To Parking Lot

    After luncheon with the awesome Ms. Amy Holleman yesterday, I ran many errands, then decided to take advantage of the weather to go hiking. It wasn't the kind of weather one would normally take advantage of, as it was highly overcast and not really a beautiful day unless you like pewter. But it was cool and comfortable, rare in these parts this late in the year. So I went to Peachtree Rock.
    Peachtree Rock is about all we have in the way of scenic wonders in these parts. If you could see it, you would laugh to hear it described as such. It's a big rock, shaped vaguely like a peach tree (surprise!) or possibly an inverted pyramid. It's maybe 15 or 20 feet high, capped with granite probably and tapering to the base. In the same heritage preserve, there is also the only natural waterfall of any height in the Midlands. As that height is also 15 or 20 feet, it isn't a particularly electrifying sight either, but we take what we can get.
    The last several times I visited Peachtree Rock, six months or more ago, there was one little problem. You hike down from the highway on a link trail, then the rest of the trails in the preserve make a number of loops. The little problem was that the link trail wasn't marked, so finding it in order to leave was a bit of problem. Yesterday, however, it was marked, and clearly so, and throughout the preserve there were "To Parking Lot" signs with an arrow pointing back. I wondered if anybody had gotten badly lost during the unmarked period. Regardless, things are certainly better now.
    Peachtree Rock is one of the more dangerous easy trails you could ever visit, because it gets so damn hot back on the sandhills. That is also why it was a good idea to go yesterday; I never felt the least discomfort. I visited Peachtree Rock, the waterfall and then looped around to Little Peachtree Rock, another rock formation, this one looking more like a battleship on a pedestal than any manner of tree. But I still think it's neat.
    And I tell you all this because... well, if anyone in the Columbia area is reading this (which I doubt), know that Peachtree Rock is a lot safer to visit. (Also the little yellow-jacket-looking zeebs are no longer patrolling the trail, which is a plus.) And if you're somewhere else, always remember when hitting the trail that you should always know the way back out before you go particularly far in.

The Boys of Sumer

with apologies to Don Henley, the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia and the entire human race, really. Most of the words are still Henley's and thus the rights to those stay with him.

Nobody down in Ur,
nobody up in Kish.
I feel it in the air,
that Sumer's out of reach

Empty lake, empty streets,
the sun goes down alone.
Took my auroch by your house
though i know that you're not home

And I can see you
your brown skin shining in the sun
you got your hair combed back
lapis lazuli on baby

and I can tell you
my love for you will still be strong
after the boys of Sumer have gone.

Up on the ziggurat
I heard a priestess singin' 'bout Gilgamesh
a voice inside my head said don't look back
at the bronze-toned flesh

I thought I knew what love was
What did I know?
Those days are gone for ever
I should just let them go and...

I can see you
your brown skin shining in the sun
you know you're walking real slow
cuneiform for everyone
I can tell you
my love for you will still be strong
after the boys of Sumer have gone.

I never will forget those nights
I wonder what was the deal
remember how you drove me crazy?
I still have the cylinder seal

now i don't understand what happened to our ox
now baby gotta get you back
like the Tigris needs the Euphrates

I can see you
your brown skin shining in the sun
you got your potter's wheel
put glazes on baby
and I can tell you
my love for you will still be strong
after the boys of Sumer have gone

So hungry for good news I figured I'd make up my own

    ...and in other news, seven billion people didn't die today. Most of them seem to be getting along all right, though unsurprisingly all of them feel like they could be doing a little better.
    Many, many babies, as well as puppies and kittens were born today. Whole lotta cute going on out there. Granted, the vast majority of the babies are crying, but we like to think that that's just because they can't talk yet.
    Uhhhh if things keep going the way they're going, and if the Rapture in fact happens on May 21st, at least it'll be a relief. (Also, I never have to worry about turning 49.)
    The kitty loves me. A lot. This is a fair consolation prize.
    Egypt at least demonstrates that not everyone on Earth has lost their minds. I hope.
    Either Butler or VCU will be in the NCAA final. In only one of these cases will headline writers universally run with "The Butler Did It Again."
    Silver linings department: if gas prices go high enough, we might eventually start focusing on conservation and on developing different approaches to energy. Ideally, safe ones. Similarly, if the economy doesn't recover its strength, maybe we'll start to appreciate the simple life. Or a simpler one. Which isn't funny, but it's still true.
    It finally stopped raining.
    And on a more personal level, I no longer have the problem with... well, that would be TMI, wouldn't it?

Gluten nightmares

    "Nightmares" is putting it strongly, but "Weird gluten dreams" doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Last night, I just fainted fully dressed, complete with sweater. I have no idea where all this exhaustion is coming from unless it's the pollen. They do call it good sleeping weather when it's cool and wet, so maybe that's it. Regardless, when I woke up in the night I had a kitty on my legs and decided to stay there.
    Eventually, around 4 I had a very queer dream with the usual temporal anomalies. In this one, I returned to my parents' house from a long time away. In the dream, my mom was still alive, but my parents were still out even though it was very late at night. (This never happened in real life.) I was worried because I couldn't get the lights on in the back yard so they could see their way in. And I was even more worried that I wouldn't be able to find gluten-free food in their house. (In real life, I didn't find out I was celiac until 5 years after my mom died.) Then I realized that I have my own apartment and didn't have to stay there, and was boundlessly relieved. (Only in the "safe from gluten" sense, I might add.)
    After I got up, shed some clothes, turned out the lights and went back to bed, I had another gluten dream. This time, I was at KFC and got a big plate of breaded chicken strips and was all set to eat them, then went uh-oh. I think that dreams about food that you can't eat are supposed to indicate frustration in your life. I wonder what that's all about?

Nice, actually

(Too tired to bother with third person conversion.)
    Long ago, as I probably have mentioned, I did a Junior Year Abroad at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. Owing to culture shock or to my inability to speak actual English, I didn't actually make friends with too many British people during the year. One fellow whom I got to know pretty well was called Tony. He was from Hounslow in suburban London, which he said was best known for being on the flight path of the Concorde from Heathrow. Tony was a blond, friendly fellow with a lot of useful touristic suggestions.
    Tony told me that the place all the English people visit is Pembrokeshire in South Wales. Most exciting and beautiful is the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. Now I had already learned what "nice, actually" means in Britain. (It means, for instance when applied to food, "disgusting.") He didn't say "nice, actually" a single bit. If he was winding me up, he wasn't doing it halfway; he was flat lying. Or maybe I just had an unlucky visit.
    In Pembrokeshire, I stayed at the youth hostel in St. David's, the smallest city in Britain. It's a city because it has a cathedral (bet you can't guess to which saint it's dedicated!) though it only has about 1,000 people. Pretty cool... city. Unfortunately, shortly after I got on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path, it started raining. Out of some kind of foolish doggedness, I stuck it out. Out of some other kind of foolishness, I wasn't well equipped for bad weather. (Though as I recall, it was wild and windy, so an umbrella wouldn't have lasted long, and wind would have whipped the rain under any hood or hat anyway.) I no longer remember with any confidence how far I walked or for how long; it seemed like years. And for years, in my head, anything awful had to compete with the rains of Pembrokeshire, especially anything meteorological: "This may be bad, but at least it isn't Pembrokeshire."
    I also don't remember for sure if I ever asked Tony if he had been winding me up, or even if I ever told him that I had less than a superlative time. I suspect that I at least did the latter. Anyway, I'll always have St. David's.

