Quote of the Day: Cormac McCarthy

"I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing."

I was almost killed by Thanksgiving on Wednesday night. Stacey and I stayed in town late that night to have dinner with somebody (who shall remain nameless) on her side of the family. It was an adventure, and I am defining adventure as an experience that is fun to talk about afterwards but not actually go through.

First of all, we got there an hour and a half before anyone else did. When we arrived there and found the person cooking dinner running around frantically, I knew we were in for a good time. Actually, it wasn't all that bad for me because I just had to watch Mickey Mouse with a three year old. To be honest, I found the plot a little cliched. Also, if Mickey doesn't know what tool to use maybe he shouldn't be the leader of their little group. Also, Goofy is creepy. I think he may be a crude racial stereotype too.

But enough with that, let's get back to dinner which I'm sure Stacey had a great time helping with. As she was trying to not lose her sanity helping with the stress-inducing preparations, she discovered that the turkey was not cooked all the way through. There was visible blood in it and the leg would not pop off like it was supposed to. After they got done carving it, it was laying in a pool of blood in the bowl. I am no health expert but I don't think Sushi Turkey is good for you. Stacey warned me not to eat it, but unfortunately, there was no way to tell the rest of the group without hurting the cook's feelings and being cast into her personal outer darkness. If it's any consolation, we did feel bad as we watched them eat it. I'm sure we would have heard about it if someone died so I think we are in the clear.

Quote of the Day: Luc Sante

"I once felt a certain anxiety about my book-lined living room -- it was too much, no? It seemed to belong in the same category as the display of framed degrees in prominent places. Books do furnish a room -- in Anthony Powell's titular phrase -- but that room would be the library, equipped with 14-foot built-ins with a rolling ladder, and I've never had one of those. I had to consider which impulse was the stronger: the wish to let the world admire my complete collection of the works of Raymond Roussel, or the wish not to appear a bore. Having books crowd every inch of wall space in the room in which I entertained imposed a certain burden on the conversation, as if dead authors were leaning in, contributing dry, derisive chuckles."

I think I want a Kindle just so people can stop laughing at me.

Quote of the Day: G.K. Chesterton

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.”

I am too busy trying not to freak out about losing my wedding ring today to post anything of substance. (Man, we tore this office apart.) To be honest, I am not sure I am doing too good a job of not freaking out either. Not even the free Diet Mountain Dew I won helped any.

Quote of the Day: CS Lewis

"We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst."

As you can see, the weather has put me in a bit of a foul mood, foul enough to use a CS Lewis quote like everybody else does.

One of my big complaints about the rain is that nobody in Seattle knows how to drive in it. For instance, why is my bus consistently late when it's raining? I mean, if you can't figure out how to drive in the rain maybe being a Seattle Metro bus driver just isn't your calling. I still laugh when I think back to the guy I ran across a long time ago when I was still putting focus group studies together. He called up and told me he was cancelling for that night because of the weather. I asked him why he signed up for a focus group in November in the first place if he was scared of a little rain because it frequently rains that time of year. He said he didn't know it was going to rain when he signed up for it. Guess where he worked? NOAA. (The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Well, Sunday morning, when I went to go run a dog-feeding errand before church I learned that I am no better than anybody else. My car was stuck in the mud because I parked in a bad place against my better judgment and the judgment of my better half. Very stuck. The main problem was that my car kept trying to slide into the Escalade right next to my car every time I went forward. I was not only worried about the financial hit I would take if I hit the other vehicle but also about the literal hit the owner would put on my life if I did so because the Escalade was owned by my drug dealer neighbor. So anyway, I had to wait for him to leave and had to ride to church in Stacey's car for the first time ever. That's it. End of story. Blame the rain if you think it's boring.

Quote of the Day: Anthony Storr

"In Our Western culture, though not in all cultures, man seems so constituted that he can never rest upon his laurels. The moment he has achieved something, be it a position in the world, marriage and a family, a successful piece of research, a new book, painting, or musical composition, he is driven to question its value and look for something more. If problems are not there, he will invent them. Man seems to be a problem-seeking as well as a problem-solving animal. We are programmed to change, develop, and meet new challenges until we die. We are compelled to be perpetual travellers. If we travel hopefully, that is as much as we ought to expect. If we do not, we become depressed. The idea that we can ever arrive at a stable state in which life's problems are settles is an illusion. The only "final solution" is death."

Luckily, I am pretty busy today.

Today the woman who owns the little store downstairs told me I was crazy because she saw me walking down the street, reading a book, listening to music, and sending an email - all at the same time. (She left out my singing along.) She told me lots of things this morning.

