Why don't you write?

Day 3 of no electricity

2011-07-13T10:24:00.000-06:00

A brief but powerful storm on Monday morning brought down trees and power lines all around Chicago and its suburbs. It's the first time we've lost power for more than a few hours. Now it's Wednesday and still no power.

Here's how it stacks up for me:

Doing without:

electricity (most obvious)
car (it's at the shop)
internet at home
air conditioning (or even fans)
hot water (our water heater is actively vented; if the fan can't blow, then it won't run)
food from the fridge (after 48 hours, it's not even cool in there anymore, and most of the food must be thrown out)
one of the bathrooms (it requires use of an ejector pump, which can't run with no electricity)

On the other hand, I have:

electricity at the public library
shanks mare (as my grandma used to say)
internet at the public library
air conditioning at the public library (also the weather has cooled off, so we opened the windows)
bracing showers, a good reason to conserve water, and an excuse for not taking a bath
an excuse to eat out :^)
the other bathroom

Still, I hope they can restore power soon. This is getting boring.

Live tweeting Super Bowl XLV

2011-02-09T14:45:00.015-06:00

I'm not much of a sports fan, but I seem to have a special block where (American) football is concerned. Even my ever-patient husband has thrown up his hands and pointed out that although I ask questions, I don't really seem like I want to learn that badly. He's right.

But that didn't stop me from live tweeting the Super Bowl on Sunday evening. I figured my fresh perspective might be just what people need.

17:37

I never did choose a team.

18:07

Apparently they're not called goals. Then why do they call them goalposts, huh? :^p

18:12

The most enjoyable part for me was the tight uniforms until I was told it's nearly all padding.

18:24

18:47

18:53

It's 3 or 6 or 7 points. I think the seventh point is judged on the dance performance.

19:23

20:17

I'm a little disappointed that I haven't received any offers to be a color commentator yet. :^/

Back to Grandma's yard

2010-09-06T20:35:00.000-06:00

Once we moved into our house, I unconsciously began reassembling my favorite elements of my grandma's house. It was built around the same time as ours, about seventy miles away.

I planted the lilacs I remembered, and purple iris, four o'clocks with their small round seeds like little cartoon bombs, peonies and black-eyed susans and mint. I've had tomatoes some years, and chives, and geraniums that were her favorite shade of coral pink.

Now that we have storm windows with screens, we can open the windows on days when it's not too hot and get a very satisfying and soothing breeze.

I even found Sweetheart Soap, the smell of which takes me back to being four years old again.

And now I have a clothesline (I suppose we have a clothesline, but it's mostly mine), an umbrella style clothesline that you take down when you're not using it. When I was little, we could hang a sheet from each of the four sides and I would have the best garden house (girl equivalent of a fort) you could ask for. I tried it out today for the first time, and yes, everything dried just fine and blew picturesquely in the breeze especially for my benefit.

About to be enGulfed

2010-06-04T08:43:00.001-06:00

On Monday I'll start a new job (a detail for six months) and I'll be working on communications about our agency's work on the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The scope of this disaster is hard for me to comprehend. I found a widget from the Public Broadcasting System that shows how much oil has leaked since the incident began April 20. You can adjust the rate based on the various estimates available.

If It Was My Home uses Google Maps to show you the surface area of the spill superimposed on your part of the world. This is oddly effective, since you have probably visited places at different distances from your home and have a personal grasp of how far the spill reaches.

Links for St. Patrick's Day

2010-03-17T09:49:00.004-06:00

Corned Beef and Cabbage is not Irish. It is Irish-American, though.

Spell it right: P-A-D-D-Y

Patrick's Day in Blarney "This is probably the few times in the year that you’ll see this many locals near Blarney Castle!"

Celebrations in Dublin - photos from Darragh Doyle

And too many good things to mention from Irish KC. Here are just a few:
Frequently Asked Irish Questions
Ireland-USA differences
Alternative Irish National Anthem

7-layer St. Patrick's Day cake!

Cake Wrecks has some fine items on display today as well.
oh, but look at the clovers!

Please leave...

2010-03-11T11:21:00.000-06:00

I was walking past one of the bridge houses along the Chicago River this morning, and I noticed that I could see right into it, and there was a sign on the wall. (You may have to look at the larger image to read it.)

Maps of France - chain of thought

2010-03-05T15:00:00.000-06:00

This illustration is from a great blog I don't read often enough, Strange Maps: Squaring the Hexagon.

Which leads me to some other thoughts:

I have never been able to see how the map of France suggests a hexagon. Maybe a kind of a star, the kind a little kid would draw, but not a hexagon.
When I was in college, I found a wonderful stained glass window in an antique store. I was told it had been pulled from an old building in Indianapolis. It was about four feet on a side, square, and it was a fine map of France, divided up into its old regions, not the modern départements. Its borders were small squares with the blasons of, well, I suppose dukedoms or something. It was the unimaginable sum of $400. Don't I wish I could go back and buy it now!
(That same antique store had a priest's kit for administering the last rites and a stuffed mongoose engaged in combat with a stuffed snake. Mercy!)
I also wish I'd gotten the ring I saw once that had a ruby flanked by two Indian heads back to back wearing feather headdresses. I would have been just as taken with it when I was seven.
And I can't omit (though I should) the idiomatic meaning of faire une carte de France...

Uh huh.

2010-02-05T08:51:00.000-06:00

That's a fine new hat you have!

2010-01-22T19:26:00.001-06:00

I have loved hats for as long as I can remember. When I entered my eccentric phase in ninth grade (not sure if that phase has passed), I would wear different hats to school on different days. My favorite was the red corduroy baseball cap.

The Naked Cowboy

2010-01-13T08:56:00.000-06:00

With apologies to Pitti-Sing and W.S. Gilbert:

When the day is cold
A cowboy bold
Is a cheering sight to see;
And it's oh, I'm glad
He was barely clad
And right within sight of me!

Saw the Naked Cowboy in front of the train station this morning. He gets a lot of credit; it's only 23F/-4C out there.

Is this Mentschlekhkeyt?

2010-01-07T10:02:00.000-06:00

Smoky-voiced cat lady caregivers
Kvetching about people
Kvelling about pets

Debunking the 2012 Mayan apocalypse

2009-12-01T07:40:00.000-06:00

The other day I read a great column by Jean-François Cliche, a science writer for the Canadian newspaper Le Soleil. It does a neat job of debunking the 2012 Mayan apocalpyse. Since I've heard this debated by well-educated colleagues in the scientific agency where I work, I'm offering a translation of this excellent article in hopes of clearing away some of the silly mystique around this hoax.

Original article: L'Halloween en décembre... 2012 | La science au quotidien

Halloween in December...2012
Jean-François Cliche
Le Soleil

(Quebec) “I'm writing to you because I've got questions about the date December 21, 2012. We know that the planets of our solar system will be aligned on that date. Some people say that the poles will change position. Others say that storms will be much more frequent and more violent, and a number of others speculate that it will even be the end of the world. As far as I know, this kind of alignment already occurred 5000 or 6000 years ago, and we're still here. From a purely scientific standpoint, what can we expect?” writes Michel Gagnon.

With last week's release of the film 2012, which paints an apocalyptic portrait, it's certainly a question people are asking. What's more, a plethora of New Age websites are predicting all sorts of spectacular events for this so-called special date. In itself, this isn't terribly surprising, because humankind has been seeing omens in astronomic phenomena for millennia, according to the physicist and popularizer Sébastien Gauthier, of the scientific communication firm Cosmagora. He recently gave a lecture titled “2012: how to survive the pseudo-scientific discourse” at the Collège F.-X.-Garneau.

But the thing that's particularly astonishing in this case, says M. Gauthier, is that there will be no alignment of the planets on that date! Absolutely none, as you can see on this map of the solar system which shows the position of the planets (calculated by a NASA simulator) at high noon, universal time, on December 21, 2012. http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/ Unfortunately, this doesn't stop false rumors from circulating on the Web...

(Anyway, even if all the planets did align, there wouldn't be the slightest consequence. A few small calculations show that the combined gravitational effect upon Earth of the seven other planets is 61 times weaker than the pull of the moon. So as far as this author is concerned, they can go ahead and align as much as they want.)

According to M. Gauthier, the “popularity” of this date 12/21/2012 stems from the recent craze in New Age circles and other more or less esoteric groups for the history of the Mayans, that great pre-Columbian Central American civilization. In one of their calendars (the Mayans had more than one way to measure the passing of time), called the “long count,” this exact date will mark the end of a baktun, which is a 394-year period in this calendar that corresponds roughly to our millennia.

Since the Mayans used a vigesimal (base 20) counting system instead of a decimal (base 10) system like ours, their calendar counted days in groups of 20, called uinal, which served as months, after a fashion. The next largest unit was the tun, equivalent to 18 uinal instead of twenty so that it would correspond roughly to a solar year – 18 x 20 days = 360 days. In turn, a group of 20 tun made a katun (which is 7200 days, or about 20 years), and the longest unit of time was the baktun, equal to 20 katuns, or 394 years.

According to certain calculations, says M. Gauthier, this “long count” is supposed to have begun on August 11, 3114 B.C., which means that December 21, 2012 would mark the end of the 13th baktun. But remember that this date calculation exercise is subject to errors, and certain experts suggest instead the date of December 23, 2012, which is unfortunately too late for the end of the world to save us from last minute Christmas shopping.

And anyway, what would that change? For the industry of all things esoteric, every temporal milestone is a business opportunity – let's remember the year 2000 – and its gurus are certainly delighted to have a new one at hand.

Finally, let's point out that there's a Mayan monument in Mexico that refers to the end of the 13th baktun. The “catastrophists” refer to it abundantly, saying that its inscriptions foretell a catastrophe, but serious experts describe its inscriptions as “vague” at best.

Weighty matters

2009-11-24T06:06:00.002-06:00

"What is making my purse so darn heavy?" I wondered. "I know what I'll do. I've got that dandy electronic kitchen scale. I'm gonna weigh every last thing in my purse to find out the answer."

