all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no productive makes ryan a very dull boy all busy and no
productive makes
ryan a very
dull
boy
all work
and thinking constantly
about someone seldom met
scenarios
I rented the movie Pi. I enjoyed it. it really made me want to be so understanding of something, so good at a one thing that there would be no question, no turning it off, a painfull assurance, a constant direction, a line-walking consumation , completely psychological. just give something everything. wishy-washy, middle of the road, sensible, drug-free, healthy, optimistic gets boring after a while. scary.... but something. i'm not being ironic. Bob Dylan said he never put 100% effort into anything.
I believe him.
i've begged and i've begged them to take me off of this damn development team; well, not begged... but asked, politely, several times, with an increasing sense of urgency, because i've got to get out of this cubicle. i've got guys from marketing trying to tell me what kind of changes we should make to the user interface of the DOD. great. DOD stands for Depth Overlay Database -- it is, in effect, a 3-dimensional database. Total backend. It doesn't have a fucking user interface. The DOD stores any kind of data that might appear on site: soil ph, artifact size and positioning, texture change, and so on. It's usually configured for direct input from calibration tools on site. More importantly, it extrapolates entered data in terms of volume: each cubic centimeter dug into the ground--or cubic millimeter, or any selected volume--gets its own record in the DOD. There's a potential for incredible resolution. The DOD will scale the record resolution up and down, accept parameters for larger volumes and auto-divide to the desired res, blah blah, blah.
It doesn't have a fucking user interface.
"Frank," I asked him, "are you talking about The little ArcheoType program we've been working on?" Archeotype let's the user name shapes, structures, even non-visual patterns found within DOD data. It's a little proggie we added on to the whole package in last minute beta.
"Yeah, right, the GUI you added." Frank started. "A few of us think it looks like ass".
I have guys in marketing critiquing my software, and they don't even know what to call the programs they think look like ass.
I watched the Grammys tonight with Matt Wollman, friend to me and brother to Andrew. It was entertaining, thanks to Jon Stewart. Also: Steely Dan?
Umm... Huh?
What?
I was particularly impressed with the speech from National Academy of Arts and Sciences President Michael Greene, which led into an introduction of Eminem and Elton.
This has certainly been a dynamic year for music -- all you have to do is look at the diversity represented on this stage tonight to witness the walls of division crumble under the weight of a connected world. Of late, the controversy over extreme lyrics has been a heat-seeking missile and it is important to remember that the Academy is not here to defend or vilify, commercialize or censor art. We are here to recognize those recordings that are notable, noticeable and oft times, controversial.
People are mad, and people are talking. And that's a good thing because it's through dialogue and debate that social discovery can occur.
Listen, music has always been the voice of rebellion -- it's a mirror of our culture, sometimes reflecting a dark and disturbing underbelly obscured from the view of most people of privilege, a militarized zone which is chronicled by the CNN of the inner city -- rap and hip-hop music. We can't edit out the art that makes us uncomfortable. Remember, that's what our parents tried to do to Elvis, the Stones and the Beatles.
The white teenagers from the suburbs buy a majority of the music in question. They live out their rebellion and delineate their rite of passage vicariously through this music, and most of the adults who pass judgement have never listened to -- or more to the point, have never even engaged their kids about -- the object of their contempt. This is not to say that there's not much to fear in this violence-drenched society of ours; we should genuinely be concerned about the younger kids, the latch-key kids who are not experienced and don't have a relevant parental connection to help them understand what's real and what's shock theater. Accept the fact that musicians, movie stars and athletes are not perfect, they make mistakes and can't always be counted on to be role models. Art incites, entices, it awes, and angers, it takes all its various incarnations to maintain the balance, vitality and authenticity of the artistic process. Let's not forget that sometimes it takes tolerance to teach tolerance.
