Category: travel

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a nice way to start the day


As the doors of the elevator slid closed this morning at work, entombing me momentarily with four strangers, I had a head-snapping moment: I got a waft of the large blob of a woman who had taken position next to me.

Globular and short, she appeared to be experiencing much higher G-forces than the other passengers and I, for she seemed to be smooshed down into herself, her neck all but disappeared and her legs compressed to stubs. As I pondered the dimensional aberration she must have unwittingly stepped into, wondering just how much more gravity weighted her down inside that anomalous hole in the astrophysical norms of the universe, her scent brutalized my nose.

Now, here, I’m sure you’re expecting me to make a crack on this poor woman’s odor as somehow related to her size – not so, though, dear readers. The scent that tickled my nose was not objectionable in the least. In fact, she stank ripe and sweet of some familiar perfume – the perfume of a girl I used to think I was in love with. It was such an olfactory revelation to smell that scent again, a tug on the lapels from times past, flooding thoughts of the present with old memories instead. So powerful is that tie in my psyche that I actually had to take another look at the woman beside me. Nope; still large and largely unattractive; bummer. And anyway, the lumbering cables hoisted us to where we were going and we parted ways.

Was a nice way to start the day.

Transition.

Today we traveled.

After two hours of delay in California, including a repaired hydraulic line, boarding and a taxi out, finding out the repair introduced air in the line and trashed the pump, and a taxi back in to move everyone to a new plane, we’re finally in the air and on our way to Oregon. Keaton held up well considering the long wait and lack of nap, her spirits buoyed by an ad-hoc dinner of chicken nuggets and a lot of walking around in the terminal. She’s restless now in the empty seat between Sharaun and I, but at least she’s behaving. At this point, I just want to be there (Keaton and Sharaun too, I’m sure.)

Back in California, the warm sunny weather is making me shamefully aware of the sad state of my yard. Winter weeds, fed by constant rains, have completely overrun my planter strips and any other patch of bare ground capable of sprouting seed. My grass is coming out of its cold weather hibernation and brownly awaits some Spring fertilizer, and my downed fence is still ghetto-propped with 2x4s. Plus, that the 10′ x 10′ patch in my front yard that’s gone unplanted since I had to drive machinery over it while building our retaining wall is really starting to get to me. I’ve decided, then, that I’m going to spend some money and fix it all. Gotta get things in shape for summer… Beer. Beef. Summer.

Goodnight from the North friends, think of me tomorrow in your sunshine as I’ll be mired in the rainy gray of Oregon.

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my geriatric symphony


(I think I’ve stolen that image to accompany a blog before… right?)

Monday night and it’s a bit of a jostled beehive here as we’re realizing that we have to leave for Oregon tomorrow and have little time to get ready. With morning obligations, packing has to happen tonight. But… we’re not packing, neither of us. Sharaun’s working on the computer in the kitchen and I’m sitting here on the laptop. By my estimates then, we’ll be up late scrambling to get things in order. It’s a longer visit this time, five days in all staying at my folks’ place. Work at the local sawmill promises to be busy, with two meetings of import Wednesday and Thursday. I know things will go OK, because I plan to a fault… but I still obsess… I still obsess.

I have only one topic for the night, and barely got that one down to boot. Feel lucky you’re reading anything at all, OK? OK.

Tonight, unfolding myself from my nightly position on the couch (leaning sideways into the upholstered arm that holds the laptop from which I suckle my nightly diet of bits and bytes, legs tucked up into myself and knees pulled close to my chest), I arose from my gargoyled perch to a loud crack! from beneath the flesh, blood, and atrophied muscle of my shoulder. My bones. The snap, crackle, and pop of old age set into my joints. While I’m ignorant of the physiology of the phenomenon, I do know that it’s as good as a warning shot fired off my bow by USS Death. Sometimes at work, I’ll turn my head sharply and hear the same auditory harbinger of my pending demise. And I’ve even noticed that, as my foot makes its small pushes on the gas pedal, my knee will often pop in protest of the minuscule motion. It’s like God is communicating to me in some secret language of clicks and pops, telling me I’m neglecting myself… urging me with with creaking bones to get out and run a mile or jump rope.

