30 June 2004

Reset

Re: previous post about waiting for test results.

False alarm. All systems are go. Proceed with your regularly scheduled happy fun time.

29 June 2004

Fireworks preview

Lightning bugs. Tons of 'em. Scads and scads. In my yard, right now. I can't remember the last time I saw one. I don't even remember how they do that thing with the light on their butts -- I must have learned it sometime in science class, right? And is it really a sparkly mating dance that they're doing? I bet it beats cruising the bar scene...

What it really looks like is the wickedest hardest game of Simon ever.


And no, not for Godot

I've been very single-minded these last couple of weeks, repeatedly pacing up and down the same worn-down furrow in the metaphorical rug, chewing the inside of my cheek, muttering inapplicable slogans, laughing spasmodically in the car...

I'm doing naught but waiting, waiting... for Resolution, for The Word, for the Test Results.

And when it's all over, I can go back to thinking planty thoughts and drinky thoughts and obscure musical reference thoughts...

Or.

I'll have one great big thing to talk about.

Or not.

We'll see.

I hate waiting.

Don't you?

25 June 2004

Rain-out

We should've gone to the Cape League game. They didn't get rained out.

It's Matt's day off today, and we had joyful plans and schemes for watching the Yankees/Mets game tonight, but no. It's been rained out. After only an hour of rain. Sigh.

The last time I was at Yankee Stadium, it rained for three and a half hours before they finally sent us home. I was so excited for that game... we had seen the day game the day before, with Andy Pettitte pitching against the Red Sox, and we were camping just a bit north of the George Washington bridge, so that we could stay in town for the two games.

That first game, on Sunday, we had bleacher seats, and I got royally roasted by the sun. On the way back to camp after the game, my car got a flat tire, and we had to change the tire on the practically non-existent shoulder of the Palisades Parkway, tractor trailers zooming past us, only feet away.

Fortunately, I still had the "donut" spare tire in the trunk -- but it had no air in it. So we put that on and limped slowly, on the rims of the donut, to the nearest exit, where we hoped to find a gas station with an air pump.

That town totally hooked us up. We got our air, and bought some water and snacks at the grocery store. The cashier had seen us deal with our tire in the parking lot, then saw our hot, dusty faces above our obviously brand new Yankees T-shirts, and gave us the water and kibble for free.

The next day, Matt and I wandered aimlessly around mid-town Manhattan, seeing the sights for a while. We ducked into St. Patrick's Cathedral for a break at one point, and enjoyed the mellow coolness within. We admired the stained glass windows and general gothic-ness of the place, then walked back outside, stepping around office workers eating their lunches on the cathedral steps.

Then back to Yankee Stadium, where we drank beer inside the concourse with a friendly couple from Florida during the three-and-a-half hour rain delay. When word came that the game was postponed, I burst into tears. I was sunburned and tired and over-reacting, but these tickets had been Matt's birthday present to me, and we were going home to Syracuse the next day. And I had been looking forward to seeing Roger Clemens pitch what would have been his 20th win of the season, had he won.

When we woke up the next morning, the weather was so outstanding, I tried to convince Matt to stay for one more day and use our rain checks that night. We didn't have any cells phones at the time, so I had to walk to the ranger station to use the pay phone to call Yankee Stadium, to ask if we could use our rain checks that night. I got no answer at the Stadium.

When I got back to the campsite, Matt was breaking down the tent, and had the car radio on with both doors wide open so he could hear better. I walked up to the site just in time to hear that the World Trade Towers had just fallen.

We drove back up to Syracuse that morning, and it wasn't until sometime the next week that I realized I was still wearing the same t-shirt I had changed the tire in.

18 June 2004

Faster faster

The last few nights I've woken up in the middle of these great, epic chase-scene dreams. Consistently, I'm playing the role of the hero of a murder mystery-type story, and elude my nefarious pursuers by using my superior knowledge of the local landscape. Things like where one can hide halfway out the jetty on a certain beach, where the shoreline drops precipitously while remaining shallow on either side just yards away, crafty use of back roads and cut-throughs...

OK, none of those were real examples, but I can hardly tell you those, can I? Then you wouldn't be ensnared in my web of suspense when you read my forthcoming mystery novel!

Geez. Like I was gonna give it away that easy. Get real, folks.

15 June 2004

No names... of course

Open letter to Michael Kay (TV play-by-play announcer for the Yankees):

OK. First of all, you're dreamy. You're also very protective of your privacy, so i have no idea if you're coupled or not, but I have to imagine you are. What a catch. (oooh what a catch! a pretty play!) But that's not what I came here to say.

