You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'The Old Man' category.
Some nights now the wife is gone helping a friend cater to the rich and richer, listening to the gliterati of an oily cow town discuss the markets, hockey and nannies who don’t have visas to travel with them to Hawaii. Meanwhile at home I am trying to push back the rising tide of maleness* that is my three offspring as it threatens to overturn the small rowboat that is my sanity. I am probably just barely keeping the water below my knee level as I bale it out by the teaspoonful with handfuls of chocolate chips and pecans I find in the cupboards. I am like a squirrel gathering bits of sanity to store for these occasions when I feel the slow boil in my throat and hear words expelled with hard edges and volumes that I immediately regret. I fear capsizing until, laying in my bed, the only quiet point of a triangle of sound, I hear from the room the two oldest boys share the following conversation.
G. the moon is full of candles and that is what makes it light. (this enlightening information is drowned out by the yapping of his little brother slowing rising in volume to a level that can’t be bested)
G. do you mind? it’s my turn to talk now.
H. OK
G. Did you know the moon is glowing houses making them happy?
(meanwhile the little brother yells “GAGA GAGA” until big brother stops to patiently listen to his mumbling and then ask for permission to speak again…)
G. “The moon is private and there’s trees and one of the branches of our tree fell down remember that? OK now your turn….. say something about the moon or the branches or the trees….”
H.” hmblmlbmlbm moo hamdlamlam moo.” (The tones and inflections are those of an animated politician imploring that you can trust his facts, his motives. Of course the sounds themselves are also like those of politicians and lawyers….. gibberish that goes on too long and with too much certainty)
On and on and on in a circle they go about the moon and trees and chimneys with stars flying out of them, followed by unintelligible but equally urgent descriptions of whatever the heck is in that kid’s mouth that makes him unable to enunciate until suddenly as clear as his little blue eyes…
H. “I wanna choo choo an apple….”
G. “YOU CAN’T KEEP SAYING THE SAME THING, STOP TALKING ABOUT THE CHOO CHOO AND THE APPLE, ok my turn… Do you know any planets, like the monkey planet? Have you ever lived in America?”
H. “uh huh….” (He always says this like a teenager might agree with, in a sort of matter of fact “of course I have who hasn’t” way.)
G. “No you haven’t lived in America…. We used to live in Muncie and now we live in Canada, First we lived in Muncie, then in America and now in Canada…. Do you like Canada?”
H. “yah…”
It goes on like this for an hour and despite the nagging feeling that I should be doing one of the tasks Google keeps telling me are urgent, I lie there and listen to them and feel the boat empty of water and the tide roll out and then suddenly silence. All points are quiet and still and the wife is not yet home, but you know this will make her smile and that makes you smile and close the Google Task List…..
*maleness because as Nicola often points out this sort of crazy climbing, jumping, head bashing, toy throwing hysteria is apparently all my fault and completely foreign to someone raised without a brother. I always think of it as training although I don’t think any of us have figured out exactly for what…. At any rate maybe it is my fault but when I go to the park it becomes clear that it is not an exclusive club.
The professor was staying up late preparing for an exhibit on Wednesday, so I went to bed. Because the cherubs are making me tired these days, what with summoning me to their chambers at all hours of the night….to find their pacifiers and cover them with blankets.
Jason came upstairs just before 10 to bid me good night. He started talking about some architect. It morphed into a discussion about what it takes to become famous in the world of architecture. I believe shortness may have been one of the criteria. It was past ten at this point and my initial dream of being asleep by 9.30 was fading fast, as the professor showed no sign of terminating the conversation and returning to his work.
So I turned off the light on my nightstand, thinking he might get the hint.
‘Well,’ he rubbed his hands together, ‘I can see that you’re really interested in this discussion. So how about I go downstairs and make us some coffee and then we can stay up all night and talk.’
I burst out laughing and bid him good night.
