Garrett: "Don't you know Jesus died because of your sins?"
Me: *blink* "...don't you mean 'for' my sins?"
Garrett: "Uh... same thing."
12/11/09
Garrett FIX
12/9/09
This isn't a political blog. Really.
Obama: Spend more, create jobs
I was just saying to Garrett and a few others that I'm changing my party affiliation. Democrats have become as annoying and as clueless as Republicans (well, they always were), and I'm tired of hearing it. I can't support the bipartisan system anymore, because it's so broken and corrupt and completely not what it was meant to be. So I'm going independent.
That being said, I came across this article in which Obama tells us we need to vomit up another $150 billion or so to help ourselves climb out of the recession. I'll let you read the article (and the comments) and judge for yourselves on the wisdom of this plan.
I for one think that Obama needs to be slapped upside the head. So many of the things he said this new batch of money would pay for should have been fixed with the first stimulus. Government jobs? Those are not what we need right now. Highways and bridges? I still haven't seen any of the improvements from the last stimulus bill. Retrofilling homes to make them greener? That's still too expensive to be practical for an average middle class family right now (Google it-- depending on the method, it runs from $3,000 to $20,000).
In many ways, I am an economic conservative. I believe that we need to stop focusing on spending and start worrying about getting rid of our federal deficit, which is a number that should only be used to talk about distances in space. However, I do not think cutting taxes right now is the best thing to do. Not that I have any knowledge of how to run a government, but right now, if we stop dumping money into the black Obama-hole (puns intended, I guess) and keep taxes at this level, perhaps we can work our way out of debt sometime before the sun explodes.
Yes I know the economy is still in the shitter. But clearly pouring money into [where exactly?] isn't helping. So let's not make America the definition of stupidity (again) and keep doing the same thing over and over.
I was just saying to Garrett and a few others that I'm changing my party affiliation. Democrats have become as annoying and as clueless as Republicans (well, they always were), and I'm tired of hearing it. I can't support the bipartisan system anymore, because it's so broken and corrupt and completely not what it was meant to be. So I'm going independent.
That being said, I came across this article in which Obama tells us we need to vomit up another $150 billion or so to help ourselves climb out of the recession. I'll let you read the article (and the comments) and judge for yourselves on the wisdom of this plan.
I for one think that Obama needs to be slapped upside the head. So many of the things he said this new batch of money would pay for should have been fixed with the first stimulus. Government jobs? Those are not what we need right now. Highways and bridges? I still haven't seen any of the improvements from the last stimulus bill. Retrofilling homes to make them greener? That's still too expensive to be practical for an average middle class family right now (Google it-- depending on the method, it runs from $3,000 to $20,000).
In many ways, I am an economic conservative. I believe that we need to stop focusing on spending and start worrying about getting rid of our federal deficit, which is a number that should only be used to talk about distances in space. However, I do not think cutting taxes right now is the best thing to do. Not that I have any knowledge of how to run a government, but right now, if we stop dumping money into the black Obama-hole (puns intended, I guess) and keep taxes at this level, perhaps we can work our way out of debt sometime before the sun explodes.
Yes I know the economy is still in the shitter. But clearly pouring money into [where exactly?] isn't helping. So let's not make America the definition of stupidity (again) and keep doing the same thing over and over.
12/7/09
I am horrified.
Doctors in upscale practices build niche in Triangle
I read the headline and my jaw dropped. I read the article itself and my mild discomfort grew into consternation and outrage.
Why are they doing this? Why now, when roughly 1 in 4 Americans do not have health insurance? Why now, when the aging baby boomers (read: the target market of MDVIPs) are beginning to drag the rest of us taxpayers down anyway? Why now, when a friend of mine cannot get the care she needs to manage her (and her children's) health when she and her husband both lost their jobs and cannot get unemployment benefits because she is on a social security stipend that is too pitiful to live on?
Yes, by all means, doctors, alienate your most needful patients. Refuse to treat those who cannot pay $500 a visit. Do what all the drug companies and insurance companies are doing, and make it more difficult for the average American citizen to access your corrupt but desperately needed services (what are we, Uganda?). After all, it was their fault. If they hadn't caused the economy to crack and fall with their crazy spending and lending, then they wouldn't be in this pickle anyway. You go ahead. Because as more and more of you convert to your very posh and profitable MDVIP practices, there will be fewer and fewer afforable doctors. And there is no guarantee that those will all be skilled or honest doctors.
This reminds me of the situation in [insert impoverished Third World country here]. Not enough doctors, too many poor patients, and what skilled practitioners there are usually beat it out of whatever hellhole they're living in to seek profit elsewhere. Maybe we should ask WHO to airlift some Indian doctors in. It's becoming clear that we need them.
I read the headline and my jaw dropped. I read the article itself and my mild discomfort grew into consternation and outrage.
Why are they doing this? Why now, when roughly 1 in 4 Americans do not have health insurance? Why now, when the aging baby boomers (read: the target market of MDVIPs) are beginning to drag the rest of us taxpayers down anyway? Why now, when a friend of mine cannot get the care she needs to manage her (and her children's) health when she and her husband both lost their jobs and cannot get unemployment benefits because she is on a social security stipend that is too pitiful to live on?
Yes, by all means, doctors, alienate your most needful patients. Refuse to treat those who cannot pay $500 a visit. Do what all the drug companies and insurance companies are doing, and make it more difficult for the average American citizen to access your corrupt but desperately needed services (what are we, Uganda?). After all, it was their fault. If they hadn't caused the economy to crack and fall with their crazy spending and lending, then they wouldn't be in this pickle anyway. You go ahead. Because as more and more of you convert to your very posh and profitable MDVIP practices, there will be fewer and fewer afforable doctors. And there is no guarantee that those will all be skilled or honest doctors.
This reminds me of the situation in [insert impoverished Third World country here]. Not enough doctors, too many poor patients, and what skilled practitioners there are usually beat it out of whatever hellhole they're living in to seek profit elsewhere. Maybe we should ask WHO to airlift some Indian doctors in. It's becoming clear that we need them.
12/4/09
"Something's really wrong with you", or "Thanksgiving I"
I always want to begin each entry with an apology for not posting more often. That needs to stop.
...but I am sorry.
Not that terribly much has happened since my last entry. We got the water heater issue fixed; had an issue with the washing machine that caused another flood. I came downstairs to change the laundry, saw the floor under a half inch of water for what had to be the ninth time, and let fly a string of curses that would make Ken the WonderPlumber proud. Garrett followed the sound of Kate-rage and calmly surmised the cause of the flood: a blocked drain. He grabbed a big stick, climbed on top of the washer to get close to the drain, poked it a few times, and with a lethargic gurgle, the water went its way. I stormed off and refused to return to the basement any more that evening.
My reaction to our basement is a case study in Pavlovian conditioning.
Upstairs Dude is gone. He was replaced by Bob. The story is slightly more complicated, but only just. I dropped eaves on a conversation between him and our landlord’s wife out on the front porch one day. All I heard were things like “...be gone by the end of the month” and “final rent check” and “don’t have much to move”. I may not be known for my Holmesian powers of deduction, but I didn’t really need them in this case.
Over the next week, a cavalcade of borrowed cars puttered back and forth from our driveway, carrying bits of Upstairs Dude’s possessions away to God-knows-where. He and his 13ish-year-old son did the bulk of the hauling, and I was lucky enough to catch an exchange between them as I came back from a run one morning:
Upstairs Dude: “Bring those boxes downstairs!”
Son: “I can't! They're heavy!"
