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reeked

Awful day.  Just awful.

At work it was annual review time and there’s never enough money or accolades for those deserving of money and accolades.  At one point during the week I actually thought I might be cracking up.  Like, there’s too much to do cracking up.  Because I had a full eight hours of work every day, I have not checked email (no, like really not touched it) since Monday.

When I last checked, there were close to nine-hundred unread messages in my inbox.  I’m not exaggerating.  Nine-hundred.  I have allocated the first six hours of tomorrow morning (this week I have been arriving around 6am to get some extra hours) to killing the inbox.  I will find a private place where people can’t get to me and I will respond to mail all morning.  Six hours of email.  This is how I make bread.  This is my worth.

The day reeked.  Reeked.  I hated it but I struggled through it with folded hands, propriety, and a smile.  Tonight was beer with an old friend.  Reparations, perhaps.  It was a welcome nightcap to the day, and set me in a much better mood for the end of the evening.  Actually I feel great.  I am eating potatoes out of a ziplock back with a fork.

Sorry no writing this week.  Remember, it reeked.

Goodnight.

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cohen’s first word?

Sometimes I think it’s impossible to describe how busy I am.  I often say stupid meaningless chauvinistic things to Sharaun like, “I wish you could be inside my head for a day” to try and convey what sort of rat-race is going on up there.  Yeah sometimes I think this, then other times I think I’m just a wimp.  I think about the rat-race going on in some CEO’s head or a Obama’s head and know that whatever troubles me is paltry in comparison, I walk in the proverbial park alongside that mountain of responsibility.  So, I’ll try not to complain about how very busy I’ve been and how it’s been keeping me from writing.

Instead I’ll write a short bit about Cohen.  For nearly two weeks now I’ve been wondering if Cohen’s been saying his first word.  At first, like we did with Keaton, I dismissed it as phonetically-lucky baby talk.  But more and more he’s able to speak his word on demand, with startling clarity, and, then, in the past few days, without prompting and seemingly in response to a visual connection.  What word is it, you ask?  Well take a gander:

OK it’s short and cuts off, but what do you think internet?  Yeah… eight month old kids don’t really say words, I know.  But I couldn’t be happier.

Goodnight.

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which thought is it that counts?

I took a “to-do” note on my phone last week.  There, snug between other terse and cryptic items like “2×4 bed,” “wisdom teeth,” and “401k review,” I wrote the words Betty Jonhston.

I didn’t know any better at the time, but want I meant to type was Betsey Johnson.  Google it.  I’ll wait.

You probably got some pages about womens’ clothing or something, right?  Strange thing for me to be taking a to-do note on the phone about, but let me explain.  See, each morning at work I go through my little routine.  Get to the office, walk to my desk and dump my stuff.  Dock my laptop and get it booting while I grab my coffee mug and head downstairs to fill up and grab a banana or two.  While downstairs in the cafe, I often run into a set of “same timers,” folks who have a similar cafeteria-run timeframe to mine (and are regular enough about it to be consistent).  I say hello to a few of these folks, some only because I see them most mornings and some because we’re friends “outside work.”

The other morning one of those same-timers stepped in to say “good morning” and, when she did, her freshly spritzed perfume wafted across to me.  “Dang,” I said, “you smell rad.”  (Note: I can’t remember exactly what I said, but it was long those lines.  Smooth, to-the-point, slightly inappropriate for the corporate environment, and delivered with some sort of outdated slang for just a little comedic impact).  “So many people have told me that,” she replied.  I sniffed conspicuously, asking, “What is it.”  I thought she said Betty Johnston.  I complimented the scent again as she went on her way, and after she left I typed those words into my to-do list.  (Hey, HR-types, don’t worry – I know the woman well and I don’t think I’ll be facing harassment charges anytime soon.  Don’t think you’ve not trained me well; I know that I’m a chauvinistic demon for wanting to compliment my female employee’s new hairdo or nice coat; I’m well indoctrinated.)

Women must know what motivates men to buy perfume, right?  We smell it, it smells good, we buy it.  But women must also know that (most) men aren’t just stopping by the perfume store and doing a bunch of comparative sniffing to determine what smells good.  Nope.  Those places are overwhelming anyway, those scent superstores.  The “din” of smells is so thick that my ability to distinguish individual scents flies from me, and any sort of shopping around in that environment becomes pointless.  No, no siree.  The only place I ever smell perfume, the only place I ever notice it, is on other women.  I smell it on someone, and if I like the smell enough I try and find out what it is so I can look at maybe getting some for Sharaun.

