Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

~A.E. Housman

Carpe diem, if I remember freshman English.

My usual annual cherry tree post is to complain about the tourists, but I'm down this week. The stupid swan. Another rat. Another person.

My mom was telling me about a neighbor; their pet mouse died last week. The little girl is three or four, first pet death. At her request, they buried the mouse under a bush that attracts butterflies. The little girl said she likes to watch the butterflies and thinks the mouse will, too. And when she sees the butterflies now, she will remember her mouse.

My grandparents' street was lined with cherry trees. When we were little, my sister and I used to go out and play in the "snow," the petals as they fell.

It's a nice thought, that the mouse will see the butterflies, that my grandfather will see me brushing cherry petals out of my hair. It works if you believe in Easter, or if you are three.

The cherry blossoms do come back every year. Blink and you might miss them...a good rain, a hard wind, stuck inside with allergies, and next thing you know, they cherry is just another tree with green leaves coming in. And it will bloom again next spring, but, well, you know.

I don't miss the chance to appreciate a blooming cherry tree.

Stupid swan

There is a lake in my neighborhood; I drive past it nearly every day, and when the weather warms up I often take pictures there. I've posted many of them here.

The lake is full of Canada geese, which I love. (I know, they are an invasive non-native species. So are people.)

We also had a swan. I never heard where it came from, but it was big and mean and I loved it, too. When I went to feed the geese (which you aren't supposed to do, I know) the swan bullied its way in.

It was pretty, though. And I looked for it every time I went by the lake.

It had character, stupid swan. It...I used to think of it as a female, because swans just seem to be she, but apparently no one is positive of the gender...would just walk right up to you. No fear.

I'd worry if I didn't see it for a few days in a row. All the geese look alike, but the single swan stood out. I didn't like seeing it up by the road; I'd even yell at it: Go back down to the lake! You're going to get hit! Stupid swan! That was something I did not want to see.

I didn't see it, I just read about it in the paper.

I wasn't the only one in love with the swan, apparently. Someone even had the body cremated and they'll be planting the ashes with a tree by the lake...something that will bloom white, as a memorial.

There's a certain ambivalence...should I care so much about a bird when, up the road, four young kids are dead?...just to give one example. But grief doesn't have to be finite. I remind myself of that quite often.

Stupid swan.

Hanging at dawn

I got an e-mail yesterday that said

Please report to conference room B at dawn to be hanged.

Well, ok, it didn't say "dawn," it said "9 a.m."

And ok, to be technical, it didn't say that thing about being hanged, it said "to discuss your audit."

The execution will come later, after the auditors turn in their report.

A little hockey story

Back when the Capitals played in Landover, when we sat behind the bench, there was a season ticket holder behind us named Lou. Originally from Brooklyn, he'd lived in D.C. for a long time and was a great hockey fan. Vocal, but never profane.*

To point out a player who was deficient, he'd say "What are you doin', Murph?" (Just to use a not-particularly random example from the time. We heard "Hatch" quite a bit, too.)

Praise: "Way to be, Rod, way to be!"

And a phrase that rings in my ears to this day, often:

"Hell of a power play, Murray, hell of a power play."

So if you ever took in a game here in Washington, and you heard some long-haired girl muttering that in disgust...hell of a power play, Murray, hell of a power play...and you wondered why she didn't know the coach was Jim Schoenfeld/Ron Wilson/Bruce Cassidy/Glen Hanlon...she wasn't in a time warp, it was just an homage to Lou.

*One night, there were some frat boy types down there who were nothing but profane. Lou, who was maybe 5'4", said to them "Boys, you need to watch your language. There are" [he indicated my mom and me] "ladies present."

Dilemma

What to do...the Nationals-Mets game in on tonight, and it has been many long months since I listened to Charlie and Dave. The Caps are playing the Penguins, and I have to hold out hope that they maintain some dignity here, since the whole Sid-Alex thing is hyped so widely.

Good thing neither of my teams make the playoffs, or I might have this which-game-to-watch dilemma every spring and fall.

(The reality...I don't need Banadryl to knock me out; the pollen is doing just fine. I bet I'm asleep by the 2nd inning/first goal.)

Send more bread

Ok, many days I would have walked right past this and not looked twice...but today, when I noticed that the peanut butter machine at the grocery store was filled with chocolate chips and coconut along with the peanuts, well, peanut-chocolate-coconut butter seemed liked the World's Most Perfect Food.

And indeed it is.

Worst Sports News I've Heard in Months

There is a little blub on the AP wire today:

Dick Pound is considering a new job in the Olympic movement.

The Montreal lawyer, who steps down as chief of the World Anti-Doping Agency in November, said Monday he is a candidate to become the president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the highest tribunal in the sports world.

Good God, no.

The way Dick Pound has handled the doping issues in cycling (at best, shooting off his mouth without a full grasp of the facts) has raised my blood pressure for years, and this week, he pulled the same bullshit on the NHL.

There's an old Sally Jenkins column from 2004 that sums Mr. Pound up nicely.

Nearly everything that I can say about him requires language far stronger than I like to use on the blog.