It’s good to see that he’s retaining his sense of humor in his old age. Because he is old. Another year older today. Now he comes home from his weekly soccer games smelling of muscle ointment. ‘Did you lose again?’ I ask each time. Because his orange team is on an epic streak…of defeat.
And then he holds his arms aloft and proudly declares: ‘our record is untarnished…by victory.’
It pleases me that he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
But the older we get, the lamer the birthdays get, it seems. ‘Did you get anything exciting for your birthday?’ his mom asked him over the phone. ‘Well, I got to sleep in,’ he replied.
As if sleeping until nine is the mid-thirties’ version of a really thoughtful birthday present.
It’s true, I entertained the troops so that he could rest his head until 9am. I made scones too. The Gort grabbed one off the cooling rack and took it upstairs, pressing it into his father’s hand. ‘Here’s a scone for you.’ (And a very random green marker drawing…of a triangle with legs?)
‘What do you want for your birthday dinner,’ I asked him. ‘Butternut squash ravioli, a good salad and creme brulee,’ he ordered. Apparently people in their mid-thirties have particular tastes.
So in lieu of a Porsche this year, you’re getting squash.
Happy Birthday professor hotness. I promise I’ll get you a (miniature) Porsche next year.
In order to round off what can best be described as ‘birth week’ on this blog, I thought I’d include an interview with a real, live labor coach. Seeing as I only really know one, my interviewee had to be the (slightly verbose) professor who kindly answered these questions.
‘Thank you for your interest in my labor coaching seminar. I am happy to answer your questions and should your readers be interested, to provide them with my new video on the subject “A Father’s Guide to Labor” in which I cover the various do’s and don’ts of your participation in the wonderful world of childbirth. (Hint: DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT EATING HER FOOD (even if she says she doesn’t want it).’
What has been indispensable in your role as labor coach?
I try and imagine passing a kidney stone, divide the pain by 2 and that gets me into the appropriate frame of mind for understanding what my lovely wife is feeling each time she squeezes the life out of my arm.
Our vast male readership (Shawn) would like an explanation from you about what shall be known as ‘the epidural incident of 2009′. Would you care to address the incident? Please note I will edit your response if needed.
Part of being a good coach is understanding your players and what they want now vs. what they will want tomorrow. Right now your team may just want the pain of man to man pressing defense to go away and just play zone. But tomorrow as they lick their wounds from the inevitable beating they took, they will wish they had stuck it out. (This isn’t a direct correlation of course but merely a metaphor for the vast male audience to get into the frame of mind for the real answer, just refer to the DVD chapter “Labor is NOT Like Sports (except when it is exactly like sports)” )
More to the point.
- The nurse for all her great qualities (pushiness, sweet accent, positive thinking, uhh shortness) wasn’t very good with the needles as the puncture wounds on your forearm will attest to. In my one run in with the Canadian health care system (see the kidney stone incident of 2008) I also noted a lack of skill in inserting needles into my arm which was particularly vexing given my general fear of needles. Yada, Yada, Yada, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to seeing someone line up and try to hit you in the spine with a thick needle, while you were having painful contractions, sure people do it all the time, but I was worried
- There is the matter of what happens next. Bedpans and an audience are not really your thing.
- I can’t even get you to take an aspirin on most days and these years of seeing you build up an ethos of non intervention, just led me to interpret that what you really were saying was “Jason I know you aren’t going to let me have one, so I feel it’s safe to ask, get me an epidural. Your refusal will give me a good subject heading for my blog and will also make me feel ok about ripping all the skin off of your arm.”
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being the worst possible offense and 10 being the most egregious offense) how would you rate your most recent remark to me: ’so, when are you going to start jogging again’, six days after I bore you a third son?
In my defense I was unaware that in addition to our third child leaving your body, so had your ability to detect sarcasm, as in “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see you are up and walking, when are you going to really be all better and go for a jog (and maybe make some sort of awesome cake with frosting and caramel to congratulate my excellence in husbandry”…..)
Any tips for smooth and successful umbilical cord cutting? Do you do special exercises ahead of time, or do you just go in and wing it?
