Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Maryland, My...where?

Last week, "Deficit-Wracked Maryland Calls It Quits" was a front-page story in The Onion.

Then, New Yorkers in a "Mob for fun" "acted like tourists from Maryland" in a high-end Soho shoe store.

Maryland?

When did Maryland end up on the map?

Well, in 1634, actually. But in my lifetime as a Marylander I have gotten used to the fact that we are an unremarkable state. People don't know where we are...I was on the phone with a technical support person in Colorado the other day who asked about the summer we were having here in New England.

Or worse, they don't know what we are: I did, for about two years, move away...five states south. One day I stopped at the drug store wearing a University of Maryland shirt. The clerk said "Nice shirt...where is that?"

My shirt just said "University of Maryland," and had the old school seal, which is very similar to the state seal, so I thought she meant "Which school in the University of Maryland system?"

I said "College Park."

She looked at me blankly. Well, I wasn't in ACC country, so I elaborated "It's just north of D.C."

She still looked confused, which confused me, until finally she asked "In what state?"

I wasn't sure how to answer. Obviously there was "Maryland is a state!" But I was horrified...I'm not a geography whiz, but I recognize the names of all fifty states, even if I can't remember the exact placement of all the square ones out west. And doesn't every kid learn the thirteen original colonies in history? And isn't Maryland famous for...well...

In Tennessee I did see a "Maryland Fried Chicken" restaurant. That reminded me that my uncle, who also grew up in Maryland, saw Maryland Fried Chicken on a menu in Belgium. He asked the waiter exactly what that meant, and the waiter very knowledgably explained that it was chicken pieces batter fried with bananas, just like they do it in Maryland.

Bananas. Funny, I never saw the banana boats docked on the Chesapeake Bay. (Bay-o. We say baaaay-o. Daylight come and me wanna go home.) And I thought our steamed crabs were universal, but when I was living in that southern state I finally found Old Bay in the exotic spice aisle of a gourmet shop, not next to the salt and pepper in the supermarket like I do here at home.

If we're being nationally mocked, though, complete recognition, even by dim-witted drug store clerks, can not be far behind.

Embedded image

Eh, I'm not so sure I like the pop-up...I guess it makes the page load quicker.

Yes, this is an entry for "test blog," but hey, in many ways this blog is a test, too. Coming eventually I'll have a page about rats..their care, pictures and stories for the amusement of other rat slaves. Til then I'm just fooling with this blog to use some of that server space I rented and to try to remember if I can string words together in a meaningful way.

The picture is Curly, by the way. He's a retired behavioral science test subject from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Popup image

View image

I am actually not sure what a "popup image" is, but I thought I'd give it a try to see.

The image, if it pops up, is my three female rats all snuggled together. This is how they looked when I got home from work. All together now...awwwww.

(Now the domain name makes a little more sense, huh?)

Facelift

Yep, it's a new look. I've been admiring the three-column layout from afar, and found the templates on blogstyles to figure out how to do it. I had to switch some stuff around, change some colors, you know...screw with it, basically. I remember when I first got Windows, I changed my desktop ten times a day for awhile there. Anyway, since this was my first cascading style sheet experience (I learned HTML by coding pages on my 286 laptop in DOS text editor, and I haven't advanced much since), I'm pretty pleased.

Just some random stuff

• All over the internet today people are participating in Blogathon 2003. I've been surfing through some, mostly admiring page layouts. (Oh, and the fact that these guys will post every half hour for 24 hours straight to raise money. I didn't mean to leave that part out!) I'm not sure I'd have that discipline, frankly.

• When I said last night that today's Tour stage would include man-vs.-nature, I didn't realize how right I was. It was raining hard through the course today, and Ullrich (among others...it sounded like about a third of the riders lost it at some point on the course today) fell. I felt sick when he went down...you could see sparks from the bike against the pavement...I was really afraid he'd be hurt or his bike would be so banged up he'd lose more time having to switch. Before the fall he and Armstrong really were neck-and-neck, but Ullrich lost enough time with the crash that Armstrong was able to slow down and take it much more cautiously.

  Yeah, I was routing for Lance, but I feel bad for Ullrich that the weather played the deciding factor in his performance today. You can never remove all the variables, though...the weather, the mechanics...all crashes are freak crashes at that level. And without those variables there'd bt no reason to have the race, they could just give the jersey to the best guy on paper.

