The laptop is dead

I cannot complete the title with long live the laptop. There hasn't been a replacement yet and I'm not certain when there will be one. It started a couple weeks ago as an odd message. The message didn't appear the next time I used the laptop, but after that it became increasingly common. What it was trying to tell me was that the chip on the motherboard that controls drawing the screen was going bad. Well, now it has finished going bad and is of no use. I cannot replace the chip; it is soldered to the motherboard. I could replace the motherboard, if I could find one. It looks like an otherwise perfectly good machine has been mortally wounded. My postings have already dried up. I'm not certain when they will return to their already irregular basis.

A day of Seattle politics

From my vantage point we in Washington only get two days of nomination politics this year. I didn't see my first Hillary ad until yesterday evening. I haven't seen a Barack ad at all. Tomorrow is caucus day here. With only three days between Super Tuesday and tomorrow, it'll all be over before I know it.

This morning I saw evidence that the candidates were in town. As I walked past the Westin Hotel this morning, I didn't pay much attention to the first motorcycle cop I passed. By the time I had reached the end of the block, though, I tuned in. There were black SUVs, black sedans, and men with dogs milling about the back of the hotel. I learned later that John McCain will be there tonight. Hillary Clinton was in Tacoma this morning and Barack Obama was at the Seattle Center around lunch today.

I went to see Mr. Obama in person. I left my desk twenty minutes to 11:00 and made the quick walk over to the Seattle Center where I fell into the back of the line and quickly found myself sitting in the upper level, behind the stage. Here is where I display my naivety and what I can only describe as not thinking very clearly. I was under the impression that the rally started at 11:00. It easily could have, as the building was completely full by 11:15. Soon, noon came by and then 12:30. Fifteen minutes after that I felt squeamish about being away from work the entire afternoon and left. I know now that everything started up a little before 1:00. A half hour of speeches by local and state officials put Barack on stage around 1:30. He spoke until just shy of 3:00. I listened to his speech online. I enjoyed it, but really did want to see it in person.

Tomorrow is caucus day. Our caucus site is at a local middle school, less than ten minutes away. Can Luke hang out there for two hours without melting down? I'm not sure, but I think we should give it go.

Obama Rally, Seattle, February 8, 2008.

I don't know what the ghetto is.

I don't know what the ghetto is and you probably don't know what it is either. That was one of the assertions of pair of gentlemen who rode home with me on the train last night. I was in the seat first, laptop open, ear buds in. I had a shaky internet connection bringing back to me news and email of the day when Gerry sat down. He was wearing a long black trench coat over his sweater and undershirt. He slid his briefcase beneath the table and kept a hold of his umbrella. He watched as people continued to board the train, seemingly smiling with his entire bald head, his eyes were alert and bright behind the thick black rims of his glasses. Soon what I now to believe was a coworker sat down across from him, next to me. They immediately began talking about medicine, local hospitals, and the Seattle region in general.

I was safe behind the laptop and my music, but I knew I was as good as chum and would lead him and his conversation right to me. Gerry's coworker departed the train after another stop. Nearly immediately he was on me, speaking right through my feeble ear bud barrier. I popped them out and gave myself over to his invasive queries. Without much circling, he dove straight into the what do you do line of questioning. I'm in software, I replied. Oh, what sort of, or what is your specialty. I told him and he nodded and paid attention to me as I went on. It was clear that the questions and follow-ups would continue so I dove right into the dreary details. He sucked them up, waiting for my extended pauses before adding to the conversation. He contrasted medicine with software. They ended up sounding very similar to me, I offered to him. software was a practice of breaking down the problem, defining the requirements for those pieces and investigating problems through the process of elimination; really it seemed very similar to me.

We continued on for some time. Occupation gave way to weather, climate and living. He has been in the area for a little more than a year. He likes it, likes many aspects of the region. Seattle contrasts with the east coast he came from in may ways. He likes that he doesn't have to wear a suit and tie to work, he likes that sir isn't a requirement when talking to one another, he like the overall lessening of formality. He is also a little frustrated by us. He doesn't understand why we don't talk to one another in more frank ways. If you are in New York and you don't have the exact bus fair ready when you board, you are going to hear about it from the guy behind you. Here, the guy behind you will be frustrated, but not say a word about it. I offered to him that it was our Stoic Scandinavianism that keeps us silent. He asked if I was serious, if that was it. I've heard it several times, during many conversation, I told him. I went on to relay another northwest oddity I've heard several times, that we are nice, pleasant, but cold to strangers.

