Author: Brian

Standing outside the Old Spaghetti Factory, I was several people back in line in front of the larger table of volunteers. This table had a cover, shielding the volunteers from the warm late summer sun. The other table, smaller, uncovered, also had volunteers, but fewer people in line. Those people, at the smaller table, were bent over, filling out forms, and writing checks. This table had piles of t-shirts stacked up.

Was I in the right line to pick up my packet? There were no signs directing me to one or the other. I had just joined the longer line in front of the larger table on a guess. I felt an internal resistance to asking anyone around me. I wasn’t in a hurry. I’d find out soon enough.

The evidence seemed to suggest the smaller table was for people registering today. I had registered online, days ago. I was probably in the right line.

My line of sight to behind the smaller table cleared for a moment and I spotted more baskets filled with envelopes, named and numbered. Those were the packets I’m used to receiving for all the past races I’d done. My momentary doubt turned into action. I left the line I was in, and joined the line in front of the smaller table.

Two things happened as soon as I did. The line I had been in got longer, and I noticed the five or six baskets under the tent that held many, many more packets, each basket clearly marked to show which numbers were sorted into said basket. Damn. I had been in the correct line.

Sheepishly, I re-joined the longer line, now behind an auburn-haired woman, an inch or two shorter than me, slender underneath her red silk-y tank top and blue jeans. My guess as to age (based on factors that would likely embarrass her if I wrote about them) was that she was in her late 30s or perhaps even early 40s. My age, or thereabouts. For some reason I glanced down at her feet and saw high-end flip-flops and meticulously-pedicured feet, with bright red toenails covered in hand-painted flower designs. Not necessarily the feet of a hard-core runner. And yet she was standing in line for a 10K.

She turned to me, looking back over her shoulder, her eyes hidden behind not-overlarge sunglasses. “Were you in this line?” she said, gesturing ahead of her. She seemed to be offering me my place back in line, or at least ahead of her.

“Oh, yeah, I was,” I mumbled, “but… well… I got confused. I’m OK. I’m not in any hurry.” Sweat was pooling under my fedora from the sun. Yes, from the sun.

“OK,” she smiled, and turned back to face the front, her arms linked across her chest.

“I…” I managed to push out of my mouth “I wasn’t sure which line… was… right.” Suddenly I realized that I had just had, and missed, the opportunity to see if she was wearing a wedding ring, when she had indicated I could re-join my place in line, before she had hidden her hands by crossing her arms.

She glanced back at me. Smiled. Nodded. Turned away again.

I felt an internal resistance against speaking to her further.

My mind kept proposing, and rejecting, ways I could further the conversation. The sun. The heat. The line. The race. Her pretty feet. Her auburn hair. My hat. But nothing seemed able to pierce the resistance that had now overcome me.

I thought of a friend, telling me about this moment, and it’s importance. After the ice is broken, and simple pleasantries have been exchanged, the very next thing that is said becomes the linchpin of the entire relationship. The foundation of all that happens afterward. Kevin said this with a sense of playfulness but I believed him to be essentially correct.

Was this sense of importance that I now attached to my next utterance the reason for the resistance I felt? Fear of poisoning whatever might unfold after this point? Or was it something else?

I won’t know, because I waited in line in silence, and as Dylan sang, she went her way and I went mine. I walked to the streetcar to take me back downtown. She got into her Lexus SUV and drove past me as I walked through the parking lot. I console myself, even encourage myself, with the idea that she will be at the race tomorrow. But has the moment, whatever it was, passed?

I had felt an internal resistance against speaking to her further.

Later, after lunching on pizza and a salad, I made my way to a bus stop on the park blocks. As I approached, I saw a pair of cowboy boots and a glimpse of smooth tanned leg sticking out of the shelter. As I got closer I saw, above the tanned legs, a bright red skirt, and a sleeveless shirt, and a cute round female face, her mouth punctuated with an offset piercing, eyes brought into focus with glasses, and warm brown hair. I walked past the shelter, stopping on the far side, turning to look in the direction the bus will be coming, but also looking in the general direction of the booted girl.