It always seems so cool in the movies, like it might be a moment where the room goes quiet and you become one with your wife and child. In reality this of course makes no sense. First of all the baby has just exited a nice warm hot tub where he is constantly supplied with food, and entered a world that is cold, with bright lights and a tiny Indian nurse, a lanky doctor and some weird unshaven guy all staring at him and you are about to cut him off completely….. also it’s a bit like cutting through a bratwurst so these are my tips for properly observing the decorum and appropriate manliness/sensitivity of the moment.
- Do not refuse the request. The doctor/midwife will ask if you want to cut the cord. You may at the time be standing in something of a mess, the baby is possibly not as cute as you had hoped, maybe he’s covered in white sticky stuff… but you must suck it up an proceed.
- Now is not the time for jokes. You may be tempted to ask if you can use your lucky pocket knife, or maybe even chew the cord in two caveman style. No one will laugh at these jokes, not even in retrospect, so save them for the pub night with the guys in a couple months when you can safely leave the house.
- Cut it to the outside of the potato chip clamp they have affixed. Don’t worry the doctor will point to the exact spot multiple times like you are a moron or something.
- Hand the baby directly to the mother so they can both exhaustedly bask in one another’s glow. This is the actual moment when the room seems to go quiet and the baby starts to look cute and the gentle sounds of violins can be heard in the background.
Would you like to comment on the anchovy incident of 2004?
Nope, that one was totally my bad. I panicked.
One of the boys comes to you and says, ‘Dad I want to be an urban planner.’ Your response?
Four immediate retorts come to mind all of which are unprintable and involve references to the Banana Republic, figure skating and fascist dictators…But based on the piles of rocks, blocks and sticks I seem to trip over in every room and nook and cranny of the yard and the drawings of burning buildings, crooked streets and stacked housing with scribble surfaces they seem to favor at this point, they would make great urban planners… Certainly better than Corb anyway.
Another boy says he’s going to have a recurring role in ‘Days of our Lives’…your response?
“Can you buy me a Porsche?”
Would you rather have twin girls or send me to Canyon Ranch Spa for a long weekend by myself?
That one’s easy. A weekend of mancation mayhem, beats a lifetime of miniskirt/sweats with bizarre words like “ouchie” written on them, acne covered boyfriends with Camaros, shopping for dresses and movies about fairies and princesses any day. Are you asking this as a real question? If so then I may instead call your bluff….
Would you rather be married to Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter?
Is rupturing my ear drums and option?
What about Ann Coulter or Hilary Clinton?
What about gouging out my eyes?
What’s the best thing about being married to me?
That would be like choosing a favorite child. It’s all so good I could never choose.
The worst? Oh, sorry it looks like we’re out of time…
Well thank you very much and don’t forget for only $19.99 all this wisdom and more can be yours…
By now it’s no secret that we have recently wasted vast amounts of time shopping for the vehicular equivalent of toilet paper. A necessity perhaps but hardly something to fret over for hours on end…. and yet I do. Of course send me to the store to buy toilet paper and I will fret over the 10 cent difference between one brand or another, I will wonder if the softness and luxury of the brand with butterflies on it trumps the low cost of the strangely coloured economy rolls. If, in a pinch, it can be counted upon to treat my blown nose kindly and wipe up spills. Is it versatile yet able to adeptly accomplish its intended purpose. I almost always regret my decision even as I hear it thud into the bottom of my cart. And so I find myself now trying to decipher the difference between the LXI and the EX and LS on vehicles I couldn’t care less about. I mean how many cup holders does one ugly mass of people moving metal need? Does each person need to spill 2 drinks while watching a DVD and listening to separate radio stations? Do the seats need to disappear, should they be suitable for captains or configured like church pews in worship of the road passing unfelt below our amply cushioned rear ends? Why is it that 2 sliding doors are a necessity over the will to drive?
