A year ago this evening, I took the most beautiful woman in the world to dinner on a warm spring night in Georgia. We had wonderful food, sipping cocktails together, and the rest of the world faded from view. Walking home through the historic district, we passed through misty, tree-lined squares, holding hands and laughing quietly to ourselves. Crossing through Madison Square, I took advantage of the magical night and asked her to marry me. Luckily, she said yes.
Insta-Storm-Tracker-Central. Last night the NBC weather dork claimed it would be 88° and sunny; this morning the one good digital camera, but the other one is pretty lousy and therefore not worth taking with us. Jen has a very nice Nikon SLR, I have my trusty Minolta X-700, and we sat on the couch last night wondering if we should go buy a pile of T-Max and take one of the SLR’s with us. The complicating factor is the arrival of a freelance check in our mailbox today, which means I could spend some time hunting down and buying her a good midlevel digital camera… time I don’t have at this point. (In a perfect world, we’d get something like this and start investing in lenses, but…)
Update: We’re taking Jen’s SLR with us and investigating the option of ditching our return flight in Paris to stay an extra day or three. Stay tuned.
Update Update: flying coach one-way from Paris to Baltimore, with all the connecting flights included, is prohibitively expensive ($1,200+/ea) and nullifies out any extra cash we have—and that’s not including any kind of lodging. Anybody have any ideas out there?
While packing up to leave work yesterday, I got a call from Jen, who asked for an ETA. It turned out that Penn decided to jump on Geneva for no good reason, chomping her on the leg, drawing a frightening amount of blood and scaring the shit out of Jen. She quickly got Geneva bundled up and off to the vet while I returned home to clean up after Penn’s mess.
I should stop here and describe all the occupants in the House Of Cats for everyone to understand (and I’m sure Jen will have things to add here.) We have five:
Sage, A.K.A. Chocolate Love, Chubbo, The Big Man, Barry White. Big, black, and on your lap. Sage is the most mellow of the five, has the best personality, and keeps the others in line (mostly.) Saved from a dumpster in Texas many moons ago, he is the first of Jen’s family.
Geneva, A.K.A. Miss Thing, Pretty Girl. A teeny little barn tabby Jen rescued years ago; a fearless mouser in her prime, she doesn’t see so good any more. She has also become the target of my two teenaged hellions on account of her X chromosome.
Pique, A.K.A. Get Off, Peekaboo, Coaldust, Dr. Zaius. Possibly the dumbest of the five, he avoids all conflict by the sheer force of stupidity. His superhero power is the ability to seek out painful pressure points and full bladders by standing on them for long periods of time. He would probably stare at the sun and blind himself if he was smart enough to look up.
Penn, A.K.A. Mr. Ben, Shitbrain, Shut Up, Penndandy. I picked him up at the ASPCA when he sat in his cage staring at me and meowing repeatedly; I mistook stupidity for intelligence (a fault of mine.) Easily the most aggressive and self-centered of the five, he can be both a well-behaved fop and an insufferable prick at the drop of a hat. Alive only because of his good looks. (ASPCA name: Dandy)
Teller, A.K.A. Get Down, Telleropolis, Stony Ray. Adopted the same day as Penn, he has a quiet personality and big green eyes; he can be sweet and loving but sometimes belligerent as well. (ASPCA name: Raymond)
So, after cleaning up the pool of blood near the radiator, I put food, water, a litter box, and a towel in the front basement room and threw Penn in there for a night of solitary confinement. Because this is an ongoing problem, we are bringing him to the vet for a psych test and a prescription of Little Blue Pills; hopefully his attitude will mellow and peace will reign over our little kingdom for the first time.
Geneva is fine. The vet said that cats generally close right up after being bitten, and that it was a good thing she bled out (cleaning the wound.) We have two weeks of antibiotics and a painkiller to administer, which involves a towel, two people, a bottle of Bactine, and some kitty wrasslin’. She doesn’t understand why life suddenly got worse, but she’s taking it pretty well.
