Recently in life worth living Category

I fell in love, last week.

I was sitting in Starbucks over in Dupont on Tuesday afternoon, waiting for a client. I sat at the only space available, at a table across from a girl writing a paper on her laptop. She was cute in a geeky kind of way, with the glasses and the hair pulled back and all. She had this really great grin, when I first sat down. A half-grin that is just waiting to say something.

But she never stopped grinning. I must have sat there at least an hour and a half. It wasn't a grin. That was just her look. I dunno if I could handle a woman who's everyday look was enough to make me weak.

Thankfully I'm a huge wuss, and never really said anything to her.

I have always liked wandering around in cities at ridiculous hours. Everything takes on a surreal quality. I used to work a semi-third shift at a newspaper, and would come home at 3, 4, or 5 in the morning, in a small town. And everything was quiet. It was when I first notice that night time tends to have no weather. Especially no wind. It's a Twilight Zone episode, where you're wandering around an abandoned city and nothings moving. My favorite memory of that job and those people happened when two of my coworkers, driving home from the same job, pulled over and started a snoball fight, in a suprisingly bright street at 3am.

The last couple weeks, I've gone to a club about 6 or 7 blocks away. It's very nice not having to think about how I will get home. If someone offers me a ride, great. But otherwise, it's nothing more than a short walk. And I've been stopping at CVS on my way home, since I'm inevitably hungry by the time I get out of the club.This CVS just makes me cringe in daylight. It's every depressing aspect of city life all rolled into one little cell. But at 3am, even it becomes fascinating. And everyone wandering the aisles looks briefly at you as you pass, probably wondering why you would be out at such a strange hour in a place like this, (forgtting of course that they're also doing the same).

About 4 o'clock this morning, I went down to the lobby to get a soda from the machine. Someone was running the dryer in the on-floor laundry room. That's life in the middle of the night. You know it's out there, but it's all locked up behind walls and doors.

For most of the week, it's been incredibly humid. So thick you can smell the water in the air. And then yesterday the temperature dropped about 15 degrees F, leaving it kinda-warm, but with random cool breezes. And all of a sudden, I feel like I'm back home again. I'd forgotten what it felt like living near so many lakes.

Now this morning, the light coming in through the windows is hopelessly soft and mellow. Even the traffic noise seems to be keeping to a minimum.

The world's gone all soft and mushy. And no, I'm not stoned.

I miss winter. Winter in places where it's really winter, anyway. Winter should be snow in drifts you could lose small people in. Winter should be bone-chilling winds that the best coats and hats can't keep out. Winter should mean every body of water being hidden beneath an icy blanket for 4 months. Winter's should mean storms where you could lose an elephant if it strayed more than 6 inches away from you. Winter should mean something.

Here winter tends to mean being careful not to slip in the slush.

I love this above picture, (taken by Michael Tinkler). A boathouse on the campus in my hometown. It's frozen in, with ice extending probably 40 or 50 feet out from the shore, on this massive 42 mile long lake. The water is choppy and steaming, although it's hard not to think of it as some dry ice or liquid nitrogen gas release. And of course, the sun beats down perfectly clearly, not making the least noticeable difference in the temperature.

Nature will have its way whenever it feels like it.

Hard to believe I used to sit on a bench in that exact spot, during the summer, reading. (Or, when I was even younger, watching with my friend, as college co-eds made out on the dock).

It's really not the same, but a recent cold snap here in DC froze over much of the Potomac. You can see the unending field of snow in the picture below, leading to the foot of the Jefferson Memorial. The snow of course is just dusting the sheet of ice that buried the Tidal Basin.

As I'm sitting here, I found a scar that I'd forgotten I had. It took me a while to even remember where it came from. It's right at the joint, so I don't normally even notice it among the normal creases. It just reminds me of the various other scars, none of which I've looked at either, lately. And you know... every single one of them came from me doing something stupid.

Right on schedule, my building manager was fired today. Third one we've been through since I moved in here. They have a warranty only good for 2 years. At which point they're not even serviceable. You just throw them out right away or they'll begin to smell. Interesting timing though... since our assistant manager is due to take next month off. I sense bad things emanating from the future.

