Wednesday, November 26, 2008

On Green Oyster Crackers

I love to eat carrots right out of the warm dirt, rinsed lightly under the garden hose. I've eaten apples plucked straight off the tree in the orchard behind my Granny's, and enjoyed 15-minute freshly-deceased trout, fried in butter, eaten with my face in the direct sunlight. And don't even get me started on the joys of tiny wild raspberries straight off the bushes on the way back to the cottage from Teeples Campground on an afternoon in late July. I'll say it clearly: I'm a gustatory fan of immediate food, which conveniently plants me (for once!) in the politically-correct green camp of "eat local."

So you can image what a delightful afternoon I had earlier this week. I found myself at the elbow of a dear friend, perched at a makeshift picnic table outside an un-cutesified roadside oyster bar in Tamales Bay on Hwy 1, chowing down on a plate of Hog Island beauties. The picnic table faced the bay and the very oyster beds from which my lunch in the quiet late afternoon sunshine had been hauled mere hours earlier. It was all "eat local" bliss and mindless digestion until I zeroed in on the empty cellophane oyster cracker package I was rolling between my fingers. "Made in Vermont," the printing on the packet declared.

Excuse me?

The exquisite but inexpensive menu items we paid for came from within eye-shot, but the freebie simple carbohydrates had to be flown in from the opposite coast? The crackers aren't even on the menu! You're simply welcome to take as many packets as you can stuff into your face with lunch and your purse for the ride home (not that I would do that... I'm just saying....).

All of a sudden, the carbon footprint of our lunch took an exponential leap forward. Not to mention: where did the cellophane come from? Did they ship it in from Minnesota, get the printing done in Taiwan, fly the packets to Vermont so they could pack them with half an ounce worth of little balls of lightly baked flour, water, and salt, and then ship them back in large boxes to California?

I have since checked both the Kraft Premium Saltines that, with ginger ale, saw us through a nasty stomach bug last week, and then again at Whole Foods today with a whole box of oyster crackers. Wanna guess the seat of their creation? What, you're giving up already? All right, then: East Hanover, NY, and "Olde Cape Cod," respectively.

I don't care what the papers say. There IS an East Coast oyster cracker cartel, and I'm going to write letters to every editor I can think of until I get to the bottom of this outrage. Let's give the bakers of Tamales Bay, and 50 miles in all directions, the freedom they deserve to schlep their confections of flour and water in safety and with impunity. Plus, let's spare the earth the indignity of airplane pollutants pooped out across the globe. We, The People, want to enjoy local oyster crackers with our local oysters!

I feel a movement coming on.

Wait... maybe it's just the oysters.

Friday, November 14, 2008

On Games

There are two kinds of games that people can play. The settings can vary from eight bodies around the farmhouse table to two strangers at 35,000 feet, 11 hours into a 17-hour flight. In both cases, what makes the activity a “game” is that it involves variables. If there wasn’t some element that injected uncertainty into the game, then it wouldn’t be a game. It would be completely predictable: the red piece would always win and the blue piece would always lose.

But that’s not how games work. It is the unknown element of who will come out ahead this time that means the difference between a game and, say, a meeting with a timeshare “consultant.” In a game, the outcome is unknown at the outset. With the timeshare carny, the outcome is certain to end, every time, in one of two specific outcomes. You either sign up for the worst real estate investment of your life, or you walk away wondering how you got suckered into wasting an entire afternoon with an obnoxious schlepper of bad deals when you could have been diving with the pretty fishies or getting quietly gerschnickered under an umbrella on the beach. But I digress....

In the world of legitimate games, there are wide ranges of sophistication. And here (finally) is the thesis of this particular rant: it's the source of variables involved that separate the sophistication level of games.

In some games, usually the farmhouse-after-supper variety, it's the roll of the dice or the random deal of cards that mixes up the outcomes (that, plus the age of the players and if/how much moonshine has been consumed). In others, the variables involve two human minds learning first what the rules of engagement are, and then discovering the millions of ways you can playfully break them, just because it's fun and you can.