• Once the stage is over tomorrow, I don't have anything to watch til hockey starts in October.

• This time next week I'll be on vacation! We're actually test-packing tomorrow...Victor got a new CRV this year, and we can fit the bikes inside, but we aren't sure how much room we have to spare for clothes and so on. I do tend to over-pack (it's my stupid "be prepared" hang-up), but I pared down considerably this time. I'm going to the beach; do I really need shoes?

• Farms. I'm getting tired and I need to do some things before bed (like put away the laundry that is covering the bed), but remind me later, I had some stuff to say about farms.
  Posted by Nic at 09:49 PM | Comments (1)

Stream of consciousness

That's what Victor did with his blog today. Stream of conciousness does seem to lend itself to summer Friday nights, too...rather drifting and lazy.

I had to read James Agee's A Death in the Family in tenth grade, that was my introduction to the style. I hated that book. A few years ago I ran across a copy at a church bazzar and added it to my "fill a box for a dollar" paperbacks...I guess I had a quick flash of maturity and realized that I'd been an obnoxious, ignorant little snot at 15 and perhaps there was a good reason Agee was an American classic.

After re-reading it...I can't say I enjoyed it, because it is such a dark book...but it was good. It took me three readings to really appreciate The Great Gatsby, too. Now I'm not sure if it is the greatest American novel, but I can understand why some make that case. (Or do more people say the greatest is Huck Finn? That I enjoyed even as a kid, but haven't re-read as an adult. Perhaps I should.)

Another book I read in early high school, and this one I picked up on my own, not on assignment, was John O'Hara's Appointment in Samara. That one doesn't seem to make the great American Novel lists...although O'Hara is probably a runner-up. It blew me away, and I spent the summer I was 14 in Gibbsville. (Not because of the sex and the booze, but it probably didn't hurt. Great literature is racy...that was a good revelation for a kid.)

The same summer I caught part of The Sound and the Fury on tv (the movie, that is, with Yul Brenner--when he had hair!) I tried to read it after that, but every time I have tried to read Faulkner...and I try every couple years to see if I can...I feel like I have a bad fever...spacy and sweaty. Maybe I am just a hopeless Yankee. I had no trouble with Harper Lee (and my vote for absolute best book/movie adaptation from book has to be To Kill a Mockingbird. And my favorite line in both is "I was to be a ham.") but I got a touch of the Faulkner fever feeling when I read Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Maybe it's just that southern humidity.

I mentioned last week that I don't write any more. I haven't been reading, either. I realized that recently and went on an Amazon spree, because I was ashamed of myself. Occasionally I talk to some of my oldest friends, guys I have known since junior high, and they are always mentioning what they are reading, or just finished, or are about to start, and I'll mumble something about the stuff I need to read for work and journals in my briefcase.

I did just finish a book, a real book, from my spree: The House on Beartown Road, by Elizabeth Cohen. It's a memoir, I guess you'd call it, by a columnist in New York state who cared for her father, suffering from Alzheimer's, and her toddler daughter during a winter after her husband left the family. It was really well done, and not completely depressing if you could appreciate the cycle-of-life balance of her daughter's expanding world versus her father's contracting one. It was a bit of a tough read, though, in terms of "there but for the grace of God" with my own family, and I actually read it to see if I should give it to my sister, whose father-in-law has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

I've started some of the others, too (I have trouble reading just one thing at a time...my mind is too jumpy):

The Day of St. Anthony's Fire : I actually read this many years ago, but now that I work in the pharmaceutical/toxicolgy field, the story of ergot poisoning fascinates me more. It is an account of a village in France that was staggered by ergot from moldy rye flour at the local bakery in 1951. One of the things that is striking me on the re-reading is how much I take for granted the ease with which we gather and exchange information...contrasting the medical community's difficulty in nailing down the ergotism in this case with, say, SARS.

The Main Enemy : The most interesting thing in this book about the CIA/KGB activities at the end of the Cold War is Milton Bearden's belief that there's still another American double agent that isn't identified yet. I'm just at the point in the book where Bearden is assigned to Afghanistan, so I'm expecting some current events insight there, too.

