Wedges and Edths

As part of my continuing quest not to be the dumbest person ever, I started wondering how I might be able more easily to insert foreign characters* in here. When the Character Set would offer me selections in the default font (Arial) (which it turned out was not even the one the post font was set to) (Times) (but why would I know that? They came out with serifs on the blog!), I would have recourse to some that I needed, like E's both aigu and grave, but for C-cedille I needed to Google some Froggy or Turkic word that contained it, use an entry where the character was not in bold (because Blogger would retain that formatting, and I am not smart enough to know how to remove it when obvious steps do not), and then cut and paste it into the entry because the character set in that font does not have it except in majuscule which, despite my low standards, looks every bit as stupid in the middle of 'faÇade' as I think it does.

My solution, when cutting and pasting seemed too labourious, was to use a terminal sigma and call it done, as with faςade. You probably didn't even notice.

But what I don't understand is why different commonplace fonts would have differing selections of diacritics and/or languages' alphabets from others. (I.e., were there some definitive studies done showing that Courier users consistently need letters that Georgia fans do not?) Not to mention wondering why in Arial I can get access to a capital C-cedille, not to mention a Latin C with both an acute and a cedille and a 'Latin Small Letter Sideways Open O' but be barred from what seems to be a far more regularly used character than either of those? So now everything will be in Georgia (allegedly), wherein I can not only use C-cedilles as liberally as I please, but also toss in a few 'Greek Small Letter Iota with Dialytika and Tonos' when I want.

So here is a final goodbye to Final Sigma. You've been good to me, but just like the loden-green wedges the thieves stole 1/2 of from the car, you were never quite right, anyway. And leave off the hissing; it's unbecoming.

ςςςςςςςςςςςςςςςς.....

*By which I mean more of the sigmas-and-edths type and less the Louis-the-Fourteenth sort.

The Tribulations of Ti

Not to be excessively bloggy, but for those of you who don't believe in a God, here's your proof He exists: the crazy, *******tent-as-he-is-*********iacal executive director of Fort Ticonderoga (yes, Virginia, there is a Fort Ticonderoga!) is finally announcing he is finally stepping down, having estranged himself and thereby the Fort from the friendship, largesse, and presence of benefactors and former board president and member Deborah Clarke Mars and Forrest Mars. Fort attendance is down overall (except for this year, which had 250th-anniversary events for the Capture of Fort Ticonderoga [July 8, 1758] in the 'French and Indian War' [1754-63]), charitable contributions are way down due to the departure of the Marses, the Fort's largest donors, and, with recent media coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times, Mr. Westbrook's plans to sell off the Fort's artwork (banned by New York law, by the way, under the Fort's charter) reached a wide audience.



And if you have any question as to why such a nice fort would have kept switching hands, it is apparently because a candle and a groggy wife do not a sound defensive strategy make.

Almost-on-the-Highway Robbery

My recent problems with car thefts got me thinking of the stupidest time I was robbed. --Aren't they all pretty stupid? you ask. Yes, of course, but some leave you feeling more like a hapless sap than others. Now, I admit that this latest round of car robberies does incline me to believe I was rather excessive in Standing on Principle by still refusing to lock my doors after the second round of thefts, but the Convenience Store Pocket-Pickers of '92 win by a landslide for the extent to which they added insult to ego to injury to my pocketbook.

It all began, as most of these stories do, with idiocy. When yet another one of my $300 cars died (was it the Rambler? the Nova? the Mustang II? the Dart, the Valiant, the Olds? I have no idea, but I loved them all), my stepfather (the nice one) took the situation in hand and said we were going to go to a real car dealership, and get me a real car. Fair enough by itself, but when we got there, after cursory handshakes with the avuncular sales agent, both parents sat down and read magazines, leaving me to deal with the car shark on my own, on the basis that I was (chronologically, at any rate) an adult.

I told the middle-aged salesman what I wanted in a car: large and lumbering; safe and slow. As far as features, I wanted power windows. With regard to design, I was hoping for lots of metal around me, and pedals I could reach. In other words, I wanted some granny's trade-in. What I drove out in was a ridiculous speedy Mustang with a bordello-red interior, a spoiler, and some 'sporty' thing over the back window. The salesman was a 50-year-old man, an authority figure, and I gave up standing by my criteria soon after he began prating on about how 'young ladies like you' needed 'fun, sporty' cars. It was a ridiculous accusation, but I was helpless to protest.