A nearly forgotten beautiful moment: Saturday afternoon driving through Plymouth and the Myles Standish State Forest in my '79 Granada with Adam, Jonas and Elizabeth, listening to the Velvet Underground, listening to my tires crunch through snow and ice. The sun greenhousing my vinyl interior as we made our way around a 10 mile loop towards a beer and a bowl of chowder at the Run of the Mill Tavern.
oh yes: the last of the spaces we visited that afternoon; multi-colored liquor-store strips paralleled on both walls. it was a relaxing cool down, i remember. nice. sillier than the chapels. just a big room, white from so much color, saturated, the kind of place you'd wanna have a rave. we didn't have a rave. but my eyes twitch in heavy light. and no one defies...
artificial light.
and no one defies...
(waiting for you to decide)
artificial light.
that seems like a long time ago. sometimes, even the present seems like a long time ago, if you ask me.
There are three cats living at the Pizer's house, where I've been house-sitting all weekend. All three of these cats have names, presumably. These names are no concern of mine. My only concern is to make sure that the skinny white cat (who I refer to simply as "crack") gets one half of a tablet of valium with each meal. Each cat gets half a can of cat food, except for Crack who gets half a can and half a pill of dope. I have to isolate her in the bathroom, so the other cat's wont accidentally eat the pill. The bottle for the pill has a label warning about operation heavy machinery, but it is a kitty-pill nonetheless. I have never had a pet. I have never had valium. Crack needs to be quarantined during mealtime for a second reason: she has an uncontrollable appetite, and steals food from the other cats, violently pushing them out of the way. When I open the bathroom door after feeding, crack rockets out at, um, about a bajillion miles an hour. Scares the shit out of me.
Why is Crack on valium? Age-related dementia.
Kitty Alzheimer's.
" Looks like somebody's got a case of the Mondays!" It's official: people jokingly quoting Office Space around the office are as annoying as the characters they're quoting.
Jesus. The whole reason I wanted to post in the first place: minutes ago, while changing lanes on Memorial Drive, I ran over a dog. It was a small dog, and it couldn't have survived. I killed it. An accident.
why is this technology, i don't know. less than one cold week, but it feels like three, thousands of miles. I zone out a lot, like many people. It might be a good thing. if you want to piss me off, wave your hand in front of my face and say "Earth to Ryan, Earth to Ryan!" It's so childish, and somehow belittling. Who want's to be the sort of person who always pays attention? I'm sitting here, looking out the frosty windowpane, still wearing my coat and scarf, wriggling my fingers over the keyboard trying to come up with an annoying anecdote to report, something-else exemplary of the life I lead here. And I've just realized how stupid that is, passing on annoyance to you, a non-existent reader so I can feel better and you can pity empathdjwsdofjwsld s sksksldddddddddddddn dfsdfsdf (more frustro-fillerdgffffffffffffffffffff) wHINE. Whine Whine. Whining. Constructive. Telling. The telling process. Ack.
Hell, this is an outlet, and I need it. Needless to say, I'm happy to be leaving this Slummerville afartment today and heading back to Plymouth for a week of house-sitting close to home. I'll be commuting with my dear old dad, a Jersey farm lad. He usually takes the train in, so a ride with me should be a nice change for the man.
You're not your fucking kakhis, you say. Sure. What I mean is, I think I tend to keep moving in the flow of things, neverlooking around too much. Observing people and landscapes, yes, but never looking around at other possibilities for myself, directions I could move in, activities I could be doing. I keep it real zen stoic, most of the time, namsayin? Sitting with my head against the wall, it was clear to me that my life is comprised of me entwined with things I do not need and routines I might not want. I'd like to start fresh. I don't know. I don't know what I want.
I bet loads of people would live wordless lives, if they could.
