Sea-Fever

car woes

I hit a pothole the other day, a big one. I didn't see it and I was going faster than I would have if I had seen it. Ever since, the car has had a bit of shimmy, a little extra vibration. It went in that instant from driving normally to driving like an Old Car. 

Now "Harriet" is 7 years old - right at the age when things start going wrong with a car, but she's a Honda, and I've been diligent in doing preventive maintenance, so I thought I would be ok for another few years before the gigantic shop bills started rolling in.

Wrong.

I think my first error was taking the car to the dealer. But I knew the car needed a good once over - inspected brakes, tires, alignment, belts, pumps, etc. It probably needed its transmission fluid replaced (a year five service) and would probably need new tires in the next year or so. Plus I wanted to get the shimmy looked at by someone who would know what they were doing.

But nothing prepared me for the call from the service guy (Stu) at 2. I wish he had asked me if I was sitting down, because sit down I did during his litany of things wrong with my car. Leaking right front strut, unevenly wearing tires (their perp in the vibration mystery), lower arm joint thing cracked and worn, improperly installed battery (this one's my fave - apparently the Jiffy Lube guys installed the wrong battery in my car 8 months ago - the terminals are reversed, and too close to the hood prop, and in danger of electrical fire/explosion should the hood prop hit the terminals. At least this is what the dealer tells me) and finally, and most terribly expensively, apparently the timing belt (and the water pump and oil seals) all should be replaced at 7 years. I had thought that the timing belt was a 100,000 mile/10 year fix, but apparently its 7 years. My car is no where near 100,000 miles, but it is 7 years old. I don't want to mess with the timing belt - I've heard the catastrophic horror stories.

But its $1300 to replace. More than my RENT. And that doesn't include any of the other work. Or that oil change. Hell.

Things like this leave me feeling helpless. I don't know enough about cars to really know what these guys are talking about, so I don't know if I can say "Nah, I'll do the timing belt next year." I'll be doing a good amount of driving this summer and I don't want to be worried that the car is going to blow up literally or figuratively at an inopportune moment - but as soon as the service guy says it, it's like the fear of breakdown has been planted in my mind.

Ultimately, though, it's about trust. Who do I trust? Does this mean I can't trust the jokers at Jiffy Lube who slapped whatever battery they had in my car? Or is the dealer making a big deal out of nothing, and just padding their charges to make their monthly service quota in a bad economy? If I took it somewhere else, would any other mechanic look at the mileage and year of my car and suggest the timing belt fix? I hate not knowing who to trust and oscillating between worrying about spending money needlessly (LOTS and LOTS OF MONEY - more than a year of savings GONE.) and worrying that I'm not properly taking care of a vehicle that I want and need to have last me 3 to 5 more years.

Sigh. I get it back tomorrow night. Stu promised me some "discounts." Said he'd "See what he could do." So we shall see what the ultimate damage is, but I suspect it will be well into the 4 figures.

A sense of place - thinking about travel & home

I'm currently reading Richard Russo's The Bridge of Sighs. The book begins with the main character describing his almost anachronistic rootedness in a place - his hometown - a place he's never really left.  The narrator (one of them) has never traveled much at all, and is preparing to travel to Italy - leaving the country for the first time.

I cracked the book on my plane flight back to this fair city from a simultaneously fun, but frustrating weekend at a conference that left me chaffing at some of the responsibilities of my job and the choices I'd made with regards to it. I started thinking about travel, and homecoming and the importance of the idea of home.

I enjoy travel - love it for the way it upends me out of my routines, my complacencies, my ruts. It exposes me to new places, foods, communities, accents and languages, attitudes and regional quirks, and in doing so makes me reconsider all of those elements of my own life. Shakes the dust off, challenges my own assumptions, and adds a new lustre to those previously wearying chores and life moments. The grocery store, the walk to the dry cleaner, my office all feel a little fresher.

But travel is also wearying. All that newness and disruption requires energy and management. We get into routines because they streamline life in certain ways and changing them requires more "cycles" of the brain and body. Add to this the indignities of travel - the cramming, jostling, lines, power struggles over security theater, the endless details of identification, liquids and compliance with regulations. Not only has travel lost its glamour, it's lost any element of enjoyment or relaxation and has become purely a utility - a way to get from A to B rather than a journey, or a part of the experience. Even when nothing particularly goes wrong, travel is exhausting.