21st century comedy

    A couple of years ago I was on Netflix and I asked my friends on Democratic Underground to recommend some comedies. They did and I put them in my queue. Then I became fed up with Netflix and suspended my account. Fast forward to the present, or nearly. A few weeks ago, I got an offer from Netflix of a free month, presumably for having been POed enough to keep my account suspended for two years. So I took them up on it, and my long-ago recommended comedies started coming in the mail. Boy!
    "Little Miss Sunshine" is a little bundle of joy. About loneliness, desperation, suicidal depression, heroin, the pointlessness of all hope and aspiration and the uselessness of being America's leading Proust scholar, it is indeed a ray of sunshine only equal to that shed by Miss Anita Bryant all those years ago. At least it ends cheerfully, so there's that.
    "Happiness" is probably in fact a late 20th century movie, but I don't feel like looking it up. It's about all the same things except for heroin and Proust, but with child rape added. It is actually marketed as a comedy-drama. I'm not sure that "funny-peculiar" really qualifies something as comedy, but there you are. The best I can say about it is that I keep thinking of Ms. Jane Adams as Joy, so I guess that means that her performance conveyed something. Mainly I'm just glad there isn't a shotgun in this house, or I might not be here to be typing this.
    The "Badder Santa" edition of "Bad Santa" didn't exactly inspire me to want to watch the less bad edition, so I can't say what the difference is. I'm wild-guessing that the original may have slightly less potty-mouthed. This was just a tiresome example of stringing together a lot of cusswords in place of, I don't know, jokes. Ms. Lauren Graham was largely wasted in a cartoonish part, while Mr. Billy Bob Thornton used his considerable charm to turn a total wart into-- almost a total wart.
    What do we conclude? Asking the lovely people of the Lounge at Democratic Underground for comedy recommendations might not be the best idea. Or we might conclude that I am still powered by bitterness and envy. After all, I should be writing screenplays in Hollywood! Or we might conclude that I like pretty women with dark hair. But I think we knew that already. Tonight: Bowfinger. If Eddie Murphy is a Proust scholar, I'm sending the damned thing right back.:)

And what the hell was THAT all about?

    Generally, I don't much worry about insane dreams. Most times I regard them as a signal to wake up (i.e., "you need to go to the bathroom, stupid"). But this one was fairly baroque.
    Since the advent of the all-night mockingbird in my yard (which I guess makes him a nightinggale), I have to listen to sports-talk radio all night to be able to sleep. So the first odd thing about the dream is that it had nothing to do with sports. I'd expect to dream about March Madness or the NFL lockout or something like that. Instead it was a different kind of March Madness.
    Paul and I were in a Viennese-themed restaurant somewhere else in Europe, or anyway somewhere where English wasn't necessarily spoken. And Paul didn't get something he ordered, or was bitterly disappointed by something he ordered, and wanted it taken it off the bill. And somehow it fell to me to try to convey this to the not-necessarily-English-speaking waitress, as he had gone catatonic for some reason. And what was funny about it was that when I woke up I was actually mad at Paul! Had it not been 3:30 in the morning I probably would have phoned and blessed him out. So I asked the mockingbird to go do it instead.

Mystery bug

    Tuesday morning, I was walking the boardwalk at Congaree National Park (aka Congaree Swamp) and saw a most unusual insect. It appeared to be a stick insect floating very slowly down to the boardwalk, but then it rose and hovered. It quite definitely could control its movement. It somehow suggested a very spindly Chinook helicopter, only with legs.
    Odd thing was that I couldn't see any wings. Internet searching indicates that there are certainly stick insects that fly, but their wings were quite prominent, and there was no suggestion of the helicopter about them. I'm familiar with dragonflies and damselflies, or at least the ones that live around here. I swear that the only thing it looked like was a stick insect. And yet... the same Internet searches at least implied that the flying ones mostly live very far from here (as in, not on this continent or in this hemisphere).
    Whatever it was, it was awesome, cool and neato. I've got to start carrying a camera all the time. On the same walk, I saw a pileated woodpecker on the wing, also awesome, cool and neato, but considerably less mysterious.

K is for kale; kale is for calcium

    Every year or so I ask Andrea, a wonderful lady in Drinking Liberally and a vegan, how vegans get enough calcium. This is because I quit dairy almost two years ago, and haven't been happy with the results when I have experimented with reintroducing it. This time, she pointed out that vegans don't need as much calcium since digesting meat requires a lot of calcium. (If that came out wrong, it's entirely a function of my inconstant command of English and is no reflection on Andrea.) But I eat meat.
    So she suggested sauteeing kale, baking it, or trying it with garlic and hot sauce. I admitted that organic kale smells and tastes a lot more like something I would actually eat on purpose. And all those suggestions do indeed make me feel more like eating kale daily, or more nearly daily.
    Andrea said she just doesn't worry about calcium. As it's short-sleeve weather again, I was able to brandish my tiny wrists and suggest that maybe I never got much calcium out of all that dairy I used to consume. And I noted that my rib cage pops, which I find alarming. She remarked that Jeff, her husband (also wonderful and a vegan, but somewhat more unusually, a jet fighter pilot) has that, too, and that she didn't think it indicated a calcium deficiency. I noted that I didn't have the problem until I quit dairy.
    Regardless, it was nice to have the support and good suggestions. She also suggested I visit VegWeb (which I will do shortly assuming I remembered the site's name correctly).