Hope's Edge : Sort of a sequel to Diet for a Small Planet, which I never read but knew of: the major thesis is that we could have plenty of food for everyone in the world, but the meat-based, agribusiness Western model uses up all the resources. I read Fast Food Nation before I picked this one up (so I lied, I do read some). There's some real, er, food for thought, if you'll pardon the pun. Although I'm not one, I have definite vegetarian sympathies, so I'm probably predisposed toward agreeing with a lot of the arguments in both books. (Some, but not all. In almost every situation or controversy I recognize more shades of grey than Ansel Adams. Another subject for another day.)

I also have Walter Issacson's new Ben Franklin biography...I read the exerpt in Time (I read magazines, too, but that doesn't count) and enjoyed it. I haven't read about Franklin since grade school, when I read my way through all those "for young people" biographies of American heroes they had in the library to turn us into good little citizens.

There are no novels on my currect to-read list, though. After I got out of college I started leaning unintentionally toward non-fiction...perhaps true stories are that much more compelling. Maybe it was giving up journalism for tech writing...I know I turned my back on real drama, but if I don't write it, I can at least still read it.

Speaking of real drama, tomorrow in France is the man-versues-man, man-versues-nature, man-versues-himself showdown that is the Tour de France time trial. I need to go to the office this weekend, but I'd rather give up my Sunday than miss this.

Til then, my consciousness has slowed to a trickle. Good night.

'Tis done

The refinance is finished. Finally. Over. Done.

{Heavy sigh of relief.}

So, what else is going on out there in the world?

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Well, I have word that my mortgage nightmare is over. I won't breathe my final sigh of relief until I have the release and Note from my first bank, but it looks brighter than it has in days.

I've said not-nice things about my house (and I've meant them) but there are some good things, too. I'm about a ten-minute walk from two shopping centers, and as I walked up there this afternoon I realized that it is a nice bonus. There's the usual bank-supermarket-drug store triad, not exciting but handy to have close by. There's a beer & wine store that stocks good beer. There's the aforementioned new Mexican restaurant (which is actually run by a Salvadoran family; technically I think the menu is Salvadoran/Tex-Mex. Whichever, they have good guacamole and I like them.)

There's also a Greek carryout with a wood grill that's awesome, a good Chinese carryout, and a pet supply store where they always give my dog a treat or two.

I do tend to focus on the food, though...a new bakery just opened (Colombian, if you are keeping count of the ethnicities represented. I'm not sure what baked goods are specific to Colombia, but I'm looking forward to checking it out some lazy weekend morning, if I ever get such a thing.) and tonight I was up there to get nan from the Indian market for tonight's dinner.

I wish we had an Indian restaurant, although the closest one to drive to is only a few miles away. About the same distance in the opposite direction we have a Jamaican place with the best rice and peas.

I can also go back to the other side of town, where my parents live, and go to the same pizza-burger-beer joint I've been going to since junior high. Some of my junior high school classmates still hang out at the bar.

What's cool is that I live in a planned community...one of those soulless suburbs...but obviously it isn't. Yeah, we have McDonald's, Subway, and Pizza Hut. but the rest of the places I mentioned are small, independent neighborhood restaurants where the owners recognize us (I don't cook much), and we aren't hurting for variety.

Quick thoughts on the Tour

It is taking my mind of the mortgage. (I heard a rumor that the lender was funding today, but I never heard from the lawyer that they got the wire transfer. Whatever. I have a place to sleep.)

At work today I was logged in to the Tour de France site, which has these "newsflashes" with text updates of what is going on, for those of us who can't watch it live. I was sitting there hitting refresh every minute or two, and after I saw

16 H 30 - Armstrong Crashes!
Armstrong has crashed. He has also taken down Mayo.

16 H 30 - Armstrong Back On Bike
Armstrong is back on his bike now.

I got frantic. Then my browser locked up. It came back at about

16 H 49 - Ullrich Not Defeated Yet...
Ullrich may be 50" behind Armstrong, but the German is gritting his teeth and is leading his five-man group (including Hamilton, Mayo, Moreau, Basso and Zubeldia) in pursuit of the yellow jersey who is now 3km from the finish of the stage.

...at which point I could exhale. It was pretty funny that I could get so excited sitting at my desk looking at text...had I been home my heart rate would have been up like I was riding myself.