So fleeing the stuffy confines of the airport on Sunday was like the release of a prisoner after a long captivity. I was headed Home, to the cats and their attendant dirt, my apartment, crammed full of its books, and ceramics, handmedown furniture and threadbare oriental rungs. The city itself welcomed me as only this place can, with a warm May evening, air soft and scented with honeysuckle through the open cab window as it wended its way past parks, glimmering river and glowing marble monuments in the lowering dark.

Home is now cast as a comfortable retreat after 5 days absence rather than the pedestrian and rather unkempt roof-over-ones head it was when I left. The idea of home is such a central concept to our ideas of life, its rhythms, and relaxation. I think of this when I remember the distinct moment when I no longer thought of my parent's house as home - the transition sometime after college, a month after signing a lease and moving into my own house with friends - and how incredibly radical that felt. I also think of this when I see how S's girls struggle at times with having two homes - Dad's and Mom's - but designating one as "home" so freighted with untenable favoritism and preference that it becomes as hard to articulate as it does to sometimes manage. But not having one "home" is a significant adjustment, and not just with regards to the movement of material things like soccer cleats and tshirts and favorite toys.

All of this makes me appreciate my own small apartment and renews my sense of delight in coming home to it.

What I should have written

So about a month ago, I wrote a post about eating at a restaurant with a very old friend and her husband. And while it was an amazing meal of poetically delicious food, I didn't really tell the whole story. But today I'm feeling honest and unflinching, so I'll share the parts I left out.

The parts about feeling resentful of having more food that I could ever possibly eat laid before me - including three or four 'gifts from the kitchen.' Of sitting with people who ordered fois gras (after talking with their server about how if it becomes illegal in their state - it might, for reasons of animal cruelty - they'll just raise their own geese to force feed), and not one, but two helpings and rationally expected me to help pay for the $45 they just added to our bill.  What was styled as generosity (and don't get me wrong, it was) ended up feeling like obligation and left me feeling ill having over-eaten out of fear of offending my various hosts and companions and trying to figure out how to expense an $80 meal.

I also left out the part about how one of my companions felt compelled towards the end of the meal to wax rhapsodic (really, brag) about the other person sitting right there at the table with us. It's nice to be supportive of your spouse and all, but there's really no need to tell me every single wonderful thing about him. Really. It's actually a little embarrassing for us both and makes wonder if a little bit of the old high-school you bubbled up there for a second. I hope it wasn't because I did something that made you uncomfortable.

It was great to reconnect with this person and ultimately the meal was lovely - particularly a special salad of asparagus, radishes and new peas that the kitchen made especially for us. But it wasn't quite all sunshine and roses, either.

About suicide, but not in the way you might think...

I'm supposed to attend a small group event next week that looks at the problem of suicide and how various new media might contribute to or help mitigate the problem. In preparation for the event, various participants have been sharing their online footprints. At first it was just PR and media types - here's my company, here's my research. Follow me on Twitter!

But yesterday and today, it's been the personal stories. The families of teens and young adults who killed themselves - bullied to death by peers, or silently suffering crushing depression - now politicized and energized to work publicly on this issue through websites and foundations, each gently telling their story. The documentary about teen suicide that aired on PBS last night. The news reports of laid off family men taking guns to themselves and sometimes their spouses and children. And the 45 pages of background reading with statistics.

I'm not sure I can take much more of it. Each story hits me from a fresh angle, and claws at me. It's for the same reason that I can't and don't watch garden-variety local tv news and their tragedy of the day anymore. It literally hurts every time.

I was a bit apprehensive about signing up to participate in such a group given the topic, but I agreed because I think it's an important issue, one that's touched me at times in my own life. And besides, how do you say no to something like this?   But I do wonder what's going to be left of me, emotionally next week once the two-day meeting is over if just the preparation for it seems so very hard.

Poetry

This month, my book club has set aside our usual book-length novel or work of non-fiction and took up a curious offer. Poetry magazine offered 10 copies of its April issue for free to book clubs for discussion, and we took them up on their offer.

Initially, I was disappointed, as the April issue turned out to be Poetry's Translation issue, and if there's one thing that confounds me with poetry it's poetry in translation. How can it possibly be translated? If poems are the best words in their best order, how is that replicated in another language with different sounds, rhymes, patterns, meanings?