I ponder all of this while passing listlessly from one sales pitch to the next. The salesmen know my heart is not in it. I am unable to summon enough of a feigned interest for them to feign enthusiasm in trying to sell me what I need but do not want. It is the same attitude they seem to bring to their jobs. They need the money but don’t want to be selling minivans to men who don’t want them, while wives and children look upon both sets of men with the urgency of moving on to the next urgency. So we are stuck, the salesmen and I in a dance of small talk about tire tread, the weather, convenience, how great the car I drove up in looks, how fast it is, how deceptive in its small package, anything but the car we are both prodding, opening doors, and trunks and hoods, looking under seats and mats, in glove boxes, hoping desperately for something to be so wrong with this one that we can rule it out (rule them all out), but also for everything to be fine so we can say this is the one, the one that will end this search and let us move on to the grocery store and school and friends’ houses, possibly with friends in tow and room to spare for all the crap gifted by well intentioned grandparents.
I think back to my own childhood in the back of a giant caprice classic station wagon, seats folded down flat and three boys rolling around on spread-out sleeping bags and playing games amongst the various suitcases and coolers with easy cheese for crackers, celery for my dad, and Oreo cookies if we were lucky. I wonder if my father who grew up in an age of muscular American cars, whose plastic models he collected from the local dealers and assembled growing up, felt a similar sense of loss when he loaded us all up in the cavernous expanse of that wagon which floated across the Midwest’s highways like a boat on an almost tranquil sea, gently rocking over the dips and around the curves of towns and country in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Kentucky. I remember that sensation of floating even now when I think of those long car rides from one small town to the next and wonder how my children will remember the inevitable journeys of their youth as we glide, sway and labor across the continent from west to east and back. Stuck unhappily behind un-passable tractor-trailers and RV’s like a forlorn caravan transferring its contents from here to there in workmanlike fashion, anticipating home or homecoming.
It is an odyssey that must have an end. A resolution. Our little sporty Volvo will not rendezvous with Montana again. It will not, most likely venture beyond the 150 mile radius of its new owner’s driving life. We will move on, albeit not as fast or stylishly.
We will buy a van and spill drinks and food in it and clean it up with toilet paper laboriously selected for the occasion.
The guest blogger is back to clear his name. OK not really. I admit it I melted the kids’ sippy cup lids and the pan I was “steaming” them in and I dulled a knife beyond recognition trying to extract said lids from said pan only to find that all of the articles were indeed a total loss. I may also have something to do with the insanity of these little beings that seem to follow us all over the place, while sneezing in our faces, fighting over objects that have no discernible value to anyone only to abandon them after winning the fight, kicking us either in A. the jewels or B. the container of their future sibling (you can do the math I assume) while riding in the shopping cart and begging, yes begging to get a t-ball bat and ball only to take two swings and say “That’s enough, you can carry it home now”.
So of course one of us is blameless in all of this. She is the princess and we are all gigantic boulder sized peas under the mattress. So if we are to change our ways and give her the respect and deference she deserves we will need to listen to the words of one far wiser than we. Ladies and gentlemen I give you Mr. T. I pity the child that does not heed his wisdom, or the woman who dresses like his back up singers.
Well my time as your host is drawing to a close. The wife should be returning soon from the land of crooked teeth, tweed and an appallingly low threshold for becoming a celebrity (“Hey is that the guy from the closed circuit tv feed in the Balham tube station?”). It will be the end of admittedly overly inside jokes, offensive comments and updates on the latest rules of the land (#6 was Lunch), but not the end of the endless fount of entertainment sprouting from the mouths of babes. So consider this the season finale when all the loose ends are tied up and the hero returns.
Over the last week I have witnessed wondrous things. G & H have taken mercy on their old man as if sensing his inadequate preparation for the job of sole parent. They have hugged one another, shared books and secret forts, yelled only occasionally and taken some decent naps along the way. But today the cracks are beginning to show, at breakfast the little guy was plowing through cinnamon rolls at an impressive clip, until I finally took mercy on his bowels and cut him off. A howling fit ensued and G helpfully intoned “that’s enough Colin!”. That’s right G has for reasons yet to be clear to me taken to calling his little brother “Colin” in times of distress or bossiness. I have asked him about this for the last several days and he simply replies “That’s his nickname”.