So I did. Here's what I found:

The purse, laden, weighed 4 lb. 11 oz. (2.13 kg). Okay, so I wasn't imagining things; that's kinda heavy.

camera	11 oz.	310 g
purse itself	8.5 oz.	240 g
Blackberry	7 oz.	200 g
iPod	5.5 oz.	160 g
moleskine notebook	5 oz.	140 g
wallet	4.25 oz.	125 g
medicine/makeup bag	4.25 oz.	120 g
agenda book	3.75 oz.	105 g
special red “ideas” notebook	3 oz.	90 g
keys	2.5 oz.	75 g
phone	2.5 oz.	75 g
Weight Watchers member book	2.25 oz.	65 g
loose change	2 oz.	55 g
2 fountain pens + case	1.75 oz.	50 g
ID badge & lanyard	1.5 oz.	40 g
loyalty cards on keyring	1.5 oz.	45 g
hairbrush	1.25 oz.	35 g
earphones in a tin	1.25 oz.	35 g
gum	0.75 oz.	20 g
packet of tissue	0.75 oz.	20 g
lip balm #1	0.5 oz.	15 g
lucky bauble	0.5 oz.	15 g
exercise band	0.5 oz.	20 g
tube of hand lotion	0.5 oz.	15 g
ballpoint pen	0.25 oz.	10 g
lip balm #2	0 oz.	5 g
2nd pair of earplugs	0 oz.	0 g

I can see a few things that I can do without, at least for everyday commuting (hello, two fountain pens?). And I can certainly choose lighter versions of other things. But can I use this as an argument to get a different small camera? And if I got a smartphone, could I really bring myself to leave out the camera and the agenda book and the iPod?

It makes me think of Steve Martin in "The Jerk":

"Well I'm gonna to go then. And I don't need any of this. I don't need this stuff, and I don't need you. I don't need anything except this. [picks up an ashtray] And that's it and that's the only thing I need, is this. I don't need this or this. Just this ashtray. And this paddle game, the ashtray and the paddle game and that's all I need. And this remote control. The ashtray, the paddle game, and the remote control, and that's all I need. And these matches. The ashtray, and these matches, and the remote control and the paddle ball. And this lamp. The ashtray, this paddle game and the remote control and the lamp and that's all I need. And that's all I need too. I don't need one other thing, not one - I need this. The paddle game, and the chair, and the remote control, and the matches, for sure. And this. And that's all I need. The ashtray, the remote control, the paddle game, this magazine and the chair."

Man struck down in crosswalk

2009-11-20T08:42:00.002-06:00

I saw him for the first time this summer, in a crosswalk in Chicago. I wasn't sure if he was friendly, so I walked by without speaking to him.

But when I saw him after they repaved the streets, he just wasn't the same man.

It's a tough life on the streets. (I think this is some sort of meme.)

What would you tell 6% of all men?

2009-09-24T10:07:00.000-06:00

It started as an email discussion at work. We've encountered a user who has red-green colorblindness. Some of the colors associated with links in our website aren't distinguishable to him.

M: User L is color-blind, red-green (which occurs in 6% of males). L cannot distinguish between the "visited" state of links and regular text. The purple visited link is gray for him. While looking at a page with a bunch of visited links, he wasn't even aware they were links. Should we do something to indicate the visited state more clearly?

C: It seems that the default for all PCs and all browsers, unless you customize, is blue for unvisited and purple for visited. Why doesn't L just customize his browser?

M: I know about the default blue and purple. (...) And what, are we going to tell 6% of all men to "customize your browser, dude"? :D

S: Listen, if I could tell 6% of all men something, it surely wouldn't be that! :^)

So if you could tell 6% of all men something, what would it be? (Keep it clean, please!)

Favorite tools: Snagit screen capture utility

2009-06-27T05:04:00.007-06:00

I don't intend to make a habit of endorsing products, but I do have a few favorites. Remember how Douglas Adams described the Babel Fish as "mindbogglingly useful"? Well, Snagit is like that for me. It does a simple thing better than any other utility I've tried: take a screen capture. (If you haven't heard the term before, it just means taking a picture of what's on your computer screen.)

Yes, I know that my computer comes with that inscrutable PrtSc key (Print Screen), which I can use to copy a picture of my entire desktop onto the Clipboard (more info here). But Snagit is better.

Snagit has a simple interface, even after countless versions (please heed this, Techsmith!)
You can easily choose what you want to take a picture of (the whole screen, just one window, a region that you draw with your mouse)
You can do the things you're most likely to want to do with the image you've captured: paste it into an email, save it as a file, print it.
You can even add stuff to your snapshot, like highlighter yellow or big fat red circles and the words "click THIS BIT RIGHT HERE"
There are some nice bells and whistles, too:
- capture a scrolling window all at once, rather than screenful by screenful;
- magnify or shrink what you're capturing
- choose what file format you want to save the image as
- automatically name a series of captures

Although I don't use it every day, it is exactly the right tool for some things.

Illustrating instructions for some process on the computer (e.g. saving Word documents without the prior edits available in them)
Documenting problems (error messages) or odd behavior of my computer ("See? My monitor has this line of schmutz running across it. That's not right!")
Printing a web page exactly as it appears, so that I can do a paper-based usability test) or mark it up with edits
Putting a picture of your website or software in a newsletter or promotional materials

There are just enough post-production editing tools that you could get away without a fancier image editor. I've used Snagit for maybe ten years. The colleagues I've recommended it to are now acolytes.

As of this writing, it costs $50, with discounts for education, nonprofit, and government. There's a free trial (fully functional, 30 days), so you can see if it becomes one of your favorite tools, too.

Cupcakes: WTF?

2009-06-20T06:48:00.006-06:00

Okay, I'm going to spoil a few minutes of my lovely Saturday morning (first honest to goodness warm sunny day of the year) and open the cranky gates. It's not so much dislike as honest puzzlement.

What's up with cupcakes? I just don't get it. There are so many things that are nicer than cupcakes. They're not actively bad; they're just aggressively over-promoted. A few quick Google searches reveal the wrongness:

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,780,000 for cupcakes
Results 1 - 10 of about 5,730,000 for apple pie
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,310,000 for creme brulée
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,050,000 for chocolate mousse.
Results 1 - 10 of about 657,000 for chocolate fondue.
Results 1 - 10 of about 307,000 for Baked Alaska.
Results 1 - 10 of about 170,000 for Bûche de Noël
Results 1 - 10 of about 99,200 for French silk pie.

Ditto vampires. I missed this whole bit: Buffy, Anne Rice, and now True Blood. I read Dracula as a teenager and I was very nervous going into our basement for weeks afterward. Is that nice?

Bringing the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. All I can say is: É a vez de Rio!

Reality TV of any stripe. Real Housewives Dancing with your Big Brother to American Idol on Tempatation Island. One exception: I dig Deadliest Catch. (Maybe this is the reason why.) And if you've never seen any of the Up documentaries (7 Up, 21 Up...), they're interesting.

Miracle Whip. Give me the Hellman's every time.

My Cranial Jukebox needs a refresh!

2009-03-06T07:38:00.004-06:00

Okay, this is getting serious. I usually have one or two songs that get stuck in my head for a few minutes or hours, and then they're either replaced by something else or fade away altogether. If I'm desperate, I can tell someone else what's playing, thereby infecting them instead (not very nice), or I can ask my husband for a replacement song without telling him what I so desperately want to replace.

But I have been plagued by a small playlist of songs I don't care for the last few days and it shows no signs of going away.

Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Beach Boys)
I Get Around (Beach Boys)
Barbara Ann (Beach Boys)
Witchy Woman (Eagles)
I'm Gonna Tell You How It's Gonna Be (Buddy Holly)

It could be worse, but it ain't great.

So please, if you have something better to suggest, give me a new song to play in my head!

Web design and stuff

2009-02-19T11:33:00.003-06:00

As our workgroup deals with comments on a look-and-feel redesign, we get a number of requests for making navigation elements smaller or even eliminating them, allowing for much longer page titles, and expanding the number of items we allow in the "quick finder" table at the top of some pages.

It's making me think that in Web design, as in real life (as in Weight Watchers, for that matter!):

If you keep looking for more room to cram your stuff,
have you considered that maybe you have too much stuff?

:^p

Favorite tools: Neoprene face mask and other stay-warm clothing

2009-01-15T08:39:00.008-06:00

Today is very cold. It was minus 18 F (-26 C) as I waited for the train. About minus 10 as I trekked the mile across the Loop to my office. But I was toasty warm, thanks to my four favorite tools to combat the cold (two old-fashioned, two from new-fangled materials).

Neoprene face mask - Sure, I look like a bank robber when I wear it, but it keeps my face warm and lets me breathe. Yes, I could achieve all that with a tightly wrapped muffler, but here's the significant advantage: my glasses don't fog up and ice over. The design directs my exhaled breath down and away from my face, and I can proceed confidently instead of viewing the world through an admittedly artful icy haze. ($11 from Campmor)

Silk long underwear - This stuff is fantastic. It is gossamer-like, as thin and elegant as a white lie. It lies unconspicuous beneath a pair of slacks or jeans, and your legs are miraculously warm. Much more comfortable than nylons.

Polarfleece - Yum! I have a couple "fuzzies" that are stylish enough to pass as casual office wear. They're light and warm and wash with no fuss.

Down - God bless the geese who gave their downy bottoms to keep me warm. (Down doesn't make me feel as guilty as fur does, though maybe it should.) I just got a very long down coat from LL Bean, and it is "ultrawarm" as promised. After a few blocks' walk, standing on the corner waiting to cross, I sense that I'm enveloped in a column of warmth.

In French you could say "Je ne crains pas le froid," (literally, "I don't fear the cold") for "I'm staying warm."

Free Irish Calendar / Féilire Lán-Ghaeilge saor in aisce

2009-01-04T22:52:00.006-06:00

Sin é! There it is!

I finally finished the project I've been hatching for the last seven weeks: an Irish calendar featuring photos from our most recent trip to Ireland. When I say Irish, I mean tá an féilire seo lán-Ghaeilge; it's completely in Irish, right down to the little letters denoting the days of the week on the small inset calendars each month.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out. (I owe a big debt of thanks to Juliana Halvorson, who created the Adobe InDesign template I used.) I took the photos in Cork and Connemara.

I took the file to Kinko's today, and for just under $20 I was able to get the calendar printed on 60 lb. paper and comb-bound. (I had hoped it would be far less, but there you are.)

2009 Irish Calendar - Íomhá na Míosa : Féilire Gaeilge 2009 ón mblag Íomhá an Lae (PDF) (27MB, 28pp) Yes, it's big, but it prints beautifully. Here's a smaller version if you just want to see what it looks like: lower-resolution version (PDF, 28pp, 3.7MB)

And if you have little or no Irish, well, I think you should take a look anyway, because a calendar is a calendar; it's laid out just the same as the ones you're used to, ah, go on, it's not hard at all... :^) Please let me know what you think.

Why don't you write, indeed

2009-01-01T22:56:00.003-06:00

Came across this terrific advice from Daphne Gray Grant, the Publication Coach, via Le Craic (merci to AJ). :

1) When you have words, use them. I’m a gabber. I usually talk a lot. I write a lot. And I read a lot. But I seldom see words as precious. They are. Write and speak as if you might never be given the chance again. Don’t waste time; don’t waste your words. Really communicate.

2) Plan your time so you use each minute in the way you most want to. Sometimes you might need to be walking or running. Or other times, you might need to abandon making dinner so you can write a sonnet. (OK, I just made that up.) But do whatever it is you most need to do. Don’t compromise; don’t take second place. Think hard and act harder.

