It's here! The coolest computer ever is here, and it's writing the world's shortest blog entry because I'm about to go play with it all. day. long.
Pants and I are headed to Yosemite this weekend if he can manage to tear me away from this thing...
Showing posts with label Mac love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mac love. Show all posts
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
The Subtle Race
Tomorrow! Tomorrow!
I'm humming an obnoxious show tune in my head, complete with the Doris Day-like shout-singing of all good Little Orphans Annie. My computer arrives tomorrow, sometime before 12 PM, as in noon, which I'm embarassed to say has been a source of confusion for me ever since I was eight years old. I see the PM and I automatically think "night," an incorrect detour in the well-worn streets of my neural pathways that years of peer mocking has failed to correct. Thankfully, though, I caught this blunder before The Day My Mac Arrives, so now I'll have only 6 hours to fill whilst waiting for it rather than 12. I plan to enlist Pledge and caffeine to help in making the time fly.
It's hard to find anything else blogworthy today. This morning marked my second forray to the base gym, a place which received Arnold Schwarzeneggar's emphatically garbled Teutonic blessing when it opened. The place is nice-- all green glass and stainless steel archways, an intimidating effect immediately negated by the military's overbearing motherly signage: "If you have MUD on your feet or person, please REMOVE it before entering." Because I just mopped. Little warnings about heat exhaustion and slippery floors abound, as well as reminders to clean "bodily fluids" off all machinery after use. Why "bodily fluids" and not "sweat"? Or is this not stictly a gym...?
There's a nice lap pool outside, but I've avoided it thusfar because I'm still unclear on lane etiquette. Back in Florida, Pants and I swam laps for about two weeks in preparation for his "let's put on all your gear and see if you drown!" test. We always showed up at about the same time, so we started recognizing our fellow swimmers. One was a tiny Asian woman with a murderous breaststroke. This happens to be the only stroke I'm really any good at, so I used to subtly race her.
This subtle race thing-- I have a problem with it. I do it way more than is healthy, and I don't know if it's because I didn't get all the competitive sports burned out of me at a young enough age or what, but I seem to be unable to enjoy physical activity, except maybe running, for its own sake without inventing some elaborate internal fiction about who this other person is and why I've got to BEAT THEM. "Cold War Olympic Challenge" is a favorite scenario, as are "Alien Abduction Biometrics test" and the Ender's Game-inspired "High Ranker Fitness Test." Basically, nothing is too cheesy. And it never matters who the person is-- little old men, Marines, children-- doesn't matter. In fact, my success rate is quite poor, maybe 50/50 if I'm being generous, but all that does is fuel the fictional rivalry for next time. I've given grudging, narrow-eyed nods of respect to people who stare back at me in nervous puzzlement.
Back to the Asian breaststroker: she beat me night after night. 10 laps, 15 laps, 30. She kept handing me my ass and it was getting to me. One night I decided I would beat her, or at least match her, if it killed me. The pool was very crowded and people were doubling, and even tripling up in the lanes-- lots of different professions were having their "let's see if you drown" test in the next few days and people were cramming (which makes no sense for swimming, but whatever).
In retrospect, I realize I probably should have gotten out of the pool and let people who actually had something on the line have full use of the lane, but my fictive rivalry was such that I believed I did have something on the line. We started out matched in pace for the first 10 laps, but then both got company in our lanes and had to slow down. She had two freestylers (whom she still outpaced), but I got two doughy boys from Kentucky who were unfamiliar with any stroke beyond dog paddling, and who were also determined to hold a conversation as they paddled in single file. It was maddening. I've never felt like such a competitive jerk while also feeling I'd be entirely justified in dunking both of them repeatedly.
Needless to say, she completely obliviously handed me my ass once again, but the annoyance verging on rage I felt at the two doughboys made me leary of getting into a shared lane ever again. What if my lane-mate is someone with an imaginary axe to grind with a fellow swimmer? What if I'm driving the wedge of her delusion deeper with every leisurely frog kick, and the view of my moon-white tuchus is front of her makes her want to drown me?
