Back when I was a kid...

Reminiscing about the past, mine and others

Now relegated to Blogblivion...

Friday, January 28, 2005

Let Time Not Be All That Flies

Caltechgirl just made me feel old, as well as very sad.  Has it really been 19 years?  Wow.  Yet only 38 yesterday for Apollo 1.  How far we came in those first 19 years.  Well, the first handful, anyway.  How mired we’ve been these last 19.

I am hopeful.  Ecstatic, even, at the recent progress and moves being made in the private world of business toward viable, practical, flexible, long-term solutions to the shortage of “soup bowls” and the lapse of will to catch the universe’s rain of bounty.

It’s exciting, but no less sad so many won’t be with us to see it.  Still, the biggest obstacle even the privateers face is making space transport, habitation and work too costly in money because we refuse to expend lives on risk anymore.  As humans have traditionally done so freely to get us where we are.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Doctors Versus Dentists

The Glittering Eye speaks of experiences with dentists versus doctors.  The key part:

I’ve got quite a few dentists who are clients. In my professional capacity I have found them personable, respectful, grateful for services rendered, not technology-averse, and extremely hard-working in improving their businesses as businesses. For dentists the greatest business challenge is finding and retaining good staff.

I’ve had medical doctors as clients, too. They’ve been smart, peremptory, technology-averse, knew more than I did about my own specialty (or gave that impression at any rate), jealous of their prerogatives, and slow to pay. I’m not sure what the greatest business challenge for medical doctors is today. It may be reimbursement.

This brought back memories of doing support for Microsoft products and finding that doctors were disproportionately arrogant, impatient, and fanciers of themselves as more experts than you on what they were calling for help about.  We all dreaded getting calls from doctors.

This is not to say all of them were like this.  Just that stereotypes tend to form for a reason.

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

F Words

Deb was just pointing out that four year old kids all know the word “fuck” already, even if they also know they are never to say it.

Well, maybe.  I don’t recall knowing it, but there was not a lot of cursing going on in our house or else I was oblivious.  I remember being shocked when friends used words not even so potent when I was several years old, and I only carefully started using the F word myself when I was about eleven.  Rarely and privately at that.

Anyway, this reminded me of an anecdote.  When I was in fifth grade, the newest insult being flung around was “fag.” Kids would say to each other in a mean tone “you fag!”

So one night at the dinner table I blurted out “what’s a fag?”

Shock!  Anger!  “You will NEVER say that word again!” All this told me was that it must be something really horrible and never to ask anything like that or rely on my family to teach me things I could learn elsewhere again.  It was an understandable yet hopelessly irrational response.

If this sounds funny, remember that “suck” was still a mild swear when I was growing up, and words you hear on TV regularly were still somewhat of a big deal, if nothing like the F word or, apparently in my family, the other F word.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Sitcoms and Memories

Jeff is talking about old TV today.  As I noted in his comments, what you saw when it was first on is a great indicator of relative ages.  Sometimes I’ll be talking away about something I saw, or did or otherwise remember for that matter, and then I’ll remember Deb wasn’t around or was too young, which is amusingly disconcerting.  By the same token, Jeff is just that much older than me (though you’d never know it to look at him guys) that things I only just remember, or didn’t quite see when they were first on, he remembers fondly.  To me The Honeymooners is an ancient show that people remember fondly if they’re old enough, but that I have never seen a single episode of start to finish.  But I remember Jackie Gleason, and he was cool.

Another discontinuity among the age ranges is who remembers not having a color TV because color TV was unavailable or new and expensive, and who remembers there being no remote control.

Sunday, January 16, 2005

Six Years

I just remember a little while ago that it has now been six years since I left my last “day job” and went self-employed “full time.” Which means six years February 1st since we moved into a real office for the business.  Wow.

Ironically, I have of late been going the opposite direction, thinking more and more that as long as it’s essentially me alone, I should not have an office, just work from home, or from home with an office about 1/4 the size to use for some purposes.  But that only makes sense if I stay small and solitary.

Except for the weird cash flow and the lack of money at times, I don’t regret for a second not having a real job.  There were things I liked about it, most of which would come back if I grew the business to any size.  Meaning I tend to miss having other people around, at least to a point, despite my introversion that spills over into full blown social anxiety.  I also miss supervising people and managing their activities.  I seem to end up in charge without trying, and generate surprisingly intense loyalty.  I’m not always comfortable working by myself.  Even though people are annoying at times.

Hard to believe it’s been that long.  My record for keeping one job is under five years, and this has been six.

Friday, January 14, 2005

Reasons to love your job…

This post reminded me of one of my favorite parts of my last job with the Navy in Pensacola.  Every so often the Blue Angels would come in low enough over the building I worked in that we’d have the same car alarm issue.  I’d try to time my smoke breaks to see part of their practice when I could.  Very, very cool.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Dreams and Memories

I go through long dry spells of not remembering any dreams I may have, or of having less interesting ones.  Then something happens and it’s one after another, or vivid all-nighters, and I actually recall something about them on waking.

The night before last was a good example.  It’s also an extension of one of those “dream places” that appear over and over.  I can understand that I still have disproportionate dreams taking place in the house where I grew up, or houses that include aspects of that one, or in the immediate yard.  This one was in a building up the street that has no business being in my dreams regularly.  My father will know the one I mean.

My house was on a dirt road, 1/3 mile from the nearest street and other houses.  Mostly it was surrounded by woods, though in one direction, along the rest of the street, was open, sandy field.  While we didn’t have neighboring houses, there were other buildings, owned by the family who owned the hundreds of acres surrounding our one acre.  My grandfather had been the caretaker of the property.

On the same side as the house, immediately next to us and the reason termites were such a problem, was an old sawmill and associated sawdust pile.  Next was a long building, long side to the road, that housed equipment.  Right after that was a road that looped around a sandpit, lined by stacks of raw boards that had once upon a time been made at the sawmill, and some other fun stuff like brick tiles and relatively uniform, painted flint rocks.

Next on that side was an army green, garage-like building, fairly tall, with a pointed roof, with the garage door/short side facing the road.  It was large enough to house something like an extremely large bulldozer.

Next came a series of small sheds, smaller to larger, ordered by size.  They were also army green, wood with sheet metal exteriors.  Each had a single, person-sized door.  The largest was perhaps six by six.  The smallest was perhaps three by a foot and a half.  I might even have a print picture somewhere that happens to include that small one, after it had been moved to our yard and used mainly by me to store stuff.  Also in that lineup of sheds, which had been for storing powder or munitions during the war, was an outhouse.  I hated having to use the outhouse when I was little, because it tended to attract hornets.  Just after the row of sheds, the land dropped off precipitousely, and the road curved down a hill to run through Turkey Swamp and some cranberry bogs there.  There was another such outhouse, placed incongruously in the woods between two sections of bogs, for people to use when working them.

Okay, back to my house, which was on the left as you come in from the main road.  Setting out up the street again, but looking at the right side, roughly across from the sawmill was a tiny building perhaps the size and shape of a caboose or slightly larger.  I have no idea what it was used for in its heyday, but it struck me as an office of some kind.  I recall that in and behind it there were some huge glass bottles.  Maybe ten gallons each?  Not visible from the road, but not far off in the woods behind it, there was a hunting cabin people used once in a while when I was growing up. 

The only reason I ever learned to have anything against hunting was because in hunting season, the hunters came around and made our woods potentially dangerous to us.  How dare they!  We couldn’t go out there and play normally then (well, sometimes we did anyway, just tried to dress brightly, make noise, and be obviously human), and it was even nervous-making walking to and from the bus.  Until I was much older, that was my primary impression of hunting and memory of hunting seasons.

