March 2003 Archives

But I swear to god, Mimi Smartypants is the funniest blogwriter I've found in ages. And any woman who would tell an IT techie "I'm here to rock you like a hurricane!" must have something going on. Full story here. Your click will be rewarded. Otherwise, I'm exhausted. Note to self: Northern California in the brown months is much safer, histamine-wise. What isn't swollen is bloodshot. What isn't bloodshot is dripping. You'd think after 42 years my body would figure out what the f to do with pollen, but apparently I have an immune system like a labrador retriever chasing a ball into a wall, and every time it bangs up against the wall, it's a surprise. (Hours of editing wouldn't make that sentence clearer, so just deal with it, okay?)

From the bulkhead window seat of an Airbus 319: There's a hell of a lot of America down there. I am always surprised by how imaginary the mountains appear. Shadows in light & dark brown with shocks of white at the top, impossibly detailed, even individual trees visible from 5 miles in the air, wisps of mist here and there distorting the view. Or, here, monstrous fluffy white clouds casting shadows below. The extent of the clouds is knowable only from above; below, you can only guess. The mountains run as far as the eye can see, even from way up here. The valleys are filled with snow, looking like powdered sugar that fills in the folds of a tablecloth. Those who first crossed these must have wondered if the mountains would ever end, if they hadn't truly entered the land of the frost giants. Just passed two other planes, one going the other way, the other a big bomber running right toward us, which is always unnerving. Seems as if there's enough 'up here' up here that we needn't see anyone else at all, but I know it doesn't work that way. People once walked across all this. And consumed 9 pounds of meat a day, while there was meat. No wonder the horses were skittish. My allergies whacked me upside the head on this brief trip. On the way to the airport I noticed copious goldenrod, normally a July/August menace (with its quieter partner ragweed), and now I know what hit me. There's a war on, or didn't you know? Nonstop coverage on CNN and everywhere else. Can't even look at most of my usual blog reading. The arguments are over, we're in it, and I can't stand to read another word of self-righteous bleating from either side. There was an article on Salon earlier in the week that well-described my feelings on this- that this is something that has to be done, but that the Administration didn't bother to make the case for the liberation of Iraq. I remember years of articles lamenting the horrible conditions for women in Afghanistan, demanding (and rightly so) that there should be some sort of intervention - but not sanctions, of course, because those only hurt the powerless, and nothing that infringes sovereignty even if it's illegitimate. And then we went in and did something, and many of the same voices criticized that we didn't fix it all overnight. And in the Iraq situation, there's the call for endless diplomacy (11 years not being enough) and the naive belief that you can reason with madmen. It's tragic that Vietnam casts such a long shadow over our foreign policy history, because what we're seeing here is 1930s appeasement, a hope that if we give them what they want they'll leave us alone. Read what the Muslim extremists are writing- this isn't about our support for Israel and it's not about their hatred of their love for Britney Spears CDs and Coke. This is a reactionary movement to restore the world to an imagined time of glory. Where those sentiments pop up here, they're recognized for what they are, but there's a dangerous tendency in liberal thought (and I don't use that term derogatorily) to view the exotic as somehow more legitimate than the familiar, which leads to the fallacy that everything can be resolved if we just understood everyone else better. We should, but it's important not to forget what we knew as children: some people are just evil. Yes, some of our actions now will come back to bite us in the future. As they did in Afghanistan. As they did in Iraq. Despite our wishes, situations change. The Soviet Union and Iran leave the equation. People living among us save the money they make driving cabs and making pizza, and they funnel it back through ostensibly religious organizations to make into bombs to kill us. I don't see a need to discuss the legitimacy of their desire to kill me as opposed to my desire not to be killed. In 10 years other things will have changed that will affect how all this turns out. Perhaps Islam will be swept by a movement that seeks to bring their societies forward. Here's a thing to keep in mind: attempts to return to a glorious past have not, historically speaking, worked out to the benefit of mankind.

