Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Over in my blogroll to the left, you’ll see a link to a site called The Language Guy which I snuck in there a couple of months ago.  Mike’s a retired linguistics professor from Ohio State University.  I met him in an OSU sports ranter’s maillist about a decade ago, where he earned the nickname “Hammer” for his .. um .. vigorous repartee.

In his blog, he looks at various topics through the lens of language.  It’s entertaining and often revelatory - check him out!

More notes from the bomb shelter (my wife’s desktop computer) where I’m hiding after the cratering of my laptop’s hard disk.  Although, there are indications that this might not be the safest of refuges - it capriciously and spontaneously reboots itself for no particular reason.  I’m glad I’m not using it as a porn repository - the fistus interruptus would be more than one could bear.

The club date last night was loads of fun.  I danced so much I feel like I ran a marathon.  And my jeans today smell like an ashtray.  I’ve been trying to get this computer to recognize my camera so that I can post some pictures from last night, but there seem to be conflicting drivers and, in fact, they seem to both be from Canon - my Canon Multipass F80 printer seems to be jealous of its little Powershot S300 brother.

I’ve been tracking my new Dell laptop, and it arrived in Seattle at 5:30 this morning!  It’s so frustrating, cuz it’s sitting in a warehouse just 5 miles from my house, but I have to wait until Monday for them to deliver it.  Then I step back and look at myself and say, “Get the hell off the computer and get out of the house!  You’re turning into a pasty-faced pus-bag.”

So, that’s what I’ll do.  Saturday afternoon beckons.

OK, I’ve finished my work and now I’m psyched.  We’re headed to Chop Suey to hear Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra.  Film at 11.

OK, let’s see if I can avoid screwing this up. Meg, our favorite BC Bud, tagged me with the following meme, which I shall engage from the cramped quarters of what I’m coming to think of as my bomb shelter, my Slaughterhouse Five. I’ve taken up residence in my wife’s desktop computer owing to my laptop’s hard drive crash this morning, and the fact that my new laptop, a Dell Inspiron 600M that I ordered last weekend, is not scheduled to arrive until Wednesday. As you know, we’ve been married 31 years, but there’s cohabiting (generally enjoyable), and then there’s sharing a damn computer, a foible in human relationships that just cries out for a statistical analysis on its relationship to domestic disturbance. It’s a gambit that tips the tenor of conversation from “honey, you’re home!” to “How long do you think you’ll be staying this time?”

Anyway, here’s the game from Meg: You write about the 5 things you miss most about your childhood. All well and good, but then there’s a complicated little dance at the end with bubble-up linking and the usual Shirley Jacksonesque selection of new victims. Wish the fucking thing came with a user’s manual. OK, here goes - the 5 things I miss most about my childhood:

1. I really miss…hmmm, what was her name again? On the monkey bars, with the frilly skirt?
   
   
2. Summer band. Band was my social life in high school, and summer band was loose, relaxed and fun. We’d go play in small-town Strawberry Festivals, and we always went to Cedar Point, where we’d play for a while and then get free passes for the afternoon.
   
   
3. In fact, I miss playing my trumpet. I really liked playing in bands and ensembles, and I wish I had an adult group to play with. It takes regular practice to keep yourself in playing shape, and it’s not the kind of musical instrument that you can enjoy playing by yourself. I bought an electric guitar once, when my kid started playing, but it was sort of the same as when we started skiing together - he got really good really fast whilst I languished and, after a few (guitar) lessons, I punked out.
   
4. Ike. My young years were spent in the cocoon of the 50s, and there was no reason to think that the white-haired, avuncular Ike wasn’t going to always be the president. I remember one day at Glenwood grade school, which sat right beside the Ohio Turnpike. There must not have been an Air Force One then, because this one day a motorcade carrying Ike up to Minnesota to hunt quail was supposed to pass by us on the Turnpike, and the entire school lined the windows on that side to see the brace of black Cadillac sedans with 48-star flags snapping furiously on their hoods. I remember being discomfited in 1960 when I realized that Ike actually wouldn’t be president forever, and we had to choose between Nixon, the vice president we’d hardly ever seen, and Kennedy, annoyingly nasal and, worse, a Catholic. I wish I still had the Nixon/Lodge badge I wore to school that fall, the one with prism lines so that, viewed from one angle, it had Nixon’s picture and, from another angle, Henry Cabot Lodge’s. I mean, if the now-me lived in the 50s, I’d certainly be a very frustrated Adlai Stevenson voter, but the then-me lived in a chrysalis that Ike personified.
   
5. Locusts. In August. Their advent, of course, meant the end of summer, but I miss the enveloping heat of an Ohio summer night, with a few fireflies bobbing in the near distance and the crescendo-decrescendo of locusts tolling the final days of bucolic freedom.
   

• Ultrablog
  
• Snidget
  
• Mike at Chew Toys
  
• Meg at BlogCabin
  
• and the luminous Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

• I see Freshman44 hasn’t caught this one yet, and I needs me some payback on her ass.
  
• Actually, this really feels like my childhood - my “friends” list was never very long. But maybe I’ll welcome Philip of Just Playing back to the blogosphere with a splash.

I think that’s enough for this one.

We ended up stepping out for a nice little dinner at a place called Mona’s, about a mile’s walk from the house.  We shared a bottle of bubbly (not the Veuve Clicquot cited on the ice bucket, but a nice Argyle Brut.  We started with some interesting savory salads.  Mine was a roasted beet and blood orange salad laced with goat cheese and pistachios.  I could have been quite happy to get up and walk away after that, but we’d already ordered entrees, and I was a prisoner of my king salmon rampant on a potato pancake, so pity me.

Thank you all for your good wishes.  We’re grateful for the time we’ve had, but we ain’t nearly done yet!

cuz I’m lazy and never was worth a damn.  But that’s a story for another entry, another day.  Today, however, marks 31 years since Mrs. Perils and I made this trip.  Despite my busy schedule last week, I not only remembered the date, I stole some extra airline snacks on the flight home in its anticipation.  I’ll just wait for an opportune moment to present them today, so I can bask in her look of rapture and gratitude.

Not sure if we’ll do anything special tonight, but Friday we’re going to hear Antibalas as part of the celebration.  Yeah, we’ve heard them before, but it’s never the same, and never dull.

Well, May has slud to June without a proper goodbye from me. Work was
brutal during this short week, as I really jammed 5 days’ work into 4
here at my client’s here in Milwaukee, plus treating various software
emergencies incurred by my Seattle clients.

I’ll cheat a little and play Kathy’s  iPod meme:
Set your mp3 player on “shuffle” and list the first 10 songs with body
parts in the title. 

• Heart Loses Balance - Camille Bloom
• Untouchable Face - Ani DiFranco
• Blood For Sugar - Two Loons for Tea
• Hand Jive - Miles Davis
• Use Your Head - Money Mark (Red Hot + Rio compilation album)
• Cracker Lips - Taarka
• Naked Eye - Luscious Jackson
• Heaven’s Gonna Burn Your Eyes - Thievery Corporation
• Purple Toupee - They Might Be Giants
• My Eyes, My Heart - Ghazal - As Night Falls On The Silk Road