Wednesday, 1 October 2003

october to-do list

House:

  • Replace floral glass in living room door.
  • Repaint mantel.
  • Wash all windows.
  • Remove screens and hang storms.
  • Scrub kitchen walls.
  • Patch kitchen walls.
  • Scrub, patch, sand, and paint back landing wall.
  • Strip wallpaper from water-closet (it really is a toilet in a closet).
  • Scrape wallpaper backing from water-closet.
  • Strip wallpaper from furnace room.
  • Pin cables in den.

    Errands:

  • Bloodbath & Beyond: hooks for inside closet doors.
  • Home Despot: return crap. Tarp. Wallpaper solvent stuff. Scraper. New pot for corn plant and the other plant. Heating duct covers.
  • Belcaro: water closet, study.
  • Goodwill: everything.
  • Costco: shampoo, cotton balls, maple syrup, honey, soap.

    Reading:

  • The Parrot's Theorem
  • The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty (by 8 October)
  • She Is Me (by 14 October)
  • Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (by 16 October)

    Lisa:

  • Egg's happy hour 3 October
  • Phipps collection at Denver Art Museum
  • New baby giraffe (Taabu, born in September)

  • bike

    Two 3.8-mile city rides

    Friday, 3 October 2003

    old lyme

    Thanks to Haitch for the link: The New York Times profiles my beautiful town.

    Saturday, 4 October 2003

    getting stuff done

    A satisfying day, though not without its frustrating elements. I woke well before dawn, which I am sure has something to do with my not having had a lick of exercise since Wednesday, and since before that if you don't count, as I shouldn't, bike-commuting. The Parrot's Theorem was waaay out in the dining room in my backpack and I don't do well reading stuff I want to think about when the point of my reading is to go back to sleep. I lay restive and grumpy for a while before remembering I had Nobody's Fool on my bedtable.

    It's there because RDC got it for his latest audio and I'm listening to it too and I always like to have the book with me as well if I can. I've mentioned before that repeated readings will turn up faults, and I noticed another one: sometimes Sully has a watch, sometimes he has not. Does it matter? Nope. Luckily RDC doesn't mind the voices. Sully sounds gruffer than I imagine him, but gruff probably works for a 60-year-old smoker. It's Mrs. Peoples's voice that grates, because she's made to sound like an old biddy. But he likes the book, which means that we can stay married. Hey, another thing to add to the marriage articles: Thou shalt like Nobody's Fool and "Sense and Sensibility."

    Speaking of which, I just reread Persuasion because sometimes you just have to. It struck me (for the first time?) that this is the only Austen book in which you don't know the protagonist's dowry straight off. Fanny Price has nothing of course; the Bennet and Dashwood girls each have one thousand pounds, which is piddling; Georgianna Darcy and Emma Woodhouse each have thirty thousand pounds, which I expect would be the upper limit for the untitled gentry; part of the excess of Sense and Sensibility is that Miss Grey has fifty thousand, which is also the fantastic amount Elizabeth Bennet teases that Col. Fitzwilliam should require unless his older brother fell ill; I don't remember how much Catherine has. But how much has Anne Elliot, daughter of a baronet? Austen doesn't say until the last chapter, when we learn that of course her spendthrift father can give her but a fraction of the ten thousand which is her due. It was interesting to me that this important fact was left so late, but Austen's point is that Anne and Captain Wentworth are past all that thanks to Wentworth's success. His booty earns him an annual income of only a thousand pounds, which doesn't seem so grand, but that's Elinor Dashwood's wealth, so it's probably adequate.

    Persuasion is so very satisfying. I love the changed 23rd chapter because it gives some sense of Mrs. Croft's delighted hope, in which her fluttering makes her satisfyingly reminiscent of Mrs. Gardiner's not so subtle voiced wonderings.

    But it was Nobody's Fool I read this morning.

    So I read and maybe dozed fitfully and didn't get up, if you don't count RDC's alarm going off at 7:00 and my sister calling at 8:15, until almost 9:30, when I finished the book (again). So I figured I had wasted the day. But I had not.

    This is what I got done: two garbage bags of clothes, mostly RDC's, and one of shoes, also mostly RDC's, one flatbed scanner, one 5-disc CD player, three other electronic pieces whose identity I forget, one Brother Electronic typewriter (from 1986, a high school graduation present from my father), one box assorted household goods (a drill, various books, some pots and pans), and one pair extra-torture ski boots, are now in their new charitable homes. The clothes we thought fit to wear are about two-thirds what came out of RDC's wardrobe; the rest became rags or trash. He weeded! Even a Jerry Garcia design tie, which I think now maybe should have gone into a box of souvenir clothes.

    When I added his retired tie-dyes to this box, I weeded out some of mine: I kept concert shirts for Joshua Tree and Unforgettable Fire (I am not made of stone), but I ditched my UConn Co-op staff shirt and one from the UConn Women's Center and another from the Ivoryton Playhouse. The latter two, being half polyester, I never ever wore, and the first I wore only at work. Breaking the crippling cycle of nostalgia, that's me.