She told me a story about a woman who had been begging for a cup of coffee in front of her store all day yesterday. She would tell people she just needed enough money for a cup of coffee; and once she got the money for a cup she would walk into Tully's, get a free cup of ice, and go right back to panhandling. My friend was pretty sure she was using the money to buy drugs. I asked her what she did about it.

She said, "Nothing because I was too scared."
"Why?"
"She was, you know..."
"What?"
"Black," she whispered.
"I thought she was going to knife me or have me jumped."
"Well, we certainly can't have that."


In other news, I have now lost 170 pounds in the past 13 months and that's including all those crepes in Paris.

Quote of the Day: Clive James

"Fiction is life with the dull bits left out."

I will be brief today for that very reason. I just wanted to touch on one thing I forgot to yesterday.

Our accommodations in Paris were "interesting." There are several Tim Hotels in Paris. One is a three star hotel located in Montparnasse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montparnasse) and one is a two-star located in Pigalle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigalle). I was quoted on the Montparnasse hotel which seemed like a good choice because it was right by a lot of sites we wanted to see.

Now based on the pictures, which one do you think we ended up actually being booked at? That's right, the one in Pigalle. In fact, you can see the very edge of our hotel touching the left side of the Sexodrome in that picture. On the other side, was a sex shop. We were in the famous red light district of Paris. You know, the one with the Moulin Rouge? It was pretty much like the worst parts of Aurora Avenue in Seattle condensed down into ten blocks. It was a very dangerous district to be using the pay phone in the middle of the night in, at least according to the woman at Western Union who gave us our money.

I can say a few positive things about our hotel. Our room may have been too small to open two suitcases at the same time but at least it was clean and when we complained about the two twin beds on our honeymoon they fixed the problem by zipping the beds together. They even had a free continental breakfast that consisted of croissants and warm milk and a rude French women and her son making fun of us for eating like the hungry Americans we were.


PS
I really did like Paris. In fact, I liked it so much we missed our flight out we were having such a good time. Or maybe it was because NW Airlines has a lot to learn about customer service. In all seriousness, I can't wait to go back.

Quote of the Day: Ernest Hemingway

“Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you, you have only to spend a little money.”

We learned the hard way just how forbidding and cold France can be when you have no money by spending our first twenty-four hours there without a Euro to our name. It wasn't that we had no money, it was just that it was all tied up safely in Bank of America with the operative word in that sentence being America. I just assumed we'd be able to get cash out of an ATM with our Discover Cards like we'd been doing in London.

I began to suspect that my plan was flawed when the ATM inside the chunnel station on the English side said it couldn't read my Discover Card or my ATM card. I tried to ignore the nagging feeling of anxiety on the ride over but that didn't make the problem go away in Paris. We didn't panic at first when the ATM's all said the same thing because we still had my Mastercard that I never used (Stacey's ATM card had accidentally been left at home during the wedding confusion.). I had to call Citibank because I couldn't remember my pin and they told me all they could do was send me to the automated system that told me I would receive my pin in the mail in 7-10 days, which by the way, I am still waiting for. As soon as we knew we were screwed, we cashed in all the British Pounds we had for 27 Euros which turned out just to be enough to pay the cab fare to our already paid for hotel. Thank you, completely honest cabbies, for not taking advantage of us.

That night, after having an old Cliff bar for my official first meal in France, I called Bank of America and was told to just go to a PNB ATM which I did several times the next day only to discover that old familiar message telling me my transaction could not be processed (also the title of my autobiography). We hungrily walked for five hours straight trying to get cash to no avail. When I got home I would later learn that BOA had left several messages on my cell phone telling me my card would be suspended on suspicion of fraud until I called them. (I guess I have a limit that I can only try to pull out 300 dollars at a time, that's dollars not Euros.) Too bad my cell phone was turned off the whole time.

Finally, we broke down and called Stacey's parents so I could tell them that after five days of marriage I was not longer able to support their daughter. Luckily, they were more than happy to wire us what we needed. So after three trips to Western Union because of various snafus, we were well on our way in Paris to be snubbed by for not speaking French instead of for being bums. (I am withholding one vital fact for dramatic effect. We did get my card to work at a little store sometime in the early evening where we bought such American comfort food as sandwiches, Diet Coke, an Oreos.)

So that is the story of how we arrived in Paris Friday night with no money and went to bed Saturday night with enough Euros in our pockets to eat our way out of Paris.


Epilogue

The first two things I did when I got home was send a check to my in-laws and open an account at BECU.

Quote of the Day: Samuel Johnson

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life."