I was actually thinking that Jan Ullrich *might take the jersey today. I feel almost torn...I want Lance to win five, particularly five in a row...but I like Ullrich. He's worked really hard to come back, and I hope there are more Tour victories in his future. (Maybe his streak could continue starting next year.)

One of the things I keep remembering about Ullrich is that he grew up in the old East German sports machine. Some of his less-discipled off-season habits might have been a delayed reaction to the hyper-discipline he was subjected to as a kid. That's just me playing armchair shrink, of course, but I figure he deserved a few years to be a headcase.

I'm also kind of an Euskaltel-Euskadi fan, too. I read a book a looong time ago that included some Basque characters...the author was very sympathetic to the separatists, but I don't remember much about it. I was left with the impression that the Basques were screwed by France and Spain, although there's nothing political about my support for the team. Maybe I just like bright orange.

I have now killed enough time that it is time for another OLN Tour rebroadcast. I love those guys!

* Ullrich's web page is in German. Between what I remember from high school and Babel Fish, I was able to make some of it out.

When is a door not a door?

When it's ajar!

That was the first joke I ever learned. It was on a popsicle stick, and my father had to explain it, because I didn't know what "ajar" meant. I was maybe four years old.

My sense of humor has not gotten any more mature. When the "Laugh Lab" at the University of Hertfordshire came out with the results of the world's funniest joke last year, I laughed harder at the joke submitted most often (300 times) but that got no votes:

What's brown and sticky?

A stick.

Why am I here?

But first: A mortgage refinance update. I was right about the horror-movie ending...I was on the phone through the day and into the evening yesterday. The lender still hasn't transferred the funds to pay off the existing mortgage. They are using the wrong signature, wrong date crap to stall, probably because they don't have a buyer for my loan yet. I got really fed up and asked the attorney to pull the plug, and she drafted a letter saying that since they did not fund the payoff yet (technically required the day of settlement here) the deal was not closed. Suddenly they were willing to put in writing that all the requirements have been met and the funds will be transferred Monday. I'll see, but I won't believe it 'til I see.

I am still thinking about that guy and his kids.

Okay, on to why I'm here. I was a journalism major in college, a major I decided on back in junior high, maybe earlier. In fact, once I realized that professional hockey player was not an option (it wasn't for girls back then...I weep with joy seeing professional womens' sports now...but that's another entry), writer was my fallback job for what I wanted to be when I grew up.

I am a writer. I write technical documents on safety and chemicals. I actually find the subjects useful and even interesting, but I know most of my audience doesn't...they are just fullfilling job requirements. And it doesn't particularly bother me, because it pays the bills.

When I was in school I wrote daily. I reported for school papers. I researched and wrote. I took "creative writing," which I didn't particularly like, to write fiction and poetry...I figured any writing would make me a better writer. I wrote light essays about things I found amusing. I wrote letters (I went to school in days before e-mail) to friends around the country. A lot of what I wrote I wrote only for myself, because the words in my head seemed to belong on paper.

Sometimes when I edit my own work...the technical stuff I now do...I realize...I can't write any more. I use passive voice and jargon and violate every rule in Strunk & White. My dead professors are probably rolling in their graves, and I wouldn't want any of the living ones to read what I'm doing now.

The thing is, though I stopped writing, I have never stopped thinking like I was going to write. My little internal voice still speaks to a little internal me at a typewriter, turning all my observations and feelings into words intended for print.

Now, when that little internal me pulls the paper out of the typewriter and yells "Copy!" I don't expect anybody externally to care. I guess this blog is just a way for me to get my discipline back, to write every day (or when I can) and try out the tools I haven't been using at work. It's just a high-tech version of my old notebooks and journals, to satisfy myself.

That said: gentle reader, if you exist, feel free to comment. Correct my grammar and point out weaknesses; I'm used to that. Answer my agonizing questions; I'm always interested in hearing someone else's solutions.

Beat me up too bad; I can block your IP. {Wink.}

Perspective

Earlier I wrote, again, about living in a box. I was joking, of course. If something got screwed up with my refinance, I'd get a lawyer...and even if something else got screwed up and I did manage to lose the house, my parents would take me in. Or I could live with my grandmother, or my sister, probably even my ex would let me crash on his floor if it was truly the difference between sleeping in a house or in a box.