    First stop, get rid of all that. Second stop, Belcaro Paint, ejected from the Belcaro neighborhood by the invasion of Home Despot. I selected some paint strips for the water closet, the back landing, and my study. I actually bought paint for the water closet. Third, a supermarket where I further divested myself of Bag Lady status by turning in my bag of bags, and accepted the 9% fee to get rid of almost $30 in coins. Now only parking-meter silver is in the car ashtray and only foreign coins and tokens in the change basket on the dresser. Wheeee! And while at the regular supermarket, I bought (with the coin cash) exciting things like bleach that we don't get at the elitist food store.

    Then I checked out a store called, apparently incorrectly, Scrap 'n' Stamp, which had only scrapbooking stuff but satisfied my curiosity. Besides, I am going to do something Different for my Yule card this year. Then Home Despot, where I remembered some things but not others, and Wild Oats, where I scored vegetable pulp and a picnic that I brought to Cranmer (Sundial Park). I did not score roasted salted bulk peanuts, also not available at Whole Foods, which probably means not available anywhere in town, which means I have to use their peanut grinder, which turns out product inferior in both texture and saltiness to that which I made on my own.

    However, my picnic was delightful. Wild Oats commissary usually doesn't hold a candle to Whole Foods, which makes more of its ready-made stuff on-site, but it had a New Thing that was wicked good, Veggie Tortellini. Zucchini, green beans, spinach, and cheese tortellini, in a hot-diggety-dog garlicky pesto. I read Ms. (the best of the selection at Wild Oats, and it really could spin less like a top than it does) and ate and watched a chocolate Lab catch a Frisbee tossed repeatedly for it by someone not entirely one with the Pet Concept: she held a towel to pick up and throw the drippingly slobbery disk, which diminished her range considerably.

    I stopped at the coffee shop to pick up grounds, as I had arranged in the morning, and a Brambleberry Tazo because the having been awake for 10 hours already was taking its toll. Blake and I read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them on the porch swing until yellowjackets harassed him (have parrots died of bee stings? Do parrots, free or cagedly captive, get stung? I should have asked the vet), whereupon we adjourned to the couch, and later downstairs to facilitate napping. Also because Franken was pissing me off with puerile hyperbole.

    In the late afternoon I re-emerged to lay another lasagne mulch: vegetable pulp (I acquired at least three gallons grocery shopping last night, plus today's) and sunflower seed husks and coffee grounds and pine needles on top. Inside, I scored wallpaper with the wheely-bob tool. Blake was on my shoulder at his insistence, which I used as an excuse not to proceed with the wallpaper solvent but instead to call myself done for the day.

    There are two instances of wallpaper in the house: in the furnace room and in the water closet. The [a] kitchen sink is original to the house, so I don't know why the waste pipe from the sink is external to the furnace room wall (the dishwasher drains to the sink so shouldn't have required new plumbing?). Probably because the basement wasn't finished when the house was built. Anyway, someone drywalled around the pipe, so we have a rectangular tube angling along and down the wall. Later, the earth cooled, and someone decided that a nice strip of wallpaper border with birdhouses on it would dress up the pipe attractively. Three and a half years ago, I saw that and resolved to remove it immediately. Today I did: it peeled right off. Maybe I shouldn't've peeled it, but I peel sunburned skin prematurely. That bleeds, and my hypothesis is that since the wall doesn't bleed, peeling wallpaper off it can't be nearly as harmful as premature sunburn peelage, which hasn't killed me yet. Though it has scarred me, and peeling this strip left some backing on the drywall. I will practice in there with the solvent and to prepare for the water closet.

    Which is, as I've said, truly a water closet. One of the Before pictures I took this evening (too late, since a section had already come loose plus it was dark out) is of my foot on the wall opposite to the toilet (I took it while seated on the closed commode.) That's how big the room is: the length of a toilet plus a leg by slightly more than the width of a toilet, and its ceiling is lower than elsewhere in the basement. Hence water closet. Tomorrow I dissolve and scrape and dissolve paste and scrape and wash and rinse and wash and rinse and wait. After the wait, I patch whatever I have to patch, and sand.

    Then paint.

    Somewhere, I need to find a sign to hang on the door announcing a W.C. I would look for such a thing now but the day's major frustration is that the airport is acting up, denying me internet access. So I think I'll go cozy up with some peanut butter toast, Pantalaimon, Blake, and Al Franken, and call it a night.

    Sunday, 5 October 2003

    nod to uconn

    I'm watching a program on the History Channel, "Russia: Land of the Tsars," and among the academics lending any historical credibility is Larry Langer, University of Connecticut. I was in the laundry room when he spoke for the first time, and I recognized him, incredulously, by voice rather than face or name. I had him for Russia to 1905 (big surprise) as a...sophomore? Yes, sophomore fall, a year before I should have taken an upper division class. I took two that semester, and I am grateful I was allowed to: they inspired me to become a college student rather than the super-high-school student I had been as a freshling.

