17 February 06
Ambitions
One of our cats, Diego, walked across the keyboard the other day and spelled out the word “tyyyyyyygrttttttt”. But hey, dogs, or at least Welsh corgis, can do calculus.
16 February 06
Early Morning
If Charlie hadn’t
pounced
on my bladder
at four
[oofff]
I wouldn’t have
had the chance
to go for a walk
after half an hour
of
writing
and another
of
calligraphy
and another
of
blogsandemail
so I’d have missed
the sound the creek
makes
rounding that
willow
and the
pair of
bluebirds
in the sunrise
framed by
the feral almond
and the
seven egrets
that rose
as one
when the wood duck
screamed
or learning
again
that when you walk
in the frost
with the sun
to your east
the left side of
your
face
is less
cold than
the right…
14 February 06
Valentine's Day Ballgame
While the Northeast is still digging themselves out from a blizzard, we spent this Valentine’s Day afternoon sunning our toes in 70-degree weather at a baseball game. We were joined by yesterday’s guest blogger Barbara Anderson who has been suffering much from baseball deprivation. The game pitted the UC Davis Aggie team against the Cal Bears. The Aggies got off to a rough start in the top of the first: the leadoff batter hit a fly to left which was muffed, and Cal went on to score three runs. The Aggies soon caught up and were ahead 8-3 by the bottom of the third. We left early to do a couple of errands and Barbara had a class to go to, so we ended up missing the exciting bit. Cal rallied in the 8th and 9th innings but the Aggies added to their score to win the game 13-9.
13 February 06
Hearts of Stone
Barbara Anderson is guest blogging today.
Being single on Valentine’s Day is like being a Muslim at Christmas. It has nothing to do with you, but you can’t get away from it. It’s everywhere—in the grocery store, the jewelry store, the gift shop, the stationers’, the record shop, the book store, the garden shop, the drug store, the department store, every mall and shopping center and AM-PM Mini Mart and fast food stop and restaurant (“Make your reservations now for our special Valentine’s Day Aphrodisiac Dinner! Just $50 for two!”); today in the mail there was an offer from the local windshield replacement company: Have your windshield replaced before February 15th and get a box of See’s chocolates for your valentine. Between the end of the Christmas frenzy and Feb. 14th, there’s more red and white in the stores than the Cohen brothers ever thought of putting in “Fargo.”
As a single person, I ask you: is this fair? Is this right? In this enlightened day and age, when we have rules and regulations in place to ensure no one is discriminated against because of race, religion, physical condition, gender or veteran status, here we have what’s become a virtual national holiday, with merchants crowing about their Valentine specials, and bed-and-breakfast owners falling all over themselves to offer romantic getaways to love-besotted couples. I’m here to tell you that I want equal treatment. I want special offers of glorious weekends alone in some georgeous hideway on the coast, with a four-poster bed and a down comforter and scones and tea by the fireplace in the late afternoon as I sit and watch the surf break on the rocks below. I want restaurateurs courting me with lovely meals served at a linen-covered table, fresh flowers and complimentary wine, and no pitying or condescending looks because I’m there by myself.
What’s the big deal about being a couple, anyway? I’ll bet most of those couples wish Valentine’s Day would go away, too: the men usually clueless as to what to give their wives or girlfriends, the women marshalling all their feelings to the fore, ready to have them be hurt again this year when he gives her carnations and she wanted roses, or chocolates when he knows she’s trying to lose 10 pounds before summer gets here. What a dope. And then there’s all that unfulfilled expectation of the romantic weekend or the intimate dinner that the newspapers and magazines and TV news have been flogging for weeks. Like Christmas, nothing can live up to the hype. I usually spend Valentine’s Day reviewing my list of reasons singlehood is enjoyable:
- No matter what time I go to bed, no one cares
- I can eat baked potatoes every night for two weeks running and nobody says, “Baked potatoes AGAIN?”
- No listening to someone else complain about their boss
- I always get to drive
- No “what do you want to do?” “I don’t care; what do you want to do?” “I dunno.”
