With a smile on my face I say, "Seems like the bitch just left."
June 2009 Archives
Stevie Wonder is a hell of a nice guy. And the folks with him were very patient with all the people that asked for pictures.
It was cool.
And while I'm posting pictures, this is the photographic evidence of a previous post.
And while I'm still posting pictures, this is the view to the east out my back door.
It apparently still hasn't figured out how to post pictures.
"That's why I am unlikely to agree." (Dave Matthews Band - Why I Am.)
What a great line.
Which led to pondring other favorites.
"If there's an answer, it's just that it's just that way, when you're looking for space." (John Denver - Looking for Space.)
"Is this just vulgar electricity, is this the edifying fire." (Joni Mitchell - Come in From the Cold.)
"We've all gone crazy, mourning all day and mourning all night, falling over ourselves to get all of the misery right." (Andrew Lloyd Webber - Oh! What a Circus from Evita.)
"Jane doesn't think a man can ever be faithful." (Barenaked Ladies - Jane.)
"Oh, how I hate to see October go." (Barry Manilow - When October Goes.)
"Control has left me, and I can't feel another thing." (Hootie & the Blowfish - Sad Caper.)
"Don't know where you're going. Don't know what you're doing. Hell, it might be the highway to heaven. And it might be the road to ruin." (Marc Cohn - Strangers in a Car.)
"I said to myself it's time for me release my vicious rhyme I call my masterpiece. Now people in the house this is just for you..." (Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight.)
That last one is funny for me. I recall, vividly, standing at my locker in 1979. The girl next to me was named Jackie. Jackie was singing this song. It intrigued me. Still does. It's my fifteen-minute project song.
And sometimes if my head is busy before I go to sleep, I think of this song. It immediately distracts me. Always has. I'm usually asleep by the time the fly fly girl with the sexy lean goes into the party.
Shea and I were out shopping tonight. She got some new socks. When we got back in the car, she was reading the materials in the socks. She read, "One percent Spandex." Then she stretched the socks out and said, "That seems like more than one percent."
I couldn't help but laugh.
"I'm going to write that one down," I said.
"Oh, no."
I'm pondring in analogy form this morning.
I'm a baby. I get hungry. I can't say to you that I'm hungry, so I cry. When I cry you come and get me and fuss over me and feed me. I get content, I stop crying.
Then I need my diaper changed. I express this the only way I know how. I cry. You come and attend to my needs.
I learn that when I cry, comforting takes place. So sometimes I'm not hungry, or wet, or unhappy, I cry to say, "Please come pick me up and soothe me." And you do.
And I'm smart. Pretty soon I can have you running at all hours of the night, even though, technically, I don't need anything. I'm fed and dry and warm in my bed. You know this, yet you come running anyway, because that is what you do.
One day, however, you realize I as the baby need nothing, and you're going to let me cry myself back to sleep, so you can get some sleep.
It's hard.
I cry a little bit, and wait. You don't come running.
I cry harder. Nothing.
I don't see you in the other room, or just how hard it is for you to NOT come running. What you're doing is really helping me grow, but my immediate myopia keeps me from understanding that.
I start to scream. The crying didn't do it, so I crank it up a notch. That will bring you running.
Huh. Still no comfort.
I, as a baby, have a setting called "cry so hard as to go silent and turn purple." You've left me no choice. I turn the knob to purple. I won't have to wait long. You can't resist this.
Well, you've never been able to resist it in the past. Tonight though, I'm screaming my little lungs out. Can't you hear me saying, "Waaaaaaaaa."
Yes, little one. I hear you.
I have the monitor next to my ear. And a screen that lets me check often to make sure you are not tangled in your jammie feet, smooshed against the wall of your crib, or otherwise in real peril.
Yes, little one. I hear you. It may be a long time before you understand how I can love you at the same time I let you cry yourself back to sleep tonight.
A week or more ago I took some earrings to the jeweler to have them reset. I took them to the same jeweler that reset them the first time.
