BlahdeBlah

Did you all enjoy watching my team win the World Series this week? Because I didn't.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I would have enjoyed it tremendously, IF I HAD BEEN ABLE TO WATCH IT.

But nooooooo. I was stuck on late-running trains, to AND from our state capital, both Monday night and Wednesday night, and I did not see a single fucking pitch of the whole fucking game.

Not that I'm upset about this; nope; not at all!

Yeah.

The good news: the WaterRower people called today and left a message that my water tank is fixed and they just need me to pay them and they'll ship it back to me. The entire adventure, including my shipping costs, is going to run about $90 to $100; with the cost of the machine, then, about $625, which is still half the price of a new machine and less than a year's membership at a gym.

Other news, from the nephew front: Younger Nephew's school has been testing him the past few weeks, because everyone else is figuring out what I noticed, oh, two-and-a-half years ago, that he is v. v. v. smart. Not surprisingly, all the testing they've done confirms this, so he'll get 45 minutes twice a week in a group of gifted kids, most of whom are older than he is, I believe. I think the plan is that they'll do some kind of project together or whatever, but, as I said to mom, the important thing, in some ways, is that he'll get to hang with other really smart kids. Smart can be lonely, and lack of people to commune with is limiting.

It's been kind of entertaining discussing this with my mother (I wanted to start a family betting pool on his IQ, but couldn't get any takers--and they ended up not giving a number, per se, anyway). I reminded her just how long ago I had pointed this out, and she had to concede that I totally called this one. Because, hey, as I said at the time (that would have been in May 2006), it is not particularly normal for 6-year-old kids to be designing scientific experiments, with well-thought-out rationales and an experimental design.

The other thing that will help him, perhaps, is that he is also a gifted athlete, or he seems to be, anyway. All of this is going to be hard on my older nephew, because he, too is smart--but not AS smart--and he, too, is athletically talented--but perhaps not AS talented. And he runs more to insecurity as it is, so this could be a challenge to have a younger brother who can do so many things better than he can.

My sister and I had some of this worked out between us, because, even though I was smarter, and we had some other talents as well, her talents and mine were assuredly not the same. She was a gymnast, for example (while I have my father's joint flexibility, which is in the category of "able to bend joints enough to walk and climb stairs"), and a dancer (also not me), and socially adept (definitely not me, at least not in grade school and high school). I was the better writer, and more interested in reading, and more artistically talented. I still remember a conversation she and I had on the subject, back when we were both in high school and working on the school play (she as a featured dancer and I as the stage manager and helping with set construction), where we basically said we were glad our talents were different. I'm sure that we sort of focused on or emphasized some of the personality differences we already had, as well; it made it easier.

And, of course, one of the things I always wonder about is what she would have been doing if she'd lived, how the differences we had 25 years ago would have played out over time. I truly cannot think about that very much, or for very long, because it leads to paths of unutterable longing and loss, and there's nothing to be gained by heading that way. What if. Might have been. Maybe. Possibly. It's too hard, too painful, to think like that, and I have to let go of it, as best I can.

Okay, I must turn away from this--from the previous paragraph, but also from the four or five paragraphs that I have written and deleted. I have promised various things to various people--recipes, dissertation chapters--and I have not been delivering. Perhaps this weekend: I am going to have some stretches of free time, it appears, some of which I will use to bake more things.

It occurred to me the other day--and I am not making this up--that, instead of fussing in my head about how I can get to the bakery, and which day, and what it would entail, I could bake my own bread. Yes! I know! What a concept!

Of course, me being me, I then immediately started thinking about getting some sourdough starter from the bakery. Which adds the travel-to-the-bakery complication right back into the equation.

Given how complicated my work life is becoming, it is not entirely clear to me whether I am complicating simple things (like baking bread) because I do not have enough to do and my brain is whirring out of boredom, or whether it's my own Special form of meditation-by-distraction, or whatthefuck.

Anyway. Baking will occur this weekend, most likely.

And You?

Remember that part about how I was cleaning out everything?