Well, the payments on this thing were a bit obscene, and I was not entirely successful in making them all the time. In the days before online bill-paying, when bills got too late the only recourse we had was to drive somewhere and pay the thing in person, which was what I had to do one sunny summer day in Orange County.

First, go back in time one day.

I stopped at my customary Diet Coke outlet, a convenience store just before the freeway onramp. To get in, I walked past two men standing just beside the door who would have looked more at home in a Dorothea Lange photo than in our sparkling suburbs. When I came out, they asked for money. They told of how they had driven from Oklahoma for work in 'that ole pickup over there' (pointing to distant hideous truck parked in front of the office-supply store), earned some money, but got robbed and now just needed to fix up their ole truck to go back home. I felt flush, having just cashed my paycheck, and it hurt me that decent, hardworking rustics would have such a cruel welcome to California. Again. So I gave them a twenty.

Now, go forward a day.

I had to go pay my current and overdue car payment in person somewhere way up north. For that I needed Diet Coke. Now, I had the whole of my paycheck on me still, most of it in a billfold I had stuck in the side pocket of a jacket, and a lot of it was going to the car. The same two guys were outside the store as I went in. I paid for the Coke with money in my purse, and the same one as before accosted me again with a story. They had come out from Nevada to help their ailing relative in that ole van over there (pointing to a sickly, rusted van parked in front of the auto-parts store), but got robbed coming out of the nursing home or graveyard or something, and just needed to get some money to get back home. I was only brave because I was angry, but I actually managed to give some version of a 'Say, look here, Mister' and express a tiny bit of my indignation at having given them twenty dollars the previous day for a different story.

Needless to say, I did not again contribute to their cause. --Not intentionally, that is. While the talky one was remonstrating with me about his need for gas money, the silent partner picked my jacket pocket clean of the billfold, and with it nearly all the money I had in the world. I'm pretty sure that's the time I feel most stupid about. At least until the next one...

Cube-ism, and Where I Went Wrong

The Jeu de Marienbad, or Nim, or Fantan, or Tiuktiuk, or Tiouk-tiouk, is like a short, crappy game of chess. I can't play chess, since I can't accomplish drivings, or pool, or finding a parking lot, or walking to a destination, or anything even obliquely involving geometry. But I like to think I'm smart enough to accomplish many short, crappy versions of many things.

So, my question to you is, why can't I win it? You can answer that here. (Hint: I can do simple [okay, very simple: chuckle smugly, think of me as 'cute,' and then calm yourself] arithmetic, so I count ahead and do what limited planning my mind is able to do, and it seems to me my mind is indeed able enough for this, if at the same time admittedly not for chess, so factor that in to your factoring.)

I think whoever goes first loses?

Or is there something I do wrong? Or is it just that, with a human partner and thus the opportunity for tactical application of my formidable Withering Glance, and vast knowledge of human and canid psychology, I might be able endlessly to vanquish non-virtual opponents in this realm?

(Or tomorrow at the tattooist's should I just get it engraved in the stone of my biceps that '2 + 2 = Something the Vague Idea of Which I at Times Begin to Comprehend Theoretically and then Lose Entirely the Gist thereof'?)

(Or perhaps just 'Ibn Sina, I'm sorry.')

'Who is she that looketh forth as the morning,

fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners?' Well, let me assure you: it's not me. My head is muddy as the Okefenokee, vague as a valley wrapped in fog, and imposing as a one-man marching band.

To wit: I found that Schimmel book today, anyway. It was cunningly disguised as a book, on the bookshelf, between a teenytiny Zizek volume and a very crappy Romanian textbook. I looked three times yesterday at that bookshelf and didn't see it. This is made all the odder by the fact that the Zizek book is so little that I could see both the spine and a good part of the front cover of the one I was looking for/at. And I'm not at all surprised anymore that that should occur on the same day that I happen to write stuff about seeing-but-not-seeing.


Anyway, here are the two lines with which Mevlana encapsulated his whole life:

'And the result is not more than these three words:
I burnt, and burnt, and burnt.'

In any process, the total energy of the universe remains the same.

--First Law of Thermodynamics

Well, I did it again. This morning bright and early I dropped my Blackberry in the toilet at the meal program as soon as I got there. It was, aside from putting on and taking off a pair of earrings that didn't seem quite right, my first significant act of the day.