Immediately after the small building was a larger, almost house-like one.  There was one interlude of a year or two when “the Puerto Ricans” lived there.  Those were some nice if crude guys imported and hired to work the cranberry bogs.  Apparently the building was indeed supposed to have been a house, but was never lived in as such, except for itinerant usage.  It is the only remaining one of these buildings still standing, and is the maintenance office of the mobile home park for the elderly now occupying the land I thought of as mine as a child.  There’s one way to learn about property rights.  Sadly, my family did have the opportunity to buy as much of the land as we wanted a couple times.  $400 An acre sounds so cheap, doesn’t it?  Especially given the current value upwards of $100,000 forty years later.  But it’s not so cheap when you make a couple thousand a year.

Anyway, that house-like building had a cellar with a garage door at ground level with a parking area accessed by driving down the hill the building was on.  There was a workshop-like environment in the cellar, and when I was little, my grandfather worked in there.  The one vivid memory I have is of watching him use a large, foot-operated grindstone.  Other especially vivid memories I have of him at work are riding down the road with him on a giant bulldozer toward our house, and watching him use a giant dozer with jaws to rip out a tree on the side of the island in Turkey Swamp.  No idea what was the context.  Well, that and picking cranberries, along with much of the rest of my family.  They kept cranberry equipment in that cellar, back in the day. 

They used roller things for moving cranberry boxes or something.  You know the ones?  Two metal rails, spoks in between, free-spinning metal wheels on them.  Set them up on supports, link them together as needed, and roll heavy items along them.  A&P in Bridgewater had some of those that went from the checkout area, through a flap in the front of the store, and would roll your groceries out on the contraption.  I thought it was the coolest thing.

Well, one year they had those rollers sitting around outside the maintenance building.  We, my older brother in the lead of course, used them on the hill for sliding without snow.  Whee!  Except I seem to recall being little enough to be scared.

The next thing, back up level with the road, was a pumphouse.  Our artesian well that supplied water to the house.  It was a small, slant-roofed thing, low end to the road, door on the other end, with a long flight of stairs down to the pump, and mass quantities of hornets.  That was the Best Water Ever.  The mobile home park is on town water, but last I knew they still had the well and a public faucet the residents could use to fill containers with the good water.

Next was a twin to the green garage building on the other side of the street.  The well and the green garage building were basically across from the long building.  It is that building I keep dreaming about.  I only ever went in it or saw the door of it opened a few times.  It was not a place I can recall ever hanging out.  Yet it recurs in my dreams, the ghost of a mostly forgotten building of no particular significance.  I’ll get back to it.

Finally, at the top of the hill overlooking the dropoff into the swamp, across from the little sheds, was my father’s body shop on three quarters of an acre.  He started out working on cars informally in the yard, from what I gather.  When he went into business fully, this old building, a larger army green one, was available and got him well established.  It always seemed a little odd, having the business a half mile off the beaten path, on a dirt road, but hey, it was a town of perhaps less than 3000 then, and a different time.

That building burned when I was around five, before I started school.  Amazing how vividly I remember the place.  Certainly I remember the day of the fire, and the ruins very well.  After a couple years in rented quarters elsewhere in town, he rebuilt.  No more outhouse!  The new garage had proper plumbing, and a nicer, roomier setup in general.  Sadly, that building burned too, leading to an even longer time in the wilderness.  By then the writing was on the wall both in terms of the mobile home park going up around us, and maritally, so the next rebuild - in a metal building - was on the other side of town.  The second one wasn’t there all that long, as I was no older than fifth grade when that fire happened.  It’s not as vivid.  I seem to recall it was an overnight thing and we woke to the news in the morning.  The first one I watched out a window of the second floor of my house, with my grandmother, who was crying as I don’t recall ever seeing her cry otherwise.  The image of the burned ruins, and the smell, are indelible.

Radiating out from where the house was were paths and fire roads, and there were lots of fun spots and times in the surrounding woods and such.  I’ve long thought of basing some fiction, or even not so fiction, on the place where I grew up.  Sort of the proverbial “hundred acre wood,” but larger and more diverse.  The dream and then this remembrance of some of the surroundings have reinforced that idea.

My usual dream about that old building is that I step into it and at the last second realize, or am warned by somebody with me, that there is a hole in the floor.  As far as I can recall, there was no such thing.  In the dream it’s a deep, perfectly rectangular pit, as if someone were going to put in hydraulic lift equipment.  Or a trap for the unwary building entrant.

Sometimes that is as far as it goes.  Other times the dream, pit or not, involves a stairs along the wall to the right, up to a simple attic-like second floor/loft area.  This we use as a hangout or place to explore, with varying degrees of danger.  Sometimes the floor is so rickety or incomplete, there is a danger of falling through and then on down the pit.  Sometimes it’s a near normal, almost livable quarters.  That’s as far as it usually goes.

The latest version didn’t feature the hole in the floor.  I went up to the second floor, which was nicely equipped as a place to hang out, if rather unfinished.  The whole time I was there, it was ambiguous as to whether there was any electricity.  My older brother, who has been going through a divorce, was staying there.  This wasn’t known at first.  He was there at times.  My friend Nicole and her mother were there briefly, more so her mother, who was giving us a hard time about something.  This is odd in that I have never met Nic’s mother in person.  I’ve seen a couple of pictures, and seen her from a distance.  Strange.

The main area was far bigger than it would actually have been, which is a normal thing for me in dream houses.  I specialize in variants of old houses with endless rooms full of interesting stuff.  It had a couch, a bed, some rugs and chairs.  I think my mind was trying to picture it with a pool table but never quite made one materialize.  That would match the upstairs of a barn friends of mine had finished as a hangout, complete with a bar, at their old place.

What did materialize was a door at the back end.  In reality, the door should have taken me into thin air and dropped me onto the ground ten feet below.  In fact, it went into a narrow, long room running along the back of the main one.  Down at the right end was a bed, and there was another bed closer to me.  My brother was down at the end, and this was where he apparently was staying, not in the main room as it first appeared.  This scene was probably based on my grandmother’s attic.  I found myself thinking that with all these beds, other people could crash there too if needed.  There was a lot of other junk in that room.  But wait!

To the left end was a set of stairs up.  It went to another room, a larger one like the first, only more polished.  There was at least one more bed.  I started to wonder, probably my rational mind intruding, whether the place had electricity, and if not where were all the candles or lanterns.

Finally, I discovered another door and stairs to a final floor.  That was my brother’s inner sanctum, the real place he was staying, even as he worried about find a place that was not temporary and spartan.  Beds galore, but no stoves, refrigerators, or even bathrooms were apparent.  Strange.

I don’t remember all the circumstances in the dream, since there was more to it than discovering new rooms and floors, and uncovering my brother’s secret getaway.  It was so compelling that I kept waking up, then falling back asleep into the same dream by choice.  Which doesn’t always work, but it’s cool when it does.

Anyway, that’s enough on dreams and childhood memories for now.  You may not see much from me the rest of the day, as I have work to do that by rights ought to preclude the distraction of blogging.  Much of what I posted yesterday was written the night before or earlier in the day, and time stamped to appear later.  Which annoyingly prevents both trackbacks and pings, making it harder to draw extra traffic by being prolific.  I didn’t get the same chance and inspiration to create advance posts last night, except the baby pictures.

One final thought: one of my dreams in life has always been to give my kids a yard as close as possible to the scale of the “yard” I had as a kid.  It probably won’t happen, but you can see why I would think of an acre as a very modest yard.

Update:

Deb showed me this nifty ACME Mapper tool.  This image is centered on where the house I grew up in was.  It’s not there anymore.  The main road toward the top is route 106.  The main road at the right is route 58. 

The big dark splotch to the lower left of center is a body of water that was not there when I was a kid.  Someone messed with things and caused what had been a relatively dry section of swamp to flood, killing most of the trees.