Afterwards, we walked away from the octogon-shaped chapel without saying a word. We were carrying nothing. I can't remember if we were holding hands, or if I wanted to remember us holding hands. Oops... did I say something sensitive? Pardon me. It wasn't all squishy, we were just walking from one silent place to another. Green air, warm grass, fresh sun. All the things I don't have here in Boston. Hands included. From the outside, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel looks like some kind of clean concrete power-plant. Inside the foyer, a large dark-skinned woman sitting at the single desk was talkingn and laughing with a man. I don't remember how old he was. We passed through wooden doors into a small anteroom where a sign read "Please wait here a moment for your eyes to adjust to the light." We continued on into the chapel. Cement walls and open space surrounded a center structure made of glass and iron that seemed to float in the middle of the room. An actual fresco half-dome attached to the structure hung above a small altar. The two of us moved separately around the room, under iro archways, between glass panels. I sat down on a simple black bench, facing the altar, and rested my head against the rear wall.
I snapped a picture.
Somehow, natural light lit only the perimeter of the room; candlelight flickered through the interior. I stared. We didn't stay for long, but I slipped into a very still place, a frame of mind I'd never encountered before, where everything I am these days seemed unnecessary and pointless. Not me... I didn't feel that I was pointless or that this is pointless in some kind of high school way. It didn't affect my sense of self. What seemed unnecessary, superfluous, even unactual or nonexistent at that moment was every bit of my life here in Boston. All the stuff I'm surrounded with: this cubicle, Amy's voice, office banter, this whole goddamn Software Implementation What What division of DinoTech, the tuna sandwich and bag of Fritos I pack for lunch almost every day, my Slummerville apartment, late-night television, the fact that I still live in my college town, the cold, the clothes, meeting the same good friends for dinner or a beer. These things... I guess these things didn't exactly seem pointless in that extended moment, but I recognized that I as a person am separate from all of these activities, routines and responsibilities. And it was peaceful, because all of that stuff, my whole life in Boston, even the convention that brought me to Houston in the first place, seemed far away from me and from the Byzantine Chapel at that moment. I felt clean, distilled downaway from the usual distracting environment.
We left together, still quiet.
i choo-choo-choose long-lasting celibacy, long-distance imagination fgkkfffffffffjjjjjj jjjjjjjmdfjmglsdfjgoerggaomvvaaaaa a v a aaaaaaaa aaaaaa kkkjjaasdf;lkjasdfj;ijjlsqweruiop;n vxds
We walked through the city, her city: apartments, trees and crooked sidewalks, Richmond, West Alabama, Montrose. We sipped our coffees and talked when it seemed appropriate. She took me to each of three interior spaces, rooms given power through openness and light. I'm now remembering. I'm now remembering that I once valued these two things most.
We sat outside by the reflecting pool, on a small bench. Towards the left, rising from the water, stood a large sculpture, barely balancing. From there, the city was quiet.
From the inside, everything everywhere was quiet and still. One large strong octagonal room. On each wall hung a giant painting, nearly monochromatic in a late-Rothko shade of black. It was either the pigment of these canvases or the natural light seeping into the space through glass vents on the ceiling that gave the room a purplish hue. We sat together on one of the benches. We separated and surveyed the space from each corner. A young couple strode through, an older couple strode through, two mothers with two young children walked through. The mothers spoke, then took the children away again. They were silent. There were three cushions placed on the floor for sitting, and I assumed a full-lotus, and I assumed that I understood the power of the room, and I assumed a point-of view where I recognized nothing beyond possibilities.
Heh.
I assume too much, too big.
And I feel like I just don't know.
It is cold and empty here in my apartment.
Yes, it's another exciting day here in Ryan's tiny gray cubicle. I now remember why I haven't thought about work much at all during the last few days. At least I slept well and brought money for lunch. I'm keeping a running tally of the number of people who ask, "So, how hard was it to come home from all that warm weather in Houston? Did you hear about last week's blizzard?" So far, the tally's up to seven. If it hits ten, I'm treating myself to another cup of Chock Full of Dung. Also, note that I find Amy's voice rather grating, especially when she's talking to her "b-friend" on her "c-phone"..