Serendipity- here's what you should try: watch 'Star Trek: Nemesis' while listening to Aimee Mann's 'Lost in Space' Maybe this album works with any movie, but this one fits very well. This movie sucks, but with Aimee way up loud, you can picture word balloons coming from the characters' mouths, which would improve things more than somewhat. I cannot imagine that i once got a rush from Kate Capshaw playing Maggie the Cat at Syracuse Stage, but Counselor Troi (the Counselor With the Big Big Eyes) looks more beautiful than ever. Hey, this works pretty well with The Church too. The iPod is The Shuffle Mode of the Gods, the long-wished-for Radio Station of Me, What Music Would Sound Like If I Had Any Say. I have something like 850 songs on it, nearly 2 solid days of music. And even that seems not enough. This new replacement for my Palm, the Audiovox Thera, is working out well enough. Having huge problems synching it, but it adds lots of features (like guessing words so I don't have to write them fully . Wireless web access rocks! Too bad I'm such a good typist (90 wpm) that anything else will always be too slow 'the moth don't care if the flame is real.' - Aimee Hannah is so much my daughter -- these days she's constantly making up wordplay jokes. 'What does a pig put on a boo-boo? Oinkment!' Last night she came along with me to the drugstore, and while we were getting checked out, 'Long December' by Counting Crows came on. I said, 'I hear this song everywhere I go,' which has been true, plus it was featured in a Warren Miller tape we've seen a number of times this winter. And she asked, 'Do you like it?' which for some reason struck me as an interesting question. Then she sang along to an Elvis Costello song on the way home. A very interesting little girl. Hey, remember this: we've got tickets to Marshall Crenshaw for Saturday night! Can't wait. Saw him a couple of years ago at Belleayre, and he totally rocked. (Hey, does anybody else have rules about not listening to an artist for the five or six days prior to seeing him or her in concert? No? Then I won't even ask about playing contrasting music during the ride there and back.)

Looks like I picked the wrong week to trade up my cell phone. Or something like that. I'm literally triple-booked at times these days, and tomorrow night I'm off to Sacramento and then right back on Friday night. Trying to get my new cell phone programmed and ready to accept text messages so I can leave the goddamn beeper behind forever (and so I shall), and also trying to get my other new toy, an Audiovox Thera, synched up so I can use it for my e-mail. It almost works. Even so, I can access work e-mail through its web interface, which means: NO MORE DRAGGING THE LAPTOP AROUND THE COUNTRY!! My back thanks me. Oh, and the iPod? Shuffle mode tantra, baby. And the plumbing? Oh, well, the plumber's coming tomorrow. We have but one toilet, and I'm not going to be the one who makes it inaccessible for long periods of time.

First bike ride of the season yesterday -- snow still everywhere on the bike paths. Who knew that only Albany plowed its path? (Thanks, Albany!) Tried to start out at Colonie Town Park, but that didn't work, so I drove down to the train station in Niskayuna, and that part of the path was clear only as far as the Lock 7 road, so I got out onto River Road and then up Rosendale, did some spins through the neighborhoods, went all the way to the end of Rosendale and then came back. Turns out I had been climbing more than I realized, because the ride back was fast. Then I hit the mall for my iPod. Major tax return coming, and a cross-country trip this week, so I finally decided it was time to make the plunge. iPod: very cool. Software is completely intuitive, it's like it teaches you how to use it. But going to the mall is thoroughly painful. The place is just too goddamned big. Can't wait 'til the EMS moves out of there. If only the Apple store would follow... Today, continued work on the plumbing issues over my head. Found the leak, but man is it subtle. Have to tear out a little more ceiling, scrub some pipe, and hope that I can caulk it up. It may just be that the iron waste pipe is rotten after only 74 years, but I'm hoping I can patch it up because replacing that would be a major venture.