Upstairs Dude: "Well bring them one at a time!"
Son: "They're too heavy, Dad!"
Upstairs Dude: "Just bring me one!"
Son: "You know, something's really wrong with you."
They may have heard the thump as I lost my balance from laughing; the walls are thin.
Then, not too long after that, the pulsing red-blue of police strobes invaded my dream about an abandoned construction site. The thought “Oh God something’s happened to Garrett” straddled sleep and waking so that I snapped full awake in less than the time it took for the adrenaline to blast through my system. I bolted to the front window; two cruisers were parked in front of the house and I heard voices upstairs. I immediately relaxed and settled onto the futon to watch the fun.
There wasn’t much fun for anybody. I couldn’t see or hear much; from what I could see, the cops looked bored and Upstairs Dude looked more annoyed than furious. They cuffed him, walked him out to one cruiser and plopped him in. They fiddled with their radios for several minutes, sat in their cruisers for several more, then drove off, leaving me in a state of mild bewilderment.
The next day, Bob arrived. Bob looks and sounds just as country bumpkin as Upstairs Dude, but has a few more social graces. He introduced himself to me (as Bob) and volunteered some details about Upstairs Dude that I had been itching for, and several about himself that I could have lived without.
Bob told me Upstairs Dude had been living on parole and had simultaneously violated it and his lease. Vinnie had magnanimously turned a blind eye to the lease violation and had just asked him to vacate ASAP. The cops weren’t so other-cheeky with his parole violation. So back to jail he went. A breath before I could wonder how Bob knew so much, he told me. He’d been a jailbuddy of Upstairs Dude and was on parole as well. They even had the same parole officer, who knew Vinnie.
So far, the plumbing has been more of a threat to our health than him, so I’m not worried.
Still no luck on the job front. I’m starting to get a better sense of this town now that the newness has worn off, and a contributor to the dismal job climate here is the town itself. It’s smaller and more rural than I’m used to and a good hour away from anything resembling a city. The only real industries here are metalworks and a nuclear plant. Everything else is small and privately owned, which in this economic climate means that employers are cutting back and employees are holding onto what jobs they have with tooth and nail. The few chain stores and fast food joints aren’t hiring.
In other news, I spent Thanksgiving in New Jersey. Everybody calls it the armpit of America, but I, like a good skeptic, refused to believe anything anyone said until I could see it for myself.
...but I am sorry.
Not that terribly much has happened since my last entry. We got the water heater issue fixed; had an issue with the washing machine that caused another flood. I came downstairs to change the laundry, saw the floor under a half inch of water for what had to be the ninth time, and let fly a string of curses that would make Ken the WonderPlumber proud. Garrett followed the sound of Kate-rage and calmly surmised the cause of the flood: a blocked drain. He grabbed a big stick, climbed on top of the washer to get close to the drain, poked it a few times, and with a lethargic gurgle, the water went its way. I stormed off and refused to return to the basement any more that evening.
My reaction to our basement is a case study in Pavlovian conditioning.
Upstairs Dude is gone. He was replaced by Bob. The story is slightly more complicated, but only just. I dropped eaves on a conversation between him and our landlord’s wife out on the front porch one day. All I heard were things like “...be gone by the end of the month” and “final rent check” and “don’t have much to move”. I may not be known for my Holmesian powers of deduction, but I didn’t really need them in this case.
Over the next week, a cavalcade of borrowed cars puttered back and forth from our driveway, carrying bits of Upstairs Dude’s possessions away to God-knows-where. He and his 13ish-year-old son did the bulk of the hauling, and I was lucky enough to catch an exchange between them as I came back from a run one morning:
Upstairs Dude: “Bring those boxes downstairs!”
Son: “I can't! They're heavy!"
Upstairs Dude: "Well bring them one at a time!"
Son: "They're too heavy, Dad!"
Upstairs Dude: "Just bring me one!"
Son: "You know, something's really wrong with you."
They may have heard the thump as I lost my balance from laughing; the walls are thin.
Then, not too long after that, the pulsing red-blue of police strobes invaded my dream about an abandoned construction site. The thought “Oh God something’s happened to Garrett” straddled sleep and waking so that I snapped full awake in less than the time it took for the adrenaline to blast through my system. I bolted to the front window; two cruisers were parked in front of the house and I heard voices upstairs. I immediately relaxed and settled onto the futon to watch the fun.
There wasn’t much fun for anybody. I couldn’t see or hear much; from what I could see, the cops looked bored and Upstairs Dude looked more annoyed than furious. They cuffed him, walked him out to one cruiser and plopped him in. They fiddled with their radios for several minutes, sat in their cruisers for several more, then drove off, leaving me in a state of mild bewilderment.
The next day, Bob arrived. Bob looks and sounds just as country bumpkin as Upstairs Dude, but has a few more social graces. He introduced himself to me (as Bob) and volunteered some details about Upstairs Dude that I had been itching for, and several about himself that I could have lived without.
Bob told me Upstairs Dude had been living on parole and had simultaneously violated it and his lease. Vinnie had magnanimously turned a blind eye to the lease violation and had just asked him to vacate ASAP. The cops weren’t so other-cheeky with his parole violation. So back to jail he went. A breath before I could wonder how Bob knew so much, he told me. He’d been a jailbuddy of Upstairs Dude and was on parole as well. They even had the same parole officer, who knew Vinnie.
So far, the plumbing has been more of a threat to our health than him, so I’m not worried.
Still no luck on the job front. I’m starting to get a better sense of this town now that the newness has worn off, and a contributor to the dismal job climate here is the town itself. It’s smaller and more rural than I’m used to and a good hour away from anything resembling a city. The only real industries here are metalworks and a nuclear plant. Everything else is small and privately owned, which in this economic climate means that employers are cutting back and employees are holding onto what jobs they have with tooth and nail. The few chain stores and fast food joints aren’t hiring.
In other news, I spent Thanksgiving in New Jersey. Everybody calls it the armpit of America, but I, like a good skeptic, refused to believe anything anyone said until I could see it for myself.
"Epic Armpit Farts", or "Thanksgiving II"
Yep, they were right.
The air was bad and the tap water tasted like Richard Simmons’ unmentionables, sure, but the part that rang most true to me (being the driver of the expedition) was the crack about Jersey drivers. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they are the worst drivers in this country. I say “in the country” because I have met worse drivers out of it. But that really doesn’t count, because everyone there drove badly the same way, so everything was predictable. Such is not the case here.
Jughandles are part of the problem. If there were cars in medieval England, then jughandles would be the torture device of choice. Instead of making a left turn, a jughandle is a waste of asphalt that forces you to turn right to go left. They say jughandles cut down on accidents because left turns are dangerous. Which would make slightly more sense if every left turn in the entire state of New Jersey, nay, the entire US, were made by jughandle. That way, everybody would be used to jughandles and stoplights would only have to be wired for traffic going straight.
But this is not the case. There is no rhyme or reason to which turns get jughandled and which don’t, so drivers are caught in the wrong lane and are constantly leapfrogging across three or more lanes of traffic (usually nearing a stoplight and therefore decelerating and becoming denser), causing mass slammage of brakes. Since Jerseyans are used to jughandles, this makes them less skilled at making normal left turns, of which there are a good many in the state of Jersey. They seem to forget that extra lane of traffic they have to watch out for.