THAT’S HIS NICKNAME? “Why pray tell is that his nickname”, I ask, figuring that since we’re all adults here dispensing nicknames and whatnot there’s no need to simplify our conversation. “I don’t know”, comes the mostly unsatisfactory reply. “Why Colin, where did you hear Colin”, I ask. “I don’t know”, he inevitably replies and goes back to whatever he is doing. In this case he was trying to protect his cinamon rolls from his little brother Colin. So I figured that this new moniker was fair game. Yesterday I tried it on myself, figuring why not maybe the little guy will respond to direction when called Colin. “Colin, come here, let’s put your coat on”, I say. G looks at me as if I just walked in from the moon. “Who’s Colin”?, he asks. “His name isn’t Colin” he says, as if it is the most absurd thing ever uttered by mankind. In my head I flashed forward 10 years to the time when I, by then an old even less cool man, I will be trying to in some way work myself into my sons’ worlds by bringing up some hip band I can’t stand to listen too, or offering to go with them to wherever the heck it will be that kids hang out in 10 years (please don’t let it be some virtual pod that you access by placing a needle into your eyeball), and they will just look at me as if I am a man trying to follow a mermaid into the sea, shake their heads and say, whose THAT band, that was soo 10 minutes ago and plug needles into their eyes to get away from my retro coolness.
Perspective like that doesn’t come to you when you spend all day at work, come home tired and see two boys driving their mother insane. So I am in some ways really thankful for the chance I had this week to wrestle, built shanty towns and so 20 different things out of egg crates (thank you Calgary Public Library for putting THAT book right in G’s eyeline), removing screaming children from multiple locales (the grocery, the library, a meeting with my boss at work), having a paper ripping and throwing contest, falling on our butts at the hockey rink in the park, waking up at 2 am (I plan on going back to sleeping through these opportunities for bonding on the return of the queen), and seeing them run to the kitchen for our daily ice cream consumption. I am grateful and so ready for it to be over.
So some things seem completely unnecessary to me. Like Boss’ Day, the layers of packaging on kids toys or the show Two and a Half Men. But these things pale in comparison to the national holiday the boys and I awoke to this morning. CBC radio kindly informed us that it was 10 below and today was Hockey Day in Canada. This would be highlighted with hockey games all over the country matching retired hockey greats against members of the armed services, children with no teeth against children with fewer teeth and an entire town dressing up as Don Cherry. I found myself wondering what the heck every other day since the first flake hit the ground here has been. This is Canada where the junior hockey team leads the news broadcasts when it announces its lineups. Were the minor league teams can play in the same arenas as their NHL big brothers and still pack the place out. You can smell the stench of sweaty hockey gear every time a minivan/SUV door opens for crying out loud. Declaring a Hockey Day in Canada is like declaring a Fast Food Day in the US or a Fat Customer Day at Walmart. You had them at hello and there is no need to rub it in. OK well now that I have offended pretty much the whole of NAFTA, let me get to the only reason several of you are tuning in.
ARE THE CHILDREN STILL ALIVE? Yes I have gotten the urgent emails, ignored the caller ID, and tried not to be offended by the insinuation that we are probably just rolling around in piles of macaroni and cheese boxes. We are all fine thank you. Like any good Canadians we bundled up and headed down to the local pond to take in some aforementioned hockey and underwhelmed by local talent, we wandered over to the playground and proceeded to play for 20 minutes with the only patch of exposed earth and rocks the boys have seen in months. We wandered home, basking in the insanely bright and warm sunshine that seems to charactize even the coldest of days here in Calgary and stumbled upon the newly exposed sandbox in the front yard. Ice was removed from the “digger” and trucks and the boys spent another half hour bulldozing snow and pine cones around the yard. Finally their desperation for being outside gave way to the complaining of their cold fingers and we headed inside and trashed the house while I prepared the last of our provisions. Over tomato soup and grilled cheese we debated whether tomorrow would be a “school day, a church day with snacks, a big church day, or just a play day”. The answer was not well received since due to the lack of certain womanly qualities, I skipped the woman’s “coffee break” at the local church and G missed out on his Thursday snack.
