Sweet is the Air
You know who you are and how special as well:
July 27, 2010
July 21, 2010
A Small Present For A Special Someone
April 30, 2010
More Inappropriate Behavior
Oh San Francisco, you never cease to shock and disgust and slightly titillate. As I was having a run the other day I decided to make it more interesting and ran up the hill to Franklin Park down on Potrero and 16th. As I rounded the chain link fence separating the playground and swings from the rest of the park I spotted an overloaded shopping cart. Near it was an homeless person bundled up and sleeping on the grass. As I mused over the homeless problem, I noticed another figure huddled in the grass a little further along. As I got closer, I realized it was two people, and as I drew level I realized that it was a girl with her shirt half off astride a guy, with a coat covering their mid-sections as they did their best to form the beast with two backs. In the bright daylight, not 50ft from a playground with kids on the swings and the seesaws.
Boy howdy, no matter how many times it happens, it never ceases to shock me. I certainly never know how to react in situations like that. I mean, what do you say? "Excuse me, Sir, Ma'am, but you can't do that." Yeah, it sounds stupid to me too. So I did all I could do which is to trot home and try to put it behind me (unsuccessfully). More tales of life in the city, I guess.
March 5, 2009
"Fire!" or "That Darn Cat"
It was actually a dark and stormy night, believe it or not, but not sinister at all. I went to bed gratefully due to having not slept well the night before and had every intention of sleeping the whole night through. At about 4:20a my dreams were interrupted by a loud beeping. Upon awakening I discovered that the beeping was coming seemingly from everywhere at once. I stumbled bleary eyed around the apartment wondering if I was just going nuts or if in fact the fire alarms were really going off. My roommate's appearance outside his bedroom door was confirmation that the fire alarms were real.
I dressed quickly, and glanced at the rain pouring in sheets down the window, then gathered wallet and passport and marched down the stairs. With each step I was more and more aware that the sound of the alarms was fading. You couldn't hear them at all on the ground floor, and a glance at the master alarm panel showed "All systems ok - no alarms". After a momentary hesitation I walked back up the stairs, roommate in tow, and started looking for smoke, or fire, or anything at all. Risky, yes, but necessary I think.
We started deactivating the alarms (which, it turns out, were all linked together), until one last one remained. Pulling it off the ceiling we found the back of it wet. There was a leak. From the roof. It had started our alarms going off, scaring the bejeezus out of us. An inspection of the roof showed a puddle about an inch deep, smack dab in the center of the roof, around a large, poorly designed drain. It was right above our smoke detector.
Now I should point out the the area of the roof that was under water is also the second litter box for our neighbor's cat from the building next door. The cursed thing pads over and relieves itself, then tries to cover it's deed and ends up scraping away just a little bit of the weather proofing material of our roof. Hence, the large bare patch that happened to be underwater. It took an hour of bailing out in the rain and sweeping to the drain to reduce the size of the puddle and we still had a minor leak. I suppose I should be happy, after all, there was no fire. Glee.
January 6, 2009
Wedding of the Season
Dec 23rd Khartoum Sudan
Part of the reason for my visit to Sudan this time of year is my cousin's wedding. Those of you who know me know that the word "cousin" is used very loosely, and in some cases does not denote any sort of blood relation at all (although in the Sudan that is nearly impossible). To those people I say, yes, I am actually related to this girl my blood, albeit distantly in the Western sense (but very closely in the Sudanese sense).
I somewhat naively did not think that this would be The Wedding of the Season. This was naive since my aunt (my cousin's mother) is married to a member of one of the large political families in the Sudan. Their political prominence is a result of their religious prominence, which stems from the days of the Mahdist revolt in the mid-19th century. Without delving too deeply into the history of the Sudan, there is a lot surrounding the family and they end up being a mix between the Kennedys, the Corleones (without the murder and extortion), and the royal house of Morocco (also less murder, I think). In other words, what else could the wedding possibly be other than the event of the year?