They also suck at driving in general. This gets back to the unpredictability I mentioned earlier. For example, they slow down while merging onto the highway. This is ass-backwards from the way I learned it. I thought the point of that little merging lane was so the driver could accelerate enough to make a smooth entrance and not disrupt the flow of traffic. But I guess said driver can’t do that when traveling cars enter the rightmost lane instead of moving left to allow the merging driver to actually merge. Jersey drivers also have this habit of speeding up when the light changes to yellow and when they realize they don’t have time to make it before the light turns red, they play the game called “My Skidmark Is Longer Than Yours”. They also play “I’ll Race You Out Of The Toll Plaza (And Cut You Off When I Win)” and “No, I Have The Right-Of-Way, You Fuckass”.
Garrett tells me I need to be more positive, so I’ll focus on the good things about my Thanksgiving break. First and foremost, and the reason why my tail wags harder for Thanksgiving than for Christmas, is the food. I was (and am) most thankful for the excuse to gather together with a large group of folks who are, after a fashion, related to me and eat a house’s worth of food in one four-hour-long sitting.
The air was bad and the tap water tasted like Richard Simmons’ unmentionables, sure, but the part that rang most true to me (being the driver of the expedition) was the crack about Jersey drivers. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, they are the worst drivers in this country. I say “in the country” because I have met worse drivers out of it. But that really doesn’t count, because everyone there drove badly the same way, so everything was predictable. Such is not the case here.
Jughandles are part of the problem. If there were cars in medieval England, then jughandles would be the torture device of choice. Instead of making a left turn, a jughandle is a waste of asphalt that forces you to turn right to go left. They say jughandles cut down on accidents because left turns are dangerous. Which would make slightly more sense if every left turn in the entire state of New Jersey, nay, the entire US, were made by jughandle. That way, everybody would be used to jughandles and stoplights would only have to be wired for traffic going straight.
But this is not the case. There is no rhyme or reason to which turns get jughandled and which don’t, so drivers are caught in the wrong lane and are constantly leapfrogging across three or more lanes of traffic (usually nearing a stoplight and therefore decelerating and becoming denser), causing mass slammage of brakes. Since Jerseyans are used to jughandles, this makes them less skilled at making normal left turns, of which there are a good many in the state of Jersey. They seem to forget that extra lane of traffic they have to watch out for.
They also suck at driving in general. This gets back to the unpredictability I mentioned earlier. For example, they slow down while merging onto the highway. This is ass-backwards from the way I learned it. I thought the point of that little merging lane was so the driver could accelerate enough to make a smooth entrance and not disrupt the flow of traffic. But I guess said driver can’t do that when traveling cars enter the rightmost lane instead of moving left to allow the merging driver to actually merge. Jersey drivers also have this habit of speeding up when the light changes to yellow and when they realize they don’t have time to make it before the light turns red, they play the game called “My Skidmark Is Longer Than Yours”. They also play “I’ll Race You Out Of The Toll Plaza (And Cut You Off When I Win)” and “No, I Have The Right-Of-Way, You Fuckass”.
Garrett tells me I need to be more positive, so I’ll focus on the good things about my Thanksgiving break. First and foremost, and the reason why my tail wags harder for Thanksgiving than for Christmas, is the food. I was (and am) most thankful for the excuse to gather together with a large group of folks who are, after a fashion, related to me and eat a house’s worth of food in one four-hour-long sitting.
"Look at me while I am talking at you", or "Thanksgiving III"
Thanksgiving is the perfect holiday. In no particular order the reasons for this are:
1) the food. Okay, this one was in order.
2) it’s a chance to collect one’s family in one place and spend the day (or weekend) talking and catching up.
3) #2 could be done at Christmas, but the joyous thing about Thanksgiving is that it’s free of the stress of Christmas. You don’t have to participate in Black Friday if you don’t want to, but everyone feels compelled to participate in the Christmas tradition of gift-giving. Christmas has become, in Garrett’s words, Capitalistmas. No matter how much individual people may emphasize family or joy or God in Christmas, the general theme of Christmas is “give/get presents.” What is the first question anyone asks you after “How was your holiday?” “What’d you get?” Right?
Before you bark about the sordid history of Thanksgiving and all the Indians that the English slaughtered to make it that far, consider this. All folk (not just us Americans, though we’re really good at it) alter or forget their history, especially related to holidays. With each passing year, another coat of sugar gets slathered onto the memory until the event itself is a lump of shapeless goo. To make an overly complicated example to prove my point, look up St. Valentine on Wikipedia. Nobody knows who he was, or how many St. Valentines there were (yes, there were more than one). Nobody knows why or how they were martyred, and not even the Romans were sure where the first St. Valentine was buried. Then look at the stuff between then and now. Nobody can agree on how we got from a gaggle of Roman saints to a holiday about chocolates, red hearts and obligatory sex. To offer another example, think about Christmas. We all know how it started out. No, not the part about Jesus, the part further back than that. The pagan part. Between then and now dozens of date changes, rewrites, additions (hello Santa Claus) and alterations have changed Christmas so profoundly that when I tell you that for many years Protestants vehemently and violently opposed the celebration of Christmas, you will think it at the least a bit bizarre and run off to Wikipedia to see if I’m telling you the truth.
I am by no means advocating for abolishment of Christmas or Valentine’s Day or even a return to their roots; I’m merely making the point that it’s implausible and downright silly to think too hard about any holiday based on a historical event or a dead person. If you try to include the entire span of a holiday’s history in your observation of it, you will inevitably do or say things that completely contradict one another. That’s why some people celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus, some celebrate it as a day to get and give a whole bunch of stuff, some celebrate it not as a Christian holiday but as the winter solstice, or yet again as a pagan feast and party, but never as all those things at the same time.
But I digest. I was talking about Thanksgiving in New Jersey. I met Garrett’s very Jewish grandmother about whom I will only say this: the stereotypes are true. I felt like speaking in a Southern drawl just to save my own ears from the increasingly twitch-inducing dialects Garrett’s family issued forth. Don’t get me wrong; they’re wonderful people. They just need to learn how totalk right.
Since New Brunswick was only an hour away, we decided to zip up to Rutgers on Saturday to spend a while with the Brothers of Pi Chapter of MBPsi. We played football (which devolved into a silly string battle– only at Pi), had an official meeting, played the Jewish version of Apples to Apples (an automatic win if you can't pronounce the word you play), and were just about to take part in the most lavish and plentiful Thanksgiving bounty I have ever seen (there were about 30 people packed into a 4-person apartment), but Garrett needed to get home to get up early for work the next morning, and Oswego is a good 5 hours from north Jersey.
That was definitely the most memorable Thanksgiving I’ve had to date. I love my family with all my heart, but there’s not much can compete with being captive audience to a 75-year-old Jew wife for eight hours, getting nearly run off the road three times on residential streets, playing Jewish Apples to Apples with two Jews until 5a.m., and running around an entire apartment complex with two cans of silly string participating in a mass regression to early childhood.
This is why I’ve decided that holidays are worth it again.
1) the food. Okay, this one was in order.
2) it’s a chance to collect one’s family in one place and spend the day (or weekend) talking and catching up.
3) #2 could be done at Christmas, but the joyous thing about Thanksgiving is that it’s free of the stress of Christmas. You don’t have to participate in Black Friday if you don’t want to, but everyone feels compelled to participate in the Christmas tradition of gift-giving. Christmas has become, in Garrett’s words, Capitalistmas. No matter how much individual people may emphasize family or joy or God in Christmas, the general theme of Christmas is “give/get presents.” What is the first question anyone asks you after “How was your holiday?” “What’d you get?” Right?