About this time we were joined by another gentleman. He sat next to and, after returning from the restroom, became the focus of Gerry's conversation. I'm not certain where the questions started, but shortly after how are you, it turned to how it feels to be the only black man in a room of white people. I settled back and became a witness to the remainder of their conversation, as it was pretty clear that my color was going to push me to the side of this one. They went on to talk about how white Seattle was, as opposed to the South. I attempted a token offering to point out our diversity as compared to many other places in the country. They went right on their way. Speaking about the South, one being born in Louisiana, the other in Georgia, led to the heat and how they missed it and then to gangs and ghettos. We don't know what a ghetto is the new man offered, Gerry agreeing enthusiastically. He's been threatened and robbed in ERs he's worked, and in the neighborhoods around those hospitals. The mantra continued, we don't know what a ghetto is. Ghetto definition led to gangs and quite the detailed description by our new guest regarding the ease of setting up a drug dealing operation in the area. Kids here, he says, are eager and wanting to belong to a gang. They are easily manipulated by the dream and sex-appeal of gang membership. In reality, he'd just be using them to suit his needs. He'd set up one house, recruit some local kids to distribute and stake out territory. After the first, it is easy for the second house to spin off. On it goes and there is no resistance, no competition to getting it up and running.

Another stop came and our newest guest left, leaving Gerry and I. He turned the conversation back the other direction and wanted to talk about the environment and how nice Tacoma was for the remainder of the conversation. We disembarked in Tacoma, shook hands and parted. I gave him a "Nice to talk to you. Have a nice day, sir." before walking into the parking garage.

Blogging instead of writing. Browsing instead of living.

I started this post last week. I started it twice. The first time it got way out of hand and turned into what can only be described as railing against processed foods; brainwashed, lethargic children and our general lack of self awareness in this country. Seeing that go terribly off topic, I started again, but I ended up sounding like I had the answer to the Internet and the meaning of self. That was absurd and it could no be fixed. Now I'm at this a third time and I think I have a handle on it.

Should you blog instead of write short stories and long fiction? Should you read news, blogs and twitters instead of those books that people are writing less of? Yes and no; and no and yes is really the answer, I think. You should do what you want to do. You should read what you want to read. You should ponder if you really want to blog instead of write. You should also ponder why you want to blog instead of write. It is, after all, perfectly okay to write long fiction. It is a long road, though, so why not blog along the way and fritter away your time with twitters. Should you wade into the bog of You-Tube? You are apt to have your boots sucked right off your feet several times before you discover how to navigate without time-loss not seen since you were abducted by those aliens in 2004.

You should, if you want, but you should choose want to; queue the soap box. I guess that is the distinction for me. Now you are getting an idea of how I transgressed from blogging to the food courts of America. Directed self choice, not the filling of time because we need something to do is what we should aim for. So blog, write, twitter, browse, consume, run, paddle, laugh, and cry. But don't expect that anyone else will be choosing to read or care a terrible amount.

I forgot the corn

The seeds are here for the season, most of them. I forgot to order the corn, beets and carrots, too. I ordered more than enough to keep our table full of tasty salad, stir fry and salsa for the summer and fall. A few new items like chard and winter squash have been added to the regulars. The tomatoes have been downsized. I'll plant fewer and given them more room. That should let their yield ripen during the summertime instead of in big buckets on the counter after it has become too dark to leave them outside any longer. We've added more varieties of lettuce now that we know it grows like a tasty, tasty weed. Spinach, broccoli are back. Peas, too, make their return, though I've opted to only grow the sugar snap peas. You eat the pod and all. Luke loved them last year even though the pods were hard to work on without molars. He should love them even more with a full compliment of teeth. I'll get he corn, beets and carrots at our corner nursery. That'll just leave me with the task of finding a spot for it all. 

Grow your own Thanksgiving

I've been utilizing my commute time lately to read. I've just finished Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Its the recounting of a year in the life of a family wanting to live locally. Local means what they can grow on their farm and what is produced organically within a hundred miles. There were a few exceptions. Each chose a luxury food, coffee for example. They bought their flours from a non-local source because a local source never presented itself. Other such things also cropped up, but the point of their experiment remained very much in-tact. Using their own hands and hard work they dedicated themselves to planting, weeding, picking and nurturing their food sources from one March to the next. Barbara writes the book with the intent of showing that not only is it possible, but it should be our responsibility to limit the energy we expend growing and shipping food from one corner of the world to the other. There is a factoid in there: for every calorie of food in the United States, eighty were expended transporting it. Those bananas we eat may be organic, but they trail behind them thousands of miles of exhaust. She also stresses organic food origins. It is better for your and the Earth's body to grow and consume organic food. The stress on the land through conventional farming parallels the stress on our atmosphere and climate.