The twist, however, is that, although I always, always have my phone with me, even on late night Diet Coke and Good-n-Plenty runs, I actually reconsidered it this morning. Who's going to call at that hour? No one. If someone is having an emergency, I am not the person he or she would call, since unless it involves emergently needing a pair of used size-5 heels or the source for a line of poetry or an emergency brunoising of some carrots, I am going to be of no help whatsoever. I don't know how to change your tire, and I simply can't give remote hairstyle advice.

So I thought about it.

Then I thought, If I die between home and the soup kitchen I'm going to need the phone to call someone and let them know I've died. I'm stuck without it; I have to bring it. So I did, and so it ended up in the toilet.

The Best Laid Plans...

Firstly, today was a long, long day. It was the first day the meal program I volunteer at on Wednesdays was having Tent City on the church premises, in theory adding an additional hundred or so people. That many people, it turned out, were not added, since although most of Tent City came, many regulars stayed away, some perhaps fearing we were not up to the task, and others possibly fearing they would be pressed into duty as dishwashers. As we were prepping and cooking, however, we didn't know what number would arrive, so we had to continue with the largest estimate. And we had a very generous donation of salmon. Very generous. And I cooked it all.

Without belaboring the point, one of our cooks had to leave early, we prepped the full amount but served our normal number, I scrubbed three hot flattops within an inch of their lives, accidentally poured vinegar instead of oil on a scalding hot one, and left with hair, skin, and clothes trailing a rank sillage of garlic cream sauce, fish and vinegar.

I felt inestimably cleaner after a long bath, but I was still exhausted. I lay in bed reading, but my eyes kept closing, which I took to mean I needed to go to sleep. Despite my best intentions and concerted effort, that plan fell through, so I went back out to the living room and did some work.

In time the neighbor's cat climbed in through the screen (which I neatly sliced months ago to allow him to escape bad weather) and brought with him a mouse. At first I couldn't tell if he was alive or dead, but it turned out he was living. I ushered the cat into the bedroom and the mouse into a flexible binder-thing for bills and receipts. In my altered state that was Phase One of a dimly-conceived plan which included an ill-thought-out Phase Two involving asking the mouse to go into a cardboard box from there, and a satisfying Phase Three of him doing so. It should, by contrast, have involved picking up the folder, putting it in a cardboard box, walking down the stairs, going out somewhere, and putting down the folder near an attractive stand of trees.

That was a couple of hours ago. I am still awake, now researching 'humane mousetraps' on the Web. All things considered, the one involving a two litre bottle of Diet Coke should seem the most reasonable, if not providentially revealed, choice. Plan B, that of depositing the neighbor's cat in action poses in various spots likely to contain curious mice and a good scent trail, and then nabbing the rodent once thus detected, resulted in little other than odd sounds, blank looks, and all manner of languourous poses from the uninterested hunter.

Now the cat has left, and I have a wild mouse, about whose state of health or recent conjugal activity I know nothing, in my house! I don't want the cat to find him when I am not able immediately to retrieve him, but I also don't want to wake up and find him in my bed. Or on my head, in my bed! I also very much do not want him to die of whatever injuries he might have, and be unreachable yet foul-smelling in some unfindable crevice post-mortem.

Had I only been able to sleep, the cat would have killed him, I would not have known and tried to prevent it, and although it is distinctly, horrifically unpleasant to awaken to a dead animal or bird on the floor, it is, unlike this, a readily, easily, eminently soluble problem...

Godard on Prozac

Here is my second-ever cinematic opus. I didn't think it worked (and that it did is arguable still, as you will know once you've seen it, if you see it, if you're brave), because it just looked like a bad photo in the folder.

Instead, it's a long string of bad photos, in a sense.

Anyway, it's from the arboretum at the University of Washington, way too early in the morning, from the same batch of photos as the one with the William Blake quote. I would have taken some stellar photos, I'm sure, however lamentable my filmmaking skills might be, but the camera still had all the old photos in it, so I ran out of space before I got to the exciting parts of the arboretum.

On the upside, apparently Nilla Wafers have a soft-cookie sandwich with filling, and I met some ducks and geese who enjoyed my gas-station impulse buy rather more than I was in the midst of my technological misadventure. Anyway, had I known I was going to run out of space I would have spared myself the artistic outpouring. Since I didn't, it's yours to savor!

Be glad I am not subjecting you to my first movie, which was from my phone and consisted of the toes of my pointy aubergine boots walking down First Avenue in Belltown. You might think it potentially difficult to pull of pointy aubergine boots; what's actually difficult is managing to walk down the street filming them with a phone and not being disturbed in the slightest by looking completely idiotic by walking while pointing a telephone at one's feet!