    Russian history was my first love, before English (history) I think. Or alongside. My favorite high school history teachers both emphasized Russia in world history classes (to prepare us as good citizens to fight the Cold War). We read Nicholas and Alexandra and Dr. Zhivago and A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Those I loved, and Fathers and Sons with Professor Langer; however, in Russian Lit, not with Langer, Eugene Onegin and Dead Souls both bored me to tears.

    The History Channel values entertainment more than history. The title still of the show is supposed to read "Russia: Land of the Tsars," but thanks to mindless substitution of Cyrillic letters for Phonetic ones that they vaguely resemble, the word "Russia" isn't. The backward-R letter is "yah," the not-U letter is "ee." Yah-ee-ssia. It's akin to the insertion of punctuation for dubious aesthetic effect.

    getting more stuff done

    W.C. wallpaper
    Distressing Blake mightily, I spent the morning in the water closet removing stripey wallpaper. The nozzle of the bottle of solvent didn't work, so I squirted the gel onto the wide scraper and slathered it on the walls that way. The wallpaper came off easily, but most of the backing did not. Blake nearly had laryngitis from shrieking and whining (anyone want a cockatiel cheap?) when I broke at noon.

    More coffee grounds. Home Depot again, for another bottle of solvent whose nozzle I tested, and heating register covers, but not ceramics glue. Bloodbath and Beyond for brackets and a curtain. When RDC and I recently examined the back landing, he picked up a curtain rod I freed from the sunroom almost two years ago and wondered why we had never thrown it out. Aha, it turns out that I kept it on purpose, not because it could be ignored behind the vacuum cleaner, because it would come in handy today: I hung a heavy curtain between the den and the laundry room. The doorway used to have--a door. I wouldn't have a door again, but the back of the basement doesn't need to be heated. This curtain might make the room cozier, blocking drafts and holding in the warmth from the space heater.

    I had lunch from Einstein Bros. bagels with a book that I brought with me. There are several new nonfiction books that look really interesting, including one on the Bounty whose author is doing a reading Wednesday, but I didn't indulge. For now. Instead I indulged in dogs, an unusual terrier mix with a curly tail and unterrier snout, and more time with more pettable English mastiff named Greta. Her human and I talked for quite a while--he's lived in Hong Kong and traveled all over Asia and nearly bought a cattle ranch in Ecuador and made for a pleasant hour of stranger-chat.

    While we sat chatting, lots of other passersby wanted to meet Greta. She obviously loved all the children she met. One little girl commented, "It looks like Fluffy!" Which she did, in shape of head, besides that she had only the one head and a brindle coat. Greta's human asked who Fluffy was, and I told him Fluffy was a Cerebus in the first Harry Potter book.
    The girl's father contradicted, "That dog's name wasn't Fluffy."
    The girl and I protested that yes, the three-headed dog was named Fluffy.
    Now, it turned out (eventually), that the man was thinking of Hagrid's regular dog, Fang, who is a mastiff, and Greta did look more like Fang than Fluffy, being a one-headed mastiff not a three-headed CGI. I can't fault the girl for thinking of Fluffy first, since it has more page and screen presence than Fang. I can fault the father for insisting that the three-headed dog's name wasn't Fluffy.

    After they left, I told Greta's human about a recent zoo trip. I was watching a resident, not captive, gopher, because it was little and cute and right at my feet, instead of over a moat, like the ruminant in front of whose enclosure I stood. A series of passersby asked what I was watching. "A gopher," I would say. The majority, spotting the animal, would reply, "Oh, a chipmunk!" In the Crested Butte newspaper I read a column by a park ranger who's been stationed all over the Rockies, on the frustration of not being believed when she answered certain questions ("How big do deer need to be before they're elk?"). Ah, the tribulations of being a know-it-all. It might have been a ground squirrel at the zoo, though the lines of spots among its solid stripes really do indicate gopherhood.

    Anyway, I got home and attacked the water-closet for another three hours. The two drywall walls were relatively well-behaved, though (nooo!) the toilet has to come out to do the wall behind it properly. The exterior wall is plastered brick or cement block, and wallpaper does not come tidily off plaster. I'm not done scraping yet, but nearly.

    coal doorunder the wallpaperWhen we first moved into the house, we saw many traces of the previous tenant. She told us that the one thing she never got around to doing was painting. As far as the main walls of the house were concerned, this was true. But she decorated quite a bit. The chute cover in the coal cellar is the most obvious example. On field of blue bordered in green, painted in red, are painted a flower, her nickname, and the word "Boogie," which might be her son's nickname. The saloon doors into the sunroom were the same primary red, as is the edge of the hardwood floor in the back landing, as is the frame of the window in the water closet. Stripping the wallpaper revealed another instance of tagging. Just to be clear, the W.C. had been painted white, then someone streaked it (as if cleaning off a brush) with a mix of the blue and green of the chute cover, and saw fit to tag it with her name in white. The coal cellar, home of off-season window parts, painting supplies, and beer carboys, is easily ignored. But I have got to get that toilet up so I can paint the room properly, because there is no way I'm putting up with that name over my shoulder every time I need that facility.