I found the book a little preachy, but that may be because I don't need much in the way of persuading. Shari and I have been moving steadily toward a lifestyle rooted more in locally produced, organic when possible, foods. We believe in lessening our impact on the world. We would like to get off the electric grid, or at least offset our electric needs. We've talked about finding ourselves on a farm, our farm, raising chickens and corn. I love the idea of working on and in the land. Getting to that point is a major undertaking for the future.

I see new value in Thanksgiving after reading of Barbara's and her family's. It meant something to them just as it meant something to those who came before shrink wrap and fresh December strawberries. To grow and then enjoy a bountiful meal at the end of the growing season is much more meaningful than opening twenty cans of product and defrosting a plastic pop-up thermometer enabled turkey in the refrigerator three days before cooking.

My old friend Eric and his family live and work their farm in Athens, Georgia. There he raises crops for sale at the farmers market and works with other local farmers to build their co-op's health. What else he does I'm not sure of any more. He was a prolific blogger at one time, but the arrival of their daughter seems to have sapped the remainder of what little free time he used to have. I suspect that he is still actively building the farm, brewing his own mead, and trying to make a go of it as a family farm. I suspect he will succeed; he usually does.

Becoming Alec

Darwin wrote a book. It is called Becoming Alec. It is available from LuLu and maybe other outlets soon. I downloaded the book shortly after I saw the announcement and began to read it. While Gay, Lesbian and trans-sexual fiction isn't my normal genre, I very much enjoyed my side trip through this foreign neighborhood. I quickly forgot that the book was written by a friend of mine, though I was thrilled to see character traits from friends and relations Darwin and I have in common expressed by characters in her books. Perhaps she isn't pulling these traits from the people I know, but I imprinted them onto faces from my past. Like getting a mention in the credits of a CD, it felt like a little nod in your direction from the author.

I once called the Young Fresh Fellows great when working on an article for the New Mexico Tech newspaper. I had booked them for a show at school and was working on a piece for the paper. I recall Tom Jones looking at this and basically asking if that was the best I could do. I was embarrassed and still am when I think about that; he was correct. Its great, their great doesn't mean much. It is what I meant and I think its true, but there are more rich and useful ways of saying it. So, I sit here and try to think of why I liked Becoming Alec. I enjoyed the cast. I could visualize each of them clearly in my mind, though Tucker was a black man in my head (his strength, style and sense of coolness didn't seem possible when I pictured him as some white guy). I felt myself walking in those bars and bathrooms and dining rooms. I enjoyed my journey and look forward to Darwin's next effort.

Content aside, I find it a very remarkable display of focus and fortitude to write an entire book and to get it published. A good deal of stamina is required to start and finished any project of any significant size. Bravo to Darwin and all authors out there working in their spare time to see such projects through. It is something that I long for. The smattering of projects on this laptop are many. The number of them that are done or near done is very scant.

Time to plant, not yet, probably.

Its January 7th. I've been looking through this year's seed catalog for a few weeks now. Shari went through and bookmarked and starred her choices a few days after it came it. She won't look at it again unless I have a question or want to show her something. That's the way she is, sees a task, does a task, moves on. I love her for that. I'm drawn back to the catalog time and again, browsing, reading, trying to find something new or to visualize what will go where in our limited garden real estate. This year there will be fewer potatoes; corn will make an appearance after a year's absence, this time in quantity enough to germinate properly; pod peas will be replaced by sugar snaps exclusively; there will be more greens, planted at staggered intervals to keep us in lettuce all season long. I'll get to the planting on time this year, or I'll have a chance to. Last spring I was extending the garden box. Luke's chance of taking a header onto the patio is greatly reduced this year. That alone will help, but more than that, he'll love to play alongside us. Hopefully he'll not specialize in digging up just planted seeds. We (he and I) were out digging through the garden over the weekend, hunting for worms for Myrtle (our box turtle) and generally just playing stomp-in-the-dirt. I turned under some of the weeds that had been is sustenance mode to this point, what little sun they clung to plotted out by the shovel of their non-benevolent deity. Luke, with his own shovel, turned over and flung dirt himself. I picked around the onions and leeks that are over-wintering. They seem to be fine. I haven't gotten the hang of onions, yet. Their bulbs don't ever seem to amount to much. They will be the mission of the year. The leeks are fantastic, on the other hand. Their thick green leaves show no signs of failing against what has been a pathetically un-cold winter so far. The frost has yet to really settle in. I seem to recall the puddles at the bus stop being frozen every day back then, their thin sheets shattering under heal and rock. There isn't any sign of that so far. Snow is predicted for tonight. We'll see. In either case, planting will have to wait for another couple months at least.