I hope this isn’t bad.  There’s no notion of fantasy here or anything… no concept of making one woman smell like another as some mindtrick or anything like that.  It’s just how I encounter and decide I like fragrances.  (OK, OK, just as long as anyone who knows the real story behind the star-shaped bottle of Thierry Mugler’s Angel I bought her sophomore year of college – you keep your mouths shut.)  It’s not like I’m saying, “Hey, I bought you this perfume so you can smell like the blonde I see every morning at work.”  It’s more like, “This perfume smells rad and I think you’d smell hot in it, so I bought it for you.”  I think that’s OK, yeah?  I guess it’s too bad if it’s not, because it’s how I do it.  She uses perfume so sparingly, anyway, that I rarely have a reason or opportunity to get her more – so it’s not like a regular thing.  Yeah, that’s OK.

Goodnight.

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deadbeat baker

For a lark on a bored rainy Sunday Keaton and I decided to bake together.

I don’t know who likes baking together more… because, man, I get some serious enjoyment out of it.  I like “teaching” Keaton how things go together to make other things, and we enjoy experimenting with recipes by brainstorming what might taste good as additions.  This Sunday we kept it simple and made sugar cookies.  Partway through rolling out more dough-balls and baking the ones we’d already put on sheets, she wondered if adding cinnamon might be good.  “Let’s try it,” I said.  I let her work a liberal sprinkling into the remaining dough.  When we’d rolled a few more balls, Sharaun got home and suggested we use cookie-cutters to make some cool shapes.  Keaton chose hearts.

In the end, the hearts were too thin and burned in the time it took to cook the regular cookies.  Even that was OK, though.  Gave me a chance to explain about the beauty of trial and error.  Next time, we know that rolled-out cookie-cutter cookies are too thin and only need to bake for about half the time.  Live and learn.

Now if only the recipe hadn’t made five-thousand cookies.  Sharaun, the more diligent of us in the realm of calorie-limiting, has been steadfastly ignoring them.  Meanwhile I feel I have an imperative to consume them… I’m responsible for their existence, after all.  I don’t want to be a deadbeat baker.  I’ve got the Tupperware thing right next to me, a little glass of milk on the arm of the couch to my left, and I’m wondering how many times one person can lie to themselves about “Just one more.”

Gosh, I sound like a chick in this thing.  I’m gonna go smoke a cigarette and drink beer and watch sports.

Goodnight.

Posted on

of gas alone

Happy Monday team.  I spent most of Saturday putting the finishing touches on the RV route/itinerary.  Since that’s all I did, it’s what I’m going to write about (again).

An engineer decided to go on a cross-country RV trip.  One of his chores in preparation, most assuredly, would be to create a spreadsheet.  Spreadsheets are great for everything.  Budgeting; planing back-country hikes; cataloging collections of things; and of course charting the miles and stops of a cross-country RV trip.  My spreadsheet does this and more, and is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fantastic achievement of nerddom.  Want to know the minimum speed (miles per hour) you’d have to cruise at to get from A to B in the estimated time?  OK.  Want to know how much you’ll likely pay in sum-total for the horrendous cost of “crisis in the Middle East” gasoline required for the trip?  Sure!  Some of the more interesting figures (and the ones with the most complicated nerd-math behind them) are those which I use as “indicators” for the overall “fun ratio” of the trip.

While I’d imagine there is “fun” to be had while driving on a RV trip: seeing the sights, hugging the curves, waving at other travelers, etc., I’ve decided that the most heavily-weighted predictor of “fun” is actually going to be the amount of “free time” we have.  This is defined as non-driving time, but is more complicated than that.  What I wanted to ensure was that our “usable non-driving” time (I notion I defined for the purpose of this calculation) is by far greater than our “non-usable/driving” time.  I wanted that ratio to favor the usable non-driving time by a lot, more than 2:1 if possible.  In this way, I felt like I’d be giving us the best possible amount of “family time” or “free time” to see sights, hang out, and enjoy the rest and relaxation.

For the record, “usable non-driving” time is defined as any time each day that not sleeping, driving, setup/takedown, or “breaktime.”  For the further record, there are about ~14hrs each day of this type of time (for the adults, that is).  This may sound dumb and overly analytic.  It is.  Oh it really is.  But I wanted a “finer grain” way to conceptualize how much of our time is really our time. My previous method – comparing the number of days with any driving to those with zero driving – is still a valuable statistic, but it’s not detailed enough.  You have to look at both to get the whole picture, see.  No… maybe you don’t see.  Maybe it’s only me who sees like this, who cares like this.  On the off chance not, here are some fun statistics about our coming trip:

Total miles 8,037
Total days 45
States driven through 28 (+ DC!)
“Zero days” (parked; no driving) 19
Days driving/not-driving (ratio of days with some driving to those with none) 57% / 42%
Hours driving/not-driving (ratio of “usable hours” spent driving vs. spent doing whatever we want) 23% / 77%
Estimated cost of gas alone assuming national average of $3.75/gallon $3,265.42

I love data. I really do. As you can see, I was able to do really well (I’m happy with it, at least) with that “usable hours” ratio – spending less than a quarter of our “free time” driving and the rest of it doing whatever it is we’ll be doing.  I was also happy that I was able to arrange several different “kinds” of RVing: big-rig restort camping, state/national park camping, truck-stop camping, and boondocking.  There were so many “layers” of things I wanted us to be able to do, and my anal data-addiction enabled me to get most of them accounted for.  Let’s hope that it’s worth the planning, right?  To close this trip-narcissistic entry, a compiled list of the places we’re going that I’m most excited about, in-order per our planned route:

Although we’re booked pretty solidly, I’m hoping there’ll also be plenty of “World’s Biggest Ball of Twine” and “96oz Steak Challenge” stops to boot.

OK… I think I got it out of my system for another week at least.  Apologies for the indulgent Monday.

See ya.

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a sound that any kid knows

Tuesday night Keaton had a bad dream.

No, I mean a baaad dream.  The kind you used to have when you were little and you were being chased by skeleton and you were running for your life and you woke up just as he was about to grab you with his bony fingers – only to see him, to really see him, standing there in real life at the foot of your bed.  Of course, he wasn’t really there, you were still dreaming or in some half-dreaming/half-waking state where you haven’t quite shaken off the residuals.  Oh… do you remember the fear?  I do, friends; I do.  One time there were sharks “swimming” around on the ceiling above my bed, like I was looking up at them from somewhere deeper underwater.  I was terrified because I knew I was awake. The dream was over but here were my dreams, crossed over to haunt me in real life.  It’s the fear come alive.

That’s the kind of dream Keaton had, and it really got her twisted.  Bedtimes have a foreboding quality not unlike the bygone “bedtime hell” days of 2009.  She’s genuinely afraid of her room.  See, it was a pretty traumatizing dream: She awoke because she heard a noise, a growl – the growl of a monster, a sound that any kid knows.  Wanting to be brave, she boldly growled right back.  It was then that the monster, according to the story, a story which is consistent and has never varied even in one tiny detail over repeated re-tellings, replied with two short grunt-like noises.  Immediately after, it jumped on her bed and popped up from under the covers.  It looked like the dog-thing Kyle from the movie Despicable Me, I hear.  This is when the screaming started.

It was 3am and I was dead asleep.  Keaton’s scream ended that instantly.  It wasn’t a “normal” bad dream scream, it was a horrible pure-fear kind of thing that registered deep in some primal part of my parental response center.  Before I really knew what was going on I’d tossed aside the covers and was running towards her room, calling to her that I was on my way as her screams frayed and tattered with fright.  As I turned the corner into her room I half expected to see a real problem – the terror in her voice was palpable and it got my adrenaline running hot in the seconds between our room and hers.  But it was just her, screaming, legs held in the air so not to touch the bed (from whence, I’d later learn, the monster had sprung).

She slept the rest of the night with us and I thought that’d be it.  Nope.

Sharaun texted me at work the next day, “Tonight is going to be tough; she’s too scared of her room for quiet time.”  I hadn’t even thought of it.  That night was tough.  That was last night.  Tonight was tough.

We tried a lot of things.  “Bravery gummies” for naptime (Sharaun’s idea, think of them like when you used to pretend Smarties actually made you smart).  A “bad dream alarm” plugged in and running (Dad’s idea, an unused ethernet-over-powerline converter with blinking lights that could easily indicate dream-warding).  Prayer.  We gave her a good set of options and tools, I thought.  Nothing really worked.  Tonight, in fact, she just wore herself out.  Under thread of cancelled playdates tomorrow and numerous attempts at cold rationalization (“There is no such thing as monsters, and you know that”), she finally collapsed on her bedroom floor near the door (the monster lives, somehow, in the bed… so it’s the worst possible place to be).

