Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

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

Not much time for
serious blogging this morning - trying to catch up from not working a
lick last weekend. I promise I’ll be all over it tonight. Here are some
shots from the Perrysburg (OH) Memorial Day Parade.
My grandfather used to drive in the red Monza-car group of Shriners.
When I was in high school, I marched with the band out to the cemetery
for the memorial observance that served as the boundary between school
and summer vacation, so I used to like this parade.

I’m thinking the guy on the right is saluting the wrong flagpole.

Well, I’m sitting at SeaTac airport, and the laptop seems to be
behaving.  I’ve had it on for about 45 minutes.  Must be the
air conditioning in here - it was in the mid-80s in the house yesterday
when I was having difficulties.  I panic-ordered a replacement
cooling fan on eBay, and it turns out the bastards will only ship to my
home address (I had requested delivery at my client’s in
Milwaukee).  Oh, yeah.  I’m flying to Detroit today and will
drive to my Mom’s for the rest of the weekend.  Monday night, I’ll
fly to Milwaukee to work through Friday.  It’s gorgeous in Seattle
right now, and it’s going to be one of those
pound-my-head-against-the-window departures as I question my sanity for
ever leaving.

On the plus side, my Atlanta brother and his wife are flying up, and
we’ll attend (weather permitting) what we’re hoping will be an
old-fashioned small town Memorial Day parade Monday.  If this
thing holds together, I’ll post from Ohio.

OK, here’s how much I love you
guys. This afternoon (of course, the Friday afternoon before a
3-day weekend, 15 hours before I leave for a weekend in Toledo and a
week’s toil in Milwaukee) my laptop starts siezing up. I believe
the cooling fan is busted, cuz it works ok for about 5 minutes, then
goes all Grandpa Simpson on me. My solution? You see
it in the adjacent picture: the little bugger is sitting atop an
impromptu sofa of icepacks from the freezer, usually used to nurse our
athletic owies. Seems to be working. I excel at high-tech solutions. Tell your friends. Remember that Paul Theroux book called The Mosquito Coast? Where a guy (played by Harrison Ford in a movie version)’s raison d’etre was to construct a mammoth ice machine in the jungle? I need me one of them.

OK, here’s how much I love you
guys. This afternoon (of course, the Friday afternoon before a
3-day weekend, 15 hours before I leave for a weekend in Toledo and a
week’s toil in Milwaukee) my laptop starts siezing up. I believe
the cooling fan is busted, cuz it works ok for about 5 minutes, then
goes all Grandpa Simpson on me. My solution? You see
it in the adjacent picture: the little bugger is sitting atop an
impromptu sofa of icepacks from the freezer, usually used to nurse our
athletic owies. Seems to be working. I excel at high-tech solutions. Tell your friends. Remember that Paul Theroux book called The Mosquito Coast? Where a guy (played by Harrison Ford in a movie version)’s raison d’etre was to construct a mammoth ice machine in the jungle? I need me one of them.

Kathy’s started another Random 10 for Friday.  Put your mp3 on shuffle and list the first 10 songs with place names.  Here’s my dumpster-dive:

• Train From Kansas City - Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken
  
• The Girl From Ipanema - Getz/Gilberto
  
• Sing Sing Sing - Benny Goodman  (unless he doesn’t mean the prison)
  
• Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley - Grace
  
• Birmingham - Amanda Marshall
  
• Pay Back Africa - Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra - Who Is This America?
  
• Neptune Pools - Sunset Valley - The New Speed
  
• In France They Kiss On Main Street - Joni Mitchell - Hissing Of Summer Lawns
  
• Raoul And The Kings Of Spain - Tears For Fears
  
• Madagascar - Garaj Mahal - Live In Northern California
  
• Paris Finale - Santana - Viva Santana - The Wild, the Innocent & The E Street Shuffle
  
• The E Street Shuffle - Bruce Springsteen -
  
• Who Discovered America? - Ozomatli - Street Signs
  
• N.Y. - The Doves - The Last Broadcast
  
• St. Louis Blues - OSU Marching Band
  
• The Hong Kong Triad - Thievery Corporation - the Mirror Conspiracy

We’re about to dive into the 2-hour season finale of Lost, almost entirely because Mrs. Perils has a crush on Sayid. I’m only watching to maintain cultural contact with my spouse. It has nothing to do with Kate.  See you in a cuppla hours.

(update) OK, that’s over. There was a point where a group of the crash survivors (none of the hot women, thank god) were out to sea in a sailing raft they’d fashioned, and they consulted a primitive radar device Sayid had salvaged from the wreckage of the plane.  A blip appeared, and remained on the screen.  After an interminable period of gape-jawed portent, someone said, “There’s something out there.”  The show is set in the tropics, but nonetheless moves at a fairly glacial pace. Mrs. Perils, having become impatient with the pacing, and the fact that Sayid was with the land party and not on the raft, exclaimed, “No SHIT.  It’s fucking Moby Dick, and he ain’t using his runnin’ lights!”

See you in September.