Ultimately, though, I'm enjoying wrestling with the problem of poems in translation - which ones work, and which don't? Do poems that are translated from languages that are further from English (non-germanic or romantic) have greater or lesser levels of success? Are there different moments in the poem of greater or lesser success? and what about translating as a group project?

And it's nice to be exposed to some more modern and less canonized poems. One one hand, it reminds me of the value of the canon - these heavily anthologized, read and taught poems are masterful.  But on the other hand, some of the poems in the magazine are truly radical, and remind me of the ways in which the canon is limited, but poetry isn't.

But the best side effect of reading and re-engaging with poetry has been a desire and the inspiration to start writing poems again. Not many, and none good, but it's nice to flex that long-disused creative muscle.

Trying not to see

I rowed this morning. It was my second outing of the year, on day four of a early hot streak. The trees, emboldened by the heat, have been pumping out the pollen, covering us in a hot, green, itchy haze. But the river was mostly flat, aside from a warm wind from the southeast, pushing debris, and water and boats into the dock.

I set out gingerly, knowing that my still-raw hands from Saturday's row would be the limiting factor on the day. Quickly, though, I lost myself in the row, enjoying the remembered rhythms of oars, boat, water and banks.

Until I was buzzed by the helicopter.

It was flying low, and slowly, more of an extended, gradually moving hover, rather than a true buzzing. And it wasn't a military helicopter, usually the culprit in the loud and low boathouse fly overs. Was it a rogue traffic reporter out for a joy ride, dropping in close to see the contours of the river?

And then I remembered.

It was a small item on the bottom of the front page of the metro section - a short narrative that laid out in clipped newspaper verse a family tragedy. A 12 year old boy, out fishing with his father, enticed by the cool and seemingly calm river on the first hot weekend, slips and falls into the water. His father tries to save him, but must be rescued himself. The boy never resurfaced.

Oh dear god, I thought as I rowed, they must not have found him yet. I turned and squinted up stream, and in the distance saw the police boats slowly trolling the river.

My stomach lurched, and suddenly every stick, every clump leaves or log or plastic bag became the body of a little boy.  How could I stand the horror of a small hand, or sneakered foot protruding from some mid river tangle of rocks, wood and trash?

I couldn't. I turned my boat around, away from the horror, and one family's tragedy now consuming the local police, and determinedly softened my gaze. I would look at everything and nothing, take in no specifics, and try desperately not to see.

Lessons learned

Life is one long series of lessons, or at least it seems that way sometimes. Lately life has been delivering up a motley, amusing and occasionally even useful assortment.

Recent lesson #1: skin cream is not like fine wine - it does not get better with age.
In a fit of spring cleaning, I purged my bathroom of various expired medicines and personal body products. I do this periodically, but for many years I had been holding onto a particularly beloved skin cream. It's expensive stuff and smells heavenly, like herbs and citrus and eucalyptus. So I'd always doled it out to myself in small doses, saving it for "special occasions." But I'd done that for so long, that the stuff actually turned rancid, which I learned yesterday after liberally smearing myself with the stuff - the first blurp out of the bottle smelled lovely, the following one, much less so. I didn't quite catch on for one or two dollops, either, so I spent the day well-moisturized but oddly scented.  The purge also revealed that similar issues plague shampoo, too.  The takeaway? Products are meant to be used, so use them.

Recent lesson #2: Do not get the cute, fat gerbil at the pet store. Unless you would like your gerbil census to swell nearly exponentially from 3 to eleven less than twenty-four hours after you get home from the pet store. Lesson thoughtfully provided by my friend L.T., a stay at home mom who after gerbil sitting with her two daughters for week thought it might be time for an early lesson on suburban small animal husbandry. She got a tad more than she bargained for, and sadly the two boys, Peach and Rainbow Flower Blossom had to go back to the shop. Marshmallow and her brood stay.

Recent lesson #3: contact lens wearers often look oddly stare-eyed in photographs. For more natural looking photos, take the lenses out. I learned this one after sitting through a session and a half with a professional photog for headshots for work. After I returned for a second sitting, he asked me what I didn't like about the earlier ones ("Aside from everything?..."). And after taking a couple of initial shots, he explained his theory about contacts and strange-looking eyes (born out by looking at the first few shots.) So I went and popped the lenses out, and lo and behold, the photos look much more normal and natural. They're still not awesome, but at least I won't shudder every time I see them circulating on the internet.

cat behavior modification

It's been getting steadily worse over the past few months. First Oscar, then Daisy, making ever bolder leaps into previously forbidden territory.