Anyway, it comes to a fairly shocking finale. You won't see it coming; you won't expect it in the slightest.

Glowing Balls of Wisdom

The post a couple days back looks like I'm accusing Ron Reagan, Salman Rushdie, and Georg Lichtenberg of being unthinky atheists. It's really just because while I could get them aligned right to left in the box as I wrote, and thus format the pictures spatially where it made sense with the text, Lichtenberg would crawl all over Rushdie once I posted. Not being a gay man, it was more perplexing than hot. (Not that I am accusing the gay world of having crushes on Salman Rushdie and Georg Lichtenberg, mind you; the world may be a strange place, but I don't think it is that strange.)

Had the post gone as I had wished, i.e., had my formatting prowess been simply sub-par rather than hideously, unfathomably, preternatually low, then under 'devout atheist' in pink the three would have been arrayed left to right, with Lichtenberg and his glowing ball in the middle. Then and only then would have come the stuff about being reactionary and anti-reason. Unlike Seattle weather, my technological abilities will - quite often, really - cease to amaze.

Gay Post #3 (Don't Worry Mom; I Still Only Love Michael Bywater. I Swear.)

Well, I couldn't be more excited. Headbang8 of the Deutschland űber Elvis (still here) blog blogrolled me after my lauding his witty recounting of an uncomfortable encounter with the Deutschlandisch police. I'm tickled, well, pink, I guess, not only because that's my only chromatic option in that cliche, but also because his blog is by turns very funny and well-thought-out, and he is as gay as my gay exhusband. Which I suppose means nothing other than that if I were gay, we'd have that in common, and that pink is somehow therefore apposite. A tenuous link, but one I'm more than happy to grasp at. Plus, even though he is a devout atheist,

he is not one of those stinky, unthinky kinds who are as dull as their religious-fundamentalist counterparts: he asks questions, as all good believers and non-believers alike should do. (As opposed to just the people in between, who seem to be the only ones consistently and reliably to have no problem doing that!) (Which makes the religion question different from, and in fact less prickly than, the musical theatre one, as there are no agnostics with regard to that particular cultural phenomenon.)

Anyway, I so routinely experience near-meltdowns while tackling technological issues (notice my sorry excuse for an umlauted u above and you'll get the picture; other than the MS Character Set, and pillaging them from other sites, I don't know how to get one up on Blogger) and forget what I am doing halfway through, that I at some point abandoned giving the descriptions of sites I like, or even separating the list into categories. Mr. 8, however, apparently encounters no such difficulties routinely, and therefore appended a brief description of me to his link.

What he put as his description was 'very, very well read,' so I put a different version of the Unamuno header up to substantiate that accusation. Of course, that required some mind-bending, positively deadly HTML, much hand-wringing, and forty-five minutes of crying into the neighbor's cat's fur, not to mention the fact that I destroyed my carefully-crafted color scheme and now have to put the blog name and rotating blog description in black in order that they be seen over the too-variable hues of the picture. I also tried black-and-whiting versions of the previous blue-and-red header so that I wouldn't wreck the color scheme, but it looked wrong with all the colored photos around.

Anyway #2, I don't really know what I think of a complete stranger encapsulating me as 'very well read.' Of course, he is gay, so 'gorgeously well read' is perhaps hoping for a bit much. After all, I look nothing like Celine Dion (I'm sorry, gay people; I know it's a cheap shot, but I can't help it any more than I can tolerate her mincing anorexic-motherhood persona), so what would he know? I am so much more, of course: poor driver, good cook, bad hairstylist, great decorator, inept photographer, skilled volunteer, terrible flyer, cloying writer.

---Nuts! I have to go! I feel a song coming on!

The Cheek of Day

A trip to traffic court is not unlike a trip to the airport before a flight. There is the careful selection of clothing for the event, the long drive early in the morning, the mental wrestling over which book to bring, and the inability to sleep the night before from nerves. Such was my morning this morning.

As for the outfit, my wardrobe is overrun by neutrals at the moment, so I did as I have been lately and went with Eight Layers of Beige. Even the silk long-john shirt underneath it all was beige, as were the wool tights. On the bottom, I opted for jeans, imagining that in Seattle anything more would seem overly calculating. And no one wants to seem overly calculating to a traffic judge. As for the book, it was an odd choice, since I would not normally bring a novel when the interruptions to its reading would not be of my own choosing but imposed from outside, but since this novel has its own built-in interruptions I think it was just as reasonable a choice as nonfiction: Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. And I wore slim brown tasseled loafers, since I seem to be having a difficult time keeping my balance in flats and can use the practice.