The mass of bright structures and associated roads are “mobile homes” for the elderly in a trailer mobile home park.  Except for the road my house was on, none of the roads were there.  There was what amounted to a fire road that went to the one other house in the woods, down route 106 a ways from us.

All that was woods, with the buildings I described.  The bogs are still there, though there’s been some expansion.  There’s a light splotch adjacent to the bogs where there was a wooded hill.  That was razed and dug out for sand, so it’s all barren now.  Or it was last I knew, and when this picture was taken.  I haven’t been down there in many years.  As long as my mother still had her house, we could visit there and walk down to take ourselves back to the bogs and wilder areas that remained.  When my mother lost her house in 1994, she lost that easy access to my childhood.

Update2: Added this to today’s Beltway Traffic Jam

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Bridge Musings

Sarah K. has been writing of her adventures in packing and moving to Frank J.‘s neck of the woods.  It’s like a blast from our own past.  Apparently she doesn’t like bridges or tunnels.  I don’t recall the crossing at Baton Rouge having been that bad, but I’ve gotten past most of my youthful nervousness about bridges.  Plus that was circa 1988, so who knows how much longer or scarier the crossing may have become since then.

When I was a kid, we stayed in a relative’s cottage on the mainland side of the Cape Cod Canal in Bourne for a chunk of a summer.  We went to the July 4 fireworks at the Bourne high school, which was on the other side of the canal.  On the way back, there was a massive traffic jam (well, probably not that massive, being a matter of perception) going over the Bourne bridge.  Siting there stopped at the top of the bridge, the way it vibrated the car convinced me the bridge was going down and we were all about to die.  I have seldom been more terrified.

I also didn’t like the French King Bridge, on route 2 in western Massachusetts, over the Connecticut River.  The sad thing is, when I was a kid it was because it seemed so long, high and old.  When I lived in the Greenfield area, it was because it looked so decrepit I was sure it was going to crumble apart under me.  I wonder if it’s been renovated yet.  At the same time, the other river bridges in the area didn’t bother me at all.

The best sign that my old fear of bridges has almost completely abated is the complete nonchalance with which I drove over the new bridge from New Brunswick to Prince Edward Island, around where the Borden ferry used to run.  I was too busy marveling at the engineering, and wishing my Sentra was higher so I could have a better view.

Saturday, January 08, 2005

Special Protection For Janitors?

This proposal by Massachusetts politicians is just absurd.  A company changes hands, they can do whatever they want.  They ought to give you a chance to prove yourselves or have modest notice, but maybe their policy is to grant all cleaning contracts to a particular vendor, or to have in-house staff.  It is absolutely no business of the state’s whether a cleaning company retains its work.

On a related note, the building my office is in has gone through probably six cleaning companies in as many years.  Most of them were primarily non-English speaking crews.  Invariably they’d start off doing a great job and making the previous cleaners look bad.  Then they’d slack or get sloppy.  Not just with cleaning, but with things like forgetting to lock doors and set alarms.

All of them seemed to have ways of cutting corners or neglecting things in order to do the work expediently enough to make it worth the money the building owner was willing to pay.  It looks like it’s a thankless business.  What I didn’t like about my stint as a janitor at one of my first jobs was the repetition.  I like doing a task and having it be done.  I hate having to do the same thing over and over and over, having it not remain complete.  Or at least look obviously accomplished, with a superior job being clearly superior when people look at it.

I always found it disturbing that things that might not be treated as trash and thrown out without being labeled usually had to be labeled “basura” so the cleaning people would know it was “trash.” Can’t they at least learn the word “trash” for the sake of their employment?

One of the cleaning crews that had the account in my building was one guy and his two little kids; a girl about 5 and a boy about 8, at my best guess.  The work that was done by crews of as many as six people, he would fly through by himself, with his kids emptying trash barrels at each desk (they do the public areas of the building plus a couple of the tenants) and doing some of the toilet cleaning.

The current crew started out being three women who looked like they were college students.  They were great, until one of them left and was replaced by a teenage boy who obviously hated being there and went through the motions glumly.  Their trade secret seems to be using such strong smelling cleaners in the bathrooms, you hopefully won’t notice they didn’t really clean properly.  I think they clean the urinals every couple months and hope nobody notices the stench in between.

My employment as a janitor didn’t go well because I couldn’t bring myself to do a cursory, corner-cutting job that most people would consider passable.  The work was structured with just that expectation.  Made sense for the company.  In my world, they needed seven or eight janitors for some 30 apartment building.  They employed five.  Probably a smart business move.  I just wasn’t cut out to fit into the scheme.  As, apparently, most people weren’t.  They went through eleven people in four of the five janitor positions (the other guy was a lifer) in the course of a year.

But I digress.

No reason at all that people should be unable to change janitorial services, or hire and fire individual janitors, at will.  Just like any other job.  No reason to give illegals who work for cleaning services any special dispensation.

Friday, January 07, 2005

A Year Ago The Sixth

I wrote this yesterday, never finished it, and have no idea what, if anything, else I might have intended to say.  I think I was in ramble mode.  That almost never happens.  Anyway, here is what I wrote about the sixth:

A short time ago I remembered that it’s the 6th.  That means a year ago I was on my way home from Fresno.  It also means that Sadie was a work in progress, even though we didn’t know it at the time.  She’s come a long way in a year.

As have we all.  It was a bit strange, arriving home, married, but wifeless until I returned to fetch her on the 31st.  That was a surreal few weeks.  It felt like nothing had changed, and was easy to believe the whole thing wasn’t real, that I’d wake up and find I had a hell of an imagination playing tricks on me.

Today Sadie is a demanding three month old squirt who thinks she’s twice her age.  Right now she’s playing in an exersaucer, which is the answer to her problem with boredom.  She’s not really big enough for it yet, but with a big towel folded up under her feet, she manages surprisingly well.  She’s happier standing, or at least sitting.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Keep Them Safe, Keep Them Calm

This sounds like when I was a kid, except the part about the drugs.  Those didn’t start seriously coming along until my younger brother’s time.  Plus I’d never have been a candidate for them anyway.

I grew up surrounded by woods, swamp, cranberry bogs, sandpits, old buildings and equpment, a sawmill, with the nearest house 1/3 of a mile away.  We’d spend whole days off in the woods.  My mother preferred us not to come home bleeding, but otherwise nothing much mattered.  We’d not quite make it when jumping a ditch, or go wading in the brook, and come home wet.  We made bows and arrows.  We made slingshots, or had store bought ones.  We used sharp tools.

Playgrounds were a real kick, especially when they had the merry go rounds that wouldn’t pass the liability test these days.  It was great if someone was there who could push it up to dizzying speeds.

When I drive by the modern playgrounds, my thoughts alternate between thinking they’re cool, with the big wooden structures unlike anything we had and, and hopelessly lame, having been neutered for maximum safety.  Are we supposed to raise our kids to believe nothing has risk and they will never get hurt?  Oh please.  While we’re at it, let’s teach them they should never expect to have fun or be responsible either.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Milestones and Reflections

My old blog is about to hit 100,000.  Woohoo!  At the new blog, we’re not so far behind, at 96k and change.

This is slightly misleading, as the meter for the “old blog” is for the blog, the original Blogspot blog, and most of all, the largest source of traffic these days, the Carnival of the Capitalists page.  There’s a lot of residual search traffic and archival link hits, but most of the traffic is CotC.

At any rate, it’s pretty cool to be on the verge of 200,000 overall, and far more (44,090 plus 388 before Deb moved off Blogspot) if you include the old Accidental Jedi blog in our little bloglomerate.  Hey look, a new coinage of the realm!  Not that this is anywhere close to folks who started out around the same time as us or later, but set a goal of traffic galore, or had a focus that got them there, intended or not.