I felt an internal resistance against speaking to her.

Two young, tall, black men approached the bus stop, joking with each other. They stopped right inside the shelter, next to where the girl sat. One pulled out his phone and called a friend, the other one read aloud from the schedule inside the shelter.

The girl shifted on her seat. Then she pulled an almost empty water bottle from her purse. She drank the rest of the water, started to put it away, stopped. Her purse had been at her side; now it was on her lap. She stood quickly, stepped past me to the garbage can. I didn’t turn my head but I heard something dropped into the garbage.

The two young tall black men shifted so that they took up all the space inside the shelter, between the two of them, without any apparent conscious thought.

I stayed where I was. I pulled out my own water bottle, shifting my messenger bag around and then back again. I sipped from the bottle. I thought of raising my bottle in cheers to the girl. But, no. She’d thrown hers away.

A bus came, and the two young tall men got on, along with everyone else waiting at that stop. Everyone except for me, and the cowboy booted red-skirted girl.

I shifted around, looking more towards the street, and now had the girl standing to my right.

I felt an internal resistance against speaking to her.

A light breeze came up. My mind, seeking to overcome this resistance, produced the words “That breeze feels nice.” But as the thought became words, the wind grew stronger. The flap on my messenger bag now became a flag, fluttering in the strong wind. I was actually rocked on my feet a little bit. I could see the girl’s skirt pressed against her legs and waving behind her, exposing only a little more leg.

I laughed. “I was going to say ‘that breeze felt nice’ but…”

She laughed, too. “It’s a bit more than a breeze, now!” She raised her voice as the wind continued. “It’s kind of cold now, too.” She started to cross her arms across her chest, stopped herself, held them resolutely at her sides and along her legs, keeping her skirt from raising any higher.

“Yes, it is!” It felt as though I were shouting, though considering my soft-spokenness I was likely just at a normal conversational volume.

The wind died back to a breeze.

“Are you waiting for the 19?” I asked.

She looked sad. “No. The 17.”

“Oh.”

She walked past me, sat down in the shelter again.

I felt an internal resistance against speaking to her further.

I pulled out my phone, called Tri-Met’s automated bus schedule. As I did that, the bus I was waiting for, the 19, appeared two blocks down. I put my phone away. She glanced up, saw the bus approaching, looked at me, gave a sad smile.

I nodded. Yes. My bus is coming. I am going now. Not another word was spoken between us.

I had felt an internal resistance against speaking to her further.

Tomorrow I will be up early on a Sunday, to race in my fourth Pints to Pasta 10K. It’s the last run of the summer season in Portland, and it’s one of my favorites. It starts up in North Portland, and ends at the Old Spaghetti Factory in SW. The weather is almost always cool but humid, though this race it looks to be warm and humid compared to previous years.

I have lofty goals. Last year I finished in 1:02:36.1. But after training hard all winter, I finally was able to finish a 10K (a hard one!) in under an hour. Then in May, I did even better in the Cinco de Mayo 10K! It’s my best 10K time ever.

That was spring and early summer.

And then… I kinda stopped running. Struggled with some personal feelings of depression and loneliness. Stopped running every other day, stopped eating right. My cat ran off and hasn’t returned. Y’know, shit happens.

But I didn’t want to miss the Pints to Pasta. I’ve been more active in the last month, been getting back on track with my diet, been riding the bike my dad gave me, around my ‘hood, to work and back. And this past week I’ve been running every other day, just like I did before. It’s strange – I feel strong when I run. Like I could be going faster. My breathing is steady and deep. I feel a twinge of guilt thinking that my allergies are clearing up now that I no longer have a cat, but I’m sure that’s part of it. Another part might be the (slightly) cooler weather. It’s difficult to acclimate to running in 90+° heat, after all.

It’s counter-intuitive, though, to think that taking the summer off and I’m still where I was at the beginning of summer. That’s essentially what it feels like, though. The mental hurdle of not running for two months may be larger than any actual physical loss of fitness or conditioning.