Two weeks, no keyboard

Work gave us Christmas and New Year's Eve off, making it two four-day weekends in a row. I took the intervening three days off myself. That made eleven days at home with no travel plans anywhere in sight. I'm used to the weekend with Luke routine, not the everyday with Luke routine. There is a mental mental shift to get out from behind the desk. It takes a day to realize that I'm not commuting, not sitting behind a desk all day. After that I didn't think of work and didn't touch a computer more than a few times. By the end of the days I had forgot about work completely and did not want to get back on the bus. In all, it was wonderful and excellent. Now I'm on the train, ending this short post-holiday week and looking forward to another couple days at home.

A crowded bus ride home

A man walks into a bus. A foot is stepped on. A computer is ruined. An iPhone is won. The bus is crowded tonight. It is 7:15pm. We speed home through the rain that has settled over the city for most of the day. Next to me is an older gentleman. His beard is full, his head not-so-much, and his belly is round. He won the iPhone or an iTouch at work tonight. I think it was an iPhone. He was looking over a multi-folded pamphlet as he sat down. This pamphlet he handed to the man standing in front of him now, urging him to look over what he won tonight. This man take the pamphlet, raises his glasses to the top of his head and peers down into the pages. With a little scoff and a look at that comment, he hands it back. They know one another, from work it seems. The standing man is younger than my neighbor. He wears a button down flannel-like shirt over his little belly ponch. His blue jeans end in leather slip-ons. He was wearing a bike helmet as he boarded. My neighbor and I learn that his laptop is dying after a short lived two months, but he isn't optimistic about returning it. He's uninstalled the evil-empire that is Windows and seems, tonight at least, to like the idea of getting stuck with a lemon. The woman to my right had her foot stepped upon earlier. She stated this in the direction of the offender. Neither of them, it seems, thought much more of the incident. She is reading a book. Either the book or the chapter is titled Read-neck, here I come. I think that was the chapter. She is now on ...till death do us part in what looks like a book called No shirt, No Shoes, No Problem. She and they and the rest of us are wrapped in our little cocoons of personal space. I have evening jazz in my ears. I've turned it back up, losing interest in the conversation between the iPhone winner and the laptop looser. We should be nearing Tacoma another fifteen minutes. The standing man raises his voice a bit. I turn down the jazz. He is railing against the IRS. It may not even be constitutional, he says. It could be done away with if this or that (something about sales tax I think) happened, ridding us of one of the most destructive and bureaucratic institutions of this country. As interesting as the conversation has become, I turn the jazz back up.

Off the shoulder of civilization

The train passes several makeshift campsites every day. From my window I see blue tarps draped in the form of tents. These tents are hung among little stands of alder that crowd together in the small pockets of undeveloped fields along the train's route. This time of year, the fields are drenched and soggy. Rain, now water, stands across much of these fields. It appears that the trees grow on the somewhat higher portions of ground. Their earth is merely wet and soggy. There are three tent sites within one particular pocket. One of the sites looks abandoned, as its tarp has been stripped away, moved to a more dry spot. What is left is a mish-mash of cardboard boxes, torn and partially dismantled. If the cardboard serves as insulation or padding, I'm not sure. Next to this site are two separate tents. What is within I cannot tell, as the construction leaves no obvious gap or entry way in which to steal a glance as the train speeds by. Further down the tracks there is another site. Unlike the last, this one has an actual tent pitched beneath the trees, atop a mat of summertime leaves turned mulch. Its fly is zipped. It looks recently pitched. I believe that the city of Seattle or a homeless advocacy group provides tents and such material to the homeless. I've seen other tents pitched along Alaskan Way, beneath the viaduct, as well as under overpasses and in sparser areas of south Seattle.

That these tents are plopped in the middle of, or just off of, civilization strikes me as very similar to recent readings of mine. Chris McCandless chose to live like this. Krakauer tells of how Chris camp just on the outskirts of town, sometimes for a day, sometimes for weeks. It seems like his sites were little more than a makeshift shelter and basic supplies. In reading about Seattle's history, after the city got going and displaced much of the native population, there were still sightings of pitched teepee and dwellings along the waterfront. It is my impression that these were temporary, set up by the natives when they had a need or a desire to camp in or near town to fish or trade or observe what was happening.

While it seems to me that these three instances are very different from one another with respect to quality of life and circumstance for being, all are instances of anomalies to our normal patterns of living that are generally unseen by bustle of activity around them. People in this society are busy. We do this to ourselves, by choice, as a way of filling our day and ourselves with purpose. A busy life is easily thrown off when the routine is broken, and taking notice of these outliers of society as more than a curiosity would certainly break the routine. I notice, but I don't act more than to write a few hundred words about it. I try to think about the situation, but it is only for me. I suppose it is part of my routine to notice and to think about these things. I wonder if the people who inhabit that one stand of tents are known to the people who live over the berm of the road in the housing tract. Have the kids who live there stumbled upon this site during their play? Do they fear it now, concocting some Injun Joe-like story to go along with the unknown of the tents? I wonder.

Late night commuting, barely evening for the rest of Seattle it seems

After a long day at work I set out to find a bus stop and a ride home. A few blocks from the office it sank in how strange it all felt. The leaving work after nearly everyone, instead of before anyone, the thought that Luke was nearly asleep by now and the evening's darkness were all hanging over me, telling me that something wasn't right. I should be home by now. Then I realized that the sun would up, bright and have another two hours in our skies if this were six months from now. It wasn't even seven o'clock. Everyone around me seemed to think it was early. People were eating dinner, having their first post-work drink. Some bars were just setting up to be open. Waite staff looked as though they just started their shift.

What a very odd turn my days have taken over the last few years. Before this job I was back to restaurant work to make the mortgage, working four tens at the newly opened Tulalip Casino, 11:00-am10:00pm normally. There were some days early on when I'd close down the store, getting out around 1:00am. And here I am, five years on, thinking that 6:45pm is the dead of night.

It is just different, that's all. Luke had a bath this morning, looked through some books, matched his new animals to their two dimensional counterparts and made bagels this morning. We got them mixed, rested, and rolled out. They are in the fridge for the next ten hours, maybe overnight. All in all, it was a nice full set of hours.

Right now it is morning, eight-forty-five, the sun is up behind misty clouds. Silhouettes of tree lines are stacked behind one another to the horizon. They end, swallowed by those same misty clouds that hide the sun. The commute is smooth. The man to my left looks to be transferring numbers from one cell phone's address book to another. The man across from me has headphones to his ears and two books in his hands. One is Zoro; the other is an English-Spanish dictionary. I'll be to work shortly. Shortly after that it'll be 6:30, the dead of evening having descended again.

Strength, determination, will-power

Last night I could feel my hamstrings tighten and resist my efforts to bend at the waist. This morning I'm all over sore. From my neck, to my back, to my abs, to my calves, I feel the effects my return to yoga. It is quite lovely. We've both started back this weekend, Shari on Saturday, Sunday for me. Just after rolling out the mat, laying down the towel and settling my bum down, I felt right at home. The heat of the studio quickly warmed my still chilled body. It had been nearly a year since my last visit, but it felt like no time had been missed. It was as familiar as stepping through our front door.

It is now nine a.m. and I'm on a bus headed for work, two and a half hours later than normal. Shari returned from six-thirty yoga at eight-fifteen, freeing me to hit the road. We are shifting the schedule a couple times a week to try to get more time at the yoga studio. It makes sense from the yoga perspective, but also from the Luke perspective. I've been constantly pushing my waking time earlier and earlier with the intention of getting out of the house well before everyone wakes. I now wake between four-thirty and five in the morning, out of the house and on a bus to Seattle by five-thirty, at my desk by seven. Luke, because of the shortened days or because he knows I'm up earlier, or because he's going to become a person who needs only a tad of sleep, continues to push his waking schedule up as well. There isn't much point now to getting out of the house early, as he is up a few minutes after I shut the front door. This morning we were up a little after five, giving us three hours together. What fun it is to have early morning, well rested Luke! The evening version is nice too, but has a day of wear, sleep creeping up quickly. I'll get more time with this new schedule, so will Luke. Shari will get three days of yoga a week to recharge and grow strong again. I'll get to Yoga at least once a week, twice after we see where it'll fit into the schedule best.

It looks like traffic at eight-thirty is a breeze. It is now nine-o-eight and we are passing Boeing field in south Seattle. This is about the same flow of traffic I get at five-thirty, maybe better. The only downside to all this is that I'll miss the night time rituals and possibly the start to some trashy television.