Sorry, I shouldn't be whining. Sometimes I wish I was still doing field testing. Standing up and walking around are under-rated actions. Maybe I'll just climb up up the ladder, and leave software behind. I'll be an administrator. I'll give Amy her own office, on the roof, where she just might be pecked to death.
Great. Harvey wants to "go over some things". So ends my lunch.
boston may be cold, but i've got a pea-coat. sunday afternoons, even in february, see the public gardens packed with couples laughing, holding hands. taking pictures of each other while skating on the frog pond. warm scarves, hot cashews. how great it would be if the human body only needed a bedtime glass of merlot to stay up to snuff.
I never get sick. Correction: I get sick once a year for approximately four hours. My immune system keeps on keepin' on. When I was living at home, I used to metabolize in a matter of hours illnesses that kept my siblings out of school for days. I only missed school when I faked it, holding the thermometer up to the light bulb Ferris Bueller style. My body behaves. I think it all stems from playing outside, around trees and stems. During most of my visit to Houston I suffered from a horrible sore throat. My first sore throat ever, really. I ate pills and took shots of viscous orange, suckled popsicles and sprayed numbing medicine upon my tonsils. I walked and drove and spoke in a bit of a daze. It was surreal because I was sick, and surreal because I never get sick. Reading over what I've written this week, I'm not sure where I end and the sore throat begins.
But by the time Flight 284 entered a holding pattern just over the Bourne bridge, the soreness in my throat had all but disappeared. It could have been coincidence, it could have been echinachea, it could have been cleaner air. Or it could have been home. Several planes were queued up to land ahead of us at Logan, so our craft twirled around three times over the Cape Cod Canal, Wareham and South Plymouth, as the last rays of day cooled to a blue-gray over Providence. I sipped orange juice with my forehead against the plexiglass, listening to Kid A.
The captain spoke. Our plane was to turn left over Plymouth Harbor, joining the northbound landing line. We hovered. My entire hometown sat outside my tiny window: the long stretch of beach, the waterfront, the blinking lights of WPLM. Rows of streetlights. I knew my old house waited somewhere south of the small but bright town airport, which looked to be much less than five miles from the coast. The Kingston Mall outshined everything.
From airplanes, humans seem small, and mostly unremarkably harmless. My throat feels fine today. My apartment looks the same. Tomorrow I have work. I work in some office, somewhere.
The big bland terminal here in Airtran's ATL homebase offers all the modern in cross-country conveniences, including this ten minutes for free internet terminal, interminably slow. No telling if this will publish Stumbled Popeye's where I purchased a basket of spicy-fried chicken, garlic mashed, and a biscut. I love biscuts. They live fried-chicken in A-town. People act kindly, even though it's an airtport. There's a glass-enshrouded yellowish flourescent enclosed windowless smoking quarantine coral area circa All the President's Men that makes smoking look so sad and depressing. Enclosed spaces I'm here all alone, in a sort of in-between place. No telling where-to next. Quiet peace, girl; big office enclose flouro-space Tyrrano-Tech, eh. Happy Winter! I am a blind person. I'm offering you this handy Tool Key Chain which may be used for glasses, watches, computers and more for only $2.00. The proceeds help pay for my educational and living expenses. May I interest you in one? Card and plastic easily worth three dollars. Her hands sweetly gesturing Thank You.
And off I go. Flight 284 to coldbeantown boreds in five minutes.
The best days are long, warm, and filled with conversations and unexpected visits to beautiful places. I'm feeling highly relaxed, because today was one of those days. Tomorrow morning I catch an early AirTran flight to Atlanta, and from there a connecting flight back home to Boston. Presently I'm back in my Hotel room, typing into my laptop, leaning back in the brown cushioned chair here in the corner beside the round walnut table. My right leg resting comfortably on my left. I'm enjoying a Jack and Coke, mixed in one of the special wrapped plastic cup provided with my ice bucket. I made it with Tab, actually, just for kicks. They have Tab here! I found it at Fiesta. After I posted this morning I went to the local House of Pancakes for some waffles. Delicious place. Man, that was a long time ago.