3) Never forget every day is a gift. I’m grateful to be alive and I’m spectacularly grateful to my patient and thoughtful husband, Eric, and my wonderful kids, Claire, Duncan and Alison. They make my life interesting and challenging and engaging. I’m also grateful to you, all the readers of Power Writing — some of whom I know well enough to visit or chat with — others of whom I know only by their email name in my database.

Life is a gift. Use it. Write with it.

So for 2009:

Write
Read
Do what you really want to do

The stealing presents game

2008-12-29T15:03:00.013-06:00

Every year I go to a couple parties where the guests are instructed to bring untagged gifts to participate in a gift exchange. Sometimes there's a theme; there's nearly always a price limit. You get your gift by participating in the present-stealing game (see thorough description here).

I grew up in a house where there were just the two of us kids, and there wasn't much competition between us for toys. We tended to draw out the gift opening as long as possible, with one person opening something at a time while everyone else watched.

So two years ago, this game was new to me. I was disoriented by the speed, the competition, the-- hey, wait a minute! You just TOOK that right outta my lap! But I really wanted to keep it!!

This was a party with my sister-in-law (a truly delightful person who would never steal your gift if it weren't expressly part of the game) and a number of her friends (generally very nice, except perhaps when it comes to gift-stealing). The game began and I soon found myself holding a lovely duvet-style throw with snowflakes all over it. Perfect!

But it was not to be. I sat bewildered as the throw was whisked away and something not nearly as good was dumped in my lap instead. (Oy! Candles!) Getting into the spirit of things, I soon stole it back. It could not last, however, and the snowflake throw went to someone else, someone absurdly deserving who was planning to cuddle her toddler and infant son in it. It would be churlish of me to still want the throw, but I showed all the skill of a toddler myself in hiding my disappointment. (They even teased me about this the next year.)

A few days later, opening gifts at my sister-in-law's, I was surprised to find a package for me from my mother, who wasn't even there. (Our two families get on fine, but live in different states, so we drive a lot around the holidays.) Yes, it was the identical snowflake throw, just for me! It seems my mom remembered my story of the duvet that got away, and had enlisted my sister-in-law as her shopping agent (Mama was the best shopper there ever was), who found another one to give to me.

It's the last Christmas gift my mother got me. Last year she was too ill to shop, and this year she's not here.

Now I play the present-stealing game with magnanimity. I cheerfully accept the ugliest candles-- although I do put up a good fight first, boldly snatching packages from laps. I know that sometimes, if you've been very good, and very lucky, you will get exactly what you want.

Why I haven't been writing

2008-12-24T06:45:00.009-06:00

Yesterday I finally completed the last assignment for the online Irish course I've been taking from the City University of New York. I owe a great debt of thanks to instructor Eimear Ní Cheallaigh, whose encouragement and corrections have been so helpful. Although it's listed as a grammar course, the reading and writing assignments have been just as interesting. I don't think I ever considered a creative writing class in a foreign language, but it's great fun.

So our final assignment was to write an essay on the theme: Tá cúrsaí eacnamaíochta na tíre ina phraiseach faoi láthair. (The nation's economy is in a mess right now.) I decided it would be fun to write an essay in verse, and somehow it came out in limericks. (If you want to try this yourself, agus má tá Gaeilge agat, uirlis an-úsáideach é an bogearra WinGléacht, especially the wildcard searches to help you find rhymes.)

Abair slán, slán go deo leis an craic
Tá an pobal ag dul ina raic
De bharr baincéirí cliste
Tá na bancanna briste
Agus ní fágfar dúinn ach faic.

I nDetroit tagtar lá an breithiúnais
Tá an Triúr Mór i mbaol chlisiúnais
Níl an Chomhdháil ar tí
Iad a tharrtháil, dar fía
Tar éis blianta fada dhíolúnais.

Éíríonn ardfheidhmeannaigh níos ainfhéile
Agus a gcomhlachtaí ag titeamh as a chéile
Íoctar bónais ollmhóra
Don saghas sin tubaisteora
Ach is orainne atá an deirbhéíle!

Here's an English version in case your Irish is rusty ;^)

It looks like the good times are through.
We're all seeing red, feeling blue.
Those bankers so sly
Have bled the banks dry;
There'll be diddley squat left me and you.

In Detroit it is now Judgment Day
The Big Three may go bankrupt, they say.
They asked Congress for dough,
But they told them, "Hell, no!
You'd just fritter that money away!"

CEOs have no cause to complain
While their companies go down the drain.
Those mischievious jerks
Get commissions and perks,
But we're the ones feeling the pain.

I'll have to think of something else

2008-12-07T06:01:00.002-06:00

Have just determined that I cannot claim credit for coining the phrase "half-used Kleenex". Just as well, really, I suppose.

Ireland trip - 1 - County Cork

2008-11-21T05:39:00.002-06:00

I don't always keep the first photo from a batch, but here, overlooking the River Lee west of Blarney, was a surprisingly photogenic roadside stop. The look of the fields on the hillside epitomizes Ireland to me (as do many other things!). (I think we were near Inis Loinge (Inishleena).

We passed through Macroom (Maigh Cromtha) on market day. This meant traffic and not much parking, but a good opportunity to crawl through the town and take it in. Saw more Irish on the signs than I expected.

I love the juxtaposition of the wind farm and the classic farm houses.

A house in Coolea, where Seán Ó Riada lived.

Taken October 28-29, 2008.

In other words...

2008-11-12T15:37:00.002-06:00

..."No Smoking"
I see the recession has not affected verbosity at any rate.

This might explain a few things...

2008-10-22T05:26:00.002-06:00

Understand now, I work for the federal government, and I'm proud to. And I know what this conference was about, and I think it's a valid topic.
But still.
Until we're known for plain language in government, sights like this conference tote bag will still be funny.

Sent this around the office today

2008-10-20T09:54:00.001-06:00

Seventeen years ago today
I began working for EPA

Young and able, fit and trim
My head held nary an acronym

I thought I'd be a French professor
Instead I used a word processor

I can remember when email was new
And your boss got the copy you'd highlight blue

Shelter in place and TQM
I've re-org'd with the best of them

Climate change and mutant frogs
And even federal government blogs

Presidents come and presidents go
But I have learned to go with the flow

The passing of another year
Is cause for cheer, or fear, or beer

Whichever of those is in your head
Come have cookies and pumpkin bread

They're on my floor, inside the south door
And when they're gone, there won't be more

Irks in progress

2008-10-06T12:17:00.003-06:00

Reading twenty-two words today, I was reminded of a favorite irk: the obligatory right turn on red. You know, when you're stopped at a red light, and you're in the lane that lets you go forward or turn right. And the person behind you is agitatedly laying on the horn to make you turn right, dammit, because you don't have to wait for the light to change. Except that you aren't turning right because you intend to go straight, and if they would stop that racket they might be able to think for a moment and realize why you are still blocking their way. Now which of those choice words from Abraham's list is most fitting for the situation?

Favorite tools: The I.P.A.

2008-09-28T08:45:00.000-06:00

When I studied linguistics in college, I had to take courses in phonology and phonetics. And I learned that despite having the sound "fun" in its name, phonetics was pretty darned dull. Though I did learn that any healthy human is capable of making the exact sounds of any language, and that was encouraging. (It's not that you can't make those sounds, you just don't make them on purpose yet.) Phonology was somewhat better, because it went into how sounds are used in a given language, and that was a welcome departure from the pure mechanics of speech production.

Although I was ambivalent about these subjects, they did give me one excellent tool that has stood me in good stead ever since: the International Phonetic Alphabet IPA), used for phonetic transcription.

Just as you can use musical notation to record a melody on staff paper, IPA lets you transcribe the exact sounds of any language. Once you have a good command of it, you can accurately record anything you hear on paper. Very low-tech, and very handy.

IPA chart (PDF, 1pg, 58K) from the International Phonetic Association
A nice explanation of that chart from Omniglot

I've used it for transcribing songs before I understood all the words. I've used it to improve my accent in French. I've used it to get a handle on how people from different dialects of Irish pronounce the same word.

The lack of it in my first Irish textbook ((See if you can) Teach Yourself Irish by Myles Dillon and Donncha ó Cróinín, 1961) convinced me that I could not learn the language from a book because I would never be sure how to pronounce anything. (The book did have a pronunciation guide, but it described the symbols it used in terms of sounds in common English words, probably in an Irish English or British English accent, which was useless to me. I come from a place where we actually say our r's, and I make no distinction between the vowels in the pairs tool/tune, do/duty, noon/new, loose/lure. And if you give me weird words, it's as good as no help at all: good/gules(??) Another odd thing about that book: it used IPA in the glossary, but this other odd system throughout the chapters.)

Once you have a way to describe what you are hearing, it improves your ability to hear the fine distinctions, and it's a great help toward actually producing the sounds intentionally yourself. Once you have a target to aim for...

Record rains in the region

2008-09-15T07:17:00.002-06:00

The commuter train was crowded as usual this Monday morning. Sitting on the upper deck, everyone was minding their own business, snoozing, meditating, working, reading the paper -- until we neared Des Plaines, Illinois. There we cross the Des Plaines River, and with the record rainfall we had over the weekend, I knew there would be dramatic flooding there. Everyone paused in what they were doing and turned around to look out the window. There was a chorus of quiet exclamations.

I found a video someone shot from the train yesterday, coming in the opposite direction, and it gives you an excellent idea of the flooding and people's reactions to it. The river peaked in Des Plaines at ten feet.

We set a Chicago area record for rainfall in a calendar day with 6.64 inches on Saturday. Since the rain continued through the weekend, total rainfall for September so far is 12.61 inches. (The 1961 record was 14.17 inches.)

I was in Northwest Indiana over the weekend, and the rain severely affected low-lying areas there. One big consequence was that they closed one of the two east-west interstate highways that cross the area. Here are a couple more photo collections: Selil and releeh.

Wordle Essay: How I spent my summer in Twitter

2008-09-05T13:49:00.007-06:00

Built this in Wordle.net

(see it properly in the gallery)

Facebook and Irish invade my dreams

2008-09-01T06:06:00.004-06:00

Had another one of those epic dreams last night. It's what comes from reading a whole novel in one afternoon. I was staying at some resort or retreat for a few days, for an Irish language immersion workshop. (No, I don't remember if I was dreaming in Irish. It has happened, though.)

As our group was gathering for dinner, I happened to run into a friend I know from a completely unconnected volunteer group. Although Jeanne B. and her husband are a generation or so older than I am, we always find plenty to talk about; we try to sit by them at dinners so we can enjoy the conversation. In my dream, I sat down with them at their table for a bit, while the servers brought the first course.

We were quite surprised to see each other there. In fact, Jeanne had evidently invited me to join them there for a few days as their guest, and were a bit hurt that they hadn't received a response. I was unaware of the invitation; it turned out she had left the invitation on my Facebook site, which I never visit.