Sudanese weddings (for the uninitiated) are interminably long affairs spanning multiple days. Back in days of yore (say 30-40 years ago) a wedding could take as long as 40 days depending on the family and their stature. Nowadays a reasonably long wedding is more like a week. They go in roughly this order:
The 'Agid (or contract): wherein, once the two parties have agreed to shackle themselves together for all time, their representative (typically fathers) solemnly agree that the agreement has happened in the witness of friends, relations, grandees, and so on. Slightly roundabout, but that's how it's done. This takes about 10 minutes and for all intents and purposes, the actual marriage part is done. This is a prime place for spotting long lost friends, or just watching a sea of white robes drown the father of the bride. In the case of my cousin, this took place at the mosque near the Mahdi's tomb. The family set up a large enclosure filled with tables topped with fresh fruit, dates and nuts, and fresh juices. The tables were ranged around a large dais where the family sat, surrounded by people from the other big families. Government ministers, policy makers, and all around important folks mingled with the rest of us common folk. The crowd was enormous and loud so you couldn't hear anything going on. Usually, everyone says a prayer over the union that it may successful etc, but this time the whole thing went off without my even knowing, due to the number of people.
The Shayla (gift exchange): this is a more or less defunct section of the wedding. In economically better and simpler times, the groom's family would pile into cars and buses and head over to the bride's family home and present them with all sorts of gifts ranging from sacks of charcoal to fine silk garments (for the ladies of course!). In part it is also a method for the two families to share the financial burden of the wedding ("we'll pay for the stuff, you cook it and here are some dresses" in short). This tradition has fallen by the wayside for the most part, and when undertaken it often takes the form of cash.
The Hinna (bride and groom): These are two separate, but identical, events. At each event the person in question (bride or groom) is sat down and has their hands and feet stained with henna. For men it's just a flat coat on the soles of the feet, and a handful in each hand (or just the right) to stain the palms. For women it's much more elaborate geometric and arabesque shapes, which might be familiar from Indian weddings you may have seen. This all takes place against the backdrop of songs and some dancing, and family walking in and out. Technically all of the application of henna should be done by family members, although for women that has changed as designs have become much more elaborate. Professionals are brought in and all the women of the house avail themselves so that at the wedding, the bride, her mother, her sisters and cousins all have elaborate designs wrapping around their hands and wrists and their feet and ankles. If you play your cards right and keep going to weddings, you can be properly decorated almost all year long!
Raqs Al'Aroos (The Bride's Dance): In this step, the bride dances for the groom and her own female family members. The dance is very stylized and in many ways it is quite seductive, but unfortunately this tradition has almost completely disappeared. I haven't heard of one happening in many a year and most women nowadays don't even know how to do the dance itself. Moreover, as Sudanese culture skews more ridiculously conservative this sort of thing becomes even less likely. This is how the cultural heritage of a nation fades away and disappears completely.
Dukhla or Zafaf (the Wedding Party): This is the most recognizable part of the wedding to most foreign observers. It most closely approximates the wedding reception in a typical American wedding, in that everyone shows up, eats a meal and then is treated to the sight of the bride and groom entering as husband and wife for the first time. There's a wedding singer, and lots of dancing to Sudanese songs. It's a rare thing to hear any western music, and I have never seen a DJ at a Sudanese wedding (except for one time at one located in Great Neck, Long Island, but even then he was simply a warm up to the wedding singer).
In the case of my cousin's wedding, the dukhla took place in the evening at a large date palm grove on the Nile in Omdurman (the Mahdist capital of Sudan, on the western bank). A cool breeze blew through the palms and whipped up the enclosure. All the women at the wedding were freezing as they ate their dinners, and the men laughed with forced joviality. The first wedding singer wrapped up at 11p, and people took that as their cue to get to a warmer environment, despite assurances that there would be a second wedding singer carrying us through to 2a. So it was a much smaller group that danced with the second singer, and made their bleary eyed way back to their cars.
My poor cousin was so exhausted at the end of that night - and has been looking so frail throughout - that I couldn't help but worry. At least, I thought, the wedding was over - but it wasn't, there was one last step the next day.