The Internet is slow today, or at least HaloScan is slow, which is bogging my pageloads down. So if’n you tried to leave a comment here and couldn’t, try again later. My peeps with iPods and iTunes should boogie over to Apple.com and download the iTunes 4.5 and the iPod 2.2 updater—it’s not offered in Software Update, so it won’t automatically load for you.
spending time shooting pictures instead of going to work, 4.26.04
This weekend was a blur of activity, from getting a coat or two of paint on the trim in the Pink room, to moving my bed out of the living room into the Blue room (my first night sleeping upstairs was peaceful and comfortable), beginning the purge of the front porch (all boxes will leave before the wedding), having dinner with a friend and her new beau, mowing the overgrown lawn, moving the Doc’s old workbench to the greenhouse as a potting stand, hitting church on Sunday to talk with the musician (who wasn’t there, so we ducked out of the service to buy groceries—sorry, God), putting more paint on the trim, and spending a quiet evening together.
headband (courtesy of and thanks to the P.S.D.F.), 4.22.04
One of the drawbacks to writing a weblog under one’s own name is the fact that you can’t write about everything you’re thinking for fear of co-workers, bosses, or potential employers finding your self-centered griping online. I wrote a whole post about work, life, and some recent developments, and haven’t posted it. I’ll spill this much: I’m unhappy about one particular thing, I could be doing some things better than I am, and I found out what could be the root of the problem. More on that later.
Meanwhile, as if I didn’t know this already, it’s amazing how much better the Tortoise shifts into gear when it actually has oil. I checked the level today as I filled up on gas and was greeted with a naked “ADD 1 QT” marker on the dipstick. These days, because the Ford burns oil at a half-quart a week, I don’t carry single refils around with me—I carry a case of generic brand in the trunk. They are gonna love me at the emissions station. (Interesting trivia: Between my Mazda pickup, Honda CRX, Tortoise, and Scout, the 26-year-old V-8 with 150K+ miles has been the only vehicle to consistently pass emissions.)
We have reservations made for an eight-night stay in Rome at the Palace Hotel, a short walk away from the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps. I am alternately nervous and excited about going to Europe for the first time in my life. This is going to be great!
Bring Out The Gimp. Jen drove me in to work this morning, as my range of motion is still severely limited and turning my head still brings tears to my eyes. (It’s actually much better today—I’m just shamefully soliciting sympathy and cash donations.) I kinda look like Frankenstein, keeping my head squarely on top of my shoulders (the afflicted muscles are between my shoulderblades, the ones that branch out into all the others in my back) and trying not to look down too much. Which makes bathroom breaks interesting, let me tell you.
Meanwhile, downtime on my current project at work means I’ve been switched off to another one, which at first glance is the worst “game” I’ve ever seen. Making something work out of this mess will require either a stroke of genius or a frontal lobotomy, and I know which one of these I can attempt with a cordless drill and some gauze.
Resolution. If I get some time tonight, I’m going to finish cleaning up an HTML divelog I started but never finished last year after returning from Bimini—#153 in the long list of uncompleted web projects. Stay tuned!
Here’s a link to a do-it-yourself steadicam project—for $14 you can build a pretty professional camera stabilization rig and shoot DV like the pros. (via boing boing)
Whiplash. So much for moving furniture today. My neck, which was giving me aches and pains yesterday, feels like it’s going to give way completely and let the rest of my head fall off the back of my shoulders. This morning we moved the doctor’s oak desk, one file cabinet, and my IKEA table into the office before Jen (the Voice Of Reason) told me we were stopping. I don’t know what I did to myself, or why it feels so friggin’ bad right now, but I can’t turn my head in any direction without the sensation of having a ballpeen hammer hitting directly on my spine. Just great.
Flashback. One year ago today, I was on a boat bobbing in the Bahamas, diving on coral reefs for a project at work that has since been cancelled and will most likely never come back.
Ever since I started dating Jen, I learned a lot of things that I hadn’t figured out in three previous relationships and several catastrophic dating experiences; when I met her, I was a 22-year-old with 17-year-old tendencies trapped in a 29-year-old body. Among the many vices and character flaws I sported like a superhero utility belt was the infuriating ability to coast through life with little regard for other people’s feelings. My loving family could sit you down and relate a lifetime’s worth of stories to this effect, and I won’t even mention the volumes of examples Jen could tell you about. Instead, I’ll point to a current issue, and attempt to apologize for my ignorance. You see, when it comes to uncomfortable issues, I have a reflexive habit of sidestepping the whole thing and burying my head in the sand. As you can guess, this is one of the more infuriating character flaws I have, and it’s probably the first one that my fiancée would cite as she stood over my unconscious body with the frying pan.
So I should clarify my post from yesterday: I suggested we put the moratorium on further invitees to our wedding, and she suggested I shut the f**k up and pay attention to what she’s been telling me for three months: we’re over our limit, and only a miracle (or the Almighty) will help us sneak in under or at the budget. My loving fiancée has been wrestling the budget since the beginning, and while I look at it, nod, and blink, she can (and has) recalled the exact figure for the postage on the save-the-date cards like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man.