I had to be there, faraway, at 8:30. Obviously, the commute would involve rush-hour traffic, so I figured that doubling estimated driving time and adding .5 more on top would be the best idea, since no one wants to seem late, either, to a traffic judge. I don't actually know how long it would normally take me to get there, since I don't 'actually' 'normally' get there at all. I only have the ticket from driving to go look at a piece of furniture (which I had the strength not to buy, even though I felt awful for wasting the old lady's time) and getting so confused that I was driving very slowly and poorly on the same stretch of road more than once and not availing myself at all times of all available signaling devices as I tried to figure out where it was the GPS was trying to get me to go, and whether it was more correct this time than the last. I gave the trip 2 1/2 hours, since it seemed like it would normally take about one. This would allow for traffic, for getting to alternate routes if traffic were not moving at all, and for getting lost and righting myself at least once.

It wasn't hard to be ready at six since I had not been asleep yet. I wrote down the directions from Google and entered the address in the GPS, as well, my customary practice. If one fails, I still have the other, since my mind is of no help in such situations.

The traffic was not bad. In fact, it was hardly traffic. And all along the way I was accompanied by a truly astonishing sunrise on my left with views of the snowy Cascade Mountains and Mt. Rainier glowing pink. The whole experience was so lovely and refreshing and energizing I even got into the fast lane for a while. Then I thought, Who'm I kidding? and merged right. But even then, though, I was going over the speed limit and got where I was going with an awful lot of time to spare, especially considering the hour of the morning.

The court building was easy to find (well, with GPS it was easy to find) and was right in the middle of what seemed an enormous nine-pointed star of strip malls. It being seven AM, they were no more open than the courthouse was, and it was too cold to sit in the car and read. The only place open seemed to be the Denny's back by the highway, but I hate pancakes as well as beef-barley soup. My only salvation for wasting time seemed to be the 24-hour Walgreen's drugstore. Since I need to find a new lipstick strategy, anyway, it was a welcome diversion.

My lipstick problem is thus: this summer I was very brown. In the past, I have kept a little bit of glow over winter by popping into a tanning salon sporadically. I started the practice on the advice of a friend who suggested it just as a way to get a blast of powerful heat and relayed that I could even put on a sunblock and use it for nothing other than raising my core (reptilian) temperature. That way I would have no need of difficult, tense, and accusatory conversations with myself over being vain.

I didn't bother with the sunblock, though, because I could never remember it. And, frankly, it was amusing to me to see me looking bronzed and rugged in January.

However.

This winter I have been warmer than usual. Maybe I have simply been more careful, or perhaps I have actually gained a bit of insulating fat; I don't know to what I should attribute this shocking and promising change. Quite separate from that issue, however, I have also wanted to see just how pallid I can get, how I look as a study in etiolated Victorian Yankeedom, and especially if the freckles on my cheeks will fade away. Toward the end of last summer they had sort-of, well, massed, in a terrifically unbecoming way, such that my cheeks tended to look darker than the other bits, and giving me a somewhat 'ruddy' character, even though they, and I, weren't actually red.

Well, now I am not ruddy, genuinely or merely apparently, thank God, but my lipsticks are either too red or too brown for this new, wan self. The pallor makes the brown ones appear too orange, and the gorgeous 1940s/50s reds look better in photos from the 1940s and 50s than they do on me, here, now. I have any number of taupe selections, too, which I think suit me fine, but between the beige outfit, the beige eyeshadow, the beige nails, the beige lipstick, and my incredibly small size, I would be nearly imperceptible and end up dying, unnoticed in a corner booth, of starvation waiting for service at some overpriced wine bar or noodle house.

So berry it is.

They have a slight jolt of color, signifying that I am, in fact, there, and that these are my lips - but not enough to overpower the other elements. I bought two lipsticks and their nail polishes, and I think they look quite nice, but I feel sad in swearing off red clothing until July, when I can again wear lipstick and nail color that don't clash with my complexion.

And, as a final note, I wasn't supposed to be in court at all. I am not sure what I did, and even less solid on what I failed to do, but whatever I thought I mailed in did not, it seems, get to where it might have under ideal circumstances.

I guess I'm paying that ticket after all.