Last night was the Girl Scouts' Sadie Hawkins Day Dance. (Never mind that any Lil' Abner fan knows that Sadie Hawkins Day is November 15 -- that's the kind of thing that leaves you uninvited to dances.) This is a delightful event at which girls and their dads get to dress up for dinner and dancing. They seated us by troop (bad dad doesn't know his daughter's troop number -- 75, as it turns out -- but remembers his Cub Scout Pack was 63, Boy Scout Troop was 21, and Explorer Post was 30) and I had to work at small talk with the other dads and a grandpa, but we were all game for it. The girls were all dressed to the 7's -- they've got a little bit of practice before they get to the 9's, but there were lots of heels and shawls, flouncy gowns and strappy little numbers, and a little bit of makeup and eye shadow here and there. Very cute, particularly when the DJ encouraged them to shout along the chorus to Shania Twain's "I Feel Like a Woman" at the top of their lungs. The irony was for the dads. There were daddy-daughter dances, macarena and hokey-pokey, and a medley of oldies that at least gave me something to dance to. I wasn't constructed to dance to "Jennie From the Block," but I can manage the "Hawaii Five-O" them very nicely still. But sitting in a cafeteria with swirling lights, a mirror ball and a DJ is still the same as it ever was, and it was just a little weird to be transported back in time. During our 6th grade class trip to Old Sturbridge Village, while we were eating our picnic lunch, Eddie Carroll asked a question that would unnerve me for the next year: "Who ya gonna take to Teen Town?" I didn't even know what Teen Town was. It turned out to be a school dance in the eighth grade gym -- they were held three or four times a year. (And yes, the name seemed dumb then, too, but there was still the Generation Gap then, and the oldsters had trouble naming things right. I suspect we still do.) From that moment on, my 11-year-old brain worried about nothing more than I worried about who I could possibly ask to a dance, and who would possibly go with me. I was not alone in this -- we boys discussed this night and day. Our options, being from a very small neighborhood school, were very limited. If I'm remembering right, my active crush at that time (and there was always at least one active crush) was on a girl a year behind me, so she was safely excluded from consideration and I was safe from ever having to actually talk to her. When we advanced to seventh grade the next year, there would be girls from 5 other schools to choose from, but we worried whether we would have enough time to develop crushes on any of them before the first dance. (The biggest problem with being young is that you have all the time in the world to obsess over this stuff.) But still, that seemed like the only sane option. Of course, in the end, despite dares and double-dares and months of consideration, almost no boys asked any girls. We all went in a knot. I still remember the song that was playing as we entered the darkened gym: "Go All The Way" by the Raspberries. (We knew that meant something. We didn't really know what.) I still remember the horrible horrible horrible orange soda that was offered by way of refreshment. And I still remember that I danced not at all, talked to no girls whatsoever, and generally tried to stay invisible along the gym wall. The girls ran around whispering about who liked whom. The boys wandered in and out of knots, trying hard to be too cool to care since we were too dorky to dance. They could have torn up the center of the gym and it wouldn't have had any effect -- all the action was on the sidelines. I did have an active crush, but she was way out of my league, and if she was even there, I don't remember, but I would never have talked to her. My friend Keith talked to girls like it was no big thing, and we all desperately envied his cool. I had fun anyway, and developed a progressive plan by which I would be both talking to, and dancing with, girls no later than high school graduation. I couldn't see a way to speed things up. In just a couple of years, all those little girls from the dance last night are going to be the gossiping objects of desire for boys who don't really have a clue what they're desiring. And so the world turns... Oh, the top of the cafeteria must have been used for orchestra practice. Up with some of the music stands was a sheet of paper listing their practice order: 1) Scales 2) Bartok 3) 1812 Overture 4) Cripple Creek I'm dying to hear a fifth-grade orchestra wheeze its way through Cripple Creek. A music teacher's desperate attempt to be hip by letting them play music from their parents' time?

You can't really do serious damage to your house without a Sawzall. But I've got one of those. Actually, the news is goodish. For the last couple of years, in the dead of winter, we've had occasions when there has been a leak down the dining room wall, but a very light one, and it has always gone away once it has warmed up. Once we thought it might be from an ice jam, and good luck ever tracking down a roof leak. But eventually it dawned on us that it was connected with draining the bathtub. Never leaks during a shower, but would occasionally leak in the very cold weather when there was some hydraulic head in the tub. (And, please, if you've never had hydraulic head in your tub, you just have no idea.) But it always went away when it warmed up, so we figured, a little pipe shrinkage, a couple of drips, and I'm not going to rip out a wall and a ceiling for a couple of drips. Lately, many more drips. Not just drips. Spillage. So, today, the Sawzall. Stay tuned.

I can no longer shop happily. Here's what happened to me tonight:

• The least of all Human League songs, "Human," is now stuck in my head. The least of all Human League songs is saying something, especially for those of us who remember "Mirror Man" and "I Am The Law." I'm sorry, it was the '80s, music deeply sucked, and I was really very stoned. Very. And "Don't You Want Me" rocked, right? Right?
• They moved the bananas to the entrance to the fruit & produce section. Or so it would appear. Bananas up front, where bananas have never been before. But I work my way to the back, and what do I find? Bananas in back, where bananas have ever been before. Fruit & Produce is now bookended by bananas. I don't know what this means, but if they show up on the third wall next week, I'm switching grocery stores, just to be safe.
• I ran through entire aisles without even looking, meaning I probably missed a mess of stuff I needed, but I just couldn't deal with those aisles today. Like the battery/detergent/starch aisle. I really couldn't bear to think about all the things I might need from that aisle, so I skipped it altogether. If my shirts start to look less than starchy fresh, you'll know why.
• The raisins are on the very bottom shelf. It's a squat I really just would rather not do. Nothing else I need is on the bottom shelf.
• The conversations of teenage clerks and bag boys are enough to make me want to throttle them, but only because I had those conversations more than 25 years ago, and it doesn't seem like they needed to be said twice. Apparently I was wrong. My god were we stupid when we were young.