The whole writer's block thing

    The problem with having writer's block, in my life at least, wasn't the writer's block itself. The problem was that because of the writer's block, anything I wrote was so hard-won that it became like divine writ. "Every comma is sacred; not a word can be changed!" seemed to be my thinking. Anyway, it was my behavior. So I would bang out a page, or ten pages, or 20 pages, and parts of the piece would be very good. And parts would be less good. And I just couldn't bring myself to fix the less good parts, and eventually the struggle to get the stuff out of my head just didn't seem worth it anymore.
    Writer's block broke recently, only a couple of weeks ago in fact. I'm not pretending that anything in this blog is Art, or of a quality that could be published for money. Frankly, I'm just having a good time. But I knew that the light at the end of the tunnel was something other than an oncoming train as of last fall. That was when I suddenly rediscovered the ability to edit my own stuff. My writing was no longer anything like holy writ; it was just a bunch of words on a screen. And I suddenly had the facility just to move this sentence from here to there, or make a verse scan better, or take out one or another of my pompous catchwords.
    None of this means that a novel will eventually be spit out, or even decent stories or worthwhile poetry. It just means that whatever does get spit out will probably be better by the time you read it here than it was when I first conceived of it. And if anything here turns out to be interesting to anyone other than the guy living in my skull, I can polish it up and make it better still. All of which is a major improvement over the old days of agonizing over every comma and semi-colon. And some of the words, too.

The Suitors of Penelope

I wrote this last fall; it attacked me in the park. I've reworked the meter, so now it only sort of sucks. As I said after the first draft, when some commenters thought it was a clever, original plot, "No, I didn't write the Odyssey of Homer." (Nor the Iliad, for that matter.)

The bard sang that the vengeful sailor
after 20 years' wandering came home
and killed the men who for all that time
pressed marriage claims upon his suffering wife
or pretended to just to eat her food.
Nothing of the sort.
What killed the suitors
was Penelope's patient love
and enduring hope for his return
and her indifference and contempt
toward them all.
The poison hemlock helped, too.
This is why you never trust a blind poet.

Daytrip to Bull Island

    Paul, Ross and I decided to go down to Bull Island in Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge near Charleston, SC. We had also decided to do this in December, but it was raining and as Ross is made of sugar, we weren't able to go through with it that time. This time, however, the weather was perfect. Our planning, not so much. For future reference, it's a good idea to call ahead for reservations. Also to bring sun block. Also lots and lots of water. As we failed to do any of these things, we could only stay for half the day. But it was still glorious.
    The boat leaves at 9, but you're supposed to be there by 8:30. Thus, we needed to leave Columbia by 6, an hour before dawn this time of the year. We did so with fairly good grace, and apart from sun block and binoculars didn't forget anything important. We were the first in the parking lot and the first on the dock, so when approximately a gazillion people turned up, we weren't too worried. But then it developed that half a gazillion of them had reservations, and then we did worry a bit. The man from Coastal Expeditions said that he could only take another 18 people, but that there would be another boat at 10. I said that we had driven from Columbia and that we were here first. Another passenger confirmed the latter and he let us on. On the way to the boat I said under my breath to Paul, "It's good to see that the Voice of God still works!"
    Had we had sun block and more water, we could have stayed until 3, but as we didn't we had to make it back by the first return boat at noon. Ross and I had hats but Paul didn't and he started getting very florid very fast. We made a quick breakfast at the picnic area, then hustled across the island to the beach. We crazy-mad loved the almost-completely deserted beach. Paul and Ross waded, though I am much too stick-in-the-butt for such activity.
    We walked up the beach to Boneyard Beach, a section towards the northeast end of the island featuring bleached, dead trees. It sounds dull and nasty, but is really spectacularly, insanely beautiful. We were awed, and I took pictures like a kid in a candy store, if I may mix the metaphor. Or simile at least. And then I had to run back to where I'd left the fellas so we could get back to the boat. We walked back, smartly but not hurrying unduly and made it no problem.
    On the ride back, we saw a couple of bottlenose dolphins and they swam along in our wake for a while, jumping in tandem. It was awesome in any sense of the word. (On the way out we had seen a mother dolphin and her baby, which was also very cool, but less dramatic.)
    We ate lunch at Seewee Restaurant just across US 17 from the road to the ferry landing. They had grave difficulties understanding what gluten is, or for that matter what wheat is, and brought me bread on top of my shrimp creole. I had to explain the concept of cross-contamination. The waiter apologized profusely for "our stupidity." I would have preferred it if he'd at least have comped my drink. But the shrimp creole was good. We'll see by morning if it had gluten in it.
    We went to Whole Foods for some rapid shopping. I got my gluten-free cookies and assorted frozen fruits and vegetables. (I had also brought an ice-box.) As they only had lilies in bouquets, I was able to put lilies on the graves of my Aunt Catherine, my Uncle Roy and my Cousin Ronnie as well as on Mom's. And then we went home.

Arguing with The Carpenters (and/or Hal David)

(I swear I'm stealing this bit from some comic from the '70s or '80s, but Google declines to identify any such person. I certainly am not stealing it from Hal David; all rights are reserved by whoever holds them these days. Anyway, parody is protected speech, or so I fervently hope. Regardless, my bits are in Italics. Inspired by and dedicated to the mockingbird who sings outside my window day and night. A great and inspired singer, but still. )
Close to You

Why do birds
Suddenly appear?
Everytime you are near

(I must have picked the wrong scent of AXE body spray)

Just like me
They long to be
Close to you

Why do stars
Fall down from the sky?
Every time you walk by

(What?! I didn't do that! Anyway, who cares? Get out of the way!)

Just like me
They long to be
Close to you

On the day that you were born
The angels got together and decided
To create a dream come true

(I always KNEW it was a conspiracy!)

So they sprinkled moondust in your hair

(Hey! The Grecian Formula's supposed to take care of that!)

Of gold and starlight in your eyes of blue

(Whew! The police sketch artist will never be able to match me with THAT description!)

That is why all the girls in town
Follow you all around

(No, I finally got the RIGHT scent of AXE body spray)

Just like me
They long to be
Close to you

Time is a smart aleck

    For most of us, time flows in a fairly predictable fashion. When you're very young, time flows verrrry slooowly, such that next Christmas, for instance, seems several centuries away. As you grow older, time passes more quickly, and the rate of change seems pretty steady as well. I'm told that when you're old, time goes so fast a year seems to take about as long as a week did when you were young.
    At the age of nearly fifty, I haven't quite experienced this yet. But I had gotten used to time more or less racing by. Since last December, though, I've been having quite the slowdown. Every day is like a week, but not in any onerous way. I have had the strong sense that something massive, something spectacular is about to occur, but yet, it keeps declining to do so. It's enough to make a fellow start to doubt his fabulous psychic powers.
    I'm starting to get fed up with it. I'm about ready for the pages to fly off the calendar again, like in the old movies. I'd like to go for a hike without the breeze in the leaves of the trees whispering words of omen and portent. I'm most emphatically too old for this stuff. So Fates? Get on with it, will you?