Jirtik: There's no real translation for this ceremony, and it's a singularly Sudanese tradition with no roots, so far as I can tell, in the Muslim faith or Arab culture. The bride and groom (no doubt fresh from the presume consummation of their marriage) enter (again to much fanfare) and are congratulated by friends, relatives and assorted well-wishers, as they sit on a bed covered in red cloth. The bride is covered in a red shawl, and the groom has red headband with a brass crescent moon on it tied onto his head. The couple's oldest female relations sit with them, while the younger married women surround them, and smear their heads with a sandalwood paste (there are other things, but the sandalwood stands out). They are given a large basket with dates and rice and candy in it and pass handfuls back and forth to each other. Then they are given a bowl (or nowadays, a glass) of milk which they each drink from, and then the older women will spray them with some of the milk. It's my belief that this is actually part of a very old fertility ritual. It may date back all the way to pharaonic times. This certainly explains why the old women are involved, the red sheets (come on, do I have to spell it out for you?), the milk, and so on. It's really quite fascinating when you think about it.
My cousin's jirtik was held at the family farm about 35 miles south of the capital. It was set to start at 2p which had my mother yelling at me to get ready around 1p. Upon arrival we found no sense of urgency at all. Ladies were sitting around in the large living room - or perhaps lounging is the better expression. My Dad and I sat in the garden waiting for our 2p (3p, 4p?) departure. An hour and a half later, my Dad got in a car headed over and sold me out. Two hours after that, we had almost finished loading tea cakes and nuts into the last remaining cars, and the groom had just arrived. So it was that we found ourselves finally heading to the family farm at around 5p.
The far is set far enough back from the road that you begin to think that it doesn't exist. The way there is off the main road and onto an unmarked dirt road that meanders through an unremarkable dusty field. Eventually you are actually met by a traffic cop who directs you to another traffic cop who directs you to the farm itself. For miles around there isn't much to see, except for in the distance behind the farm where there is a minaret that tells you that there is a small village or town back there somewhere.
There were a lot of people (again) at the farm, all invited (how else would you know to come all the way out here). They were waited upon by an army of waiters and cooks, and watched by the local yokels - who stood at a distance and only dared come closer at night closed in around the mango trees (I've always wanted to say that). The Sudanese contingent was supplemented by some visiting poobah's, most notably the British ambassador. Her Excellency was accompanied by a retinue of crewcut military types. All no doubt good Yorkshire boys from the Royal Marines, they ranged around the garden with eagle eyes sharp, on the lookout for malfeasance of any sort. I think they were slightly disappointed at how friendly everyone was, offering them seats and food and drinks and such (or maybe extremely suspicious). One of them asked one of the family hangers on what was going on, and was met with a complete lack of understanding.
The crowd was composed of women, mostly, in fantastical peacock colors surrounding the singer (again), with their back to the "couple's bed". They in turn were surrounded by a cordon of white clad older men, beyond whom sat the "young lions", as they do at the edge of any pride.
Typically this is women's ceremony with very few men present outside of immediate family (silk and gold abound and you can tell it's the real thing because it doesn't gleam, it just sits matte and glowing). But it was the bride's great uncle, who - in a stunning turn of affairs! - performed the jirtik ceremony.
We drove back to my aunt's house afterward and said our good-byes to the couple, who were headed off to their honeymoon. My poor cousin was exhausted and it only showed slightly in her face, because she's a classy girl. The farewell was tearful, surprisingly so, and I felt overcome with the need to give them advice, which is my own wedding tradition. At the end of the wedding I think we all felt a little let down and empty.
November 28, 2008
Sleeplessness
I could not sleep. With insomnia, nothing is real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy
Jack, Fight Club
I've had a weird sleeping problem for the past month or three. I can't get to bed before midnight and I wake up every day at around 545a or 6a regardless of when I went to sleep. At first it was a source of stupid pride ("Sleep is for the weak!" and "I'll sleep when I'm dead") but lately it's really becoming a concern. While I'm basically wide awake at 6a and pretty functional throughout the day, I feel like I am operating at 75%.