Here's the thing:

Not that you have to fear for your job or anything, but I have, over the last little while, eerily anticipated your words during the Yankees broadcast. I say something, you say it a minute or two later.

Like when that terrific rookie, Khalil Greene, who is a dead ringer for Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, came to bat. Dude, I totally said that he looked like Spicoli only 45 seconds before you did. And... no one else in the broadcast booth knew who, or what, you were talking about.

I knew.

I make the same dork-tastic puns as you do, almost at the same time.

I knew what you meant when you said "Bonus Cantos" when the game went to extra innings the other night.

If it weren't for the fact that you're this big, busy, seriously important guy who lives hundreds of miles away from me, I would totally take you out for cocktails sometime.

I think we would enjoy each others' company. I think we would crack each other up. Or hate each other on sight. Either one, really.

In any case, I love your flavor, baby, in all your dorky, big-word-using, literary-reference-dropping, pun-loving glory.


...and we do thank you for that.

12 June 2004

Cheering section

Must be some kind of weird weather front moving through, because I keep getting up before noon and doing stuff. Odd, but I'll go with it.

Today I decided I wanted to follow up yesterday's surprisingly strenuous hike by walking the two miles of the nearby beach, so I put my walkin' shoes on and skedaddled on down to the shore. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that The Season has truly begun, to the extent that I now need a beach sticker to access the beach at 8 o'clock in the morning.

Good thing I'm a resident, and it only costs twenty bucks.

So I cruise on up to town hall, only to discover it doesn't open until 9. So I go to the PO, the Bank, and the coffee shop. Back to Town Hall, where I see:

1. a man with his two young sons (toddlers), walking toward their car. The sons are trying desperately to catch up to Dad, and saying Dada! Dada! Dad turns around, still walking away from them, like he's too cool for them, and sneers, Dada! Dada! Way to go. Let's hear it for cruel mockery in parenting.

2. an entirely different kind of town employee/sticker teller -- usually they are very old and slow retirees, who like to try to remember how many members of my family they went to grammar school with, which I don't really mind much. This gal was about 19, adorable, maybe 80 pounds wet, and had full sleeve tattoos on both arms. Awright! Woo! Let's hear it for diversity in town hiring!

3. a guy I used to babysit for, who still lives next door to my mother. This is only interesting because he's the very first person in the last two years to recognize me from my misspent youth. Also, he was nice enough not to bring up that time I smoked three of his cigarettes in his bathroom, threw the butts in the toilet, and forgot to flush. yeah! Let's hear it for a complete and utter lack of stealth in rule-breaking!

11 June 2004

Like Open Arms, but worse

And what about this:

my major contribution to the set construction for Sleeping Beauty has been the sewing of about 5 billion red felt roses, soon to be followed by the making of many many papier mache thorns.

So about 15 hours into this project, I start getting all cross-eyed and delirious, so natch I start to belt out "Every Rose has Its Thorn" which is of course the shlockiest of Schlocky Eighties hair band Tunes...

And everyone claimed to have never heard it before.

All the other techies are my age, people. And I know that I didn't discover the fact that music existed outside of top 40 radio stations until much later in life than most folks, but still.

Please, someone validate me, and tell me I'm not spontaneously making up awful awful arena rock ballads in my filthy little subconcious.

knock wood

I guess, like cleaning out an attic or shed, when undertaking even the most modest of home improvement projects, you have to make it look like hell before you can make it look good. Our house looked like ass for a few days, while we got a new roof put on, but now it's lovely -- pale green tiles all symmetrically snugged up against each other, pleasing in their regular spacing. (If you know me, you know that symmetry is super important to me. Like Monk craves symmetry, I crave symmetry. I line up the silverware on restaurant tables as I pass by. hey, lay off. there are worse compulsions.)

But NO, I have not yet planted anything in our purported "garden", Nosy Nellie, even though it's been about a month since the topsoil was put down. I'll get to it, OK? I'm still enjoying my Very First Summer of Non-Restaurant Work, dig?

Jeez.

Speaking of restaurant work, my awesome husband the restaurant manager actually has tonight off (OMG... a Friday night off during The Season???) so we've got schemes and plans. Perhaps a little nature hike, followed by a bite to eat somewhere, followed by an evening's entertainment at the 'Comah.

To top off my sense of preening contentedness (goddamn, tempt fate much?) I have work aplenty on my desk and on its way. Oh, and that rash finally went away.

just kidding.

It'll never go away.