As if a premonition of todays events, I was attacked by a bus yesterday. Sitting at the bus stop in Bethesda, one of the Ride-On busses came down the highway. And the door fell off. Like that, stopping about 4 feet from me. Traveling at about 40 miles an hour, the bus continued on and ran over the door. And... kept going. Never stopped. Never came back. And there in the highway sat a bus door, in several pieces, surrounded by the traffic which had screeched to a stop around it. And we all just sort of looked at. The cars eventually moved on, and I pulled the pieces onto the sidewalk. Much as it would look really cool to see a car shred its undercarriage by hitting a giant metal frame and 4 foot long slab of glass at highway speeds... I just didn't want to have to administer CPR. Yuppies have diseases, you know.

So, Keir, maybe the busses are working for the squirrels?

I so need a DVD burner, for backing up by photos, if nothing else. I had over 4,000 pictures in iPhoto, and burned 9 CDs just to get the archive back down under 2 gigabytes. I love my new camera. But bigger toys have bigger issues. Huge photos also mean it takes forever to copy the files off the camera using the USB cable. (An hour and a half for 200 shots). But today I found a brand-name firewire CF card reader for only 11 bucks. So I got that going for me.

So I was thinking today. And that's always a well-known novel experience for me. Thinking about this work stuff I do. I've elaborated before on how much I love the control it offers. How much freedom I now have. How I now contribute, rather than leeching from the system. But as fundamental as it should have been, it never really occurred to me until this afternoon how much I like the creative part of it all. Many people go into business for themselves. Most frequently, it has to do with selling something, followed closely by offering your experience and advice in trade. But I actually create new things. Each jobs involves creating something brand new, that's never existed before.To me, thats an incredibly fulfilling thing to be doing for a living.

So I was talking to Tonto the other day, while we walked. Earlier in the day, I had been thinking, for god knows what reason, about oral history. The method by which knowledge and history were passed along, person to person, by stories and repetitive telling. But that all kind of died out with the advent of television. Without going into the evils of TV in particular, it is true that people started spending less time together creating life, and more time in their own little world, observing a fantasy. What really struck me though, was how 'blogs and journals are gradually starting to resurrect the idea of an oral history, albeit in written form. Message boards and journals are offering up technical answers. Memory archives hold the shared histories of families and groups. Individuals work through their past, and what it's made of their present, right there in front of your eyes. It's staggering, to imagine the sheer volume of memory that is online, now. And a little scary, in that so much of it tends to reside in single places, making it susceptible to loss. If the California is wiped out, the thoughts and stories of 10 million people may be lost. But the NBC homepage will be fine, thanks to colocation.

"boobies!"

(It still makes me smile.)

There was a very ugly woman on the train tonight. She sat across from me as I tried to read Dandelion Wine. She wore a beautiful black dress. But underneath, she was knock-kneed and boney. She had a mustache and eyes that didn't belong.

I think the ugly girls go to bed earlier. Normally when I come back from the boonies, it's 3 AM and the car is filled with vastly intoxicated teenage girls in less clothing than Michaengelo's David. The last set of girls I remember spent the entire 40 minute ride calling up taxi cab companies on their cell phone trying to find a ride from the last station. They were both 16 and a little cuter. Even the chubby one with the mohawk.

I'm sorry... but I still cant walk through downtown after midnight and not marvel that I'm here. I know that makes me a really big dork, and it's only worse that I've been here 7 years.

I think it's better when it snows in the big city.

I've lived both in the city and in the boondocks. But here in the city, snow does something special. It's that one little accent that sets the whole thing off. Every different building, every bush and tree, every mailbox, street-sign and lamp post all pull together into one big painting, held together and held down by a white blanket.

In the boonies, once you've seen one field, one river, or one frozen lake, you've seen them all. But here in the city, every street is a new picture with untouched nature spread all over it.

The top strata of the "Recently-Read Pile":

Idoru by William Gibson
All Tomorrow's Parties by William Gibson
City Come a Walkin’ by John Shirley
Beyond this Horizon, by Robert Heinlein
The Atlantic Abomination, by John Brunner
Jennifer Government, by Max Barry
Journey to the Center of the Earth, by Jules Verne
Isaac Asimov’s Christmas, Edited by Gardner Dozois and Sheila Williams
Skylark Duquesne by E.E. “Doc” Smith
The Santaroga Barrier by Frank Herbert
Virtual Light by William Gibson
Keepers of the Gate by Steven Spruill
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Destination: Universe! by A.E. van Vogt
Assignment in Eternity by Robert Heinlein

swiss cheese
ham
onion
provolone
hot dog
sharp cheddar
bacon
on a bagel
with mayo