Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Game on

I always get a little excited by a new hockey season.

This season is the 30th for the Washington Capitals. I still remember the first one. My family had season tickets, great seats behind the bench. I didn't get to see my first live game until November, a 4-4 tie against the North Stars.

The first Caps game I saw was not a loss. I think that is significant, because that first season was 8-67-5...a lot of losses...but I always expected them to win. Bear in mind I was a little kid. The finer points of the game, like actual talent, were still lost on me. They were my team, I loved them, if they lost I was crushed.

My favorite player was defenseman Yvon Labre. I liked Denis Dupere, too, and Ron Low and Ace Bailey. But Yvon Labre was my favorite favorite. When I played street hockey...always pretending the Caps were about to win the Stanley Cup...I scored the winning goal on a pass from Yvon.

They had a promotion the second season where kids could get their pictures taken with a player, and the whole way to the Capital Centre I talked about how I hoped I could get my picture with Yvon. I had my Yvon Labre hockey card with me to get autographed, just in case! I was all dressed up in red, white, and blue, with my Capitals stocking cap. When warmups were over a few players were lined up on folding chairs, and ushers dropped the kids on players laps like an assembly line of department store Santas. If I got Yvon it would be dumb luck...

Or a dad who could count. I didn't find this out until later (much later. Twenty years later) but my dad dropped us back in line as needed so that when I got to the front the empty player was Yvon.

On the ice, though, the team crushed me on a regular basis. Finally I got used to losing, and in a perverse way I think I started to take some pride in staying loyal to a team whose fans are always labelled with the modifier "long-suffering." Now I can trade the battle stories. The 1987 Easter game? Of course I was there. Pittsburgh? Don't talk to me about Pittsburgh. In 1982 I remember the last game of the season, the Caps had failed to make the playoffs by that much, the final standings decided by another game the same day, and captain Ryan Walter actually cried, telling the fans who stayed that next year would be the year.

Next year is always the year.

Next year starts next week.

What I am doing at work today

Article 1 of European Parliament and Council Directive 1999/33/EC(3) permitted Sweden from 1 January 1999 until 31 December 2000 to require the use of the additional R-phrase R340, not listed in Annex III, for substances classified as carcinogenic, category 3, instead of R-phrase R40. Member State experts have agreed to revise the text of R-phrase R40 to refer to carcinogenic, category 3 substances. A new R-phrase R-68 should be added to Annex III, containing the original text of R-phrase R40 for classification and labelling of mutagenic category 3 and harmful substances listed in Annex I. The classification and labelling and concentration limit references in Annex I that include R40 should therefore be revised for such mutagenic category 3 and harmful substances.

*hic*

I have had the hiccups all darn day.

Ok, not literally every minute since I woke up, but for long stretches throughout the day, and I am getting sore.

It was a busy weekend and a busy day...once again I have done lots of thinking but don't have time for lots of typing.

I do have one quick thing, in the "wish I had a camera" category:

I saw a couple getting married on a Metro platform this evening. When our train first pulled in the station I saw the bride and thought, that's odd, riding the Metro in a wedding gown. Then when everyone in the car turned to look again I did too, and saw the groom and the minister, and a few other people in suits and dresses standing in a semi-circle.

Then we pulled out. I'd swear I was hallucinating, except everyone in the car had a varitation on "Was that what I thought it was?"

The woman sitting next to me said "Wow, I wonder where they are going for the honeymoon."

Sunshine & cynicism

I've had people tell me I'm a cynic, although I don't think that is altogether true. I do find some value in the advice of A.E. Housman:

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.

Still, when I was out walking the dog this morning I was feeling quite uncynical. It was another beautiful morning. I was getting ready to go to the fall bazaar at my parents' church. Last night I had a nice evening with my sister, watching my brother-in-law's band. I was thinking, I'm actually really lucky, not only to live near to my family, but to get along with them well enough to want to see them all the time.

I was having quite a happy day.

I saw some folks up at the church I haven't seen in many years, including the mother of a girl I babysat regularly. The girl's up in Cambridge going to grad school (I'm assuming Harvard. When I was in tenth grade and she was in third, she was helping me with my trig homework.) and she's married. Married! That can't be legal. She's a little girl. I was relieved to see an old high school classmate looking pretty much like he did in high school...until my mom told me that under his baseball cap, the hair he has left is grey. Thanks, Ma.

So then I was feeling old and happy.

When we got home I checked in on the rat board we frequent. There was a new post there, from a new member, with a video clip. Victor took a look and said "Don't do that."

"Why not?" I asked, clicking along. It was supposed to be a rat swimming.

"It's a troll," he warned me. "You are not going to want to see it."

Yep, the video was a swimming rodent. There were fish in the tank. "I wouldn't think letting him swim in a fish tank is a good idea..." I said, still not getting it. Then the (you guessed it) piranhas attacked.

"I told you not to look." Victor said.

I sat there sputtering, confused. Why would somebody post a video of a piranha killing a rat on a message board for people who keep rats as pets? I sounded like my five-year-old niece...why? Because people are cruel. Why? Because people are jerks. Why? Because people get off on hurting others.

And I know there are worse videos floating around out there. I had to get my cynical guard back up, to let the "you know why" soak back through my brain, before I had that unpleasant thought.

Sigh.

Well, I can't speak for the world. My day still had much good, and much more good than ill. But it is clouding up outside, so I'm going to make the dog happy with one more walk before it starts to rain.

RIP

I was surprised to hear abour Robert Palmer. Fifty-four seems way too young to die of a heart attack.