I can remember bad dreams.  Poor thing.  But this cannot stand.

Goodnight.

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way to go, song-picker guy

Hile, internet.

I don’t know if you guys have seen the movie 127 Hours.  I don’t write about pop-culturey things all that often (I did moreso back when the blog started in the aught-tres, when I was still figuring out what this thing was for), but I wanted to write about this movie a bit.  Not about the story, but specifically about the use of one song in the film.  For those who’ve not seen the thing, I won’t be ruining it or anything so no worries (not that most everyone isn’t at least passably familiar with the story anyway).  Is a movie even pop-culture?  I think so.

Anyway, I wanted to write about how expertly the film used the Sigur Rós track, “Festival.”  Gotta be my favorite use of a song in a movie in a while.

If you’re not familiar with Sigur Rós, you’ll likely react like my wife did when I tried to get her to appreciate them so many years ago.  Honestly, her reaction wasn’t entirely unexpected… they aren’t the easiest act to get into for most.  I mean, if you can get around their lengthy songs you’ve then got to make peace with the fact that the band is from Iceland.  Not that Iceland is a bad place, but, moreso that this means the band sings in a foreign language – which by itself turns a lot of folks off.  Worse even than that, most of the time they sing in a made up foreign language – one that has no meaning and sounds like gibberish (the rest of the time they sing in Icelandic; I can’t tell the difference).  The “language,” called Vonlenska, or “Hopelandic when translated to English (hey, the name of the language is a real Icelandic word, at least), is entirely unintelligible and the band has stated that they want folks to hear whatever they want to hear in the lyrics.

Sharaun, like many, doesn’t really do songs with no words (ala Mogwai, Mono, or Explosions in the Sky, etc.) or songs in foreign langauges (Air, Malajube, Dungen, etc.).  You better bet, then, that a band whose forte is either songs with no words, songs sung in Icelandic, or songs sung in a fabricated nonsense language ain’t high on her list.  That’s cool, I can accept that.  I actually kind of like the notion of lyrics in an imaginary meaningless language.  For one thing, it’s kind fun to make up your own words and “sing along” to whatever you hear.  I mis-hear and sing words to songs wrong all the time, and Sigur Rós solves that problem out of the gate by not having any real words to mis-hear.  For another thing, my opinion says your music has to be pretty darn strong to pull off singing in gibberish.

And strong songs they are!  Sigur Rós has a knack for laying down songs which often border on “anthemic.”  Things that get stuck in your head and make your chest swell with feeling, things that sound like national anthems for pretend countries or old familiar spirituals or other such emotionally-tied things.  In fact, the band’s music seems to inspire all sorts of folks – particularly those in the advertising world as the Sigur Rós themselves pointed out on their blog about being ripped off in commercials all over the world (it’s so prevalent they actually wrote about it again here).  Their stuff is catchy and often big and important sounding.  And the track used in 127 Hours is one of these grand affairs.

The song (listen here while you read), used in an emotional climactic scene near the end of the movie, is called “Festival” and is a nine minute piece (I almost called it an “epic,” but length is fairly common for the band) from the 2008 effort, með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust.  The first five minutes or so of the song are quiet and singsong, all done in Hopelandic (and this meaningless).  Around the five minute mark the meat of the track, a crazy-good bassline which dominates, kicks in.  The track ends with an crashing and repetitive

In 127 Hours the song more than merely underscore or support the film, it absolutely defines and in fact drives the emotional engine of the scene.  Yes, the viewer has a lot invested in the story at this point, but even still the scene wouldn’t be nearly as effective with the volume muted (says me).  Honestly, whoever picked the song did such and excellent job, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to listen to it again without thinking of the release of pent-up emotion that came with it during that scene.  The closing minutes of the track are so well-matched to the tenor of the scene.

No for real guys, if you haven’t seen it you really should – and pay particular attention to the finale, the denouement, the emotional climax of the thing.  Hear your heart beating in time with that crazy-good song?  Feel the way you’re edging up on your seat as the kick-drums go double-time and the strings inch towards cacophony?  Watch your fists clench as the horns come shining into the party, brassing things up and taking the layered madness just another notch towards the precipice?  What’s that, crazy cymbals?  Insane rain-on-a-tin-roof snares, trumpet-gone-wild, do I hear an ever-loving glockenspiel?!  Land of Goshen!, who picked this thing?!  I gotta buy this cat a beer.

So kudos to you, soundtrack-type person for 127 Hours, you masterfully applied this wonderful track to the film.

Goodnight.