I went out tonight to get a wireless network card for my laptop. In the parking lot of the computer store there was a man asking for money. He said he was homeless. The thing that got me was that he had two kids with him, a girl in a stroller and a boy a little older.

I don't know what kind of shelters might exist here. During the winter some of the churches are open, but I don't know about summer. There's a place down by my office that is specifically for men; they serve dinner and people sleep there, but during the day it is closed and I doubt they'd allow kids. Even if they did, it's ten miles away.

Like I said, I have family here, and friends with sofas I could crash on and people who would help. I wonder about this guy. I worry about this guy.

Now I'm back home in the house I said I hate, but I don't really, because at least I have it. I'm wondering if the guy is still walking his children around the shopping center trying to get enough money to buy them some dinner, or if he's taken them...where?...and put them to...bed?

South Pacific

At work today a friend of mine was surfing Monster (well that's not a good sign!) and found this job posting:

We are currently seeking 20 applicants for our new Web Development company. There's only one small issue that our applicants are asked to deal with... Our new web firm is located on an 'all-inclusive' South Pacific Island Resort, and we ask that all applicants come to the Island and live in their own fully furnished home, less than 40 feet from the beach. ...

We are currently seeking multiple positions in the fields of IT (including Flash,
HTML Development, Project Managers, and Database professionals) and Sales and Marketing. Applicants have the opportunity to live, work and play on an all-inclusive Island resort full-time. Here's what you receive with your completed application:

• One laptop connected to the Internet at 1 Mbps
  
• Airfare to the Island for you and your family
  
• Visa fees paid and visas completed
  
• Fully furnished home
  
• Food (3 meals per day)
  
• Utilities, laundry and cleaning service
  
• $30 bar credit per adult per month
  
• Scuba lessons
  
• Free membership in the Nuku'alofa golf course
  
• Use of all marine vessels, scuba/snorkeling gear
  
• Use of all Sport Fishing equipment
  
• Use of uninhabited islands for day/overnight stays
  

It's from the Tonga Concept (the link wasn't working when we tried, which added to the sketchiness of the proposal).

But...holy cow! What's not to like...except maybe the part about getting to the island to find out it's ruled by some psychotic despot who makes everybody join a cult, then the web developers start disappearing one by one...

Of course this is real life, not Scooby Doo. We checked Tonga out on the CIA and State Department
websites, and it looks darn friendly. Tonga's government even has a web site (which looks a little like it was designed by a kid on Anglefire, but maybe the guys at Tonga Concept can work on that).

When have you ever seen a job with a monthly bar tab included? And $30 doesn't sound like much...that wouldn't cover a single happy hour for me here...but in looking at the government's page I noticed that the salaries for the economists the kingdom is looking to hire start at $8799. I'm guessing your dollar goes farther in Tonga.

And I bet you can wear a sarong and open-toed sandals to work. Maybe...maybe you can even work barefoot.

Living in a box

I remember a song coming out when I was in school called Living In A Box. I think the band was also called Living In A Box, perhaps the song came from the self-titled debut album Living In A Box...

I am closer to living in a box. Last Friday I was so relieved that the mortgage refinance nightmare was over. This morning I got a call from the settlement attorney...the lender still hadn't wired the funds because when I signed my closing papers, I signed First M. Last, not First Middle Last. Now I know I also signed an affidavit that had every possible name combination and nom de guerre I have ever or could ever use, but apparently it also needed to be signed with my full name to be valid.

Luckily I was able to aggressively drive my way through the cross town traffic (I don't normally drive like an ass; I'm in the safety field and to be in an accident because of my own unsafe action would be professionally embarrassing), re-sign the papers, write another check for four more days of interest, get a McDonald's Extra Value Meal and get back to the office using only 90 minutes of my allotted hour.

I'd like to breathe a sigh of relief that it is now done, but if I do that I'm afraid I'll hear the dum dum dum dum...or is it? like the end of a bad horror movie.

The last ankle pants

I bought some new pants the other day. I'm actually pretty pleased about the need for new pants, though I hate shopping, because I lost some weight and needed new pants to replace the ones that were now too big.

Anyway, I hate shopping. One of the things I hate is fitting rooms, so I have a bad habit of purchasing clothes without trying them on. I did that with a suit once. Then I got home and it fit beautifully, except that the sleeves ended three inches above my wrists and the pants ended above my ankles. My sister is the same size I am except shorter. Instead of going through the return & exchangle hassle (I'm too lazy to try stuff on, you think I can stand returns and exchanges?) I gave the suit to her. She looks great in it.