I can't figure out what's going on. I am working out regularly, eating fairly well (or at least no worse than before), but I'm not tired at the end of the day. Even when I am, I can't seem to stop emailing or talking or reading. It could be stress I guess, and lately I've had more dreams than usual, but that's associated with REM sleep right, which should be restful right?
Instead I am pushing through most of the time, sleeping uncomfortably on the BART before or after work. I am testing my limits to see how far I can go, which is a benefit I guess. So far I've discovered that even on vacation I wake up early, though with no work to go to afterwards, I am able to drift off to a fitful half-sleep. It's all very curious and if it weren't happening to me, I'd be fascinated by it. As it is, I am strangely removed from it and interested until the fatigue takes hold and then I am fearful. If it's stress, what can be done to remove it? If it's physiological then what can I do to remedy it? Perhaps it's nothing, just a part of aging.
Tonight, luckily, I feel sleepy. I hope that once I get into bed my head won't be filled with a thousand thoughts like ants streaming around an anthill, drowning out the soft rhythm of sleep with their six thousand footsteps.
November 11, 2008
Crybaby
The other night I had a few friends from the Couscous Collective over for dinner and a movie, as part of my silent movie kick. The evening went well and everyone enjoyed the movie (a silent German full length feature film "The Adventures of Prince Achmed"). As the night wound on most of the guests left, and eventually it was just the Young Marrieds and me. The conversation drifted to Barack Obama's electoral victory of two nights before. We had watched the returns come in together, and during his speech I had gotten insanely choked up, as had Mrs Young Married. We agreed that we had been in spontaneous tears for the rest of that night and most of the rest of the week.
aside: I have always been a little "emotional" (cf a big girl's blouse) and while the emotion of choice has typically been anger, there's also been some tears. As I get older I find that I am more and more prone to having tears sneak up on me. Consequently I get choked up at surprising (yet perhaps wholly predictable) times.
That prompted a discussion of (unusual?) things that made us weep, which is to say, movies or books that for some reason cause you to spontaneous get inappropriately emotional. So I decided to list a few (in chronological order), just as an exercise, to see if there is some sort of pattern (yes, I am an engineer):
- "A.D." (miniseries, 1985) - I was only 10 years old and was watching the scene were young Christian children are given lambskins to wear by a nice Roman who tells them they are going to play a little game. They'll pretend to be little lambs running around! The children are delighted and prance as they are sort of guided out into a courtyard, which happens to be the Coliseum. Then the mastiffs are released, their jowls already bloody from previous sport, and the scene ends as the children start to scream. I ran out of the room to my mother with tears streaming down my face at the unfairness - they were only kids! I said.
- "G.I. Joe" (series, 1985) - still 10 years old (man, how did I not get my ass kicked all day for this?) and as I watched my favorite cartoon, there was a scene where my favorite character - Snake Eyes - was nearly killed in an explosion. I started to wonder whether he'd make it or if he could be killed in some sort of incident! I mean people were firing lasers and throwing grenades all over the place! I freaked out a little and there were some waterworks before I realized it was only fiction and hence it wasn't likely that he'd die on the show.
- "Microserfs "(book Douglas Coupland, 1995) - I had this book recommended to me at Barnes and Noble (by a clerk I subsequently dated for 3 years), and read it through in a weekend. It's the first book that has ever moved me to tears, and one of the few books I felt related to.
- "Umi Says" (Mos Def, Coachella Music Festival 2005) - Mos Def and Talib Kweli were the headliners at Coachella in 2005 and I pushed up almost to the front with the Byrninator after the all the goths left once NIN was done. I am a big fan of Mos Def because he's just lyrically gifted, but even I didn't suspect that "Umi Says" would set me off.
"I don't want to write this down/ I want to tell you how I feel right now ... hey, tomorrow may never come/for you and me, this life is not promised ... I ain't no perfect man/I'm trying to do the best that I can with what it is that I have .... my Umi says, shine your light on the world/shine your light for the world to see."
