Month: February 2009

It only just now occurred to me that my previous post was titled “Lost things” and posted on the night that “Lost”, the TV show, was on.

And yet there wasn’t a conscious attempt to connect those two things.

I picked the topic by leafing through the book “Writing Without The Muse” by Beth Joselow and picking a suggestion at random.

Is the connection a conscious one, a subconscious one, or a matter of apophenia – forging a connection after the fact when one didn’t exist prior? Who knows? Who cares?

OK, obviously, I care. Fascinating how the mind works.

Everyone has stories about things they have had, and lost. Small things, big things, personal things, public things, even things that aren’t things: ideals, people, senses.

If I reach into my brain and pull out something I’ve lost, one of the first things that comes to mind is my first car.

My actual first automobile was a truck: a mustard-yellow Ford Courier pickup, which was a hand-me-down given to me by my dad, after he had also given it to my sister, until she could save up for a car of her own. I drove that truck for almost a year, until the engine block cracked because it had overheated and run out of coolant, stranding me on the freeway on a hot summer afternoon. As my dad angrily described it after I had had it towed home, “It’s bone dry! It’s a big fuckin’ boat anchor now!”

Not my finest moment.

Even though I “lost” that truck, that’s not the car I think of as my first car. The car I bought after melting the truck was a 1978 Porsche 924. Nutmeg brown, with a tan interior. Sunroof, 2.0 liter 4-cylinder over-head cam engine, four-speed transmission. I paid $2900 for it, and it was the first, and last, car loan I ever had.

I drove that car for years, and drove it hard. It was the car in which my friend and I drove to San Francisco and back.

I autocrossed that car – autocrossing involves setting up a course with orange safety cones in a parking lot, and driving as fast as possible through the course. I earned the nickname “The Unicorn” in that car when I completed one pass through the course with an orange safety cone sticking straight out from under the air dam on my Porsche.

I took so many girls out on dates in that car. Some were happy when they heard I drove a Porsche; some of those were disappointed when they actually saw it. It was not impressive. The interior was a bit trashed. The sunroof leaked and there was a lake in the passenger side footwell on rainy days. And the Nutmeg Brown paint job had faded and chipped in places. But it was still my baby.

There was no sub-component of that car that I hadn’t fixed, replaced, or rebuilt. Engine, clutch, transmission, brakes.

And even though I loved that car, I treated it poorly. One time, in my hurry to go meet a friend after he’d gotten off work, I rushed off after a brake job without torquing down the bolts on the wheels. I didn’t notice until a mile or so from home, rounding a corner, when the entire car wobbled and shook. I pulled over and only then discovered that I had not one, not two but all four wheels about to fall off! I was able to wrench them down enough to drive, slowly, home, where I jacked it up, examined the damage (the soft alloy wheels had the bolt holes slightly enlarged but were otherwise fine), and called my friend back to tell him I wouldn’t make it in time.

How did I lose it? In a car accident. I was operating on too little sleep, and it was an early Sunday morning. I was in a hurry to go pick up a friend to take him back to my house, where other friends were gathering to play a little game of Dungeons and Dragons. When I arrived to pick up my gaming companion, the TV in the house was turned to an episode of Ren and Stimpy, which I had never seen before. The kids of my friend’s roommate were watching it. Ren was singing the “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy” song, and with my sleep-lack, it was perhaps the funniest thing I had ever seen. But I had to be going, so we got back in my car, and I took off. At the first intersection, I looked left, right, and pulled out into traffic. But a car had been coming and I must have missed seeing it; it slammed into the driver’s side, spraying glass over me and my passenger, and totaling the car. Even more dazed than before, I drove it over to the side of the road and the older couple in the green VW Type 4 got out, yelling at me. We exchanged insurance information and all the necessities, and my friend ran back the four blocks to his house to call for a tow.

My Porsche was towed twice; once to my home, and then once, again, to the insurance adjuster’s lot.

I never saw it again.

Craig, the building manager for my office, had come all the way into the basement to find my co-worker, Ken. But Ken was not there; he had the day off.