    Wednesday, 8 October 2003

    lies and the lying liars who tell them

    Al Franken points out several lies the right, politicians and mediafolk, has told. He points out how the media leapt on Gore for saying he'd been to a particular disaster site with James Lee Witt, when he had gone to other sites with Witt but to that one with a deputy. That does seem like a slip, rather than a deception. Later in the book he says that Cheney was either lying or blind or deliberately misleading when he spoke of how moved he is every time he flies over Arlington Cemetery and sees "crosses row upon row." Franken points out that Arlington stones have rounded tops and that perhaps Cheney was thinking of Coleville-sur-Mer (the cemetery in "Saving Private Ryan") or Flanders Field. I'm among the last to give Cheney the benefit of the doubt, but there's the possibility he was speaking metaphorically. It's a famous poem that even prosaic Cheney has probably read.

    Thursday, 9 October 2003

    debate

    Lordy. If Kucinich, Sharpton, or Lieberman, but especially Kucinich, becomes the Democratic candidate, whatever advantage television gave to handsome Kennedy obviously will no longer be a factor. Can't a representative either own his baldness or get a better hairpiece? No, now I feel bad: a department of peace? If a Department of Homeland Security is possible, certainly one of peace is.

    Wesley Clark, the most attractive of the bunch, just said, "There's not enough forces there." So he's out. I require my president to match his verbs to his predicative nominatives. He said Bush decimated the EPA, but honey, he destroyed more than 10% of it. He's not really out.

    Al Sharpton was never in, but he's out even more. "I disagree with he and Governor Dean and Senator Kerry." "Their children has gone to war." Plus he's just a showman, as much as Schwarzenegger.

    Lieberman was a lousy running mate for Gore because neither of them ever spoke in other than a monotone. At least as veep Gore didn't speak often, and Lieberman wouldn't've had to. Connecticut or not, I can't get behind Lieberman.

    Gephart--well, I'd have to rewind to hear whatever his first grammatical mistake was. His second speech was fine. He should dye his eyebrows darker. He's too much inside the beltway

    Kerry's not Kennedy. Does he know that? Oh, he cracked a joke! He gets points for that.

    Edwards's accent is too strong. Also: "Every one of us are against George Bush." Someone, I think Clark, said, "Each of us want to be president."

    Carol Moseley Braun speaks well and isn't freaky looking. But seriously speaking, the first black Usan president will not be a woman, and the first woman president will not be black.

    Which leaves me with Dean. Of course.

    I went to a Dean Meetup last Wednesday. I brought 6.5 years of professional Dot Org knowledge to bear when, as the organizers gave addresses of representatives whose support of Dean we were to solicit, I spoke up to give, and advocate using, the proper etiquette in both address and salutation.

    Later. Fuck. Dean, solid Yankee that he is, just said "idear." Three times.

    blue

    Oh, fine. Last night RDC asked what I was doing that Blake couldn't help with. I was priming, and primer fumes are bad. Also I was up a ladder. But I wanted to surprise RDC when he gets home. I didn't tell him. So he decided I had jacked up the house and was replacing the lolly columns. "You guessed!" I protested.

    Tonight I told him. I'm painting the back landing. A really nice pale blue. Behr, because it occurred to me to do this quite impulsively standing in the middle of Home Depot, "Ocean Air." I pray it's not at all a shade of violet, though it might be a paler indigo than a blue. (I have never understood indigo's role in the spectrum. Is it there because "Roy G. Bv" is not pronounceable?)

    The main wall has behaved thus far. Lots of tack holes in the drywall, but only tack holes, and drywall not plaster. Patch, sand, okay fine. It's not a pristine stretch, but it's okay. I primed and put on a half coat with a brush, and today put on a thorough coat with a roller. The stepladder can only go along a diagonal on the landing, and I have to lean way over the top to get the far corner, but it's not scary.

    The interesting, slightly scary bit is the other wall, around the corner. The staircase starts down along the main wall, turns left, and continues to the basement. So the side wall is 9 feet plus the descending staircase tall: I set up the extension ladder on either of the first two stairs. It's a perfectly stable situation, not too steep an angle, the ladder on a tread against a riser where it can't slip, but the height is enough to cause painful damage to some of my favorite parts.

    At least it provided more satisfying scraping than the water closet. It had been primed part way up, and brown--I thought the brown of drywall--above that. But as I scrubbed with a stiff brush and TSP-substitute, the brown came off, showing green underneath. I have no idea what material that wall is made of. It feels like plastic under the scraper, under my nail, but it sounds like metal. It's part of the built-out closet in the bedroom. The main wall is regular drywall, so why is this... green plasticked metal? Will primer stick to it, and paint after that? Lots of green still shows through after one brush coat. It looked neglected before, and now it looks shoddy. I have until Sunday afternoon.