I like both.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Low in Fat, High in Good For You

In a post-new-job-Week-5 stupor this past weekend, I found myself chowing down on a new entry into the highly innovative food 'n 'beverage offering world: Trader Joe's "Chocolate Decadence." And I quothe:

"Looking for a new perspective on cereal? [Yes, yes... we're ALL looking for change.] Our Chocolate Decadence offers that and a whole lot more. Like 23 grams of whole grain per blah, blah, blah... But wait! there's chocolate!... rolled oats, blah.... and fortifying like granola [pardon?!].... When? Anytime. Enjoy with fresh, chilled milk .... or sprinkle over ice cream for an unforgettable (really, it's sublime) dessert."

All this for only 8 grams of fat per serving, with no nasty trans-fat globules whatsoever.

In a week filled with a neighbor's death, a young friend's breast cancer discovery, new job anxiety, stock market plunges/falls/drops/crashes (fill in your own favorite verb from all the carefully worded headlines), mainstream media who want to know "why VP candidates use the words they did and what they mean and why they put them together in the order they did," and corporate-wear pants that STILL don't fit, who wouldn't be ready for a new perspective on cereal?

Marketing cynicism be darned! This cereal is low in fat, and high in "Good for you, Trader Joe's!"

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Starting a New Job

Tomorrow is the start of a new era/resume line item/set of LinkedIn contacts. I can't find my Bewitched lunch box. And I'm not sure I have enough "fat" corporate clothes in my closet to last a whole week. (Just off three weeks of travel, food, wine, laughter, laziness, and every friggin' french fry I felt like eating, dammit). But I'm jazzed about the work and the people and the new scenery at Autodesk.

The best part? I have my green card, and that's all the intake people need. 'Nough said: your pedigree has been vetted, reviewed, signed, sealed, and approved. Bon. You are now free to roam the company. 

Hallelujah!!!!

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

On Affectations

I just spent an hour waking up over coffee at an outside table at Delaney's on Denman St., Vancouver, British Columbia, Home and Native Land. Had I chosen my seat better, it would have been a delightful, quiet slide into a soft day. As it was, I spent the whole time struggling to read my blessed and incredibly informative Globe and Mail. My difficulty arose in that I was simultaneously resisting the impulse to saunter back to the two gay men chatting at the table behind me and giving one a brisk slap in the chops.

This impulse might cause you to pose two questions, so let me jump on those up front.

1. How did I know they were gay? Because they spent a large chunk of their conversation discussing a mutual third party and how odd it was that while he looked really good in the buff and was great in the sack, for some reason neither could quite get their arms around (sorry), he didn't look so hot in his clothes. Should they stage a "What Not To Wear" style intervention? This, methinks, was a fairly crisp indication on which side of the teeter-tooter they bounce.

2. Why did I want to slap the one (let's call him "Frank")? Good question, since Frank seemed like a nice enough fellow, had civil coffee house table manners, wasn't screaming into his cell phone, etc. And let me state up front that I had zero issue with Frank's sexual orientation. Aside from the fact that it's none of my concern, even if I did have issues, a) I would have had no business sitting in a coffee shop in this particular section of town, and b) I would have wanted to give them both a good cuff upside the head.

No, the source of my irritation was Frank's outrageous "gay" lisp. Call me an uninformed boor, but I just don't believe that people are born with that kind of speech impediment. It's a "nurtured" as opposed to "natured" feature, it's dumb, and it just grinds my gears big time. So, when one is forced* to overhear two men dishing a third on the cut of his clothed jib and one of them insists on delivering the word "slacks" with way over-the-top hissy silibants, well, who can blame a girl for an itchy palm?