As we were digesting this misunderstanding, my Irish teacher came by to bring me back to the table where the class was sitting. To put the icing of awkwardness on this half-baked cake, I politely introduced Jeanne B. as Marjorie D., and couldn't understand why she was now scowling at me.

Obviously, it was time to wake up and save myself from this faux pas de deux, so I did.

I hadn't thought about it like that

2008-08-27T21:52:00.003-06:00

When I was growing up, churches didn't have message signs; Huber's Rent-All did. My favorite dates back to when Burt Reynolds appeared as the centerfold in Playgirl magazine: "Burt Needs Reynolds Wrap."
We like to imagine that there's a newsletter for pastors that feeds them clever bits they can put on their signs. Then again, maybe pastors are wittier than when I was a kid, too.

Fun Monday - Trivial Fact

2008-08-25T08:01:00.003-06:00

Hauling out the keyboard to participate in Fun Monday today. :^)

Asks Mama Drama: What funny trivial fact do you remember that you probably should have forgotten a long time ago?

Well, that's a hard choice; there seem to be so many the older I get!

For a long time, I cherished the knowledge that the original name of short-lived Pope John Paul I was Albino Luciani.

But now that you mentioned President Garfield, I'm thinking of my favorite president story. William Henry Harrison, the only Hoosier to be elected President of the United States, caught cold and died after only a month in office, setting the tone for many future flawed Indiana celebrities. And all because he refused to wear an overcoat during his longest-ever inauguration speech. (According to Wikipedia, the real circumstances of his fatal illness were unrelated, but hey, that spoils the story a bit.)

Looking forward to being enriched by what everyone else turns up. Thanks, Mama Drama!

A farewell to elms

2008-08-20T08:00:00.004-06:00

Okay, not elms, actually. A variety of "trash trees" that have been growing at the back of our neighbor's property, along our shared back fence. Ailanthus, buckthorn, and white poplar.

I came home yesterday and noticed with glee that the huge mulberry tree that's been slowly destroying our garage roof was completely gone. I appreciated the new clearing on the horizon, and the greater light it let in. I thought how little I would miss having to wash purple stains off my feet when I walk barefoot in our yard. I did reflect that the squirrels and birds who perform their morning theater in the solid wall of 20-foot tall trees would have to find a new venue.

But this morning, things keep on changing. A crew of workers are back, with a big chipper and a couple other yellow machines, and they seem to be removing nearly everything along the fence. A lot of it's falling into our yard, so they hop the fence and remove it.

I wonder what the owner has in mind. An airline pilot lives there, and I sometimes glimpse him on his screened-in back porch having a smoke. We've never chatted, so I figure he must like his privacy. I've already figured out he doesn't like winged company (see the sorrowful birdie condemned tenement at right).

Is this a prelude to landscaping? Will he put up a tall wooden fence instead? Is he getting the house ready to sell?

I wonder if we'll be tempted to plant some sort of screen ourselves, such as a row of hedge or arbor vitae. Good fences make good neighbors, and a thick wall of vegetation along the fences doesn't hurt either, methinks.

It's "official"

2008-07-09T16:05:00.003-06:00

Today I attended a presentation on the new electronic official personnel file. It's an OPM thing that government agencies are switching to so that we'll all be in the same system. Change is scary, and people are suddenly feeling nervous and protective about their personnel files that they've never valued enough to ask to see before now.

My favorite part is the watermark that will appear on anything we print from this system. It will read:

This is an "official" government document generated from the EHRI eOPF system.

Foods I craved in France

2008-07-05T07:48:00.004-06:00

When I was a student, I was fortunate enough to live in France for a couple years. It was a great education in many respects. Small surprise that it was where I began appreciating food more deeply. Not just kweezeen, but food and people's enjoyment of it.

I got to try all sorts of great stuff, harvest wine grapes, etc. but I could not deny that there were some foods from home that I missed and really could not find in France. Okay, you could probably find them in Paris, but I always consider that a place which is the epitome of France but not like the rest of it at all.

The short list of things a person could crave, even in the gastronomic cornucopia of France:

Crackers, by which I mean plain old saltines, oyster crackers, Ritz crackers, and animal crackers
Pecans - these were really hard to find; the common nuts were hazelnuts and walnuts
Mexican food - France just doesn't have the critical mass of the right group of immigrants to ensure this
Buffalo wings - the French caution about spicy things (oh, how they warned me about spicy ketchup, which was really mild by my standards) will probably keep this off the food scene for decades yet
Hershey's chocolate - yes, I know Swiss and French and Belgian chocolate are lovely and silky, but sometimes I just craved a plain, waxy Hershey's bar
M&Ms - Smarties are just not the same, although the color choices are better
Peanut butter - You could find cans --cans-- of Dakatine, which featured a homely red-headed boy about to enjoy the product. But it was old-fashioned or natural peanut butter, which is a hard sell even to me. No wonder it never caught on. They never had Skippy or Jif or Peter Pan. On white bread. With grape jelly or marshmallow fluff. Or bananas. Or homemade peanut butter cookies.
Popcorn - This was before microwave popcorn, so there wasn't even as much of it here in the US at that time. But when they did eat popcorn in France, they sprinkled sugar on it. Eww!
Corn chips - At home in those days, we could choose between Doritos and Fritos. In France they had neither, as corn was just not a foodstuff for humans. Except for polenta, but that was Swiss.
Diet Coke - In those days, diet soft drinks had not come to France yet. I did find Coke Light in Germany, though.

Lest I sound like a complete Philistine, I did not spend much time pining for these things. But the second time I went to live there, I sent ahead a box of treats for myself, which included Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, and Barnum's Animal Crackers. And on one shorter trip, I carefully packed and brought all the makings for a taco dinner for my friends. They may still be drinking glasses of cold water.

Foods I can pass up with no grief

2008-07-03T08:05:00.004-06:00

I always feel a little funny about this, but here are some foods that send other people into raptures but don't do a thing for me. I don't out and out dislike them, and I won't refuse to eat them, but I don't think I'd care if I never had them again.

coffee cake
Danish pastries
lasagna
cheesecake
sangria
lemon bars
meatloaf
bread pudding
macaroni and cheese
martinis
tamales
falafel
boston creme pie

What's on your list?

I'm tired... so tired *

2008-06-30T18:21:00.004-06:00

I'm a little loath to admit this, especially with the likes of Eolai out there, but I detest filling bicycle tires.

I like to ride my bicycle, but every spring I delay later the day when I must fill the bicycle tires.

It doesn't help that our garage is beginning to look like the home for stray two-wheelers. I keep trying to fulfill my Jessica Fletcher fantasy and get a marvelous heavy old sheep dog of a bike (ladies' style, of course) to ride around town. To the train station, or to the farmers' market (same thing in our town). This means I have three sets of hungry tires to feed once the snow melts. One has gone lame (=needs new tires), but the other two are just fine.

We do have two very functional bicycle pumps. But one of them attaches in a funny way, and I always waste ages pumping away while a gentle hissing sound reminds me that none of this effort is actually putting air into the tires. My hands get bruised, my back gets sore, and I get maybe six pounds of pressure registering. (I do have a very nice tire gauge.)

So my preferred solution is to walk the bike to the nearest filling station (Does anyone still call them that? You know, a gas station.) and use the compressed air hose. I'm offended by the ones that expect me to put quarters in a machine to get air, so I seek out places that give away air for free. There's one about half a mile from the house. I trundle my lovely heavy bicycle over there, and that's when I'm forced to admit that I am also no good with a compressed air hose. I press down and, like a baby refusing to nurse, the tire just gets flatter and flatter as I fish for the nozzle sunk deep in the rim. Then I get into a rhythm: aha! it's latched on! here comes the air! whoops, no, now it's just releasing it all again, yes! got it now! no, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, wow that's fast, it'll be really firm, last all summer long... BANG!! Ears ringing, I look around , hoping no one's been watching me. I trudge home with my crippled paleolithic bike and wonder if I could just get solid tires like I had when I was a little kid.

* lyric reference from Blazing Saddles

Binoculars

2008-06-28T06:08:00.004-06:00

I'm starting to realize that I will become one of those older folks who keeps a pair of good binoculars handy near the window. I'm sitting on the deck watching the non-early birds (the early ones already woke me up a couple hours ago) swoop or hop around our back yard. Robins chase each other from tree to tree. A flash of red signals a cardinal in the box elders, and yes, there's his mate in the grass. They must be after the (damned) mulberries all over the ground. They're igmoring a squirrel who seems to be on the same gourmand mission. Now see, if I had my binoculars, I could see him holding the berry in his two front paws and nibbling on it. I mean, I can see him, but I want to be cloooooser!

Of course, depending on where you live, binoculars can be useful for observing all kinds of things. Like what are they building in their yard down the street? Does she have a new dog? Or tracking someone's lawnmowing progress. A cardinal rule is never to aim at windows; that's just not right.

When we were kids, my brother would get stomach flu and have to be on that miserable restricted diet. The one that starts with plain tea (ugh) and jello, works its way to popsicles and ginger ale (which he cannot abide to this day) and saltines, and culminates in a baked potato and broiled lean meat after about a week. He often had to return to the jello phase, poor guy. But he would sit with my mom and make a list, which she would transcribe verbatim, of all the things he'd eat once he was better. And once or twice there appeared treats of his own imagining on that list. My favorite: chocolate binoculars.

Wrapped attention

2008-06-24T05:05:00.003-06:00

It's clear I don't know how to make a wrap (sandwich). I have all the same ingredients that they used in that shop where I got lunch when we were on vacation, including really really good hummus from a recent issue of Cooks Illustrated, but maybe my tortilla is too small. I mean, it's not supposed to disgorge its contents from the ends, is it? Would it be cheating to use a rubber band?

Come to think of it, I also have problems with pareos, sarongs, and saris. I always want a lot of safety pins and wonder how they manage without velcro. A bandana is about my speed.

So it's natural that I recently got a book on knot tying. Soon I will know a sheep's shank from a two-handed bend. I will one day have the most secure wrap sandwiches in town; they won't even need plastic wrap.

Twitter's got my tongue

2008-06-21T06:10:00.008-06:00

I started using Twitter a few weeks back, just as a lark (ha, ha). I'm surprised how much I enjoy it. On vacation, I sent tweets via text messages from my cell phone. I love the form of very very short missives. Somewhere I read that this is called "microblogging", and it provides the satisfaction of blogging in an even more instant way. Plus it's fun to "follow" people.

So that's a big reason I haven't written much in my regular blogs (now seeming a little faded?). Also we've been on vacation and had no internet access for most of the time. Kind of a relief in a way. Before I left, I'd agreed to blog for work while on our trip. Although it was a fun idea, I soon realized that even if my posts were really short, sent from a cell phone with modest-quality photos, it meant I had to be thinking about what I'd blog about while I was on vacation. Sort of like having a mild headache that you're trying to ignore while you're at a party. So when we got out of cell phone range (had to go to an island off the coast of Maine, sort of like early on in the first Harry Potter book...), I was a little relieved to be off the hook.