    Friday, 10 October 2003

    no winona shame here

    Has it ever occurred to me before to compare the convenience store visit by Veronica Sawyer in "Heathers" to that by whatsername in "Reality Bites"? Definitely dancing to "My Sharona" is superior to the flirtation in the former.

    Tuesday, 14 October 2003

    bike again

    Two 3.8-mile city rides for the first time since last Thursday.

    The excuse: with RDC away, less time away from Blake. The real reason: laziness. Also, Friday I brought RDC to the airport, Monday I took off entirely for medical appointments (five hours for two), laziness for four days, and Monday I made another airport run.

    For the first time, since it was below freezing, I wore my new gloves, which are warm (unlike the thin glove liners I wore under ordinary fingerless bike gloves last week), snugger than any other glove I would otherwise tolerate, that, because snug, permit full functionality for brake and gear levers. (I brought regular gloves for the afternoon ride.)

    cathleen schine

    Cathleen Schine, author of my beloved Evolution of Jane, read from her new She Is Me tonight. There were only four people, plus bookstore staff, in the audience, which was noticeable in the Tattered Cover's new meeting space. They've sacrificed a whole floor in each store to meeting space and shipping, allegedly cramming just as many books into the remaining three (Cherry Creek) or two (LoDo) storeys.

    Anyway. I told her how much I love Evolution of Jane and she was glad to hear it. And she signed it with a turtle.

    Wednesday, 15 October 2003

    bike

    Two 3.8-mile city rides

    Friday, 17 October 2003

    bike

    Two 3.8-mile rides.

    biographies for children

    I just spent a lot of time at Loganberry Books. There I was reminded of The Shark in Charlie's Window and a few other books of my childhood. I'm still searching for a few others, like the one about a boy who finds a key in the woods that brings him good luck (e.g. he thinks the cat ate his brother's favorite fish until he approaches the aquarium with the key, whereupon the black fish reappears among the ferns), and one about sailing and King Solomon's mines, and most especially the series of children's biographies that I devoured: Clara Barton, Florence Nightingale, Helen Keller, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman. I had a Scholastic biography of Helen Keller with the Braille alphabet in low relief on the back cover; the front cover showed her sitting in a tree (facing left). I remember that it mentioned how she swam (by tying a rope around herself and a tree, so she could find shore again).

    geek love

    I reread Geek Love this week: I recommended it to Egg just before she moved and she wound up borrowing it in audio to listen to on her cross-country drive. (She is loving it, thank heavens.) Also I just rewatched "Freaks." Also HBO's new series Carnivale, which RDC and I might be alone in liking.

    The first time I saw this dentist I had Lying Liars with me, without its jacket. This time I had Geek Love with me, and he and I talked about it some. He asked me if I knew whence the term "geek" originated and I pointed out the obvious, that I was reading Geek Love (the word's meaning is clearly suggested in the first score of pages).

    RDC said he was a cool dentist, and he is.

    Saturday, 18 October 2003

    dude, where's my country?

    We saw Michael Moore again Wednesday night, and Thursday planned to see Al Franken. Noam Chomsky they're not, I know. Anyway, when we got to the Tattered Cover LoDo just after 7:00 Thursday, the event room was beyond Standing Room Only. So we bailed, but RDC picked up Dude, Where's My Country? on the way out.

    He reminds his reader of things that seem not to gel in the collective memory, which is a fine thing. He points out lies Bush has told, which is fine. He shows that they are lies by citing sources like The New York Times. Later, pointing out another lie, he says another Times story is wrong.

    blake's new favorite

    I thought Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, overall, was Blake's absolute favorite. It turns out he's never heard Nevermind before. Poor little guy, I don't know how I'll break it to him about Kurt Cobain.

    Sunday, 19 October 2003

    medium ambling ride

    Down 7th, lined with elms, past the Engagement Square of Sidewalk, to the Cherry Creek trail, down the Creek to Confluence Park, up the South Platte to Mile High stadium (I might be breaking the law by not calling it Invesco Field at Mile High), back up the left bank and up the creek again to a detour at Downing so through the country club neighborhood to Cherry Creek North and large cones of sorbeto from the gelato place and home again, jiggety jig.

    Monday, 20 October 2003

    half a commute

    I rode in but RDC picked me up. One 3.8-mile city ride.

    Tuesday, 21 October 2003

    city confidential

    My sister called me yesterday to tell me to watch City Confidential on A&E: an episode entitled "New London, Connecticut." It's a true crime show, her kind of thing not mine, but when she called me seven minutes in, there had just been snippets of Old Lyme. So now I'm watching.

