehorning the bass violin into the front seat of my mother’s green Gremlin (with me in the back seat, how embarassing) and carting it all over creation.

My first concert was at the elementary school with a group of about thirty kids, playing something I can’t remember, and was relatively uneventful. But my music teacher knew the conductor of the local youth orchestra, and quickly put him in touch with my parents, and we all learned a valuable lesson: kids who play the bass violin are rare, as are the parents who support them. Soon I was second fiddle (literally) to a tall, beautiful dark-haired sophomore girl who I instantly crushed on, and who was a skilled musician. We played a mixture of medolies (theme from Cats, theme from Fame, theme from Chariots of Fire) and a few orchestral arrangements, one of which I still remember—Procession of the Nobles, from the opera Mlada, by Rimsky-Korsakoff. (That’s a killer piece.)

Anyway, we moved out of Conneticut that spring, before I could tour Europe with the youth orchestra, (still bitter about that one) and into New York, where the school district placed as high a value on musical education as they did on football, because the teachers were all first-rate and so was the equipment. When I met the orchestra teacher at the high school, he was thrilled to find that I played bass, because he was classically trained on the instrument. He was a big guy with a Magnum P.I. moustache and bad cologne, and he took great pride in his students, typically sending five or six kids to the allstate orchestra every year. I was mistrustful at first, for reasons I can’t explain, other than that his personality was full of things I didn’t like—he was pushy, arrogant, and overbearing.

However, he was an excellent string teacher. He quickly sized up my playing technique (which at that time was mostly familiarity with the instrument and a vague ability to read music) and sadly informed me that I needed to be re-trained in posture. I had been taught by non-bassists, and so my stance resembled clinging to a lamppost in a flood instead of dancing the tango with a partner. The bow I had been using was French, and he switched me to German, which was better for my hand and lent a more intuitive feel for the instrument. (This process was not unlike Tiger Woods learning to swing a golf club a completely different way, and took a whole summer of retraining.) My music-reading abilities improved dramatically with the addition of complicated Bach, Beethtoven and Mozart orchestral suites he assigned for homework, and by the time school started, I was at least somewhat prepared for the fall season’s concert practice.

My companions in the bass section were two supremely talented juniors who both resembled David Lee Roth in both wardrobe and hairstyle. After playing alongside them, being tortured for a full year as the “new guy” and learning technique from them both, we slowly became friends. As I continued through high school, I took private lessons from this teacher as I moved up the line until I was first chair my senior year. Along the way, I was encouraged to try out for the Allstate orchestra (an alternate my sophomore year, second to last chair my junior year), and performed onstage at Carnegie Hall—in checkerboard Vans—with the rest of the orchestra. It was during this time that I met some of my best friends (who I’ve been abominable about keeping in touch with) and found a way to make it through High School alive and in good mental health.

My senior year with him was strained, as my focus had moved away from music and into art; I was the lead set builder for the drama club, in the marching band (the girls in the drama/band universe were far more interesting than orchestra girls anyway) and involved in other time-consuming activities as well as holding down a job, so my practice time suffered. The situation came to a head when I was abruptly informed that I had two weeks to practice for Allstate tryouts, which was scheduled for the same weekend as the opening night of the school play. As I was way in over my head on that project, sleeping six hours a night, failing math, and not willing to ditch my existing commitments, I told him I couldn’t do Allstate. He was furious, insisting I could do both, and couldn’t understand my position. I remember at one point he mentioned that he always sent bass players to Allstate and that this would be the first year he hadn’t, and then it really became clear to me what the story was.

We both said some things we shouldn’t have, I was threatened with losing first chair, and things got frosty. (Well, things got frosty that time I helped fill his office to the ceiling with packing peanuts, but that’s a different story.) Over time, we both backed off a bit, made some half-hearted apologies, and I played first chair for my final concert. I don’t remember ever having said goodbye to the man, or thanking him for teaching me what he did, but I respect that part of him and what he did for me.

Hearing about his current condition, the charges against him, and some of the details of the case has been hard for those reasons, and because I don’t remember him as an old man in a wheelchair with MS—he was a big swarthy Polish dude who water-skiied and drove a black Supra with personalized plates, kind of a middle-aged high school guido who got a decent job. I can’t say that I didn’t have my suspicions about his proclivities, but I didn’t think it made its way down to four and five year olds. I do wonder who testified against him, and marvel at how difficult that must have been. For all his faults, he had a cadre of devoted families centered around his music program who put all their kids through the orchestra, knowing that he was a good teacher. My only hope is that he didn’t betray their trust as well.

So I don’t know how to feel about that situation, really. I’m sorry for the children he (allegedly) molested; I’m sorry for anybody he may have diddled with as a teacher, and I’m sorry for him. I also remember him as a caring and talented man who had the best interests of his students at heart, for all that matters.