The Celiac Sprue: What It Do

    Now that nobody is reading this anymore, I can give a detailed description of everybody's favorite autoimmune disorder with no fear that there is anyone out there to be bored. Folks surfing in accidentally from Belarus: Hi! Please accept my apologies; there probably won't even be any iambic pentameter. You might like the skydiving piece from a week or so back, though.
    Celiac sprue, as mentioned, is an autoimmune disorder. Autoimmune disorders differ from allergies pretty markedly. In an allergy, if a trigger is introduced (say, pollen), your body attempts to attack the trigger but also might damage some of your own tissue. In an autoimmune disorder, if a trigger (say, gluten) is introduced, your body just attacks itself. It's like a country, under military attack, deciding for no particular reason to attack its own cities.
    Gluten is mostly found in wheat, but also barley, barley malt and rye. Oats are often cross-contaminated with gluten, but some celiacs are sensitive to even gluten-free oats. Corn gluten is a different substance and doesn't cause celiacs problems. The alert reader, though, will notice that that's a whole lot of foods and beverages to have to cut out. Yes, it sure is. But there are more and better substitutes coming out practically every day.
    What celiac disease does varies from individual to individual. Most experience severe pain, bloating and gas when they accidentally ingest gluten, and this can last from days to weeks. I am a lucky one, in that I have very little in the way of symptoms. On the other hand, it took me 45 years to notice that I'm celiac. It took 40 years for lactose intolerance to make itself obvious. (If you don't know what the symptoms of severe lactose intolerance are, I hope you never find out.) It took around 30 years for vitamin B12 symptoms (wandering pins-and-needles) to make themselves felt, though I just thought I had poor circulation.
    What does celiac disease do in the long run? Mostly you die from intestinal cancer. I try to remain upbeat and keep my sense of humor. Who knows? Maybe having mild symptoms means I'm at lower risk of painful death. I keep my fingers crossed.

So you want to be an NFL player?

    The solution is so easy! They turn the NFL into a league for regular guys. One massive reality show, with tryouts for every position on every team. HBO could be wall-to-wall Hard Knocks. Somebody could explain the rules to Simon Cowell and he could be the commissioner. ("That tackle was AW-ful!") C'mon; it'll be great!
    For one thing, when the players are great, it's a real problem if one of them gets hurt. If Troy Polamalu misses five games, he can't be replaced. But if all the players stink, you just plug in another stinky player, and who will notice? Again, simple!
    Of course, nobody wants to see people cross picket lines. (OK, a lot of us don't want to see people cross picket lines.) But there are untold numbers of guys who would love to play in the NFL for free. You know what? I bet the owners could live with that deal, too!
    And when viewers tire of watching regular guys playing football, the owners could always hand out the steroids and HGH. And lo and behold: supermen again!

Half Life

Forty years more or less
More or less alone
And then a clasping
A joining
And two people
Turn into one
Or one and a half
A boy-girl being
Living the adventure
'Til suddenly it ends.

Wandering in the wilderness
Of anything but pain
Psychic skin grafts take a while
Bone grafts even longer
To grow a soul back
Whole and free
To give away again

And then Japan
Where life meets half-life
In clouds of fear
and radiation
All we learn
is that we never learn.

Funny stuff people said to me

    Long ago, before God needed to shave, a young woman captivated me completely. That story did not have a happy ending, so we will stick to the funny part. She was fascinated by astrology. When I told her that I didn't believe in it particularly, she said the second funniest thing anyone ever said to me about me: "Of course you don't believe in astrology; you're a Gemini!"
    Not quite so long ago, in an airport, a woman accosted me with, "Was the coat-rack yours?" I was utterly non-plussed, but have always believed that if I had just kept my head and said something like, "The dew falls heavily on the Vistula," she would have handed me a dossier and my career in international espionage would have been well under way. Or at least I would have no longer been the most bewildered person in the airport. Or maybe I would have awakened in a bathtub full of ice short one kidney--who knows?
    Last year, I got my annual wintertime physical collapse out of the way early, in fact on the first Monday of the year. I had the most astonishing case of vertigo, scary enough that even as physician-phobic as I am, I called the clinic and got an appointment as soon as possible, which turned out to be the next day. The doctor I saw was a very attractive young woman, which has no bearing on the story except that I ought to get some sex appeal in this blog somewhere. She said that I was just highly congested, most especially in the ears. She prescribed a decongestant and also a stool softener she suggested I put in my ears. Thus, I was told by a trained physician that I have shit for brains. It was the funniest thing anyone ever said to me about me, and she wasn't even trying to make a joke. (She also gave me the much cheaper option of putting diluted hydrogen peroxide in my ears instead. I took it.)

Beetroot non-halwa

    Some months ago Paul and I went to the buffet at Delhi Palace and tried a dessert called beetroot halwa. It was crazy mad delicious, but seemed a bit dairy-heavy. As dairy is one of the things I don't eat I looked it up and indeed the recipe featured dairy left and right. So I started scheming...
    What I came up with has very little in common with beetroot halwa and is basically an excuse to eat more avocado, not that one is needed. There is open question whether it is crazy mad delicious, but if it isn't, you can always add more honey. The one thing that can't be questioned: you'll never feel better about life, the universe and everything than when after you've eaten this.
    I buy beets with the greens cut off. These can be hard to find; hell, beets with the greens not cut off can be hard to find. I find them at EarthFare, which of course helps you not at all if you aren't in a small portion of the Southeast. Try looking in any health food store, or a really large supermarket.
    I buy three beets, or four if they're conspicuously small, rinse them as well as possible and cut the roots off because I'm childish and they're hairy looking. I cut up the beets and then cut them up smaller using a food chopper. (A food processor would work just as well or better.) I put them in a pot, covering them with purified water and turn the heat to 5 or Medium.
    I bring it to a boil but leave the heat at 5, checking on it every 10 minutes. When the water is largely boiled away (say a half hour), I add a tablespoon of vanilla. It would be more economical just to add a teaspoon or less after all the water has boiled away, but that way I can taste the alcohol. I am profligate as well as childish.
    When the water is gone, I set the beets aside to cool a bit and turn to the avocado. Hopefully it is a ripe avocado. I cut it open, remove the pit, scoop out the innards and throw them in the blender. I cover with purified water (sounds like a ritual, I know) and puree. Mix the avocado goop with the beets, add about a tablespoon of olive oil and maybe a smidge over a tablespoon of honey and voila! Whatever it is, there it is.
    I eat a couple-three tablespoons (more formally, blops) of this after breakfast as a kind of dessert. It adds markedly to my equilibrium all day.

