One For Val

This post is almost exclusively for my friend Val, who’s in town (well, the country) for only a few weeks until she and her little ones have to go back to Mexico.

It’s also, to a lesser extent, for all the *other* twenty-or-thirty-somethings who once bumped Snoop Dogg on fuzzy speaker boxes in the trunk and now shop for funnily named, sleekly affordable designs at everyone’s favorite Swedish home furnishings superstore. You know who you are.

Posted in gangstå, snoop, swedes | 2 Comments »

California, There We Went

Group Shot, High Angle
Originally uploaded by This Guy Colin

Now that it’s freezing outside and the days are all short and we never leave the house or see our friends or comb our hair, it seems like a good opportunity to remember the time we went to Laguna Beach, California. Two months ago.

As I browse back through the pictures (as you’re welcome to do as well, by clicking HERE) I notice a fun color palette. Lots of purples and reds and blues that are pale yet somehow bright. That may be credit to the Canon cameras’ famously vivid image-processing engines, but I prefer to pin it on the Golden (And Purple, and Red, and Pale Yet Somehow Bright Blue) State.

Enjoy, and forgive me for the delay in posting. If I were Jamie, who we went with and who took pictures sixteen times better than these, I’d have had these on here weeks ago.

Posted in canon color, laguna beach, negligent combing | 2 Comments »

Welcome to our Boring Home

“We dare not trust our wit for making our house pleasant to our friend, so we buy ice cream.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

This holiday weekend, Penny and I had guests. It’s not something we’re very experienced with, and it’s probably not even right to call them guests, since we’re related to them and everything, but having her dad and his wife Jan stay over was an adventure for us.

Most evenings, you see, we do more or less what we’re doing right now: sit quietly in the living room, listen to music and read books or tap on our laptops. Which we enjoy.

But this white-knuckle, thrill-a-minute lifestyle can be, how shall I put it, less than breathtaking to newcomers. Friday night, when Jack and Jan first arrived, I helped bring in their bags, administered the honorary home tour (“…And that’s our dining room. We, uh, eat stuff there”) and then, basically, just stood around staring at the carpet.

I believe at one point someone opened the doors of the entertainment center and asked if we could watch television, to which I must have replied, “Well, we can watch *the* television, but it just kind of sits there, since we don’t have cable. Or an antenna.”

Our movies, which are all we have the TV for, are of course all Weird and Unpopular, which Lope and I momentarily considered adopting as our respective nicknames.

“So who wants to watch a documentary about long-haul truck drivers? Big Rig? Anyone? How about a contemporary musical about a busker and an immigrant and their eventful week in Dublin? Any takers? Here, I’ve got… the films of Charles and Ray Eames. It includes ‘Powers of Ten,’ which is just spellbinding I assure you, as well as an in depth tour of their studios in Venice, California after they, uh, died…”

So we did about what you’d figure: sat around listening to music and staring at the carpet. The weave is just exquisite.

It’s a shame, too, because they really seem to enjoy about the same basic activities we do: reading books and browsing the internet. Only I couldn’t remember the password to get their laptop on our network. Dang.

I started to remember, repeatedly, why my friend Brad used to refer to our house as a cabin in the suburbs. There’s just nothing to do, unless you’re us.

To make matters worse, we’re energy-efficient. Which is to say anal. And that trait just doesn’t jibe with houseguests. Even though we’ve only been here a couple months, we’re already established in our patterns, and seeing someone, oh, leave the refrigerator open while walking across the kitchen to pour milk on her cereal, or running the hairdryer for the duration of his shower so that the bathroom will get nice and warm… that stuff’s a little jarring to us.

We’re also used to a container of ice cream lasting maybe a month or so. But people have different ideas of how much “some” ice cream constitutes, you know? One person’s two scoops nestled in a coffee mug is another’s half-gallon piled in a cereal bowl.

When I reached for the new carton of Fudge Tracks, purchased only a couple days ago, and found it half-demolished, I must admit: I was impressed. Penny’s stepmom can eat ice cream like gangbusters. The following day, she even bragged about it: “Oh, you should see me when I’m really hungry.”

It’s all about making adjustments. And that’s something neither Penny nor I is particularly good at quite yet. But we’d better brush up, quick, right?

And that’s why I think maybe it’s a good thing we got the opportunity to share our home — and our dead-boring lifestyle — with some other folks for a change. Soon we’ll have a permanent newcomer here on the scene. And though I don’t expect she’ll be bogarting the desserts for a few years, she’s bound to shake things up in lots of other ways.