Will I be able to run the course under an hour, or will my time be comparable to my previous years’ finishes?

The test will come tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Barrack Obama gives a good speech. He spoke passionately about all the good things he’d do once he’s President.

But not one word about the most important issue in America right now.

Not one word about what he can do, right now, to end the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Not one word about accountability for the men who lied us into a war.

Not one word from a leading voice of the majority party in both houses of the People’s Congress.

Apparently Congress is powerless these days. The message from the junior Senator from Illinois is that we need a good king, not the bad king we have now.

Yes, a good king would be nice. But what about all those “checks and balances” that the founding fathers put into the Constitution? I’d really like to hear more about those. That’s not Senator Obama’s message tonight.

And that’s all I needed to hear. I’m glad I went tonight.

Tuesday night last I attended Firefly at the Mission for the last time.

At least until they do it again.

Even though the show didn’t start until 10:00 PM, I got there at 8:30 PM, because experience has taught me that Portland fans of “Firefly” bring new meaning to the word “fan”. And, sure enough, for this final night, even at 8:30 the line was long, stretching around the corner almost to the rear of the building.

Matt had texted me earlier to let me know that there was someone already inside saving our seats. And on the drive to the theater, Sherry had called to let me know that she and her husband Franz were en route as well. New friends, all, I’d made through just this show. Tuesday nights this summer have been fun because of these new friends.

And I recognized many of the folk in line, too, even though I hadn’t formally been introduced.

There was the guy that Matt and Franz called “Comic Book Guy”, after the Simpsons’ character, despite being thinner and more muscular.

There was the pale-skinned brunette inevitably in a bright red dress, whom I secretly called “Snow White”, and her plain boyfriend I hardly even noticed, playing Scrabble while waiting.

There were the three or four geek girls, beautiful but unaware, dressed in jeans and t-shirts with no makeup or hair-styling at all.

The One True b!x (real name: Christopher Frankonis) was there, hunched, chain-smoking, obviously worried about his employment and his application to Powell’s. I wanted to say something to him, maybe warn him about my own experience at Powell’s… but that was a long time ago, before they unionized, and I’m sure it’s different now. I remembered starting to tell Sherry about b!x’s meeting with Joss Whedon, then realizing that the man himself was standing right behind me, and prompting him to recount it for her. He did.

All these folk and more. So many stories to tell. Before Matt, Sherry and Franz showed up, Comic Book Guy interviewed me for a Firefly-themed podcast, holding an actual black iPod with microphone up to record my answers. I scanned the growing line for any sign of non-iPhone girl, but certain I wouldn’t actually say anything to her.

After we were all inside and seated, waiting for Mike Russell to start the trivia questions and prize giveaway, I still scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Athena, another Portland-based blogger, had been coming to these and she and I had exchanged occasional emails about introducing ourselves here, but hadn’t. I’d only seen pictures of her, and in the dark of the theater, I couldn’t be sure. She’d told me before that she and her friends liked to sit in the front row of the balcony, and as I looked (our group liked to sit off to stage left on the balcony, so I had a direct line of sight) I saw a girl that could’ve been Athena. Maybe. Probably not.

In line, earlier, Sherry and Franz had mentioned that today was their second wedding anniversary. Franz had given his wife a copy of every comic book that Joss Whedon has had a hand in. All the Buffy comics. All the Angel comics. The Firefly comics. Even obscure X-Men issues, or other titles I can’t recall right now. Talk about knowing your partner! But now, as the crowd kept coming in, and the promotional folk from the radio station KUFO laid out the prizes for tonight on the stage, and hung the banners advertising their station, and the line for food and beer ran its course, Sherry turned to me and said, “I should go flag down Mike and have him do an announcement for our anniversary! That’d embarrass Franz!”

I smiled. “Let me do it! I can check out the prizes while I’m down there! Plus Franz’ll be less suspicious.”

Sherry agreed and off I went. I planned my route to go past the girl who might (probably not) be Athena, and when I got closer I asked, “Excuse me, are you named Athena?”