And it still was a lovely, lovely drive. And had I not gone, I never would have, in all my life, seen a sign that said:

Auto Sheepskin
Shoe Repair
Mink Blankets

'For everything you have missed,

you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.' (Emerson) Trite rubbish, of course, but I don't know any profound quotations about Blackberries by heart, and nothing in the text on either the BB or T-Mobile websites struck me as an uncannily profound opening for this bit, so we are stuck with me searching on a 'quotations' website for something marginally utile. So, Emerson it is; you can accept it (and 'lose something else!' thereby), or forgo this whole, dull posting and do something truly worthwhile, like reading some Merton or Jefferson, or listening for owls out in the woods.

Alright, praise God, the Blackberry is fine. The Blackberry is fine, and so is all of my so-called data, and so now when you call I will know who you are and answer the phone. Well, not the phone, of course, but the 'handheld,' the PDA, the 'device.' And maybe my knowing who you are will mean I will not answer the phone. But at least I will be making an informed decision.

In all my conversations with T-Mobile during this tedious ordeal terrifying crisis, it was only in the last two, after the Blackberry was once again cooing contentedly in my hands, that anyone mentioned there was such a thing as insurance for my device. The second time, after the person explained the basics of it (6 dollars a month gets you a replacement phone for 50 dollars or something in case of damage, theft, loss, or being me), I was daring enough to ask how long ago it was that this bold new idea was introduced. She or he let me know this was hardly a new idea, and that my telephone travails of the past many years could have had a quite different character had someone told me of this before...

Hmmm. I think it is like when I was sometimes having to spend three or four hundred extra dollars a month in overage charges: they see a good thing and don't want it to end, so no one makes a suggestion. Then, when I finally make a comment about it seeming like perhaps a change might be in order, I get a more perceptive one on the line who says he can't believe no

one ever called me and ran down the options before, that that's just crazy, that someone should have called, that he's never it wouldn't he can't understand why they. I suppose it's entirely conceivable that anyone looking at my records might just think I buy a lot of phones because I like change (--->). But if there are any notes somewhere on my account, 'stopped working after three months' and 'stolen with purse on ill-starred New Years Trip' have little to do with a zest for variety, even in the most generous or ESL-inspired reading.

At any rate, welcome home, little Blackberry. I have done the previously unthinkable and backed everything up. I have updated the software and loaded a picture of the neighbor's cat for the homescreen. I have read the NY Times on Opera, updated my Google Maps, added a new email account, deleted the 789 messages that were waiting to herald its rebirth, attempted anew to type coherent emails with enormous thumbs on microscopic keys, and had the pleasure of once again looking like an unrepentant Star Trek fan driving down the highway with a blinking light in my ear.

From now on I swear I will be a more careful and adept user. I will put the device in its little disabling holster when not in use so that neither my lipstick, purse lining, nor pointy hipbone on the other side of my coat pocket dials calls I don't intend. Second, now that I know what it is from the brief tutorial after the update download, I will use the 'escape' button located conveniently beneath the trackwheel (yes, it's an older model, because manifestly I can't be trusted with the newer ones) to exit screens I used to have to remove the battery to leave. I will keep the device synched to the computer and to reality to the greatest extent possible. I will not be reckless with battery life, and I will not cram SIM cards in past the point they should go. If I need to remove the SIM card and find I cannot, I will seek professional, or at least semi-professional, help. Torque will never be applied in the extraction or insertion of SIM cards. And lastly, I will endeavor to utilize Google Maps on the Blackberry in conjunction with GPS to preclude being three hours early, or one hour late, for anything ever again.

Call Me!

I had to go cold-turkey on my cell-phone addiction briefly, which means I was, in fact, completely incommunicado telephonically, as I haven't had a landline since the Great War and I've never bothered with VOIP. The reason? A cell phone serves all my needs: I can use it at home just as easily as in the car!

And normally my 'system' serves me well. I have a one-million-minutes-per-month plan, and I have five 'friends' whom I can call at any time without using any of those minutes. Gone are the months with surprise overage charges of two or three hundred dollars. Plus, I have been with T-Mobile since the days when we had to strap our forty-five-pound 'car phones' to the roofs of our Datsuns anytime we wanted to carry a passenger, or freight larger than an evening bag, so every time I talk with them I receive shocked and somewhat disgusted but nonetheless effusive thanks for my unwavering loyalty.