So thanks, Jack and Jan. You endured three days in the cabin. Braved the vigilant supervision of the enviro-nazis. Tolerated — or attempted to tolerate — the snowfall you moved to South Carolina expressly to avoid.

And, yes, ate all the ice cream we had on the premises. Something tells me it’s a good warmup.

*****

A few selected highlights from the weekend:
Walking in the woods with Jack and Vince and Penny, and spotting a family taking a group-shot with a timer and tripod and everything on a log running across the stream.

Seeing a little girl out in a bright pink hooded coat on that same walk, and happily noting her rosy cheeks and smiling, contented look. One of my first “I want one of those” moments.

Visiting “Our Father’s House,” a local mission/thrift store, with Penny’s aunt Carol and her cousin Julie, who came down from Michigan for dinner, and finding it closed for the holidays. We forged on to “Home Sweet Home,” another area junk joint, and I got to see Julie gasp upon finding a painting by an artist whose work her friend collects. It was only $18 and I talked them down to $15 on the basis of an ill-fitting frame and missing documentation on the back. Go me.

Being greeted by name at the coffeehouse/bakery in the village near our house. I knew that Aaron behind the counter ran the place, but I didn’t know he knew me yet.

Reheating my mom’s vegetarian stuffing and linguini with clam sauce for my dinner last night, along with spaghetti with marinara and boca crumbles for Penny, Jan and Jack, and getting credit for cooking.

Leftover pumpkin pie from Mom’s Thanksgiving dinner. And cherry. And strawberry-orange.

Watching the BBC Planet Earth series on DVD, and all being so enraptured by snow leopards and migrating nautiluses that we all forgot the actual snow outside and the 12-hour migration awaiting Jack and Jan and just marveled at nature together.

And lastly, changing a diaper — yes, changing a diaper — for the first time ever. I had plenty of supervision from Penny’s sister Lauren, who is by now a certified pro, and an equal amount of laughter from Jan and others in the room. Whatever. I thought it went pretty smoothly, and I’m feeling a lot readier for February now. That’s invaluable.

Posted in adjustments, houseguests, ice cream consumption | 7 Comments »

The Shiniest Gift

The holiday season is upon us. And I, inveterate dork that I am, had planned on suggesting all manner of gadgets and gizmos to give to all the nice people on your list.

(I don’t really like shopping, for the record. But in my experience consumer electronics never let you down. No matter when you look or where you turn, everything shiny, plastic and festooned with buttons is better, smaller and cheaper than it was just a few weeks ago. It’s one of the few categories in life that can be relied on for continual improvement.)

Well, I thought the wi-fi memory card was pretty cool. Come back from your day at the zoo or wherever, bring your camera into the house (or within range of any available network) and it automatically connects to the Web and uploads all the pictures you’ve just taken. Voila — every group shot, blurry reptile and monkey impersonation is right there on your Flickr page for friends and family to browse through. Magic.

The Airport Express is not a new invention, but noteworthy nonetheless. It’s a wireless router (which would work well with the Eye-Fi card, naturally) but it’s also a handy dandy music server for your home stereo. Just plug it in near your radio, connect its output to your radio’s input and holy cheesecake: All the music on your computer can now be played through real, non-tinny speakers. Add to it the C.Crane Whole House FM Transmitter, as I did, and you can also hear the music on any radio on the premises, without running any wires at all.

The Amazon Kindle was interesting the first time I heard about it, fascinating the more I learned, and amazing when I finally saw one in person. 190,000 books available on a little box the size of a paperback in your pocket, plus you can subscribe to dozens of newspapers and magazines and have them wirelessly delivered every day, with no stupid car-dealer ads tucked between every other page or soggy plastic bags in your driveway.

The iPod touch with the incomprehensibly cool “Bloom” application, the temperature-sensitive LED faucet light, the hundred-dollar “Action Cam Flash Memory Camcorder” that straps to your helmet or handlebars and captures video of all your extreme adventures, the multi-thousand-dollar cinema-quality Red digital video cameras… all brilliant and desirable stuff. I was even going to hype the Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, which tells you at any given moment how much energy all these gizmos are sucking down.

But then I couldn’t help noticing that thing that happened. You know, the part with the global economy collapsing.