Is it the mark of the truly insane that they imagine everyone else shares their peculiar hang-ups, or is the ability to at least partially imagine others' viewpoints, however incorrectly, still a saving grace, some proof that one is aware that a whole world exists outside of one's own mind? I don't know. Obviously I've spent my fair share of time exercising by myself in the last few years, but until I have indisputable proof-- I mean proof-- that it's making me spongy in the sanity department, I'll keep racing.
I'm humming an obnoxious show tune in my head, complete with the Doris Day-like shout-singing of all good Little Orphans Annie. My computer arrives tomorrow, sometime before 12 PM, as in noon, which I'm embarassed to say has been a source of confusion for me ever since I was eight years old. I see the PM and I automatically think "night," an incorrect detour in the well-worn streets of my neural pathways that years of peer mocking has failed to correct. Thankfully, though, I caught this blunder before The Day My Mac Arrives, so now I'll have only 6 hours to fill whilst waiting for it rather than 12. I plan to enlist Pledge and caffeine to help in making the time fly.
It's hard to find anything else blogworthy today. This morning marked my second forray to the base gym, a place which received Arnold Schwarzeneggar's emphatically garbled Teutonic blessing when it opened. The place is nice-- all green glass and stainless steel archways, an intimidating effect immediately negated by the military's overbearing motherly signage: "If you have MUD on your feet or person, please REMOVE it before entering." Because I just mopped. Little warnings about heat exhaustion and slippery floors abound, as well as reminders to clean "bodily fluids" off all machinery after use. Why "bodily fluids" and not "sweat"? Or is this not stictly a gym...?
There's a nice lap pool outside, but I've avoided it thusfar because I'm still unclear on lane etiquette. Back in Florida, Pants and I swam laps for about two weeks in preparation for his "let's put on all your gear and see if you drown!" test. We always showed up at about the same time, so we started recognizing our fellow swimmers. One was a tiny Asian woman with a murderous breaststroke. This happens to be the only stroke I'm really any good at, so I used to subtly race her.
This subtle race thing-- I have a problem with it. I do it way more than is healthy, and I don't know if it's because I didn't get all the competitive sports burned out of me at a young enough age or what, but I seem to be unable to enjoy physical activity, except maybe running, for its own sake without inventing some elaborate internal fiction about who this other person is and why I've got to BEAT THEM. "Cold War Olympic Challenge" is a favorite scenario, as are "Alien Abduction Biometrics test" and the Ender's Game-inspired "High Ranker Fitness Test." Basically, nothing is too cheesy. And it never matters who the person is-- little old men, Marines, children-- doesn't matter. In fact, my success rate is quite poor, maybe 50/50 if I'm being generous, but all that does is fuel the fictional rivalry for next time. I've given grudging, narrow-eyed nods of respect to people who stare back at me in nervous puzzlement.
Back to the Asian breaststroker: she beat me night after night. 10 laps, 15 laps, 30. She kept handing me my ass and it was getting to me. One night I decided I would beat her, or at least match her, if it killed me. The pool was very crowded and people were doubling, and even tripling up in the lanes-- lots of different professions were having their "let's see if you drown" test in the next few days and people were cramming (which makes no sense for swimming, but whatever).
In retrospect, I realize I probably should have gotten out of the pool and let people who actually had something on the line have full use of the lane, but my fictive rivalry was such that I believed I did have something on the line. We started out matched in pace for the first 10 laps, but then both got company in our lanes and had to slow down. She had two freestylers (whom she still outpaced), but I got two doughy boys from Kentucky who were unfamiliar with any stroke beyond dog paddling, and who were also determined to hold a conversation as they paddled in single file. It was maddening. I've never felt like such a competitive jerk while also feeling I'd be entirely justified in dunking both of them repeatedly.
Needless to say, she completely obliviously handed me my ass once again, but the annoyance verging on rage I felt at the two doughboys made me leary of getting into a shared lane ever again. What if my lane-mate is someone with an imaginary axe to grind with a fellow swimmer? What if I'm driving the wedge of her delusion deeper with every leisurely frog kick, and the view of my moon-white tuchus is front of her makes her want to drown me?