I’m listening, Lord. I’ve tried Morse Code, I’ve tried that clicky language they speak in the Gods Must Be Crazy movies, I’ve even tried dolphin – but I can’t seem to decipher the message. Maybe I should play the lottery? Eat more greens? File for medical leave and drop off the grid as an experiment to see how long a company will pay an employee who’s MIA? Perhaps I only have a piece of the decoder, and I’ll need to augment my popping joints with the growls and grumbles of my aging gut or the scraping sound my hairbrush makes on my bare scalp in the mornings to reveal the true message. A full sonic testament to old age, my geriatric symphony played right through the instrument of my corpus.

I offer you a wet old-man kiss through well-used lips as a heartfelt “goodnight.” Wish us luck in our travels, and I’ll type to you next from Oregon.

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longjohns


Happy Thursday my friends. I worked until seven this evening, wanting so bad to just finish the review work I’ve been working on for the past week or so. And, I almost did it too. Almost. Tomorrow will be the forcing function, as I’ve setup meetings with those I’ve been writing about. I figure sitting down with them to review the the review will pretty much force me to finish the review, right? Right.

Wednesday morning, as I readied myself to travel to Oregon, I had in the back of my mind my brother’s foreboding warning from the day prior: “Dude, it’s totally freezing here. It’s snowing!”. Mindful of this, I attempted to dress for the elements. I decided this meant I would try and wear my long underwear beneath my dress pants. See, I had to dress up, as I was meeting customers from Japan, where the coat-and-tie still rule the business world. And, I’m always conscious of how thin fancypants are. They may look nice, and give the Japanese assurances that I’m all-business, but they don’t do anything to stop the icy wind from freezing my thighs.

I’ve only every worn my long underwear when camping. In fact, I bought them (underwear are plural, why?) for specifically for hiking and camping, with no intentions of wearing them in real-life situations. They are dark blue, as a matter of fact, and you couldn’t really call them conspicuous at all. So, I had a bit of a time decided just how best to both wear them and completely conceal the fact that I was wearing them. In the end, I decided on tucking them into my tan dress socks, then pulling those socks up to maximum height to avoid any sneak-peaks during crossed-legged situations or the like. In the end, I found myself in front of the long mirror in our bedroom around 4:30am, staring at my pants and socks, trying to objectively determine if a third-party observer would be able to tell I was wearing long underwear. Satisfied, I kept them on.

And man, am I glad I did. It was completely freezing in Oregon, and even with the extra layer underneath my thin-but-snazzy khakis, I was hugging myself for warmth in the three minutes outside while changing trains. I even had enough confidence to cross my legs during the meeting, no fear. I mean, they were a little “pully,” and somewhat noticeable in terms of comfort-transparency, but I think it was worth it.

Dressclothes suck for comfort anyway, right, with all their diabolical tug-and-pull interdependencies? Undershirt tucked into pants, dressshirt atop, belt cinching them both tight so that every twist and turn, every stand-up and sit-down pulls on my shoulders or somehow inexplicably at my wrists or elbows. I guess it’s just something you have to deal with, the price of being dapper, or somesuch.

And, speaking of mirrors, I noticed yesterday that, even though I’ve seen myself in the mirror thousands of times, I still catch myself walking through public places (airports, for example) mentally picking out folks and thinking, “Is that what I look like?” The portly guy with the well-kept, if unimpressively thin and sparse, beard, a decidedly unfair-trade coffee in one hand, iPod in the other. The wanna-be businessman thirty-something with a Bluetooth fixed to one ear whose laptop trails behind him in some lower-back sparing stewardess style rollerboard. That’s me, isn’t it? That’s totally what I look like. Like that dude right there, right? Awww man, it is. It’s absolutely what I look like.

Goodnight.

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read a book, fell in love


Hi people.

I’m sitting in the Portland airport right now. I have 59% battery on the laptop and approximately two hours to kill. I don’t know why I booked my flight so late, I think maybe I was using it as a “test case” to see if I could do an entirely public-transit based day-trip into the local sawmill.

Leave California around 6:30am, arrive in Portland around 8:45am. Hop the train from the airport towards work, arrive via shuttle van just shy of 10am. Work till around 4:30pm, take the shuttle van to the train, train to the airport, and clear security just before 6pm. Thing is, my flight’s not until 8:45pm. I think I did this just in case, assuming I could get on standby for the earlier flight if I broke speed records (I did, and I couldn’t, economically).

So then, here I am. Nursing the first of at least a few tall black-and-tans, pondering what to eat even though my bowels protest (I think they’re grumpy from not having a decent at-home evacuation today… 4am was just too early for them, and they do tend to get upset when they get off-schedule).

But, even though I’m weary from the rigors of travel, I count two good things which came of today: 1) I got do some much-missed reading-for-pleasure, and 2) I totally fell in love in the security line. Let’s take them in reverse order.

Cut to security line at the airport. The girl in front of me is small, slimish with crinkled-curly dirty-blonde hair. From behind, she looks plausible, but I’ll need frontal confirmation to say for sure. Suddenly, as we progressed through the ranks of the line, awaiting our turns to undress and empty our pockets as a thick, symbolic American middle-finger to Al Qaeda, my opportunity arose.

Roses and Cigarettes, as I have since fondly dubbed her, dropped her black belt on the ground – and failed to notice. As she continued to disrobe, gradually revealing her diminutive figure in what I imagined as a private audience, I stooped to retrieve the belt. “Excuse me, I think you dropped this,” I said casually to her back. As she turned, her sharp features came into view: An isosceles nose and angular jaw, not manlike, but designed. Her curly, almost crunchy looking, hair framed her face well, and she replied though thin lips, “Thank you so much, I kinda need that, huh?”

“No! No! You need neither that, nor any other clothing in my presence!,” my lustful heart wanted to cry.

“Guess so,” was the tepid response my level-headed brain formed in my mouth instead.

At least I remembered to smile my best smile while speaking, and was met with one just as warm and promising in return (and, in my head, no doubt).

Presently, I was aware of her scent as we moved: An overpowering wash of roses and cigarettes, the stink of the latter somehow imbued with the headiness of the former, combining into some sort of otherworldly aphrodisiac scent that said, “I’m delicate and feminine, but I totally do it.” It was only later, after using the restroom, that I realized the scent had been transferred, permanent-for-the-night, to my hand, presumably from my brief belt-fetching. (Yes, I do make it a habit of sniffing my hands after washing them in the restroom. It’s some compulsive thing I do to ensure my hands are truly “clean,” regardless of #1 or #2.)

Back in the present, Rosed and Cigarettes preceded me through the portal-of-ensuritude and we both began to reclaim our clothing and ore-laden effects from the rolling belts on the other side. As she redressed next to me, I sighed, overly loud, as I re-threaded my belt through the loops of my sliperry, pleatless, cuffless, khakis, in hopes she would hear. She did. Turning, in all her pale crisp-angled glory, to me and speaking, she said, “Take care,” as I walked away. “Thanks,” I replied, “you too.”

And, as I walked away towards my gate, my heart crumbled to dust at the prospect of the life I’d lost for not being with her.

Secondthingwise, I read a book today on the plain/train/shuttle. A book a friend loaned me because he said I needed to read the author’s work. He even commented as such right here on this very blogish thing. When I saw him this weekend, I borrowed one he recommended, and set about digging in today. I hadn’t intended to day-read it, but it was short and really good and I totally got sucked in. It was called A Maze of Death and it was a kind of theological/metaphysical/sci-fi mashup that I totally dug. Anyway, whenever I read something, I have this misconception that it makes me write better. I have no idea from whence this delusion comes, but I labor under it still. In fact, I wrote a ton today on the train in between fits of reading; all of it thumbed into my BlackBerry in a gush. I decided, however, after some consult, to leave over these bits for tomorrow – as having them pre-written will afford me an evening “off.” Unfortunately (right?) for you, this means you’ll have to to wait.

Speaking of the train (I was, I swear), it always amazes me how many people stumble onto public transit in the early-morning still reeking of liquor. Today, as the train hit its downtown run, at least three people wobbled on looking worse for wear and emanating the sickly-sweet aroma of a night spent in the bottle. One guy even paced the center aisle in a decidedly certifiable stomp, back and forth, back and forth, chuckling loudly to some unheard joke replaying silently for him alone, making everyone uncomfortable. These roll-your-own-smokes types seem to flock to the train, maybe as shelter from the biting cold outside on the concrete where they live. For me, to wake up smelling of booze is an awful, shameful thing. The kind of thing that will get you in deep trouble with the Lord and make your soul weep. I can’t imagine reconciling myself to a life of waking up that way. It must be terribly depressing.