Before you bark about the sordid history of Thanksgiving and all the Indians that the English slaughtered to make it that far, consider this. All folk (not just us Americans, though we’re really good at it) alter or forget their history, especially related to holidays. With each passing year, another coat of sugar gets slathered onto the memory until the event itself is a lump of shapeless goo. To make an overly complicated example to prove my point, look up St. Valentine on Wikipedia. Nobody knows who he was, or how many St. Valentines there were (yes, there were more than one). Nobody knows why or how they were martyred, and not even the Romans were sure where the first St. Valentine was buried. Then look at the stuff between then and now. Nobody can agree on how we got from a gaggle of Roman saints to a holiday about chocolates, red hearts and obligatory sex. To offer another example, think about Christmas. We all know how it started out. No, not the part about Jesus, the part further back than that. The pagan part. Between then and now dozens of date changes, rewrites, additions (hello Santa Claus) and alterations have changed Christmas so profoundly that when I tell you that for many years Protestants vehemently and violently opposed the celebration of Christmas, you will think it at the least a bit bizarre and run off to Wikipedia to see if I’m telling you the truth.
I am by no means advocating for abolishment of Christmas or Valentine’s Day or even a return to their roots; I’m merely making the point that it’s implausible and downright silly to think too hard about any holiday based on a historical event or a dead person. If you try to include the entire span of a holiday’s history in your observation of it, you will inevitably do or say things that completely contradict one another. That’s why some people celebrate Christmas as the birth of Jesus, some celebrate it as a day to get and give a whole bunch of stuff, some celebrate it not as a Christian holiday but as the winter solstice, or yet again as a pagan feast and party, but never as all those things at the same time.
But I digest. I was talking about Thanksgiving in New Jersey. I met Garrett’s very Jewish grandmother about whom I will only say this: the stereotypes are true. I felt like speaking in a Southern drawl just to save my own ears from the increasingly twitch-inducing dialects Garrett’s family issued forth. Don’t get me wrong; they’re wonderful people. They just need to learn how to
Since New Brunswick was only an hour away, we decided to zip up to Rutgers on Saturday to spend a while with the Brothers of Pi Chapter of MBPsi. We played football (which devolved into a silly string battle– only at Pi), had an official meeting, played the Jewish version of Apples to Apples (an automatic win if you can't pronounce the word you play), and were just about to take part in the most lavish and plentiful Thanksgiving bounty I have ever seen (there were about 30 people packed into a 4-person apartment), but Garrett needed to get home to get up early for work the next morning, and Oswego is a good 5 hours from north Jersey.
That was definitely the most memorable Thanksgiving I’ve had to date. I love my family with all my heart, but there’s not much can compete with being captive audience to a 75-year-old Jew wife for eight hours, getting nearly run off the road three times on residential streets, playing Jewish Apples to Apples with two Jews until 5a.m., and running around an entire apartment complex with two cans of silly string participating in a mass regression to early childhood.
This is why I’ve decided that holidays are worth it again.
10/17/09
Eye-searing Irony
"Thank the gods," I said to myself as I carried laundry down to the lake-less basement, "the leaking's finally stopped."
As if on cue, I heard dripping water.
I turned and found a refrigerator-size (and rapidly growing) puddle under the hot water heater.
The landlord, in a surprise turn of events, answered his phone on my first call. "It's so funny, because I grew up in that house and I've never had problems with it, ever."
Well, when it rains.
More on this weather report as it develops.
As if on cue, I heard dripping water.
I turned and found a refrigerator-size (and rapidly growing) puddle under the hot water heater.
The landlord, in a surprise turn of events, answered his phone on my first call. "It's so funny, because I grew up in that house and I've never had problems with it, ever."
Well, when it rains.
More on this weather report as it develops.
10/12/09
Revenge of the Golgothan
Day Six: Tide rising. So is the smell. Prudence is telling me to go over to someone's house to shower, but I am just too lazy. Going in. Tell my boyfriend I love him.
Day Seven: Found out Upstairs Dude's toilet is connected to our shower. Gurgling sounds invaded my dreams. Still haven't reached the landlord. Working up a good righteous anger for next call.
Day Eight: Three Brothers are spending the weekend in our house. Wondering if I should prepare them for the Septic Apocalypse or just Noah's Flood. God help us all.
If I had kept a journal of the events at our apartment over the past week and a half, it would have looked like this. We've had problems with our septic system since we moved in; most of you know some of it. In response to Garrett's and my first notice of the perpetual puddle on the floor of the basement, the previous tenant and the landlord both assured us it was a leak from outside and that it was not serious. Turns out, though, the water through which I was treading to get to the washer and the dryer was not rainwater.
I was changing the laundry one evening and I heard water rushing; the septic pipes run against the wall in the basement. What I did not expect was a gush of water to spill out of a gaping four-inch hole in the main line right onto the table and floor. I was struck dumb for a moment, then, almost dropping the armload of clothes I had, I flew up the stairs and drug Garrett down to see. Yes indeed, boys and girls, everything from our bathroom and Upstairs Dude's bathroom was pouring down this one pipe and onto our basement floor.
This all began a little less than two weeks ago. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the landlord, I took matters into my own hands and called a plumber that despite his blazingly colorful language (even for a plumber), patched the hole well.
Please note that the house in which Garrett and I live is very likely more than twice my age. The pipes, then, have had about fifty years to get corroded and clogged. Not a day after Ken the Cussing Plumber patched the yawning hole in the main line, I discovered a lesser leak. It could wait a day. Then, the toilet stopped flushing properly. But with tough love from a plunger and choice words from yours truly, it accepted its lot. That could wait a day too. That night, I was awoken by violent and prolonged gurgling sounds coming from our shower drain. These were caused by the flushing toilet from upstairs. That could even wait. The next morning, I discovered that our shower no longer drained and that our bathroom sink leaked.
That could not wait a day.
But it had to, because the next day was Saturday. To throw some sprinkles on this pile of shit, Garrett and I had invited three Psi Brothers to spend the next two nights at our house, in addition to hosting a large party for the Brotherhood on Saturday night.
Everyone is well, so we don't have to worry about another apocalypse until 2012. It got hairy for a few minutes during the party; since there was only one plunger, Garrett and I took turns jousting with the toilet. Evidently it felt it was getting the rotten end of this whole deal. I couldn't completely blame it until it gurgled irritably at one of the Brothers and freaked her out. She hasn't used our toilet since then.
This morning I called the Ken the WonderPlumber and bless his jaded soul, he put off a few other calls for us. He and his slack-jawed young assistant spent about an hour clanking around in our basement, cussing and roto-rooting our toilet (the hole in the floor to be exact; they had taken the toilet off its pipe). The results according to Ken the Hero of the People: a three-year-old had assembled the plumbing in the entire house. Tree roots had complicated the problem. Ken had patched, unclogged and unrooted to the best of his ability, but the problem would never really be solved until the all the pipes were replaced.
Let me take this moment to say how happy I am that I do not own this house.
Let me also take this moment to say how not forward I am looking to cleaning up the shitwater lake from our basement floor. Anybody think Garrett could pull off a Moses move?
Day Seven: Found out Upstairs Dude's toilet is connected to our shower. Gurgling sounds invaded my dreams. Still haven't reached the landlord. Working up a good righteous anger for next call.
Day Eight: Three Brothers are spending the weekend in our house. Wondering if I should prepare them for the Septic Apocalypse or just Noah's Flood. God help us all.