Yeah, well, right now my fridge has so much in it that I'd need a crowbar to wedge anything else in there. This is partly because I have the stockpot in there . . . and beets, kale (I think that's what it is; it's in that neighborhood, and a big bunch was only a buck), more beets, a dozen eggs for the baking, herbs (rosemary and oregano; no basil to be had) for the tomato-roasting, and the veggies (carrots, celery, onions) from the stock, which I've decided I'm going to puree and freeze, because I don't see why it wouldn't be useful for thickening purposes. There're also multiple wads of cheese, because I stocked up at the market (stravecchio, asiago, and Midnight Moon aged goat cheese), and apples from last week's expedition that will be turned into cake tomorrow. I also bought about 22 pounds of tomatos. (No; really; it was more than 20 pounds total.)

I went to the market early this morning, and came back with a full load. While I was there, I also stopped in to the Fedex place to see what size boxes they had and stopped at the bank on the way home. When I came back here, I finished packing up the water tank and measured it, and realized it would, in fact, fit in their largest box, and why not take it down there today. All of the Fedex places required shlepping on some form of public transportation (with a very heavy, awkward, large bundle--more upper-body workout!), and I knew the one near the market actually had the box I needed, plus it's close to the el, so I just went back there, even though it's pretty far (in terms of miles) from my apartment. But? Success! And that's when I got the second batch of tomatos.

I came home and started the chicken stock, then cleaned up a bit and started gathering crap for my trip next week and sorted laundry but made an executive decision to actually do the laundry when I return.

So Sunday will be Oven Day: the tomatos and the apple cake and the beets, and, if I'm sufficiently ambitious, maybe some breakfast muffins or ginger cookies. I'm tired right now and would like to go to sleep, it being midnight and all, but my Phillies are not doing well, in part because an ump missed a major call, which led to runs that would not otherwise have scored. It's after 1:00 am in Philadelphia, and cold, I'm sure, and damp, because it was raining earlier, and the score is tied in the middle of the 8th. Oh--and I want to finish packing and maybe do some needlepoint (!) tomorrow.

Unglued

Unfortunately, that's what's happened to my rowing machine: the seam of the water tank came unglued, which means it leaks. I was going to try to caulk it, but I wasn't sure what kind of caulk might work. So, I called the nice people at the WaterRower company and they told me that (a) my machine is 10 years old (I'd given them the serial number), (b) they've changed the way they glue the tanks, and (c) if I send it back to them in Rhode Island, they'll reglue it and ship it back to me. The total cost will probably be less than $100 (whereas a new tank will run about $250). I've managed to disassemble the whole thing, but I'm going to need a bigger box to pack it all in than I have available. I thought I was going to be able to cobble something together here, but now, upon viewing the whole thing, I think a bigger box would be the best idea. The subsequent problem will be trying to reassemble it with no parts left over, but I'll worry about that later. Despite the hassle, it's still going to be cheaper than a year's membership at a gym. Also, for the two weeks I was able to use it, I really liked it--and it cured my back issues, presumably by increasing my core strength, so yay. (Srsly: a back problem that plagued me for 10 months pretty much went away. I haven't been able to row for about a week, and today I had a twinge again.)

This weekend is going to be an exercise in choredom: I went to Whole Paycheck tonight and lugged 40 pounds of groceries home on the bus and el. I calculated that the whole trip, from work to the store to home, took approximately 2.5 hours, and that that was approximately twice as long as the whole thing would have taken if I'd had a vehicle. On the other hand: upper-body workout. Still, I have this vision of me as an 85-year-old, lugging groceries on the bus, and it depresses me. I know, I know, I could have taken a taxi; it's not even that I couldn't have afforded the $25 for the taxi, it's more that I'd rather spend it on beer, or organic veggies, or good cheese. More to the point, I have a difficult time spending money on a taxi when I have an unlimited-rides public transit pass, i.e., the ride on the bus is already paid for. I am, as you all know, quite capable of spending a handful of cash on all kinds of things, but paying more for transportation that is, in some sense, already paid for is difficult for me. (A side note: not one but TWO people asked me for directions tonight. It's a little eerie just how often I get picked out of a sizable crowd of people for directional questions.)

