Category: General

Two words you never thought you’d read in the Oregonian:

“Berserk llama”.

You’re welcome.

My toaster doesn’t work.

It gets warm. But it doesn’t actually toast.

How does that happen? How does a toaster lose just enough functionality to warm up bread but not burn it? Does that seem like a normal failure to you? Seems like it should either work, or not work. It shouldn’t partially fail.

Today is the birthday of Stephen Jay Gould. I almost forgot, until I went to open up my Google Calendar to make note of a future evening with my friend Kevin, and spotted the reminder I had left of this birthday.

I wanted to have had more advance notice of Dr. Gould’s birthday, so that I could write up something to honor his memory and the impact he had on me. But somehow the date had slipped away, and I’ve ignored the warnings I had set up, reminding me a week ago, and another reminder yesterday, that this day was coming.
I’ve been busy lately with lots of stuff, much of which you’ve read about here, and so didn’t set aside any time to blog about Dr. Gould, or his contributions to paleontology, or evolutionary biology, or about reconciling science and religion or panda’s thumbs or Bermudan snails, or baseball, or teaching in Springfield, or smokin’ weed for medical purposes.

But I would have known none of that, if, more than 10 years ago, as an employee of Powell’s City of Books, I hadn’t been discussing popular science with two other employees. Stacy “Freedom Rock!” Friedman, a dark-haired, musically-inclined lesbian (the woman who witnessed, and was jealous of, my encounter with Heather Locklear) mentioned how much she loved reading pop science books, which to me, at the time, seemed 180° from what I expected of her. I mentioned Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, but wasn’t sure what other authors were out there. That’s the problem with being a self-made man; there’s gaps in my knowledge that some may find hard to believe.

Clyde “Bailio” Bailey causally mentioned Stephen Jay Gould, and before the day was over, I went down to the Rose Room, found the several shelves of his books, and started in. Dr. Gould’s essays were a harder read than Dr. Sagan, but it was still fairly accessible stuff. Most of his books are collections of essays, written once a month, for Natural History magazine, in his column titled “This View of Life”, and collected into occasional books. I only got through one of those collections while employed at Powell’s, but later, on my own in Austin, Texas, I re-discovered Dr. Gould’s books at a used bookstore off of Guadalupe Street, and eventually read the bulk of his essays.

The essays, collected, represent in a concrete way the measure of Stephen Jay Gould. Dr. Gould made a deal with himself and Natural History magazine, to write a total of 300 essays, all dealing in some way with the history of science. And he kept that promise, not missing a single issue, for 27 years. In fact, his final collection is titled “I Have Landed” at least in part because of the completion of his original promise. But the title of that volume, like his final essay explains, is also a tribute to his maternal grandfather’s words, recorded in the margins of a book, upon arriving in America from the Old World:

My maternal grandparents—Irene and Joseph Rosenberg, or Grammy and Papa Joe to me—loved to read in their adopted language of English. My grandfather even bought a set of The Harvard Classics (the famous “Five Foot Shelf” of Western wisdom) to facilitate his assimilation to American life. I inherited only two of Papa Joe’s books, and nothing of a material nature could be more precious to me. The first bears a stamp of sale: “Carroll’s book store. Old, rare and curious books. Fulton and Pearl Sts. Brooklyn, N.Y.” Perhaps my grandfather obtained this volume from a Landsmann, for I can discern, through erasures on three pages of the book, the common Hungarian name “Imre.” On the front page of this 1892 edition of J. M. Greenwood’s Studies in English Grammar, my grandfather wrote in ink, in an obviously European hand, “Prop. of Joseph A. Rosenberg, New York.” To the side, in pencil, he added the presumed date of his acquisition: “1901. Oct. 25th.” Just below, also in pencil, he appended the most eloquent of all conceivable words for this context—even though he used the wrong tense, confusing the compound past of continuing action with an intended simple past to designate a definite and completed event (not bad for a barely fourteen-year-old boy just a month or two off the boat): “I have landed. Sept. 11th 1901.”

“I have landed.” I can’t read that simple sentence without being filled with sadness and loss, in spite of it originally being said in hope and a sense of new beginnings, so I still have that final collection in my “to be read” pile of books. Yes, “final collection”. He, too, has landed.

Stephen Jay Gould passed away on 20 May 2002, in a loft in SoHo, surrounded by his wife, his mother, and his library.

Today would have been his 66th birthday.

I’m too tired to write a full report on the Pints to Pasta 10K this morning. Sorry.

It was warm, it was pretty fast, and I ran 9:30-9:50 per mile… up until the final mile-point-two, which was almost 13 minutes, I think. I don’t know. I pooped out.

But the final results are posted, and my official time is 1:00:51, for an average 9:48 pace. Good but not great. Well, it’s great if you consider all the training I haven’t done this summer.

I pretty much kept pace with a brunette girl for the whole way. I found her after the race and thanked her for setting my nearly-perfect pace, right up until the end.

I want to race a 10K again soon because I know I can do better.

The plan was to spend all day at Backspace, the coolest coffee shop in Portland, with the best coffee and the comfiest couches, then meet Ken and his wife for dinner and a movie. It would be a late night, and I had to be up early Sunday for the Pints to Pasta 10K, but whatever. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Or at work. One of those.

But the plan ran into complication after complication, which tires me just thinking about. I didn’t get to Backspace until late, just an hour or three before our reservation. And there weren’t any good couches available when I arrived, so I spent the first half-hour on an uncomfortable futon, waiting and watching like a hawk for a couch to open up. Eventually, one did, and I settled in, started surfing and texting Tracy and drinking my enormous cup of coffee.

Coffee good.