I come from the land of ice and snow

Well, hardly. But I'm pretty sick of what we are getting. Spring training, dammit. Spring training!

They try, the brave little crocuses. They try.

Ta da

It's done! The basement is done. And honestly, except for costing a trillion dollars, the experience was remarkably smooth. Significantly less stressful than the kitchen, anyway.

Of course, this picture is utterly without context. To appreciate how fabulous this generic beige rec room is, you would have had to have seen it before.

Yeah. It was so black, photography was impossible. The absolute black absorbed all light, along with any feelings of warmth, comfort, and humanity. Truly it was a pit of despair.

Now, it is calm. (Really, that's the paint color. And the carpet is "alpaca.")

Next: Nic goes shopping for bookshelves.

(Hell no, I don't check my Sitemeter stats. Why do you ask?)

Hey kid, rock and roll, rock on...

Went to The Who concert last night. Well worth it.

Even if such a late night does rob me of the ability to write in complete sentences.

Some random thoughts...

I saw The Who first in '89, and I was on the younger end of the fan base then. (Though I saw the show with a trio of 13-year-old boys, my brother and two of his friends. The other boys' mothers were relieved that I was a responsible 20-year-old so they didn't have to chaparone and spend the concert in the quiet room.) I'm still on the younger end of the fan base, although I did see some kids there last night. Most of the people in our section seemed to be around the age of Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend, but without having aged quite so well.

Roger looks good for a guy my age, not to mention a man of 60-some.

The two guys in front of me who kept jumping up to dance...not so much. I was afraid the guy in the Land's End outfit was going to tear his rotator cuff trying to do the air guitar windmill.

At first I thought it was a little, I dunno, ironic? to see the paunchy bald guys rockin' out to My Generation...but watching the video montage behind the stage, with shots of people of all ages and cultures dancing, it seemed less dorky. (And I thought it was very cool that they segued from My Generation to Cry if You Want: "Don't you want to hide your face/When going through your teenage books/And read the kind of crap you wrote/About "Ban the Bomb" and city crooks...")

The songs from Endless Wire are starting to grow on me. The music reminds me a lot of Quadrophenia; in fact, when they started The Man in the Purple Dress, I thought it was the opening to I'm One.

Pino Palladino was good, he sort of staying off to the side and didn't move much. Still, on the way home, I had Success Story, Boris the Spider, and My Wife going through my head.

A couple of friends of mine tried to get me to go to Las Vegas for the show in 2002. One of my old friends lives there, and they thought it would be a great reunion, see each other and The Who. I begged off (fear of flying), but when I heard the news that John Entwistle had died, I immediately called them both to see if they had tickets.

Zak Starkey had a Keith Moon thing going, with his floppy white shirt and sweaty hair. Seeing him made me think of the scene in The Kids Are Alright with Ringo Starr interviewing Moon. "Not drunk, teeny boppers! We need our medicine..."

Speaking again of kids, I had no idea who the opening band (Rose Hill Drive) was, but they weren't bad. Something they did reminded me a bit of Cream (well, without Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker), and I might see if I can find the song to download it. "I'm sure they have a MySpace site," Victor said.

I took today off work, knowing that after a loud, after midnight night I wasn't going to be in the mood to get up at 5 to go to work. Besides, I won't be able to hear anything anybody says to me today anyway.

I had some dreams they were clouds in my coffee

I wouldn't mind dreaming of clouds in my coffee.

I've been having nightmares. This is not terribly unusual; when I am stressed, sleep is the first thing to go. Last summer, when my aunt died, I think I got 15 minutes of good sleep the whole month of August. Back when I had to fire that guy at work, the dreams were ten times worse and a hundred times longer than the actual situation. You don't need Dr. Freud to figure out what's on my mind, and my mind is a real nocturnal drama queen.

I'm not sure what's up now, though. I am not aware of anything horrible going on...just my garden variety pretty annoyances. The dreams themselves aren't clueing me in...the four horsemen are riding though with generic pestilence, war, famine, and death, but nothing is specific enough that in the clear light of day I can say "Ah ha, I'm clearly concerned about x,y, or z."

God, I'm tired. I'm going to bed.

To sleep, perchance to dream-
ay, there's the rub.

A reason to believe

This winter, with our crazy-warm December and January, my bulbs started to come up very early. Then we got hammered with ice and snow, which is melting off now. I love the sight of the bulbs coming though the ice; to me, this is the affirmation that life will again be good.

But even better is the first blooming crocus.

Spring training

This week's excuse for not blogging is that I'm busy following the Nationals' spring training.

(That's not the whole actual truth, but it'll do.)

Besides, as the hockey season grinds down to its bitter, depressing end, I might as well look forward to something...

Here's my prediction: Everyone in the universe will write off the Nats as a rebuilding team that's just going to suck. That will appear to be the truth, but mid-season they'll go on a tear, Manny Acta will be hailed as a genius, and people will start saying "pennant race" out loud. Then there will be key injuries and the bottom will fall out, and by September I'll be saying that I'm busy watching the Caps training camp as the baseball seasons grinds to its bitter, depressing end...