So: tonight I went grocery shopping and took apart the rowing machine, and the small free-standing freezer is defrosting as I type. I had hoped to mail the water tank tomorrow morning--there's a FedEx/Kinko's in the middle of the farmers' market--but I think that won't happen. I will go to the market, for more tomatos for roasting; cheese; herbs; maybe some more beets (even though I haven't used the other ones yet); maybe some more apples (even though I have a bunch in the fridge); maybe some butternut squash if I want some more upper-body workout; and some greens (like kale or swiss chard); with a possible detour to the other market so I can get some bread from the bakery's stand. I need to make a detour somewhere for a big box, and I might stop at the hardware store for lightbulbs and a humidifier filter, though those last two can wait if need be. Once I get home, I'll start the chicken stock.

The other chores that need to be accomplished some time between Saturday and Sunday: cleaning the bathroom; packing for next week's trip to the state capital for a training session (I leave Monday afternoon and won't get back until late Wednesday night); baking an apple cake for Monday's meeting; laundry; baking some breakfast muffins; trying a ginger cookie recipe, and possibly adding some chocolate chunks to it; roasting whatever tomatos I buy, along with whatever herbs I buy; roasting the beets and freezing them; packaging the water tank; and straining the chicken stock, putting it into one-cup yogurt containers, and freezing it. (I make my stock, then cool it in the sink with cold water and, if I'm feeling ambitious, a bag of ice, then cool it overnight in the fridge so the fat rises and hardens and is easy to skim off. Thus, the broth I eventually get is quite low in fat.) If I'm REALLY ambitious, I could even go back out tomorrow afternoon and drop off the water tank at some kind of mailing location; we'll see how that goes. And, of course, there will be baseball. And an IRL race Saturday night, from Australia, if I manage to stay awake.

Monday my boss and the finance person and my boss's counterpart from the other organization and I are all going to get together at the last person's apartment building (in a conference room) to wade through the budgets. The previous budget person put together this massive workbook with all of the budget information crammed into it. It's a big ball of spaghetti, with formulae, and cross references, and hidden assumptions, and things that aren't connected but should be. The finance person kind of freaked out, because her predecessor didn't want to actually explain anything, and my boss doesn't know the details of any of it (in part because the predecessor LIKED being the only one who knew things), so I realized that I was going to have to be the person to figure it all out. The counterpart already had to pick through his organization's version of this, so I wanted to pick his brain, and we all realized that it would be useful for the four of us to do it together, knowing ahead of time that I'd be the one doing the major picking and rebuilding, but also knowing that the effort would mean that all of us would know at least a little and would be able to build on what we learned. (Enabling can be a good thing.)

Anyway.

I wanted to write about bodily information, but I'm starting to fade. And I have a few things to do this weekend.

Real Ization

Okay, enough.

If you haven't seen The Daily Show from Monday night, then hunt it down on the web and watch it, particularly the opening segment and the closing lines. Basically, TDS goes to Wasilla to interview so-called "real" Americans--you know: those people who live in small towns, because those of us who live in cities, even though we are the majority of the fucking country, aren't REALLY real. And the people being interviewed prattle on about how small towns are where the values really are (because the rest of us eat children for lunch and unwary rural tourists for dinner). When asked how all this realness came about, one interviewee cites 9-11. Well, the interviewer points out, that happened in New York City, to New Yorkers. For which the interviewee doesn't really have any response at all. It's like the politicians who wrap themselves in 9-11, perhaps even going to ground zero, and then leave the city and start warbling about how eeeeevil New Yorkers and all city folk really are, because small towns are where you find, you know, actual values.