- Full and immediate access to the bathroom, 24 hours a day
- Never having to say I’m sorry for leaving the kitchen/bathroom/car in a mess
- No interminable weekends visiting someone else’s ghastly Aunt Josephine
- Pizza and a video—my choice, both—on Friday nights
So go ahead: While you coupled-up types are spending 45 minutes at the Hallmark rack debating funny-vs.-mushy-vs.-sincere and hoping against hope that you haven’t waited too long to order those long-stemmed red roses and make that dinner reservation at that trendy and overcrowded restaurant, I’ll just be settling back with the remote in one hand and that first slice of Greek pizza in the other, ready for a satisfying evening watching Nicholas Cage persuade Cher to dump his dopey brother and marry him. Now there’s somebody worth giving up my Friday nights for.
12 February 06
The Other World Championships In Italy
Save the date—from 10-11 March in Lucca, Italy, is the 1st World Sudoku Puzzle Championship. Each country can be represented by at most six people, so get your entry form in soon, or something like that. Myself, I’m still stuck on the Diabolical one in today’s paper, which will probably seem trivial to those converging on Lucca.
11 February 06
Dumpster Diving
A successful day: looking for (and finding) plenty of material for my “found objects” artist trading card swap, realizing that this might better be done as a map folded into a tiny rectangle attached to a card. Most of the stuff that’s really interesting is too big to fit or too bulky. We’re going out for a tandem ride tomorrow, so I may catalog things as we go.
I did the first longish walk with the new boots today: no blisters. It was only three miles, though. Not a perfect test…
10 February 06
Vanishing Winter
I actually have a hankering to watch some of the Winter Olympics. Since I always ignore the Olympics, there must be some explanation for this, and probably it has to do with the fact that winter seems very far away here, with it being clear and the temperature reaching the low 70s. But we don’t have a telly, so the hankering will have to pass, though the kitties are a bit disappointed they won’t get to see any of the cat skating.
9 February 06
Not Reading, Still
The Creative License by Danny Gregory arrived today. It made a cross-country trip to the Davis Post Office, was returned to New York, and finally arrived today at my office.
The bummer is, I can’t read it. Not till Tuesday. (The delight is I can already see I need to buy a few copies and distribute them around the planet…)
This Reading Deprivation Week is doing weird things to me. I’m realizing, for instance, how email and reading blogs are a narcotic for me. I must check both emails—work and home—at least 30 times a day.
Nobody needs an answer that fast.
Ever.
If they did, they’d call.
I am not reading the paper. I’m barely reading comments on blog posts of mine, something I normally pounce on like a cat onto a lurking mouse. I’m not reading for pleasure. I AM reading for work, but it’s editing, it’s almost like connecting the dots. I’m restricting my home email to once a day, which I’m sure is breaking the rules.
It’s amazing how simultaneously liberating and freakish this is.
8 February 06
Cell Phones For Moose
If Nokia et al. ever run out of humans as a market for their wares, they might try large ungulates. Moose in Sweden are being equipped with GPS collars hooked up to GSM cell phones for tracking purposes. I think this implies that the Swedes have their rural cell phone coverage more sorted out than we do here in the United States.
7 February 06
Zen Beekeeping
The almond tree is in full blossom. We’re having some unseasonably warm weather here and the fruit trees are responding vigorously.
The landlord’s son’s beekeeping business is now headquartered in Nevada, but he seems to spend a lot of time down here, trucking bees around the Central Valley to pollinate fruit trees. Today the bees were busy—and angry. He got stung several times.
He’s a meat and potatoes kind of guy, young Johnny, but he took the stings with a stoic smile. I don’t know why I was so impressed by this, but I was. No sound from his lips. His life’s mission seems to be keeping his bees happy.
I will be doing fewer blog rounds over the next week. I’ve reached the dreaded week 4 of the Artist’s Way, Reading Deprivation Week. Yikes. I’ve read very little today and it was terrifying and quite liberating. I have yet to check my email, may wait until the morning…