Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

Just finishing a week in Milwaukee, nurturing and entertaining auditors from our CPA firm.  When I first saw three of them in the conference room on Monday, I thought it was a kindergarten class.  They were so young.  We thought of putting some toy trucks in there, and maybe hanging one of those Tweety Bird mobiles that you see suspended over cribs.  I used the office of the Accounts Payable guy, who was in Jamaica.  Coincidence?

I’ve been going to a health club about a mile from my hotel a couple times a week when I’m here for a workout.  This trip, they had a sign out for a promotion called The Bridal Boot Camp with three different packages: Beautiful Bride, Dream Day and Princess.  They also offer a group program for the whole wedding party.  Perhaps a game of Roller Derby at the reception?

I didn’t realize what a big business weddings were until I went to a wedding show when I worked for a bakery that made terrific wedding cakes.  The draw for us to pony up and attend was, according to the salesman for the show, “We’re going to have Brides With Budgets!”

Off to my plane - more over the weekendc.

So I sucked it up and attended my biennial physical exam yesterday.  That’s what it means by “physical”, I guess.  You actually have to go there.  So much of what I do is cyber- and virtual these days, and this event actually started in cyberspace - I made the appointment and received confirmation on my HMO’s website, and filled out an online questionnaire that used to be administered haphazardly by a harried nurse in the seconds before the doctor arrived in the exam room.

But for all of their sophistication and mouse-side manner, the WebMDs of the world are not yet able to reach out and fondle your nuts to see if anything untoward is going on down there, so I ultimately had to hie me thither and unpersuasively envelop my naked self in the standard-issue peek-a-boo muumuu.

Though I suffered the usual indignities stoically, the part that I dread most is when they want to draw blood, this time for a cholesterol test.  It’s not the pain I dread, it’s some murky psychological weirdness I have about veins, arteries and blood.  I hyperventilate a little, and get woozy sometimes just anticipating.  I’ve gotten so I simply tell the tech that I’ve got a phobia.  This time the woman said, “OK, let me tell you about my animals,” and I jumped in gratefully, asking probing questions about their personalities and relationships with each other, and you’d have thought I was on a first date, I was so animated.

Of course, it was over in seconds - I give good vein - and my spirit soared.  They bandage the puncture and say to keep it on for 15 minutes, but I’ve been known to wear one all day and through my evening shower, only daring near the end to remove it because it’s gotten soggy, fully expecting the wound to have developed into some hideous spurting hematoma.

Though it’s been certified that the Fountain of Youth has once again eluded me, I’m told the chances are reasonable that I’ll be slumping up there again in two years.  I’ll try to have the bandage off by then.

I have my laptop set up in two-screen mode (one onboard, one external) when I’m in my office, and I spent way too much of the weekend watching March Madness on one screen and telling myself I was multitasking on the other.  By the end of Saturday, I had foregone the deceit and had a game going on each screen, one Purdue-Washington and the other Duke-Texas.  At one point, both were in the final minute and either tied or within 2 points.

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We’re adjusting to the loss of the newspaper we’ve subscribed to since 1975, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  We’ve been fortunate during that period to have two daily newspapers with two sets of personalities and gradations (I wouldn’t say polar opposites) of political persuasion.  Oddly, the P-I, owned by Hearst, was the slightly more liberal paper, while the local family-controlled Times was more idiosyncratically conservative, reflecting, probably, the humors of its splenetic publisher.

I think the competition was great for the city, perhaps tempering the tendency of a paper to become a cheerleader and mouthpiece of the local establishment.  I thrilled in the 80s when the PI took as its mission the scourging of our Reaganesque Democrat governor, Dixy Lee Ray.  Dixy was an unflinchingly pro-development shill who never heard of an energy project she wouldn’t stump for, whether it was a supertanker port, an under-Sound oil pipeline or the archipelago of nuclear plants known as WPPSS.  A character appearing in a comic strip by the PI’s editorial cartoonist named Dipstick Duck sat in judgment.

The PI continues in truncated form as a web-only venture, and the “thunk” on our porch each morning now heralds the arrival of The Times.  We would probably discontinue taking a daily, but my MIL, who lives with us, takes pleasure in a paper with her breakfast.  Since I’ve been reading both papers online for several years and seldom actually handled the newsprint version, I can’t gauge the feeling of emptiness expressed by those for whom that tactility is a big part of their news-reading experience.  But a lot of distinctive voices in sports, arts, reportage and editorial have been silenced, and I will certainly miss their part of the local news chorus.