Here we are, with Black Friday coming up — and Cyber Monday following shortly after — when the deals are supposed to be “doorbusting” in their appeal, when the malls are supposed to be impenetrable, when 5 *billion* dollars are supposed to be spent on all manner of blinky, blippy electrified hoo-hah, and half the people I know are out of work.

23 folks got laid off from my old employer last week. Retirement savings are disappearing right and left. Relatives are coming to me for help editing their résumés. My entire *state* is asking to borrow money from the federal government — it seems they’ve paid out more in unemployment benefits this year than they’ve brought in. Not surprising, with some 75,000 Hoosiers out of a job.

So raving about the coolness of digital amplifiers and remote-turn off surge protectors just felt a little silly. The stuff’s all still neat and all; don’t get me wrong. And a lot of it is really reasonably priced, for what it does — from the $70 Airport Express to the $5,000 Red camera.

But it’s unnecessary. Frivolous, in the truest sense of the word. That’s a big part of the fun in shopping for something like a remote-controlled blimp — how wrong can you go? So I guess what I’m recommending instead of gadgets this year is what you probably had in mind anyway: meaningful gifts.

Knit someone a scarf. Write someone a poem. Bake someone some cupcakes. All the stuff you already know how to do, and that you know doesn’t cost any money, and that you know is worth so much more than even the shiniest portable induction cooker.

You won’t be contributing to the faltering economy, and you may not be helping any retailers go “into the black” this Black Friday, but you may just find the silver lining in this dark financial cloud.

You’re also welcome to do what I’m going to do on this historic occasion: listen to some stories. I was already planning this for the holidays, but I just heard on the radio that Friday is also designated as our first-ever National Day of Listening.

Now I’m just more determined than ever. It’s a wonderful idea from one of my favorite organizations: StoryCorps. You can go to the site and download a guide to collecting your family’s and friends’ stories, and even get an extensive list of great questions to ask. All free.

Or you could write your own questions, and just think of some of the things you’ve always wanted to ask your siblings, or your grandparents if you’re lucky enough to still have them, or even just your friend from your hometown who you know will be coming by for the holidays. Just write it down and ask them, and record their answer.

Now of course, my version of this inaugural holiday tradition does involve some dorkery — I’ll be recording the stories with my digital camera’s voice recorder function. But you can use a laptop or a tape recorder, or heck — go get one of those micro-cassette jobbers from the local office supply store. They probably have memory-card-based ones now that would make it even easier to transfer the files to your computer if you like. It won’t cost much, and maybe your little archiving project will prop up Staples or Radio Shack for another couple of quarters.

You could even pony up for something like the Zoom H2 Portable Stereo Recorder and get studio-quality recordings of your loved ones’ tales.

So as you can probably tell, I still like gadgets. But not for no reason. Not this year.

Right now I think it’s a better idea to stay out of the malls, stay off the shopping websites on Monday, and sit down with somebody you care about and listen.

(You might also consider a gift that pays dividends long after the warranty would have run out on the $400 laptop folks will be “busting doors” for: a gift from Heifer International. Purchasing a dairy goat — or even just a share of a goat, for $10 — for a little boy or girl on the other side of the world can provide that family with several quarts of nutritious milk per day. And that little goat is likely to give the family more little goats, helping them earn money for food, health care and education.)

I’ll close with a perfect comment I just noticed on an article about cash-strapped consumers embracing the idea of “home for the holidays.” It’s by someone calling himself “oldgeezer.”

“Born in the 1920s, both my wife and I grew up during the Great Depression. Thanksgiving was always a time for the greater family, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, parents, and brothers and sisters to gather together for a grand feast. It was really something! You see, normally we ate no meat on weekdays because it was too expensive, and ate chicken on Sundays because they were raised. We had turkey or ham on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Most of everything else on the table came from various family gardens.

Well, then, for Christmas the gifts were mainly clothes that were needed, although the children also received a toy or two. Many of the toys were home-made, including tops, stilts to walk on, kites, etc. When the budget allowed store-bought toys were received, such as marbles, toy soldiers, toy cars and trucks, and dolls and tea sets for the girls.

We were not unhappy because we couldn’t have things we saw in the movies. As a matter of fact we were close-knit to one another, and we all knew that we were loved and cared about.

So one thing I know, money and things don’t make you happy… they aren’t the things your memories are made of. So, please, all of you enjoy each other in you family this Thanksgiving and Christmas and in all those to come.”