First they just started getting up on the counters, but would quickly jump down. Now, they're up on the counters and stealing food, licking clean bowls left to soak in the sink, and even venturing over to the stove, to sample whatever is cooling in pans left on the stove to clean after dinner has been eaten. Dinner at home has become a ritual of sitting down, and standing up mid-bite to yell, run to the kitchen, grab the squirt bottle to reinforce a sharp "No!" with a stream of water. Lately I've resorted to giving the cats a dinner time "timeout" in the bedroom, if only to have some peace to eat my meal.

But it's not working. They still get up there, only now, they jump down as soon as they hear me get up from my chair in the front room. I've started trying to clean as I go more, so there's less deliciousness available on the counters, but sometimes that's just not practical when the food is hot and waiting to be eaten and the clean up messy and time consuming. The spray of water seems pretty ineffective - Daisy sometimes snarls or bats it away, Oscar just scampers off to lick the water from his fur elsewhere.

Just yesterday evening I was sitting, rather proud of myself for making pork chops with a rhubarb apple compote (sadly not as good as its sounds, and a rather unappetizing neon pink color that doesn't go well flavor-wise nor visually with the pork.), baked polenta topped with thyme-scented sauteed mushrooms and steamed spinach. I was just chowing down, when I hear a tell-tale Thump! and turn towards the kitchen to see Oscar scurrying away with my lunch - the other pork chop - dangling gently from his jaws.

It's not like I'm underfeeding them - the vet approves of their current twice a day, can and quarter regimen.

So I'm not really sure what to do. The problem is getting worse - they're getting up on the counter more often, and are more boldly carrying things off. They're also attacking each other more. Daisy stalked Oscar and then viciously chomped on his butt right in front of my while I was using the computer yesterday. I put it down to spring fever, and I make sure to crack the windows so they get more porch and bird-sassing time, but it's not helping in either regard.

Thoughts?

Salt House

Let me tell you, it's pretty awesome when you're friends with the sous-chef at a fancy restaurant. Make that guy the second in command, the day-to-day leader of the kitchen in a fabulous local focused organic restaurant in San Francisco and you've got a feast staring you in the face.

After tantalizing with food descriptions that took two and three minutes to unspool "well first, I make three of my own marmalades from scratch. Then I mix two of them with a rhubarb/anchiote simple syrup reduction, and then blend quinoa, red barley and teff grains into a pilaf with steamed nibs of asparagus..." Darryl tossed off that he might have a "few things up his sleeve," and boy should we have paid attention.

Tonight I dined with friend S-E and her husband S at the Salt House, a lovely little restaurant in the SOuth of MArket District in San Francisco.  I was peckish but not ravenous and was planning to order a soup and an appetizer and a dessert and call it a meal.  Oh no. no no. That is most definitely not what happened.

My dining companions, one of whom I had never met and the other whom I hadn't seen in 17 years, turned out to be super-foodies.  They had cocktails and a gorgeous sounding Pinot Noir. We split 4 appetizers including two servings of the "Fois" (gras) [which I haven't eaten in more than a decade], and a smoked trout salad and pork belly (which basically melted off the fork). But prior to getting the food we had actually ordered, "the kitchen" sent out little green salads made with shaved radishes, shaved asparagus, new peas, and a light meyer lemon dressing. It was a revelation of spring in every crunchy green lemony bite. The kitchen also sent us the consomme - a new menu addition with fresh and crisp local onions and a ricotta dumpling floating in the housemade broth.

We hadn't even gotten to the main courses yet - I had ordered the seared tuna lightly crusted in north african spices along with the marmalade sauce and the three grain asaparagus pilaf - and while the portions weren't huge and the tuna lovely, I would have been fine if I stopped with appetizers.