I got a blank look and a shaken head back. Hmmm. I realized that that’s kind of an unusual name, and has a lot of resonance for a geek, and so my question might have come across almost as strangely out of the blue as “Do you have an iPhone?” I continued downstairs, chuckling to myself.

Found Mike Russell, and even though his comic alter-ego seems small, Russell himself is broad-shouldered and tall. Well, taller than me, anyway. I wondered briefly about mentioning the fact that he owes me a comic… but no. I’m not in a hurry for it. Was also tempted to pester him about how I can start selling my writing in the local market… but again, no. When I finish the novel I started during NaNoWriMo last year, then I’ll start working my contacts. For now, I just passed on the mention of Sherry and Franz’s anniversary. Russell seemed happy to make mention of it and scrambled for a pen to write down the info. I checked out the prizes and hoped I could win something on tonight, the final night.

But the past questions seemed hard, and many of the folk here were much more informed than me. I had an ace up my sleeve, though, because Sherry had been studying the wikis and we’d all been practicing in line. Maybe I could win something tonight.

Back upstairs, with Franz none the wiser, I kept looking around. Spotted another girl who might, or might not, be Athena, sitting on the far side of the balcony. I excused myself and walked over. The long walk. She seemed to spot me heading her way, and kept talking to her girl friend. I stood there in front of her for a moment. Her friend finally noticed me and pointed me out, patiently waiting, to her.

“Excuse me… are you called Athena?” I don’t know why I phrased it that way. It sounded even more like a cheesy pick-up line. Inwardly I winced, but from reading Athena’s blog I had the sense that she would’ve laughed with me, not at me, for this whole thing. She seems cool like that.

This girl, though, just shook her head, said “No”, and went back to her friend. OK, I was done with cold approaches for the night.

Franz was suitably embarrassed by Russell’s announcement, though I’m sure he would pretend he wasn’t. The funny part was that Sherry seemed shy, too, even though it was her idea. I had to encourage both of them to stand up, as the crowd erupted in romantic applause.

During the trivia questions, Sherry wanted something, anything, signed by Joss. But instead she won a DVD with a copy of the previous week’s “bonus features”, hand-burned by Mike Russell. I forget the question she won on.

When Russell announced that the next prizes were fan-made copies of Firefly character Jayne’s stocking cap. But when Russell announced the hat-styled cell phone cozy, I turned to Sherry and said, “Ooooh… my iPhone would look so hot in one of those!”

The question was: “Name three Blue Sun-logoed products that have appeared in Firefly.”

I stood up, even though I didn’t know the answer. As I was standing up, Sherry and Franz whispered to me what they thought the answers were: “Tomatoes, corn, and cola.” When Russell pointed up at me, I repeated what they’d said.

Russell looked down at his notes. “Hmm… no. That’s close. You’ve got two of them. Do you have another answer?”

I looked back at my friends. They were blank. Shook their heads. I stood there for what seemed like minutes but was likely only a few seconds. I shook my head. Nope. That’s all I’ve got.

Russell asked the crowd if anyone had the full answer. “If no one gets it, you’ll win it,” he said to me. But another girl gave the third item, an answer which was obvious in retrospect, seeing that it’s one of the most popular items to be found online: a t-shirt, worn by Jayne several times in the series. Damn.

“That girl got my iPhone cozy!” But I wasn’t really mad. And Russell gave me a copy of the “Serenity: Those Left Behind” graphic novel for getting two out of three.

Non-iPhone girl was there, too. Showed up late, with her two friends, and was dressed to the nines in a black-and-red dress. She’s a bit intimidating, actually. Even Sherry said she had no idea how I could approach her again. “I’m sorry,” Sherry said, “she’s a tough cookie.” I decided it wasn’t worth it. I’ll still have the story to tell; that will suffice.

Thanks for the memories, everyone.

Just as I didn’t want Firefly to end, just as I didn’t want these showings to end, I don’t want this night to end. I don’t want this blog post to end, either.

Sadly, all good things come to an end.

