A Simple Desultory Philippic
(16-25 June 2001)
25 June
2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-AMEN SISTA! to Lisha for her comments...
checking update pages with no
updates at a long stretch is indeed a pain. & thanks
too, by the way. I promise
that somewhere, as long as this project goes, every day will have
an entry. Sometimes,
as with the Elephant Butte entries from 2 days ago, I have to
write it on paper & then transfer
to computer (see also Grand Canyon, Scotland, etc.), but an update
is being written & will
eventually show here... guaranteed.
-Right after I got off the
phone with Nikki, Kate called.
It's been a good night on the phone.
-Everyone wants me
to visit Washington. I
don't think I'll join Fish in being asked, "state or
DC"? Nor does such a question
carry similar significance here.
24 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-There was quite a bit of bridge this
weekend, but in the car on the
way back was probably pushing it. Playing cards in a car
ended up being much like reading
in a car.
-So I spent about 2+ full days in the Elephant Butte
area, trading in my normal
form for a much redder model. I could be a lobster.
It's my own fault, & it
doesn't bother me too much, but it looks sorta
funny.
-Congratulations are in order to
Charles Heinberg & Krystal Rogers, who were married 4 days
ago. They were planning a
big Mormon-style August wedding in Salt Lake, but (not
surprisingly), it was a wee bit too stressful.
A crisp twenty says Charles & the Mormon
"secret-wedding" crew were not
hitting it off big-time. So they functionally eloped, &
are now probably awfully happy.
Friends who bought tickets in advance for August are
probably less happy.
-"Ah,
sweet (fill-in-the-blank)" as a phrase has invaded my
consciousness, from Fish's reciting
it every other second all weekend long.
23 June 2001
[from Elephant
Butte, New Mexico]
-This boat is both larger & nicer than
any living space I ever
expect to own.
-The rest of the world seems to interpret Fish's
& my constant banter as
real disagreement or argumentation. Or at least the rest of
his family sees it that
way.
-People think the darndest things.
-Well, I've just had
my first lifetime "jetski"
experience. It was fun, though I told Fish it's one of those
things that gets more fun the
further away one gets from it in time. By tomorrow, it will
have been an absolute blast!
But honestly, I was okay, & between a half-wetsuit &
a thorough lifejacket, I
actually floated! Another lifetime first. Either way,
Erica (a McFeely family
friends' child, approximately our age) didn't deliberately dunk us
(she was driving the jetski),
but she did spin an awful lot. I didn't get my lungs TOO
full of water.
-Fish covers
his Roman Centurion hair with a beatnik hat I saw him buy at UCSD.
Go look up a picture
of a Roman Centurion's hat on the internet... that's EXACTLY what
Fish's hair looks like.
-This
is a whole lot of time with the McFeeleys. So interesting to
immerse oneself in another's
family for a time. I guess I've done this with the Torcivias
& the Myerses before...
it's perhaps odder when one is actually closer to the whole
family.
22 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-After somehow managing not to go there in
8 years of knowing Fish, I'm
finally joining his family in an excursion to "the
lake". I bid you all a good
weekend... I'll be back Sunday.
21 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-June TWENTY-FIRST? Jeez, this is
gonna start degrading fast into
something circa last year with Kate's Ramblings & her
consistent refrain, "oh well, at
least I'm not pregnant". I'm not pregnant either (even
if I might actually be gaining
weight--?), but I'm sure mystified by how it's late June all of a
sudden. Gotta get in
gear.
-DK discovered tonight that Fish is College America's
Golden Boy. Seriously.
What got to me was not Fish's sky-high MCAT score, which
he's planning on taking to law
school, but the fact that nothing seems to be going wrong in his
life. Kunx sincerely
asked, "What's wrong in your life?". Fish said
that spending the next 10 weeks
away from his girlfriend & most of his friends was the big
thing. Kunx made fun of
this. I dunno what to think, except that DK should become
Fish's personal agent, he's so
impressed.
-High school seniors look so young to me now.
At least on Academy basketball
courts.
20 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-June TWENTIETH? As Jake would say,
dat ain't right!
-YAY!
Ariela's definitely coming in August! Woo! &
there was much
rejoicing...
-Dubious... sigh.
-Suddenly, with Fish in town,
it seems like there is much
to do!
19 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-People say things they don't mean out of
anger all the time.
-I
made the tape "The Edge of Reason" a little less than 2
years ago. I know I've
been revisiting a lot of old tapes lately, of the many I've
accumulated since '98, but they all
carry their ongoing relevances. In this case, quite
unfortunately.
-Goo goo
g'joob.
-Mostly for Schneider's benefit, I post
this
lovely link. I
don't recommend you visit it yourself, unless of course you
remember some late-AA highschool
era humor.
-Bouts of nostalgia are always difficult to deal
with. When it means going back to the
AA yearbook & senior pages, happiness is always gonna be a lil'
bit elusive.
18 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-Looking over the Pond today, I realized that
I really don't have much inclination to change it. Sure,
there's a couple things I could
do, like add a link or two & scan a pic or two, but I really
don't feel massively motivated
by the task. Maybe it's just that I'm not in Beantown &
am lazy, but more likely it's
that other projects are consuming me more. It's a page.
Hasn't been changed since
March, but it gets the job done. "The point
across" as Seth Lewin would have
said approximately 13 years ago.
-Getting over a migraine feels
so good.
-Now I have more
energy than I know what to do with. Usually the energy has
to be a bit on the down-swing
for me to write, & I'd play some chess.net, but the server
appears to be down. I'm restless! Hmmmmmmmm.
-Bob is
cracking me up today. Funny all around. At least Mesco
is getting more
traffic courtesy of the link above. I don't even know what a
Lynx browser is! Silly
me.
-Monday mornings are the quietest times around. Coming
back from the Frontier,
Albuquerque was fully asleep at around 3:30. Then I chunked
out about 10 pages of novel.
You heard right, TEN PAGES! Admittedly most of it's a
heavy-dialogue section, so
the word-density isn't the same, though the page-density is.
Sometimes I feel like I'm as
much a geologist of this book as anything else. I need to get
Jake in here to do soil-samples
& Fish for an anthropological analysis. I think I'm
reaching cruising altitude, at
least.
17 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-Happy Birthday, Griser! 21 for
almost all now.
-Happy Father's
Day, Dad!
-I HATE Western European foreign language films.
I understand that by that,
I'm really only ruling out French, Spanish, & Italian movies,
but that's exactly what I
intend to do from now on. After enduring "With a Friend
Like Harry", which was
purported to be so good, I give up.
-The names of some people
turn out to be almost novelesque
in their significance. I understand that most things are
novelesque in my world these days,
but really. It's impressive.
16 June 2001
[from
Albuquerque]
-The Creel back porch never
changes.
-I'm tired of vague fatigue.
-Coming back from the
Frontier this afternoon, driving down Lead, I almost ran literally
into the old odd guy who works at the Frontier. You know who
I'm talking about... the one
who talks very very slowly if at all, & always asks if I take
cream with my coffee so he
knows how high to fill it. He always looks like you've just
placed an order for moon rocks
when you finish asking for food. Anyway, he was not wearing a
Frontier apron & hat, but
was instead holding a camera & standing somewhat obliviously in
the middle of Lead while
traffic raced by on both sides. I think he was taking a
picture of a rather normal-looking
house.
Introspection, My Worst
Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old
Frontiers",
by SWClayton.