When I was in high school I worked as an office clerk. We usually listened to a MOR "lite" rock station, but when the office manager was on vacation we'd put on harder rock. The rock station had a call-in request show at lunch, and we'd phone up but never get through.

One afternoon we actually did. That's when we realized we'd never thought of a song to request. The receptionist blurted out "Sneaking Sally Through the Alley!"

They played it, mentioning our names on the air, and the secretaries, recptionist and I were all dancing around the front desk, singing along.

I don't have a George Plimpton memory like that, but I read a lot of his works. My favorite was Open Net (the hockey version of Paper Lion, where he plays goalie for the Bruins).

The Reuter's obituary included the paragraph

Known for writing about topics through first-hand experience, Plimpton played as a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, played the triangle for the New York Philharmonic, flew on a circus trapeze, fought bulls with Ernest Hemingway, pitched baseballs to Willie Mays and even made an appearance in the boxing ring.

My first assignment in my first journalism class was to write my own obituary.

I wish I'd come up with something half that cool.

Goodnight, gentlemen.

Hooky, hockey, and heathy living

I'm playing hooky this afternoon. We were having computer problems at work, making me less than productive. My boss was out. My boss' boss was out. I went outside around 1 to deliver something to the other building and saw the blue sky, felt the warm sun...

I signed out. Told them to call my cell phone if we have any disasters (oddly enough, when we do have "incidents" it does seem to be when I am not there) and I took off.

I have tickets for the hockey game tonight, so I'm going to head into town early and enjoy Washington on a bright fall afternoon.

And hey, my holistic health book says to get at least twenty minutes of sunlight a day!

snake oil

I bought snake oil today.

No, wait, it is flaxseed oil.

I've been feeling really crappy most of the time for several months. I thought I might be anemic or something, but I had a physical and bloodwork and apparently I'm fine. Well, fine except for the (occasionally crushing) fatigue and malaise.

Actually, I'm not really totally fine, because for years I've had endometriosis (I know...dangerously close to "TMI." Don't worry, I won't share details.) I've been controlling it with drugs for the most part, but for about the last year the drugs have been kinda letting me down. I just read something in the past week or so that suggested that even when the usual endo symptoms aren't acute, that one might still be suffering from a variety of things like, oh, say, fatigue and malaise.

Huh.

Well, it does make sense. When it acts up, I am in a world of hurt, and it does take a toll. Maybe I am just having trouble recovering fully from month to month.

I ordered a book about a holistic approach to treating endometriosis. The word "holistic" has some connotations to me: crystals, chanting, balancing chakras. It shouldn't, though. Dorland's, the medical dictionary that sits on my desk, defines holistic health as taking "into account the whole individual, his own responsibility for his well-being and the total influences--social, psychological, environmental--that affect health, including nutrition, exercise, and mental relaxation."

That makes perfect sense. Anyway, this book's holistic approach has a lot to do with nutrition. I don't have a horrible diet, but it could be better...for every meal of fresh organic vegetables, I eat a Big Mac. I don't know if I really want to kick caffeine and preservatives, but I'd rather give that a try than, say, abdominal surgery.

I'm not adverse to drugs, either, but as I said, the drugs that used to help aren't doing it for me anymore. And I've been working in the pharmaceutical field for most of the last 15 years, and honestly, the more I learn about drugs the more I'd rather not take them if I can find another alternative.

That doesn't make me a big proponent of "natural products," though. It's not that they don't work...plants can have huge effects. That's where we got (and in some cases still get) the drugs from, after all. But it is hard to get plants to standardize, as an old boss of mine used to say. And too many companies are marketing too much unproven garbage to too many naive and desperate sick people. Beyond that, I shudder when I hear people equate "natural" with "safe." Yeah, right. My favorite natural product is belladonna.

So: nutrition. The diet calls for the usual low fat, low refined carbohydrates, low sugar, heavy on fresh vegetables, fruit, and whole grains. It's also big on the fatty acids. I'd love to eat salmon a couple times a week, but it happens to be one of the fish to which I am allergic. I'm not sure how many walnuts I can eat a day. So to increase the fatty acid intake, I found myself standing in the pharmacy this afternoon, surrounded by the poorly-tested and the unproven natural remedies, with bottles of flaxseed and evening primrose oils.

My ex-husband once suggested that I suffer from an anti-placebo effect...even drugs that work don't work on me because I'm too cynical.

Well, maybe. I'm also becoming one of the desperate, though. So I took my oil capsules. And maybe I'll do a little chant, too.

If only

If I had a bigger house, I'd have a bigger bedroom.

If I had a bigger bedroom, I'd have room for a bigger bed. (Like a California king.)

If I had a bigger bed, when the dog decided to sleep with me, I could still get up in the morning without being stiff and sore and hobbling around like a great-grandmother with arthritis.

Joking around

Victor hates my favorite joke:

What's brown and sticky?

A stick!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Whew.

(Wipe tears from eyes.)

God, I love that joke.

First with a joke was LeeAnn, then Da Goddess, then Victor, then Daniel, then Susie.

I have another one:

A dog walks into a bar and orders a beer. "Get lost, mutt," growls the bartender.

The dog slinks away, tail between his legs, but the next day he comes back. Hoping up on the stool, he asks for a beer.

"What did I tell you yesterday?" says the bartender. "I hate dogs! Get outta my bar!"

The dog leaves, but shows up again the next afternoon, goes right up to the bar and asks for a beer.

The bartender is enraged. "You sonofabitch*! How many times do I have to tell you--stay the heck out of here!" And with that, he raises a pistol and BANG shoots the dog. The dog whimpers and limps away.

Years go by.

One day the dog, a little grey in the muzzle, still with a bit of a limp, walks slowly through the bar doors.