Well, while I was eating breakfast I got a call from Alison the hitchhiker I drove to Dallas last week (remember? you remember) and I found myself pretty damned enthusiastic about meeting her for a cup of coffee at Artiste and a nice long walk. I finished my cup of hot lemon tea with curdled half and half in one big gulp, stuffed my phone into the shirt pocket of my semi-starchy Structure shirt, smiled at a couple of elderly Texan debutantes who were scowling in my general direction (apparently in disapproval of my having taken a call in such a fine establishment), and got my ass the hell out of WaffleTown.
Left the waitress a five-spot, cuz I'm a high roller.
Little miss hitchhiker looked beautiful, with her blonde-streaked shoulder-length hair and light-green zip-up sweater. And obviously, I looked good in my $65.00 slacks. Artiste is a chill and soulful little cafe I first stumbled into a few days ago while wandering around town. I think they were playing the Sea and Cake when I first walked in there and ordered an iced mango tea, so the place had to be pretty cool with all those undergrad coeds smoking kamels, reading Rousseau and Eliot and Spinoza. But earlier today the place was quieter and mostly vacant. We gave each other a whussup whussup, bought two cups of coffee and one turnover, and stepped out into the cool sunlit air for a nice long stroll.
Stroll? Right. It's funny strange, trying to make narrative sense of an important day just as the day is ending. And I'm heading back to Boston. Up and down. Sit still, get up and walk, I don't know. February's usually not great for decision making. But I'll write more about it all tomorrow, from Home.
Well, good morning Houston. I just drank about 2 quarts of water, because I'm dehydrated something fierce, and I'm hungy as hell. I don't believe I made it home last night. When I woke up this morning, the television was still on. I woke up to a commercial for a Time Life series of Muppet Show videos. You know, the old Muppet Show. The second tape has Mark Hamil and C3PO hosting - how cool is that. I would have ordered it but I was too tired to look for my wallet. I just found it on the floor in the bathroom, but I'd alreadf forgotten the number.
got a call earlier tonight from a guy I met yesterday at one of the panels, but I didn't call him back. Last thing I felt like doing wass talking about new remote sensing technology or archeologocal ethnohistory bronze native aztec whatever blah BLAH. That's all these guys ever want to talk about. it'll be just casual drinks, current events and plans or whatever and suddenly you're nback to talking about work. what they don't tell you is that a career isn't just something you can turn offand ignore when you get home from work, it's your life and you live it all the time. That's fine and everything, but for once i'd like a moment to myself, thanks I drove downtown tonight, parked the beast somewhere, walked around. pretty warm night. Hopped a couple of bars, drinking Bass mostly, watching TV screens, listening to U2 and Bon Jovi tunes someone plugged on the jukebox at the Mercury Room. Houston people, i bet aren't like most Texas people. I sat for a while at this coffeehouse place called Notsuoh, which was in betweebn some clubs downtown. It's "Houston" spelled backwards. clever, eh. the whole place is an old thrift store or pawn shop filled with junk that they just lef there. they have shows upstairs. i was on one side of the big room, drinking something listening to the music and the kid fiddleing on the piano in the corner and the couples talking and the jamaican-looking guy reading and talking outloud to no one. On the other side of the room all of these twenty-year old kids were sitting, laughing. putting a puzzle together, telling jokes and singing, smoking cigarettes. They were good frioends. Taking turns making words out of wooden blocks. They talked about hip-hop, poetry and a guy and a girl stood up and sang songs using onlt the word "meow", a cat sound, as others took pictures. the singing was annoying, but i kept watching them all.
i miss college, being surrounded by people like that. And everyone at the DT office is great, but there's no time to hang out in groups like that, not enough people. Hell. those aren't the people I want to go out to bars with after seeing all day. Its like a balance i can;'t find between responsibility and relaxation time. I don't even know what I'm This whole free day doesn't feel like anything, maybe that's being alone. I'd call julie or someone, but, hell it's frickin bedtime here at La Conquista Inna. So Buenos Tardes to You.
