Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

It seems like I’ve been working nonstop for a couple of months now, although it’s not really true, I ‘ve mostly taken weekends off and had a nice long Thanksgiving break. It’s just that I’ve gotten so many projects going, I’ve started to be haunted by them, and feel like no second is totally my own. Which, I realize, is a fuck of a lot better than not having any work, and I dig it when I do my billing.

Still, I haven’t had much mental space for reflection, and these pages have fallen a little fallow. Just, coincidentally, as I euphorically told several neighbors about the blog at a New Year’s Eve party, and just after my mom got DSL and started developing an appetite for internet content, and looks expectantly at Perils as the jumping-off place for all good things with an IP address.

As I do every month, I’m just finishing up a week working in Milwaukee. The week started in a deep-freeze, going to 8 below on Monday night before warming up to a balmy 20+ the last couple of days. It started snowing in earnest about an hour before my plane left for Minneapolis, a snowstorm that had actually hit MSP first, so that, as we approached Minneapolis, we were slowed down, sent to a holding pattern, then on final approach waved off of the runway because snow removal equipment hadn’t quite finished clearing it. The upshot: a 40-minute flight ended up taking 2 1/2 hours, maybe longer because, once we landed, we waited another half hour or so as the gate areas were plowed.

Overheard at Sonic Boom Records in Fremont Saturday: “I’m not drinking until March.”  In like a lion, I guess.

While there, we picked up a cd of a group we’ve been hearing a lot on KEXP called the Blue Scholars.  It’s hip-hop/spoken word, with catchy beats and thoughtful lyrics.  You can listen to a live studio performance at KEXP here.

While walking down to Fremont, we came across this pickup with Matchbox trucks festooned all over the cab roof.  I think someone’s mom made him clean out the attic:

When you’re on the phone with someone and they put you on “hold”, you conclude it’s because they don’t have the wherewithal, at that moment, to listen to you, right?  Turns out maybe they do.  Here’s a sort of chilling article detailing how the smack you talk about your correspondent, his company or her personal shortcomings while on hold might be going straight to tape.  Once you assent to the message “this call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes” or similar verbiage, the entire duration of the call may be recorded.  And, you might suspect, even if you’re not so alerted.

This might not be such a big deal with some anonymous business transactions such as cell phone help lines, etc., but what if you’re talking to someone you have other dealings with, like a doctor, co-worker or tax authority?  I know I’m going to be a lot more circumspect while a connection is live from now on.

I made my hotel reservations for this Tucson trip on cheaprooms.com, after vetting out several locations to ensure that high-speed internet was available.  It’s “the season” here in the desert, so nothing’s REAL cheap, but this was pretty reasonably priced, and I like to present the impression of frugality to my clients.  So I check in, unpack my laptop and…no wireless signal available.  Turns out they have a wireless router in the lobby.  So I’m stuck with dialup, which is useable, even at 24k, but not what I expected.  Every now and then it helps to be reminded that coach class and dialup internet are survivable, maybe even sufficient, and serve to build character.

But, tell me how a hotel that can’t get broadband cabled to your room gets the bright idea that you need a phoneset hanging on the wall next to the toilet?

OK, my New Year’s hangover wasn’t THAT bad (to keep me from posting for over a week).  I just had a really intense week of work last week, one of those where you really don’t feel that any waking minute is your own, it’s owed to some commitment.  I’m an accounting software consultant, and at this time of year many of my clients are performing year-end procedures and getting set for the new year’s transactions, and there are often issues.

However, my mom is on me to start posting again (Hi, Mom!), so I’d better get my act together.

I’m in Tucson for 3 days, just flew in last night.  I changed planes in Phoenix, and as my Phoenix - Tucson plane taxied out for take-off, the flight attendant deadpanned, “In the unlikely event of a water landing between Phoenix and Tucson, your seat cushion will serve as a flotation device.”

I think a lot of University of Arizona students were returning to school.  While waiting to pick up my luggage, I was standing near three kids, a man and two women, and it became apparent that they were discussing the strangest or most precarious places they’d had sex.  One woman said it was while her mother was sleeping in the adjacent bedroom;  the man said in a movie theatre, with witnesses, and that actually two couples did it at the same time;  the most startling, for me, was the other woman’s story about doing it in a moving car - she steered while her partner worked the gas pedal. 

Anyway, that has to serve as my entertainment so far this trip.

I’m the height (or depth) of sloth today.  Slept ’til 11, and since then have been sitting on the couch, in my jammies, bowl games on TV and laptop in my lap.  Annoyed a bit, actually, at the effort required to flick my eyeballs down to see my laptop screen through reading glasses, then up to catch the action on the TV.

Currently watching the Rose Bowl, this year an abomination ‘afore the Lord as Texas has supplanted a worthy (at least until they got rolled by Texas Tech a couple days ago) Cal team in what should ALWAYS be a contest between the Pac10 and Big 10.  I’m sure White House operatives were instrumental in getting Texas the bid.  I’ll bet Karl Rove has voted in the Coaches’ Poll the last 4 weeks, inching Texas up the BCS rankings with a whispering campaign that the Berkeley folks support requiring a third locker room at all NCAA games just for gay players.  Of which there are none, of course.  What am I thinking?.

It’s actually quality time with my mother in law, as my wife hides out in another room or even does some housework to avoid watching football.  My MIL has trouble tracking sitcoms and other shows sometimes (in her defense, producers have sped up the pace of dialogue), but she likes watching football after a lifetime of watching with my father in law, and every now & then sees something familiar (”Is Joe Paterno still coaching?  How old is he, anyway?”  Ans: not much younger than she.)  

Although it feels like speaking a foreign language, I find myself cheering for Michigan in Big Ten solidarity.  I’ll gargle with something antiseptic after.

2004 has been our “30th” for several things.  In June, we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary;  In October, 1974, we loaded up a 5′ by 8′ U-Haul, hitched it to my 1967 Pontiac Tempest, and left northwestern Ohio for a vision of Ecotopia in Seattle;  and, 30 years ago tonight, we did a “midnight move” from our apartment on Belmont Avenue, Capitol Hill to our current home near Greenlake.

We had signed a 6-month lease for the Belmont apartment in October, and faithfully paid our rent.  However, around Thanksgiving, the radiator system, which had been showing increasing signs of distress, finally just quit working, and we had no heat at all, day or night, for the month of December.

I had found work in what I then considered my “field”, as a bicycle mechanic, while Mrs. Perils was spending her evenings weaving rugs and her days trying to sell them at the Pike Place Market.  We were unused to the relentless damp and gloom of this northern latitude, and a depression of sorts settled in.  I don’t remember if we called the landlord about the lack of heat or not…perhaps we didn’t feel, as carpetbaggers and fugitives from responsible midwestern values, entitled to heat on demand.  My seldom-used Tempest, meanwhile, was parked in an inclined lot with its right side facing upwards, and once when I went to drive it, I found 2 inches of water on the floor and mold festooning then interior.

At that time in our strapping youth, we mostly bicycled for transportation.  We still felt, however, that we needed to do something for exercise, and often stopped at Greenlake to run its 2 1/2 mile circumference before bicycling back to our Belmont Avenue digs.  At some point, a friend of ours approached us about renting a house near Greenlake with him, and we jumped at the chance.  We went to tour the house, but were disappointed when it was rented to someone else.  Spurred by the cold and damp in our apartment, though, we started checking ads, and happened on one for our current house.  The landlady said we could have it, but we’d have to take it immediately, and not wait for our apartment lease to expire.

This presented a dilemma, as we felt bound by the lease, but really wanted the house and its proximity to our hallowed running venue.  We finally decided that enough was enough,  packed up our stuff on New Year’s evening and moved into the house.  It seemed cavernous compared to our apartment, as we had no furniture beyond my JBL 77 speakers and Mrs. Perils’ weaving loom.  We sat on the floor, ate a dinner hastily purchased at Dick’s Drive-In, and felt quite satisfied in our civil disobedience and the unimagined opulence of occupying an entire house (a letter of explanation to our Belmont landlord brought an apology and full refund of our deposit).

9 months later our landlady asked us if we were prepared to move out so she could put the house on the market and (subject of a future story) we ended up, after sweating bullets over signing a land contract and paying what seemed like a fortune, buying the place from her instead.

Last year in December I was here

Loreto City Hall decked out for the holidays

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OK, one more Hallmark moment, then I’ll get back to my mission statement of wry cynicism. I’ve often coveted this house in broad daylight - it’s 5 blocks away and often on my walking routes - but when I came upon it last night, I was especially taken.

Our (or MY, anyway) preparations for Christmas were typically desultory. I had planned to somehow complete all my shopping and other obligations in a whirlwind of activity starting Sunday, when I got back from my road trip.  That whirlwind instead had to be redirected to bail out a client whose hard disk crashed last Friday, a client who hadn’t had a useable backup for two months. And knew it all along. Add this to other end-or-year chores to perform with accounting software and you’re looking at a shopping season telescoped, finally into an evening’s desperate surfing for e-gift certificates. My only outside-the-house shopping foray occurred Sunday, when we walked to REI’s flagship store on Eastlake, with a stop in at Feathered Friends. REI’s about 4 miles from our house, so we were feeling all virtuous, but, hey!  If you’re not a hiker, what are you doing shopping at REI in the first place?

While I was out of town, my wife had bought a Noble Fir at Green Lake Elementary (see previous post) and placed it in a bucket on the porch, awaiting my return last Sunday. We finally brought it into the house on Thursday, and the final ornament was hung right about midnight Friday.

Despite the compressed season, we had some good times, thanks in large part to our neighbors’ hospitality:

Carolers arrive on our front porch.

We joined the carolers after they were finished, at a house down the street. To our delight, these two fellows pulled out their axes and gave a delightful bluegrass concert.

Christmas dinner was hosted by our long-time neighbors across the street. Our son flexes his forearms mashing potatoes.

Dinner is convivial and delicious, turkey and numerous yummy dishes punctuated by an archipelago of wine bottles.

What’s a holiday dinner without somebody’s show-stopping cute kid to corrupt with chocolate and jumping-on-someone-else’s-sofa activities? Mrs. Perils does the honor here. I can categorically say she’s not hoping for grandchildren, but..she’s sure having fun, isn’t she?