And just in case you are ready to draw and quarter me for being a homophobic poop-head, I feel exactly the same way about Orange County bobble-heads who use such thick coats of lip gloss that they daren't allow their top lips to contact their bottom lips while speaking. This leads to an affected open-mouth "I'm so bored with this whole conversation that I can barely keep my lips moving" delivery, which is almost always exacerbated by delivering every thought in the form of an oddly-gravelly toned question, as though life were just one continuous round of Jeopardy. "So, I was at the counter of Tiffany's? when my chihuahua Pinky? did a doo-doo in my new Kate Spade handbag? And, like, it was so gross? omigahwd...."

In this same category fall teen-age boys who insist on grunting for three or four years before they remember to use their words, seven-year old girls who baby talk only to their Daddies, and politicians who respond to every question with a "Oh, you can't throw me off with that one" kind of inside-track chuckle. I just want to slap 'em and slap 'em good.

Frank was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all.

*Yeah, I could have moved, but then what would I have blogged about today?

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Get Your Fingers ON

Get Your Fingers ON The Screen!

After spending years--okay... decades--developing a healthy aversion to finger prints on computer screens, I find myself writing this post by touching the shiny surface of my new iPhone and sliding my index finger back and forth across an interactive picture of a qwerty
keyboard. How slick is that?

It wasn't too long ago that this kind of technology debuted in email chains in a video file of a "touch table" demo. The table top was actually a huge screen that changed as if by magic in sweeping fluid motions as the demoer's fingers flew from corner to corner of the table.It was mesmerizing to watch and inconceivable to think that anything like that would be in my own hands in time for me to actually learn how to use it. Yet here I sit, making fingerprint tracks willingly as I play with "Wordpad," one of hundreds of applications available for the my new 3G iPhone. In fact, everything in my life with a screen now is vulnerable to the same treatment: I routinely attempt to poke my camera to life via the LCD display, and decide my blackberry must be broken when I can't initiate a call by touching the screen icon. The disturbing aspect of the whole thing is that a smudged screen still really bugs me.

Yes, it's a phone and internet connection that also now houses my entire music collection, address book, calendar, and the daily combined insights of every major and local newspaper in the world. And yes, Third Child was an integral member of the design team at Apple who created the charger connection (in spite of being ridiculously proud of him, we're still gonna have a chat about battery life). And yes, it may yet prove to have a meaningful business application someday. Meanwhile, this is the closest toy so far to the jetpack and/or hover car I always wanted for Christmas.
But, like everything else in life, nothing is perfect. Since the device lacks the fundamental word processing ability to cut and paste, my next trick will be to figure out how to post this puppy from here.
Stand by...

Monday, February 18, 2008

The Joy of Scrabble


I had the privilege of having a number of cracker jack Scrabble players in residence over the Christmas holidays. As a result, I learned a new rule and once again became fixated on one of the best games for linguaphiles, ever.

The new rule, introduced by Second Champion of the Universe (my universe, that is), Emily Blue, is thus:

"A proper play uses any number of the player's tiles to form a single continuous word ("main word") on the board, reading either left-to-right or top-to-bottom. The main word must either use the letters of one or more previously played words, or else have at least one of its tiles horizontally or vertically adjacent to an already played word. If words other than the main word are newly formed by the play, they are scored as well, and are subject to the same criteria for acceptability."

I had been leaving that option on the table for years. And in true Emily-Vs.-Her-Mother style, we argued, sorta graciously, for fifteen minutes until one of us (me) insisted on actually consulting the rules in the box. And, dammit... she was right!

I hate being wrong.

Just ask any family member... proving you're right in an argument with me isn't always worth the trouble. I also hate that about me. The good news is, that pretty much sums up what I hate. Except for cooked turnips and being cold.

But being wrong and learning something about the world's best word game is okay. I sucked it up and carried on. And cleaned up the board, I might add. But Emily still rocks. She just rocks a teeny bit less than me, in Scrabble.