I agree with Deb that our posts were more interesting to more people in the past.  I always “blogged personal,” as she put it way back.  The change in our lives has made it more so, perhaps by too much.  Or too high a proportion, at any rate.

In checking the stats for the old blog, which I’d not done very often until I noticed it was approaching 100,000, I noticed I am number one with this post for ordering fast food pda.  In that post, I imagined the idea of ordering at fast food places from your PDA or an in-car computer.  I gather there is some movement along those lines.  At any rate, wireless PDA systems being used by restaurant personnel in conjunction with POS systems.  It’s cool both seeing that idea again, and seeing it as an active search hit all this time later.

I Don’t Know, It’s A Mystery

Jeff Soyer has been blogging up a storm.  Must be a New Year’s resolution to post more or something…

I must say, I have never been into reading mysteries.  The most significant one I can remember reading are the Brains Benton Mysteries when I was a kid, gifts from my sister.  Alas, I have only the sixth one still in my collection.  The others long since were lost or destroyed in the course of life.

Anyway, Jeff almost makes me want to run out and read Agatha Christie, with his glowing ode to her books.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

More Reruns

First…
Mahwidge Is What Bwings Us Toghethah Today

So on the third of January last year, I hurriedly put up this post to confirm what Deb had said in her original post, rerun here.  I find it cool to go back and see the comments.  Not rerunning that one, as it is not a post of substance except in what it confirms.

Then:
I’m back

On the seventh I posted about my arrival home, sans bride, and some more about the trip, wedding, and followup plans.  Around this same time is when Sadie was working on getting herself established and making the cross country commute more exciting a few weeks later.

And Also That Day:
A Few Las Vegas Pictures

Views from our hotel room and of the outside of the hotel.  Only a few of the bunch I took.  They still look breathtaking to me.

And Now the Biggie, which I rerun completely here, though it is worth seeing the original (note that any links to Deb’s old blog are broken unless I’ve updated them to point to reruns at AV):

Jedi Wedding 04: A New Hope

I can’t begin to say how happy I am, and how lacking in hope I was before a couple months ago.  I’m married!  To a beautiful woman who adores me and sees me as the most wonderful guy in the world, as much an antidote to past hurts for her as she is for me.

It all started with blogging.  In a sense, it started around March or April, when I was still new and Deb first noticed and was intrigued by me.  I first noticed her blog sometime after she moved to Blogmosis, as far as I can recall.  The big thing I remember is she went straight from new discovery to one of my favorites immediately.  Before long (on July 6, to be exact), I read her About page and commented that, alas, I was too old for her.  She replied that she should have said “likes older men” there, which made me go “hmmmmm...” Indeed, I might have wondered more about “I appreciate the compliment more than you would probably suspect” had I been thinking straight.  One of her concepts on her about page was the “house test.” Could she bear to share a house with someone?  The answer for me was yes before we ever met in person.  That still astounds me she knew without meeting, but as far as we can tell, it’s absolutely true.  All that time together in her apartment and hotels, and hours on end in the car, left us dying to live in the same house and happy with the idea of driving across the country together.

A couple times I commented on her blog, and she e-mailed me in reply, but I was a slacker about e-mailing back.  Finally, on October 3rd, in response to a funny comment I left, she e-mailed me with a subject of “fan mail,” and said: “One of these days I’m going to provoke you into answering when I send you a silly little note.  ”

That got a reply from me, naturally, and could be considered the real beginning of things.  Still, there was October 15th, when she appreciated that I was the only one who really seemed to “get” what she was saying - ironically - about marriage.  Finally, there was the foot post on October 20th.  Wow!  My reaction to it was far more inexplicably visceral and intense than the comment “Ooooh, yummy feetses!” could capture.  Or for that matter the “…inspiringly purty feet” comment subsequently.  That to me was the big milestone.

That started some “virtual flirting.” We’ve exchanged somewhere over 1000 e-mails since then.  Our first AIM chat was 4.5 hours.  Our first phone call was 8 hours, and it is seldom we have talked for less than 2 hours at a time since then.  By the end of October, the plans for my visit at the end of the year were underway, and we were discussing marriage in Vegas, her moving here, and so forth.  The phone thing is funny, as getting me to talk on the phone these days is like pulling teeth.

I have never been so anti-nervous with anyone in my life.  It was like meeting a new best friend and simply hitting it off in a “shared brain” way.  It’s uncanny how we agree on most things, think of the same things at the same times or say things in unison, and can finish each other’s sentences or answer each other’s questions before the other one finishes asking.  For instance, “Is it just me, or did they…” “Yup.” *Funny look* “If you’re asking did the wedding chapel people treat us extra nice, then ‘yes’.” We both had the impression that the wedding chapel people thought we were particularly cute and genuine, and so were especially nice to us rather than doing the rote in and out get ‘em hitched thing. 

Almost everything that comes up we either agree on or can live with the difference easily; usually the former.  She likes my puns and jokes!  Now that is compatibility.

The sense of rightness and complete lack of nervousness was amazing for me.  There was no doubt or nervousness, ever.  I am all about nervousness, to the point where I almost never dated because of what it does to me.  Between already “knowing” each other, a little boldness by Deb, and the comfortable nature of online communications, that helped get it going.  But there was more than that.  It was as if we’d always known each other in lifetimes without measure. 

It wasn’t falling in love.  It was finally discovering the whereabouts someone we’d loved forever and saying “oh, there you are!  You’ve been hiding on the opposite coast.” Nothing like making it difficult, being separated by a continent and thirteen years.

This alacrity is not as strange as it sounds.  Her parents, who are way cool, were married three weeks after they met, more than 33 years ago.  I told my mother not to be surprised if there was no “real wedding” and I simply turned up married.  Despite she and seemingly everyone but me having been irked at my younger brother for going to a JP and letting people know after the fact, she was totally cool with that.  I learned that she and my father had done similar.  Someone they knew was getting married at the Methodist church in Bryantville, so they borrowed the church and minister immediately afterward, and had just them and two friends for witnesses.  I never knew that my parents didn’t care for having a big wedding.  That, as with most things, is something Deb and I found a remarkable degree of agreement on.

Another indicator how fast the whole thing went is by her birthday on November 5th I was more than ready to send a present.  That took the form of a wireless keyboard and mouse for her laptop, so typing wouldn’t hurt her.  That was quite a nice surprise.  I forget if it was that shipment or the next, but I also sent her a stack of print pictures.  That was a big hit.  After Thanksgiving, I sent another box.  This one had goodies, gifts for her and her parents and, at the bottom of the box, the famous warm socks.  I didn’t mean it to be the most romantic thing ever.  It was more a joke about her moving to my cold climate.  It just shows you never know, guys, if the context it right.  Of course, she was thoughtful too, surprising me touching cards and notes in the mail a number of times.

The frustrating thing was she in Fresno and I in Massachusetts.  When and how would we meet?  I fairly quickly noticed the confluence of holidays at the end of the year and the fact those are surrounded by slow days for my big client.  We looked at flights and timing.  The marriage was better taking place in 2004, a new tax year, plus it fit the Star Wars episode numbering used in the title here.  We’d originally planned for her to move to Massachusetts, which she declared the ideal scenario with no persuading by me, in June or July.  Ha!  It didn’t take long to know we’d never last all that time.  Our phone bills sure wouldn’t take it.  During a mere three weeks of separation, we are averaging at least two hours a day on the phone, plus several e-mails.

We settled on the flight that left on Christmas and returned on the 6th because it was over $100 lower than tickets for 12/26 - 1/5 we’d originally considered.  That left me minimal coverage needed at the office.  So by the time a month had passed, I had the flight booked, the move planned, and had put my search for a better apartment that would become ours into high gear.