And I'm really fucking sick of it. I grew up in a small town: about 18,000 people. It was the largest town in the county, and, at the time, it was surrounded by what was still farmland. There was a Future Farmers of America (all hail blue courderoy!) at my high school, and a county farmers' fair every summer. There was also industry--Ingersoll Rand had a division in town, and there was a big-pipe (like sewer-pipe-size) manufacturer. Since I lived there, the former has removed all the actual manufacturing, although the land isn't being used for anything--too much toxic waste, apparently--and the latter was bought up by a company that was featured in the NY Times a few years ago for its OSHA violations at its plants, including that one. The town is more than hundred years old, and it's tired, and there's not much work, and it's kind of down and out. The farmland has been chewed up by developments: once one farmer sells, everyone else's property values go up, even though the property and the business haven't changed, and suddenly a business that is marginal and hard work but a living becomes an impossibility, all to make way for McMansions. Because, now that a highway is in place, some people who live within 10 or 15 minutes of my hometown commute to New York and back every day.

Yes, New York and Philadelphia were within a two-hour drive, but we never went there, except for the once-a-year outing to see the Phillies and the occasional visit to the Philadelphia Zoo. We also went to the American Museum of Natural History once, I think, when my brother was little, so I must have been 11 or so.

But we didn't go to big cities; not just because some of the highways weren't there yet, but because it just wasn't part of our repertoire, and I don't think we were unusual in that. So I understand those origins, and the prejudices that breed there, as well as both the good and bad parts of a small size. When I first moved to a city, I had spent less than a month in cities ever in my life--i.e., fewer than 30 days total.

I've lived in cities, however, since 1981--i.e., for 28 years, give or take. And you know what? "Real" people live in cities, too. We live and breathe and vote and pay taxes and die here. We pay more taxes than people who live outside of cities, because cities have infrastructures, and suburbanites and rural people who visit or work in the cities use those infrastructures but don't contribute much to their upkeep. And, yes, we tend to vote Democratic, especially in this state: have you ever thought about why that would be?

Well the Republican right-wing has, and what they've concluded, apparently, is that we vote Democratic because we're unamerican.

Now, of course, for a little detour, let me point out that the right wing isn't one group of people; it's several groups:

1. There's the children of privilege--Kristol, Podheretz, Jonah Goldberg, and I'm sure there are a bunch more--whose mommies and/or daddies are right wingers, and the children are following in the footsteps. Most of them, so far as I can tell, have never worked a shit job, or anything other than a wingnut-welfare job, and they are the people I have in mind when I rant about 50-pound sacks of flour, not least because they are also the people who promulgate memes about "real" Americans. If Bill Kristol is more "real" than I am, then I am Marie of Romania.

2. There's the Rovian rat-fuckers who learned their trade at the knee of the Nixonian rat-fuckers (that was their term of art). They are the people in charge of smearing and sliming and insinuating, of developing and utilizing as many dirty tricks as they can invent or recycle. They've never met a Democratic vote they don't want to suppress or invalidate in some way. It's not entirely clear to me what they get out of it, because they typically don't start out or end up as rich or powerful; they do the dirty work, and it's a good-paying job, but they're not going to get really big bucks, and I think they tend to be held at arms' length by much of the rest of the party.

3. And there are the ideologues, though they seem to fall into a couple of camps: the religious nutjobs who want everyone to live under their version of X-treme fundamentalist patriarchal christianity; the architects of the disaster in the middle east; and the Norquistians and libertarians, who want to destroy government. If that isn't an unholy alliance, I don't know what the fuck is.

4. And there are the profiteers--the Enrons, and the AIGs, and the Halliburtons, and all the rest. Have you ever wondered why those people tend to vote Republican? Do the math.

But here's the thing. They like to prattle about "values" and small towns and plumbers, but which values, exactly, do they want to tout? The insular, racist values? (Well, yes, some of them like to incite those.) Oh, no, wait, they claim they want to tout the values of helping one's neighbor, and so on; those things that big-city folk don't do, because we're all evil unamerican evil people. And we probably have dark skin or are illegal immigrants. Which would explain the lines of people waiting to donate blood after 9-11. Which would explain the cops and firefighters, too. Oh, wait; they were city residents? Hmmm . . .