The ceiling is not leaking. The ceiling is not leaking. The ceiling is not leaking. I'm going to keep repeating this until the ceiling stops leaking. I'll let ya know how that goes.

I'm not into blogrolling and all that, but there are some blogs I read regularly -- Lileks, Wil Wheaton, a number of the LiveJournal Buffy/Angel entries, and I've just discovered this delightful writer, Mimi Smartypants, who today starts her entry with: Tax refund for me! Everybody say yeah! After last year's debacle, when we owed two thousand dollars and I was convinced I would end up in debtor's prison, I totally changed my withholding scheme at work and that, combined with NASDAQ's shitty performance, means hooray hooray refund. What do you think? Pay off the Visa bill or spend it all on cocaine and lapdances? I knew you would say that.

Well, not Nielsens, exactly, but I'm wondering if impending war is responsible for the recent plummet in the number of daily hits I get. Surely it couldn't be the content! Are people so absorbed in the daily Blix blah-blah that they don't have time to find out what I thought of Annie Potts in the '80s? Fickle bastids. Actually cancelled a night in the Big Apple tonight, partly because I couldn't get a train that worked with my schedule and still gave me time to go blading once I got there, and partly because Hannah is very nervous about the impending war and my being away and in New York would only make her more so. She had a little fit week before last that we couldn't quite understand -- it started out to be about not being able to watch "Survivor" because W was addressing the nation, but it turned out to be fear that I would have to go fight in the war. No, honey, Daddy's too damn old. But she knows I'm involved in the response here, and that's enough to scare her a little, too. Where Rebekah was fascinated to know about Ground Zero, Hannah wanted nothing to do with it. I took them there so they could understand that something like that could happen and I could be involved and it didn't mean that something bad would happen to me, but I don't think that message got across to her. So the penalty for my consideration tonight is that I have to get on the 6:20 tomorrow to get to the city in time for this meeting, which is way on down in the financial district. There will be people with big guns at the doors. That's nothing I ever want to get used to.

Wandering around last night, complaining of how tired I was. Hannah says: "Then don't stay up late watching 'Pretty in Pink'!" She has a point. But doesn't she understand that that's the movie where I first really heard Otis Redding's brilliant "Try a Little Tenderness" (and long failed to find a mix that even approximated the excellent mix in the movie soundtrack)? Doesn't she understand the joy of complaining that whoever chose the music really just had to completely ignore the subject matter of the Psychedelic Furs' title track? Doesn't she get the appeal of a pre-"Designing Women" Annie Potts, who here represents the dichotomy of an aging punkette who loves huge, femmy dresses? Anyway, "Pretty in Pink" wasn't on last night. But "The Wild Angels" was! No, I went to sleep. I was THAT tired. Like my daughters, I view sleep as a moral failure. Received disturbing news about family members through our mutual tax preparer. There couldn't be a stranger way to hear such things. Not sure what to do with it, other than nothing, until somebody calls to tell me and I get to act all surprised, instead of saying, "Yeah, our tax preparer told me."

This whole day has already just been more than I'm willing to take. Retirements, bioterror, going to Condition Red, pending war. I ended up walking out of a presentation on strategic planning because it was just too much (in fairness to myself, I'd seen it before); it seemed like something from another time, and something almost unrelated to what I'm doing today. But I miss it. (There was even an aside about how we may be sick of the phrase "do more with less." Yes. Yes, we are. Quite sick of it.) I miss being able to think about what I do, and having some degrees of freedom in our responses. I also miss my frequent flyer status (a victim of budget and a general no-enjoying-yourself edict) although it's mostly meaningless when you don't get to fly jets anymore -- 19-seaters pretty much get boarded all at once, and my skates don't fit in the overhead. When there is one. Bitch, bitch, bitch. I just want to go home today.