But did we stop? Of course not? I ordered a cookie plate and tea for dessert, while my companions ordered cookies and a strawberry dish. When it came time for them to bring out the desserts, once again the kitchen sent something else - the cheese plate - which I had eyed, but rejected as too rich for my poor lactose intolerant stomach.  So what did I do, I ate cheese. Gorgeous, amazing cheese (Cowgirl Creameries famous Mt. Tam cheese, a soft brie like cheese from Washington and a pungent and delicious cheese whose name I did not learn. All of this was accompanied by a thinly sliced and stacked pear and similar sliced apple, with the slices arranged in narrow rows to create a skinny apple "fence" between one of the cheeses and the candied hazelenuts that also accompanied the cheese, along with the spoonful of fresh local honey.  The cookies, the parts I could choke down, were also delightful and the remainder now reside in my bag to serve as tomorrow's mid-morning snack, assuming I'm ever actually hungry again.

All in all, an amazing (and amazingly expensive) meal, but well worth it. It was nice to meet someone (Darryl) who obviously took such pride and delight in his food and his creative development of dishes as well as to reconnect with S-E.

Hierarchies

I'm currently attending a conference in San Francisco. It's the Game Developers Conference, a 5 day, 16,000 person video game related extravaganza.

I couldn't be more out of place.
I'm not male (though I am white). I'm not given to wearing black tshirts and black leather jackets. Converse lowtops also predominate, though mainly among North Americans. I don't have hair that is dyed or shaved and I haven't braided my (nonexistent) facial hair. I'm not interested in buying books of Anime erotica, though I could at the conference book store. [Aside: does anyone actually buy books of erotica or porn anymore? isn't the web just a whole lot easier?]

There's also a whole hierarchy here - mostly indicated by the color of your enormous conference badge (though also suggested by the expensiveness of the suit jacket you happen to be wearing over your black tshirt.) This conference badge is so large its almost like a Scottish sporran and bristles with ribbons that also indicate status. Are you an exhibitor? volunteer? or better yet, a speaker? Do you have the all-access orange badge holder, or are you just a tutorials and summits blue? Or a black "expo only?" In the anonymous world of a giant convention, where everyone looks pretty much the same, we (or the conference organizers) are reimposing a new hierarchy, and new sets of statuses on the attendees - using the language of color, ribbon and badges to give us glanceable ways to decide whether someone is important, worth talking to, and deserving of respect. Of course this doesn't even begin to signify any of those things with any semblance of accuracy - the most interesting conversations I've had at the conference so far have been with three volunteers, all in college or fresh out, and brimming with thoughts on telecom and broadband policy and social networking. But we use these cues nonetheless when wading through the throngs in the cavernous convention center.

So despite the fact that my relatively straightlaced, colorful, female self looks entirely out of place, I have the ace in status hole in my all-access badge with the speaker ribbon. This proves to be my saving grace, otherwise I fear that no one would talk to me, though they might stare.

Another odd thing I've noticed; Among the few women at the conference, a relatively large percentage of them wear skirts or dresses. It's almost as if they're adopting an aggressively feminine look in defiance of the masculinity of the conference and the industry. Or another read suggests that maybe they've bought into some of the stereotyping of women that runs through many of the industries most popular offerings - where women have barbie curves and skimpy clothes, though notably few of the skirt wearers are showing much in the way of skin.

It's an uncomfortable place, this conference, though not much worse than the anti-woman vibes I picked up at last years South by Southwest Interactive conference. Nevertheless, tomorrow I'll put on my trousers, grab my bright green coat and even brighter scarf and head back into the hordes.

Soundtracks

I often have a quiet soundtrack playing in the back of my life. Certain moments in my life seem to be accompanied by music; runs are heavy on the drums, walks to work can have a hip-hop back beat, or a slow mournful Iron and Wine melody behind them. Sometimes these are literally provided by my iPod, or car stereo, other times by the throbbing bass of passing cars and sometimes the songs ring and mutter in my head.

Soundtracks can be both a function of the mood of a moment, or set it. This weekend, S. and I headed to California, as a pleasant prelude to a longer and less pleasant work trip of mine. We rented a zippy cherry red Pontiac Vibe that was equipped with XM satellite radio. The XM proved a key feature of the weekend as we headed to the Point Reyes National Seashore, a place firmly off the radio and cellphone grid.  After some experimentation, we hit upon a particular XM station called the CoffeeHouse - which we eventually realized played only acoustic versions of songs by singer songwriters.