So now we're back home, and so far that vacation feeling still lingers. I'm sitting on the back deck with a cuppa tea and the laptop. It's still early enough to hear quite a few birds. I see the neighbors' Damned Mulberry Tree is laying its branches on our garage roof. Already the ripe berries are showing up in the driveway, and soon there will be colorful bird droppings all over. Yay. Next come the two sizeable cherry trees. I'm not sure if the fruit is nice to eat, but it too winds up on the driveway, and for weeks there's a sound like small firecrackers every time we back the car out. I suppose I could sweep the cherry pits away, but that never seems to happen.

Inside we're undertaking some renovation. Which is another way of saying that we came home to a new window over the kitchen sink (yay!) but an upstairs bathroom devoid of all plumbing fixtures. The toilet is temporarily living in the guest bedroom. We can see down into the living room through holes in the bathroom floor. Am I alone in my secret temptation to drop things from above? (Ask me about France and the omelette.)

But even though it's Saturday, I think these things will have to wait. There's class this morning, and before that study, and before that maybe please the farmer's market, just for the blueberries I promise, and there's a household hazardous waste collection too, and returning the guitar to our friends, but then after class we shall hie oursel's o'er to the Highland Games, which we miss every year. It's promising thunderstorms throughout the day, so we'll see how that works out.

Definitely not a day to mow the lawn. (Maybe it never is.)

So sentimental

2008-05-11T10:50:00.000-06:00

Have you encountered the musical greeting cards that are available now? The recordings are surprisingly high quality, and quite audible. While shopping (late) for Mother's Day cards, I found this (the red one):

Now there's a lovely sentiment, don't you think?

Earth Day comes but once a year

2008-05-03T06:48:00.002-06:00

"Earth Day every day!"

Uh, sounds great, yeah. I mean, really, it's a good thing to be aware of your impact on the environment. I believe conservation of energy and natural resources.

I also work at a place where Earth Day brings out some of the same feelings as Christmas if you work at a shopping mall. Yes, it's great, and it brings you lots of attention, but it's also crazy busy and you feel a distinct relief when it's over.

I got to write a post about this for our blog at work. I wrote a straight version and a rhyming version, and I'm pleased to say that they published the latter.

I have mixed feelings as we approach Earth Day each year. I wish we started planning further in advance so that it wouldn't feel so flurried. I prefer events that accomplish something tangible to ones where people make speeches. This year was better than most; we had a clear theme of recycling electronics and medications that was easy to embrace. (Actually, recycling is not something our agency regulates, but everyone thinks we do. We encourage the heck out of it, though.)

We organized a number of events and I think it went well. Our booth at Daley Plaza got many visitors and we gave away lots of publications. It really is heartening to see so many people thinking about protecting the environment. I never thought I'd hear the phase "carbon footprint" anywhere outside our office, but now it's in all the mainstream media. (I sometimes wonder what it's like farther away from urban media epicenters like Chicago. Do I just think that people are excited/upset about the environment because our local media are saturated with those themes? What do people in the rest of the country think?)

Our band performed again for one of the events. We call ourselves the Earth Tones and play environmentally themed songs plus my favorite Irish and American fiddle tunes. :^)

Earth Day is also a personal anniversary; my better half and I had our first date on Earth Day. (My friend Al used to suggest celebrating by practicing running in slow motion toward each other across a flowery meadow. It's usually too cold or too damp on April 22nd for that.)

I hope your Earth Day brought something you can use the rest of the year.

P.S. - The Earth Tones are booking for 2009... ;^)

Evidence of a benificent, all-powerful God

2008-04-07T10:24:00.001-06:00

A perfectly ripe pear.

He was just a little green blob of clay...

2008-03-28T09:55:00.002-06:00

...GUMBY!!

I'm not sure I should be admitting this, but at some stressful point in my life (grad school, I think) I rented (yes, paid money for) videos of old episodes of The Gumby Show. It was claymation from the 1950s by a fellow named Art Clokey.

I appreciated some of its surreal aspects. I remember Gumby's mother asking Gumby's father to wake him. He stepped into his son's room, and there on the bed lay his boy, but a moment later he morphed into a bat and ball, and then a saxophone, followed by a few more transformations. Father turned to Mother and said, "Aww, I can't wake him now--he's dreaming!"

The theme song has stuck with me, too:

He was just a little green slab of clay... GUMBY!!
But you should see what Gumby can do today... GUMBY!!
He can walk into any book
With his pony pal Pokey, too.
If you have a heart,
Then Gumby's a part
Of YOU!!!

And since that's the song that's stuck in my head, you get to hear about it.

A couple more links for the Gumby-curious:

Peeps on the brain

2008-03-23T22:48:00.005-06:00

This morning I found out that there was a 24-hour contest over at DP Challenge for photos involving Peeps marshmallow candy (you may wish to turn sound down before following this link). Soon I had a couple ideas, and we stopped at Walgreen's on our way back from brunch. We were too late; there wasn't a fluorescent marshmallow left in the store. A quick trip to the next Walgreen's brought success (and a half-price discount). Then unreasonable amounts of time spent on staging and lighting. Peeps seem to bring out the sadist in many people, but I was resolved to play nicely with my mute marshmallow models.

So I posed them for a swimsuit shot:

I swear it was an accident.

Irish Blog Awards

2008-03-03T05:27:00.005-06:00

Well, I didn't win at the Irish Blog Awards on Saturday, but I was pleased as could be to have been nominated. I made the short list for Best Use of Irish Language in a Blog. That honor went to Blag Ghael gan Náire; I intend to start reading. I was also nominated for Best Photo Blog-- see the third photo? That's one of mine.

Conn of An tImeall live streamed the awards show online. I had to reload a number of times, but I was able to follow along and heard my blog's name read aloud, which was satisfying.

This was the 4th year for the Irish Blog Awards. It seems to be well run, and proceeds from the awards ceremony go to charity. And by all accounts, the people attending feel the same kind of delight at finally getting to meet the people behind the words that I've found when I attend conferences for our web community at work.

Remembrances of things past

2008-03-01T15:16:00.006-06:00

One of the photos in Red Mum's post from her trip to work reminded me of a cold wet night years ago in Strasbourg. I was coming home on my bike late at night. I stopped at a red light and while I waited, I glanced up at the pedestrian signal (they were not done up in LEDs back then). That's how I happened to notice it when it changed to Walk. I nearly fell off my bike; someone had anatomically corrected the cheerful little man; he was now very cheerful indeed. I take no responsibility for the selectivity of my memories.

A bit too vivid, perhaps

2008-02-14T11:48:00.001-06:00

Happy Valentine's Day to all you chicken lovers...

There's no good time

2008-01-15T08:33:00.000-06:00

I was just finishing yesterday's "Fun Monday" post when we got the call from my dad at the hospice. He let us know that my mother was fading faster than they'd expected. So we put some quick sustenance in ourselves and drove out there. We arrived in time and were with her during her last hours. The hospice people were wonderful, and I cannot imagine a more comforting and caring environment. It diminished our fear and pain.

I'd like to say something profound, and I probably could eventually, but my first impression was that this was the weirdest situation I'd ever been in. Surreal. We each acted according to our nature; I journaled instead of talking. I'm very glad we were there. It is very sad, and I know there will be aching times ahead for all of us. But we're in a bubble in time where we can appreciate her life, talk about her with friends, and be glad on some level that she's at peace.

Fun Monday

2008-01-14T18:28:00.001-06:00

(I'm all a-flutter. I'm so excited to be participating in Fun Monday! Thanks to Ann for hosting.)

A Web site that's changed my life.

Well, there's a couple different ways to approach this. Since I'm feeling generous, you get them both.

About ten years ago, my husband sent me a link to this quiz: Porn Star or My Little Pony? My devotion to The Brunching Shuttlecocks was instantaneous, intense, enduring. How can I ever forget The Complete and Utter Idiot's Guide to Making a Baloney Sandwich or The Björk Song? When I need laughs, I need hardcore nonsense, and here I always found my fix. The only thing remotely like it at the time was Dilbert; there was no comparison. Of course, the lads eventually grew up and got real jobs (though Lore is still out there blogging). But my sense of humor was irreversibly perverted: Engrish.com, Internet Bumper Stickers, The Onion.

On the serious side, now.

I took a job with the government sixteen years ago. I worked as a grants project officer at first. This was nothing like what I had studied to do. J'étais censée devenir professeur de français. All those years of studying French and I wasn't a French professor after all? Kinda neat, once you get past the distress.

Well, after a couple of years someone said, "Hey, you don't seem to be afraid of computers. There's this new thing called a Web site-- it's sort of like a Gopher site-- would you like to build one? We'll show you how." I accepted, and I think it was Halloween 1994 when the SEAHOME Web site first went live. (I can't find any screenshots from back then, but the Wayback Machine has a few archived from later years.)

This really did change my life. It headed me in a new direction in my career. Heck, it gave me a career. I've moved on to be the lead web person for our region, and I really enjoy what I do.

Hope this is what you were looking for. Can't wait to read the other posts for Fun Monday.

No more earplugs

2008-01-13T06:54:00.000-06:00

I still feel childish about my last ranting post. I never want to take people for granted or let the little insignificant things get in the way.

When it came time to move to our new desks, we chose based on seniority (length of time since the date we started government service). I've had people shake their heads at how petty that is, but if you think of Office Space or The Office, you'll remember that pettiness defines the modern cubicle farm. There were three window seats, and I was number four in line. Jessica, our move coordinator, offered to go stand in the hotline cubicle and talk to herself while I scoped out the noise bleedover level in the remaining cubicles. Now that's a pal! I chose one that seemed workable, if a bit dim, and began moving my non-essential possessions over the next few days so there wouldn't be so much to do on move day.

A couple days before we were to move, my colleague who was number three in seniority came by and suggested I not move all my stuff to that new cubicle. It looked like she'd be moving to a job in another division, and we'd most likely get to play musical chairs all over again. It came to pass exactly as she predicted, and I now have a splendid seat by the window facing west. It is bright and quiet, and there's a slight white noise effect from the ventilation system that masks most nearby conversations. And I have a view by day and by night:

Sometimes you get lucky. :^)

Why I wear earplugs at work

2007-12-03T12:47:00.000-06:00

I keep a pair of squishy foam earplugs at work. They have some fantastic industrial rating, and when I wear them, I can't even hear my keyboard as I type. Clearly, I'm not working with a jackhammer or a high-powered blender. So why do I wear them, in my pleasant office setting?

Because I work about ten feet away from someone, who, like Nature, abhors a (conversational) vacuum and so fills it all day long with talk.