    It sets New London in its social place among the suburbs around it with a lifelong New London resident saying how those in surrounding towns look down in New London and a woman who married into an Old Lyme family saying that she will probably never be accepted by lifelongers as an Old Lymer. To the first, I say New London is a city, not a town, so yes, townfolk are afraid of it; to the second, I hope a native of anywhere is proud to be a native of that place. I recognized which scenes were from Old Lyme--mostly from along Lyme Street, easy-peasy, even if that café wasn't open in 1994 when the crime took place. Finally the narrator acknowledges that not everyone in the surrounding towns has a yacht the size of an aircraft carrier. Thank you.

    Wow, listening to these people I understand why I have an accent in Colorado. I never thought so, though I accepted people's saying so. I expected to hear a Midwest twang here, but I seldom do, probably because so few people are native to Denver. Someone just said "vister" instead of "vista." Ack.

    I swear the narrator is stoned. There is no other reason for him to slur and use slang.

    Wednesday, 22 October 2003

    blake

    Recently I participated in a Usual Suspects interview project. I was asked five good questions, but I gave only one a good answer.

    You talk about Blake with such enthusiasm and affection that I can't help but anthropomorphise him. Help me out. If the feathered gentleman were a person, what sort of person would he be? How would he look? What would be his career and interests? Would he be a person you'd like to know, or the neighbour from hell?

    This is my favorite question, so I left it to last. Perhaps it will cheer me enough that I can flesh out the two scary last questions that I skimped on. All they needed was a little prestidigitation. Blake is so much a parrot and I have adopted so many of his mannerisms it's easier to think of me as one of them, instead of him as one of us.

    RDC recently remarked, “We shouldn't anthropomorphize animals so much. They hate that.”

    preening the racing stripeWhat would he look like? He would have muttonchop whiskers like a Dickensian villain (because when he preens, he angles the feathers that usually lie sleek under his beak out away from his face, exposing his lower mandible). He would wear breeches--we call the thick fluff (for egg-incubating) around and behind his thighs his bloomers, but bloomers are for females and breeches for males. In 1850, would an old-fashioned Dickensian villain still wear breeches? I'll say yes. Also a swallow-tail coat, no matter the time of day, with epaulets. He might have eczema or another condition that would have him constant attending to his skin (instead of feathers). Scrofulous. Less ickily, he would be a fop, obsessed with his eccentric wardrobe. He would have dandruff. He would have a Tintin-esque quiff. He would walk around with his hands clasped behind his back, except I can picture him using a walking stick (the kind with a sword in it). Possibly because I'm overdoing the Dickensian villain thing, I see a monocle too. Prominent eyes, certainly. Unlike Bill Sykes or Mr. Gradgrind, though, he would have excellent teeth, straight and white and strong, and he would smell good.

    preening the wingpitHe would be an explorer, particularly a spelunker. I'm not sure he'd be successful, because (like any pigeon you see on the sidewalk) he finds purposefully moving in a straight line quite a challenge. But he would explore the great dangerous unknown, and most especially honeycombed caves. He would need a faithful assistant, like a Sancho Ponzo or Pinky, to wait to rescue him, because he might have narcolepsy. He would never go anywhere very cold, because he would be deeply afraid of snow. And perhaps honeycombed caves wouldn't be a good idea, because he would be afraid both of total darkness and of flashlights and candles. But cliff-dwellings, canyons, and overhangs, he would know all about. He certainly would be in charge of all expeditions, because he likes to manage things, and he has very particular ideas about who is allowed to touch what. Oven mitts might not part of the paraphernalia, but knives would be, and those are his to wield.

    kissy kissy kissyIf caving didn't pay the bills, he would also sing. I can't picture him singing in subways--cavelike though they are--but I can't imagine that he would have a good enough voice, or write good enough songs, to make a regular living. He would sing, though, somehow. Especially in his caves. Perhaps he could be an acoustical engineer for a cave chorale. That he would form and be the soloist for. Perhaps also he could consult for the Ministry of Silly Walks. Or he might be an interior designer, again unsuccessfully, because the clientele who believe everything should be lemon yellow or sea green or artistically draped with dishtowels or socks would be few. Or a book critic, a very literal deconstructionist.

    If he were old enough, he would have served in the war as a spotter.


    nappingWhat kind of person would he be? Self-important. Annoying but irresistible, so enjoying company that even though he would be pesky and demanding, people would be drawn to him. Like Sir John Middleton in Sense and Sensibility, except he wouldn't shoot birds for sport. He'd be an optimstic curmudgeon, verging on the neighbor from hell--not wanting kids to play on his grass or dogs to pee in his garden and playing loud music (but only during decent daylight hours)--but you'd want to know him because he would have frequent parties full of chattering company and tasty food and goofy games and musical entertainment. He would be able to play most musical instruments at least rudimentarily, though his specialty would be brass and his favorite the French horn.

    He might look villainous, but he actually wouldn't be. He would solicit your admiration ("Do admire my freesias!") but he would be generous with his in turn. Also, he would call everyone "chap."