We chose 1-2-4 chosen as a wedding date because it’s a neat number combination.  Almost nobody on my side knew it, and one of the people I did tell freaked enough to cement my silence.  It’s hard to convey how certain it’s the right thing I was.  Deb told her family, which helped nudge her brother into planning a wedding to his girlfriend near the same time as ours.

I flew to LAX on American, then on an American Eagle flight to Fresno.  At the Fresno airport, I came walking down the hall, saw her, grinned (as Deb put it, “I know you!"), made a beeline in her direction, shared a perfect hug and off we went.  If there was any uncertainty at all, the moment we met in person ended it.  We’ve had a wonderful week or so together, some of which I have posted about here.  That included going to Monterey to meet Ith and Nin, which we highly recommend.  They are amazingly cool people.

What Deb said about the relationship is exactly right.  She’s my best friend, soulmate, lover, missing piece of the incomplete puzzle that is me.  I feel lucky and amazed every day.

The wedding day itself was funny.  We drove for 7 hours to get to Vegas, after getting our usual early start.  Traffic sucked big time in places, if not nearly so much as it did for people heading the other way.  The Strip is a sight to behold.  Now that I have, there’ll be no particular need ever to return there again.  Then again, the hotel is awfully nice, and the view from our window was wonderful.

I always say if it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.  We seem to do a lot of that.  After looking at rings online for weeks, including unique titanium ones, we ended up at a jewlery store, Rogers, in a mall, just before closing the night before the wedding.  We got matching, white gold bands that are nothing fancy, but are still gorgeous.  Even if they do scratch easily.  She didn’t want a diamond.  Just as well, given my budget.  Mine is wider than hers, as befits my size, and mine is 12 1/2 to her 6, but color and style match perfectly, just as we do.  Despite the last minute, we had a perfect experience buying them.  We both liked the sales guy so much of course we weren’t going to check any other stores.  He was funny, personable, and treated us just the same as a customer making a fancy purchase worth thousands.  Plus he was cute, or so she tells me.  To avoid forgetting them, they got packed in the laptop bag.  Thus they’d either get here with us, or we’d be even more seriously bumming.

After arriving in Vegas, we checked into the hotel and resisted the urge to collapse.  Drove down the strip attempting to find Third Street at the opposite end.  Managed to get confused after bearing left onto Fourth, but found Third anyway, and finally the marriage bureau for our license.  Busy place!  Luckily we beat the huge line.

If you ever do this, beware.  Outside the marriage bureau lurk a pack of saleswolves on the sidewalk, accosting couples as they go into and out of the building to get their licenses.  They represent some of the various local wedding chapels, and thrust their offers at you mercilesssly.  Pick me!  Pick me!  We had planned simply to go to the nearby courthouse and get a civil marriage, rather than do a chapel.

The smart saleswolf got us on the other side of the road from the main pack, as we got out of Deb’s truck.  He was a great guy, personable, well presented, not pushy in a subtle way that set him apart, and his chapel was closest.  We managed to get past them on the way in for the license, but man, they tore into our susceptible flesh when we walked out with the marriage license.  I have about five info packets with offers I kept for posterity.  It was a riot.

We ended up going with the original one, Vegas Wedding Chapel, which was as good a deal and nice a place as any.  We gave the minister $50 instead of the recommended $15 - $30 because he was so great.  We either hit a real nerve with them, or they do their jobs well there.  They thought the way we met was cool.

I managed to start crying during the ceremony, while Deb stayed stoic.  I seem to keep getting all emotional and doing that.  Then there’s all the giggling we both did!  There may or may not be any pictures.  One of the guys takes a roll and sends the film off with you.  Unless you pay a huge amount extra for digital.  One service they provide that’s great is to get you your official marriage certificate in about a week, rather than waiting up to four months for it.  Things like that add to the cost, so be aware you will inevitably not spend the low, base amount the chapel you use officially offers.  You could, but it’s unlikely, and it is their job to make money by selling other services and goods.  The certificate is worth it, as Deb has to use it to change her name on things in this few weeks before moving.  As much as possible, anyway.

We had no idea at the time that Britney Spears was in Vegas, several hours behind us in her joke wedding publicity fling.  No, it was not the same chapel.  No, we didn’t see her.  It does add a funny dimension to our own timing and story for posterity.

I already wrote of our first meal after we married, which was a variety of items from Nathan’s Famous on the food court of the Luxor, followed by ice cream.  Mmmm… ice cream!  Rather amusing first meal, but it was late and we were there for getting married, no frills, no other reason to be in Vegas.  Besides playing the ring toss at Circus Circus, of course.  We have both been duly yelled at by people we know at work for failing to take in the more costly culinary delights of the city.  Heh.

We had a wonderful drive back to Fresno, with a scenic detour to Utah for lunch.  On Monday the 5th her brother married a wonderful woman in a courthouse ceremony.  It ended up being less simple than planned.  While they married, Deb and I picked up their cake, took it to her grandmother’s, and helped setup for the reception there.  It was fun, meeting the extended in-laws and getting to know Deb’s grandmother.  It felt a little like having our own reception, but with the focus neatly on someone else.  There might be pictures of us from that day, eventually.  Deb’s other brother’s girlfriend, who is perfect and should not be allowed to escape, is into photography.  Other people took many pictures too, including of us.  Naturally I forgot my camera.

The next day I had to leave.  That was unbelievably difficult!  I surprised Deb by calling her after I landed in LAX.  She wouldn’t have expected to hear from me until the next day, or maybe late that night, except e-mail updates from my phone.  It’s the little things sometimes guys.

That’s the basic story.  It arose from our blogging and being on the same wavelength on most things.  It arose from Deb being just assertive enough with her nagging interest in me to get my attention and then ramp it up to self-sustaining levels.

I find myself having to explain what a blog is over and over when telling people how we met online, when I don’t simply leave it at “we met online because we both run fairly popular web sites, read each other and started talking.” Meeting online is right on the threshhold of being considered completely normal rather than odd.  The reaction still depends on the person hearing the news, but most people think about how you can really learn plenty about each other ahead of time this way, and go in more certain.  It also meant, for us, falling in love with an amazing mind and intriguing personality to such a degree that looks wouldn’t have mattered.  Not that I mind being considered “cute” or “handsome,” and not that I mind her being beautiful, almost pixy-like when her glasses are off, but we were predisposed toward each other regardless.

I highly recommend meeting people online.  I recommend being open to meeting people through blogging, if you are a single blogger.  Who knows, you could meet the love of your life.

It really works!
--

And The Rest…

Wedding pictures from the actual ceremony in Vegas, at our rebel attire, family (and associated stress) free event.

A better picture from the fifth, at the wedding reception of Deb’s brother and his wife, pictured on the left.

A closeup of us at the same event.

There you have it; a nice retrospective.  Memories for those who were following along at the time, and something fun to see for those who are new here.

Early Hint

We were already planning for the big day on November 1, 2003 when I dropped this hint.

It was crystal clear in a matter of days, as the whole thing didn’t go serious until October 21.  When I posted on November 1 we knew we’d do it.  It was like lightning.

Saturday, January 01, 2005

A rerun.

First posted on the original Accidental Jedi blog, January 1, 2004:

Leap of Faith

Tomorrow I’m going to do something I would have considered myself absolutely insane for doing a year ago.  I don’t mean eccentric-like-your-great-aunt-Rosie insane, either; I mean lock-you-up-you’re-a-danger-to-self-and-others insane.  Hell, when I started this little blogaventure last March, I’d have committed myself if I was planning to do what I’m now planning to do.

Y’all know where this is going, don’t you?

Jay and I have been planning all along to go to Vegas, because it’s close and he’s never been there and with any weather luck we can go to the Grand Canyon the next day before hurrying home in that end-of-vacation panic that always seems to grip one the last day or two of said vacation.

Convenient location to be heading for, as it turns out.