Curriculum vitae

See if this has the ring of truth...
I was born on my birthday in the year of my birth at my birthplace.
Early life: I don't remember much about this period. I understand that I pooped a lot.
Education: Attended kindergarten, elementary school, middle school, high school, middle high school, early new high school and trade school. However, the player to be named later in the trade already had a name, so I returned to high school.
Attended college, majoring in Epistemology. My senior paper earned me a summa cum laude degree, but since it proved conclusively the pointlessness of all knowledge, they took my diploma back.
Passed the written Foreign Service Exam. Sat and passed the oral Foreign Service Exam (hence the constant scent of mouthwash)
Employment:
1985-87 Third Secretary, Embassy to Lower Slobovia
1987-89 Second Secretary, Embassy to Fredonia
1989-92 Brought back stateside as Deputy Under Assistant Auxiliary Redundant Emergency-Backup Associate Secretary for Coming Up With New Synonyms For Sidekick
1992-99 Emperor of Zaire. Reason for leaving: Deposed in bloodless coup. Damned vampires.
1999-present Teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. As there are no students, it's a very restful job.
Awards: As I haven't fathered any children, I'm still eligible for a Darwin Award. I'm assured by every woman I meet that I am a shoo-in.

Vinyl that I miss

    I've always felt that Al Stewart was badly underrated, including even while he was putting out big hit records. I still do. I only had those big hit records (Year of the Cat, Time Passages), but they were superb pop albums, and I find I miss them very often, even if there's no one on my mind like a song on the radio.
    Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert was a total delight, with probably the definitive version of Sing Sing Sing (With A Swing). The version on my greatest hits CD doesn't measure up, and the versions on my MP3 old-time radio CDs nearly do, but not quite. Miss the vinyl.
    Talking Heads '77 and The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads are badly missed, especially Happy Day and Building On Fire. The Was (Not Was) record Born To Laugh At Tornadoes is pretty nearly universally reviled, except by me, especially Smile as sung by the late, great Doug Fieger of The Knack. I'm actually less knocked out by the much better selling What Up, Dog?, though Somewhere In America There's A Street Named After My Dad is among my favorites. I even found the video on YouTube once (but only briefly, unfortunately).
    Katy Lied is probably my most missed Steely Dan disc (especially Dr. Wu and Any World That I'm Welcome To), but I miss them all. Goodness knows why I haven't bought it and Aja on CD by now. At least there's a version of Aja (the song) on Alive In America.
    Other than that, there are the Swimming Pool Qs records, which I should definitely pick up since they've put so much effort into the CD re-releases. Or at least World War Two Point Five for I'd Rather Feel This Pain Than Be Nowhere. And other than THAT, there's a gazillion one-hit wonders, or at least one-song wonder albums, the kind of things that'll make me buy a turntable that will record straight to CD or MP3 some time sooner or later. Leading the pack there is Girl Of My Dreams by Bram Tchaikovsky. At least it's on YouTube.
    On the other hand, there's Thick As A Brick, which I would most emphatically miss if I didn't have, but which I have on LP, MP3 and CD. Probably the only record in my collection to hit the trifecta.
    Upon edit, I find that I should have made clearer that these are records that I still have; I miss them because I don't have a working turntable. One of these days I'll learn to read and write.

Atone

I want them back
I want them all back
The one who jumped
and the one who drank and smoked
and the one who smoked and drank
and all the ones who killed themselves
and all the ones who went away
and all the ones who lost their minds
and to have the chance
to do a better job
at helping them try
to save themselves

Open Mic

Yet again, a true story from my life cast into third person with my name changed to make the third personiness less  weird. This time, I'll be Dave. Robert and Mary play themselves, though the temptation to rename them Roscoe and Weezy was well-nigh overwhelming. This happened in Philadelphia in the winter of '87-'88. The club was almost certainly called Comedy Factory Outlet, but I'm calling it Zeppo's because a) I don't feel like looking it up; and b) Zeppo's would be a kickass name for a comedy club.
    Dave was ready to step forward and take up his destiny as a standup comedian. It was the '80s, and Dave figured all he needed was some jokes, a skinny tie and a willingness to stand in front of a brick wall. He had listened to his Steven Wright tape over and over again, and decided he was ready to roll.
    Around the block from his house in Old City Philadelphia was a comedy club called Zeppo's. And Zeppo's held an Open Mic night once a week. Dave asked around, and was told that the club was easy on new comedy aspirants. Sort of. Knowing that the new guys would be nervous and therefore would probably suck, the club put them on at the very end when most of the audience had left already. "Sign me up!" Dave thought, and busily set to typing all his jokes on little index cards.
    By the time the Night of Open Mic arrived, Dave had made little progress memorizing his routine, but hey, he would be going on last. He had all evening to learn the material! This turned out to be the funniest joke of the night. Dave went in to sign up and was told that the order of performance would be determined by pulling their names out of a hat. Aaaaand when the names were pulled, Dave was first. All evening to learn the routine turned into, maybe, half an hour.
    This was an age before Janeane Garofalo. Comics didn't bring their jokes with them up on stage on a clipboard in the '80s. (Though maybe it would have helped.) No idiots they, Zeppo's salted the open mic night program with a few ringers, pros or at least very talented amateurs, to keep things moving. The one who kicked off this open mic night was a gentleman whose schtick was making helicopter noises with his tongue. It was probably very funny, but Dave couldn't get much of a yuck out of it, because he was on next.
    Dave's friends Robert and Mary had come out in support, and he sat with them until he was called to the stage. And he left his winter coat with them when he went up. And in the pocket of the coat were his index cards. Somewhere, no doubt, Janeane Garofalo is saying, "Told you so!"
    Dave had been on a stage before, in high school, but couldn't remember the lights being this bright. He could barely see the audience, just the dim outlines of the people in the front row. He did, however, perceive an air of expectancy from in front of him. It would not last long. Dave remembered two of his jokes, maybe three, and performed them haltingly. If there was any laughter, it was not the warm, friendly kind. And Dave bailed. Said "thanks" and ran from the club.
    Having paid the cover, Robert and Mary wanted to stay and hear the other comics and in an era before cell phones were widespread, they couldn't call up to abuse Dave. Dave felt charged, amped, relieved, and not at all embarrassed or ashamed about having totally bombed. He was at home, drinking Strongbow, and calling friends and family long-distance to chortle about the experience.
    Robert and Mary eventually showed up, bringing Dave's jacket. They reported that the emcee spent the rest of the evening riffing about Dave between every act. "Dave? Has anybody seen Dave?" Dave felt that if this was the entire extent of his fame in comedy, he could live with it.

I blogged on JEOPARDY!