I try to remind myself that he does a good job, that I'm glad he's here, that he's a pleasant, dedicated worker. If I were shipwrecked alone on a desert island, I'm sure I'd grow to miss his constant chatter. But it might take a few years.

I try to just concentrate on my work, and sometimes that's enough. But sometimes I just can't shut him out.

"Would a brown bear really kill a grizzly bear? Don't they know they're cousins? They shouldn't do that! I don't think I like Nature."

"Did you ever hear of a fan tax? I know this guy who's one of the last clothing manufacturers in the city, and they came to him one day and said, 'you know, we noticed you have a fan up in the back of your shop, and there's a new fan tax.' And a ladder tax, too. Can you imagine that?..."

"Wow. I put (unintelligible) in my shoes and now they're stretched out."

"They're coming to our house today to put in new cable TV. HD TV, something to do with high definition, supposed to be a sharper picture..."

"I got a new phone. The old one was really big, and it didn't get good reception anymore and..."

All this in the space of four minutes before I inserted the earplugs. Sweet Lord in Heaven! Can you not give it a rest?

This is when he's got down time. Otherwise he's answering the phone, routing calls to the appropriate people. Sometimes the appropriate people would be a state government agency, or maybe a mental health hotline. He's got Bob Newhart syndrome. Like the comedian in his early days, he doesn't just answer the phone; he repeats everything the caller says. "You say you've got a terrible problem? You say you're concerned for your life? Your, uh, yes, neighbor lives downstairs and she's... trying to poison you by using dryer sheets in the laundry? And you want us to come out and test your apartment? And arrest your neighbor?"

It just drives me wild sometimes. There's no partition between this gentleman and me, so nothing to diminish the sound. He's fairly quiet when he's by himself, though he does like to go around to people's cubicles and strike up conversation with them if the phones are slow. Once his colleague arrives in late morning, he's got a tidal wave of suppressed chatter that needs to come out.

But I see an end in sight. In a few more weeks, we're to move desks, and I should have enough seniority to choose a desk well out of earshot of the Babbling Brook.

I feel guilty even writing about it, because I know he means no harm. But I can't hear myself think when I have to hear someone else think, too.

Dervish on my mind

2007-11-20T10:35:00.000-06:00

One of the pleasant things about working from home sometimes is that I get to listen to music without headphones and without interruption. Right now I'm enjoying Dervish's 1996 album Playing With Fire. It's just so pleasing. It helps me forget the Eurovision fiasco, and bolsters my belief they've got other more interesting things in store.

A couple years back I was listening to the cranial jukebox--that's when you get a song stuck in your head; sometimes pleasant, but more often irritating, especially when it's just the few bars from an old record commercial and you never heard the rest of that song so that's all you've got and it goes around over and over in your head...

Well anyway, a couple years ago, it was a Dervish song stuck in my head (The Banks of the Sweet Viledee, another version of the House Carpenter). This led me to visit their website to see when they might next be around Chicago on tour. Not anytime soon, I found, but they'd be at a festival in Sebastopol, California in late September. For some reason, I checked the website for that festival and the lineup of performers was stupendous! In no time, I'd told my husband that this was how we should celebrate our tenth anniversary, with a trip to this festival. Aussitôt dit, aussitôt fait, and a fine time we had, too. We splashed for VIP tickets and brought the instruments, too (the guitar got lost and found and delivered 75 miles to our hotel). We knew no one in town, but quite a few of the performers. One new discovery was the Welsh poet Les Barker; it's hard to pick a favorite among his many self-published poems, but I can't forget about the lovesick dachsund... Thanks to Cloud for the great hospitality.

One (hundred) for the road?

2007-11-03T07:08:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the first frost. Today is November 3rd, and even though it's almost 8:00 in the morning and quite light, our yard is full of birds. There are countless robins in the box elders lining our back fence, and they're darting around madly like barn swallows. I step out on the deck to marvel, but they take no notice.
A trio of mourning doves is foraging under the great tall spruce outside the kitchen window. Something small and stripey (a nuthatch? do we get those here?) is shouldering them out of the way as they earnestly overturn the dry needles.
Coco is buried there. My cockatiel companion for eleven years, he always liked to find the highest perch in the room, which often meant the tallest guest's shoulder. When he died, we laid him under the blue spruce, some fifty feet tall.
I wonder if everyone's finally getting ready to go someplace warmer for the winter.

Such assistance

2007-09-25T22:25:00.001-06:00

Is interpreting this statement one of the requirements to become an employee? (I wonder what the fire exit door says...)
Whitehall Hotel, Chicago

Fontenay Field Trip (or The Long March in August)

2007-09-02T09:18:00.000-06:00

We hosted a group of 29 visitors from our sister city in France last week. Most of them were students 16-18 years old, plus six adults. We had a family of four staying with us. They were great company, and indeed the whole group of teenagers were remarkably well-behaved.

On Tuesday, I took the day off work to help lead them on a trip to Chicago. There were some last-minute worries about whether any other leaders would accompany the group. This was important, because I had a doctor's appointment (in Chicago) in the middle of the day, so I knew I couldn't be with them the whole day. But in the end Janet and Ruth and Nancy were able to come, and two young adults, Andrew and Giselle, joined us as well. Here, as best I can remember, is how the day went.

7:30 - Mike is making breakfast, our houseguests are getting dressed, and I'm making sack lunches for them.

7:45 - I run to the grocery for more bread, bottled water and some cookies to pack in their lunches.

8:30 - I make half a dozen ham and cheese sandwiches and put them in an isotherm bag along with apples, fig newtons, and tortilla chips. I hand this to the oldest boy explaining that it's lunch.

8:50 - We walk to the train station to meet the rest of the group.

9:15 - Janet asks where to pay for the parking garage. I explain about the pay boxes when you exit the garage, but there's no time to go back now. It turns out that she parked in the reserved spots on the first floor and is liable to get a ticket or worse. Ruth confides that she, too, parked in the reserved spaces. The train is approaching and there is no time to go back and move their cars.

9:20 - Ken shepherds us to the far end of the middle platform, we keep everyone well back from the edge and the moving train, and we board the pre-arranged car which we have all to ourselves. I am The Bearer of the group ticket, which is a letter stating that we have pre-paid for the group. It is good for exactly two rides, the 9:25am train and the 7:30pm train.

9:30 - We board the train and head off for adventure.

9:32 - I call the Village Hall and explain about the two misparked cars. I give the license plate numbers and ask if it's at all possible to ask that those cars not be ticketed. They will see what they can do.

9:42 - I check voicemail and return a call from Runa, who visited our houseguests when she went to France. She's trying to meet up with them for lunch. I pass the phone around, and they all arrange to meet in Millenium Park for lunch.

9:53 - I exchange cell phone numbers with Giselle and Nancy. This will prove to be very good planning, with some caveats. Nancy's phone, as it turns out, gets terrible reception near water or in buildings. Giselle's phone is rapidly running out of juice, so she will keep it turned off much of the day to conserve the battery. I am glad I have brought my charger.

10:23 - We arrive in Chicago. The din on the platform is deafening. I lead everyone to the glassed-in waiting room where they will regroup and decide how they will go the mile to Millennium Park.

10:36 - I take my leave and dash off to the water taxi so I can make my doctor's appointment. For $2 I enjoy a swift, scenic ride to the foot of the Michigan Avenue bridge. For once, I am early for my appointment. I plug in my phone charger and wait...

11:16 - I get a text message from my boss. Can I possibly come in today to take care of a couple things? Of course; he's such an easygoing person and rarely asks me for anything. I'll be over right after my appointment, and I can still meet the group at the art museum.

12:01 - Giselle calls on behalf of our house guests who are wondering where their sack lunches are.
- "It's in the gray bag," I tell them. - Do you have it? - No, I gave it to you. - We didn't take it with us. We left it on the dining room table. - Oh dear. I'm very sorry, but you'll have to buy your lunches today, then. - It's all right (much laughter), no problem. I am grateful that Corinne is even more easygoing than my boss. I think wistfully of the six yummy ham and cheese sandwiches going bad in our dining room, and how the cost of the ingredients just about adds up to one lunch from a Michigan Avenue sandwich shop. Sigh. At least they brought the water.

12:45 - My doctor's appointment over, blood drawn, follow-up appointment made, I head to my office. It's a very hot day, probably at least 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Not being completely selfless, I duck into a handbag shop to admire the wares and enjoy the air conditioning. I also pick up a couple plants at the farmer's market.

1:06 - Giselle lets me know that the current plan is to meet outside the art museum gift shop at 3pm and then head over to Navy Pier.

2:15 - My work done, I leave the office and wend my way to the Art Institute.

3:45 - We have finally rounded up the entire group. Nancy and Maeva will meet us at Navy Pier; they've been at the Shedd Aquarium instead today. After some discussion of using the free trolleybus that goes all around downtown during the summer, we decide that I will accompany three of our more venerable guests in a taxi, and everyone else will walk to Navy Pier. It's about a 20-minute walk in the hot sun. Janet needs to head back early to get to a wake. But first, she'd like to take a group picture on the steps of the museum. All 30+ of us form up, and cameras are passed down to the people taking the pictures so everyone will go home with this shot. A group of American students offer to help us take all those pictures; by the end, they join us in the shot, holding an inscrutable banner as we all get in the frame.
4:35 - The Venerables plus Nancy and Maeva are enjoying cool drinks at an outside table when the youth show up, sweating and panting but cheerful. Poor Giselle looks half dehydrated; I make sure she gets a big glass of water first thing. Then Maeva and I skip off to ride the giant Ferris wheel and enjoy the spectacular views of the lakefront it affords. It has been decided We Are All Meeting At 6:15 To Go Catch The Train.

6:15 - Some of us are here.

6:30 - Now all of us are here. The train is at 7:30, and I have the ticket for everyone. We recommence discussions of how to move 30 people two miles across town. We learn where to catch the free shuttle, but there is much doubt:
- how long will we have to wait?
- how long will it take?
- will we all fit on one trolley?
- will it get us close to the station?
- we need the yellow one, but we only see the blue one...
- can we take the water taxi?

6:38 - The Venerables take a taxi. The Durables and I begin a 20-minute march to catch the water taxi. For $2 a person, it will deliver us right to the station. Some of the students are singing French marching songs and camp songs. It is charming.

6:52 - A moment of doubt, a wrong turn, a doubling back, and we are racing the last block to the landing. We arrive, we pant, we sweat, we wait.

6:56 - We consult the schedule. The last taxi leaves the landing at 6:56.

6:58 - No sign of the boat. I call the water taxi company, and they say it's either just about to arrive or it's just left.

7:06 - A fellow from the other boat service at the neighboring landing confirms that the last taxi left just before we arrived. We muster the troops and march double time through the dingy lower level of Kinzie Street, up the stairs and out onto Michigan Avenue. I send Andrew and Giselle ahead to start hailing cabs. We shove kids into cabs and explain to amused drivers where they are going.