Is it the mark of the truly insane that they imagine everyone else shares their peculiar hang-ups, or is the ability to at least partially imagine others' viewpoints, however incorrectly, still a saving grace, some proof that one is aware that a whole world exists outside of one's own mind? I don't know. Obviously I've spent my fair share of time exercising by myself in the last few years, but until I have indisputable proof-- I mean proof-- that it's making me spongy in the sanity department, I'll keep racing.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Waiting for FedEx
Somewhere in a factory, someone is packing up my new Mac and getting ready to FedEx it to me. Its tender little circuits are being lovingly sealed away in classy, minimalistic bubble wrap, and its sleek, almost organic-looking shell is closed like a secret, waiting for me. Today, maybe tomorrow, maybe (God!) the next day, the delivery guy who's missing his left hand (but is somehow able to carry human-sized boxes *and* his little beeping signature pad) will pull up in front of my house and glance awkwardly at me when I throw open the front door before he's even pulled to a complete stop, and then meet him at the curb, bouncing back and forth on the balls of my feet. Until then, I'm going to wait in my house like one of those trap door spiders lest I miss his arrival and fail to provide the signature which will release My Mac to me.
I hope I can muster as much excitement when my first child is born. I may have to fake it.
The weekend passed fairly uneventfully. Pants and I and three of his buddies went to a triple A ballgame in Fresno. It was cold and the mascot, a Grizzly, allegedly, gyrated furiously in his dusty costume. One of Pants's friends is a baseball fanatic, but this only meant that he was a much louder heckler than anyone else. When I used to go to Astros games with my dad, a true fanatic, I'd leave knowing the family and medical histories of individual players, their seething personal rivalries, but M.'s contribution stopped at a folksy catalogue of pitching flaws delivered at high volume.
Fresno's Chukchansi Stadium, according to the teenager taking ticket stubs, is named after a casino. Whether that casino takes its name from a Native American tribe whose people once ruled the land with fearsome warriors or peaceful commerce or some combination of the two, we'll never know. Just beyond the right field fence, old downtown buildings, some with the names of bygone banks still sketched out against the skyline in iron letters, peer down. Back behind left field, the train station still has an open line and train whistles blot out the at-bat snippets of Nirvana and Marilyn Manson the players have chosen to introduce themselves. Center field is dominated by a massive electronic scoreboard/television/billboard, a short grass berm, and then a clear path of darkening sky beyond.
After the game (the Grizzlies beat the 51's handily) the stadium had a fireworks display that ended in a breathtaking finale given its small scale. It surprised laughter and yells out of me, and I imagined Fresno's homeless population, many of whom seem to live in the forested city pavilion a block from the stadium, looking up through the shadows of the trees at the exploding lights and wondering, like me, "Why tonight?" Oh well, why not? Maybe Chukchansi is just a casino.
The next day Pants and I took an evening walk to take the head of steam off the dog, who had been stalking around the house wide-eyed and grumbling all afternoon. We took her to a park downtown and made her run huge geometric paths, the greatest possible distance from point A (us) to point B (the ball), that space allowed. Two little boys came over and wanted to throw the ball for her, and she cowered and barked before finally relenting and chasing their short throws only to toss the ball back at them from ten feet away. They quickly lost interest and focused instead on a fallen nest of baby birds.
"This one needs help!" one of them shouted at me. I went over to look. One of the thirty-foot palms had dropped an armful's worth of nest, and five chicks, each as big across as my palm and covered in gray down with the black stubs of beginner feathers sprouting along their backs, lay scattered across the grass. "This one's still alive," one of the boys said, pointing to a chick who wobbled weakly on his side, "We have to help him."
I felt like a mom because I had to disappoint him. "I don't think he's going to make it, buddy. This happens sometimes." I squatted down next to them and held the kid's hand back when he reached out to touch the bird. "Probably shouldn't touch him." "Germs?" "Yeah." We stared and I wondered what to say. I pointed out what beginner feathers looked like, and described what I'd learned from David Attenborough about why baby birds have such pronounced, fleshy sides to their mouths. "It's so their moms can see where to put the food."