I spent half the afternoon draped across the bed in my room at La Quina Inn, munching on some food that I bought from the vending machines in the hall, hopping channels on the cable TV. The only things I found mildly enterntaining were some Spanish soap operas and a couple of episodes of Out of this World on TNT. What a great, stupid show. You see, I just can't seem to get enough of hilarious Uncle Beano, or of Edie's supernatural teenage charm. Ugh. At about 3:30 or so I realized that the whole reason I hadn't booked my return flight until Saturday was to get around and see some of the city, and La Quinta was really starting to get to me anyways. I put some miles on the Excursion I'd rented, bumping up and down the freeway listening to that old Mad Season record. Remember that cd? It's pretty good, if you're a fan of Layne Stanely's voice. He annoys me sometimes. I got stuck in traffic twice, and escaped at the next exit. Driving through the Rice University area was nice. Some really expensive looking houses over there.
I ended up at a mall where I bought a new pair of slacks and a silk shirt at Structure. I needed the shirt, because I hadn't packed enough warm-weather clothes, but I probably would have bough it anyway. Structure just makes great looking clothes that last, and they're always worth the price. Across from the Structure was an Old Navy, a pretty tacky place to shop if you ask me. Like I need long sleeved tee-shirts with Valentiney Old Navy logos screened onto the front. Ugh. I'll confess, though, that I bought a couple of ribbed tees, and put them into my Structure bag. No sense in wasting a bag.
Strip malls, dirty air, and big flat fucking parking lots. Houston isn't as crappy as Phoenix, but it's pretty close.
if i was smart
i'd save up for a piece of string
and a rock to wind the string around.
everybody wants a rock
to wind a piece of string around.
Walking through Houston: I passed used car lots and video stores. Scrappy apartment complexes, beautiful brick homes, the crowded Fiesta supermarket. Women jogging in the sixty degree evening. Surrealisme at the Menil Museum. Oversized kitchen furniture, twenty-foot-tall plastic beards, giant cups and bowls piled high at the CAM. Pizza Hut, Artiste, The Harp, the Southmore House, Cactus. Cement buildings and concrete fountains. There are roads everywhere, new bridges arching over old highways. In some places, the sidewalk panels lie skewed, easy to trip over. Rothko's Chapel, lined with shades of black, possesses a somber sectless sanctity. Today, at the final day of my archaeology convention, I wandered through the halls in a daze. I kept forgeting the names of colleagues I had just met. I think I sat in a red padded chair, for a while. I lost my name tag. I bought a three-inch model of a male Gigantopithecus, and held its furry little body under my right arm for a while. I took some DayQuil and ibuprofen, but the soreness in my throat refuses to let up. Later, outside, I dropped half of my peanut M&Ms. They all landed close together, so I drew a circle around them with chalk.
Everything takes effort. Most of the time, the best things require the most.
When I was a wee lad of fourteen, I went sledding out behind my house, on a hill now occupied by the cartparth that runs between the back and front tees on the fourth hole of Southers Marsh Golf Club. The hill was steeper back in the day, and it looked much longer and scarier. Anyways, somehow during the course of sledding one afternoon, I lost my glasses. They fell into the snow. There's a Nor'Easter plowing through Massachusetts right now. Massachusetts is my home state. A Nor'Easter is a big, regional snowstorm that makes use of my favorite punctuation mark, the apostrope. I am in Houston, hashing plans to sabotage tomorrow's big presentation by ArchoSaurus, my company's long-time nemesis. Hmm. I shouldn't have told you that. That is, I meant to say: it is warm here. In general, snow cover and frozen ground makes ten centimeters of digging impossible.