"YOU!" shouts the bartender. "What are YOU doing here!?"

The dog says "I'm lookin' for the man who shot my paw."

*Technically not an obscenity in this case. Remember, he is a dog.

back to work

We have lights, we have servers, we have no reason not to be at work tomorrow. Of course everybody will spend seven hours trading hurricane horror stories, but that's to be expected.

I got that out of my system already, talking to the other people in my department on the phone today to tell them to come in (carefully, since many of the traffic lights are still out). A couple of the people had some pretty bad tree damage (lost huge old trees completely...it costs $600 to have somebody come and saw and chip a big old tree, apparently. Ouch. I didn't even think of that aspect.) and one still doesn't have power. Not only is she happy to be coming in to work, she told me she's coming in early for a hot shower and to blowdry her hair.

the lack of calm after the storm

I just heard on the radio that two workers for BGE, one of the area power companies, were electrocuted while working on line repairs.

Damn. Obviously I don't have details (I couldn't even find a more in-depth account on the local online news), but I would not be surprised if it was merely a case of workers going through something too fast and taking some safety shortcuts.

Not surprisingly, people are enormously frustrated. (And it's easy for me to be objective, right, since I have power. For some reason, it's been during winter storms that I seem to lose mine. So while I'm not powerless now, I can relate.) The pressure is definitely on the utility workers. I'm worried about those guys.

It is the same story...right now people are demanding buried lines, trimmed trees, more equipment and staff. When the lights come back on, extra measures will be too expensive to justify and no, you better not touch that beautiful old tree...

As Victor and I drove up to Carroll County yesterday we saw a lot more trees down and a lot of intersections without traffic lights. Those are tricky. Of course everyone remembers the driver's ed instruction that you treat a dead traffic light like a stop sign, but when the intersection has twelve lanes instead of four, the flow of traffic is not quite so obvious. We did see a couple of accidents.

As a radio traffic reporter remarked, what Isabel didn't do to us, we do to each other, or to ourselves.

vino, vidi, vici

Victor and I went up to the Maryland Wine Festival today. It was a new experience for me; until I started drinking with Victor I was pretty much a beer person. I said I didn't drink wine because it gave me a headache (and it did. I drank plenty of bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill when I was young, and I always had a headache the next day.)

Anyway, though I have always been a beer person, I am a lot more discriminating with my beer than I was with the Boone's Farm. During the microbrew boom in the early '90s my husband was a brewer (we are no longer married and he no longer makes beer, although the two are not connected) and I learned pretty much by osmosis how to characterize different beers. That turned me into a snob on the one hand, but on the other, guys seem impressed by a woman who orders (and actually drinks) porter.

But back to wine. A couple years ago I took Victor to an Italian restaurant for his birthday and he ordered a bottle of cabernet sauvignon (Beaulieu, I think). I'm not a big Peroni fan, so I joined him in the wine. No headache the next day.

I also started reading the wine column in the Wall Street Journal. (I get it from AvantGo on my PDA.) It struck me then that tasting wine was really no different than tasting beer...or coffee, for that matter...or black cherry Kool Aid. The Kool Aid is just a bit less complex.

I'm a big proponent of "Think globally, eat/drink locally." With beer, you actually want to drink it as fresh as possible (best beer I ever had came right out of the Brite tank at Dixie Brewing Co. in New Orleans...oh wait, I'm back to wine) but since wine ages, it can travel. Still, I like to support local farms and local businesses, so drinking Maryland has plenty of appeal.

There were twelve wineries at the festival this year. My favorites were Boordy , Elk Run, and Deep Creek, but I admit I relied too much on my memory as we went from tent to tent doing the tastings. When it came time to go back and buy bottles, I couldn't remember everything I'd had that I'd liked. Funny how that happened...

One I know I missed was a raspberry dessert wine. There was a reason for the Boone's Farm; I do like the sweet stuff.

Another funny thing happened at the wine festival: I saw one of the company VPs. Apparently he's a woodworker on the weekends, and he was set up there selling his work in the craft section. He told me that the power in my building is back on (we have four buildings) but two others are still out. Looks like I'm back at work on Monday.

That's fine. There's still a whole day left of this weekend, and I have a case of nice wine.

pictures

Victor has pretty much the same pictures from the neighborhood (but I'm still practicing pings):

Then he'd lead you to a roll of scotch tape and tell you to fix it.

Oh, and the most surreal part of this experience: sitting ten feet from Victor on separate computers reading each other's blogs instead of talking. Is that modern communication or what?

I feel very lucky

Last night we stayed in the basement with all the pets...using the same "overabundance of caution" that the local authorities used when they started closing things yesterday.

Our power has not gone out, but I think it's out at work (I can't get to voicemail) and on the news right now the reporter is standing at a major intersection very near the house, and it's dark. I am nervous about my various family and friends, especially my grandmother and great-aunt, and the friend with the new baby...Pepco is saying that it may be a week before power is restored.

I've also been seeing the floods around town. My grandmother isn't far from Rock Creek, but at least she is on a hill. If my parents lost power and couldn't run the sump pump, their basement is a pool, I'm sure.

Without the work voicemail, I'm not sure if we are offically closed...but I'm taking the lack of voicemail as a clue. Besides, the police are asking people to keep off the roads until they can restore power to traffic lights and get rid of the downed trees. If I have to, I'll burn a day of vacation.

It is worth it.

(fingers drumming)

I'm going to learn how to use MT, since I have nothing better to do while I wait for the power to go out.

I'll try a trackback to Victor.

The Chesapeake Bay Bridge has closed because of the wind.

