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.