I’m doing something tomorrow that I never in my wildest dreams imagined I’d do: I’m getting married.  And not only am I getting married, but I’m marrying a man who for years I believed didn’t--couldn’t--exist.  I never expected to meet someone who fits with me so perfectly that it feels like we’ve known each other for several lifetimes.  I never expected to find someone who would laugh at my bullshit and cry at my jokes and hold me when I need him and let me hold him when he needs me, who knows the importance of good thick socks and the power of a hug. 

He’s my best friend, my lover, and the light of my life, and I’m a very lucky girl.

As I’ve said before, I’m not going to let this one get away.  So I told him that of course I would marry him, and I’m spiriting him off to Vegas before he can come to his senses.

Wish us luck, ‘eh?

Friday, December 31, 2004

Only A Year And A Day

So a year ago yesterday (sorry, a day late doing this) (and some, because it’s taken me much of the day to go through pictures in between being too sick to function), the Monterrey monsoon was over, and it was a fine day for driving from Gilroy back to Fresno, via some stops.

Marina Beach was one of those.  San Juan Bautista was another.  Plus Donut Nation in Los Banos, but no pictures of that.  At the risk of tastelessness due to current world events, here are some pictures.

As always, click for larger versions.  The beach pictures were inherently smaller and so the larger size is the original full size, less than 800 pixels wide.  Older camera.  The Bautista pictures are a full 800 in the larger size.  A lot of it is simply scenic, perhaps not anything outrageously special.

This is before you scramble down to the beach, looking roughly west toward the peninsula.  The water in all of these is rougher and colored differently than it might have had there not just been such a storm…

I was impressed with the surf.  This was my first encounter with the Pacific.  I waded in the Gulf of Mexico in 1988 or so, in Galveston.  And of course I grew up near the Atlantic.

It didn’t seem to bother the duck, or whatever type of bird it was:

Sometimes you just have to get wet.  Luckily there was a convenient place to change pants…

Finally, the obligatory pictures of each of us, including one in which Deb appears to be fleeing the big waves…

San Juan Bautista was one of the early missions, many of them setup by one intensely dedicated priest.  It’s noted for being right on the San Andreas and yet… being there still.  I am enough into the geology thing that seeing the San Andreas was more of a thrill than it would be for most of the population.

Here are the bells as they appear from the vicinity of the San Andreas exhibit…

Here’s a plaque on a rock about the San Andreas exhibit, most readable if you click for the 800 pixel wide version…

The nicer looking of the two directions down the walk that goes right along the fault…

Another look down at the fault, along the line of brush where the land drops off on the other side of the walk.  It’s really not much to look at, but it doesn’t need to be to command respect…

Finally, some pictures in the gardens behind the mission and its exhibits.  The second one is fuzzy, but still nice in an almost impressionist sort of way…

And that’s it for a year ago December 30th.  We did nothing special the 31st, and on the first we bought the rings:

At least that’s the day we think we remember doing it.  We were trying to get to the jewelry stores before everything closed early that day.  We checked one we’d been recommended, that was not in a mall, and it was actually closed for the day.  At least we had some idea what we wanted, having started looking at rings online long before I went out there.

There you have it, a bit of boring history and some relatively cool pictures.  No doubt there will be more along these lines Sunday, so watch out.

Thank goodness for our friendly local 24 hour CVS!

When did everything start closing early on New Year’s Eve?  I don’t remember Wal-Mart, grocery stores, et cetera closing early on the eve, just on the day.  Have I been missing something all these years?

Wednesday, December 29, 2004

One Year Ago

On the 28th of December last year, Deb and I made the trek from Fresno to Monterey to meet and hang out with Ith and Nin.  That was cool.

We stayed overnight on Monterey Bay, as reported in a post titled to hint at what was about to happen, then returned to Cannery Row and went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the 29th.  In the pouring rain.  Later the 29th, we drove to Gilroy and stayed a night there, waiting out the rain before meandering back to Fresno.  One of our stops was Marina Beach on Monterey Bay, and as far as I can determine, I only ever posted one picture.  That despite having several cool pictures.  Maybe I’ll rectify that.  Along with some Sadie and other pictures I need to post.

That was fun.  Who knows when we’ll get there again.  By the time we get around to visiting the Jedi parents, they will probably be in Utah rather than Fresno.  Though that’s subject to a final decision when the time comes.  Ith and Nin will probably be in Utah as well, possibly the same town.  Convenient.  But less of an excuse to go to Monterey.  It looks like the target destinations in California in the future will be the Bay area and San Diego.  We’ll see.  Before we can travel, we need to make enough money to live on, and perhaps have slightly older kids.  Eventually, if not every time, we’ll drive rather than fly.

But I digress.  A year ago there was no Sadie, not even in the oven, unless you count the dream I’d had in which she, as a child of perhaps as old as seven, chastised me for being slow to bring her and the other potential children into the world.  If the dream is any indication, she has a sister and a brother waiting as well.  I wasn’t at all surprised she latched on as soon as we were married.  We sometimes ask her if she’s sure she should have picked us as parents.  Sounds mystical, but that’s how it often feels.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Regionalism?

I keep forgetting to post this.

We were riding around one night recently, admiring the Christmas lights in the course of the drive, and Deb asked me what was up with the individual lights in windows.

I was jaw droppingly surprised, and explained they were essentially electric candles, very common around here all my life.  Something to do with an ancient practice of putting candles in windows to light the way for the Christ child, or something.  Many houses use only those and perhaps an inside Christmas tree visible in a window; no outside lights.

She had never seen them and I was surprised to learn it’s apparently a regional thing.  Is anyone else aware of it being regional to use the candle-like single bulb Christmas lights in windows?  If it really is regional, I wonder how widely it is practiced.

Saturday, December 25, 2004

A Year Ago

A year ago I was all excited, and a little nervous, because I was preparing to fly to California to meet Deb, the Accidental Jedi.  It was kind of an abbrieviated day.  Get up, pack, have dinner and do presents, drop stuff at home, grab my luggage, get dropped at the airport by my brother-in-law, breeze through security and then wait.

Then an interminable flight to LAX.  When I saw the lights of Denver I thought we were there and was very disappointed.  Then a puddle jumper to Fresno, for which the wait was longer than the flight.

Finally!  At about midnight Pacific time, I was in the Fresno attempting-to-be-international airport, walking down the hall, grinning like an idiot as I approached Deb.

Now here we are, one year later.  What a year!

The Calm Before The Presents

I remember being a kid, not being able to get up and at the presents under the tree soon enough.  It was so exciting!

Then I became more relaxed about it, as did each of us in turn as we aged.  In my teens it was like “okay, whenever.” This got even worse after I was on my own.  Especially once I only had to go one place for dinner and presents.

I’d wake up and say “eleven o’clock!?” Then I’d even be late for dinner if I didn’t move it.

This year Sadie doesn’t know any better, so she’s still sacked out, sleeping like a teenager, while we’re already up.  With a few breaks to eat or have a new diaper, she can sleep ten hours no problem, and as much as six at a stretch.

So here I am, up first, having my coffee, in the calm before the presents both in the today sense, and in the “not yet having the kid get up at 5:00 eager to dive under the tree” sense.  Since I started typing this, Deb has gotten up and she’s a bit eager, but I don’t think she’ll ever get up at 5:00, wake up the whole house, or not wake up the house and just go open everything.  I seem to recall a tale of one of my younger cousins doing that when she was little.

Guess we’ll get to it soon though, since we’ll have to be leaving…

Friday, December 24, 2004

Not-The-Baby Pictures

This will mostly be pictures from Edaville Sunday night, and most of those I am putting “below the fold” so those who have modems can choose to load them or not.  I decided I needed a post with various pictures that are not Sadie, as I have accumulated some and been meaning to post them.