Posted in Action Cams, giving, listening | 4 Comments »

Puppy Cam - Hailed By a Male

Yes, I’m a dude, and yes, I’m straight, and I even have copious amounts of facial hair at the moment, I’ll have you know.

But I still have to write about this Puppy Cam. Reason being is that I’m crazy about our dog Vince, and I’ve long lamented our lack of pictures of him from his youth. We adopted him at ten months of age, you see, so we’ll never know exactly what Vince looked like at, say, six weeks.

But here’s a good guess. Thank you, Puppy Cam.

Posted in Vince, lost youth, puppy cams | 3 Comments »

Mystery Meatless

Leftover night is my favorite. It’s the only guilt-free eating there is. After all, you’re doing the world a favor, right? This was just going to go to waste, and it’s taking up valuable fridge space, so by volunteering to consume whatever’s in that tupperware container you’re both hygienically disposing of it *and* staving off your own demise. Bravo.

The brown rice I found was pretty safe, relatively speaking. Amateur stuff. Penny got the better part of that — well, she and the baby, I suppose.

Me, I took on the Other Container, which held secrets unknown. Culinary adventures uncharted. Week-old leftover vegetarian sloppy-joes, hopefully uncongealed.

Lope recommended I sniff it. This I did. No harm so far. Then I put it in the microwave on the thermonuclear setting, which I figured would do in any malevolent microorganisms waiting to surf down my alimentary canals. And when the dinger went off, it was go time.

Do or die.

Or both.

Actually, I’m getting a little carried away. Kind of just trying to fill space, to tell you the truth. I’m not sure why. I ate it. That’s the end of the story. And I feel fine.

I did sing a little song to myself, though, which is why I thought this tale might be worth telling. Maybe you can make use of the song during your own Leftover Nights, which always seem to catch you unawares.

Back to the food for a second, first. Now, this stuff’s suspicious; I think we can all agree on that. Vegetarian sloppy joes… that’s like, hmm. Sugarless candy? Dehydrated water, perhaps. A wireless extension cord. The clean version of Straight Outta Compton.

So it’s already filed under Weird, even when new. But on the bright side, if it’s just “soy protein” (a term I find reassuringly vague, but only vaguely reassuring), then how “bad” can it really go, anyway? Rancid only applies to animal matter, correct? Old veggies are just… old. I think. And even though neither Penny nor I can remember when we actually made sloppy joes, it can’t have been *too* distant an event. We’ve only lived here a month, after all.

Besides, I thought to myself, I’m healthy. (For now.) Surely the “good bacteria” in the confines of Colin can stand up to whatever lurks in my own refrigerator.

And again, “it’s just going to go to waste” otherwise, right?

So here’s the song, which is offered in its entirety, free of any and all copyright protection.

Oh, before I start: you want to sing this to the tune of Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again.”

[plaintive keyboard intro]

I don’t know what I’m eating.
But I sure know where it’s been.

Sitting on the back shelf, behind the orange juice.

And I’ve made up my mind

I ain’t wasting no more food

Yeah, here I go again…

Here I go again.

[pause for dramatic emphasis]

Though I keep searching for some dinner,
I never seem to find what I’m looking for.

But I found this substance, made with “Maltodextrin.”
I don’t know what that means…

But stomach come on, we do this as a team!

[guitar intro, general rocking]

Here I go again, on my own.
Choking down whatever’s left in my home!

Yeah, this meal may be questionable at best.
But it’s going down the hatch nonetheless!

[guitar solo, chorus, fade out as dancers tumble off car hood]

Posted in leftovers, vegetarian sloppy joes, whitesnake | 3 Comments »

Stone Cold Nonsense

Bust it.

I love, and have always loved, Young MC’s 1989 hit, Bust a Move. I consider it one of the premier achievements of the human race, is what I’m telling you. Seriously.

The beat, the plot, the rhythmic sound effects that sound like excerpts from a comical beatdown (seriously, every few seconds you hear a guy go, “Huh!” followed by him yelping “Aah!”. This is outstanding.) …it’s all just top-notch stuff. Plus you had Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing the bassline, and that never hurts.

I do take issue, however, with the logic. Point of fact, the whole rhyme, dope as it may be, doesn’t really hold water.

(Sidenote: Now, hold on, folks. I give Marvin Young, better known as Young MC, all the props to which he is entitled. In this song alone he successfully incorporated the words “opportunistic,” “overzealous” and “celibate,” not to mention the exceptional characterization of women lying on the beach as “perpetrating” a tan so that, as you know, a brother with money could be their man. Cynical, accusatory, borderline misogynistic, but unquestionably funky fresh. Plus he wrote a lot of the rhymes for Tone Lōc’s “Wild Thing,” another singular accomplishment in the hip hop pantheon.)