Ken had done Craig a work favor, circumventing the bureaucratic process by which work requests for our team were normally processed. Ken does things like that. He’s not, at heart, a functionary.

However, the favor involved two steps: first unplugging, then re-plugging (if that’s a word) a computer and all it’s peripheral devices. In between the un- and re-plugging, a group of sturdy men would disassemble a desk and work unit and reassemble it in a different, superior, configuration.

The favor was needed because the person who used that computer on that particular work surface in that particular office was located on one particular floor of the building in which I work. The highest floor, in fact, where all of the most important people spent their work hours. People far too busy and important to bother with things like bureaucracy and processes for notifying people like building managers and, well, Ken and I. So Craig had been given very little notice to get this particular, outside-of-the-ordinary work request completed. And so, he had come looking for a favor.

But the cunning plans of Craig and Ken had failed to take into account several factors, including Ken’s memory (he forgot about the second part), Craig’s lack of knowledge of Ken’s schedule (Ken was off today), and the slowness by which the sturdy men had completed their work (they had taken long enough that they were not finished before the end of Ken’s normal work day).

Which brings me back to the morning in question, when Craig had come looking for Ken, and found, not Ken, but Ken’s empty cube in the basement of the building where I work.

In the cube next to Ken’s cube was myself, a giant glazed cinnamon roll, and a steaming hot cup of half-decaf, half normal coffee, with lots of cream and lots of sugar. That’s just the way I like it.

“Ken’s not here,” Craig said helplessly.

“Nope,” I said, and I bit off a piece of my cinnamon roll and sipped a little bit of my coffee.

“He was doing me a favor,” Craig explained.

“I remember,” I replied, eyeing my cinnamon roll and hefting my warm cup of coffee.

“Where is he?”

“Ken?” I asked. Craig nodded. “He’s not here.” This was beginning to sound like a comedy routine, I thought. Maybe I can make it even funnier.

“I can see that,” Craig said. He was normally a patient man but I could detect a small hint of frustration.

“It’s his day off.”

“Oh, he’s off on Mondays?”

I nodded. My coffee wasn’t getting warmer. Quite the opposite.

“He was helping me unplug that computer upstairs.”

“Right.” I could smell the cinnamon and the sugar glaze. Wait. Can one smell a sugar glaze? I could taste it. I tasted it.

“But it needs plugging back in.”

“Right.” I nodded. I am not volunteering for anything, I thought.

“The movers are done upstairs,” Craig said.

The suspense was killing me. Why doesn’t he just ask me straight out? “But Ken’s not here,” I said.

“I can see that,” Craig said. “Can you plug it in for me?”

At last! So tempted was I to refuse. However… “Is that where you’re going with all this?”

Craig barked out a laugh of frustration. “Yes! That’s where I’m going!”

“OK.” I carefully set down my cinnamon roll and coffee. “Fine.”

I hate it when Ken does favors for people. It breaks our processes.

In the winter of 2000 I was far less politically interested than I am now. I was a member of the group of Americans who feel that “all politicians are corrupt liars”, which had led me to largely only vote in presidential elections, and then usually for the third-party candidate.

I had little idea what the difference was between a US Representative or a US Senator, except that they were both Congresscritters.

But I still liked the idea of Washington, D.C. And I had family friends who lived in our nation’s capital, and their adult son lived in New York City, and I had always wanted to travel to the East Coast. And I had vacation time accruing from my job, and money to spend.

So, in the waning days of the Clinton Administration, I arranged a little vacation.

I’d fly into Baltimore (my friends advised this as a cheaper, easier alternative to flying into National), take a short train ride into D.C., stay a few nights at my friends’ apartment, then take another train ride to Manhattan and stay with their son.

I barely remember the details of the flight, in those days before religious extremists flew planes into tall buildings, except that it was easier and more boring. And most of what I did inside the Beltway was visit as many of the Smithsonian museums as I could. The Lunar Landing Module at the National Air and Space Museum actually made me weep for the steps backwards we have taken as a nation in exploration and nearly pure science. I’m so sentimental. And I was suitably impressed with the Hope Diamond.