I have the news on (staticy portable tv with rabbit ears) and they keep showing street scenes around town. Except for the newscasters in their slickers, nobody is outside. It's kinda creepy.

Ocean City

Poor O.C. Sunfest, the big end-of-season celebration, was supposed to start today. The way the town's luck ran this summer (the worst since 1986, because of the nearly-constant rain and the economy), a hurricane would fit right in.

Ocean City has been a resort beach since the 19th century, but it was a hurricane in 1933 that created the look of the island today. That August, the storm separated Ocean City from Assateague, creating an inlet between Sinepuxent Bay and the Atlantic. The new inlet was a boon for fisherman who could then get into the ocean to fish for white marlin, and when the jetty was built to preserve the inlet, a buildup of sand created the wide white beach on the south end of town.

For the last couple of years I have been coveting a place in Ocean City, but they are quite beyond my reach. Victor gave me the silver lining last night when we were running around getting our house (~150 miles inland) ready for Isabel. "Imagine if you had one of those half-a-million dollar condos at the beach," he said. "You'd be shitting yourself right now."

The waiting is the hardest part

Well, there are worse ways to spend a Thursday afternoon than eating gyros, drinking beer, and watching DVDs (Victor took down the satellite dish, so no tv).

We closed up the office at noon (11:30, actually, to take down the servers.) I had customers calling all morning, driving me nuts. Excuse me, I have weather to monitor! But I have a guilty feeling of glee thinking of the customers calling this afternoon...

I am really impatient. Sitting around waiting for the storm to start, waiting for a flood, waiting for my roof to blow off, is driving me nuts.

Not that I'd rather have my roof blown off, mind you.

But I suck at waiting.

The calm before the storm

Apparently that isn't just a cliche; a hurricane is usually preceeded by beautiful weather. It has been beautiful here the last couple of days, but I think we are in for a heckuva change.

Some people wall in their patio to make another living room. We turned the living room into a patio.

I just walked the dog (who is acting squirrelly...I was at the vet this afternoon with Curly, and all the dogs there were acting squirrelly. The tech said the dogs had been really antsy all day. Maybe there is something to that "animals sense a storm" thing. OTOH, the rats are acting normally.) and noticed that most of my neighbors have not bothered to bring in trashcans, recycle bins, flower pots, patio furniture...

I am going to be supremely irked if my neighbor's lawn jockey ends up in my living room.

Trying to reason with hurricane season

Here's what the National Weather Service is saying about Hurricane Isabel:

...PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
PERSONS LOCATED IN AND NEAR THE POSTED HURRICANE WATCH AREA SHOULD
PREPARE FOR HIGH WINDS AND SIGNIFICANT COASTAL FLOODING. PEOPLE
INLAND SHOULD PREPARE FOR STRONG WINDS...HEAVY RAIN...AND POTENTIAL
SMALL STREAM AND RIVER FLOODING.

Here is what the people in my office are saying:
"Are we gonna close Thursday and Friday?"

I'm in the safety department, so people like to call me to complain about strange smells, people speeding in the garage, and, any time the weather is bad, the fact that we are willing to risk people's lives! by making them come to work.

The thing that gets me is that so many of my cow-orkers seem to be focusing on getting a day off, not the potential destruction and loss. I pointed out to one that we have a shelter-in-place plan for just such emergencies, and since the storm was likely to start on Thursday during the day, she might want to review those procedures. She gave me a very dirty look and told me she had no intention of staying at work no matter what was going on outside.

I am not freaking about Isabel, but I have learned to take weather emergencies seriously. It is probably just maturity. Tonight I'll make sure that the flashlights and batteries are accessible and put all the garden tools in the shed, maybe even rearrange the furniture a bit in case we need to bring in the grills. Not freaking, just being prudent.

The only hurricane of real significance I've experienced was Andrew. Except for 1992, I've been here around DC, where for the most part our weather is pretty good. (I'm too young to remember Camille and Agnes.) Anyway, in 1992 I was living on the Gulf coast. Andrew hadn't hit south Florida yet but was on the radar. I stopped at a convenience store on my way to work and noticed that flashlights, batteries, and water were already sold out. At the office I commented that back at home, people went nuts for milk and bread when we had snow forecasts.

My boss asked if my "hurricane kit" was ready. I didn't know what he was talking about. I had a chart from Winn Dixie that had a little hurricane symbol sticker and a map, but no"kit."

He asked if I knew my evacaution route. Yeah, I said, west to 95 then north to my parents' house.

I hadn't paid too much attention to preparing for hurricane season because I didn't live on the beach. I was several miles in, not on a canal, what did I need to worry about?

Then the guys in the office started telling me about all the past damage from previous storms, including, they said, the store that used to be right where my apartment was until it had the roof ripped off by Camille in '69.

I think they might have been bs'ing me there, but it kinda got my attention. Then watching Homestead on CNN really got my attention. When Andrew did come up the Gulf of Mexico it hit west of where I lived, but I had my hurricane kit ready. I kept it ready 'til I moved home.

I'm more lax at home now, which is funny since I have to check the emergency supplies and conduct the drills and always be ready at work. But I have canned food (and the manual can opener...I love hearing that little "by the way" on the news. Duh. But I can't stand electric can openers anyway, so I don't even own one.) and plenty of water, flashlights and a radio.

Now I'm going to go batten down the hatches and hope I don't need 'em.

Out of their league

The WUSA (Women's United Soccer Association) announced today that they are suspending operations.

I heard the news on my way home and felt a little guilty, because I never made it to any Freedom games this year.

Now the price of my seat and a hot dog wasn't going to stand between the league and insolvency, I know. But as I mentioned in a previous entry, I feel very strongly about pro women's sports.