If I had kept a journal of the events at our apartment over the past week and a half, it would have looked like this. We've had problems with our septic system since we moved in; most of you know some of it. In response to Garrett's and my first notice of the perpetual puddle on the floor of the basement, the previous tenant and the landlord both assured us it was a leak from outside and that it was not serious. Turns out, though, the water through which I was treading to get to the washer and the dryer was not rainwater.
I was changing the laundry one evening and I heard water rushing; the septic pipes run against the wall in the basement. What I did not expect was a gush of water to spill out of a gaping four-inch hole in the main line right onto the table and floor. I was struck dumb for a moment, then, almost dropping the armload of clothes I had, I flew up the stairs and drug Garrett down to see. Yes indeed, boys and girls, everything from our bathroom and Upstairs Dude's bathroom was pouring down this one pipe and onto our basement floor.
This all began a little less than two weeks ago. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact the landlord, I took matters into my own hands and called a plumber that despite his blazingly colorful language (even for a plumber), patched the hole well.
Please note that the house in which Garrett and I live is very likely more than twice my age. The pipes, then, have had about fifty years to get corroded and clogged. Not a day after Ken the Cussing Plumber patched the yawning hole in the main line, I discovered a lesser leak. It could wait a day. Then, the toilet stopped flushing properly. But with tough love from a plunger and choice words from yours truly, it accepted its lot. That could wait a day too. That night, I was awoken by violent and prolonged gurgling sounds coming from our shower drain. These were caused by the flushing toilet from upstairs. That could even wait. The next morning, I discovered that our shower no longer drained and that our bathroom sink leaked.
That could not wait a day.
But it had to, because the next day was Saturday. To throw some sprinkles on this pile of shit, Garrett and I had invited three Psi Brothers to spend the next two nights at our house, in addition to hosting a large party for the Brotherhood on Saturday night.
Everyone is well, so we don't have to worry about another apocalypse until 2012. It got hairy for a few minutes during the party; since there was only one plunger, Garrett and I took turns jousting with the toilet. Evidently it felt it was getting the rotten end of this whole deal. I couldn't completely blame it until it gurgled irritably at one of the Brothers and freaked her out. She hasn't used our toilet since then.
This morning I called the Ken the WonderPlumber and bless his jaded soul, he put off a few other calls for us. He and his slack-jawed young assistant spent about an hour clanking around in our basement, cussing and roto-rooting our toilet (the hole in the floor to be exact; they had taken the toilet off its pipe). The results according to Ken the Hero of the People: a three-year-old had assembled the plumbing in the entire house. Tree roots had complicated the problem. Ken had patched, unclogged and unrooted to the best of his ability, but the problem would never really be solved until the all the pipes were replaced.
Let me take this moment to say how happy I am that I do not own this house.
Let me also take this moment to say how not forward I am looking to cleaning up the shitwater lake from our basement floor. Anybody think Garrett could pull off a Moses move?
10/7/09
Oswego in Pictures IV
Who wouldn't want to live on Tenth And A Half Street? Really.
The surf reminds me of Nags Head.
I tell whoever will listen at least once daily that I love the clouds in this area. They say it's because of the lake. I didn't really realize it before, but I couldn't imagine not living near a big water anymore.
Remember the railroad tracks? They went through a neighborhood.
See them off to the left? They cross someone's front yard and a street.
I just really like this photo.
Like I said, this town has personality.
The squirrel is not real.
The town dump. I wanted very badly to go in and snoop around, but prudence and a bunch of signs persuaded me not to.
I want this to be on the side of my house.
10/2/09
Oswego in Pictures III
Found this on the massive concrete supports under the bridge that spans across the Oswego Canal and also marks the center of town.
Taken from under the bridge, looking out over the canal to Lake Ontario in the distance.
I love the structure of this shot.
10/1/09
Oswego in Pictures II
Oswego in Pictures I
This is Garrett's and my place. We rent the bottom floor, and I adore it. I will post pictures when we have everything settled in and it's not just full of boxes.
Garrett says the unofficial title of the town is "The Land of the Steel Sky", but I prefer "The Land of the Floofy Clouds That Dump Rain/Snow On You At Awkward Times". I occasionally see glimpses of that sweet Carolina blue.
Oswego is home to Fort Ontario, about which I will tell you in another entry. But this abandoned lot belongs to the fort, and I was not allowed to be on it. These unused railroad tracks started about thirty feet back from the camera and ended fifty or so feet before the water. And yes, out there beyond the trees is Lake Ontario. I walked two blocks from my house to take this photo. The wind was bracing.
Back beyond the fence is the abandoned lot and the railroad tracks. I am standing on another, more used set of tracks and behind me is the water. I shouldn't have been on these tracks or the rickety wooden platform where I took the lighthouse picture, but I cannot resist the other side of a broken fence.
I adore the color gradation in this photo. From the bottom: brown/red, green, green/blue, blue, grey. See I can be artsy-fartsy with something other than words!
Now I really wasn't supposed to be here either. But I heard a Jeep calling and had to come see.
9/29/09
Some other beginning's blah blah blah
It's not official for the DMV, the bank, the insurance company or even for me yet, but all my stuff is here, so I officially live in New York.
I feel I must make one outstanding, pervading, overarching observation that I am sure will blow apart every preconceived notion any of you have ever had about the state of New York; this observation may even change your lives with the meteoral impact of the great weight of the information it carries:
IT'S COLD.
Let me allow that mind-numbing wealth of information to set in.
Okay, you think you can go on now?
The hilarious part is that it's not even winter, and it's not even that cold, but it's WINDY. Oswego is a port town, right on Lake Ontario, and my house is, quite literally and God I wish I was kidding, two blocks from the water. So take steady 20-25mph winds that will only get stronger as the season goes on, add clouds and rain that have been around since I arrived, throw in regular Oswego fall temperatures of 55 degrees or so, and for spice sprinkle on a Carolina girl who hasn't unpacked any of her winter clothes yet.
Speaking of rain, it was raining when I left North Carolina; it rained for the two days that my mother and I were on the road; it rained when we got here, and lo and behold it's still raining. We saw the sun yesterday for about two hours. I asked Garrett if it's always like this, and he blinked. "I did tell you, didn't I, that they call Oswego 'the land of the steel sky'?"
"...oh. Guess you did."
But if the weather isn't smiling, the people sure are. I had been excited to get up to Oswego because Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi is at SUNY Oswego, Garrett's alma mater. Nu Chapter is a great bunch of folks; not that my native Mu Chapter isn't, but each Chapter has its own identity and personality, and I feel so at home with the Nus. When I first met them over a year ago, they welcomed me as their own. Granted, we're all Brothers, so we're all each other's keepers, but they didn't make me feel like a Mu visiting Nus. They made me feel like a Brother visiting Brothers, which is how it should be. This time was no different. They were overjoyed to see me when I walked into their Brothers' meeting last night, and they included me in their conversations when we went out to eat afterwards. They're so friendly that one of them even cuddled with me this morning after Garrett left for work-- with his permission, of course (not that I wasn't a little surprised to see a face that was not Garrett's beside me-- she meant well, really).
I haven't had time to feel any real nostalgia for North Carolina, though I do frequently think about the folks I left behind. I miss them already, and I've found myself wondering what they're doing tonight and maybe we can go out to Franklin Street or something. Then I remember that Franklin Street is a bit of a hike for me now.
Just to let everyone know: I am saving up all the hugs I normally give you folks for when I come back for Christmas. So everyone in North Carolina, be prepared to be hugged to death by a small white girl.
I feel I must make one outstanding, pervading, overarching observation that I am sure will blow apart every preconceived notion any of you have ever had about the state of New York; this observation may even change your lives with the meteoral impact of the great weight of the information it carries:
IT'S COLD.