Last night was a full moon here in Seattle, and a few of my kayak buddies and I thought it would be cool to observe it from our boats. In a major upset, the evening was almost crystal clear - temps in the 20s, but little to no wind. We launched near Gasworks Park on Lake Union and paddled towards the University of Washington.

As we turned into the Montlake Cut, the moon revealed itself gloriously, making a river of light on the water and a silhouette of the Montlake Bridge in the air (Click to enlarge):

Usually the Cut - a short canal connecting Lake Union with Lake Washington - is rocking and rolling with motorboat wake, but last night it was our private reflecting pool.  We paddled through it and into a bayou-like area near the Arboretum.  There we consternated several herons, who squawked and took to ungainly flight, as well as several beaver, who slapped their tails on the surface of the water to show their displeasure.

We stayed pleasantly warm despite the water droplets from our paddles trying to freeze on our decks.  Visually, it could have been a balmy summer night.  GPS tale-o-the-tape here (which also includes the car trip down to the lake, due to user malfunction).

I was working downtown yesterday, and needed to head a bit north to the South Lake Union area in order to rescue a client in distress. (Distress that I may have caused, but let’s not go there.) The South Lake Union area, already home to medical complexes such as the Fred Hutchinson Center and the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, is being built out into a mini-city almost single-handedly by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Corporation.

The city has done a number of things to accommodate the development, among them installing the South Lake Union Trolley, aka SLUT. I’d seen the trolley quite a few times, but yesterday was the first time I was actually going the same direction that it was, so I hopped on it (Click to enlarge):

In my view, mass transit that operates at street grade (as does the SLUT) is never going to reach the potential that transit in its own grade can provide.  Street-grade transit has to stop for stop lights, gets caught in the same traffic jams that single-occupancy cars do and can travel no faster than rush-hour traffic.

I thought it was ironic that, as we waited at a green light for some cars to clear a grid-locked intersection, I could see the anachronistic skeleton of what could have been an piece of a solution - the old monorail track from the 1962 World’s Fair:

A few years ago, we voted for funding and created an administrative infrastructure to build a modern monorail that would have connected two problematic parts of the city, operating above street level over its entire course.  I think it would have been a great emblem for the city, extending the symbolism of the old monorail in a functional piece of infrastructure.

But the Monorail always had its enemies and, after acquiring land and plotting several versions of a route, the project imploded due to funding doubts and municipal squabbling.  True, we’ll soon have a light rail system connecting downtown to the airport.  A lot of that system, however, will operate at street grade and, in my view, won’t have the cache that the Monorail would have.

Took another little stroll on Sunday, up to Phinney Ridge just west of Casa de Perils.  I believe this is the best view from a Starbucks cafe I’ve had the pleasure of gazing at while sipping my macchiato (see sidebar):

We caught a PBS broadcast of last night’s Stevie Wonder concert in the East Room of the White House.  An illustrious parade of musicians performed Stevie’s songs, ending with “Superstition”, performed by Stevie himself, sounding terrific.  I kept trying to guess who would do the (horrifyingly treacly) “Ebony and Ivory”.  My bet was on Barack and John McCain, but, alas, they passed over the number.  Obama kills me sometimes.  At the end of the concert, he said he’d just seen the most illustrious Stevie Wonder cover band ever.

Who has weekend plans?  Some folks I know are kayaking off Marrowstone Island, near Port Townsend, on Saturday, and I’ll be with them if the stars align (and it doesn’t snow any more like it did this morning - sheesh!)

Just ended a week of business travel, dancing through snowstorms in both Milwaukee and Minneapolis to arrive in Seattle only an hour late (albeit at 1am Saturday morning). This time, I really did sort of go around the dark side of the moon, blog-wise. I felt very out of touch, cerebrally, for most of the week.

Here’s the scene of my last contact before disappearing.  It’s the Northwest Airlines Worldclub in Detroit, where I alit between flights. It’s perched above the main corridor between the concourses, TSA and baggage claim, and it’s fun to watch the body language of both departures and arrivals through this river of humanity. Each has its qualities of jubilance and dread. There’s the business road warrior slumping either into or out of town with Monday on his mind; lovers ending a weekend that either succeeded wildly, or didn’t; arrivals from tropical climes, tans already cracking, boxed pineapple tucked under their arms as consolation prizes; student groups off on an adventure they’ve been saving for with car washes and bake sales, already forming their little alliances (Click photos to enlarge):

The work week was heavily involved in another variant of businesses trying to respond to the current financial crisis: excise muscle and amputate limbs in order to survive, and risk having no capacity to respond to an eventual upturn; or don’t act, and risk losing the entire business.  We’re in unprecedented territory; you can’t Google the answer.