For those of you who are interested, I don't play by the Scrabble dictionary. Not that I have anything against real words that real people never use. It's just that it feels way less fun to get your knickers in a twist about using those final vowels in the end game. If I can't find a word I would write here tomorrow, I will concede "done" and let the counting begin.

And maybe, it would be a better world if we just did away with the counting altogether. Could we play merely for the fun of building puzzles of words together, in front of the fireplace with a nice Syrah in hand?

BTW: two tiles were left un-played in the making of this non-scored game. First two in the comments section to correctly identify said tiles wins....

Nothing. But the satisfaction of being first. (And having really good eyes, still.) I put a ridiculous amount of energy into the everyday quest of being first, and/or right. So here's your chance...

Saturday, February 16, 2008

On The Gift of Music

I got a new guitar today.

It was fifth in a list of contenders, but from the moment the first chord was struck, there were no more contenders. How can a few small pieces of wood and glue, steel and nylon, be responsible for such a magical and memorable connection?

I'm gonna learn to work with this crafted thing of wonder. I suspect that in the long dance of harmony and rhythm, it will lead and I will follow. And I am okay with that.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

A Word on Dictionaries

1 : a reference source in print or electronic form containing words usually alphabetically arranged along with information about their forms, pronunciations, functions, etymologies, meanings, and syntactical and idiomatic uses.

You'd think a dictionary would be a bit more precise, wouldn't you? For instance, who chooses the words, and how are they selected? And thus, I introduce the purpose of today's posting.

I'm hoping this will assist any of my 11 readers (bless you!) who may have found yourself in the heat of a dinner table "discussion" on spelling, usage, or even the right of a collection of letters to exist as a word at all that has escalated to the point where Condoleezza Rice is on her way in Air Force One Person At A Time, And Speak Nicely! These conversations always seem to end up in someone (usually the dude who owns the book) raising hairy eyebrows and declaring archly, "Well! We'll just look that up in THE DICTIONARY!

News flash: Even the venerated Oxford English Dictionary is just an opinionated snapshot of the state of the language at the time it was published. In fact, because writing a new hard-copy dictionary is such a huge and time-consuming undertaking, by the time a new one hits the shelves, it's already out of date. Dictionaries are time-constrained "consensus" documents: they count and report the most commonly used spelling and usage conventions. If the lexicographers can locate roughly 15 citations of any word in published material, that word becomes eligible for inclusion in the dictionary. And words that initially show up with the disdainful "slang" tag in brackets eventually lose the linguistic smudge on the nose and become respectable.

Not that it's going to put the "fun" back in to any seriously dys-fun-ctional families or rescue the weaker linguistic arm wrestlers among us from serious noodle-lashings over the dinner table, but take it from me for what it's worth: if you are actually "right" in the argument over whether or not "irregardless" is a word (as DUMB a word as it might be, right up there with "inflammable"), temper your enthusiasm and put down the noodles. You are only correct, if at all, for as long as it takes the English-speaking culture around you to decide otherwise.

"Crunk," anyone, for dessert?

In Praise of the English Language: Part One

One of my favorite authors of all time is Bill Bryson. I first met Bill through his wonderful book "The Mother Tongue: English, and How It Got That Way." It is an enlightening and often hilarious romp through the journey of English, but most of all, it's a love song for language. It's long overdue, but thought I'd hum a few bars myself over the next couple of posts. And while I'll never write as cleverly (and with the same zeal for research either: I'm terribly lazy) as Bill, this blog is free and you have to pay $11.20 to buy Bill new.

English is robust, incredibly intricate, unpredictable yet insufferably demanding, and totally rebellious. Can you name even ONE spelling rule that doesn't have at least one exception, if not three or more? It produces hot-blooded grammar mavens who will, at the merest hint of confusion over a "who" versus "whom" construction, whip her copy of Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" under your nose so fast you could skip shaving the next day.