Just typing the words right now I'm a wreck. It's very clear to me why it makes me feel the way it does, but I have a hard time expressing it. The quickest explanation I can give is that it sings my life and that recognition strikes me like a blow to the chest, since it is so rare. After all my Umi (Mama) said the same thing to me, and while I do my best I feel like I am constantly falling short of that mark. - "Ghost Town" (film 2008) - this one is slightly cheating, since I watched this movie after breaking up with someone I cared about a lot. The movie's plot follows a particularly cold and misanthropic dentist's attempt to rid himself of a haunting by helping steer his spook's widow away from a suitor. Predictably he has to become charming in his own way, and falls in love with the girl. The part that did me in was when he admitted that he was her dead husband's agent, but that wasn't why he was trying to help, and was subsequently hit by a bus. Cheesy, I know, but at that moment I really felt for the guy, getting rewarded for finally coming out his shell with several tons of steel, rubber and fiberglass traveling at 30 mph.
August 31, 2008
Slide.
My folks spent last Saturday in Sedona and since I was around this weekend, they decided to go again. We got up early and then squandered our lead on the Labor Day traffic. We also lost our bid to get to the red rocks before the weather turned as had been predicted in the "news". Well we went anyway, with visions of sliding down rocks into freezing cold pools. Armed with a bag full of sandwiches and fruit, and no towels, we made it by about lunchtime and made a beeline for the outskirts of town.
The path down to the water was well worn but rocky, and as usual we were poorly prepared. With my mother in a long skirt and flip flops, we were moving fairly slow. This made us an easy target for the dark clouds that were shifting over the buttes and started making their intentions clear. The first drops were cold but small and sharp, like tiny daggers; these spies were followed by warm, bucket sized battalions of raindrops. The sparse leaves on the trees and the few trees left us exposed and ultimately drenched. Still it was really pleasant and I felt quite free as I cowered under a pine tree waiting for the weather to clear up enough to head down to the bottom of the canyon.
August 29, 2008
The Drive
I play soccer on Thursday nights, usually in the South Bay with a bunch of guys who I met through a former co-worker. It's so late when I get done that I can't take a reasonable train back so most Thursdays I just stay at a friend's house. Since I am going to Phoenix later today, I decided I'd drive up last night, and so got to watch the sky get darker and the horizon get oranger (orangertan?) and listen to Obama's speech at the close of the DNC. As the coverage ended I turned down the volume and drove with the windows down.
August 6, 2008
Artificial Life
When I was in college I got really into the cyberpunk novels of William Gibson. In Neuromancer and the subsequent novels Gibson introduces and expands a world where the line between humans and machines is blurred. The body is an almost infinitely upgradeable machine, that is optimized and modified for a variety of reasons. The movie got me into movies like Ghost in the Shell, which took some of those ideas and mixed them with ideas preempting the Matrix. The movie revolves around a military unit composed entirely of cybernetically "enhanced" people pursuing the nefarious terrorist known as the Puppetmaster. The film is very visually compelling and the introduction is quite an elegant - yet dark - vision of what's to come. Altogether it made me question the nature of "life" and what really constitutes it.
I ran across this today and it was strangely reminiscent of that introduction. The way the manufacturers of the mannequins talk about them: their design and creation, and what they mean; it's as if they are creating real women out of the foam and plastic that they mold. There's an eerily loving quality to what they say which would be creepy without having seen or read some of the works above. Regardless it's also interesting to watch.
June 17, 2008
Fireworks in the Morning
I was on the train this morning, heading to work in a somewhat morose mood. As I stared out the window of the moving train I noticed something peculiar. I could see sunlight passing between the train cars as we rolled along. The sun must have been exactly perpendicular to the path of the train, and so the light skimmed along the ground, mirroring the velocity of the train. As the train sped along, the light flowed over the brush that lines the ground beside the train tracks, and as it did so the leaves and branches were gilded for the briefest of moments. The effect was like tiny green and yellow fireworks by the side of the train celebrating our passing through. I smiled in spite of myself.