I awoke Saturday to a sweet sorta-spring day, and I did a walk around the extended neighborhood to run errands and expel the plane from my lungs.  I stopped at a cafe for an espresso and bowl of delicious soup: a peanut-carrot-curry, with a stick of garlic bread.

There were some unusual things to photograph.  Lawns in my neighborhood are often found-art canvases.  Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes not:

A little late with the podcast, but I got the important stuff taken care of last night. I nabbed some caramels and a gift card at one of Mrs. Perils’ favorite pleasure-palaces (Click to enlarge):

I think I made the safe choice. I was talking with one of my clients this morning, and he was just then buying his wife’s Valentine gift. He was walking into Best Buy. I don’t think this will end well.

Since it’s almost impossible to beat your way into a restaurant tonight, we’re noshing on home-made pasta and an Aussie Syrah. I heard in interesting piece on NPR yesterday about how anguished restaurants are that Valentine’s Day falls on Saturday, because it co-opts what is normally a busy night anyway. I imagine their lobbying group is pushing Congress to fix the day on a Wednesday.

So, here I am, a “weekend blogger”.  In golf, they call such a person a “duffer”.  Maybe you could call me a “bluffer”.

Anyway, I’m working on my 2009 Valentine’s podcast, which I vow will be online in time to nibble chocolate and listen to my treacly offering.  But just in case you’ve gotten your chocolate windfall early, here are my podcasts from the last two Valentine’s Days, which are just as sweet today.

First, the 2007 blockbuster:

[audio:http://perilsofcaffeineintheevening.com/wp-content/uploads/PerilsValentine.mp3]

featuring:

• Amadio Mio - Pink Martini
• Advice For The Young At Heart - Tears for Fears (”Love is a promise, love is a souvenir”)
• Small Wonders - Dog’s Eye View
• Lovesong - The Cure (”However far I stray, whatever words I say”)
• Great Expectations - Elbow (”Know I’ll Always wait…”)
• Crush - Garbage (from the Baz Luhrman “Romeo and Juliet”) (”I’d do time for you”)
• Blue - Joni (”Songs are like tattoos, you know, I’ve been to sea before”)
• Corcovado - Everything But the Girl

And the 2008 podast:

[audio:http://perilsofcaffeineintheevening.com/wp-content/uploads/Valentine2008.mp3]

featuring:

• Help Me - Joni
• Destiny - Zero 7
• Sagaba - Blue Scholars
• I Can’t Get Started - Bunny Berrigan (”I’ve got a house, a showplace…still I can’t get noplace with you”)
• Someone To Watch Over Me - Linda Ronstadt/Nelson Eddy Orchestra
• Since I Fell For You - Lenny Welch

A couple of weeks ago, a person on my blogroll had a story published in the online literary magazine Brevity.  After clicking over there to read her piece, I poked around the magazine and found several delightful stories, and I’ll be making Brevity a regular stop.

One story in particular impressed and amused me.  It’s called Future Ex Buys Pajamas, by John Bresland.  In it, he’s touring Paris for the first time with his girlfriend/wife/whatever, and he’s a little non-plussed by both Paris and the French:

The more we walk, the more difficult it becomes to avoid mention of the city’s high concentration of lingerie boutiques. During one fifteen minute stretch we pass more lingerie shops than pharmacies. For every chicken roasting on a spit, there’s sexy lingerie smoldering in the boutique window next door. I try to be a man about it. Try not to stare. But every time a woman emerges from a lingerie shop, I can’t resist studying her face for signs of lifelong erotic contentment.

Inevitably, they enter one of the boutiques:

Every item has the delicate vascularity of a burning leaf. Her eyes settle on a pair of black stockings.

And for a moment, his girlfriend becomes the object of his fantasy.  But then:

Suspended behind the stockings, hanging from a pink padded hanger like a wet blanket, one pair of women’s pajamas. The anti-lingerie. And I worry about this.

I guess the title of the story tells us where they are headed.

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For a while in the 80s, the Victoria’s Secret catalog would grace our mailbox from time to time.  Unlike the author of the story, I wasn’t inconvenienced by having to imagine very much about the women in the catalogs.

Mrs. Perils did actually purchase something from VS once, but don’t leap to any conclusion - it was something like a sweatshirt.  Unlike the couple in the story, we’re still together (hey, Mrs. Perils is hot in a sweatshirt! - Ed.)  But the catalogs long ago stopped arriving.

Coincidentally, we passed this store today walking around Fremont (click photos to engorge):

We didn’t go in, though. We had a date with a troll: