March 2006 Archives

A brief conversation held last night between me and my number two son after I caught him doing his homework while watching television:

Me: Are you doing your homework with the television on? You know you're not supposed to do your homework while watching TV.

He: Yeah... but... it's not due tomorrow.

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I usually don't need a lot of inducement to stay away from work on the weekends. While I like my job, I would never do it as a hobby. So when I have time off I take it. But earlier this week, I received even more incentive to stay away. It came from my employer's health and safety office. Would you like to know what that incentive is?

They're x-raying my building. That's right... x-raying my building. I received notification that because of the x-rays, floors 4-7 of my building will be closed and shuttered for four hours this weekend.

Evidently my employer needs to drill a channel through the internal building structure and they need to know where all the rebar is. But I love this little warning to the building staff (copied verbatim from the email):

"The radiographer will be using radioactive Cobalt-60 and film to locate potential conduit passages that avoid re-bar in the concrete. The source emits gamma rays which are similar to x-rays. Once the radiographic work is complete, the radioactive source is returned to its shielding and transported off-site by the radiographers."

Obviously they don't want the folks on the upper floors getting in the way. And since they didn't say it would be unsafe elsewhere, I'm sure I would be perfectly okay working in my ground floor office despite a half-day of gamma ray radiation from the source three floors up.

I'm just not sure what to do about the giant cockroaches I'll find come Monday morning.
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As you can infer from the relatively few entries I've made these last couple of weeks, my imagination has shut down. That - and the fact that I'll be out of the office much of the week - suggests that I should be more forthcoming about my non-blogging status.

I'll be back. Can't say when but it shouldn't be too long. Maybe a week... maybe two.
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1. The wind was really howling last night. It was causing this weird creeking in the roof over my bedroom. A house sound I've not heard before.

2. WBAL - Baltimore's news and talk radio station - announced yesterday that it was dropping Rush Limbaugh's show. Yeeeeehawww!

3. A- came home from school last Sunday for a visit. He brought a surprise: his goatee.

4. My employer is constructing a building right outside my office window. It looks to be four stories. They're using this huge, monster crane (at least 200' tall) to hoist the steel into place. I've been enthralled with cranes my whole life. I can barely keep my eyes on my work.

5. I just sent Man on Fire back to Netflix. Next up... High Noon.

6. Fearless Final Four Forecast: Connecticut wins it all.

7. I missed Pi-day yesterday when we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the number pi. It occurred at 1:59 yesterday afternoon. Get it? 3.14.... 1:59.... 3.14159? I believe the plaques on the Pioneer and Voyager spacecrafts each have a binary representation of pi. (And I hope I don't have to remind anyone of this but pi is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. Pi crops up in math and engineering all the time.)

8. Let's hear it for Sandra Day O'Connor... her recent harsh criticism of Republican attacks on the judiciary went largely unnoticed. I guess Fox was too busy whipping the country into a Bennish frenzy to pay attention.

9. If you're interested, you can take a virtual tour of the Washington Nationals new stadium. Opening day for the Orioles is less than 3 weeks away.

10. Birding note: ring-necked ducks and hooded mergansers have been hanging out in my employer's front yard pond. Never seen them in the pond before.
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Life in America when our parents were young was weird. All of us can say that no matter how old we are. What kid doesn't think so? Our parents enjoyed all manner of things that we, their children, now regard as mundane. Banal even. Our parents roamed the countryside in their Ramblers and Studebakers seeking out quaint and curious destinations: the giant swimming pool shaped like Texas, the albino vermin display at Vermont's taxidermy museum, that place in northern Michigan where things mysteriously roll uphill "defying gravity", the word's largest muskie in Hayward, Wisconsin.

This weekend I came across something in my basement that is, well, unbelievable. I could only shake my head and roll my eyes. My parents went places I could only dream of. But what were they thinking?