The CoffeeHouse proved to be the perfect soundtrack to the weekend - mellow, charming, sing-along-able at times, the music melted the world away and snuggled up into the alternately sunny and misty but always windswept green landscape. It propelled us smiling along California Route 1 as it hugged the coast to Stinson Beach, and soothed us as we limped into Point Reyes Station looking for dinner, exhausted, hungry and sore after a 15 mile hike.

One small sad point - unlike if we were listening to an album (or two) of songs, or a concrete mix of music that we could replay and use to recapture the feeling of the trip, XM is fleeting. The weekend has been marked by a genre of music in a way that will be hard to recapture even as it means that we'll also be able to lightly reconnect with it when ever we listen to music in a particular style.

 

This time, I tried flowers

About eight years ago, I became embroiled in a needless, monthlong health scare foisted upon me by a crappy primary care doctor. Suffice to say, I had a random symptom on a frequently administered test and had had it in various forms for years. At this particular moment 8 years ago, my PCD decided that it might be something and that she was going to withhold another much need Rx from me until I went and got it checked out. Once she got the test results, she'd write the scrip.

After cursing her, I made an appointment with the specialist, who looked at the test results and said its probably nothing, but we'll check it out. We booked a couple of appointments for a series of tests a month in the future. And then I went home. And checked the internet. Where upon I learned what all those other things might be that my random symptom suggested - not the least of which was some horrendous invasive cancers.

I spent the month lumping around in varying degrees of panic - sometimes subdued, low grade panic, sometimes, active "Oh My Freaking God What if I Actually Die" panic. I wore the nagging fear like a lead jacket. And I started to see the world differently. Why should I put off that purchase/thing? What if I'm dying? then I'd better start enjoying what I've got!

Mostly, this manifest itself in odd purchases, most notably the I Might Die Shoes. They were a pair of chunky two-tone Nine West loafers. I loved them, would walk past them in the window at Nine West at lunch time and gaze at them longingly. I hadn't purchased them however, because I had plenty of other shoes in my closet that fit that loafer niche. But after two weeks of oppression under the fear of the unknown and worry about what might be going on with my health, I pulled the trigger and bought them.

Never mind that they didn't really fit, and gave me horrendous blisters and could not be made to stay comfortably on my foot even with the addition of footbeds, stretching and heel attachments. I maybe wore them a total of four times before eventually giving them away 3 years later.

And obviously, nothing was actually seriously wrong with me, though I suffered through two painful and uncomfortable tests and a month of punishing worry.

I find myself thinking about this again after going through a mini-version of this over the past 5 days. Mysterious symptom was initially dismissed by a primary care doctor, but a month later, a random pre-planned visit to a specialist reignited the concern over said symptom, resulting in a fire drill of doctors visits and tests and a weekend of waiting for test results in Dr. Google's waiting room. This time, though, the internet proved to be as much a comfort as a fear-monger, and once again, all the scariest scenarios have been ruled out. But still, gnawing fear and worry add an extra weight on to the daily grind of life that makes each day a bit more exhausting.

And mindful of the shoe debacle, this time, I turned to a vaseful of tulips for comfort rather than footwear.

travels

I'm about to head out for a spate of travel again - some for fun, but mostly for work and mostly places I've already been and visit a lot (big East Coast cities, for example). But I was inspired to finally add in some of my photos from one of my more recent and more photogenic trips - my Baja kayaking trip with my sister, which was now almost two years ago (yikes!)

Typepad isn't letting me surface those images at the top of my photo album (grr) but if you click through the Vancouver shots, a few lovely, spiny, hot and dry images have been added in the middle.

And hopefully, next week's California trip will yield some additional photographic blog fodder.

'Not in any particular order'

The funny thing is, that even though I wrote these in 1996, I have managed to accomplish some of them in the last few years. I learned to knit (though not, sadly, how to purl and I have since put knitting aside). I did learn about photography and SLR cameras. I did take cardio kickboxing for a year post college, though whether that could be called 'learning boxing' is entirely debatable. I have on a few vacations in the past 10 years, done some landscape painting.  Not sure whether I read more, but I think I definitely read more for pleasure than I did in college when I wrote this, when every waking moment was devoted to rowing, studying, eating, writing and radio and certainly not to the reading of fun novels that I chose myself.

So, P. did you ever do that hangliding?