First up, food porn.  As opposed to foot porn.  Deb made her Best Meatloaf Yet the other night, and memorialized it with a picture.  Perhaps next time she’ll make a quantified recipe of it based on what she did this time, and that’ll get into the recipe carnival.  As usual, click each picture if you’d like to see a larger version…

Next up, the older two of my three grandnieces.  I’ll probably put the youngest in with some more Sadie pics soon.  The first one is Katherine, attempting to escape the camera for a cool result.  The second one is Emily, the oldest, who was absolutely crazy about Sadie and vice-versa.  These are Sadie’s first cousins once removed, to be exact.  As opposed to my cousin Joyce, who is my second cousin once removed.  That is, my great-grandmother, Sadie, was her grandmother Bertha’s sister.  But I digress…

Sadie does make a cameo in this one, which is in a caboose on display at Edaville.  That’s my brother Gary behind Deb and Sadie.  He turned fifty on Tuesday, which I believe makes me officially “old.” Okay, not really.  It makes me feel old though.  There are five of us, born 1954, 1957, 1961, 1967 and 1971.  I’m in the middle, and maybe it makes me feel old, but no reason it should make my two younger brothers feel especially old.

I wonder… does it make my mother feel old?

This is a big bear or whatever it’s supposed to be, at Edaville, which just begs for posed pictures.

This is our minimalist tree.  We have ornaments I still haven’t gotten hangers for yet.  Sadie’s stocking says Sadie Rose on it.  It came with a glitter pen, which took about two days to dry for some reason.  The present in the front is for me.  Deb is the master of curly ribbon and went all out on that, and I have some pictures on the camera of Sadie latched onto the ribbon playing with it.  It’s the most she has ever latched onto something like that.  She also managed to knock it over last night, laying in front of the pile of gifts.

Indeed, she’s being frustrating because of the teeth coming in, but she’s also exhibiting new things all the time.  She figured out she can propel herself along the floor on her back using her feet.  She pushed off the blanket, onto the rug, and against the recliner in the living room, and in the computer room she came to a halt head-butting the spare car seat.  She also specifically asked to play with her baby gym last night.  She’s never done that.  The closest thing is when she makes it fairly clear she’d like the Pooh mobile to be wound up.  She seems to love the giraffe that’s posed on the gift pile, and she will now hold things like dolls in both hands.  She did that for the first time when one of the previously pictured cousins handed her one at their house.  Yesterday she held her fancy rattle for an extended time and shook it in what might have been an intentional manner.  She certainly let go of it intentionally.

But I digress.  The tree, stocking and presents…

The rest of this is pictures from Edaville, like this one:

Okay, strike the “below the fold” part.  I have never used that in Expression Engine, so I just tested it.  I found that there was no way to view the “extended entry” portion, and it didn’t even show using the permalink or comments link to the post.  That is just wrong.  So here are the rest of the pictures, right in plain sight.  We’ll figure out what the extended entry problem is later.

This next one is an attempt to capture the train going by across the water from where we were in the main part of Edaville.  The string of small lights marks the top of the train, and along the lower sides there are floodlights that show the passengers the unlit scenes along the 5 1/2 mile route.  None of the pics here are from the train itself, which is quite amazing.  The part of the park shown has a mass of lights and displays, obviously, and a bunch of rides oriented mainly toward kids.  There’s a store, a gift shop, pictures with Santa, and a museum/exhibit on cranberries and cranberry picking and cultivation techniques and equipment.  My mother got to point out to Deb the dry pick machine she used to run; the one that used cranberry boxes.  Later they started using burlap bags and that culled out any harvest work by people who couldn’t lift them.  Eventually most bogs went to wet picking, which gives you juice and sauce quality berries.  Dry picked berries are the ones you buy for cooking.  But I digress.

Thursday, December 23, 2004

Christmas Plans and Traditions Poll/Discussion

Ith has a Christmas poll for you.  Whether you go out for Chinese and a movie on Christmas, or traverse lots of rivers and woods to get to Grandma’s house, she’s looking for your answers in her comments or in a post of your own.

This is one such post.

I traditionally spend the day somewhere else.  This year will be a mix of here, obviously, where we have actual presents and an actual family to open them here, and the usual going elsewhere.  Lately that has been my sister’s most years.  In the past it had been my grandmother’s.  It has changed over the years.  For my sister it has gotten hard, with the MS (for which the drugs are $1500 a month, so the new insurance company has started jerking her around), so a lot of the cooking will be done by my mother and grandmother.  But she has more room for a bunch of us.  As in at least twelve.

When we have more kids and they are enough older to make it matter, we may stay home, have dinner at home, or someday actually host dinner for the multitudes that are my family.

I am not sure what’s on the menu.  Probably turkey and something, which will most likely be ham.  Sometimes there’s roast beef or pork as one of two meats.  If there’s one, it’s usually turkey and sometimes ham.  One of the most wonderful things ever is ham with my late grandfather’s raisin sauce.

For dessert, which is the main thing my sister is making, there will probably be pumpkin pie, another kind or two, including likely lemon meringue that one of her kids is crazy about, and date nut bars for me because I mentioned how much I liked them last Sunday.  My mother always made them and I haven’t had them for years.  Want the recipe.  We will probably bring the cobbler-like cranberry pie, which will be something different.

We will probably eat about 1:00, which means probably by 2:00.  Which means “early,” to folks who have evening dinners.

Favorite gift when I was a child?  I can’t remember offhand.  Is that sad or what?  Not sure I remember or if one stands out as an adult either.  There are gifts I could expound upon as memorable, or praise in some way or another, but favorite… well, as an adult perhaps the pocket computer I got in 1983 would count.  As opposed to the winter coat I got in 1982 and am still wearing 22 years later, which was an excellent gift, but notable more for its longevity and extended usefulness.

I have nothing intensely specific on my wish list.  I wouldn’t mind Spiderman, Spiderman 2, and some other videos, but I hadn’t given it much thought, and gifts from relatives this year will be for the baby, now that I have one.  And that is gift enough for me.

Unique tradition?  Not really.  Until my uncle moved to Maine, it was traditional to go to his place on Christmas eve.  We tend to be into stockings even for adults.  It hasn’t been that long since my mother last did one for me, and around the time I was in my teens we started doing a stocking for her, which lasted many years.

Deb and I are at the start of making new traditions and Sadie’s memories.  We’ve declared Christmas eve to be “ours” to balance the running off elsewhere on Christmas itself. 

We recently talked about when to open presents, and a tradition her family had of opening a single present the night before, which for the kids took the edge off waiting.  Maybe I’ll let Deb open one of hers tomorrow night.  In a sense we got that by going to my uncle’s and getting a present from him, and some years we’d get to open something else too.  I always thought it was weird to open everything before morning.  Unless maybe there’s a practical reason, like traveling on Christmas itself.

Anyway, help Ith out; go comment, or write a post on the topic and link her Christmas post.

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Checking It Twice

Ha!  Here’s an amusing, comment-provoking artifact.  I was searching on my computer at the office to see if I had a handy mailing list for holiday Christmas cards for clients and vendors.  I came across my Christmas list for the year 2000.

My family demands one of these most years, else they have no clue what to get me.  However, nobody mentioned it this year because I am no longer single and childless.  The emphasis is always on the kids in the families that have them.  I do now, so Sadie will get the presents.