Let me allow that mind-numbing wealth of information to set in.
Okay, you think you can go on now?
The hilarious part is that it's not even winter, and it's not even that cold, but it's WINDY. Oswego is a port town, right on Lake Ontario, and my house is, quite literally and God I wish I was kidding, two blocks from the water. So take steady 20-25mph winds that will only get stronger as the season goes on, add clouds and rain that have been around since I arrived, throw in regular Oswego fall temperatures of 55 degrees or so, and for spice sprinkle on a Carolina girl who hasn't unpacked any of her winter clothes yet.
Speaking of rain, it was raining when I left North Carolina; it rained for the two days that my mother and I were on the road; it rained when we got here, and lo and behold it's still raining. We saw the sun yesterday for about two hours. I asked Garrett if it's always like this, and he blinked. "I did tell you, didn't I, that they call Oswego 'the land of the steel sky'?"
"...oh. Guess you did."
But if the weather isn't smiling, the people sure are. I had been excited to get up to Oswego because Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi is at SUNY Oswego, Garrett's alma mater. Nu Chapter is a great bunch of folks; not that my native Mu Chapter isn't, but each Chapter has its own identity and personality, and I feel so at home with the Nus. When I first met them over a year ago, they welcomed me as their own. Granted, we're all Brothers, so we're all each other's keepers, but they didn't make me feel like a Mu visiting Nus. They made me feel like a Brother visiting Brothers, which is how it should be. This time was no different. They were overjoyed to see me when I walked into their Brothers' meeting last night, and they included me in their conversations when we went out to eat afterwards. They're so friendly that one of them even cuddled with me this morning after Garrett left for work-- with his permission, of course (not that I wasn't a little surprised to see a face that was not Garrett's beside me-- she meant well, really).
I haven't had time to feel any real nostalgia for North Carolina, though I do frequently think about the folks I left behind. I miss them already, and I've found myself wondering what they're doing tonight and maybe we can go out to Franklin Street or something. Then I remember that Franklin Street is a bit of a hike for me now.
Just to let everyone know: I am saving up all the hugs I normally give you folks for when I come back for Christmas. So everyone in North Carolina, be prepared to be hugged to death by a small white girl.
9/13/09
Strong is her hold
Boy do I have bad timing.
I had been waiting a year and a half for what went around to finally come around, and two weeks before I leave the company, eleven years of selfishness and mismanagement explode in my boss’s face in a great karmic fart.
She quit before she could get fired, but the effect is still the same. She remains in the bakery, but being kicked back from team leader to receiver (yes, my job) is a significant pay and benefit cut. Her home life and personal situation struck a match of pity, but that ember died in the next breath because oh right, look at all she’s done to her employees and her department. I’ll spare you the details.
Karma’s a bitch and then you get reincarnated as a dung beetle.
In other news, this is the fifth year in a row that I have missed the NC Literary Festival. This troubles me deeply, because this year it was hosted by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library system, and I had absolutely no reason not to go. In fact, three of my professors were featured in the festival and read from their books.
The Festival is just what its name implies; a celebration of the various writers and books that have come out of North Carolina and the South over the years. John Grisham and Clyde Edgerton were among the keynote speakers, as well as R. L. Stine and Kathy Reichs. If you’re curious: www.ncliteraryfestival.org
I would not be so stricken by this if I were remaining in North Carolina for another year and another festival. But I’m pulling up my Tarheel roots and moving, as my mountain-born friend jokingly put it, “Up thar whar them Yanks gon’ suck all the South outta ya.”
I know I gripe about living in the land of tobacco and NASCAR, about how I feel displaced here, but a gentle Carolina twang rolls so naturally off my lips that, despite myself, I do belong here in a distantly-anchored sort of way. I was born here, grew up here, and except for brief stints out of the country, lived my life here. I know North Carolina well, and even though I may not like her very much, I do love her, because she’s my mother, and she’ll always be home.
Let it be known that I will cry if I hear “Carolina In My Mind” anytime soon.
I had been waiting a year and a half for what went around to finally come around, and two weeks before I leave the company, eleven years of selfishness and mismanagement explode in my boss’s face in a great karmic fart.
She quit before she could get fired, but the effect is still the same. She remains in the bakery, but being kicked back from team leader to receiver (yes, my job) is a significant pay and benefit cut. Her home life and personal situation struck a match of pity, but that ember died in the next breath because oh right, look at all she’s done to her employees and her department. I’ll spare you the details.
Karma’s a bitch and then you get reincarnated as a dung beetle.
In other news, this is the fifth year in a row that I have missed the NC Literary Festival. This troubles me deeply, because this year it was hosted by the UNC-Chapel Hill Library system, and I had absolutely no reason not to go. In fact, three of my professors were featured in the festival and read from their books.
The Festival is just what its name implies; a celebration of the various writers and books that have come out of North Carolina and the South over the years. John Grisham and Clyde Edgerton were among the keynote speakers, as well as R. L. Stine and Kathy Reichs. If you’re curious: www.ncliteraryfestival.org
I would not be so stricken by this if I were remaining in North Carolina for another year and another festival. But I’m pulling up my Tarheel roots and moving, as my mountain-born friend jokingly put it, “Up thar whar them Yanks gon’ suck all the South outta ya.”
I know I gripe about living in the land of tobacco and NASCAR, about how I feel displaced here, but a gentle Carolina twang rolls so naturally off my lips that, despite myself, I do belong here in a distantly-anchored sort of way. I was born here, grew up here, and except for brief stints out of the country, lived my life here. I know North Carolina well, and even though I may not like her very much, I do love her, because she’s my mother, and she’ll always be home.
Let it be known that I will cry if I hear “Carolina In My Mind” anytime soon.
9/11/09
Chococat
Screw the landlord, I'm keeping a cat in my apartment.
He's the tuxedo, the dark-colored one, the last one standing of six kittens from the litter Mama Cat had when I first found her this time two months ago.
Since he was dark-colored and very shy, he was my least favorite kitten of the bunch. I've had solid-colored black or grey cats all my life (except for a brief stint with a tuxedo named Gus which I try to wipe from my mind), and the white and orange tabby kittens were of much more interest to me.
But for some reason, Little Bit was the only one who stuck around. Three of the kittens found homes, two disappeared, but Bit stayed with his mother, despite the apparent terror my presence caused him. I did like every good foster would do: tried to socialize him, used the safety of his mother to help make him comfortable around people. But I despaired; he would not come out of his shell. It would be difficult to find him a home if he ran at the sight of people.
Then, Mama Cat got herself knocked up again. I was reasonably sure when I saw the tuxedoed tom wandering around; I was dead sure when Mama Cat turned up at my door looking like she'd swallowed a dodgeball. I'd made her an appointment to get spayed today, actually, but that's another ordeal to tell.
Mama Cat thereafter wanted nothing to do with her remaining son and began reprimanding him for breathing her air, in that special clawy-bleedy way that cats do. Which is normal, but a bit heartbreaking. Mama Cat has wanted less to do with me as well, but Bit has completely changed his tune.
He has become my dream kitten. He has become the cat I've always wanted, the cat that will actually cuddle with me instead of allowing me to touch him on his terms. Bit will let me hold him for as long as I can stand and longer, he will curl up in my lap wherever I sit and purr until it gets awkward, he will cry and cry and cry until I pay attention to him, and whatever attention I give he will cherish. In turn, I try to give him as much attention as I can, offer him as many playthings as I have on hand (sacrificing a pair of socks, a dish towel and a set of shoelaces in the cause), and welcome him with a purr of my own whenever he seeks a warm place to sleep. I love him deeply, as much as I have loved any animal, as much as I swore to myself I could not.