When I bought the earrings they were on yellow gold, screw-back posts. I had them set in bezel-cut hoops. The jeweler I took them to has been around forever; a non-chain, and when possible I prefer the little guys get my business.
It was easier for me to hand over two carats to the local guy than to a large chain. Shrug.
So I had them reset probably seven or eight years ago, and a few months ago one of them bent when I got my comb caught on it. Not the first time it's happened. In fact it's happened so much that I took the earrings out. I had been thinking about having them reset again, and that seemed like a good time.
So I took them to the jeweler. I'm guessing it was Mom, of the Mom and Pop part, that wrote the order. Personally, I didn't understand the shorthand she put on the little envelope, but she's been doing this for 100 years and I have not, so I didn't question anything.
Yesterday afternoon while teaching my class (via a Centra session), my cell phone rang.
It was the jeweler himself. (My request was to have the diamonds reset into 4-prong white gold screw backs.) The jeweler said he didn't understand the instructions - he was about to cut off the hoop part and remount the yellow gold bezel setting onto a white gold post. He said that didn't make any sense, so that's why he called.
I simply said again what I wanted, 4-prong white gold with large screw backs. He said he didn't get the screw-back part either from the instructions written down.
So I'm glad he called. Cause otherwise those would have been some ugly earrings that wouldn't stay in my ears.
As it is, I'm looking forward to getting them back, because my earlobes feel naked.
And the show on Fuse is just icing on the cake.
Damn. Dave looks great and is sounding equally delicious.
Still listening. Still sorting.
Have been on the verge of tears a few times. (In the best way. Sheaness does that to me sometimes.)
That hair. I miss that hair.
But that dimple will never go away.
And she's beautiful no matter what she does with her hair.
The first two pictures were from the summer of 2001. Shea said she wanted to go to the zoo. So we flew first class out to San Diego, just us two. Went to the zoo one day, and the wild animal park the next, then flew home the next.
Just because we could.
(The other two pictures were taken in the past six months.)
Going a bit further this time. I am beside myself with excitement at the thought of our upcoming adventure, just us two.
Still listening to Big Whiskey.
And sorting pictures.
Shea at five days old with her great grandfather. One of my all-time favorite pictures. For oh, so very many reasons.
This past week when I got to the airport, I laughed myself silly with the "it rubs the lotion on its skin" thing. I don't know why.
The thread continued in my head as I went through the rest of the routine things I do when I go out of town.
I intended to continue tweeting but kept getting server connection errors on my Blackberry, so I gave up.
Well, on the electronic note-taking anyway. I always have a pen and paper backup.
So here is the full list, as I wrote it by hand.
It rubs the lotion in its skin.
It puts Eternity on the cloth, and the cloth in the bag.
It straps the bag to the other bag, locks Jalepeno, and goes into airport.
It checks the board and says hi to all Delta agents.
It goes to prettiest airport bathroom ever.
It goes through security.
It gets a compliment on forearm tattoo.
It puts on shoes, straps bags together, and goes up escalator.
It gets a SW veggie wrap and chips. And a filled H20 bottle.
It goes to the gate. It asks gate agent if we have a plane. He says yes.
It sits and eats.
It chats to TSA agent who is "making a presence" [in the terminal.]
It throws out its chat. [Don't ask.]
It gets comment from gate agent that I have a very FAST looking bag.
It fesses up that it owns not a Ducati.
It still gets smiles from agent who then puts valet bag tag on fast bag.
It boards the plane.
It gets another baggage compliment from flight attendant.
It gets no seatmate.
It gets out its book.
It notices how text size has gotten bigger as I get near bottom of page.
It reads.
I'm home, having coffee, and listening to Big Whiskey. For the umpteenth time, but the first time in the quiet that is my home. Just me and the band.
I've got a friend in the DC area that found me through (if memory serves) a Dave-related post on pondring a few years ago. It was the first common thread. Derrick is as big a fan as I am.
(He also seems to share my lack of spatial perception.)