(Secondary sidenote and disclosure: “Bust a Move” was the first song I ever purchased. I remember precisely, which is unusual for me, that I bought it during a shopping excursion with Kay the Babysitter, who took us to Coconuts Music near the Greenwood Park Mall. I think I had five dollars at the time, and the Young MC cassette single was $3.49. I could not conceivably be dating myself more emphatically here. The reason I remember the event so vividly, I theorize, is that I had the choice between this “cassingle” and another I had picked up—most likely Poison or Guns ‘n Roses—on which to spend my hard-earned allowance. For some reason my eleven-year-old self chose the path less taken, (at least by suburban white boys, at least in 1989), and that has made all the difference.)

(Tertiary sidenote: This was, remember friends, the Golden Age of Hip Hop. We didn’t realize it at the time, but we were being constantly inundated with rap that was actually good, as opposed to the thugged-out jibberish b.s. I hear on the radio today. (I also had a yellow onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.) Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim, Boogie Down Productions, Beastie Boys, Tribe Called Quest… that were not “classic rap” back in the late ’80s. That was just “Rap,” a hastily pasted label on a new section in the aisles of your local Coconuts Music or Sam Goody store, and that was what was on TV (Rap City, Yo! MTV Raps, The Box) if you knew when to watch. *That* was music, like we’d never heard before, and it was inventive, diverse, surprising and influential. And *that* was what you could order at twelve tapes for a penny from Columbia House Music.)

But back to Marvin’s rhyme. Chapter four, verse one, about 3:16 into the video I hope you’re watching. I’ll emphasize the words Young MC emphasizes in his lyrics to the best of my ability.

“Your best friend Harry has a brother Larry
In five days from now he’s gonna marry
He’s hoping you can make it there if you can
‘Cause in the ceremony you’ll be the best man”

Let’s start from the beginning. We can take it as conceivable that Harry and Larry are brothers. Marriage-aged males circa 1989 would have been born around the late sixties, early seventies, when naming your kids things like Harold and Lawrence was somewhat acceptable. Okay.

But why on earth would *you* be the best man? We’ve already established that Larry has a brother: it’s Harry. Barring some remarkable falling out between the two (which nonetheless leaves young Larry in close contact with his brother’s friends), why wouldn’t he pick Harry instead?

And don’t say it’s because you’re all that tight with Larry — your best friend is *Harry*! Are we to believe that this Lawrence character is so profoundly unpopular that the best he can do in the Best Man department is some dude who hangs around with his *brother*?

Assuredly not. Furthermore, what’s with the short notice? You’ve got five days now — one business week — to prepare your speech, plot a route to the church, find the reception hall, and attend to any other Best duties I’m definitely forgetting.

But no biggie, though: Larry is hoping you can make it there “if you can.”

If you can?! You’re the Best Man in this crazy arrangement. Even if it’s not your best friend or your brother getting married, since we’ve already established that it’s in fact the brother of your best friend, you’re still what I would regard as Key Personnel.

This hitching is going down in less than a week and the hapless groom is still “hoping you can make it there.” I’m sorry; I just don’t know what kind of fly-by-night operations you’re affiliating yourself with at this point.

Oh well, I guess that’s how it is with the kids these days… always inviting random strangers to play critical roles in life events. I just don’t understand it.

But go on, go ahead. Say “neato” if you will. Proceed to check your libido. And yes, roll to the church in your new tuxedo.

I’ll be back here, listening to my old, worn out Low End Theory tape. Chillin’ at Paul’s Boutique. Standing on the wall like I was, Poindexter.

* Entirely true footnote: I really want one of those shirts they’ve got in the video. I think they’re the coolest.

Posted in Young M.C., busting moves, your best friend Harry | 6 Comments »

A New Day

Well, I guess my sign in the yard did the trick. Obama won, and even carried Indiana.

And you know, it’s funny.

Nothing has really changed yet, and our new president won’t even take office for a few more months. And when he does, he’ll inherit a mountain of problems that even he has said may not be fixable in a year, or four.

But internally, I feel a big change already. Today, somehow, I feel more like this country belongs to me. Like the people of the United States have actually taken back our country and are starting to steer it in the right direction.