It was supposed to get up into the early 50s up north today, and it was cold enough last night to support decent grooming, so we ran up to Gore today and sweated like crazy. I have never been so warm skiing. It was quite tiring, in fact. The sky was, at times, indigo, a shade that in the summer would send me paddling for cover, but which today was just intense and unreal. Skiing was soft, of course, but still not bad, and Hannah was able to regain her confidence, and Bekah made quite a bit of progress. Much fun. We didn't really last that long, though, because of the heat. They were both getting so tired that they actually admitted they were tired, so we came back home early. That was fine. (When we left, it was 64 degrees.) I'm still scheduled to have a day to myself on Friday; we'll have to see what the conditions are like. Yesterday was the family birthday party for Hannah, which Lee did all the work on. Went very nicely. Tomorrow: her actual birthday. I cannot believe that it has been 10 years. She's such a cool kid. Both of them kicked ass on their report cards, but that's par for the course. I couldn't love them more. Though I will, tomorrow.

As much as "When I Was Cruel" needed time to settle into the crevices of my mind, "Cruel Smile" is a joyful whack upside the head with a baseball bat. Bam! Many of the same songs as "When I Was Cruel," but live, demo'd, remixed, whatever . . . and kick ass! I want to paint you with glitter and with dirt Picture you with innocence and hurt The shutter closes Exposes the shot she says, "Are you looking up my skirt?" When you say "No" She says "Why not?" -- Spooky Girlfriend Also, I thought he did pretty well guest-hosting Letterman this week, n'est-ce pas?

but the charm of streets full of fat, drunken Irish (and Irish wannabes) seems to be lost on me. Maybe public expurgation is only a sport for the young (though the bloated a-holes filling the streets today weren't any too young). You may infer from this that I had to drive in to Albany today during the preparations for the St. Patrick's Day parade -- said preparations consisting mostly of parking where you shouldn't, wearing obnoxious clothing, and wandering around with open containers at 10 in the morning. Yes, there's nothing worse than a reformed anything.

There have been a couple of articles lately about a study that proposes that being an introvert isn’t a disease -- that in fact it’s a basic personality type. Some of us need a couple (or a few) hours a day to ourselves, and find just one more social interaction in a day to be more than we can bear. I don’t normally look to the media or movements for affirmation of my self or my behavior, but in this case it was nice to see some recognition that just because I’m not an extrovert doesn’t mean I’m a freak. In fact, there was a period of time when I was incredibly sociable, late high school through college, but that also coincided with a time when I was incredibly drunk, so maybe that’s what it took. Like most introverts, I can deal with people one on one just fine, but I’m lost when faced with an undifferentiated crowd. Can’t just go up and introduce myself, jump right in to conversations. And, more baffling to more sociable people, I don’t want to. I’m perfectly happy to just sit back and watch, and that’s very confusing to others. Many people think that if you’re not mingling and meeting new people, you’re not having a good time, but that’s not true. My other quirks make it more difficult and probably make people think I’m more aloof than I really am -- for example, when traveling with a group, I often like to go off by myself rather than hang with the group at night (there’s a core group of friends I often travel with that is the exception. Another example: you have to drag out of me what I do for a living. I just don’t see it as that interesting to talk about, and it sounds kinda high-falutin’ to wave a title around. And I need a few hours of the day when no one is talking to me, even if I have to eat into my sleep to get that. The realization that that is just normal was the most important thing I took from the recent attention to these ideas -- there are people who just need time to be by themselves. It’s not a reflection on anyone else, it’s not a reflection on me. I need to be alone like other people need to be with people. I think if I could just schedule that alone time more effectively, I’d be a lot more sociable throughout the day. These retirement parties are definitely stressing my sociability ability. Would love to go skiing this weekend, although it’s going to be pretty warm and won’t have snowed for a while. Mount Snow is having a wear-something-green discount that Hannah is pretty jazzed about, and it IS her birthday weekend, and she IS allowed to resume skiing now. So we may do that. Gore had a death on the Uncas trail this week -- they described the woman as an expert skier, and said that her skis came off but she continued into the woods and hit a tree. The trail is a diamond, but not dangerously steep, and it has plenty of room to move around. It's beautiful out. I want to blow off the afternoon to go skiing. Or ANYTYHING BUT THIS.