After a while the two boys stood up. "I have to go home now," one of them said to me, and then ran off. The other, the one who hadn't said anything at all the whole time, lingered. I started over to join Pants, who was standing over where Abby had finally collapsed in ecstasy, her tongue bright red and scrolling in and out of her mouth with her panting. I thought about telling the boy again not to touch the dying chick, but instead I said, "It'll be OK," and walked off, feeling thoroughly adult, and thoroughly weird in how automatic and obligatory it felt to say something like that.
Trucks keep stopping outside, and they keep not being the FedEx guy.
I hope I can muster as much excitement when my first child is born. I may have to fake it.
The weekend passed fairly uneventfully. Pants and I and three of his buddies went to a triple A ballgame in Fresno. It was cold and the mascot, a Grizzly, allegedly, gyrated furiously in his dusty costume. One of Pants's friends is a baseball fanatic, but this only meant that he was a much louder heckler than anyone else. When I used to go to Astros games with my dad, a true fanatic, I'd leave knowing the family and medical histories of individual players, their seething personal rivalries, but M.'s contribution stopped at a folksy catalogue of pitching flaws delivered at high volume.
Fresno's Chukchansi Stadium, according to the teenager taking ticket stubs, is named after a casino. Whether that casino takes its name from a Native American tribe whose people once ruled the land with fearsome warriors or peaceful commerce or some combination of the two, we'll never know. Just beyond the right field fence, old downtown buildings, some with the names of bygone banks still sketched out against the skyline in iron letters, peer down. Back behind left field, the train station still has an open line and train whistles blot out the at-bat snippets of Nirvana and Marilyn Manson the players have chosen to introduce themselves. Center field is dominated by a massive electronic scoreboard/television/billboard, a short grass berm, and then a clear path of darkening sky beyond.
After the game (the Grizzlies beat the 51's handily) the stadium had a fireworks display that ended in a breathtaking finale given its small scale. It surprised laughter and yells out of me, and I imagined Fresno's homeless population, many of whom seem to live in the forested city pavilion a block from the stadium, looking up through the shadows of the trees at the exploding lights and wondering, like me, "Why tonight?" Oh well, why not? Maybe Chukchansi is just a casino.
The next day Pants and I took an evening walk to take the head of steam off the dog, who had been stalking around the house wide-eyed and grumbling all afternoon. We took her to a park downtown and made her run huge geometric paths, the greatest possible distance from point A (us) to point B (the ball), that space allowed. Two little boys came over and wanted to throw the ball for her, and she cowered and barked before finally relenting and chasing their short throws only to toss the ball back at them from ten feet away. They quickly lost interest and focused instead on a fallen nest of baby birds.
"This one needs help!" one of them shouted at me. I went over to look. One of the thirty-foot palms had dropped an armful's worth of nest, and five chicks, each as big across as my palm and covered in gray down with the black stubs of beginner feathers sprouting along their backs, lay scattered across the grass. "This one's still alive," one of the boys said, pointing to a chick who wobbled weakly on his side, "We have to help him."
I felt like a mom because I had to disappoint him. "I don't think he's going to make it, buddy. This happens sometimes." I squatted down next to them and held the kid's hand back when he reached out to touch the bird. "Probably shouldn't touch him." "Germs?" "Yeah." We stared and I wondered what to say. I pointed out what beginner feathers looked like, and described what I'd learned from David Attenborough about why baby birds have such pronounced, fleshy sides to their mouths. "It's so their moms can see where to put the food."
After a while the two boys stood up. "I have to go home now," one of them said to me, and then ran off. The other, the one who hadn't said anything at all the whole time, lingered. I started over to join Pants, who was standing over where Abby had finally collapsed in ecstasy, her tongue bright red and scrolling in and out of her mouth with her panting. I thought about telling the boy again not to touch the dying chick, but instead I said, "It'll be OK," and walked off, feeling thoroughly adult, and thoroughly weird in how automatic and obligatory it felt to say something like that.
Trucks keep stopping outside, and they keep not being the FedEx guy.
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