However, there is a softer, fluid, egalitarian side to this language that endears it to me even more than its usage and spelling eccentricities appeal to my own inner grammar maven. (And yes, she's there lurking in the shadows, waiting to pounce and spank the moment I accidentally write "two" instead of "too" in an email.) It is the enthusiastically responsive, dynamic nature of the language that I cherish. The shape and flavor of it flows like a tide, filling in empty tidal pools in unpredictable washes, while the next wave sees it stripping clean an entire shoreline of untidy linguistic flotsam and cigarette butts, leaving a pristine slate of "write your message here" shimmering sand.

If it were a country, it would take every UN honor for harboring all who sought a toe-hold on her shores: technology adoptees, commercial branding opportunists, whisper-thin refugees from have-not languages, neologisms, culturally-specific usages, air traffic control phrases, hilarious deep-Texas country music lyrics.... Come on in, all y'all.

I love how it refuses to be "owned" by any one nation. It makes itself comfortably native the moment it hits a new continent. (And if you want living proof that every tribe on the planet handles it uniquely in every aspect from spelling to pronunciation to usage to how they exclaim derision or emphasize a point, just come and hang out in any break room in a high tech company in Silicon Valley.)

Stay tuned: I'm gonna rant about dictionaries and spelling irritations soon. I just wanted to plant my emotional flag on this particular hill before I got too snarky about the details. And I can't find my copy of "The Mother Tongue," so if I loaned it to you, will you please give it back?

Fancier Science Deficient: Neither Ancient Societal Species Has Sufficient Policies

English is a ridiculous language.

Upon even the most cursory inspection, the grammar, spelling, and usage rules appear only to exist so that the exceptions have something to lean against.

The "science" of the language, as intricate and exhaustive as it represents itself to be in tomes such a Fowler's Modern English Usage or the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, is in reality relegated to the status of the movies at The Oscars: mere gray backdrop for the real action of who shows up wearing whom, on whose arm, attending which stunning post smile-when-you-don't-mean-it party.

Yes, rules are rules, except when they aren't, as in most of English spelling.

Thus the reality of an unfortunate native-tongue speaker of a straight-up, WYSIWYG language such as German or Latin, where the rules are reliable and sturdy on their little brown legs, and leaning is discouraged as slothful. Learning English sucks. And there's a statement you can take to the bank.

Take the title of this post. Aside from the word "has" (and were I less lazy, I'm sure I could have come up with a substitute that would have further proved my point), every word is both perfectly spelled, and yet breaks The Rule "I before E, except after C."

And that's just the Coles/Cliff notes version of the rule. The full version is, "I before E, except after C, or when sounding as "A" as in "neighbour" or "weigh." And even within that expanded rule, one encounters the Canadian versus American spelling contoversy of "'u,' versus 'no u.'" And even at THAT, one encounters the "What is the correct way to indicate a quotation within a quotation?" question.

Shit.

It's enough to make both a linguiphile and an ESL struggler take up drinking cheap liquor. No wonder you can never find a seat at a bar these days.


All I can say is, English is weird. And WONDERFUL!

Monday, February 4, 2008

The Problem With Fun

The problem with having fun is that moment you become conscious you're having some, your focus shifts, the situation has changed and the delight you initially experienced threatens to slip away. So you work hard at forgetting you noticed you were having fun, and soon all that's left is the realization that you still haven't done the dishes.

And this is just one more reason why it would be good to be a sea otter. All play and/or pro-creative activity, delicious mussel snacks, single point of focus... and no dishes.


Sunday, February 3, 2008

Well, That Was A No-Brainer

The following are a few things you'll want to know about having an inter-cannicular acoustic neuroma removed via the middle-fossa approach by Dr. Jackler at the Stanford University Medical Center.