Like the ideals of the nation’s founders have not gone extinct after all. The flame never died all the way. Somehow, the ones who seized power and used the resources of many to carry out the will of a few have let that power slip away, and now we have it back.

I feel more free, I really do. More hopeful. More interested and courageous about doing whatever we can to build a better life for our kids, and their kids.

As the stock market tanks and the wars rage on and the ice caps melt, I still see much to look forward to. To strive for.

Injustices seem more defeatable. Our will seems stronger. More possibilities seem to be within our reach, and our creativity in seeing what else we can try seems renewed. Truly, I feel this, even though I’m starting to sound like a speechwriter.

I’m proud of my country.

That’s a big, big change.

And even though I know that all these current problems are a big part of why this change came about in yesterday’s election, they don’t feel so overwhelming this morning. I feel like whatever we got ourselves into, we can get ourselves out.

And I’m excited because my daughter, when she gets here in February, will get to grow up in a place like the one I envisioned for her — one filled with possibility, and unity, and democracy.

Things are scary in America right now, but today I don’t feel fear.

Just hope.

Posted in Obama, renewal, the arc of the moral universe | 14 Comments »

Exercise Your Uninformed Opinion

Voter turnout in this country has for the last four decades hovered right around 50%. Of all the people who are citizens of age, mentally competent, not felons and registered, only about half actually show up to take part in the democratic process.

That’s not one of the things I’m most proud of as an American. In Western Europe it’s more like 75%, and in Australia it’s said to be 95%, although there it’s compulsory, so I don’t feel too bad.

It just seems like the most damning evidence that we’re a complacent society of overprivileged dipsticks, which I hear is what the rest of the world thinks of us anyway. All these hard-won freedoms and we don’t even bother to exercise them. Phooey.

It’s particularly embarrassing since I personally was in the bad half of that bunch of apples during the first election for which I was eligible. Gore lost to Bush (sort of) and set our country on a collision course with disaster and it was all my fault. (Sort of.) I believe I was helping Lope move out of her apartment or something.

But this year was different. Penny and I went and voted last week, just to get things out of the way and make sure we didn’t miss it.

And I’ll tell you, it felt good. I put up my little yard sign and irked my neighbors, and I fired back an indignant response or two at my family members’ mudslinging email forwards, but other than that I didn’t do much to participate in this historic election. No knocking on doors, no working the phones, not even a strenuous objection when Penny’s little sister Brittany shrugged and said she probably wouldn’t vote. “Oh, well,” I figured. “Can’t be helped.”

Note: This was before I found out that Indiana would be a battleground state, of course. We’ve been as red as Reagan’s tie since 1964, when we decided against McCain’s predecessor as Arizona senator, Barry Goldwater. I just figured we’d swing Republican again this year, like we have my whole life. But maybe not. (!)

So in light of my minimal efforts this year, it was a relief to at least say I cast my vote. Punched the buttons on the ballot. Struck a blow for the minority here in the Hoosier State.

The only thing I had a problem with (well, the only significant* thing) was the last half of the ballot. All the little local elections. How do I know who ought to be Kosciusko County Coroner? The public information is pretty slim, sure, but even if these guys were standing right in front of me I’d have a hard time saying which one ought to be trusted with dead people.

Should our sheriff stay in office? Only if he promises to let them Duke boys go most of the time.

Treasurer? Pick a wealthy-sounding dude, so he’s less likely to swipe all our dough. He’s already got plenty himself. Somebody with “III” on his name. Is Richie Rich on the ballot? Can his dog Dollar be his running mate?

Should we keep our County Council members, Republicans in all four districts? Apparently so, since no Democrat or anybody else is even running against them.

Circuit Court Judges? County Council Trustees? Sure, whatever. I shrug repeatedly, synchronized with Brittany.

I did my best to guess at these things, while Lope just virtuously left them blank. (It’s more in my nature to just be agreeable, and play along as best I can, but Lope evidently studied under Wittgenstein: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”)

And while I do feel bad that I’m not more informed on the people and policies that shape life in my little corner of the world, it still reminded me of something funny.

It was a joke by Kathleen Madigan, who I think is just a riot. I’m probably not supposed to be posting this material on here because it’s copyrighted and all, so if anybody asks me to take it down, I will. But I thought you might enjoy a bit of humorous observation this afternoon as you head off to the polls.