So, I bit the bullet and went shopping, and found these pants. They are charcoal grey pinstripe, very professional. I took them home and they fit great...except they stop right above my ankle. I tried on every pair of shoes I have that I could wear with work pants (that would be three pairs...I don't like shoe shopping either) and decided that with black boots the short legs didn't look too bad.

I took them to my sister for her opinion. She kinda frowned and slowly answered "They look...okay." Which I took to mean "They look...wrong."

"What you have there are ankle pants," she said. "Ankle pants" is a new one to me, but as I mentioned, I hate shopping. I am, not surprisingly, not an early adapter when it comes to fashion. I believe I bought the last pair of acid-washed jeans sold in America, and possibly the last pair of stirup pants as well. Then she told me that I shouldn't be wearing boots, I should be wearing...I forgot what she called them, but shoes you wear without socks.

So, ugh, another shopping trip. Our dress code at work has some prohibition against open toes and shoes without backs, but I found a pair of sandals that had wide straps that covered toes and went around the back. And today, since it was supposed to go over 90 degrees, I figures I'd try wearing them.

In ten and a half years at my job I have never gone to work with bare legs. In the "ankle pants" only about three inches of skin was showing, but I really felt self-conscious. And it's not that I work for some puritanical place where a glimpse of non-stocking is looked upon as something shocking...with some of my younger co-workers, anything does go. (They routinely disregard the open toe rule!) But I might as well have shown up in a thong for the way I felt.

So I pretty much stayed at my desk all day. I just felt naked. I can't explain it. On my way out tonight, though, I did stop by a friend's desk to say good bye. She looked at me a minute and said "Is that a new outfit?"

"Yeah."

"Are those new shoes?"

"Yeah."

She called another friend over to check me out. "You look so fashionable! I haven't ever seen you wear sandals. And are those ankle pants?"

I admitted that it was the first time I ever had worn them to the office. I also admitted that I felt a little weird. They reassured me that I looked great, that the shoes were fine, the pants were fine, and I should go ahead and embrace the ankle panks.

Which I would, but I know that in stores all across the country they are being pulled from the shelves this very day.

In the name of

On my way home from work today I saw a nice little family scene, dad and mom and kid and baby out for a walk. Then the kid decided she could push the stroller, tried to run and oops, lost control.

No harm came to the baby; dad grabbed the stroller in time and it wasn't going that fast, but I could hear him scolding the kid "Kaitlyn!" (Or maybe it was Caitlin. Or Kaytelinne.) "Blah blah blah..!"

Ok, I tuned out after "Kaitlyn!" because the name Kaitlyn, and all its various spellings, cracks me up. I have noticed lately that when I hear a kid getting chewed out in public, it always seems to be a name that tops the trendy list. A few weeks ago I was in the grocery store and a brat, er, child, was bouncing a ball as hard as he could while his mother was checking out, and of course he wasn't catching the ball, it was flying into other people and the brat, er, child was being a complete nuisance. The mother finally intervened with an anemic "Logan, sweetie, don't bouce that inside" which the kid ignored. I rolled my eyes not at the ineffective discipline, but at the name. Logan?

What is logan, anyway? A berry, right? Or a shade of green. Which reminds me that about four years ago a friend of mine had a son. He liked the name Jake. Mother liked Hunter. Guess who won? Not long after the baby was born we all went out to dinner. All evening we were hearing from other tables "Hunter! Put that back!" "Hunter! Get down!" "Hunter! Don't bite your sister!"

My nominee for the winner in the "Name Your Kid Like a Porn Star" contest was a guy I saw chasing his daughter at a local kite festival...she darted off, he followed yelling "Asia! Asia Teal! Come back here..."

Here I must admit...my given first name is not that common (in the 60's, when I was born, my name was shared by less than 0.3% of the females born the same decade. And the 60's were the heyday...it didn't make the top 1000 names in the 1940's and had dropped to less than 0.01% by the 1990's.) And I have found out quite by accident that my name is also used by porn stars, including one who also uses a name uncomfortably close to my middle name, too.