  1. First, to grow one in the first place means you're very, very special. We know this because of Denmark. The Danes, with their hyper-socialized, federal, conservative "we'll just wait and see how this develops on its own" medical system, keep some the world's most accurate data on almost everything medical. Of course, the findings are unique to a people who are really tall, blond, and have an unaccountable fondness for the cold, dark and herring, so the data could be skewed. Take your chances: according to the Danes, there are only 10-13 cases per million in the general population. So if you get one, forget the lottery. You already had your "I feel special" moment.
  2. Second, if you are blessed enough to have Dr. Jackler (or for our Canadian friends, Dr. Agrawal, Jackler's resident but soon to be one of nine surgeons in Canada who do this kinda gig, operating (HA!) out of London, Ontario) do the surgery, you're, well, blessed. He wrote the textbook (literally) to which all the other experts refer. He is a warm, personable, and accessible surgical genius. In case you've ever looked, you'll know these folk are very, very difficult to find in this life. Again, you're special. NO LOTTERY FOR YOU!!
  3. You don't have to have your entire head shaved. Just a small Flash Gordon reverse-seven on the one side does it. We tried to advocate for some funky crop circle approach, but, well, they're sticky about the art. Whatever....
  4. The volunteer ladies in the pink smocks in the family waiting room are amazing: they find out quickly who you are, who you're waiting on in surgery, who the doctor is, and how you like your coffee. If you have to leave the area for a even moment or two, they know your cell number and how to reach you in case the surgeon wants to talk to you. They are the twilight-zone angels and they provide a great service to people who really, really need it. I want to be one when I grow old.
  5. If you go into shock in ICU an hour out of your surgery, the nurses there put Johnny-on-the-spot to shame. In the spirit of full disclosure reporting, when the blood pressure hit 62 over 99, I just closed my eyes, backed into the closest wall and prayed. However, the nursing staff futzed with the blood pressure monitor/machine, mucked with another machine this field reporter wasn't able to identify, and someone else rubbed his arm, saying "Come on... come ON... COME ON BACK HERE.... Five minutes later and all was calm. I doubt anyone else will remember it, but this was the WORST moment for me. Thank you, God, for the nurses in Stanford's surgical ICU.
  6. Retaining hearing in the affected side of your head is a blessing. We still aren't totally certain how that will work out, since swelling is a big cloaking issue, and the swelling hasn't subsided yet. However, as of today, Patient X is reporting that he is hearing "something" on his left side. Phew....
  7. Cutting the vestibular nerves on any side of one's head is bound to affect one's balance. (DOH!) The best path to rebuilding said nerves is walking. Daily. Or twice daily. Ergo, God is good: I always wanted a puppy, and now I have one.
So, if you are planning a middle-fossa approach to removing an inter-cannicular neuroma, Stanford University Medical Center with Dr. Jackler is a no-brainer.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Pre-Clearance, Edmonton Style

So, we're sitting in the Edmonton International Airport Immigration Pre-Clearance "Bad Room," eh? We've handed over the stack 'o docs to be scrutinized (Employment Authorization Document card, Advance Travel Parole document, I-485 Application Receipt and new I-94 application) to a Man in a blue suit and now we're parked in the "holding room." It occurs to me that there's nothing like owning a document with the word "parole" on it and being in a windowless room with nervous cell mates to convince one that the INS operates on the principle of "guilty until proven innocent." And how is it even possible to construct a room that feels like it's 50 years old, lovingly preserved with original ick-yellow vinyl furniture, in a terminal that's only five years old?

Anyway, there we sit, trading airborne stress contaigens with one obviously distraught big-boned Canadian woman of Eastern European heritage and her cowering spouse. They're holding a muted yet ferocious conversation in rapid-fire staccato shots of Slavic vitriol. While I don't understand a single actual word, the intent is obviously something to the tune of "I TOLD you to take the friggin' document off the kitchen counter. It was RIGHT THERE, under your wallet and keys, for crying out loud! My mother was right about you...."