I was working near DC a couple of years ago, so he and I met for the first time for dinner. This past week I let him know I'd be in the area, so he came downtown Tuesday night. He sent me a text earlier in the day saying he was at the store buying Big Whiskey, and got me one too.
When we caught up with each other outside the Verizon Center, I remembered to hug him first and THEN ask for the CD.
We walked and talked and eventually found our way to Gordon Biersch for some beers and dinner.
I've previously mentioned that Derrick is one funny mofo. His job is one I find particularly fascinating, and he's got no shortage of stories. I found myself snorting repeatedly.
Fortunately it only served to encourage him. We walked and talked more after dinner, until late. Well, late for me. He's a night owl.
Wednesday night we met in Reston's Towne Center. Walked around a bit and finally found our way to a cool restaurant that had a bar outside. We sat and drank and talked and people-watched for a while.
I snorted.
We were sitting at the short end of the bar. When I sat down there was a large white envelope leaning against the wall. The bartender asked if it was mine, and I said no. Thinking someone might come back for it, we left it there.
After a bit of time curiosity got the better of me, so I opened the envelope. It was a resume and a CD.
Derrick and I started to postulate. I wondered whether I should call the guy's number from the bottom of the paper. Then wondered if maybe he had met someone here for an interview, and the interviewer didn't think the resume was worth taking with him. Maybe. So if I called the guy, maybe he'd know the interview sucked.
Who knows.
Eventually I took the papers out of the envelope, found the phone number at the bottom, and called it.
The guy that answered the phone had never heard the name I gave him from the resume. I said thanks and hung up.
Then kept reading. There were some serious typos in the thing.
I put it back in the envelope, handed it to the bartender, and told him what it was, and that I had called the number on it with no luck.
He took it from me, looked at it for about 20 seconds, pondring, you could see it.
He put the thing in the trash.
And Derrick and I continued our conversation. Which include more stories about his job, running bar-patron-people-watching commentary, and more snorts.
We had a nice dinner, and while eating, the skies opened up. It was still pouring when we were done eating, and neither of us had an umbrella. So we darted our way from awning to awning, and then through a movie theatre, toward the parking garages.
We got to the garage I was parked in first, so I drove him to his car, which was in a garage just down the road. When he got in, Big Whiskey was, of course, in the CD player of the crap rental car.
(Which made it tolerable.)
I put on his favorite song, drove the short distance, we said our goodbyes, and I went back to DC.
(Thursday he had to work, and I, having stayed up for three nights in a row until midnight or after, ordered food in my room and was asleep by 9:30.)
I called him when I got home last night, and right away heard the music in the background. "That sounds like Grux," I say.
"It is," he says. Then says the CD is playing for the fourth time in a row.
What's not to like about that.
Right now, I've got three more times through ahead of me, in the quiet of my home. Me, coffee, and the band.
Thanks again, Derrick, for Big Whiskey, the walks and talks. And snorts.
I thought Jimmy did an excellent job here.
I'm very proud of my daughter for finishing the school year with all A's, and being able to exempt three exams. I'm Mom to a high-schooler now.
Holy crap.
But in a great way.
In other news, I had left my Hilton Honors frequent guest account alone for somewhere in the neighborhood of 9 or 10 years. Finally got around to getting an account made online this morning, after one call to customer service.
Half a million points.
Cool.
So I used points to book hotels in Madrid and Berlin this summer. Still have to get rooms in Rome. But at the moment, we've got first-class round trip airfare, and 7 of 10 nights in 4 or 5 star hotels, and have spent 71 dollars and change.
Speaking of change, if I can't find a room in Rome with points, then I'll just pay for the room, and theoretically anyway, pay for it out of the change jar. Shea asked the other day if I knew how much I had in there.
"I know exactly how much is in there."
Pause.
"Four hundred and ninety dollars."
Any we don't spend on travel will be spent on other things. Lladros for Mommy. No telling what Sheaness will choose.
Big congratulations are also in order for my one and only niece who graduated from high school on Friday night.
Funny the way it is though. I don't feel old.
I just feel lucky.