I was musing over some of the differences between the men's and women's games I attend. The difference really isn't the actual game...the women don't play the exact same game the men do, but it doesn't make it less competative or less exciting.

One of the big differences I do see is that the women's games are for families, and the men's games are for businesses. I've seen this going to the Washington Capitals and Mystics games, the two teams I see most often in person.

My parents have had season tickets to the Caps since the first season, 1974. We had great seats, right behind the players' bench, and most of the other seats in the section were also individual season ticket holders. As the ticket prices rose, though, the seatholders changed...fewer friends and families, more "corporate" seats.

We knew the seats right behind ours were owned by a company, because most of the time the people using the seats mentioned it at some point during their constant non-hockey conversation: "Awesome seats, dude. How'd you get 'em?"
"My roommate's sister's boss got them from a contractor. Do you know anything about hockey?"
"No, but I played rugby once in high school. That gives me enough experience to loudly comment on the play between beers and planning Friday's happy hour."
"If you mispronounce number 7's name it sounds funny. I'll repeat that a few million times."

Ooops, sorry. I obviously have another sports axe to grind there.

Anyway, when the Caps moved downtown to the MCI Center, even my empty-nest parents could no longer afford the "good" seats and we moved up to the nosebleeds. Even up there we hear a lot to suggest that the people in the seats received the tickets via work, either as a reward from their employer or as a gift from someone with whom they were doing business.

A couple of times I have had the luxury of seeing a game from a Luxury Suite at MCI. How? A friend of mine lives next door to a woman who handles the tickets for a Big Company. When Big Company isn't entertaining clients or rewarding employees, she can do whatever she wants with the tickets. She's not a hockey fan, but my friend is, so when she remembers and he can go he gives me a call.

Now I do sometimes buy products from Big Company, but not because I've gotten to sit in their luxury suite. I don't know how the IRS handles such business expenses (not as loosely as they used to, I don't think), but I still wonder how Big Company is justifying the cost.

Another thing...many nights, particularly on, say, a Wednesday when we are playing, say, Edmonton, I can look down from my nosebleed seat and see that Big Company's box is absolutely dark and empty. But that's okay for the arena, the team, and the NHL, 'cuz that box was already paid for.

In contrast, at the Mystics games most of the luxury boxes seem dark. And instead of K Street suits, most of the fans are families. Lots of kids. Lots of couples.

The most expensive seat for the Mystics? $75 for front row floor. The next highest is $35. The Caps "VIP" front row seat is $230. For both the cheapest ticket is $10, but for the Mystics the $10 seats are a third of the arena, for the Caps the $10 seats are two rows of twelve sections.

Maybe I'm just hanging out with the wrong crowd, but the ticket prices of the men's sports (and hockey is cheap, an also-ran sport here in Washington) place most of the tickets out of the range of regular families and into the hands of Big Companies. Women's sports aren't very attractive to Big Companies, making them affordable for families.

The problem is, a sports league itself is a Big Company, and apparently it takes more than the average family's $10 tickets to keep a company like the WUSA playing in the big leagues...

Whew.

Thank goodness for the safety.

Terps won, too. And in high school football, my alma mater beat Victor's alma mater. What a good weekend!

Except for the rain and the stitches in my finger. On the other hand (so to speak) I still can't cook or get them wet, so we went out to dinner twice and Victor cooked tonight. What a good weekend!

Up, down, and around

Please excuse the color changes, especially when they get ugly. I can't leave well enough alone with the templates, and this is my "test" blog. (The "real" blog is all about the rats, because that is how my priorities are.)

Victor and I went up to Bawl'mer yesterday to see Hairspray. It was frothy and cute, and had it not been rainy, would have been a totally lovely outing.

I am not a big Baltimore fan...I would probably like the city well enough were it not for the people I know who live(d) there. Because I self-identify as a Washingtonian, the Baltimoreans (I'm trying to be nice) I know take every opportunity to tell me why they loooooove Baltimore and hate D.C.

It usually has something to do with "Baltimore has character, Washington is dull." "Baltimore is friendly, Washington is snobby." "Baltimore is affordable, Washington is too expensive."

I must admit for the record: I live in Maryland, not D.C. I'm even outside the Beltway. I do, however, harbor a fantasy of buying my grandfather's boyhood home in Columbia Heights. And my sports allegiances are straight down the line Washington: Capitals, Redskins, Mystics, Freedom, United, Wizards. There's no baseball team on that list because we don't have a baseball team and haven't since 1972. I will not substitute the Orioles.

My blood pressure is rising, so I'll lay off that subject for now.

Anyway, went to play, had fun.

In the evening we went to the mall for dinner (I'm getting a lot of eating out because of the stitched-up finger) and to the record store. I'm too self-conscious to go out and buy CDs right after some major musical figure has died, because I'm afraid the clerk is going to make fun of me when I leave. "Hey, did you see that woman? She just bought every album Johnny Cash ever recorded. She probably didn't even know who Johnny Cash was until he died and now she's the Johnny Cash fan club..."

Total paranoia. It is much more likely that the clerk was ignoring me entirely and focusing on the 16-year-old behind me.

I'm remembering when I was a punk kid and my punk friends worked in record stores and we made fun of all the customers. (I mean "punk" in the "obnoxious youth" sense. I was never a punk in the music sense. I was probably listening to Johnny Cash.)

Victor doesn't share my self-counsciousness. He had no trouble buying a Johnny Cash box set and the new album, American IV: The Man Comes Around.

Whew. The Amazon review sums it up well...by the time the album was over we were both just slumped on the sofa too depressed to move.

Probably a good thing I decided to leave Warren Zevon's The Wind for another day.

The Man in Black

I wasn't surprised to hear that Johnny Cash died, but I was sorry to hear it. I brought a tape to listen to in the car on my way in to work. (I don't have a CD player in the car, and most of my Johnny Cash is actually on vinyl. I'm pretty old, or so my friends say.) It was a cheap tape, the kind you can buy at a truck stop, a compilation of live cuts.

One was If I Were A Carpenter with June Carter Cash. That was one reason I wasn't surprised to hear he'd died...when his wife passed in May I figured he wasn't going to be around much longer.

Some obituaries, like the one from Reuters, mentioned the "plaintive tales" of his songs. I do love a sad country song, I admit, and Live at San Quentin might be my favorite of his albums. But I was chuckling when I got to work today, because my tape ended with One Piece at a Time, the song about the GM assembly line worker who sneaks a Cadillac out in his lunch box.

I hadn't heard (or seen) Hurt, though. You can watch it on County Music Television's page, as I just did...

Damn.

Turn, turn, turn

Following up on my post from Monday: Heather gave me a link to Bruegel's painting...Musee des Beaux Arts makes even more sense when you look at them together.

Some people over the years have told me that they find it a depressing poem. I don't think it is depressing, necessarily, to remember that while monumental things are happening, so too are the mundane. And with the bad, the good. The best day of my life was the worst day of someone else's, and vice versa.

I was thinking of that on Monday because I had talked to a dear friend who was very, very pregnant with her first child. On Monday her doctor made the decision to induce labor on Thursday. That is, on September 11.

I asked how she felt about that, and she said it didn't really upset her. We remembered that on the September 11 she'd been the one who told me what had happened. She said "When we sat in your office trying to get the news on the radio, I would not have imagined that two years later I'd be becoming a mother."

She also told me that this September 11 marked the fifth anniversary of the day the family had removed her husband's teenaged cousin from life support following a car accident.

She called me first thing this morning. Their son was born, following some complications, at 11:57 last night. He is now doing fine, as is she. I am filled with relief and joy for her and her family.

Terrible things happen. Wonderous things happen. Nothing happens. Life changes every day. Life goes on as before every day.

Ecclesiastes has something about that too, I think, although I admit I'm more familiar with Pete Seeger's lyrics (by way of The Byrds) than the King James version:

To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time of peace, I swear it's not too late.

Happy birthday, little boy. I wish you many seasons of love and peace.

September 11

I have been trying to decide where to direct my One Day's Pay donation. I wanted something with a specific relevance to 9/11, and to Washington.

On that afternoon two years ago, I sat in my basement switching between news broadcasts for coverage of the Pentagon. It is not that I didn't care about New York, but the Pentagon is, quite literally, closer to home. I know people who work there.

One of the biggest effects here in the DC area was on the hospitality industry. National Airport was shut down longer than any other airport in the country, and workers in hotels and restaurants suffered through cutbacks and layoffs.

A professional association to which I belong has an annual meeting every fall in Crystal City (northern Virginia, just one subway stop from the Pentagon.) In 2001 the attendance was about half what it usually is.

(The hits continued in 2002: the meeting attendance was down again, and some people who did come did not venture out of the hotel, because the meeting occurred during the sniper attacks.)

This morning's Bob Levy column in the Post highlighted what hotel workers have gone through in the last two years. I've never seen a specific fund set up for the victims of the economic consequences of 9/11 here, so I am giving my day's pay to the Capital Area Food Bank, which distributes food to over 750 hunger relief organizations in Washington, Suburban Maryland, and Northern Virginia.

This window, constructed by Pentagon workers and family of those killed in the attack, hangs in the Pentagon chapel.

CORRECTION: The window pictured above was constructed by military chaplains last year. (I'm afraid I did some premature blogging there, without reading the full Post story.) You can read the story about the original window at dcmilitary.com.

Ow.

I was home sick today, but I started feeling better by afternoon and decided to make dinner.

I started by chopping an onion.

Instead I chopped off the tip of my finger.

Well, not really. It wasn't completely off. I grabbed a dishtowel and wrapped it up, thinking direct pressure, direct pressure. Then I remembered bleeding appendage higher than your heart.

So I was walking around the kitchen with my hand over my head and my finger in a death grip when Victor called...to see if I wanted to go out for dinner.

I said "Well, probably, because I'm sure as hell not going to be able to finish cooking." Then I took a look and found it was still bleeding and said "You know, I might need to go to the emergency room."

I called my insurance company, and after about twenty minutes of punching numbers into the automated system an actual person told me to proceed to the closest hospital or emergency care facility. By this time I was actually getting woozy.

I called Victor back, and he was still on the Metro, stuck in a delay. I decided driving myself, one-handed and woozy, was probably not so bright, so I did what I always still do in an emergency despite my age: daaaaaadeeeee.

My dad works not too far from me, and he was quite willing to take me to the emergency clinic. He had to laugh at the fact that I chopped off my finger (or nearly), but he did take me.

The emergency care clinic is pretty nice. It's closer than the hospital, and I was only there for an hour. If I'd gone to the hospital ER I'd still be in the waiting room. I was really impressed by the doctor and nurses, too. I've been really lucky with health care providers the last couple weeks.

Only one problem: the clinic doesn't take my insurance. I should be reembursed, but I anticipate a nightmare there.
And I do want that money back, since it was $352.

It took six stitches to close up the cut. The doctor said it was nice and deep...and clean. I bled so much it cleaned it right out, she said. Once she gave me what looked like about 100 cc of xylocaine my whole hand was numb, and I actually watched her do the sewing. And I don't like needles.

I have a huge thing of gauze around my left middle finger, which would impair my typing except that I only type with my right hand anyway. (Explains some of my typos, eh?) The xylocaine wore off as I was eating dinner (we did go out, and the people at the restaurant cut up my hamburger so I could eat with just one hand) and it's throbbing very painfully now. Washing my hair for the next few days will be tricky.

Cooking may be tricky too. And it's dangerous, so I may just have to give it up completely.

Tomorrow

I've been reading about the various September 11 observances, and wondering how to observe the day myself. I'm reminded of Lincoln's words in the Gettysburg Address:

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.

A group called One Day's Pay is encouraging everyone to set aside part of the day to "help others in need."

It is only my poor power, but at least I can try to add and not detract.

my favorite poem

I got home late tonight...on the Metro I was thinking deep thoughts and composing a wordy entry. But by the time I got home, medicated Curly, and had dinner (i.e., now) I'm too tired to type.

I will cut & paste my very favorite poem. I like a lot of poetry, although I admit much is from the "greatest hit" collections that were our high school anthologies, but this is my favorite. I carry a copy of this poem. I think of it as instant perspective.

W.H. Auden

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Sunday dinner

The less said about the Terps game, the better.

I was right about being sore from yesterday's little weight workout...I am feeling it most when I climb the stairs...but I did drag my lazy ass out of bed this morning for a walk with Victor and the dog. It wasn't much, just around the little neighborhood lake (Fifty minutes, but a fifty-minute beagle walk is a twenty-minute walk with thirty minutes of sniffing), but hey, two days in a row.

I wish I could report that it filled me with energy and a new sense of purpose. The dog was happy, at least.

Victor claims we are not yuppies, but our grocery shopping has become something of a trek. First, the farmer's market (or actual farm) for produce and fruit. Then the bakery for fresh 470-grain bread. Then Whole Foods for free-range grass-fed meat, goat milk gouda, and vegetarian tv dinners. Finally we hiit the "regular" grocery store for Diet Coke and toilet paper.

I suppose if we really were yuppies we'd kick the Diet Coke habit and go ahead and buy the organic unbleached toilet paper from Whole Foods. It's probably only $4 a roll.

I mock, but it is actually my preference to buy the local, organic, and as-close-to-natural as possible food. I don't hate chemicals and modern manufacturing processes, not at all. (I am addicted to Diet Coke. Thank you, Monsanto.) I work, in a way, in the chemical industy. To me, "organic" means "containing carbon."

But having seen the decline in health in my grandparents and now parents, and realizing I have no children to take of me when I'm old and feeble, I figure I better do what I can to stay healthy. And as I started switching over from...well, to be honest, crap...to real food, I realized that the less-processed, fresher food tastes a whole lot better.

My sensibilities probably did lie closer to the environmentalists and the ethical vegetarians than they did toward Big Chemical and McDonalds, but now I'm acting it, too.

Anyway, when I was a kid Sunday was our best meal of the week, and Victor and I have picked up the tradition. Tonight we grilled corn again (there are a lot of farms right around here that grow very sweet corn, and as far as I'm concerned that is one of the best parts of summer. There aren't many corn days left this year, and I'm making the most of them, dammit.)

So, corn again, and grilled chicken-apple sausage, cucumbers and sour cream, and kalamata olive bread. Oh, and a Magic Hat #9. (I'm a beer snob, too.)

And my leftovers at lunch tomorrow will be looking way better than that Lean Cusine or the Extra Value Meal #3.

Turn over a new leaf

I bought a weight bench. Nothing fancy, a $40 bench from Target. I know I need exercise, and I have been completely unsuccessful in dragging my leaden ass to the gym. Once in a rare while I'd start a home-based workout plan that's last all of a day. I dunno why, but I've been thinking that the bench was the missing link.

So now I have a bench. It came in about 40 million pieces; Victor was sweet enough to put it together for me. I did some chest presses...I like my bench. I did leg extensions. Ok, I bought a bench for two exercises. But it made me do the rest, too.

Anyway, it was a nice little workout. Now I can't walk down the stairs without shaking...guess I won't be moving tomorrow. Doh!

The Terps are playing Florida State. I hate much of the rest of the ACC, but I have a special hatred for FSU. I'm really really really really really really really really really hoping this is the year we finally beat 'em.

Really.

Friday wrap-up

Redskins won. I didn't watch it...I think I lived in the central time zone the last time I was able to watch Monday Night Football (even on Thursday) all the way through. I'm on the same bedtime schedule as my kindergardener niece, the difference being that she fights going to bed while I am grateful for the opportunity.

Speaking of my niece, this was her first week of school. She was very excited to go, but in the picture of her on her first day she looked like she was facing a firing squad. I remember that fear. I remember kindergarden like it was yesterday. How'd I get so old so fast?

The doctor got back to me about my visit last week, where I was complaining about feeling so tired. Whatever it is, the cause is not evident from my bloodwork. Iron, thyroid, and liver function are all fine. Slackass lazy is a definite possibility. She recommends exercise, and I agree, I just need some momentum.

(My cholesterol is only 140. Maybe my problem is a cheeseburger deficiency.)

Following up on yesterday's gun stories...the guy who shot the would-be car thief apparently did time himself for assault and armed robbery. That may get him in more trouble for this because, as a convicted felon, he can't possess a gun under Maryland law. (The gun was registered to his girlfriend.)

The whole thing is just...sad, I think. The fact that he served his time and apparently was living a responsible, productive life shows that people can turn it around. Maybe the young car thief (who semed to have a bit of a record himself already) could have done the same.