Please understand that filing is not my strong suit. Organization is, but not filing. I really hate sorting through all those personal records that accumulate (Keep For Your Records! the bill stub intones), placing them in tidy stacks, putting the stacks in appropriately-marked file folders, and then neatly tucking the folders away in a cabinet. My usual course of action is to just let stuff of a documentational nature accumulate on top of the basement file cabinet. Then, once a year, whether I need to or not, file it all away.

Saturday was that day.

Complicating the job this year was that I had all sorts of papers and records and files from my parent's house, which I cleaned out a year ago after my mother died. So in addition to all the stuff of my own that needed to be filed - 2005 tax returns, insurance documents, health forms, kids' school papers, receipts and instructions - I had to sort through all this paper detritus from my parent's house.

I began with my parent's stuff. I was halfway down the stack when I encountered a folder of my Dad's labeled "Miscellaneous". (Love those miscellaneous folders. I have a couple of those myself as well as one labeled "General" and one labeled "Stuff". You never know what you're going to find in them.) For the most part, there was nothing exceptional in Dad's "Miscellaneous" folder. Except, that is, for a whole bunch of postcards. My parents were apparently real gadabouts when they were young and they kept postcards from places they visited: the locks on the St. Lawrence River, the Roebling Steel Museum, and a spa in French Lick.

French Lick... that's a place? It sounds more like something you get if you pay the lap-dancer extra. I don't recall my parents ever visiting (or doing) French Lick. My favorite postcard is shown. Evidently French Lick is where you go to get "Pluto Water", which according to the back of the card has a curious restorative power. I don't know if Janet and Don went there on their own or if they had a true medical need. (If it was the latter, I'm just glad I wasn't riding in the backseat of the car.) And I really don't care to know. But I do like the postcard, especially the devil. Only in our parent's youth could something so diabolical be allowed to exist uncriticized and unchallenged by the Christianistas. I wonder if the French Lick Sheraton had extra-heavy duty toilets in the rooms for all that... Pluto Water enjoyment?

Seems like Disney has an opportunity here.
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It's getting warmer. I've been hearing a song sparrow sing each morning. The hummingbirds are back at my feeders.
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I watched the Academy Awards for about an hour-and-a-half last night. I saw the early stuff and went to bed before they announced the major awards.

I'm not exactly sure why I wasted that time and almost wish I could it back. Of the 20 people nominated for best actor, actress, supporting actor, and supporting actress, I've only seen 3 of the performances: Rachel Weisz, Matt Dillon, and David Strathairn. I only saw 2 of the films nominated for Best Picture - Crash and Good Night, and Good Luck - both of which I liked. It's hard to be interested in the award winners when you haven't seen the films or the performances. (Although I've always been a big David Strathairn fan, so it would have been nice to see him win.) I liked Crash well enough, although it was surprising it won Best Picture and no other major awards. I kind of agree with the theory of Washington Post movie critic, Stephen Hunter, on why Crash won over Brokeback Mountain: Crash didn't have a plot featuring two men in love.

Twice during the ceremony there were these heavy-handed calls for people to watch films in the theater rather than at home on DVD. Hollywood had just better get their head around the fact that 32" flat panel TVs and surround sound is going to be a major competitor with the theater-going experience. The theater experience is getting too expensive, the audiences are rude and noisy, and projector bulbs are dimmed. Why bother? If Hollywood was serious about wanting people to see their movies in theaters, do you know what they'd do? They'd release the DVD the day the movie hits the screens. Ticket prices would come down, theaters would be cleaned up, the whole experience would be better.

Think that will ever happen?
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I went to Scouts last night. I'm a sometimes assistant scoutmaster in my son's Boy Scout troop. I help out where I can, barely deserving the "assistant" title. Sometimes there's stuff to do, sometimes not. I didn't know what to expect when I showed up last night. But boy am I glad I did.

They had firemen.

One of our more industrious scouts called a local firehouse and invited them to the meeting. Three firefighters and two paramedics came last night along with a pumper and ambulance (pronunciation note for those outside Maryland: it's AM-byoo-LANCE). The Howard County Fire Department has a big program of "pub-ed" where they go to scout meetings, fairs, and parades to educate us taxpayers about what they do and how they do it. They were very friendly and engaging and I only have one thing to say after listening to them:

Man, I want to be a fireman!