Yet again with the 3d person exercises. This is a slice of my life from 2007; in this one I branch out from guys with four-letter names starting with J to masquerade as Tom instead.

    JEOPARDY! fans know that the show (hereinafter called "the show" to avoid the all-caps and exclamation mark) picks its contestants in a number of ways. Most of the players come from Southern California, but there is also a traveling road show visiting all the nation's largest cities to test potential contestants. And there's an online test given more or less annually that helps find another bunch.
    In late January 2007, Tom took the online test. It was a timed set of 50 questions-- just questions, no clues to which you have to supply the question as on the show. Tom was sure of at least 40 and probably 45 of his answers and was able to get through the entire test. Thus he felt at least borderline confident about his chances, but he still had to sweat it out. The website indicated that it would be at least six weeks until results would be available. As it turned out, it was two months.
    The news arriving in Tom's Inbox was good. Another two months later, Tom would have to drive to Atlanta from his hometown in Columbia for tryouts. He purchased a World Almanac and a blue blazer and started studying. In May, Tom made the drive to Atlanta one evening. His girlfriend, a wizard at online travel sites, had gotten him an inexpensive room in a very fine hotel downtown.
    The next morning at 9 a.m., the audition kicked off. It was more fun than a barrel of monkeys, though there was a fair bit of administrative type stuff to get through first. The application was about as extensive as a job application and Tom, not expecting this, hadn't brought a resume or any other background information. He did the best he could. The contestant co-ordinators also took a Polaroid of each participant. As Tom looked like a doughy long-haired gargoyle at this time, he wasn't much encouraged by this, either. But then the fun began.
    The group was let into a makeshift studio. Sadly, it was wholly Trebek-free, but this didn't dilute anyone's enjoyment. First, there was another timed 50-question test, this one using pen and paper. Then, while these tests were being marked, they got to play a little JEOPARDY! The players were mainly instructed to relax but speak up. First, the fellow playing the host (the contestant co-ordinator) called out clues and aspirants competed for the home computer version of the game. Tom didn't win, but didn't mind.
    Then, participants came to the front in groups of three and played a short game (complete with clickers). After each short set of answers and questions, the contestant co-ordinator played Alex Trebek to ask about themselves and what they would do with any money they won. Tom resisted the temptation to say that he would use it to overthrow the legitimate government like the oil companies do.
    The staff let them know that the show would get in touch if any of them were selected as contestants. They pointed out that although the players are responsible for their own travel to LA, all prizes are cash so the worst case scenario would be to win $1,000, which ought to cover travel expenses easily. And if one of them happened to win enough games to carry over into another week, Sony would fly them roundtrip from LA to home and back for the next week's shows. The staff also let them know that they wouldn't hear further from the show unless they were selected, and that there were at least 1,000 people in a contestant pool with only 400 contestants needed.
    Never so hearing, Tom could not say for sure whether he passed the audition. But he will always believe that he did. And he found a new Ethiopian restaurant right by I85 to celebrate in. The whole audition took only a couple of hours, and left time for an awesome lunch. A great day!

Tomorrow: the same story in the style of Hunter S. Thompson! OK, maybe not.

Updating: A Grab Bag

    I finally came up with an idea for what to do with potato-kale flatbread. What else? Pizza crust! Turned out, if not great, then at least on the good side of interesting. I cooked it as a crust for 20 minutes at 375. Then I put the tomato sauce and toppings on and cooked it for another 20. At the end, I let it cool for five minutes. The result was not very pizza-like; as Paul pointed out, it was somewhat more shepherd's pie-like. So now it's called shepherd's pizza. Or possibly Po-tay-to po-tah-to to-may-to to-mah-to/ Let's call the whole thing off. OK, maybe not.
    Regardless, cooking it without toppings at 400 rather than 375 might help and probably wouldn't hurt. I also greased the pizza pan somewhat half-heartedly with (extra virgin) olive oil, while mixing more (EV) olive oil with the potato, kale, salt and pepper as before. Didn't put it on aluminum foil, nor did  I flip it this time. It didn't stick down at all, though only one of four slices held together like an actual pizza slice. Apart from shepherd's pie, it reminded me of polenta pizza, which is also delightful, but messy.

    My other update isn't really an update; just a certain amount of angst about the fate of the lost dog. I sure hope the guy with the pickup truck was his owner and they found each other without incident. Or his family came back and found him quickly. Or he lived up the road at the nearest neighborhood, or had come with a fisherman to the somewhat nearer boat landing, and knew his way back. I'm more than a little afraid to go back now; though if I find a scareder, hungrier dog, maybe he'll be more amenable to getting in the car with me. I'll probably go today to see. I just hope he's OK.

    My other other update isn't one at all. For those who have tried and failed to leave comments, Blogger Help (not to be confused with the Will Smith vehicle, The Legend of Blogger Help) says that there's an anonymous option, whereby you can leave a comment without having to have a Google account. So maybe try that, and kick off by saying who you are. First name is sufficient if I know you well or mention your DU or Celiac.com handle if you're from one  of those sites. I should try to comment on my own blog just to find out how the system works, but that would just be too twee. I always preferred the Jack Benny approach anyway: Don't applaud; just throw money.

Sonnets from the Zombie Apocalypse

For the record, Godawful Sonnets would be a kickass name for, well, a record.

1
Apocalyptic zombie days have come
The living dead are always hard to beat
Don't hide downstairs 'cause that would just be dumb
They're walking very slowly up your street
The zombies want your brain so come across
You prob'ly never think much anyway
I think they want to use it for lacrosse
Or maybe they'd prefer cerveau flambe
You only have to shoot them in the head
To send the weasels back to sleep in dirt
It makes no sense since they're already dead
But what's the diff'rence? Who's it really hurt?
The zombies make a comeback now and then
And we just have to kick their butts again

2
The living dead are back again to play
"Hey look! There's Dennis Miller!" "He's not dead!"
Whatever could they want? Now who can say?
They sure do seem to want to grab my head.
The only thing they ever say is "Brain!"
Which rules out Dennis Miller, that's for sure
I think this started out with toxic rain
I wonder if we'll ever find a cure
They move so slow and halting, why not run?
The dead should be an easy bunch to race
It ought to be an awful lot of fun
And if you lose, well, how hard's that to face?
My darling, I'm not after your behind
I'm only here so I can EAT YOUR MIND!