In the back of my mind I knew I had to find a home for him before I leave for New York, but in the rest of my mind I gripped jealously to the hope that I could take him with me. But I made a vet appointment in any case, and I took him to get his vaccines yesterday.
Imagine my surprise when he stepped out of the cage and the vet tech dropped her jaw and went "Oh my God."
What? I know I'm not schooled or qualified, but I'm not blind. Is there some horrific ailment on him that I'm not seeing? What??
"Is...is he... brown? What color is he?"
"I... don't know. I guess he's brown. Brown-grey."
"I have never SEEN a cat that color," the tech squealed, and called in the rest of the staff that was not elbow-deep in animal.
I thought Little Bit was black when I first saw him, but as he got older his coat lightened to a shade that I couldn't really call grey, was too light for black and was too black for brown. Not that "brown" would be a cat color, not like the earth-brown of a chocolate lab or the flecked agouti of a rat.
Like brown horses, brown cats just don't exist. In the genetics of horse coloring, there is no "brown" gene, but two base colors, black and red, and a series of "dilute" genes that bleed the melanin out of these colors in different patterns and make all the variations you see. The closest to true brown you can get are the diluted-black combinations of bay, liver chestnut, and a seal color that's really just a black mane and tail and tan highlights in the flank, muzzle and underbelly. Since I had never seen a brown cat, I figured something like the genetics in horses applied to cats as well, so though I was seeing "brown", I thought "grey".
"Cats like you just don't exist," the veterinarian cooed as she held the ever-purring Bit up to examine him, "especially not in tuxedoes." The doctor told me that some rare exotic breeds are just straight-up brown, also called seal, but without much of the highlights horses have. She asked me what color his parents were. I said his mother was white and I thought his father was a black tuxedo, but I wasn't so sure. She asked me what color Bit was when he was littler, and I said I thought he'd been black, which is why I named him as I did. She nodded sagely and said, "He probably was black. I really wonder if he'll change color again." I asked her if she thought he would, and she said she'd no idea.
"You're a little chocolate kitten, aren't you," she said, which set off a flurry of chocolate-related names from the staff all crowded into the room. "Godiva," said one. "But he's a boy," said another. "Hershey," "Nestle," "Ghiardelli," "Too fancy!" "Truffle," "Cocoa,"... it went on.
I for one preferred "Chococat", after this fellow.
He's cousin to Hello Kitty and cuter than her, I think. I also tried "Charlie", after the famous book about a chocolate factory, and so far Bit has yet to show his dislike.
But really, it's not up to me. It's up to the lady that will be coming to pick him up later today.
Since he was such a celebrity, if not for his color than for his patience, good temper and surprising lack of nervousness that most cats exhibit when being poked and prodded in uncomfortable places, the whole staff said that they'd find someone to foster him right away.
They weren't lying. I was barely home when I got an email from one tech who gave me the phone number of a foster lady. I called her and that's that.
I will miss my Little Bit a lot-a-bit.
He's the tuxedo, the dark-colored one, the last one standing of six kittens from the litter Mama Cat had when I first found her this time two months ago.
Since he was dark-colored and very shy, he was my least favorite kitten of the bunch. I've had solid-colored black or grey cats all my life (except for a brief stint with a tuxedo named Gus which I try to wipe from my mind), and the white and orange tabby kittens were of much more interest to me.
But for some reason, Little Bit was the only one who stuck around. Three of the kittens found homes, two disappeared, but Bit stayed with his mother, despite the apparent terror my presence caused him. I did like every good foster would do: tried to socialize him, used the safety of his mother to help make him comfortable around people. But I despaired; he would not come out of his shell. It would be difficult to find him a home if he ran at the sight of people.
Then, Mama Cat got herself knocked up again. I was reasonably sure when I saw the tuxedoed tom wandering around; I was dead sure when Mama Cat turned up at my door looking like she'd swallowed a dodgeball. I'd made her an appointment to get spayed today, actually, but that's another ordeal to tell.
Mama Cat thereafter wanted nothing to do with her remaining son and began reprimanding him for breathing her air, in that special clawy-bleedy way that cats do. Which is normal, but a bit heartbreaking. Mama Cat has wanted less to do with me as well, but Bit has completely changed his tune.
He has become my dream kitten. He has become the cat I've always wanted, the cat that will actually cuddle with me instead of allowing me to touch him on his terms. Bit will let me hold him for as long as I can stand and longer, he will curl up in my lap wherever I sit and purr until it gets awkward, he will cry and cry and cry until I pay attention to him, and whatever attention I give he will cherish. In turn, I try to give him as much attention as I can, offer him as many playthings as I have on hand (sacrificing a pair of socks, a dish towel and a set of shoelaces in the cause), and welcome him with a purr of my own whenever he seeks a warm place to sleep. I love him deeply, as much as I have loved any animal, as much as I swore to myself I could not.
In the back of my mind I knew I had to find a home for him before I leave for New York, but in the rest of my mind I gripped jealously to the hope that I could take him with me. But I made a vet appointment in any case, and I took him to get his vaccines yesterday.
Imagine my surprise when he stepped out of the cage and the vet tech dropped her jaw and went "Oh my God."
What? I know I'm not schooled or qualified, but I'm not blind. Is there some horrific ailment on him that I'm not seeing? What??
"Is...is he... brown? What color is he?"
"I... don't know. I guess he's brown. Brown-grey."
"I have never SEEN a cat that color," the tech squealed, and called in the rest of the staff that was not elbow-deep in animal.
I thought Little Bit was black when I first saw him, but as he got older his coat lightened to a shade that I couldn't really call grey, was too light for black and was too black for brown. Not that "brown" would be a cat color, not like the earth-brown of a chocolate lab or the flecked agouti of a rat.
Like brown horses, brown cats just don't exist. In the genetics of horse coloring, there is no "brown" gene, but two base colors, black and red, and a series of "dilute" genes that bleed the melanin out of these colors in different patterns and make all the variations you see. The closest to true brown you can get are the diluted-black combinations of bay, liver chestnut, and a seal color that's really just a black mane and tail and tan highlights in the flank, muzzle and underbelly. Since I had never seen a brown cat, I figured something like the genetics in horses applied to cats as well, so though I was seeing "brown", I thought "grey".
"Cats like you just don't exist," the veterinarian cooed as she held the ever-purring Bit up to examine him, "especially not in tuxedoes." The doctor told me that some rare exotic breeds are just straight-up brown, also called seal, but without much of the highlights horses have. She asked me what color his parents were. I said his mother was white and I thought his father was a black tuxedo, but I wasn't so sure. She asked me what color Bit was when he was littler, and I said I thought he'd been black, which is why I named him as I did. She nodded sagely and said, "He probably was black. I really wonder if he'll change color again." I asked her if she thought he would, and she said she'd no idea.
"You're a little chocolate kitten, aren't you," she said, which set off a flurry of chocolate-related names from the staff all crowded into the room. "Godiva," said one. "But he's a boy," said another. "Hershey," "Nestle," "Ghiardelli," "Too fancy!" "Truffle," "Cocoa,"... it went on.
I for one preferred "Chococat", after this fellow.
He's cousin to Hello Kitty and cuter than her, I think. I also tried "Charlie", after the famous book about a chocolate factory, and so far Bit has yet to show his dislike.