In an effort to make right what has been screwed up, I offer my apology in this public forum: Forgive me for making myself ignorant of this issue, and making light of it here in public.
In other news, here’s a great link on the 10 Things They Never Taught In Design School. (via kottke) In heavy rotation on the iPod: Lapdance by N.E.R.D. This track makes me want to buy a drum kit and rock out in the garage.
Today marks the beginning of the fourth year of this humble weblog. Three years ago I sat down at my desk in Washington, and, without a project to work on, wrote a brief entry about coats. Who would have known just how different life would be since then?
I posted a new picture of the office this morning. It doesn’t look all that different, but you’ll see a dramatic change in another week or so when the trim gets painted and the walls get a finish coat.
We may have a photographer for our little party in May—a friend recommended a friend whose portfolio looks very good. The decision has not been made final, but I think it would be money well spent, even if we have to put some stuff in hock to afford it.
I went to the Baltimore County courthouse this afternoon to pick up our marriage license. The whole experience reminded me of a trip my father and I took when I was about 14 to go see the battleship Massachussetts in Fall River. The government had towed this huge monster into the harbor and opened it up for tours to the public, which meant legions of Cub Scouts got to overnight on the ship and scratch their initials into the walls. It had this smell that I’ve found unique to Navy ships: a curious mixture of fire-retardant paint and disinfectant, with a flowery bouquet of asbestos.
The county courthouse is a big cement building filled with tired gray marble and Carter-era brown furniture. It wasn’t until I stepped into the elevator that I made the olifactory connection: It had the same dull gray government paint smell as the battleship. Upstairs in the hallway outside the Clerk’s office, big signs in Times Roman announced the hours civil ceremonies would be performed, and several expectant couples milled around the waiting area. I stood on line behind a young Jewish man with a shock of red hair under his yarmulke as he and his bride got their license. A short woman shuffled slowly out of the ladies’ room past me in a silky dress with a garment bag over her arm. She padded over to the benches in stocking feet and waited with a plump man in a trucker’s vest and bluejeans, talking quietly together.
The Jewish couple turned to leave, and I wished them good luck; they both blushed and smiled nervously, holding hands. The clerk was professional and courteous, and within five minues I had a copy of our license in my hand. Leaving the building, I passed several knots of people in the waiting area: the short couple, a gaggle of Asian folks, dressed impeccably and holding flowers, and a man in a Member’s Only jacket talking excitedly in a Slavic language to a group of serious-looking family.
One of the great things about living outside the city is having a house with a yard. One of the great things about having a yard is that frequently you’ll see animals outside your windows. Hopefully they’re not trying to burrow their way in to get at your food, like the raccoons who occasionally dropped in on Jen’s old apartment, but coexist peacefully in the suburban microcosm that you call home. For us, this means chipmunks burrowing around the tree roots in our backyard, and a helpful neighborhood dog who enjoys digging out great patches of our lawn to try and roust them from their holes. We have squirrels who probably could take on the worst of Central Park’s crack-addled fauna—One morning, while sipping our coffee peacefully on the couch, we saw two local squirrels chase a hawk the size of a dalmatian from the branch of one of ‘their’ trees. We have a feral neighborhood cat with no tail or ears who enjoys beating the crap out of any animal unlucky enough to get close to it, and who dines from our garbage cans.
We also have a pair of cardinals who visit the side yard outside our kitchen window. Back when the Doctor lived there, he had a pole-stand birdhouse in that yard next to a sundial, and when the house changed hands both found their way into somebody’s car or the dumpster they filled in the driveway. The cardinals came by every morning last fall and sat on the scrubby apple tree, waiting for the bird feeder to reappear. Then one morning, they were gone. Today I was cleaning out the coffeepot and looked up to see both of them again, which was a relief. The gray female flitted about in the gray underbrush, looking for something to eat, while the red male sat on the branch looking magnificent, bored, and useless. I’d like to think his presence was the portent of a warm, enjoyable spring right around the corner, but I’m sure his mate was looking in the window at me saying, “make with some birdseed, you cheap prick.”
Another Jungian Test. Jason sent this over to me this morning, and the results were different than the pre-Cana test Jen and I took a few weeks back: ENFJ. Funny how the results change based on which test you take.
Wow. I want to go here. I love finding things like this collection of pictures, not only because they’re aesthetically beautiful, but because I have about a million different stories I’m writing in my head about the subject.