07 June 2004

Not a gypsy

From the time I was in 7th grade until he moved away in 10th, I had an everlasting crush on this kid named Gaje. He was quirky, funny: he always made us laugh in that grim fastness of a middle school.

I remember his talent for rewriting/satirizing song lyrics: In the art room, as we all charged for the limited supply of gooey inkwells filled with gooberish glue, singing "Ev-er-y-body wants glue... I just want to make you mine all mine" and the fact that he knew how many times David Van Halen changed his spandex pants in the video for "Jump".

He was the first kid I knew who could do a credible moonwalk. Better still, he could do that flip up onto the tiptoes that Michael Jackson did, in his skull-and-crossbones Vans.

He was one of those kids who was super smart, but didn't give a crispy crap. He was always in honors French class with me, and honors this and that, but was constantly absent, or in trouble, or about to be.

Every year, some teacher would be wigged out by his weird name, and would end up asking him what it "means".

One year, I heard him tell the English teacher his name was a mixture of his two godparents' names... Gail and Jeff. Get it; the first two letters of each... Ga + Je = Gaje.

The next period, he told our French teacher it was Romanian for "not a gypsy".

After he moved away, I heard many rumors about his fate. I heard he was living in a trailer in New Hampshire. I heard he was in the desert in New Mexico. Then I heard he died of a drug overdose.

later, when I was in college, I met someone who spoke Romanian. Laughing, I told her the obviously fanciful story of Gaje translating to Not A Gypsy. She slowed, stared at me, and told me that yes, Ga'je (two syllables) does mean "not a gypsy."

Yikes.

Well, I'll tell ya right now, this is not a "but he's dead now" story. Hell, I've thought he was dead for years. No, he just showed up on my high school reunion website. He's living in Brazil, playing the pennywhistle and guitar in various bands. Among his interests, he included "making up new lyrics to radio songs."

Gaje, I am so glad to have you back among the living. Gail and Jeff would be proud.

04 June 2004

Imminent domain

Some big-shot from Washington DC has apparently bought the lot across the street from me, in between my house and the river/lake, and has, over the last week, begun the exciting project of tearing down ALL the trees in preparation for the building of his five-bedroom, three story dream house. That he will probably use approximately 2 weeks every summer.

Naturally, I am thrilled.

Today the DC Dorkface has endeared himself even further (we thought it not possible!) by demolishing the wee cottage that has been on that lot for almost a hundred years.

It has long been the practice on Cape Cod to re-use and recycle buildings, dating back to the days when all the native trees had been cut down to feed the fires that ran the saltworks, and it was too expensive to import trees from the mainland. I know someone could have been found that would relocate that cottage on their property, given it a new life as a studio, guest house, or even shed.

But I doubt any effort was made.

We have a housing crisis here -- house prices have skyrocketed to such insane levels that most normal folks -- teachers, firemen, plumbers, waitresses -- can't afford to live here any more. But who needs a hundred-year-old, three-room cottage? pshaw.

This Pentagon Prick has stolen my view, ruined a piece of history, further depleted the affordable housing stock in my home town, and killed probably upwards of eighty trees in an environmentally sensitive area next to a salt marsh.

Am I steamed? Yes. Am I impotently steamed? Most likely.

What I want to know is, whose palms got greased to allow this building permit to go through?

*fume*

Where is the Lorax when you need him?

01 June 2004

Fever dream

It was a busy little weekend for me, as for most, but I probably did less socializing and hanging out than many. My primary activities included:

1. waiting for this jerk to call me so I could hang out with his transcontinental ass, and getting totally blown off. Which actually turned out to be OK, I probably would have had to cancel our "lunch date" anyway because that morning my contact lens had a transformative religious experience, and raptured all over my left eye. when I could finally pry my eye open, it was all red and gross and bulging. I probably could have carried off the Clockwork Orange look, but I was a little hesitant to see a pal for the first time in years looking like such a disease pod.

2. so then I spent a day sightless, since I couldn't wear my contacts, I'm horribly myopic, and have been too cheap to buy a pair of glasses since I lost my last pair (relax, I now have an emergency appointment at the eye doctor for tomorrow). I finally gave in and put in only the right one because I had to

3. finish a proofreading job, which I just put in the mail this morning, and was ecstatic to find another job offer in my email when I returned home. Now that's what I'm talking about.

Then, during my spontaneous nap this afternoon, I dreamed I was a commercial shellfisherman, having been conned into it by some shyster who promised "easy riches". He was painfully wrong, but I was knee-deep in fresh clams and oysters, so that was good.