But really, it's not up to me. It's up to the lady that will be coming to pick him up later today.
Since he was such a celebrity, if not for his color than for his patience, good temper and surprising lack of nervousness that most cats exhibit when being poked and prodded in uncomfortable places, the whole staff said that they'd find someone to foster him right away.
They weren't lying. I was barely home when I got an email from one tech who gave me the phone number of a foster lady. I called her and that's that.
I will miss my Little Bit a lot-a-bit.
9/10/09
So Fresh and So Clean Clean
It's hard to believe I started my blog three years ago. I was still in college three years ago, Lord bless me.
I decided to lay it to rest for several reasons. First, its original purpose was to be a public diary for those homebound to read while I was abroad in New Zealand. I wanted to give my friends and family a taste of life over there, filtered through the unique and sometimes humorous lens of my writing. I had intended to delete it after I got back home and save the archives. After I got home, though, I kept at it for a more selfish reason.
Second is the selfish reason. I wanted to keep myself verbally lubricated; I wanted to use it so I wouldn't lose it, but a blog just wasn't the place to do it. A blog, being in a public place like the internet (hard to imagine somewhere more public), should contain material that is tangentially, marginally, slightly, obliquely of interest to the public. My blog, after New Zealand, was not that. It had its moments; in its last year I tried to restrict entries to humorous vignettes and works of semi-fiction.
Third and probably most important was my realization that I was writing freely about events at my place of employment that, if found and connected to the company, would get me in big trouble, despite their truth. So from here on out, I won't mention anything about my work other than in the vaguest terms, because I do not want this blog to appear whenever someone Googles my place of employment.
That being said, welcome to the new blog!
There are yet three more reasons why I'm starting this one: First, even though I haven't done any real writing in a while, the itch never really goes away.
Second, I wanted this one to be a throwback to my last one. I started that one for New Zealand and I'm starting this one for New York. I will be moving there at the end of this month, not for a visit or for a study abroad, but for actual real.
Most of you know that I'm moving upstate, right on lake Ontario, to a college town called Oswego. It is home to SUNY Oswego, which is home to Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi. By no coincidence, SUNY Oz is Garrett's alma mater, and his new teaching job is in the next town over. He's taught at Mexico High School before, so of course all the school knows him and he was given an interview and then a job in two days. Because that's how he rolls.
The third purpose of this entry really is to just flail with glee and proclaim to all the world that I am officially ending my current employment in 12 days. I would have posted something on Facebook, but my boss recently got an account there. Oh what is this world coming to.
Handing in my two weeks' notice usually wouldn't be worth more than the breath it takes to say it, but compare this situation to retiring honorably from a year and a half service in the Revolutionary War, rather than dying (not from your leg being shot off by a six-pounder but) from a botched surgery and gangrene or blood poisoning.
Not that working under my boss is as life-threatening and disease-ridden as marching on the front line of an 18th century battle, but it's just as nerve-wracking and maybe a bit louder.
Soldiers in my department get mown down too soon more often than not, most for no good reason. One quite literally has to keep one's ass down or it will get shot off. That is the philosophy under which I have been operating for these past 17 months. It's paid off for me, but sometimes that's not even enough. I won't try to psychoanalyze her because to attempt it would surely send me down a spiral into madness. But I have known good soldiers, honest soldiers, hard workers with good hearts that she pink slipped out of the blue. Since that is the only thing, I repeat, the only thing about which my boss is tight-lipped, we have to rely on the extensive ant-tunnel spiderweb root system other nature metaphor network of gossipers to get any sort of answer or story about why they were fired. And the only story for some of those folks is a shrug and a tenuous speculation diluted by its frequent use.
But I have survived. I have survived 4 a.m. shifts, three different buyers, a major store renovation, a promotion, a new assistant team leader, a new store manager, two new assistant store managers, several cycles of employee turnover, two summers of slow sales, hundreds of angry customers, an economic meltdown, a personnel meltdown, and most importantly, I have survived the slow and inevitable decline of our department.
And in case you're wondering, yes, it was worth it. I made friends and money. That's one more thing than I was expecting to get out of it.
I decided to lay it to rest for several reasons. First, its original purpose was to be a public diary for those homebound to read while I was abroad in New Zealand. I wanted to give my friends and family a taste of life over there, filtered through the unique and sometimes humorous lens of my writing. I had intended to delete it after I got back home and save the archives. After I got home, though, I kept at it for a more selfish reason.
Second is the selfish reason. I wanted to keep myself verbally lubricated; I wanted to use it so I wouldn't lose it, but a blog just wasn't the place to do it. A blog, being in a public place like the internet (hard to imagine somewhere more public), should contain material that is tangentially, marginally, slightly, obliquely of interest to the public. My blog, after New Zealand, was not that. It had its moments; in its last year I tried to restrict entries to humorous vignettes and works of semi-fiction.
Third and probably most important was my realization that I was writing freely about events at my place of employment that, if found and connected to the company, would get me in big trouble, despite their truth. So from here on out, I won't mention anything about my work other than in the vaguest terms, because I do not want this blog to appear whenever someone Googles my place of employment.
That being said, welcome to the new blog!
There are yet three more reasons why I'm starting this one: First, even though I haven't done any real writing in a while, the itch never really goes away.
Second, I wanted this one to be a throwback to my last one. I started that one for New Zealand and I'm starting this one for New York. I will be moving there at the end of this month, not for a visit or for a study abroad, but for actual real.
Most of you know that I'm moving upstate, right on lake Ontario, to a college town called Oswego. It is home to SUNY Oswego, which is home to Nu Chapter of Mu Beta Psi. By no coincidence, SUNY Oz is Garrett's alma mater, and his new teaching job is in the next town over. He's taught at Mexico High School before, so of course all the school knows him and he was given an interview and then a job in two days. Because that's how he rolls.
The third purpose of this entry really is to just flail with glee and proclaim to all the world that I am officially ending my current employment in 12 days. I would have posted something on Facebook, but my boss recently got an account there. Oh what is this world coming to.
Handing in my two weeks' notice usually wouldn't be worth more than the breath it takes to say it, but compare this situation to retiring honorably from a year and a half service in the Revolutionary War, rather than dying (not from your leg being shot off by a six-pounder but) from a botched surgery and gangrene or blood poisoning.
Not that working under my boss is as life-threatening and disease-ridden as marching on the front line of an 18th century battle, but it's just as nerve-wracking and maybe a bit louder.
Soldiers in my department get mown down too soon more often than not, most for no good reason. One quite literally has to keep one's ass down or it will get shot off. That is the philosophy under which I have been operating for these past 17 months. It's paid off for me, but sometimes that's not even enough. I won't try to psychoanalyze her because to attempt it would surely send me down a spiral into madness. But I have known good soldiers, honest soldiers, hard workers with good hearts that she pink slipped out of the blue. Since that is the only thing, I repeat, the only thing about which my boss is tight-lipped, we have to rely on the extensive ant-tunnel spiderweb root system other nature metaphor network of gossipers to get any sort of answer or story about why they were fired. And the only story for some of those folks is a shrug and a tenuous speculation diluted by its frequent use.
But I have survived. I have survived 4 a.m. shifts, three different buyers, a major store renovation, a promotion, a new assistant team leader, a new store manager, two new assistant store managers, several cycles of employee turnover, two summers of slow sales, hundreds of angry customers, an economic meltdown, a personnel meltdown, and most importantly, I have survived the slow and inevitable decline of our department.
And in case you're wondering, yes, it was worth it. I made friends and money. That's one more thing than I was expecting to get out of it.
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