This is not exactly an amazing, unusual story for D.C. I'm not sure why it is making me so depressed, but it is. It's just bleak, and for the people involved, no happy ending in sight.

Today was "bonus day" at work. My check went straight to the bank to pay half of the plumbing credit card bill. Easy come, easy go.

Not worth it

We had no internet connection at work today. No web, no external e-mail. It was a mixed blessing...no distracting blogs, no annoying customers e-mailing requests...but I felt oddly out-of-touch. At lunch I had to read the news the old-fashioned way, in the actual paper.

I let my daily subscription to the paper go, because I found I was checking things online and half the time I recycled it unread. But I realized today that I miss quite a bit with the online version, because so many fewer things catch my eye since I'm not flipping pages.

One story was about a man who shot two people who were trying to steal his car.

Ellis, 37, a tow truck driver, said he grabbed his 9mm Ruger handgun and rushed outside. "Things just went crazy," he recalled. He said he opened fire on four young men who were near his SUV. Police said later that the four were in the process of stealing it. Two were standing next to the Tahoe and the other two were in it when Ellis pulled the trigger.

Ernest Sockwell, 16, was killed. A 23-year-old man, whom police declined to identify, was hospitalized in critical condition.

Here's the part of the story that struck me:

Late in the afternoon, he stood outside his apartment, in the 13800 block of Briarwood Drive. He stood not far from where the blood had spilled, and he spoke slowly, appearing to fight back tears.

"My biggest regret is for the families of the two kids," said Ellis, wearing pressed tan slacks and a brown dress shirt. Friends and supporters stood with him. "One is dead, and one is fighting for his life. If I could do things over again, I would."

On to the sports page. I was checking out tonight's Redskins-Jets matchup when I saw this story, inside and below the fold, about a high school football player who'd recovered from a gunshot wound.

Markoe Beachley III, a Marine Corps private first class, had been sitting a short distance away, cleaning his .50-caliber hunting rifle when it accidentally went off. The thick bullet and black gunpowder shot across the house, tearing into the right side of Shaun's chest, leaving an entrance wound the size of a softball.

Despite the fact that his "right collarbone was broken and he needed four surgeries -- one to repair a collapsed lung, one to remove debris and dead tissue and two to reconstruct muscles" the young man is a starting tailback this season.

So his, I guess, is a feel-good story.

Here's my problem with guns:

They kill people.

Yeah, yeah...people kill people. And when guns are used legally and responsibly by sportsmen etc etc etc...I know the arguments. In a gun debate in school once, I wrote both pro and con opening and closing statements for my group. I can argue both sides, and I have friends and relatives who hunt, shoot targets, and collect historic pieces.

But I have come to the conclusion that guns in the hands of private citizens hurt more people than they help, and the cost isn't worth it.

I understand Mr. Ellis' rage when he saw his car being stolen. I have a temper. That's one reason why I'll never own a gun. Because I'd never want to say "If I could do things over again, I would."

I'm sure the young Marine had been trained on how to clean a firearm. I'm sure you are supposed to unload a gun before you clean it. Accidents happen, and that guy almost killed his kid brother.

A gun that doesn't exist won't accidentally go off.

A childhood friend of mine shot himself when we were in college. He'd been a hunter and target shooter, had worked at a gun club. He'd been drinking the night he died, and it wasn't clear if he intentionally committed suicide or if it was an accident. Doesn't matter to me. If he'd just been drunk, he probably would have just been hung over the next day. But he had that gun, and there was no next day.

Not worth it.

What's the plural of burrito?

Burritos?

Burritoes?

I thought words ending in "o" took "es," but "burritos" looks better.

Whichever. I want one. I have been craving bean burritos lately. It's the weirdest thing...because eating one does not seem to satisfy the craving. Week before last I ate bean burritos for lunch or dinner five out of seven days. I oughta be sick of them.

I know a lot of people have the theory that if you crave a food, your body is needing something that food has...like if you need iron, you'll crave red meat. I have used that to justify steak or burgers, but I'm a bit suspicious...why crave beef but not spinach?

Hey, I think I might be anemic, and there's iron in beans!

OTOH, I eat a lot of beans, and I still "feel" anemic. (Ok, I don't feel anemic, you can't "feel" anemia. [I think I might be spelling that wrong, too.] I just feel like crap and I'm hoping it is anemia because then I can freaking fix it.)

Driving home from work this was my train of thought: "Turn left, there's a Taco Bell over there."

"Need anything at the bookstore? You can stop by Chipotle."

"They put a new Baja Fresh in that shopping center."

"Haven't been to the new Mexican place in a while. Don't want them to go out of business."

"I have tortillas at home! I can make a burrito!"

Mmmmmmmmmmm

It turned out well.

In addition, we had:

• New York Strip


• Grilled onion with balsamic vinegar and oregano


• Pita bread


• And for dessert, raspberry crisps and dark chocolate with a framboise lambic.
Posted by Nic at 07:13 PM | Comments (0)

Fresh tomatoes

Incredibly, I ended up with a bumper crop of roma tomatoes this year. It had to be the rain...most years I think the plants die from neglect. The same rain drowned the basil, though...last year the basil was the one successful crop. I am hoping to get enough good basil leaves to make insalata caprese...that salad with alternating tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, and basil drizzled in olive oil. This is my kind of recipe...no measurements, no cooking.

Plus it'll get rid of a half dozen tomatoes. I'm getting a bit bored with them, to be honest. I'm eating tomato on everything. The rats are turning red from eating so many tomatoes. The dog won't touch tomatoes.

Jus twait, in December I'll be paying through the nose to buy the damn things, because then I'll be craving them.