New England winters were fairly erratic nine years ago, so snow never stuck around for more than several days at a time. After I had survived spectacle-free for about one week, the icy flakes thawed and I began spending two hours after school each day searching for my lost glasses. I found them on the third day. They were all mangled.
I'm a bit of a rebel. Well, perhaps "rambler" would be a better term. Yes. And as a rambler, I'm particularly attached to my Ford Excursion. I find that other mid-sized SOBs just don't get the job done. I like to feel in control of the road. Well anyways, last night at the convention kick-off party I started getting really bored with the scenery, impatient with the shmoozing and indigestious of the crab-cakes, so I hopped a cab to the nearest Hertz rental center, threw down my AmEx and drove away with a 2000 Limited Edition J-Crew Excursion, fully loaded. I pulled through for a Whataburger, because they Use Only The Freshest Fixins, picked up a cute-looking hitchhiker. She said she was up for anything, so we split for Dallas.
It was a nice comforable drive, plenty of Twizzlers and plums to keep our mouths happy. We passed a sixty foot tall statue of Sam Houston. To the left and right, Lone Star trees mingled with Texas plains. Dallas seemed a bit sterile and dry, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. We hit Deep Ellum and bounced the club scene. Before the night was through, the hitchhiker and I had seen one talented and entertaining punk band and one crappy, self-absorbed metal outfit. Plus, we stuffed our blood with Shiner and ran into a few old friends. This pleased me.
At midnight I ate a chimichanga. I wanted to sleep in the Excursion, but we ended up crashing with generous young William. By morning I couldn't feel my right arm.
Yesterday I listened to the Modest Mouse album The Moon and Antarctica about 10 times. I listened to it in one car, on one train, on one subway, on one bus, on two planes, and in three airports. My company DinoTech sent me here for a few days, to research our competition at the annual archeology convention. Houston is the hub of the archeology world. At the airport I was met by a beautiful young lady holding a sign that read "Dr. Gantoz". So now I'm a doctor, and my last name has a bit more flair. This pleases me. I had a layover in Atlanta, and my plane was late. So I threw some Outkast into my headphones and treated myself to a copy of Affluent Mother's Monthly. I love risky upside-down cake recipes. Divine.
It took nearly two hours yesterday before I regained full control of my leg. Towards the end, the whole thing was really starting to freak me out, so I called my ex-girlfriend Julie to ask her what I should do. Julie just finished nursing school. But Julie hung up on me, either because it was around six-thirty in the morning or because two years ago I broke up with her by setting her little brother's tree-house on fire.
On the plane to Houston, the two girls sitting beside me did crossword puzzles during the entire flight. One of them was wearing a mohair-hewn gorilla-esque shirt. She freaked me out a little, so I fell asleep holding a 4 ounce cup of Sprite. It was mostly ice, actually. I love Airtran.
Quite warm, Houston. Today I was attacked by a woman wielding a sack of starved weasels. I beat her with my sno-cone. Fortunately, there were no marbles in sight.
I awoke with a start this morning at to find that my right leg had gone completely numb. All the way from my hip to my heel, I could feel nothing. I tried to wiggle my toes, and for a moment I had the sensation of walking on cool beach sand. I sat up and attempted to open the plastic venetian blinds above my bed to let in some light, but the sun had not yet come up. It was five am. I never wake up at five am. I managed to roll out of bed and stand up on my left leg, which seemed to function normally. I waved my arms around a few times, nearly knocking over a stack of travel brochures that I must have mistakenly left on top of the dresser. This pleased me -- not that I had mistakenly left a pile of brochures atop the dresser, but that I was still blessed with three fully-functional limbs.
I carefully hobbled across the oak floor of my bedroom, dragging my right jamb behind me like a horse pulling an iron plow. At the doorway to the bathroom I paused, blinking and squinting and shaking my head slightly, the way my father used to. There, on the ceramic-tiled floor, sat a small bowl of red marbles.
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