The Social Security Administration compiles lists of baby names from social security card applications, and you can check out the database on their web page. This is where I found the stats on my name, but there are lots of things to play with, like the top 5 names for a given year by state.

It is a cool use of our tax dollars, and I'm not being facetious. If I had a kid coming I'd be spending a lot of time on that site, finding a name that wasn't so common she'd be one of five in the class, but one that wouldn't make anyone smirk at me when I was yelling at her in the grocery store.

Whining

In my post about le Tour I mentioned that I started riding myself a few years ago. Back then, I was a fairly serious recreational cyclist...I was slow and on a inexpensive hybrid, but on a typical weekend I'd ride a total of about a hundred miles. (Not in one day. I never made it to the century mark; my longest ride was 83.)

I also started having excrutiating, then debilitating, pain in my knees. The eventual diagnosis was chondromalacia patellae, which I have since seen referred to as patellofemoral stress syndrome, a condition where the misaligned kneecap rubs on the femur. It can grind away at the cartilage, which happened to me, and I ended up having arthroscopic surgey.

For awhile I was good about doing physical therapy, going to the gym, and I still rode. Then other things in life started eating away at ride time, and gym time, and then I just got lazy. Since I wasn't riding, my knees only bothered me when the weather was changing (they were quite the barometer: I woke up from a sound sleep one winter night with my knee throbbing. The next morning we had several inches of unforecasted snow from a surprise front that had moved in) or if I sat too long with my knees bent, like at a hockey game.

Yesterday I decided to go riding. Tour inspired? Maybe. I have a road bike now, a nicer more expensive bike, and it doesn't do the machine justice to be hanging on the wall rack like pop art. I pumped up the tires and took it up to the local park. I won't even say how slowly or how short the ride was...sufice to say, back in my real riding days it would not have warranted putting on bike shorts and gloves. I was ashamed at how far my cardio fitness has fallen...I was panting up hills...but it was nice to be back on the bike.

Fast forward to today at work. I was sitting at my desk, probably twenty six hours since returning the bike to its wall rack, and suddenly there was a sharp repeating pain under my left kneecap. Honestly, it was so sudden and so bad that I swore out loud in surprise. I keep naproxen in my desk, and after about 20 minutes the sharp hammering pain was back to an ache. Then a few hours later, while I was walking down the flat hallway, the left knee just buckled. Thank God I wasn't carrying a cup of hot coffee.

Damn. I guess I am in worse shape than I thought, and I guess the orthopedist wasn't blowing smoke back when he advised me to keep up the PT "forever."

So tonight I'm sitting here with ice on my knee (deja vu) while I watch the Tour rebroadcast. And I feel very very wimpy, especially seeing Joseba Beloki's awful crash, which ended his race and landed him in the hospital with at least a broken leg, possibly a broken elbow as well.

Tomorrow I will start the leg lifts.

"Men riding bicycles"

I don't get much done in July, thanks to the Tour de France, and specifically thanks to the coverage on OLN.

It was not always thus. I used to assume that bike racing was pretty boring, and tv coverage seemed to consist of a long shot of a sunflower field...then a huge group of guys in ugly clothes would ride through really fast...then back to sunflowers. Whoo hoo.

I actually bought a bike and started riding myself in 1996, and by osmosis more than anything I started to pick up little bits of racing understanding. In researching cycling (I don't do anything without reading up on it) I read a book by Greg LeMond, and I watched the cycling during the 1996 Olympics. I paid a bit of attention the Tour in 1997, but it was in 1998 that I really got into it. On the Internet I found online diaries from Bobby Julich and Frankie Andreu, and reading their day-by-day experiences made it click for me.

Before that, I figured: it is a race, so everybody racing has the same idea...ride as fast as he can and try to be the first one to finish. Duh.

Reading the diaries explained it...the roles of the different riders on a team, the stages vs. the overall, the sprints and the mountains. And the politics...in 1998 the riders had a sit-down stike in the middle of a stage to protest the raids from police looking for evidence of doping. I was fascinated, and hooked.

Lance Armstrong's incredible return to the Tour in 1999 hooked a lot of other people here in the U.S. Even my mom has been watching OLN, not only because she's hoping Lance wins his fifth, but because the race commentary by Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, and Bob Roll is as instructive for noncyclists as it is riveting for die-hard fans. The other day she was watching the live feed when my two-year-old nephew toddled in and said "Oh! Men riding bicycles!"