I should so be writing employee reviews right now, but I’ve squandered my battery life on blogging. Tsk-tsk. Looks like tomorrow will be a late night getting things finalized. Good thing I have boxed-content ready to go, hope you don’t mind leftovers.

And, 23% battery dictates I now say: Love you all truly and deeply and madly. Goodnight.

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in the bathroom


Hey there post-Christmas America. Your trees down yet? Ya bust out the ladder and take the lights off the house already? Still scraping the last of the leftovers from the corners of you casserole dishes? Either way, I hope you had a good holiday. Down here in sunny Florida, we sure did. Oh, and this year Santa came with some extra special gifts…

Christmas came with an extra bonus this year: a vicious stomach bug that had me alternately sitting on or kneeling before the john all day yesterday. It was ugly, and tiring, and I didn’t answer the phone or do anything much aside from trying to sleep through the twisty flip-flopping of my beleaguered bowels. I woke up this morning feeling much better, but still with a rumbly middle… which I attribute more now to not eating anything yesterday than the bug. So, I decided to jump right back into things and am currently pre-heating the oven for a Totino’s pizza. For some reason, my stomach was craving it. I figure, if I can keep that down, I’m healed.

It’s a gorgeous day here, the sun is out and shining, and it’s not too warm to go outside and enjoy it. The original plan was to go visit my Uncle Tom, but we decided to give that another day so I wouldn’t pass along this lovely stomach-thing. Since I am feeling better, we decided we’d take Keaton down to the park close by, but now she’s acting all funny and is running a fever herself… so it seems like we’ll be housebound instead. That’s OK, I suppose I do enough complaining about our Florida trips being nothing but run-here-run-there that I should be thankful for some downtime on the homefront. I know it’s selfish to enjoy how cuddly Keaton gets when she’s not feeling well, but I just can’t help but love her crawling up into my lap and snuggling for an hour. Bad dad.

Well, I’m off. So far, the pizza is staying put… and that’s a good sign.

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remembering maui


After a successful, short- but-sweet overnight backpacking trip Saturday night with friends, I decided to take the evening off from bloggings. Besides, I’m busy filling up my new iPod Classic with all sorts of new and improved music. So… I present to you… an easy Monday post:

Click over here for some “new” pictures of Keaton and the family from our October trip to Maui.

Enjoy.

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the hug voyeur


Still rainy and cold in Oregon, melancholy. I was supposed to do something with my brother last night, but he called and bailed after work. So, I stuck around my folks’ place and made a sandwich and a bowl of soup for dinner. A glamorous evening it was not. I thought about maybe going to see a movie, I’ve never gone to a movie by myself… could’ve been an interesting experience. But, in the end, I sat there on the couch with this laptop on my knee, oscillating between dozing and waking while the Grateful Dead station on Sirius played in the background.

Woke before the sun this morning to venture out into the frigid pre-morning and ride the train to the airport with my mom. And, after meeting up with Sharaun and Keaton, we hopped right back on for the reverse trip. Getting to the airport about a half and hour early, however, we had some time to sit around in the lounge area where people await their arriving friends and relatives. Sitting there, I found myself smiling as people leapt up to greet those coming from the terminal. Grandfathers beamed as little kids ran up to them, hugging their legs before being swept up into their arms. Fathers gripped and snatched up children two at a time. People whose faces said they may have been sisters shrieked and hugged while commenting on new haircuts and how good it was to see one another. It truly was a fun thing to sit and watch. Got me thinking, in fact, that someone could make a great short film of holiday airport receptions. Also got me thinking, I should totally do it. All you need to be a filmmaker these days is a camera and a PC anyway…

Movie or not, I decided that, if and when I ever become a solitary old man whose filled with bitterness, I’ll remedy the situation by going down the airport on the day before Thanksgiving, or Christmas Eve, and watching friends and family reunite. It really is a remedy for the I-me-mine mentality.

And… before I leave you. GetReligion, one of the best religion-focused blogs on the ‘net, has an interesting and well-rounded article on some recent changes made to the introduction to the Book of Mormon. I’ve been somewhat critical of the Latter Day Saints here on sounds familiar before, but this article is pretty well balanced. Read it up if you’re still hankering for some more writin’.

Until tomorrow, I hope you get safely where you’re going and into the arms of who you’ll be with this Thanksgiving. Peace.