I was comfortable and happy and zoning out when the original iPhone girl walked in. I couldn’t miss her; six foot tall, black cap, tattoos on her arms over tanned skin, statuesque and callipygous. I was sitting away from the door, out of the main pathway for customers entering the space. I don’t think she saw me. I had to do, or say, something, anything.

First, I texted Tracy. Several explanatory texts later, having gotten Tracy back up to speed, I had a plan. The original iPhone girl had walked to the back of the space, out of my line of sight. I would get up to get more water or coffee (better get water, I told myself) and I would ask her, “What are you going to spend your $100 iPhone credit on?”

I didn’t have anything to lock my laptop on or to.

There was a nervous guy nearby. He was jittery, jumpy. Worth it? “Hey, can I ask you a favor?” I said. He nodded quickly. “Can you watch my laptop for a second?”

“Sure!”

Back by the water, I saw her. She was already deep in conversation with another, older, woman, and they were sharing a well-worn O’Reilly book (I didn’t notice which one). I felt that odd resistance again. Damn. I should’ve got coffee. More… motivating than water.

I went back to sit down. Continued to text Tracy. We discussed options. I decided that I would wave iPhone girl over if I saw her leave.

That was when the thin brunette, in a red and white gingham plaid shirt and worn jeans, her hair tied back with a scarf, came over to the couch I had to myself. She cradled a tiny cappuccino in both hands.

“Excuse me,” she said, enunciating clearly. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Not at all! Of course! Please, sit.”

I started to text Tracy about this new development, but the brunette had a clear line of sight to my screen (I pair my phone with my laptop so I can text from the keyboard. It totally feels like cheating. It rocks) and could see anything I typed.

This girl looked much more trustworthy than jittery guy. Not to mention far cuter. I took her to be in her early 20s, though everyone knows how bad I am at guessing age. I would ask her to watch my laptop. I would make another approach to iPhone girl. I turned to the new girl. “Excuse me, could I ask you to watch my laptop?”

She said, “Oh, but what if I stole it away?” An accent made a subtle appearance in her voice; a twinkle made a blatant appearance in her eye.

…I paused to reconsider.

“Oh, no,” I said breezily. “I trust you.”

“Ohhhh…” she said. “I am very dangerous.”

“Are you? Well, if you took my laptop I would have to come find you.”

“You would hunt me down?” She shook her head. “I do not think you could find me…”

I stood up, set my new sexy thing down on the seat I vacated, and said to her over my shoulder, “I don’t think so. I’m very good at finding things that do not want to be found.”

I walked to the back. I saw the iPhone girl, still deep in conversation. I made use of the bathroom, and I realized that dangerous girl suddenly appeared much more fun than the potential that iPhone girl represented.

I returned to the couch. She was still there, on her end of the couch, sipping her cappuccino. My MacBook Pro was still on the couch. I picked it up, sat down, opened up the screen…

“Excuse me?” I said to the girl. She turned to me. Looked at me with bright green eyes set in an elfin face. “I could not help but notice… your accent?”

She rolled her green eyes and groaned. “Oh, my accent! I try, I try to get rid of it!”

Another unexpected response. I laughed, cautiously. We fell into easy, comfortable, conversation.

She challenged me to guess what kind of accent she had; I guessed Hispanic. She countered by claiming to be from Toronto, but eventually confessed to only studying in Toronto, being originally from Veracruz. It took a bit to straighten out what she was doing in Portland; she said she was in a Master’s program, learning about urban planning and design, and had been spending the week here with others from her program, as Portland is apparently well-known for its planning and design. We talked about corruption in Portland because of the PDC. We talked of Toronto, and Canada. She kept coming back to her accent, treating it as a fault, a failure to communicate, as opposed to a sexy, exotic trait.

She kept scooting closer to me on the couch. I closed and set down my laptop. I turned towards her as we talked, but leaned on a pillow that sat between us. I introduced myself. She returned the favor, saying her name was M________. Well, she gave me the shorter, more Anglicized version first, still hiding her Spanish. At some point, she pulled the pillow onto her lap, then set it aside.

I remarked that the music had stopped playing. She grabbed my arm and asked me if I’d known the song that had been playing just before. I showed her Backspace’s MySpace page, with its listing of recently-played music. The band had been Iron & Wine, a band I’m not familiar with.

“Shall I email that to you?” I asked. Her green eyes lit up, again. I enjoyed it when they did that.

“Oh, yes, please!” I sent her a brief email.

Somewhere in there, I spotted iPhone girl, leaving. I did not get up or wave at her.

M________ and I spoke for an hour and a half, maybe two hours. She was tired from having worked at Dignity Village all day. I mentioned meeting my friends, flirted with the idea of inviting her, didn’t. She was leaving tomorrow. She was leaving tomorrow. Back to Toronto.

I told her of writing, and wanting to publish. She naturally encouraged me to submit my novel, and she delighted in the idea of getting to read it because it was set in Portland. “I would love to read more about this city,” she confided in me.

Eventually, we parted. Standing on the sidewalk, she held her hand out to shake. I shook it, then leaned in for a hug, which she accepted and whispered a thank you into my ear.

“You will email me? Just say, ‘I did it.'”

I paused, smirked. “You want me to do it?”

She jumped a bit, laughed, blushed. “Oh, I did not… You…!”

I snarked, “You’re talking about the novel, right? Not something else?”

“You are awesome,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, for the conversation.” I said, and we went our separate ways.

Hi, M________! Did I spell that right?

I’m back at Backspace, the coffee shop where we met & conversed.

It took me all day today to remember your name, because I spent most of the conversation yesterday thinking about kissing you.

Did you make your flight back to Toronto?

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.