He didn't sit still long enough to learn "green jersey" and "Victor Hugo Pena," but maybe next year.

Our house is a very very very fine house

I closed on my mortgage refinance today. This is only a big deal because it turned into a nightmare for awhile last month...I was literally waking up in the middle of the night with stress-related refinance dreams...but ah, it is over.

The nightmare was of the no-good-deed-goes-unpunished variety; I used a broker because he's a friend of mine who took the commission job because he hadn't found anything else, and I used a settlement agency because another friend works there. Turned out my actual costs came in above my estimates, my loan was delayed because the lender didn't get around to approving it and I missed the good month-end closing date my friend had secured, the zip code on my appraisal was wrong and delayed it further, and the lender/broker and the settlement agency weren't exactly thrilled with each other...

But it is over. Whew. And I make my last payment in August 2033. When I bought the house about ten years ago, seeing that thirty year date kinda freaked me out, but somehow in the last decade thirty years just doesn't seem that long anymore. Maybe by then I'll have the basement refinished, or at least a new kitchen floor.

See, I hate my house. My house hates me. It isn't quite the Amityville Horror, but instead of blood dripping from the walls and flies in the dead of winter I have pinhole leaks in my copper pipe (being fixed July 28, cost $6,000). I have doors that stick and windows that won't stay open. I have an electric heat pump that heats, in the winter, to what feels like a toasty 62 degrees. I have a basement finished in black pegboard and lit by strobe fluorescent lights. I have dark walnut stained kitchen cabinets. But every time I save enough to fix the cosmetic, something functional breaks.

A logical question then is "Why did you buy it?" Well, I was renting it. The owner decided to sell. I figured it was buy it myself or get it clean enough to put on the market, and buying seemed less daunting. Plus then, ten years ago, I had enthusiasm and delusions...I'd strip and refinish the cabinets. I'd take down the pegboard and replace it with nice paneling. I did replace the roof and the heat pump (the previous one didn't even get to 62 degrees, and the electric bills were closer to $200 than the $100, $150 I deal with now). I've also replaced the hot water heater, the washer and dryer (twice on that one), the dishwasher, and the refrigerator. And I have made two improvements that actually made me happy: Pergo floor on the main level, and pvc shower surrounds in the upstairs bathrooms. Everything else still makes me cringe or cry, depending on my mood.

Another funny thing happened since I bought it: home prices here have gone through the re-shingled roof and beyond. If I were looking to buy now, even with my improved income from my 1993 life, I could not afford this neighborhood. And believe me, the only thing about this neighborhood that's gotten better in ten years is the addition of a Mexican restaurant down the street.

So I am here and here I will remain, unless the mortgage deal really was so screwed up that the wire transfer from the lender never comes (it still wasn't there when I left the settlement agency) and my old mortgage company ends up foreclosing and kicking my ass out...at which point (hahaha to them) they'll have to repanel the damn basement to get this place sold. They'll have to remodel the kitchen. And you'll be finding me in the box next to the dumpster behind the Mexican restaurant.

How does your garden grow

Generally speaking, my gardens don't grow, they wither and die. I'm bad about watering. It's pathetic. Yet even knowing this about myself, every spring I buy a bunch of plants, stick them in pots or the ground, then I watch them wilt.

This spring was unusually cool and wet, and now we have hit the nightly thunderstorm season. It is actually so bad that a few of my plants died not of the usual dehydration, but from drowning. No kidding, they just rotted.

But look at this pepper! Not only is the plant itself robust and green, but I have flowers, and peppers, and look! Ripe peppers! Right there! The red ones!

Too bad I don't actually eat peppers.

Jumping In

So I rented some server space, and I spung for the $40 to have Movable Type installed (I don't know cgi scripting...and I gave installing it a whirl on my other server, and I came this close...but in the end I got frustrated, then the power went out, and by the next morning I realized that my sanity was worth the cash). And I came up with some rat-related page ideas, but the blog thing...it was hooking me. Do it. C'mon, everybody else did it.

Make a personal blog...

I may not have much to say: what I had for lunch. How my favorite team is doing. Cute thing my nephew did. And I may be sick of this after a week and hang it up (except for the rat stuff, I mean.)

The time has come.