And they like to prattle about taxes, or, more recently, socialism. Fine; let's NOT bail out the banks. Let's fine the Wall Street executives--every last fucking one of them--and throw them in Riker's Island. Oh, wait, you think regulation might have helped? You think government oversight might have been a good thing? Not if you're a Republican or a libertarian.

And they like to go on about "real" Americans--like the governor who shleps her kids around and bills the government for it while wanting rape victims to pay for the collection of evidence and who likes to give speeches to secessionist groups of which her husband is a member, or the plumber who isn't licensed and can't do math but who thinks he's going to be making more than a quarter-million dollars a year, or the fundamentalists who want to come after you if you don't believe the way they believe, and they sure as hell don't want any women to have any kind of control over their own reproductive capacities.

Fuck that. Or, as Jon Stewart said, fuck all y'all, all the people making those accusations. I vote. I pay taxes. I work every day to help people who are worse off than I am (and worse off than any of the people doing the prattling), and the government pays my salary, and I am fine with having my taxes go to those ends. If that makes me unamerican, then I shudder to think what your definition of American is.

Communique

I've been neglecting you. A couple of weeks ago, Chuck discovered this blog. He said that he wasn't going to comment on or read it to preserve his sanity, and I believe that he wants that to be true, but I don't know if his curiosity will get the better of him, and I've been trying to decide what to do. I still don't know--but send me your email addresses, and if I decide to make the blog private, I'll send you invites.

Quickie

I may be one of the few people in the vicinity who is happy about how My Team(s) performed this weekend. All of Friend's teams lost in the past two days, which will not make him happy. Although DaBears won, which will make Chuck happy (and the Packers lost, which will also please him, as Packers fans and Bears fans are required to loathe the Other Team--seriously, it's like a law or something), and the White Sox managed to avoid being swept, the Cubs, as I'm sure you know, collapsed. Completely. Despite having The Best Record in the League, they lost their series in three straight games. Their offensive effort was pitiful (which is a generous estimation), and the Dodgers lit up the Cubs' pitchers like it was fucking Christmas.

However.

The Phillies won, which is the only thing about which I care. Hard to say how they will do against the Dodgers, who have been surging since July, so I make no predictions.

The American League continues to dick around. (The American League annoys me, not least because the designated hitter should be outlawed by means of a Constitutional amendment.) The White Sox are not out of it yet. The Angels & BoSox are tied in the 9th, as I type, and I'm not even sure where that series stands; I'm torn between those teams, because, although I like the BoSox in principle, if I have to pick an AL team, they have J.D. Drew on the team, and, as a Phillies fan, I am required to dislike Drew. Which I do. Along with fans in EVERY CITY IN WHICH HE HAS PLAYED.

In my world, I have spent the weekend rearranging my stuff, and even getting some new stuff. I threw out a bunch of crap, and I bagged a bunch of clothes to give away, and I switched crap between closets, and I did laundry, and I switched out summer & winter clothes, and I put flannel sheets on the bed. Much of this was motivated by the fact that I bought a rowing machine (!). Seriously: I'd been watching Craigslist off and on, looking for a used one, and I found a top-end machine for $525 (this thing normally retails for $1200). The best part is that the guy who was looking to get rid of it (a) lives on the FAR southwest side, i.e., about 40 miles from my house, and (b) it didn't fit into K's car, and (c) Friend was out of town all weekend, but (d) the guy had to go to his sons' cross-country meet 7 MILES FROM MY HOUSE, in his only visit to the north side of the city all year, so he dropped it off for me.

So I spent lots of time rearranging my crap, and cleaning (except vacuuming my bedroom, because it has a carpet but my vacuum cleaner is Dead, Jim), and a little time editing. And did I mention I have a new rowing machine, which means I don't have to walk to and from work every day? (I put in more than 20 miles this week, and I'm here to tell you that it wears a little thin, plus doesn't really get the heartrate up, plus doesn't work the upper body.) Also: cheaper than a year's membership at the gym, and I don't have to go anywhere to use it.

There's probably more. Okay, there's lots more, but I'm tired and must sleep now.

Did I mention I got a rowing machine? for my apartment?