7:09 - Nancy calls. "Are you going to make it in time?" "Yes we are. Can't talk. Gotta go."

7:16 - We've coached the kids how to pronounce a recognizable "Ogilvie Transportation Center" and told them to meet at the 7:25 train but wait for me to board. Because I have the One Ticket That Rules Them All. I pluck the eleven-year-old off the lap of one front seat passenger before they can get the door closed. We jump into the last cab and take off to the station.

7:18 - I call Nancy to apologize for being abrupt and reassure her that we are indeed coming.

7:24 - We arrive at the station. I make a quick swing by the waiting room to make sure we're not leaving anyone there. We wait for the two students who made a desperate dash for the restroom as soon as they arrived. We run to the deafening end of the platform by the engines and join our group, who are miraculously all there. I surrender The Ticket and we all pile into the train. Following some unspoken etiquette, all the under-20s go on the upper level, and all the Venerables sit in quiet dignity on the lower level.

7:30 - The train takes off with us in it. I feel both relieved and enormously guilty at the harried trip I've just led all those people on. If I were them, I'd be complaining to someone about me. But they are very polite, and the youth are apparently unharmed, judging by the amount of noise they are making up there.

8:14 - I call my friend Laura to tell her how glad I am she's in Chicago, and how sorry I am I can't hook up with her while she's here because I'm just too busy.

8:24 - We arrive safe and sound. No cars have been towed. No students have been lost. Mike is waiting with both of our cars parked at the station, and printed maps to our dinner destination in each car. He squires our houseguests off to dinner. I drive one lad home and follow along to our friends' house. Despite a flooded basement and some time without electricity earlier in the week, they've smoked two enormous beef briskets and we sink gratefully into chairs around their table and eat and talk and drink late into the night.

A True Celt - according to Google

2007-07-25T15:41:00.000-06:00

I searched on the phrase "true Celt" in Google, and found the source for this little poem in the search results.

A true Celt

like Dad
fiery, impetuous, and quick in action.
speaking their language, thinking their thoughts, dreaming their dreams
believes in the unearthly
revels in rare and lovely decoration, and fills every corner of his canvas with rich and intricate patterns of symbolic meaning
hard-working... content to toil from season to season, and all day long
a bit darker than the fair German
on inquiry... in his reply to information,... he asks another question
fiery, passionate, quarrelsome and apt at misunderstanding

Oh dear...

2007-07-05T13:44:00.001-06:00

This has unsettling implications for face cream.

New idea for a business

2007-07-05T07:55:00.000-06:00

Our friends told us about a new quarry that started operations in their area. It's a relatively small business, but they quarry limestone there, used for flagstones and landscaping.

It was probably all the Fourth of July fireworks that got me to thinking about this: wouldn't it be fun to have something like those "u-pick" strawberry farms for stone quarries? That way if you needed some pavers, you could just bring a truck, pay a deposit for some safety equipment and explosives, and come away with your very own stone that you cut yourself from the living earth! The roadside signs could say "Blast your own" or "U-Hew!"

Let me know if you're interested in going into business together.

Ineffective ultimatum

2007-06-29T08:58:00.000-06:00

Overheard in an airport concourse last week:

Mother to squalling child: "Do you want me to send you to your room?"

Dyslexia or just moment of doubt?

2007-06-15T10:22:00.001-06:00

I always have to stop and think before I say or write these things:

dot your i's and cross your t's
move a date up or back (I just never say this because I'm not confident I use it the same way as everyone else)
judgement or judgment
Meán Fómhair or Deireadh Fómhair
Daylight savings time or standard time
cynical or sarcastic

Does anyone else have ones like this?

Balancing on the deck

2007-05-29T05:59:00.000-06:00

Just coming off a really nice three-day weekend here. Sitting on the deck in the moist-but-not-too-warm-yet morning, with my laptop, really good yogurt, and a pot of tea. There are three big red poppies open this morning, and the peonies have all passed out on the grass like a crowd of pink-headed drunks. May always brings a nearly impenetrable wall of trees and indiscriminate green growth between us and the neighbors behind, which is probably a good thing (except for the damned giant mulberry tree). From six to seven it goes from nearly silent, except for birds and squirrels, to busy traffic: cars, grindy trucks of lawn services, school buses approaching their last runs of the year, and the fainter ding-ding-ding of the train crossings. A big crow, a small barky dog, airplanes, motorcycles but no mosquitoes.

I get to just listen to them instead of being out among them because it's Tuesday, and I get to work at home on Tuesdays. I've done this for almost ten years now, and that one day a week gives me such respite; I'm really grateful. If I get up early, I can log more work time, or use the time for myself instead of getting ready to go and commuting. I could technically sit out here on the deck and work, though I rarely do; it seems a touch too hedonistic. No one cares how I'm dressed, and I can have whatever music or radio or sweet silence I want. The tea is also better.

And for the record, I really do work on these Tuesdays. It's a good time to write, think through a project, or churn out a lot of tweaks to a website.

Tomorrow I'll get up refreshed (I hope, unless I've had too much tea!) and bound off to work knowing that I only have to pull my way through three days before I get a free one. I even manage to enjoy the commute (it is nice to see other people after a few days at home).

Visualizing unimaginable statistics

2007-05-18T14:09:00.000-06:00

This artist, Chris Jordan, uses enormous images to help people comprehend statistics about America. One example is the image of the 60,000 plastic bags that we use every 5 seconds in the US. Of course, he's trying to make a point, but the sheer communicative power is remarkable.

"Will that be fine?"

2007-05-11T15:03:00.000-06:00

Having an Andy Rooney moment here. Have you ever had someone (usually a stranger, maybe a restaurant hostess) request something of you, and end the request with: "Will that be fine?"

I'm not sure when this started, but it always rubs me very much the wrong way, and I have to fight the desire to give them a sharp retort. It just seems so presumptuous.

"I know you've purchased a seat in the extended legroom section of this flight, but I'd like to switch places with you so I could sit near my fiancé. My seat is back by the toilets in between two parents who'll be holding their infant twins on their laps during this flight. Will that be fine?"

"Would you mind?" is surely a better way to phrase this. Even "would it be okay" or "would it be all right".

It will definitely not be fine.

Why should I love spring?

2007-04-27T07:50:00.000-06:00

I don't think I've ever read a sour word about spring. Why not?

We build it up with such expectations: love, new beginnings, or at least a definitive change from dull winter weather. We treat it like some young starlet and expect so much of it. But it's like any other adolescent: moody, flighty, and flat out disappointing sometimes. Spring is the eighth-grader of the seasons.

When I think of spring, I think of:

sitting in a grade school classroom and looking out that big bank of windows at the rainy world like some inverse aquarium

the college trips to Florida I never took with my friends because my parents said how much they wanted me home. So I would come home, and stay at home while my parents worked, and I had no car, and the only places I could walk to were McDonald's or car repair shops. And the weather stank. (I'm sure there were better parts than that, but this is what I remember.)

flowers that come up and trees that bud out and birds that migrate early and late freezes that come and give them all what for

and also:

45-degree days (that's about 7 for you Celsioids) that made us run around outside in shorts and shirtsleeves and sundresses

a discernible stirring of interest among lads and lasses

lambs - Easter lambs! - it never dawned on me till I visited l'Ile d'Ouessant at Easter and saw new-minted lambs that yes, this is why lambs are associated with Easter/Passover/spring in general. (How would that be to have all your flock's birthdays in the same month? Imagine the strain of gift-giving!)

Switcheroo

2007-04-15T11:16:00.000-06:00

It's Sunday, and rather than do yard work, I'm going to see if I can transfer this blog to my other blogger account. Please bear with me.

Popcorn ballet

2007-01-04T13:35:00.000-06:00

I was in a great hurry last night to get out of the house and on to a meeting. Instead of the sandwich I'd planned on, I made a bag of microwave popcorn, dumped it in an enormous plastic bowl, and hit the road. I drove one-handed, stuffing popcorn in my mouth with the other hand. When I arrived, I brushed the inevitable stray crumbs off my person before joining the meeting.

Afterward, on the way home I had to stop at a long light at a busy intersection. I opened the window and emptied the bowl onto the road. Half a minute later I was transfixed, watching a dozen small white fluffies make their way out to play in the middle of the street. They were rolling and bouncing, dancing with the traffic. I was amazed how they glowed in the headlights, like motes of dust on a bright afternoon.

More music, more reading, less dishes

2007-01-01T22:30:00.000-06:00

It'd be a shame to waste the opportunity for New Year's resolutions. I want to move away from mindless duty and do more things that I like instead of waiting till all the chores are done to get around to them.

So I will find more time for playing music and reading, and not be in such a rush to get the dishes done, because by God, those suckers will not care one bit if I wait.

I was listening to Cathal Hayden's 1999 album of great, bracing fiddle music. I remembered how I always play better when I get to play with good players. This is not nonsense; it was even true back when I played in orchestras in high school. You rise to the level of those around you, and you feel great in the process. So I'm trying something: putting on headphones and playing along with the recording. It worked pretty well this evening. But man, that guy plays fast!

As for reading, I made myself a nest in the spare bedroom with all kinds of lovely books. And I wound up settling on The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie (yes, the actor). I suppose you could fault the text for being over full of clever bits, but then you would probably turn out to be someone who thinks there can be too many chocolate chips in Toll House cookies.

The kitchen is looking only slightly sparkling. So far so good. Happy New Year.

Enough snow

2006-12-02T11:19:00.000-06:00

To my mind, this is the way to start December right. (Caveat: I did not have to drive anywhere while this was coming down yesterday.)

Fiddles can fly freely again

2006-09-22T10:42:00.000-06:00

Britain to relax carry-on bag rules
Hand luggage rules to be relaxed - standardizing baggage dimensions across the EU

What is the world coming to?

2006-09-19T19:02:00.000-06:00

We've been at festivals every weekend for a month, and in talking with musicians who come from outside the country, we've learned of a disturbing new trend in airline security. When you fly to the US from certain countries, you can't take your musical instrument on board anymore; you must check it.

We haven't been able to bring the guitar in the cabin for several years now. We do have a sturdy case for it, and have been lucky so far. (Though we did hear from one guitarist whose seemingly impregnable case was no match for a forklift, which drove its blades straight through the back of the instrument.) But with something like a violin, it just mustn't go in the hold, not ever. Even if it isn't crushed, the temperature could be very harmful to older instruments. Here's the roundup of news and horror stories on the subject (read the feedback on these articles for some interesting stories):

Airline destroys $13,800 viola
Cabin baggage ban hits musicians
Discussion on violinist.com
Airline terror baggage ban hits a bum note
Airport rules costing musicians

Although the articles above talk mostly about flights between the UK and USA, a group of Canadian musicians wound up checking their empty cases and carrying the fiddles on board in their hands. I think the reason was a strict application of instrument case dimensions by the Canadian airline. Musicians from Ireland and the UK wound up borrowing instruments once they got here.

Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US, it's grown much harder to bring musicians here from overseas to perform and teach workshops. It's more expensive and more difficult for them to get visas now, and this latest security move is discouraging them from coming here at all. Let's hope this madness ends soon. Peace to all.

King me!

2006-09-07T19:00:00.000-06:00

"King me!" I cried.
"I've come all the way to the end of the board
Surmounted your feeble obstacles
Ignored your false messengers
Proven my worth
Moved toward my goal by roundabout dances
Tacking my way across the field.
Now I'm arrived
I'm ready and deserving
Hold back no more--
King me!"

With bells on

2006-08-28T07:47:00.000-06:00

What does anyone have against bells? Why, in every possible application, are real bells being replaced by electronic sounds?

We hang onto an early touch-tone phone because when it rings, it actually rings, with the lovely warm sound of a brass bell. It does not bleat, it does not warble, and I've never had the urge to dash it against the wall.

Our doorbell is schizophrenic. A hideous little buzzer sounds in the basement, but upstairs, in the dining room, is a grand old clock with four tubular bells, which doubles as the doorbell. It's resonant, grand, and makes me eager to see who or what has turned up on the doorstep--even Jehovah's Witnesses.

The kitchen timer is a beeper now, and so are the microwave and the alarm clock. Oddly, the toaster oven is a tinkly old-fashioned "ding". The carillon at the train station is a recording of a carillon. Hmph!

Oddest to me is the warning signal at the train crossing near our station. It's truly important to give people a clear, audible warning not to cross the tracks when a train is approaching. It's not a mechanical bell, though. It's a recording of a train warning bell. There are two ways you can tell. First, it sometimes cuts off in mid "ding" when the crossing gates go up. And second, on wet, squelchy days like today, it starts out on a low tone and then rises in pitch, like a tape being sped up, or a phonograph record being started from a standstill. It makes a warped, bilious sound. Do honest clanging train bells really fail so much that they needed to be replaced with fake ones?

Hateful Norton AntiVirus

2006-08-06T07:31:00.000-06:00

I am starting to wonder if Norton AntiVirus is some sort of a shakedown scheme.

You're scared to death of what viruses will do to your computer, so when you're reminded that your subscription to virus updates needs renewing, you do it, forking over a few dozen dollars each year. Per computer, if you happen to have multiples in your household.

It whacks up your email, scanning everything that goes out and everything that comes in. You can tell it not to scan them anymore, but it does anyway. It seems quicker to just click away the annoying popup boxes than to do anything more about it.

Then one day, you notice that it hasn't performed a full system scan for half a year or more. This leads you to Symantec's website, where you eventually learn you'll have to uninstall and reinstall AntiVirus (or its younger sibling, Internet Security). Since nothing comes on disks anymore, you make sure you have the installer (thank goodness for the compulsive saving of every installer that came across your computer's threshhold), and with trembling hand, do the uninstall. (Which you have to do from Internet Explorer, because the handy uninstall link on the web page won't work in other browsers.)

That goes grand, and you reboot, peek in the corners to see if it's really gone (it is) and commence the reinstall. After a few moments, here comes a warning:

"Norton Internet Security 2005 installation has failed. Do you want to try to install again?"

Your options are Retry and Cancel. You click Retry. The popup disappears, the install continues, the progress meter shows progress... for a few seconds, and then the same error pops up again. Well, it worked last time, so you click Retry again. You're not too concerned when it happens again, because the progress meter keeps advancing (another little green bar, then another). After a while, you start keeping count of the times you click Retry. When it passes 100, you select Cancel and go looking online for the text of that error message to see if anyone else has had this problem.

They have.

In spades.

You learn about other techniques, some of which involve editing the registry (like brain surgery) or reinstalling Windows (dear God, do I even know where the disks are that came with my laptop? did I make backup disks? why me?)

You take a break and rant about it on your blog, then make a cup of tea and take another stab at it.

I hear there are some other anti virus programs out there...

Oh, how I love tea!

2006-07-28T07:40:00.000-06:00

Especially Barry's Gold Blend in the red box.

When I get up in the morning and go to the kitchen (no, I do not stumble to the kitchen; we have too many stairs for that to be practical. Besides, it's clichéd. And anyway, I'm a true morning person, so no need of that. Nevertheless, I really do enjoy the morning cuppa.), I open the cupboard that has both the coffee and tea paraphernalia, and while the electric kettle brings the water to a boil (was there ever a more civilized invention?) I try to decide whether to make tea or coffee. (I have been known to make both and carry two commuter mugs.) The tea smells so sweet; I'm always happy when it wins out. I've heard things about antioxidants, too, but I never think about that.

That first mouthful of hot tea (with milk, please) is like a jolt to the soul. I feel something rising within me (maybe it's core body temperature?), and get the instant impression of being more awake and alive.

I have a lot of memories associated with tea, too. I learned to drink it in Scotland, where it stood in for central heating in the family I was visiting. They taught me to pour the milk in the mug first, and I find I don't need a spoon if I do that. I still knit the same tea cosy that Edith had on her stainless steel teapot.

Of course, I had to get a steel teapot, too. I left one in France when I came home. A few years ago in Ireland, I picked one up in a hardware store in Ennis, delaying our departure from town to M's great annoyance. Or maybe M. was annoyed about the set of little tea spoons (smaller than the kind that come in the flatware set) at the hardware store in Donegal Town...

There were the cups of tea at Nick's flat on Saturdays when we got together to play music, in his horrible bachelor-dirty mugs.

There was the stop in a Bewley's cafe in Dublin, that first time we flew to Ireland. We hadn't slept enough (you never do) and we also hadn't planned where we'd stay the first night. That's when we learned that jetlag and on-the-spot vacation planning are not a happy combination. We wandered around Dublin in a fog, and eventually stopped in at Bewley's for a new lease on life. We did eventually find a B&B in Sandymount where we checked in and slept like logs, waking up only just in time for a late pub dinner. Where we met a charming couple who invited us over the next night, and I decided that Irish hospitality was not a myth.

And of course, there's an Irish tune, The Cup of Tea.

Random musings

2006-07-12T15:17:00.000-06:00

Which kind of animal do you resemble most?
a) carp
b) snipe
c) grouse

You hear about war-torn countries; if the trouble is less serious, is it a conflict-wrinkled country?

Favors

2006-07-03T08:03:00.000-06:00

If someone does you a favor, it's good to return the favor someday. Trouble is, you can't always repay the same person who helped you. I decided at some point that I could even things out by doing something good for someone else, inspired by or in honor of what that original person did for me. (This was well before the movie Pay It Forward, which I saw in an airplane once and thought was a dreadful, maudlin waste of time.)

When I lived in France, many people were very kind to me in ways both large and small. Inviting me for a meal, a visit, or an outing, they let me see into their lives and gave me a feeling of worth that was precious when I was far from home.

We recently hosted a young woman from France in our home for a couple weeks. We got along well and did a few excursions together: Greek Fest, Polish Fest (don't we have an American Fest, she may well be wondering?), an Irish music session, a baseball game, a visit to a relative in an assisted living facility (I guess that goes in the "slice of life" category). In a way, this was an even exchange, since we stayed with her family on our last visit to France. They were super hosts, and their kindness and openness would dispel anyone's stereotype of the French as unfriendly.

Well, we saw her off at the airport yesterday morning and figured that was the last we'd hear from her till after she got home. But that evening, as we were driving into the city for dinner, she called us from Washington Dulles airport. Her flight had been delayed arriving there, and so she'd missed the plane to France. Her new flight out would be the following evening at 6 p.m.! She planned to sleep in the airport, since she couldn't afford the hotel (darned airlines should've put her up, we think). We took the number of the payphone. We called her parents in France and gave them that number so they could call her. Then I started phoning around to my friends in the D.C. area. Soon I had J. on the line, and although he sounded tired (as might any father of two bright, energetic and strong-willed young children), he immediately agreed to put her up for the night and see to it that she got to the airport the next day. He is a real mensch! I thanked J. and then called her back at the airport, told her about J.'s offer, explained how to take the taxi (a new adventure), and spelled the unfamiliar street names, which are a lesson in American geography. I suspect she got there all right, since I haven't had any panicky phone calls to indicate otherwise.

So I'm not sure how incurrng a favor to repay a favor fits into the whole accounting, but then it's not the accounting that counts, eh? Great thanks to J. and L., who are also gracious and generous hosts.

Inexplicables

2006-06-23T08:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday P. told me about an odd, troubling experience he had. First, a couple things you should know about P. He carries his tiny digital camera with him all the time, and takes pictures of interesting things at a moment's notice. (He's my photo guru.) He also is a dedicated history buff, and always has at least one new history book he's reading. He's been looking forward to visiting the Tutankhamen exhibit in Chicago this summer; it promises to be just as interesting as the one that came here in 1977. And he's a steady, stable guy, not the least bit freaky.

Well, P. was downloading some photos off his camera to make room on the memory card. And in amongst the Chicago street scenes were sixteen carefully numbered negative images of... King Tut artefacts. No, he hasn't visited the exhibit yet (and even if he had, they surely wouldn't let you take photos like these in the exhibit; they'd make you buy them in the gift shop). And why negatives? They weren't true negatives, either; when he converted them to positives, they came out as faint pastels. Nobody borrowed his camera or his memory card. He lives alone and the dog doesn't know how to use the camera (or maybe she does, but disdains to use it). He didn't accidentally get someone else's card from the photo printing machine at the drugstore. There's just no good explanation, no "Aha!" waiting out there.

He deleted the mystery photos.

P's experience reminded me of my own inexplicables:

In college, I was studying one sunny day in a big park, spread out on the grass with my books. I happened to look up and I saw, on a street that bordered the park, a riderless bicycle going up the hill.

When I finished high school, we had both a graduation ceremony and a baccalaureate ceremony, which was held in the university chapel (a very grand space despite the name - more like a cathedral with tall narrow windows. As we sat there, I glimpsed out the window a white horse going by. This is clearly not impossible, but you just don't ever see horses in town, except maybe during a parade. I took it as a good omen.

Glad for simple

2006-06-17T07:26:00.000-06:00

Saturday morning.

Barry's Tea with milk from the little stainless steel teapot that we picked up in Ireland and the truly ugly tea cosy I knitted for it (finished with only two safety pins!).

Quiet house, sun through drawn blinds, cherry- and mulberry-crazed birds outside.

A fountain pen with green ink.

Today we are not spending time at assisted living facilities, discussing power of attorney or chemotherapy. We might get a new cell phone. We can manage that. We might go to a wine tasting. I'm sure we could manage that.