I’ve got many stories I could tell from that trip, but the one that makes me kick myself now is my dinner choice on my last night in D.C.

The couple I was staying with were political. Very much so. In fact, Tom had a job working directly with Vice President Al Gore. He was working on policies to help the salmon runs in the Columbia River, on behalf of the State of Oregon. My friends spent a lot of time with other politicians and policy makers, which is the way of things in our capital.

And Betsy told me that my final evening with them, they had already planned on having Senator Ron Wyden over for a private dinner, for some political reason I don’t remember now but was probably related to the policy work Tom was doing. And she offered me a choice of joining them, or finding something else to do.

If I had that choice now, I would leap at the opportunity to grill Sen. Wyden on many topics, including but not limited to the corporate bailout or telecom immunity or stealing an election or executive branch accountability or network neutrality or or or… So many things come to mind, and Sen. Wyden has taken brave stands with the majority on some of them, and has given the standard corporate Democratic position on others.

But on that trip, on that night… I opted for going out to a movie.

I saw a restored version of “Rear Window”, the classic Hitchcock thriller. I had never seen it before. And the idea of a small dinner with some boring windbag Senator bored me to tears.

Such a lost opportunity.

Can I get a do-over?

Cross-posted (with minor editing) from my running blog.

When I race, I have no illusions about competition. I’m a late-bloomer for running, and I’m not in the best of shape. And my gender/age group is the sweet spot for local champions – typically the winner is a man around my age. Those guys are fast!

So I just compete against myself. I try to best my previous record, or my record for that race or course.

Sunday morning I ran in my first race of the year, the Fanconi Anemia Valentine’s Day 5K.

I’ve been running every other day for a couple of months, since my last time of falling off the wagon. I’ve been working on increasing my overall distance, and in the last couple of weeks have tried to make my five-mile-plus loop my “default” run. I’m somewhat discouraged because on my training runs, I rarely average better than a 10:30-10:20 pace.

So going into today’s race, I figured I’d show up, do my best, and just use it to gauge my level of fitness for future races. No expectations. I just wanted to finish.

I did a mini-taper by running a slow 3.5 mile loop on Friday. I’ve been watching what I eat. I’ve been drinking plenty of water. Saturday I lifted some weights, mostly upper-body stuff. Got plenty of sleep the night before. Ate a cup of yogurt about an hour and a half prior to the start of the race, and a half-liter of water.

It was cold, below freezing the morning of the race, and windy, but I dressed for it; long pants, two long-sleeved technical shirts (one thin and one thicker in case I got too warm), gloves, skull cap.

The course was very flat – starting under the Morrison Bridge, heading south along the waterfront, then turn around near our beautiful expensive Tram and head back basically the same way.

When I passed the Mile 1 marker, I was astonished: 8:40?! Eight minutes and forty seconds? That can’t be right! I was pushing a little but not hard. I decided that the marker must be wrong. But I kept the same pace as long as I could.

Second mile was just around 9:00. Again, that seemed way too fast for how I felt. But, hey, keep going.

I didn’t mark the 3 mile point because I could see the finish line. I had slowed down, though, I could feel it. But with the finish line in sight I picked it up. And seeing the number 27 on the clock right next to the finish booth made my spirits soar.

My unofficial time was 28:08.56. Because I hadn’t double-checked my previous times earlier, I wasn’t sure where that fell in my overall personal records, but I knew it was near the top. I tweeted my astonishment, and my guess at this being my second-fastest.

But, actually, this is the third-fastest 5K I’ve ever run. First is the 2007 Race for the Roses at 27:30; second is the 2007 Mt. Tabor Challenge at 27:59.

Yes, only nine seconds separates my second and third best times. So close!

This is very very encouraging. Maybe all those slow miles actually do help? I’m happy, though, that my 5K times are starting to be more consistent.

My next race will be the Shamrock Run 5K. I’ll be running it in a kilt! I won’t expect to set any personal records, though; there’s far too many people to navigate around both at the start and finish. I’ll just be going out and having a good time. In a kilt.

I just had a brilliant idea, and to show some faith in my fellow human beings, I am going to give it away for free on the internet.