This gratitude has come in handy, as I tend to go through a number of phones per year and have then to change my plan each time to suit the features of the model I haven't lost or broken yet. I also have to call a lot to figure out how to use the features or software on the phone I'm just becoming acquainted with. (As well as the regular 'Please send me a new phone as soon as you can no the cheapest one no I don't care what it has yes I need a phone not a camera no I'll buy one I like later when I'm not at work crying into an office phone and deactivate the old one ASAP it's on a flight to Bangkok and I have no phone!!!! Help me pleeease!' calls.)

Now, as you can well imagine, unless I am at work, where I can comfortably cry, slaver, cajole and whine into the multi-line, my refusal to have a landline or VOIP has its unpleasant consequences each and every time I lose, destroy, or have stolen another cell phone. This last time was especially egregious, it being winter and me being about 90 pounds and the few pay phones remaining in this very wireless city not being enclosed in metal and glass as in Ye Olde Days when people used them for purposes other than setting up drug deals. It was wet, it was windy, it was cold, and I was small. Eventually quite grouchy, as well, as each time I attempted to set up my prepaid, stopgap account (which it turns out was unnecessary anyway) it seemed either I had forgotten yet another bit of crucial information, or the customer service person I reached was not privy to a different but equally crucial bit of crucial information at his end.

Much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth ensued, interrupted by bouts of shivering and clattering teeth and trips home to sit in front of the heater, after which a restorative and healing sleep was inevitable, swift, and full. The following day I spoke to a better-informed representative at great length who informed me the whole prepaid scheme was unnecessary and yes, contrary to what I had been previously told, he could indeed use an old SIM card to restart my account on a different phone.

Now I have that account on that different phone, and perhaps the Blackberry will come back to me, along with all the Terribly Important Information locked inside itself and its SIM card. For the future, though, I now have the delightful comfort of knowing that although the prepaid phone costs about sixty dollars a minute to use, it is nonetheless a phone, with a number and account and working 'send' button which I can use in two months from the comfort and privacy of my own home to order a new phone when I lose or destroy the current one.

In the meantime, call me: I don't have your phone number...

The Parkgarage at the End of the Universe

Which is not to say that last night was not deeply traumatic in its own right. I was done with work, it was early and, better yet, it was a Monday. Monday, the day when if we can predict nothing else, we can predict that the art world is closed and the bridge and tunnel set stay safely ensconced in suburbia, Tivoing and chamomile tea-ing away the weekend's Home Depot and white sale excesses.

The sun was still out, the water was lovely, the air was softly moist, and I was brave and strong and filled with desire for a Douro. A wine bar was the thing to slake my wine lust and validate my courageousness. And, I had a book with me, so there would be no need to run up against any predatory alcohol-sodden flirtatious nonsense. I would park, I would swap the Driving Shoes for one of the pairs of nice ones just waiting in the passenger seat for such an opportunity to fulfill their destiny, and I would walk up the hill and have a nice glass of wine.

I found a parking garage that abutted the street I like to use to go home from downtown, in order to avoid the freeway and all thoughts of fifth gear. I changed the shoes, grabbed the (oddly heavy, even when empty) leather bag with the book and a notebook, fixed the lipstick, took the tiny purse, and headed for the exit.

Then I headed for the exit that way. Then I walked around in several concentric circles for thirty or forty minutes, coming upon nothing but private elevators which would have taken
me to the street, but only under condition that I were possessed of the secret code. Which, despite my good looks, keen attitude, and zest for the true, the blushful Hippocrene, I was not.

My back hurt. My feet hurt. The nailbeds in my fingertips hurt, and the membrane that handily keeps the brain away from the skull hurt, and I felt sad that I should have to live out my remaining decades stuck in a poorly-lit parking garage with the scent of kelpy air taunting me at every breath. I failed even to spot my own car save for once in all my increasingly hopeless wandering.

Then, finally, a street exit. I crouched under the gate and I was free! Free for Douro, or Barolo, or anything else my flagging whimsy fancied. I confidently marched up the hill, enthusiasm and bravery returning with each step of my buckle-embellished mules. I had nearly caught a joie de vivre when I had a vague feeling about keys. It wasn't anything more than that. Just 'keys.' Once I thought to think of what such a vague thought might mean, it became far less vague. I didn't remember doing anything with my keys. I remembered getting out of the car, and I certainly remembered getting lost, but I always immediately put my keys into whatever tiny purse I have that day, and I didn't remember doing that. Or even having uncharacteristically put them into the big bag, which would be the sort of thing that would stick in the mind for all its uncharacteristicality.