Their job is so cool. They have all this neat equipment. They ride in one way-cool-tricked-out-truck, which, according to the driver, has a monster power plant. (He said the pumper he drove to our meeting - significantly larger than the ambulance that accompanied it - has no problem going much, much faster than the smaller vehicle.) They answer 10-12 calls in a 24-hour shift. I asked if they routinely go into burning buildings. "Oh, yeah," came back the nonchalant reply. They turned on their sirens, honked their horns, flashed their lights. I haven't been that enthralled in years.

When it came time for questions, the scouts were much less interested in the fact that it takes 3 big guys to hold the fire hose when it's pumping at max capacity (draining the truck in less than a minute) and much more interested in the mundane. "What do you eat? Who cooks it? Do you ever get take-out?" (Seriously, that was asked.) "Who cleans up? Do you still have a dalmation?" (Yogi, the last dalmation of the Howard County Fire Department, died a few years ago. Liability considerations prevent getting another dog.) "Do you drive the truck when you run errands? Have you ever run into someone with your firetruck?"

The hours would take some getting used to: 24 on/48 off. And they said that while on-duty, they usually don't get all that much sleep, so they're pretty beat at the end of a shift. But when I look at what I do and then look at what they do, firemen have a much cooler job.
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Did I ever mention that I have tinnitus? I have tinnitus. In case you don't know, tinnitus is a constant, high-pitched ringing in your ears. Although for me, in addition to the high-pitched whistle, my left ear has a low-pitched whooshing component I can hear if it's quiet. Most of the time I don't even notice the noise especially at daytime ambient noise levels. But it can be loud and obnoxious when I'm trying to fall asleep or if I'm reading and the house is quiet. I've had this affliction about as long as I can remember. The docs don't know why although they suggest the hours and hours I spent banging my head to Montrose and Nazareth and Robin Trower might have something to do with it. Oh, and nothing can be done about it.

Which brings me to Bedřich Smetana.

This morning on the radio, the DJ announced that today is Bedřich Smetana's birthday. Smetana was a Czech composer whose most famous compositions include "The Moldau" and "The Bartered Bride." Turns out Smetana had tinnitus, too, just like me. Only Smetana described his tinnitus as a "shrill whistle of a first inversion chord of A-flat in the highest register of the piccolo." Not being musical I would never have come up with that description but it's apt. The DJ told us that Smetana's tinnitus finally drove him insane and he spent the last year's of his life in a mental hospital in Prague.

Wow. What a cheerful story. Happy birthday, Bedřich.

I wonder if it's too early to make my reservation?
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sqrt(-1): It's March 1. In Central Maryland that means the shank of the winter is over. Snow maybe but probably not.

1.61803... Wednesday is my trash pick-up day. I sit here gazing out the window at my trash can waiting to be emptied. Close-by the can is a child's glove that's been sitting in my yard for days waiting for its owner to claim it. I'm thinking: 2 + 2 = ?

2.7183... Latest pet peeve: those disposable signs that appear at intersections for all manner of services: do-it-yourself realty, painters, youth baseball, Our Lady of Perpetual Work Church, singles... They're like spam, unwanted, unasked-for. Roadside junk mail. A blight. I'm thinking of buying a mask, roving the countryside in the Camry, trunk ajar, making my nighttime collections.

3.1415.... What is it about driving somewhere that fixes its location in your brain? Monday night my older son called from college because he had a dentist's appointment yesterday. Despite having been there twice a year since he was a baby, he needed to know how to get there. I received no frantic calls from him since. I guess he found it.

9.80665 I have had some weird sinus thing going on for months, sort of like the nasal congestion part of a cold without the cold. Can you develop allergies after 50 years without them? If so, what am I allergic to?

299792498. A house sparrow now sings atop the nestbox where Monday a bluebird inspected it for a future home. You'd think the word would have gotten around: Sparrows that try to nest in that box come to regret their decision.
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