My stress has migrated to the left back side of my neck, really down toward the shoulder. I used to keep my stress in my foot, and when that stopped working, I moved it up to my right hamstring, which interfered greatly with running and blading. For a while it was in my shoulders, and there was even a short time when it was in my back, but that seemed like a phenomenally bad idea. Now it resides in and about my neck, which is an even worse idea. The pain this morning is excruciating, and this is just days after a massage. In fact, I think she overdid it. But, what's to be stressed about? Ten percent of the workforce (and about 30 percent of the experience) walking out the door, a dozen melancholy retirement parties, an overwhelming realization that this is really happening, constant and repeated budget exercises, a directive that we should turn off cell phones f'chrissake, and a whole new raft of responsibilities. Plus, tomorrow we have the family birthday party for my 10-year-old. All I want is to be somewhere where none of this is happening for even a little while. Perhaps somewhere with chairlifts. As long as I don't have to try to look up. Arrgh!

I don't wanna go / to New York-o . . . I was whining about this last night ("Where don't I want to go?" "New York, Daddy"), and Rebekah picked it up and riffed on it until she had composed a song-poem of at least a half hour's length, yelled at the top of the lungs, a perfect example of Brecht For First-Graders: I don't want to go to New York! It's so busy there! The buildings are so tall! And you can't find an apartment! My aunt lives there! But I don't need to see her right now! And there's nothing to do! Because it's so busy there! (continue tuneless rant . . . )

Things people came to my sites looking for yesterday: "glycerol ester of wood rosin" of course "Border Ruffians of Missouri" which, strangely enough, can be found on one of my history pages "movies about bulimia" I wrote those words precisely once "Flashcubes Wait Till Next Week" what I can't believe is that anyone but me would Google those very words and, last but not least: "COLLARBONE PICTURES" Draw your own conclusions. I'm thinking of posting a new motto: "You'll come for the glycerol ester of wood rosin, but you'll stay for the Border Ruffians of Missouri."

Are your breakfast choices sometimes (or often) driven by whether or not you've remembered to run the dishwasher? ("No bowls? Hey, girls, how about waffles this morning?") Yesterday's hellish, back-to-back confrontation sessions should be replaced today by a single-backed confrontation, followed by a seriously needed massage and some cell-phone shopping. Last night, the unbelievable pleasure of sitting through Roger Corman's classic "The Wild Angels," starring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern, Laura Dern's mother, and Nancy Sinatra. And Michael J. Pollard, underused but always a delight to spot in any '60s or '70s movie. Unusually good cinematography (for an American International pic), an annoyingly catchy soundtrack and title song that I knew before I had ever seen the movie ("Wild and free / livin' wild as the wind / The Wild Angels ride tonight / And if it lets them out tonight / they'll break the law again / The Wild Angels ride tonight"). Some of it was shockingly depraved for its time (gang rape in a church, for example), yet somehow matter-of-fact about it, and Bruce Dern had more screen time as a corpse than as a living biker. The dialogue? Well, it mostly involved The Man. And how being Hassled By The Man was a real downer. "We want to be free! Free to do what we want! And not be hassled by The Man!" I can't say it was good, but it was certainly something. If I ever HAVE to join a motorcycle gang, I want to join one in which Peter Fonda is the big tough guy. Apparently this gang got together for workouts and weekend marathons.

From The Weakerthans' "Watermark": But the airport's always almost empty this time of the year, So let's go play on a baggage carousel. Set our watches forward like we're just arriving here From a past we left in a place we knew too well. Through my head all weekend. I'm wishing my life away, dreading the weeks because they have just been intensely long and less than pleasant, contentious and challenging. I'm a big boy, I can take it, but I keep waiting for it to be over. Then on the weekends I collapse in a heap and avoid doing all the things that need to be done around the house. Many of them require warm weather, but not all of them. Instead I'm scanning in pictures of the past (not my past) and trying to bring them back to life. Looked out the window this morning at all the raspberry canes that will want pulling in a few weeks -- they're still the only things sticking up through the snow. There's a lot of leaves underneath it, though. The ground is settling and there are cracks in the driveway, I really need to lay a coat of concrete on the foundation blocks, inside and out. I should spend the energy to replace the cellar windows. I need to reroof the garage and the porch. And somewhere in there, I'll need to bike, run, blade, go off to other places. The enormity of doing it all keeps me from doing any of it. So do these just-shy-of-migraine headaches that come in with the weather -- had one yesterday that nearly crippled me at the grocery store, just had to push through it without snapping my poor daughter's head off.

Suddenly, I do. Atmospheric. Evocative. Unspeakably beautiful. And a nice antidote to Abba's "Fernando," which was stuck in my head this morning because I watched "Muriel's Wedding" before going to bed last night.