Just to confirm that, despite not recalling anything, I did indeed have them, I checked in both the tiny purse (hard to miss anything in there, most particularly a gigantic collection of largely orphan keys tied up together with a huge red carabiner) and in the mostly empty big bag. And they were in neither. Leaving all thoughts of dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth behind, I hurried back to the car. This in fact amounted to hurrying back to the parkgarage, which was easy enough to find, and then wandering for fifteen or so minutes in search of the car. When I found it, the keys weren't in it. They weren't on it, and they weren't under it. And while that would be more entertainingly put in Turkish, I wasn't thinking of that at the time, because I didn't have my keys, and I had no idea where they could possibly be. Certainly they were not at the counter in the wine bar next to the lecherous Rioja-swilling Hair-Club-for-Men member -- since I hadn't managed to get that far.

Now, clearly, the thing to do at such a point is to Retrace One's Steps. This becomes tricky, however, when the One whose Steps are to be Retraced has no idea either where she is now, how she got there, or where she was before. Which steps? I didn't know where I had gone or where I hadn't gone. But I did my best, and I left the heavy bag in the car that time, which was the smart thing I accomplished yesterday.

After giving up on the garage, I went upstairs to the concierge for the building. No one had turned in keys, but she assured me that hers was the desk where keys would be turned in, at least on those occasions in which such a turning-in took place. Now was not one of those occasions. Nor was it such at the parking office, either.

Now I was even sadder than before. Not only would I have to live in a parking garage because it was an unnavigable maze of a thing, but I would have to do so incommunicado, since my lack of keys would preclude charging my cell phone. I walked around a bit inside again and found the exit, and with no hope remaining in me but not wishing to dwell on the negative, I retraced my few outdoor steps again. At some point before the destroyed eye makeup obscured my vision entirely, I called The Boyfriend.

Not, I hasten to aver, to ask for help, nor even with the intention of admitting that anything of any sort other than the most dulcet of Douros had befallen me. I was already on the right street for a taxi, the appointment for the locksmith was set for 9 AM the next day, and I was going to go home and bang on a neighbor's door and beg for a bed. But, perceptive and not-hard-of-hearing as he is, he heard the cracks and chinks and quavers in what was left of the audible range of my voice. And, weak as I am when confronted with a direct question (and sometimes the hint of a question when I am completely at wits' end), I spilled it. He said he would come over and help me find them. I knew it was futile to look further, and he lives so horribly far away that it seemed inhumane because it was now not so early as it had been two hours previous or even forty-five minutes, and also I already had the appointment with the long-winded locksmith to get a key made.

I needed Closure, not solutions.

But he came, and we reexamined my car with the assistance of a flashlight. The keys remained obstinately unthere. After the search of car and environs and a feebly-uttered and marginally coherent brief recapitulation of my barely-remembered 'timeline,' we retraced my steps outside, which were easy as they were few. No keys. We went back to the garage and retraced any and all steps by any person capable of making steps on my level of the garage, since I was of no assistance in suggesting what steps I might or might not have made. I was unapologetically and tiresomely apologetic and made repeated vows to repay him in whatever way most pleasing to him, so long as it didn't involve money, because that was all going to the locksmith and the wine cellar I was going to start building next week so as to prevent this sort of thing happening in future. And my feet hurt. My feet, my shoulders, my back, and it was starting to become that horrible sort of tired where you walk like you've still got training wheels on your legs and they are likely at any moment to come out from under you and wouldn't it just be better anyway if I lay down right here and no it won't take but a couple hours they can drive around me no I'm sure the concrete will be more than comfortable.

And then, in a weird little alcove that only housed a few cars and in which I had been when I was on foot or at least one very similar to it in near uselessness and seeming unusually after-thoughtish for a parking garage, there they were right by a post and a little ugly wall. All ninety-seven of them and the red carabiner, as well. I would have been overjoyed, but that would have required being conscious or sensate, neither of which I have any reason to believe I was at that point. I did, however, manage many more profuse apologies and gratitudes, but the lack of muscle control precluded smiling.

I made it home. I drank a beer. I apologized and thanked in email and on phone forty-three more times and vowed to myself to have copies made of house and car keys, and stick them on the car and in the planters of dying flowers outside my door. And passed out and slept the sort of sleep you can only sleep when you imagined the end of the world but it was really only the end of the two-for-one sale on vegetarian items down at the Indian place.