Next to the happy couple sits Nervous Asia-Pac Dude, hugging a very bulgy backpack close to his chest, sweating impressively. Besides us, the remaining residents are three ball-cap/baggy jeans/skater shoes totin' baby oil-field engineer types who have been denied their TN visas, despite the previous assurance of their immigration lawyer that they would breeze through.

Discussing their situation in loud, above-the-roar-of-a-diesel tones, the red-haired kid with the wild flush in his cheeks explains to his buddies, "The officer says we've got the wrong visa applications." (Translated here for a multi-national reading audience. What is actually said sounds more like "He sehs we goht the wrohng veesa ahhplehcayshun, ahn now they want aboat 900 bucks fohr a differnt one, eh?") Poor sods. Canadians grow up in a world where the rules, generally speaking, are the rules, and everybody has equal access to them. Plus, we keep them pretty simple since they always have to translated into both official languages. Government forms and processes tend to be fairly algebraic: If A=B, and B=C, then A=C. For example, if the rules say people who pay their taxes on time stay out of jail, and I pay my taxes on time, then I get to keep my rainy-day bond money. (Or maybe that's just my interpretation of it, but you get the gist.)

In any case, we have come to expect a high-level of predictability in government-related, rule-driven situations. My experience, however, is that the US immigration process has the all the orderly flow and predictability of the Pamplona Bull Run. And at times, I have felt exactly like one of those skinny Spanish dudes in the white outfits and red bandanas, hoofing it at max warp down a narrow cobblestone street with my heart pounding painfully and my adrenal glands set to full flow. I've got a huge backlog of other runners blocking the path in front of me. Directly behind me thunders a herd of easily-excitable, ridiculously powerful, Mensa rejects with pointy weapons that can make a real dent in your, um, day. (This, by the way, is the actual origin of the question, "What was I thinking?!") So as a compassionate human being, it's painful to watch the baby-engineers realize just what kind of a race they signed up for.

I have to leave them to their fate. We get called to the desk and the nice Man hands over the stamped paperwork. "Sorry for the delay," he says. "Your status is being adjusted."

If you've been tracking my Adventures in Immigration thus far, you will know by now that the cardinal rule for getting through the Bad Room is that under no circumstances do you volunteer ANYTHING, no matter how true or innocent, other than the short answer to a direct question. No questions. No quips. No polite inquiries into the general health and well-being of anyone. Just shut-the-fudge-up until forced to do otherwise. This explains why the whole process, in addition to being apparently completely arbitrary, with inexplicable rules and regulations applied randomly from port to port, and even from officer to officer, has been so difficult for me. Silence: good. Inane babble: bad. Rules? What rules?

Where was I?

Ah yes... the moment the officer casually announces, "Your status is being adjusted." Pardon?! Studiously avoiding an overt exchange of glances, we follow rule #1 and simply accept the stamped paperwork with a "thank you, sir." Then off we scuttle, back out to the sweetness of under-circulated but "free to go to the bathroom or use your cell phone if you want" regular airport air.

Once through security, we are free to ruminate on just what the Man meant. What had he seen on his computer screen? Was there current and actual movement afoot? Would we come home to the long-awaited "Congratulations, and welcome, Alien!" letter in our mailbox? Or was he just confirming that yes, indeed, our green card application was in the final "adjustment of status" phase, therefore our docs were valid, and he could, without fear of reprisal, let us back to the home of our mortgage, jobs, cat, son and laundry left unfolded?

No letter, yet. But stay tuned here: you'll be among the first to know when we're finished running through, er, with the bull.

Monday, January 14, 2008

I Smell Dirt

It's at times like this that a linguaphile truly appreciates a pure subject/verb/object combo. To be clear: I don't smell dirty. (And we won't even BEGIN to go where the adverbial sense of that sentence might take us. This is a family site, after all.) But I do love the whiff of fresh dirt. It has the olfactoral bliss of the baby lime-green of new grass. From my memory bank, it's still cool under your hands should you decide to perform the planet's best-EVER hand stand for the neighborhood riff-raff. And for me tonight, it also pulled from the air the reassuring honks of the neighborhood moms from 30 years ago, calling "Time for your ba-aaath... get in here, quick! I called you twice already, and the street lights are ON!"