So now that we have used up all the food prepared for us by the “beautiful one who travels abroad”, we will be the Three Stooges in a supermarket near you, my fellow Canadians. I only hope we can score some sweet deals in the after Hockey Day Sales.
Well folks the substitute teacher is now in the room so you get a reprieve from that homework you didn’t finish, so just put your head on your desks and lets all take a nap. That’s right our favorite blogger is off to jolly olde England and has appointed me to fill in. (A side note: actually as I write this our favorite blogger is sitting at the airport waiting for a replacement plane since the initial craft that was to be used is out of service at the moment. Details forthcoming I am sure)
I don’t of course assume that my appointment is related to anything approximating writing ability, but instead to a desire to see if I can survive a week of variously aged testosterone battles. The boys and I have hammered out the details of this arrangement and have decided upon 4 simple rules that will make this week of bach’n it a unbridled success. We have recited these rules in the car sitting in rush hour traffic for a good hour after dropping of the lovely ms. N and I can now shout out “Rule Number 2″ and G dutifully spouts the rule with such sincerity it almost seems plausible that he will A. remember the rule and B. obey it. Its like the Von Trapp family before the curtains become play clothes, or if you prefer the Pre-Mary Poppins clan with the banker father and his clock. In short there is no way it can last but until our singing heroine returns to bring back joy and laughter we have 4 simple rules.
#1. Naps- (All day, every day) OK we will settle for one nap of a decent length and I don’t mean for the kids. For some reason there are women among us who hate the idea of a full grown man napping in the middle of the day. Well those women are gone so when I say nap time I will be right there with them, not asking them to do anything I wouldn’t do.
#2. Be Kind- Uh I’m looking at you little man as you try and take big brother’s comic book and run away laughing maniacally only to then pummel said older brother when he tries to take it back. Its like watching Danny DeVito try and beat up Shawn Bradley (sorry if you aren’t knowledgeable on 90’s era 7 foot white centers in the NBA you may have to google this one.)
#3. NO YELLING!- Its going to be like a library in here. SHHHHHHH. Actually I am just hoping I’m not the first one to break this rule.
And finally since rules shouldn’t just be about what you have to do or not do but about what you might want to do, I give you the rule that trumps all the other rules and I imagine will be key to us surviving the week.
#4 Ice Cream- In this case it is both verb and noun and comes in a strawberry flavor.
Sometimes a girl just wants needs a piece of chocolate cake. Plain chocolate cake, like the kind your grandmother or mother made. Without anything on it like coconut, or peanut brittle or caramel sauce or marshmallow fluff. I needed some cake like that today.
The artist formerly known as ‘the other jason johnson’ has abandoned me, this first week of the New Year. He’s technically in town, but when one leaves before 8 in the morning and doesn’t return until 2am – save a 2 hour drop-in at home – it’s abandonment. At least in my books.
I don’t pretend to understand what it is the artist actually does. In the early part of our marriage he was just a regular architect, working at an architecture office. And the strangest question I ever had to answer was: ‘what KIND of architecture?’
But then things morphed from straightforward churches and airport terminals to futuristic, sculpture-esque stuff. And frequent use of the word ’scripting’ (like this week’s little project designed by Marc Fornes.)
I’ve been clueless ever since.
Part of what draws me to the artist, and at the same time drives me crazy, is his unfailing tendency to take on extraordinarily complicated projects that have to be completed in a (impossible) finite amount of time. These projects inevitably encounter tremendous, unforeseen obstacles, and as a result he can usually be found staying up until sunrise in the days preceding his deadline. And making emergency runs to Lowe’s or Home Depot five minutes before they close.