All I ask in return if someone takes this and make some money on it is that they tell me about it over dinner someday.

Want to know what the idea is? As I was just sorting my laundry, I thought about how annoying it is that I have to sort socks and match them up.

As I clipped together my running gloves using the built-in hook, prior to tossing it in the washer with the rest of my running clothes, I admired how easy that was compared to socks.

Now, having a clip on your socks wouldn’t normally be advisable.

But what about velcro? A little strip of velcro, one fuzzy side on one sock, one hook side on the other, just enough to keep each one attached to its mate through washing and drying.

Brilliant! All socks should have such a feature. I would convert all my socks if these were available.

Now someone needs to make it happen. Can it happen before my next load of laundry? No?! Why not?

I woke up Saturday morning when I got a text informing me that my aunt was in the hospital for diagnostic surgery after a sudden pain. Not the best way to shake a hangover.

My original plans involved breakfast and wifi, a place I could slowly become one with some greasy comfort food while working on my new project. After the call, the plan became finding some comfort food and waiting until she was out of recovery and well enough for visitors. Wifi was optional at this point; thank whatever for iPhone.

My usual coffee shop didn’t have a lot of options for breakfast, and was crowded. I decided to go a little further than normal, take a chance, and see what I could find.

I impulsively got off the #19 bus when I saw a sidewalk A-sign announcing brunch somewhere along SE Woodstock. Over the door was the word “Delta”. Walked in the door, not knowing what to expect, and heard the dulcet angry-happy sound of the Dropkick Murphys brand of Celtic punk. As I took in the painted plywood and thrift-store mismatched interior of the place, from around the corner came a skinny girl in all black, with jet-black hair and tattoo sleeves and way too much eyeliner. Holy hotness. “Just sit wherever,” she said. She followed me to a booth and set down a two-sided menu.

The positives reached a crescendo when I realized that when they said “delta” they meant the Mississippi Delta, which means one thing and one thing only to me: New Orleans, Louisiana, home of spicy Cajun food, beignets, and lots of fried batter and sauces.

I think I was literally vibrating in my seat in anticipation. I scanned the menu: yes, biscuits and gravy; oh my, chicken-fried steak; damn, oyster po-boys.

Another woman, it turned out, was my waitress. Less Goth-y and more friendly, less ink but still dark-haired. She brought me coffee, and my first sip of the chicory flavor brought back many pleasant memories of soothing a hangover with coffee just like this.

My waitress, Tonya, came back much too soon for me to have picked out one thing from the abundance to consume. “I’m going to need more time. I might just have to order one of everything.” Apparently the huge smile on my face and in my voice was contagious because she laughed.

“Or you could just come back again later,” she suggested.

I conceded the point.

I eventually decided on the berry-covered French toast, with a side of pepper bacon, dipped in a spicy habanero sauce.

And the food disappeared almost too quickly.

There’s no way I’m not going back.

During my visit, I texted and emailed three different friends to invite them to dine or breakfast with me there in the future. And I received word that my aunt had made it through the surgery and was recovering nicely.

Now that my new favorite breakfast place had improved my mood immensely, I would be a better visitor to her and the family when I showed up.

And oh your invisible sky man – I am so going back to The Delta.

I went to sleep last night in a great mood: hung out with friends, full of awesome beer and pizza, having watched a kick-ass episode of Battlestar Galactica, my best friend had just become a great-aunt when her niece gave birth. Nothing but good.

I woke up, hungover, to a text message that my aunt was in the hospital awaiting emergency surgery. That’s not a good way to wake up.

Hoping for the best.

I have a project that I’m working on.

In the course of working on it, I needed more information. Or maybe I just needed the illusion of working on it, while still delaying the actual work. Either way, I found myself standing in the aisle at Powell’s Technical Bookstore, carefully considering several different volumes of various technical manuals, one recent sunny afternoon.

I was dressed in fairly new clothing. I had shaved that day, and showered earlier. I wore clean underwear. I was not drunk or sleepy. I was present in many senses of the word.