Some years even I had no idea what to list, but apparently in 2000 I went all out to come up with a variety of items.  That people could afford.  Sometimes as a joke I would put something expensive nobody could possibly buy for me.  But hey, they asked what I wanted…

So let your mind go back four years, long before Deb, less than two years after I left my full time job to be self-employed, a year after I became the only one of several partners working full time for the business, a year after I got my previous apartment, in Quincy, after sharing a house with my stepsister for several years, two years after my peak “watching movies in theaters as they were released” year, and less than a year after I got my first ever VCR.  Here, verbatim, is the list, in approximately the same format as in Word, with everything I have since gotten or that Deb has, as best I can remember, in italics:

Jay’s Famous Annual Christmas List
For the year 2000

For the Apartment

· Grater, one of those big metal ones that does something different on each of the 4 sides is what I am picturing
· Can never have too many paring knives
· Or anyway, something specifically designed for slicing cheese might be cool
· A couple more spatulas wouldn’t hurt, for non-stick pans specifically
· Tightly sealable containers made for storing cereal
· And other such storage containers for things like pancake mix, flour, etc.
· Only kind of pans I could possibly use would be a couple small to medium sized saucepans
· A container appropriate for maple syrup
· Wouldn’t mind some kind of blender/food processor thingie, the easier designed for cleanup the better
· I wouldn’t mind a couple wooden spoons
· Decent wooden cutting board (scientifically proven more sanitary than plastic)
· Spoon holder thingie for top of stove
· I am most in need of large plates and cereal bowls when it comes to dishes, but not direly so
· Set of measuring cups
· Some new mid-sized towels, by which I mean ones that many would call “bath size” but to me are just comfortably oversized hand sized.  About the size some of you have seen me put under dishes on the counter.
· I wouldn’t object to a dish strainer thingie in a color that goes with the kitchen (unfortunately that means shades of beige, white, yellow, peach, orange rather than colors I personally prefer like blue, purple or maybe green… though green would kind of fit and blue wouldn’t clash)

More General

· Any Beatles CD, though especially interested in White Album
· Videos of
Star Wars 4: A New Hope
Star Wars 5: The Empire Strikes Back
ET
The two Toy Story films
Beauty and the Beast!
The Wizard of Oz
Dogma
Princess Mononoke
The Die Hard films
The Truman Show
Fantasia
Fantasia 2000
High Fidelity
The Sure Thing
Life of Brian
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
The Lion King
Aladdin
Sleeping Beauty
Lady and the Tramp
Jungle Book
Bambi
The Little Mermaid
Cinderella
Pocahontas
Clueless
The Breakfast Club
Top Gun
When Harry Met Sally
The Love Letter (big screen version with Tom Selleck, Ellen Degeneres, etc., not the Hallmark one with Jennifer Jason Leigh)
The Green Mile
Titan A.E.
The Batman films
The Superman films
Simply Irresistible
Every James Bond film
Armageddon
Deep Impact

· Gift certificates for any major book store or cinema chain in the general area, Filenes, South Shore Plaza in general, any place videos are sold at a reasonable price, Best Buy, Comp USA, Bed and Bath or similar stores, etc.
· Snow broom (Dad knows what I mean)
· Shirts of the long sleeved button down Oxford variety, size 18, 34/35 sleeves, basically any color but white and any pattern that doesn’t accentuate my need to lose 50 pounds.  I tend to prefer ones that have a certain… weight and texture to them, which I know doesn’t convey what I mean, but most shirts labeled Oxford seem to have it to some degree.  I have had good luck with Stafford brand Oxfords, and just bought the same thing in Van Heusen which seem to be thinner material and are a higher percentage cotton, but have traditionally been a brand I’ve had luck with.  I’ve had mixed results with L.L. Bean shirts.
· Pants of the “Dockers” genre, which can be Dockers, The Original Khaki Company, Hagar and others.  Not the waistbands that have stretchy sections in them.  Waist 40, Leg 30.
· Socks, as long as they aren’t short ones, and have a reasonable degree of thickness to the material.  I prefer colors other than white, but do like multiple socks of the same color/pattern making them fairly generic to match up.

There you have it, a blast from the past.  Some things not in italics need comment.

I did get more knives, but not the good paring knives I wanted, and I have lost my favorite one since then.

My grandmother has a hand me down blender waiting for us at her house, which we didn’t take last time because the car was too full or something.  But that’s not what I really wanted for a “food processor.”

Now we’d like some pans that aren’t non-stick, of various sizes.  And need a medium saucepan or two, non-stick or otherwise, since I boiled my good non-stick one dry and ruined the coating with excess heat.  I’m very fussy about treating them just so, and overheating with nothing in them is one of the best ways to harm them.  Now things stick instead of not.  I like non-stick cookware but would like some of the other kind too.  Deb prefers the other kind.

I forgot how much I like the word thingie.  I haven’t used it nearly enough lately.

Deb has a number of Beatles CDs, including the White Album and the red and blue compilations.  I subsequently bought One after it came out.

I may have some of the movies wrong, since Deb has an extensive collection of mostly non-overlapping movies, and I can’t even remember everything I bought.  The most amusing thing is between us we have three copies of The Cutting Edge.

I think it’s funny I had to start making my family a list as an adult.  I never did that when I was a kid.  Not as far as I can remember anyway.

Update, as I review the post:

I have the first and best Die Hard film, but didn’t mark that because I stated it there as plural.  It’s about the time of year to watch it again, being one of the best Christmas movies.

I think Deb may have at least the first Toy Story, but again, plural and wasn’t certain.

I eventually got the first two Batman films.  I think it’s two, not three.

This reminds me I need to watch While You Were Sleeping, another great Christmas movie, with Deb, who has never seen it.

Friday, December 03, 2004

The original warm socks post, presented in its entirety, since I *did* keep a copy of the old blog a

TITLE: A confession from the Jedi
DATE: 12/10/2003 11:15:54 AM
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BODY:
I’ve been holding out on you about one of the reasons why I’m so scarce lately.  All in a good cause, really...one hates to make grand announcements only to have later events shoot them down.  And including too much of one’s personal life in a blog can be hazardous in other ways, too.  You never know how the folks involved are going to react, you find out that there’s one friend you forgot to update who’s pissed at you because they found out on the site instead of from you, and your folks are like, “You did WHAT?” (Heh.  Just kidding, Dad.)

My dad reads my blog.  How cool is that?

Anyway, some time ago I met a man who has since become a big part of my life.  It’s becoming clear that one of us will be having to move if we are going to make a go of things, and it’s also clear that if it happens, I’m going to have to be the one to relocate.  Entirely apart from the fact that I once swore I would never move for a man again and I hate breaking my own rules, there is another problem: he lives where it snows.

I hate cold weather.  I have an awful time tolerating it.  Even in Fresno, where it rarely gets below freezing, I’m miserable in the winter.  Once it gets down much under 50 degrees, I just can’t seem to get warm, no matter what I do.  I was telling him this a few weeks ago, when we started seriously talking about my making a move.  I was only half-joking when I told him that I didn’t think I could move somewhere cold.  He told me he’d get me some warm socks, and I giggled and shook my head in mock exasperation even though he couldn’t see me.  Then I promptly forgot about it.

So Monday I get home from work and I have a package waiting, full of goodies that he’d picked up over the Thanksgiving holiday.  There were some things for my parents (yes, I have a boyfriend who sends gifts to my folks) and some things for me, and I was already grinning in delight when I got down to the bottom of the box.

You know what I found there, don’t you?

Warm socks.

You know that thing that girls sometimes do when they’re so overwhelmed by the damned warm fuzzy feelings that they start crying?  That was my reaction.  Guys, let me tell you something--context is everything.  A pair of socks can be a breathtakingly romantic gift if it’s given to the right girl at the right time.

And you know what?  I don’t care if he lives where it snows.  I’d have to be a damned fool to let him get away.

So if I continue to seem as scattered as I know I have been the last few weeks, now you know why.  Wish us luck in working out the logistics, if you would.  We’re going to need it.

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I’m going to be out of the office the rest of the day, and I have a project I’ll have to work on tonight, so I may not see y’all again today.  Have a great one, ‘k?

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