There was the Eurofiles exhibit made entirely of styrofoam pieces suspended from the ceiling. There were the highly fragile pieces of the ’sun’s trajectory’ made out of glue and dipped in melted wax. Right before and after the Hen’s birth. There was the graduate school thesis that had him subsisting on fries and bananas and coming home on the night bus because the tube was closed.
Sometimes I wonder if his late nights are really due to his having another family nearby, like that Lifetime movie from ten or fifteen years ago. I imagine one day I’ll walk down the street and see a couple of little blond, blue-eyed children that resemble my own. And I’ll cry in my pillow while everyone around me will shake their heads at my naivete for thinking my husband was just a really busy artiste.
Of course, the rational part of me is pretty sure Jason’s not really up for having any more kids than the ones we already have. Much less double wife maintenance.
So, until he returns on Saturday, or Sunday, I’ll be eating chocolate cake.
I’m not sure this recipe is exactly what I was looking for. Cake batter without eggs and chocolate chips scattered on top? It sounds like something out of a church cookbook. And despite its high fork rating, it had a lot of negative comments, which almost kept me from making it. But, I couldn’t find another recipe and I had all the ingredients on hand…
To my undiscerning palate, it tastes good enough. And may be just the fortification I need to survive the next three days
I am not a man who particularly enjoys travel when it is related to work. First there is of course the actual mechanics of the endeavor. Getting up at 430 AM. Not fun. Waiting until the last minute to pack. Stupid. Then of course there is the minor issue of the lack of a light in the closet, but hey it’s a conference of architecture academics just reach for something black the wife helpfully suggests. And having sat through 3 days of a tutorial on a piece of software that is making my head implode, I look around and find myself ensconced in a crowd of black clad wunderkinds. After a pleasant if confusing discussion of the Canadian and American elections with a cabbie from India on the way to the airport, I run through the process of preparing to board the flight, where by the way I will get no peanuts, no pretzels nary a snack of any kind to be found. Well I mean at least I will get a glass of water right? WRONG sucker. That’s right the most plentiful element on earth will set you back $2 on USAirways. Well a movie, that will be nice. Uhh I might be wrong but isn’t the film Cinderella Man like 5 years old? I mean this airline is seriously like TBS or something, a very non premium situation. But hey I never saw it so why not. … Umm here is why not. When the stock market is exploding and we are all shouting about how the sky is falling, I don’t think it’s a good time to show a movie about formerly comfortable people living in cardboard boxes in central park… I’m not going to say I cried, because that would just be a ploy for your emotions, but it was some powerful acting and the plane windows seemed to be fogging up or something. So we are at the climax of the film he is boxing the champ, who has killed people in the ring, renee zelwegger’s character even goes to the fight to lend support. It is all too much to take… and then zipppp. Nothing the TV is turned off, due to our need to land… I mean who cares if we watch the movie during landing… Is the pilot watching as well, are we turning it off so he won’t be tempted to watch the movie instead of the runway? So I am two for two on missing out on boxing movie endings while in flight, I also missed out on whether or not the woman boxer in the Clint Eastwood movie ended up dying or not.
So yes my dear it may seem glamorous to be sitting at a table of archinerds discussing the merits of the GrasshopperAPI versus the unidirectional flow of GC. Eating out at Café Barbette anticipating their delicious mac and cheese with pommes frites only to find them replaced on the menu by cold salmon and unripe tomatoes. And yes we will all hand out our cards and say “we should collaborate sometime”, people will stare blankly as I pass out zingers left and right, but their faces will be aglow as they discuss the highly localized differential instantiation of an element on a surface… And that’s all good stuff. Great stuff even. But when I read the entries from back on the homefront it makes my day and brings a little bit of reality back into my life. So yes as hard as it is to believe, I miss the mayhem of our little piece of heaven.