More retirement celebrations on Friday -- 14 people who work for me in one fell swoop (many more to come), and in the evening, a celebration for the person who gave me my first job in Albany. That one was interesting, a bunch of Senate Fellows from various years (and all our class pictures up on the wall), some people I hadn't seen in a number of years even though we're all working in roughly the same circles, and a bunch of people I see fairly regularly. Had a very nice conversation with a fellow I'd never met before that led to a moment when I realized that he lived in one of the communities that is most polarized over the Hudson River cleanup, which I'm suddenly involved with. Happily, for the sake of our conversation, he turned out to be in favor of it. Many aren't. Anyway, it was a very nice event to honor someone who made a tremendous difference in a lot of lives, and who quietly populated the State Senate and eventually the administration with a lot of qualified professionals. Last night, the pseudonymous Dirck Toll was performing in Albany, so friends and extended family were gathered once again, which pretty much only seems to happen when he performs. His act may be best described as "high-speed, phenomenally witty social commentary," though none of those terms really apply. But he's very funny, and has a commanding presence. Afterward, this circle of friends who have known each other for various parts of nearly 30 years descended on the Ben & Jerry's and had a lovely evening of conversation and heavy-duty ice cream. Mostly we spoke of children, skiing and vacations, which makes us adults, but not of insurance, which would make us boring adults. One of the children was present, an adorable little thing with a wispy topknot, and another was in the oven. And having a night out was such a success, we're going to try it again. Gotta try to get those Marshall Crenshaw tickets today. It is once again cold and windy. Mazzy Star is playing, which fits my mood -- slow, full of ployes and syrup, letting the coffee take effect and hoping that in a little while I really can't figure out what to do about the periodic leak under the tub so that I have no incentive to rip down the dining room ceiling, which would really be more than I'm up for.

Air travel is completely not worth the time anymore. I don't really enjoy opening my belt for someone who doesn't have an "M.D." after his name, and while the TSA folks are being much more professional and making it move as well as it can, and while as a flyer to National Airport I very much want them to be sure the plane is safe (especially these days), all the time and uncertainty and hassles it creates just are not worth it. Plus, I made it worse on myself intentionally because I didn't want to take a direct puddle-jumper, and ended up going through Philly just so I could have jets. (Philly: Visitors are confused by the mustard.) So what used to take an hour and a half takes upwards of five hours, and that's just too much. If we could just get regional jets here, my life would be so much improved. Song of the day: Aimee Mann, "The Fall of the World's Own Optimist" -- "I could get back up if you insist / But you'll have to ask politely"

Please use care when opening the overhead bins as items may have shifted allegiance during flight. So, here's what a fabulous day of biz travel is like. I can never sleep well in a strange place the first night, so my sleep is lousy. I wake up and fight with myself over whether to run or not (answer: not). Fall asleep and sleep well for an hour. Get up, fight with the cheap clock radio so I can get Howard Stern, but there's nothing on today anyway. Review junk for the meeting, meet up with a colleague for breakfast, then off to a day of writing a statement of principles by a committee of 30 or so. It was productive, in a way, but not overly so. At some point after lunch the fire alarm went off, filling me with concern the thing is going to malfunction tonight, and I know from too much experience that being awakened by hotel fire alarms is not the path to enlightenment. Upside to alarms: snuck across the street to Hecht's and picked up a couple of shirts and ties, much-needed. Lovely old Greek glamourpuss helped me go daring with the tie. Let's see if I can pull it off. Go back, finish off the meeting, say goodbye to about 30 people, which takes a good hour, get cornered by a lobbyist for a company we're suing, and finally escape. Check e-mail (working now, with the keyboard seemingly repaired), happily learn that today's crisis is merely a spill, not a fire, and that not much else is going on. Hydrate, change, and go for a run. My first good run in many months, up to the Lincoln Memorial and back, only about 40 minutes -- I wisely resisted going on until I got injured. It was sunny but breezy, only about 40 degrees but pleasant enough once I got warmed up. By the way, the tourist action is all at the Lincoln -- hardly a soul at the Washington. Note to memorial designers: big and accessible works; tiny elevator to the top doesn't. Came back to find bus loads of foreign military officers descending on the hotel. I can't say I would ever have predicted I'd share an elevator with a Rumanian colonel (or Ice T, for that matter -- different trip, in every sense). Then, long dinner alone while reading Entertainment Weekly, back up here to digest and watch a repeat of Buffy (Xander: "When our friends go crazy and start killing people, we HELP them!" Willow: "Sitting right here!"). (By the way, the real cutie is Anya, vengeance demon or not.) Buffy ends this year, no surprise. Probably a good thing. It's been stunningly good this season, but I don't agree with people who thought it wasn't true to itself last season. It was the darkest thing ever on television, but it was also real. Hey, if you're yanked out of heaven, you're probably going to be a little pissed off for a while. And let us note that last season DID bring us Buffy: The Musical, which would have jumped the shark in the hands of any other creative team. Enough!