THE REAL START OF MY STORY:
We spent the week-end in Edmonton, Alberta, celebrating my mother-in-law's 90th birthday. In January, the "Gateway to the North" is usually knicker-frostin', nose-hair freezin,' "I forget where I put my fingers" chillin' COLD this time of the year. True, this story would have been much better if I could have regaled you with accounts of squeaky snow under frozen-square tires, but alas.... At -10C, it was a mild week-end. The natives didn't even bother with gloves. I did, but since a two-year old left the party Saturday night without even his boots or coat on--"We just threw a blanket over him and tossed him in the car"--I can't find it within my Canajun soul to complain. It wasn't even cold enough to necessitate plugging in the rental car. And yes: normally in Canada, if your car is parked outside anywhere east of Vancouver from December to March, you do have to plug your car in. Otherwise, you will quickly become acquainted with the sound a battery makes in distress. It's neither pretty, nor productive, and is usually followed with a hearty Canadian, "Ahh, shit." We can say that word with impunity there, since usually it either involves actual cow poop (as in, "Don't come in here with your boots on; you got shit on 'em,") or the inability to smell said poop due to frikkin', freezin', battery-squishing cold. In either case, the usage is fully warranted. And now, back to our story...

A total lack of squeaky snow notwithstanding, this morning we made a teary good-bye to a 90-year old post-farmer chick happily settled in the world's BEST seniors' residence (thanks Harold, Sharon, Peter and LeIsle!). This was followed almost immediately by a stress-filled 20 minutes in the "bad room" in the immigration pre-clearance stopover at the Edmonton airport with a twist ending (more on this in tomorrow's posting). Finally, after 2.5 uneventful hours in a smallish yet stable aircraft zooming southward, I found myself delighted to be stomping around my own northern CA neighborhood, smelling dirt.

Unless you have ever waited a full six months in white silence to see fresh green stuff or to catch the whiff of rapidly thawing earth on the breeze, you just haven't really ever appreciated the exquisite aroma of room-temperature dirt. Trust me, it's worth a couple of winters of brain freeze to build up a pattern of recognition and appreciation when the sensation hits.

As some wise dude (too lazy to Google it now, but I promise the reference will show up in a Pink Fluffy posting near you soon) once said, "A rich man never knows the joy of a new potato." Well, I'm not rich (except in every way that counts), but I do know the value of great dirt when I smell it.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Alisa

Sometimes being an irreverent, mostly bratty and always verbose blogette has its limitations.

Like, when a very sweet colleague named Alisa contracts a swift and fatal blood disorder, all within the span of the "holiday break,"and dies before you even get back to work or knew she was feeling unwell. And the blogette really, really needs to address this monstrous outrage via the self-indulgent catharsis known as "blogging," but the subject matter and the most logical way of addressing it is SO out of kilter with the flippant tone and content of her customary blah-blah-blah stomping ground. What does a humbled and rebuked-by-real-life blogette do then?

She remembers that four years earlier, she was the only one with a digital camera that Alisa knew to ask to have a few digital photos of herself taken. And as the blogette tries to process the bizarreness of a single mom of a ten-year-old boy going from full bloom life to funeral arrangements within three weeks, she searches for and finds a photo she took of beautiful Alisa against a backdrop of red fall leaves.

She realizes that maybe Alisa's family has never seen this beautiful photo, and tries to think of a way to share this gift with these grieving people she has never met. So she creates a fresh, quiet, and respectful online space where she can post a visual eulogy to Alisa for people to visit when they are ready, and return to as often as they want.

And it makes her feel better. She hopes it will make Alisa's family and friends feel better, too.

Turn your speakers on.