* The other, insignificant thing I had a problem with at the voting booth was the animal mascots for each party. I thought Democrats were donkeys and Republicans were elephants, which I like because each is about equally flattering/unflattering depending on your context and perspective. But next to each one on this ballot was an unfamiliar representative from the bird kingdom: An eagle for the Republicans and a rooster for the Democrats. Apparently that was common a hundred years ago, and we here in this state, along with Oklahoma, Kentucky, and West Virginia, have hung on to it. Weird. The Libertarians got it worst of all, though. On their little pixelated corner of the screen, it would appear they’re represented by a flaming book.)

Posted in Goldwater, Madigan, county coroners | 4 Comments »

Up Ahead

Today I celebrate Penny’s and my fourth-and-a-half wedding anniversary. She doesn’t know it yet.

It’s a silly date, I suppose, but four and a half is my favorite number, so it only seems natural to get excited over the day on which it’s been four years and six months since our wedding day.

Today.

Today was fairly unremarkable, which pleases me to say. We woke up, I made her decaf coffee and English muffins with sliced cheese on top, remembered her prenatal vitamin and reheated her coffee when she was halfway through.

We got to work, and caught up on all the Monday morning emails and admin tasks and whathaveyou. By about 11 we were both nipping at the leftover Halloween candy, so we decided we should have lunch. About an hour and a half later, we actually acted on these plans. Pretty typical for us.

And by then, it was very close to the time when the furnace tune-up man was scheduled to come by, and we (I) only realized this after we’d left to grab lunch. So instead, we visited a furniture store and plopped into big recliners to see which one was comfiest, then headed back home to reheat leftovers.

During the trip I think we talked about Tom and the Marine Corps Ball he had to go to this weekend, which must have sucked. We probably also discussed which car we’d like to get when our lease runs out this month.

She worked upstairs for part of the afternoon, and I worked down here, heading over to the unfinished side of the basement to peek at what the furnace man was doing. Trying to see if there’s anything I ought to know how to poke or prod or maintain.

And as the workday wrapped up, she was upset because she had no good ideas for the illustration she’s got due tomorrow. So I suggested we go for a walk and talk about it, and we did. The weather is ridiculously nice these days, and a 70-degree walk in firework woods, all lit up with changing colors and streaking sunlight, worked magically to get her ideas flowing again.

Back at home I wrapped up some work and email from the workday, and she got dressed to go try out the yoga classes over at the YMCA. We’re hoping they’re at least an eighth as peaceful and invigorating (they really can go together) as the ones at our friend Diane’s house, back in Columbia.

While she went to yoga I figured out how to attach the headboard to the bed frame, even though they weren’t made to go together. It’s all set now, and looks fine.

And now I’m sitting here.

Typing this. Waiting for her to come home.

*****

An ordinary day, that makes me feel extraordinarily lucky to be used to. Four and a half years has changed things between us, in so many ways. When I reach to hold her hand now, there’s no heart-pounding thrill of wondering whether she’ll let me, like there used to be. When I introduce her to a friend now, there’s no beaming of pride that this beautiful, talented person would actually want me around.

Of course she would. She’s my other half; how could she be there without me? How could I be here without her? The shock and uncertainty have faded, and in their place have grown familiarity and understanding. I’ll take it.

It’s what I always wanted from the beginning, anyway — to be close to her. For us to know each other.

And even though I know there are many, many couples out there who would think of four and a half years as “just getting started,” it doesn’t feel that way to me.

Feels like we’ve always been together.

One thing is the same, though, as it was in April of 2005, when we hadn’t even been married a year, and I waited in our little house on Maxwell Road for Penny to come back from South Carolina — long before we ever had an idea that we might move there.

I was waiting. Waiting for her to come back. Putting my life on hold, and looking forward to having her there with me so life could finally begin again.

*****

Today I still wait, and still look forward to everything finally “starting,” even though life is so obviously still happening, and wonderfully at that.

The difference now is that it’s February I’m waiting for, when our daughter will arrive. When Lope will miraculously introduce us all. Everything now seems like preparation, or research for stories to tell her. Things to remember. Things to explain.

We look forward, and toss our minds into the future, which Diane said was a misuse of energy, and she was right. We should live in the present.

But it’s so difficult when there is a moment coming that shines so brightly in your imagining.

Waiting, still. The difference now, four and a half years since the day we stood in a freezing park pagoda and promised to love one another always, is this:

Now, we wait together.

Posted in anniversaries, futuremind, magnolia trees | 4 Comments »