3
The zombies bring apocalypse at last
The angel Gabe is readying his tune
If you're not scared you have to be a loon
Get out of town you idiots and fast!
We need to figure how to fight them soon
Before we're done I think things might get rough
The living dead will want to give some guff
Except for Gabriel they're nobody's boon.
Hey wait! These deadly dead guys aren't so tough
They're slow, they're dumb and all they want is "Brain!"
They ought to be as hard to kill as fluff
Put down that trumpet Gabe, don't be insane.
The living dead don't have to mean the end
By night or dawn against them we can fend

Found: Dog

    Yesterday, I went to Congaree Creek Heritage Preserve to find my next blog entry and, perhaps sadly, I did. I had gone as far as I usually go, which is to say as far as the the trail runs along the creek. I turned around and had come a few minutes worth of the way back when I heard the sound of feet behind me, or rather paws. A largish black dog with white patches on the neck was following me. If I turned around, he barked and feinted, but whenever I resumed walking, he resumed following. He had no collar or tags that I could see, though he didn't let me get close enough for a thorough examination.
    He followed me all the way back to the parking lot. Eventually, he quit barking when I turned around to check on him, but he certainly never drew closer. He stuck to the trail, though, even when it made pointless meanderings through flat land and he could have easily took short cuts. As such, he was a better hiker than most people I know.
    As I got closer to the trailhead, he dropped back a long way, and I thought I'd lost him. But he was just being a dog, investigating a smell or something, and caught me up again. At the parking lot, there was a pickup truck with a small empty flatbed trailer large enough to carry a Bushhog. There was no one there and no logo or anything on the pickup. Hopefully, it was a contractor for DNR (that is, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resource) who had brought his dog and knew how to whistle for him when it was time to go home.
    However, having little confidence in this possibility, I tried to lure the dog into my car with the idea of taking him to a no-kill shelter. He was way too wary for this, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view). So I found a coffee cup on the ground, ripped away enough of the styrofoam to make a vessel a muzzle could fit in, and put most of the rest of my water in it. Hopefully he drank from it in preference to the large mud puddle nearby, but he wouldn't go near it while I was there.
    I had forgotten to bring my cell phone. I tried to find one of the no-kill shelters to ask them how to proceed, but either they had moved or were very well-hidden. So I went home and phoned instead. The person answering the phone indicated that they don't make pickups and if anyone (for instance, DNR) did so, they would scan the dog for a chip and would only bring it to the shelter if the chip said it belonged to them. (In other words, that would be a dead dog, but I thought better of saying so.)
    Regardless, I called and left a message with DNR to let them know that there was a stray dog on their property. As it's a (or an) historical preserve rather than primarily a nature preserve, it's possible that they wouldn't be too interested. It's even more probable that they don't have the resources to chase down a stray dog. Anyway, I'm sad to think that they might take him to the county shelter, where he'd be very unlikely to survive. So on the whole, the idea that they might not bother with him strikes me as an optimistic one.
    I also alerted the other no-kill shelter of his existence through a post on their wall at Facebook. Maybe that will prove another possible route to his rescue.
    I wish I could have persuaded him to come with me, but because of the small size of this apartment and the fact that our fence was knocked down by a falling tree, I couldn't keep him here anyway. I'm hoping against hope that his owners come looking soon and find him. He was an awfully nice fellow.

How I became a PUBLISHED derelict

If you don't know the drill, this is another story from my life told in third-person for practice in that exciting and lucrative method of story-telling. A Drama In Real Life if you (and Reader's Digest's lawyers) will allow. This time the names are changed, though to protect the reader rather than the innocent. As my writing partner for that project was also named John, it would just be too confusing (or too last name heavy) to use our real names. So for the purposes of this story, the feckless, younger John (representing me) is Joel, while the substantial, grownup John is Fred. In real life, my co-author is John F. Clark (though the F. does not in fact stand for Fred) and the book is "Hiking South Carolina" from Falcon Press. We sort of got fired off the 2d edition for, uh, not producing one, but I think our names are still on the book. Whether we still get royalties is another question. That is, from the 2d edition. We still get them from the 1st, though I think I'm now better qualified than either Stephen King or Dave Barry to be in the all-author band, The Rock Bottom Remainders. Not that I'm more of an author, but I'm certainly more of a rock-bottom remainder.

    Joel was a free-lance do-gooder. He volunteered at the Center for Environmental Policy at the sporadically prestigious University of South Carolina in Columbia. Joel specialized in writing articles read by few and spinning off brilliant ideas for saving the world, or at least the Western hemisphere, listened to by even fewer. One of these ideas was to create a new energy conservation plan for South Carolina and this brought him to the attention of Fred.
    Fred could be called a long-time inside agitator for energy and environmental issues within S.C. state government. The particular brilliant idea Joel and Fred worked on met the same fate as most of the others, which was that it couldn't penetrate the University's administration, let alone get a chance to be judged by the foundation at which it was aimed. Too bad so sad, as we said back in the '90s, but Fred had another idea.
    Fred was also a long-time Sierra Club member. As such, he had seen a nature guide to South Georgia (the region of the American state, not the South Atlantic island) produced by the local chapter of a major environmental group, the Nature Conservancy probably. He felt that it would be fun, useful and profitable to do something similar for South Carolina, and Joel agreed.
    They had gotten as far in their How To Be A Writer handbooks to know that that they needed a book proposal, comprised mostly of three sample chapters. They chose three small (i.e., two or three counties each) areas of the state and set to work. They had a hell of a lot of fun. As they had no particular publisher in mind, they had no publisher's guidelines they had to follow, so they put in whatever occurred to them, including favorite restaurants, local history, local color, and directions to Grandma's house. (OK, they didn't really include the latter, but then neither had a living grandma at that point.)
    Eventually (about sixteen years later, I think) they had their package assembled, and sent it out to several regional publishers who seemed like good prospects. The rejection letters came considerably more quickly, and Fred and Joel struck further afield. Eventually, they got down the list to Falcon Press, then of Helena, Montana. Falcon sent an unusually enthusiastic rejection letter. They explained that they couldn't in fact use a nature guide to South Carolina, but what they would really like would be a hiking guide to South Carolina.
    Now Fred and Joel had been outdoors before now and then, and even went hiking from time to time assuming the trail had been cleared of large snakes, small snakes, spiders, alligators and any other wildlife of the biting, itching, man-eating and non-cute classes. But what the hell, they thought, how hard can it be?
    Another sixteen years later, they had a proposal for a hiking book and sent it off to Montana. And waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually, as luck would have it, Fred met a Falcon author (an author for Falcon Press, not an avian one) and asked her if she would mind checking on our manuscript. As even better luck would have it, she actually did. It turned out that the editor for the hiking book series had had a rock-climbing accident and fallen on his head and had been laid up for some time. However, he was all better now. Shortly thereafter a contract arrived in the mail and, except for the whole writing-the-book part, Fred and Joel were published authors.
    Thus, Joel and Fred can offer succinct advice to the aspiring young writer: always make sure to submit your manuscript to an editor who falls on his head. Hey, it worked for them.
    The tale of the writing of the book is probably for another day. How St. Fred scared the snakes from South Carolina's trails, mainly by almost stepping on them, was certainly a highlight. How Joel skived his way out of doing any actual writing by claiming terminal writer's block and just drew maps instead is amazing as well. However , after only another eighteen years (they wanted the total to be an even 50), Fred and Joel were able to reap the rewards of being published authors. Whatever those might turn out to be.