I just purchased a ticket to see Barrack Obama speak tomorrow night at the Oregon Convention Center. I’ve never really heard him speak except for brief bits on TV. Right now, early in the process, I’m leaning towards John Edwards; I liked him a lot better than John Kerry last time around, especially after Edwards debated Darth Cheney. But I’m still open to new information.

I’ve only done a quick search, so I don’t know if anyone else has made this connection already. It doesn’t look like it, though if anyone’s got another link feel free to share it with me.

But can we now assume that the $200 price drop for the iPhone is the “product transition” that Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer couldn’t “get into”, during Apple’s quarterly phone conference last July? It seems obvious, at least to me.

Everyone knows that Apple doesn’t keep much of the $0.99 per song they sell through the iTMS.

How much of the additional $0.99 for custom ringtones will they get to keep?

Ringtones are huge profit centers for the cell companies. I imagine Apple will get to keep a lot of it.

Oh, sorry, AT&T, you probably won’t be getting those profits.

What’s the best announcement from Steve Jobs’ at today’s Apple Special Event?

Could it be the iPod widescreen nano? Nice, but who besides a teenager would want to watch anything on that tiny little screen?

Custom ringtones from the iTunes Music Store? Not even close. I almost always have my phone on vibrate. Besides, if I want ringtones I’ll just rip them from the music I already have instead of forking over ninety-nine freakin’ cents for the privilege.

High capacity hard drive iPods? My 30 GB is nearly full, sure. But I’m gonna have say, no, that’s not the coolest announcement.

iTunes Music Store via iPod/WiFi? Yeah, that’s nice and stuff. But out of my 25 GB library, there’s maybe 20 songs in there that were from the iTMS, and I didn’t pay for any of them. I got them as free promotions. I don’t buy music that way. So that’s not a big deal to me.

I know what you’re thinking? What’s left? What’s the best part?

iPod touch? So damned sexy, yes, yes, yes… It’s basically an iPhone without the phone! Touch screen, CoverFlow, WiFi and a freakin’ BROWSER built in? This could not be any sexier unless it was, in fact, an iPhone. And thin! How did they make this thinner than an iPhone? The iPhone is basically the screen and the battery; the circuit board is tiny! Removing the phone part does not, in my head, enable them to make the rest of it 8 mm. Maybe it is magical?

…and yet, no. That’s not the best part. Want to know what the best part of today’s announcement is?

$200 price drop on the iPhone.

Yes, that’s right. I saved an additional two hundred dollars by not breaking my contract with T-Mobile and buying an iPhone when they first came out. Sometimes waiting is a good thing. I am a Super-Genius. Or closely resemble one.

Oh, T-Mobile. Buh-bye. You’re so doomed.

Ken and I are in his car coming back to work from lunch. An amazing blond girl rides by on bike. She and we both stop at a red light. The view is… stunning.

I carefully roll up my window just in case I say something she might hear. I say something about her ass.

She reaches back and grabs her own ass… no, wait, she’s pulling out her cell phone, sliding it from the confines of her pocket.

“Weird, I wouldn’t have thought she could fit a cell phone in those tight jeans,” I say to Ken.

Ken looks at me, aghast, and rolls up his window.

I bust out laughing. “Did she hear me?” I ask.

Ken just keeps looking straight ahead, trying not to stare, trying not to care if we got caught looking or not. “Is it getting hot in here now?”

I’m feelin’ scruffy, in basketball shorts and a running shirt, in the elevator at the Multnomah Building. I’m going from my office in the basement, to the 5th floor, the one with the break room.

Guy in Dockers and a button-shirt gets on at the first floor. Gives me a suspicious “sideways glance”, then notices my badge. “Oh, you work in the building? County employee?” He brightens considerably and offers his hand for a shake.

“Yeah” I say. Shake his hand.

“And what department do you work for?” he asks. The doors for the 4th floor open, he starts to step off.

“I.T.” I say.

“Oh, excellent, excellent!” This seems to confirm his suspicion, based on my casual dress, and steps off. The doors close. I laugh, once, out loud.