May 15, 2008
Khartoum on the Bay
This morning I stepped out into a Khartoum morning, warm with a thin film of dust. It's a morning of knowing that it is not going to be any cooler than this for the next 14hrs. I love it, it makes me feel at home.
May 14, 2008
Summertime Memories
Today was so warm that it sublimated memories of New York, 1985 and losing my brother in Central Park.
Let me back up a step. I stepped out of the building for lunch today with my colleague Fat'n'Happy, bent on getting a slice or two of pizza. As we walked through the doors of our building, I found my eyes closing and a small smile spreading on my face. The air was warm and silky as bathwater and frankly I'd been waiting for this for the last seven months or so. Thinking this I was suddenly aware of a scent that was distantly familiar to me, which I eventually identified as the smell of New York in the summertime. Not the urine drenched muggy stench of midtown, but the lightly stifling scent of the parks and the less traveled streets. Essentially the warmth of the lunchtime air had sublimated the solid stuff of my memories, releasing the sweet scent of my childhood summers and bringing up a specific memory tied to that smell.
(Wayne? Garth? Tootle-oo-to, Tootle-oo-to, Tootle-oo-to, Tootle-oo-to …)
April 24, 2008
Strange Envy
I was on my way to Berkeley yesterday on the BART, and as usual I missed my train having run the last several blocks. I won't rant here about the inferiority of BART to the MTA system in NYC, but suffice to say I wasn't surprised at the ensuing 15 min wait. As I stood sweating on the platform a group of young folks passed before me talking animatedly. I had headphones on so I couldn't actually hear what they were saying, but I passed the time by watching them, and as I did I saw an Asian guy walk up to them signing up a storm. I momentarily had some pity for this poor guy obviously requesting help and probably not about to get it.
To my surprise they replied in sign langage and were soon joined in conversation by another lady also signing madly. Everyone in the group took part and it seemed to be quite a lively discussion based on the smiles on everyones' faces. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted another couple a little further down the platform who seemed to be gesticulating, but it turned out they were also signing!
I felt, for a moment, like the subject of an elaborate prank, but resisted the urge to look around for the cameras. A moment later though I as overcome by a bizarre sort of envy at these folks who were carrying on a pleasant conversation without the need to worry about how loud the station was, or the train for that matter. Chalk that up on my long list of things I am envious of that I shouldn't be.
March 20, 2008
Solids of Deformation
So now that I've seen that Schweppes commercial I'm obsessed with slow motion photography and I've been searching the world for amazing films. I found THIS one immediately after the Schweppes one and I'm awed by the way that balloon deforms as it hits the ground - and doesn't burst!
And this one which is awesome if only for the way the light shines through the water:
Refreshing
This Shweppes commercial is one of the most beautiful things I've seen in a while:
The slow deformation of the balloons as they hit the ground and stretch to the limits of the rubber they're made of seems to symbolize something - at least to me. This point is emphasized by how quickly the rubber reforms around the surface of the remaining water and just seems to vanish. Even in slow motion the rubber seems to just disappear leaving the water still in the same partial tear-drop they had been in moments before. The last image of a water balloon hitting a man in the face, causing the water to spread around his face like a silver halo - that's just brilliant.
link courtesy of providence
April 19, 2007
Scent of Woman (but without the woman)
This may sound weird but smells mean a lot to me. I don't mean to imply that I am some sort of human bloodhound but I have been blessed with a rather generous schnozz and I'm not one to be modest about my endowments. So this post is not so unusual, at least I don't think so.
July 24, 2006
Heatwave
I'm not sure exactly what happened, but all of a sudden someone realized that we live in California and turned on the heat. Outside. This is a pretty big shock especially since San Francisco summer weather consists mostly of fog and cold that make London seem like Club Med. I like the heat personally, but it was getting somewhat ridiculous. The air had taken to travelling into one's nostrils like a plasma, thin tendrils of highly ionized gas coursing a channel through the center of the nostrils. Outside, the warm air embraced the casual observer like a fat aunt and wouldn't let go. Luckily this is not the infernal heat of Arizona so there was some respite in the shade. Then as quickly as it started it was back to business as usual - at least in San Francisco. Just in time for my brother to visit on Wednesday.