Forsaking all others

(Not about what you'd probably think. But I didn't exactly set a difficult puzzle.)
Nothing but socks
in my sock drawer
Nothing under the bed
but a cat
Now that I'm no longer
part of the problem
am I part of the solution?
Or anyway at last
a grownup
decades late?
Can I grow enough
to encompass love?
Well we'll see.

Might as well jump

    Long, long ago, Robert, Mary and I jumped out of an airplane. As we didn't feel like undergoing extensive training, we did tandem jumps. The following is another writing exercise exploring third person narration, so the John in the story is me. As I'm not planning to publish this beyond bloggery, there wasn't any point in changing the names.

    Robert, Mary and John wanted an adventure, but couldn't afford a cruise to the South Seas. In Philadelphia in the late '80s, Alpine mountaineering and deep-sea diving opportunities were limited so they decided to try tandem jump skydiving. It being a time before the Internet, they probably learned about Skydiving Chambersburg through the Yellow Pages, but hell, it was a long time ago. Maybe it was a word of mouth thing.
    Chambersburg, though in Pennsylvania, is really more convenient to Baltimore or DC than to Philly, but it wasn't too long a drive. They enjoyed seeing the Susquehanna and it was a pleasant drive otherwise except that John, who had done a junior year abroad in Canterbury, insisted on pronouncing Carlisle with the emphasis on the second syllable, which Mary could have easily lived without. (But what was she going to say? "Go jump out of a plane"?)
    By the time they arrived at the airport, it had become quite overcast. The staff at Skydiving Chambersburg were not discouraging exactly, but definitely indicated that there would be a wait. The weather forecast, they told the prospective jumpers, said that skies would be clearing within an hour or so. Within that hour or so, the sky had not cleared, but cloud cover had risen to the point that a jump could be done from 10,000 feet, rather than the advertised 13,000. John decided to give it a try.
    John was in a contact-lens-wearing phase at the time, and wasn't sure which would be better: to stick with the contacts and hope that the goggles fit tightly enough to keep out dust, wind and flotsam; or to go with glasses and hope the damned goggles fit over them. He did the former and couldn't see a thing all the way down. But then, when one is approaching the ground at break every bone in your body speed, not seeing well might be a blessing.
    On the slow circling ascent to the jump point, the butterflies in John's stomach were doing rhythmic gymnastics. He was sure he was going to back out; he knew that he could do so up until the last moment with a loss of money but not noticeably of face. To his own surprise, he didn't. John was hooked to the instructor, who climbed out to hang from the wing, and John hung from the instructor. For what seemed like a year but what was actually at most a minute, this was the most alarming moment in John's life. Then the instructor let go.
    This whole skydiving lark, at least for John, sprang from a reverie he had once while trying to fall asleep wherein he was falling gently through clouds towards the Earth. It was lovely; it was peaceful. Skydiving isn't like that. Even without being able to see well, or possibly because of it, John was as adrenalized as it is possible to be. Never having actually grabbed a live wire, he couldn't confidently say that that was what it was like, but it was how he imagined grabbing a live wire would be, only not painful. You probably think you know what the word "hurtling" means; until you've jumped out of a plane, you don't.
    After these seconds of eternity, probably a minute at least, the instructor pulled the release. John had been warned of the jerk that happened at this point, but it wasn't anything he couldn't handle. The ride down under the canopy was comparatively restful, much more like the reverie that had gotten John into this in the first place. The hills of south-central Pennsylvania are lovely in the spring and nice to see from above. If the scenery was flavored with a massive sense of relief, well, that probably helped, too.
    Being an obedient sort of cuss, John balled himself up for the landing like he'd been told to do and let the instructor take the impact. Mary and Robert would go up on a later plane, and get to freefall all the way from 13,000 feet. And maybe that's why their landings were rougher, or looked it. Neither Rob nor Mary were injured, but Mary's landing particularly looked scary. But they agreed that the experience was worth the alarm. It wasn't even as long as six months before Robert's, Mary's and John's eyes quit bugging out and their hair stopped standing on end. But they had learned what "hurtling" means.

    Robert and Mary corrected my memories; I thought they had jumped from 10,000 rather than 13,000 feet. Maybe I was thinking of the length of the freefall. Also I thought they both sustained minor injuries upon landing, but apparently not. Oh, and I guess we didn't really do loop-di-loops all the way down. But it's a good story.

About the cat

    Five years ago about this time of year, then-girlfriend Alice brought home a second cat. I was not overly thrilled about this, as I was already allergic to the first cat. I hid in my room for a week or so in hopes that my eyes would one day stop streaming. Then, not being a complete idiot, I changed the HVAC filter and things gradually got better.
    One week, Alice went out of town, so I was left to be the sole catkeeper. Along with feeding them and seeing to litter boxes, I came out once per evening to give out scritches. And the new cat, Amelia, decided that I was Jesus McAllah O'Buddha. Nothing that has happened since has swayed her from this opinion, for reasons that are completely beyond me.
    Shortly thereafter, I threw open my door and she glommed onto me like a barnacle. I was sleeping on a sofa. (Not that it was all that cold a relationship; it was just that Alice and I both snored.) Whenever I rolled over, Amelia climbed to the new highest point. This went on for months, before she finally became comfortable enough to sleep somewhere not on my actual person. It was extremely endearing.
    Over the years, Amelia has had many names. At Project Pet, she was called Zola. Alice named her Amelia, but I almost immediately tagged her as The Monkey. Since then I've called her Zippy McFlibbet (the morning one), Extreme Closeup the Cat, Sweetie Sweetie Sweet Sweet, Sillyhead, Headbutt, Little Kitty Foo Foo (because once she bopped the older cat on the head) and a few dozen other names.
    Alice was a good sport to let me in her life for seven years and in her house for three but when she got fed up and asked me to leave, she couldn't break up the team, so Amelia came with me. In the two-odd years since, with no need to impress anyone with my creativity, I mainly call her Pooh or Boo, though she'll still come if I look away from her and say, "WHERE'S my monkey?!" I always say that she has more names than God, but is less mysterious.
    She is about seven years old now, which means she should have at least another ten years to run. I am so looking forward to it.