    You'd even want his company when you were sick, because he would know the value of a companionable silence and a quiet shared nap. Plus his sneezes would always be louder and wetter than yours, proportionally, so you wouldn't feel as sick.

    bike

    Two 3.8-mile city rides.

    the parrot's theorem

    Denis Guedj has no idea about parrots. The parrot eats two pounds of brie a) at once and then b) doesn't die. The author writes that there were "macaws and cockatoos but no parrots." People carry the fully flighted Sidney through Paris en plein air on their shoulders. In a church, Sidney happily flies around to the delight of everyone but the caretaker, who insists the bird stay on a human's shoulder, whereupon it does (snort). It is a fictional parrot. I've got that. Sidney discusses, or at least recites, mathematical ideas, so maybe it understands when it may fly and when it should not. But bingeing on and surviving two pounds of brie is ridiculous.

    The novel is about mathematics, and so its plot is secondary, but Sophie's World's framing device actually worked, even when it seemed like it couldn't.

    It was fun to try to remember math. Logarithms don't make me huff, despite how pre-calc kicked my ass in twelfth grade and sophomore year. (Blake huffs when he's scared, if you haven't been paying attention. What did recently make me huff was Intern #3, or however I have designated The One Who Stayed and Is Now Paid, beginning to speak to me in Russian, which he's learning for fun. "Dobre ootro" ("good morning") was enough to drain the blood from my face.)

    Logarithms don't make me huff, but that doesn't mean I understand them. I loved all the stuff about π and the volume of a column compared to a sphere and similar geometrical stuff.

    But.

    I never had to rate a book on its parrot mortality before.

    Friday, 24 October 2003

    just a little

    Elliptical with handles, 20' resistance 12, 13, or 14/20, average ~60 rpm.

    Saturday, 25 October 2003

    ushering in fall

    Either I am getting better at it or I overestimated the time it's taken to do windows in the past. It took me three hours to remove the screens, bring up the storms, bring down the screens, wash all the storms and the outside sashes, and hang the storms. This time I had Windex Outdoors, which attaches to the hose and has settings for rinsing and washing, and a squeegee, and I had already washed the outside sashes of the living room windows. However, I had to maneuver the screens and storms around the fairly precarious beer-brewing set-up in the coal cellar. And it's not as if I've been doing weights to ease the job of hoisting three-foot-wide windows (three: bedroom, sunroom, and kitchen) up the stepladder without breaking either them or myself. But yea, that job is done, just in time for Standard Time.

    Friday was also the first day of fall, temperature-wise, with a high of 55. That made the inevitable ricochet of water off the windows and onto me not excessively fun on the shaded north side of the house. Today was cooler, in the low 40s, and the plan was to dig out the vegetable garden. Tomatoes are still ripening, and there's not been a hard frost yet.

    I did take up the squashes, discovering three more croquet-ball-sized pie pumpkins hiding under the bishop's weed and culling the bizarre larger pumpkin from its vine. I figured it was the Casper variety, since it was pale orange from the start, but it hasn't whitened yet. I'm not going to carve it this year (a first for me) but instead see if I can do something edible with it.

    embers

    Someone or other rediscovered a Hungarian writer, Sándor Márai, and retranslated his novels. It must have been Susie who recommended Embers to me last month. I just finished it this morning, a quick read because of its compelling narrative and smooth translation, not because of its subject matter. It reminded me, just because of the one plot point, of Howard Owens's Littlejohn. Remarkable, nearly all in one character's narrative speech.

    return to gone-away lake

    They bought such a house for only a summer house at first? and the state didn't survey the house before selling it? Ah, the idyllic '50s. It felt more like Edward Eager, like The Well-Wishers, than like Elizabeth Enright, not only because of the illustrator.

    crash

    Jerry Spinelli's been popular and commended over the past ten years, with a Newbery Medal and Honor under his belt, but I don't connect with his protagonists. They have been, in the three I have read, boys, which might be why, but I connect with, say, Ponyboy Curtis, with whom I have less in common than with Crash. I'll read Stargirl soon and see if it's Spinelli or boys.

    Sunday, 26 October 2003

    shocking

    Precor Elliptical, 10' at 20/20 incline and 12/20 resistance.

    Then leg weights to the point of wobbliness. Hacksquats, leg presses, leg curls, leg extensions, the one where you lie prone and curl the leg, seated weighted calf raises, and some other damn thing for hamstrings, all worked to exhaustion at one weight and then to exhaustion at gradually lower weights.

    Monday, 27 October 2003

    bounty: the true story of the mutiny on the bounty

    Dunno why this interests me so. Probably because Caroline Alexander wrote The Endurance, which is a terrific adventure and achievement as well as an enticing book. She uses as many first-person accounts as exist, which means none from Fletcher Christian, whose fate is unknown. So far he's mutinied without noticeable provocation.

    I did just watch a 1984 movie about the mutiny with Anthony Hopkins as Bligh and Mel Gibson (who, to my surprise, was handsome once) as Fletcher Christian and the ever-luscious Daniel Day-Lewis as John Fryer (second in command) and Liam Neeson for good measure. It could have escaped being marked as an '80s flick if Vangelis hadn't done the soundtrack. The movie paints Bligh as self-serving and ineffectual and Christian as torn away from his Tahitian love. Whatever.