(Editors note: I didn't have much time to proofread this so please forgive me for any imperfections.)


London was the first city we stopped at on our honeymoon. We mostly just saw the historical sites that one is supposed to see over there like Buckingham Palace, The London Tower, and Westminster Abbey just to name a few which I understand some people call the geek tour.


To make it even geekier, We accidentally found the writer Samuel Johnson's house which turned out to be a pleasant surprise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GoughSquare-No.17.jpg. Unfortunately, spending time in this room http://www.drjohnsonshouse.org/picture.htm did not make me a great writer like the good doctor; although on the plus side, it also didn't make me any more OCD or depressive than I already am.


We also spent one day in Stratford-Upon-Avon which is a nice quiet little English village that happens to house Shakespeare's birthplace. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Shakespeare
As I wandered the town, I pondered one very important question: How tired do you think schoolchildren get of hearing about Shakespeare? I bet it sucks to have your parents always comparing you to him.


Overall, England was very nice. I really enjoyed seeing my old friend Heath as well who bought us an English breakfast for a wedding present.


There was one little incident I should make mention of for your edification. Maybe you can learn from something from the time I almost kicked off a city bus for reasons that still remain unknown to me. Although, I guess I must admit that my smart mouth had a little something to do with it towards the end.

We had been riding the bus all day so I was pretty certain I'd gotten the hang of it by my fifth ride so imagine my surprise when the bus driver started yelling at me right after I flashed my pass. "What is your problem, my friend?"
"What?" I asked very politely because I was very concerned about being perceived as your stereotypical ugly American.
"What is your problem?" he said again with a sigh of exasperation before he proceeded to glare at me like he was trying to bore a hole through my head with his eyes.
"What is your problem, my friend?" I said back because I didn't care how I looked anymore. I was mad enough to bite my thumb at him (Yes, that is a Shakespeare reference.) because one thing that really sets me off is people yelling at me. My mom can testify to all the times I yelled at authority figures back in high school. Turns out in a lot of ways I am still an angsty sixteen- year-old boy at heart.
"I need to see your pass."
"Is this good enough?" I said and stuck my pass up to the glass partition protecting the bus driver.
"You tell me?"
"Seriously, dude, what is your problem?"
"Go sit down."
I just stood there and glared at him because nobody was going to tell me what to do until Stacey came back and told me to sit down thus thoroughly disproving that theorem.

Afterwards, we figured we were safe after we decided from then on to always travel with our passports in case I got us into trouble for mouthing off in a foreign country which Stacey was determined not to let me do anyway.

So guess who we saw the next night on the very same bus? My nemesis and I pretended not to recognize each other and I was lucky this time because he only drove a couple blocks until it was time to switch drivers at which point he proceeded to become a passenger and kick an elderly Indian man off the bus. We don't really know why because we only turned around when we heard someone say, "Who the hell are you? I have a ticket?" The Bus Nazi, as we have affectionately named him, argued with the Indian man until he finally won by pointing to the door and saying, "Please exit," enough times that the man had no choice but to take his advice.

So it turns out the guy was just a jerk and had nothing personal against me or my Americanness which is actually kind of a blow to the old ego.

Quote of the Day: Andrew Marvell

"But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near."

Did you miss me?

That's right, people, I am back and committed as ever to providing you with the superior blogging you've come to expect and demand. I have been really pressed for time over the past month which is why I chose that line from Andrew Marvell's poem *"To His Coy Mistress" as the quote of the day. The poems pretty funny because it's really just a fancy pick-up line. "Come back to my place, baby, before we're both dead."

So a lot has happened to me over the past month. I got married, went to Europe, ate lots of crepes, almost got kicked off a city bus in London, learned that the French are stereotyped as rude for the very same reason the English are stereotyped as poor cooks - because they are, bummed money from my in-laws after a week of marriage so I could eat something other than Cliff Bars in Paris, stayed next to the Sexodrome in Paris where I became an expert on the Red Light District - thanks to my stupid travel agent not knowing there are several TimHotels there, saw a drug-bust, went to a Pixies concert, realized that the differences between Weezer and myself are irreconcilable, got told that my religion makes me a good employee, won the Inside Sales Rep of the Year Award, bought a popcorn popper, traveled to Boston for work, realized I am in love with old churches and cemeteries, discovered that such a wondrous thing as Diet Sunkist exists, decided that I am lusting after a kindle, and just generally smashed my orderly routine.

I think that's enough for today. Don't worry, I plan on fleshing out the interesting parts of the above run-on sentence over the next week. So put the word out on the street that your humble correspondent is back.





*
TO HIS COY MISTRESS

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.