As I plucked first one, then another, intriguingly titled volumes from the shelf, checking out the tables of content, idly reading random pages, decoding graphs and charts and illustrations, around the corner walked a woman. For a brief moment her silhouette was outlined against the windows behind her. But not in an obviously glowing way; I simply mean that her eclipsing of the light drew an automatic response from my visual sense. My attention was caught.

Just a bit shorter than I, dressed casually but, like myself, in clothing that was neither flashy nor ragged. Slim. She moved deliberately, unclumsy, unhurried but directly; this aisle, lined with books of this specific technical topic, was her obvious goal. I could tell by her body language.

As she turned and approached the books she sought, her intention was not towards me, but indirectly she drew closer, and she passed that invisible line that custom informs us we must make some notice of the other human being. Her eyes flicked upward and made contact, briefly, with mine.

My eyes had been downcast, sidelong, drawn by the simple shadow caused by her movement, but, again, social intelligence below the level of conscious thought made me seek a direct line of sight with her pupils, as well.

A brief moment of recognition as our respective brains decoded the ancient pattern of each others’ faces, and the act of common intimacy brings an autonomic response: a microsecond of smile. No teeth. And we break the conduit of sight between us nearly immediately.

In that sliver of time, some level of awareness that was wired generations before my individual birth kicked in: female, my opposite; young, or at least younger than myself; symmetrical features, slender, healthy body; cultural signifiers of about the same social class as myself. A part of my mind outside of logical control concludes: attractive female approaches and appears unthreatened and open to conversation.

That level of awareness judges all systems “go”. Do something, it signals.

And then… something else happens.

The initial processing is passed to a different part of my brain – or multiple different parts. One part envisions any and all previous encounters with attractive females, and rapidly flashes through all the worst possible outcomes – whether actual or imagined.

Another part compares the idealized self-image with my current physical state, and every deviation I have from the absolute best I have ever achieved in mental acuity, confidence, body shape, youth, social and financial status – and judges me wanting in nearly every category. Likewise, for no reason I can deduce after the fact, but which seems so compelling in the instant, she is judged to be filled with superior knowledge, and therefore, my superior.

Still another part of my brain analyzes the surroundings. Technical bookstore, a shrine to knowledge. How knowledgeable am I? Not very, since I’m here looking for even more information on topics I have little confidence about. The setting itself resembles a library; hushed conversation, broken only by the soft chatter of the staff and the clap and hiss of bound paper being closed and handled. Social conditioning imposes the librarians’ “Shhhh!” admonishing the patrons to keep voices low.

Other judgmental processes take their turns at processing this instant. Some are of recent vintage, and some hail further back in my lifetime. Nearly all, not all, but nearly so, they collapse to inform my next action, which is to say, I take none.

Repeated: I take no action.

Book in hand, I carefully place it back on the shelf from where I plucked it.

She steps past me, stops, turns shoulder-to-shoulder to me, but a socially-imposed correct distance away from me, just outside our fight-or-flight reflex trigger zone, about one to one and a half person-width away. Not so far as to be distant. Not so close as to be uncomfortably intimate.

What feels, in my subjectivity, to be minutes, but in reality are just a handful of seconds, pass. I realize that I should say something, do something. Even just a hello, or some verbal acknowledging of the other person.

Too late, I marshal defenses against the judgements already passed. She is attractive. She smiled at me, even if it was brief. We share physical proximity. We appear to share a similar interest based on our location in the store and in this particular aisle. This is not, in fact, a library, but a retail establishment, therefore there is no onus about speaking up.

I do nothing. I stand there, nearly frozen.

Eventually, she shuffles further and further away, and disappears around the far end of the shelves.

I see her again, on a different aisle, later, as I take the two books I decided on up to the cashier.

But never do I speak to her. And I’m filled with shame for my imagined action and my actual inaction.

Why does that happen? Would knowing why that happens help me to make it not happen again? Or is pursuing the why of this encounter, like the thousands other encounters, a chimera that would lead me further from prevention?

So many questions. And a limited, finite, but unknown number of seconds, minutes, and hours in which I can find an answer.

I feel the answer won’t help me take action. And inaction won’t help me find an answer. I already know where stasis takes me…