May 10, 2006
A Suffusion of Yellow
Today epitomized the image that I had in my mind of Northern California. Even the morning was warm as I stepped out of my apartment onto the shady sidewalk of my neighborhood. By the time I was on the train, the sun was streaming in through the windows making it almost unbearably warm in my wool slacks and button up shirt.
The rest of the day was gloriously warm with the merest suspicion of a breeze. It was perfect in every way, with air like sheer silk diffusing the light and making everything a pale yellow (dare I say like the Coldplay song). I went running at lunchtime and were it not for a cramp and a sudden unexpected bout of hayfever, I may have just run forever - or at least till the sun went down.
April 22, 2006
An Amazing Smell
We brought my sister home from the hospital today and the thing I remember most about the homecoming is the smell. In the extended stay apartment we have rented there was a smell that was very distinct. At the threshold it was the olfactory equivalent of the line between the Mediterranean and the Altantic, a distinctly observable line where one would not expect one. On one side the relatively clean air of the hallway, with the smell of food preparation in other apartments, and on the other ... nothing short of the smell of decay. Those of you who grew up with large backyards and specifically with compost heaps and mulching will have a better grasp of what this scent was like. Thick like a humid day, it was sickly sweet like fruit that has been rotting in a cardboard box in the dark for days. I've heard people describe the smell of death in the same way, and it wasn't something we enjoyed walking into. Yet there was more to the scent than just that. It also had a dank sort of feel to it that brought to mind the mustiness of a cave with unusually strong stalactite activity, and the same warmth one would expect to accompany that. It didn't just waft into your nostrils, no, it was not content to have that sort of pedestrian interaction with you. Instead it crept around your legs and up your body preferring to come around your face from the back of your head, through your nostrils and the channel connecting your ear and nose as well. It immediately appeared there in your sinuses, unwelcome and unexpected, before making it's way into the nostril proper and introducing itself.
Now if you've met me you know that my nose is somewhat ample, and thus built to have the sort of olfactory resolution one would associate with a particularly doleful hound dog. In the instant of my stepping through the doorway I was immediately attacked by this insidious scent and nearly recoiled physically. A quick glance confirmed that my family had also gotten a whiff and were all politely holding their tongues in case someone had an upset tummy (not an entirely unheard of situation, mind you). Instead we all went about our business, and like the aforementioned hound dog I wandered around the living room sniffing at things. The trash, the fridge, the carpet: they all checked out. It was then that I discovered a small puddle on the floor near the sink. Following it upwards I found a larger puddle on the counter under the dish rack that extended left and right from the sink itself to the crevice between the sink and the stove. Quickly testing the faucet I surmised that it had been dripping every time the water was running and leaking under the cover of the drying rack across the counter and down the crevice. Well, my dear Watson, once I'd determined the nature of the leak and knowing, as I do, that standing water will "go bad", it was a quick leap to the solution. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with some paper towels and moving the stove, for which I would be fortunately absent as I had to leave in order to catch my plane back to San Francisco.
March 20, 2006
The King is Dead; Long Live the King!
My iPod caused a stir when I bought it since I hav ebeen long through to be the most hidebound of all my friends. The other night I set it down and when I tried to start it again it clammed up. It had been having problems with the hold switch and so I did a few experiments like a good engineer, but to no avail. It was dead.
January 18, 2006
Lines
While avoiding work the other day, I walked into the courtyard at my place of business with Chuck (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent). We idly chit chatted and tried to distract ourselves. It's the mental equivalent of prying one's tongue off one's palate after a particularly uncontrolled incident involving peanut butter. I would typically be a little bit ashamed, but the thing I've realized lately is that it is entirely necessary to maintain my tenuous grasp on sanity.