Had a dream that my bag got lost, and nobody in the airport would help me because they were going Christmas caroling. My protests that this was March went unnoticed. The dream wasn't so far off; I was getting a touch anxious as my bag was the next to last one on the belt, and they even shut down the belt then so I had to walk all the way around to the other end of the belt. Air travel is becoming such a monstrous pain in the ass (I've never had to open my belt for a man before yesterday) that it's just not worth it. They've got to find some way to do security that lets frequent flyers (particularly state officials) pass through with some greater ease. More later, off to breakfast

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First time in scenic DC since last fall, I think. The view coming in tonight was stunning, we came around the city in a new pattern, so we circled south of the Capitol from east to west and had just a stunning view of the Mall at night. I generally spend about two weeks a year down here, all together. Couldn't get into one of my usual hotels, but this one isn’t bad -- one of the only hotel pools in downtown DC, and a decent sized gym. Couldn't have told you what the rooms were like, it didn't make much of an impression on me, but I did remember that it had decent sized bathtubs, you can just about take a decent bath. Haven't been here in a couple of years -- a little far from our office, and the neighborhood is nowhere at night. Once spent a fair amount of time walking in ever-widening concentric squares around the neighborhood trying to find anything resembling fresh fruit, without success. (This is the point at which you may want to tune out my rant about how The Big Apple is the only decent city because you can walk out just about anywhere in Manhattan and find high-quality, fresh fruit at any hour of day or night. Not here.) However, there's a Starbucks downstairs, and the Timothy's next door has changed to a Cosi. Hoping to get out for a run tomorrow, though I'm undecided whether I'll rise early in the morning or hope for some sun in the afternoon. Flights were a little delayed and I'm just kinda running behind here, so maybe the afternoon will work better.

As I drove in to work this morning, the marquee of the Palace Theatre promised that Hall & Oates would be coming soon. I mean, really. Is there some nuance to "Maneater" that we somehow missed in 1982 that will now be revealed through the passage of time? Hall & Oates? Great White? Are there no new bands to see? I'd see The Weakerthans in a heartbeat, by the way. Off to DC, where it's nearly 30 degrees warmer -- by which I mean to say, it's 28 degrees.

1. Movie: "Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring." I'm not a big fantasy fan, but of course I read the books when I was a teen and was quite into them before I rejected all things elvish and runish. So, the story isn't really the thing that's going to hold me here, but I had read so many things about how incredibly well-realized the film was, and I had to see it. It's true: this is the Golden Age of Cinema. If you can imagine it, you can put it on screen and make it believable. My memory of the books is completely overtaken by the satirical book "Bored of the Rings" -- when the Balrog was about to appear, all I could think of was that book's description of the dreaded sound of "dribble - dribble - swish" as a creature appeared in a shirt with the mystic word "Villanova": the fearful Ballhog.
2. Music: The Clash, "Sandinista!" Still as complex, interesting, provocative as it was more than 20 years ago. Some of it fails, some of it is brilliant, none of it is a mess. Snuck into my consciousness last weekend, when I woke with a sudden and nearly inexplicable desire to hear "Charley Don't Surf."
3. Magazine: If I had gotten my subscription to Bicycling magazine sooner -- say, last fall -- we might have known about the bicycle lawyer when we really needed one. (However, his website seems to have slipped a cog, so to speak.)
4. TV: Trio is showing Late Night with David Letterman, vintage 1983-1986. These shows are hilarious, as good as I would have remembered them if my memory hadn't been clouded by the last ten years of slavery to formula, celebrity ass-kissing and boring bits. On one show, the entire first half of the show was presented by Larry "Bud" Melman, whose wooden delivery and inability to read of the cue cards is worth the price of admission alone. Putting a camera on a monkey on roller skates is also an excellent idea. And Dave seemed like he might have actually been enjoying what he was doing. Now the show is just too painful to watch.
5. Book: Still going through "Summerland," but it's been a busy week, you know?
6. Website: Dave Barry's weblog, if only for its connection to some fascinating Flash Japanimation.

Today, I'm going for a run. Dammit!