    I expect once the book reaches the courts martial, better motivations will be revealed or surmised. So far it's quite good.

    Tuesday, 28 October 2003

    so. damn. sore.

    I cannot touch my toes. I can barely sit up straight with my legs straight. I cannot lean very far over one straight and one bent leg. It has been two days since I shocked my hamstrings, and they are making their displeasure known. Stairs hurt. Putting my feet up on my usual under-desk footstool (a copy box) hurts. Ow.

    reading during school

    RJH said last night that when he asked his students what they read for pleasure, he heard only crickets and church bells. This reminded me about how little I read actually during school. I did my school reading, but what did I read for pleasure? Slaughterhouse Five freshling year. I know a hallmate my sophomore year lent me Aura and The Awakening and that's when Stephen King's Eyes of the Dragon came out too. I know I read Tolkien and Less Than Zero and The Big U. over winter break freshling year. I know I reread the favorites that I brought with me--Ayn Rand, Watership Down, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar, the usual. Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes, of course. In grad school I read and reread for pleasure to the exclusion of my actual work. But aside from the occasional, post-midterm indulgence from the Paperback Trader's "Not for Browsing" shelf, what books did I discover on my own during school?

    bike despite absence of legs

    Two 3.8-mile city rides. Slowly.

    laura: the life of laura ingalls wilder

    Donald Zochert makes me sad. I wanted detail, I wanted facts, I wanted new stuff, from Laura's notes and memoirs and from Census and land office records. That happens a bit, from when Laura was too young to remember: the name of the man who tried to make a go of the Big Woods farm, the neighbors around them in Indian territory. Instead of a factual biography, he writes a novel with such morsels as, illustrating Mary's character, the fact that she certainly wouldn't've wanted to eat the only bug in the whole of Dakota Territory. Well now that's original. So his "life" of Laura is the novels condensed, with a few details, not many--their time in Burr Oak--thrown in.

    Perhaps I should accept the constraints of a book with a J preceding its Dewey designation.

    Depending on his scholarship, Mary's blindness was caused by a stroke as a result of measles not wholly recovered from. The girls and their double cousins had had scarlet fever some time before, and then measles just before the stroke.

    Some time ago, I read a site that alleged the Ingalls lived with a couple and their baby over the Hard Winter. Zochert says nothing about that one way or the other. He doesn't say anything about whether the Boasts' plea for Rose really happened. Were they friends afterward? I don't expect anyone to know that by any means whatever, but did they ever have a baby of their own? Did Laura and her sisters write to each other? Where are those letters, if they exist? I also read, either in Letters to Laura or on the web, that Cousin Lena recognized herself in the books and got in touch with Laura during her life: how many of her family did she correspond with? Where was Lena then? After her sisters died, did any of her many double cousins remain? How did Ma and Mary get along for 25 years after Pa died? Did Pa provide for them or did the daughters support their mother and sister? Why can't I accept her books as the wonderful stories they are instead of wanting to dissect them? Why is "dissect" spelled with two s's when the i is long?

    Also the book is set in a cheesy type.

    Wednesday, 29 October 2003

    stowaway

    Karen Hesse didn't repeat Out of the Dust here. That was a searing story, even though its supposed poetic style was merely flowery prose with imaginative line breaks. I picked this up at the library yesterday on the strength of her Newbery and read it today mostly while wrapped in a flimsy gown with a sheet over me waiting for doctors to show, not the kind of atmostphere for Prague, which was my other book. Its primary interest for me was that William Bligh, who would ten years later command the Bounty, sailed with Captain Cook on his third and last voyage. This Cook's first, with Mr. Banks the botanist (for whom Botany Bay is named and to whom Bligh felt obliged for his commission).

    There was a stowaway on the Endeavor; this book is his story, except it's not. There is no character development, not much character at all. I think Hesse got hold of Cook's and Banks's logs and journals, summarized and simplified them for a young audience, and called it the stowaway's diary.

    Thursday, 30 October 2003

    icy hot

    When I kissed RDC goodbye this morning I told him I left him a present outside the house. He clearly could not think what this might be. He asked, "Front or back?" I told him it was outside any window he wanted to look out of. "It snowed?" I nodded. "It was 80 yesterday." I nodded again, even though it was only 75, sunny, powerfully windy with Chinooks, and dry enough for three fires, two visible from the city.

    Yet I rode anyway, OMFB. It was 29 when I got up at 6:30 and 27 when I left an hour later. I wore shorts and a thin sweatshirt and my new gloves and I was fine. Later, at my desk in tights and a skirt (the worst suffering of the morning being the donning of tights over just-showered skin), my thighs itched and tingled as the blood warmed them.

    Two 3.8-mile city rides.

    first cold ride

    Two 3.8-mile city rides in a fine cold mist.