Stay of Execution

Were

There's a motel on the fringe of this shopping mall on the way to and from the boathouse.  I go by it every day.  It has one of those marquee signs outside, double sided.  It's old fashioned, the kind with white letters on a black background, lit somehow from inside.  The two sides tend to have different messages, so on my way to practice I read something like, "HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY NICHOLAS" and on my way back something like "CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST HBO." 

For the past few weeks the message on the back has read "SURPRISE WERE NOW A BEST WESTERN."
Every time I see it it bothers me.  Not very much, but I notice it each time I drive home from practice and I have an eyelash sized moment of irritation about the missing apostrophe.  Tonight I decided to stop, to see if there was anything I could do.  I figured that if I moved the letters apart a little bit the spacing would suggest an apostrophe and the world would be a tiny bit better.  I parked my car beside the sign and looked up at it.  A part of me has always been a tiny bit envious of people who work in convenience stores or other businesses with these signs, who have the ability to write messages to traffic.  What power.  If I had that power, I wouldn't abuse it. 

I stood underneath the sign.  It's lit up from within, covered with removeable black tiles that are either solid or cut out with the shape of a letter that lets the white light shine through.  The effect is an all-black background with white letters.  I had to go find a stick in the woods to reach the row that had the "WERE NOW" on it, and with the stick I could just barely move the tiles around.  As I moved the letters around I discovered that to correct the spacing I would need another black tile, because otherwise it would look like "WEIRE" with the bar of white light shining in between the separated "E" and "R".  I toyed with the idea of taking the "A" out after the word "NOW" and making the sign read "SURPRISE WE ARE NOW BEST WESTERN," but to do that I would have had to find something to climb up on and take out a bunch of tiles to cover over the blank spots I had left.  That seemed like it might be hard to explain to someone from the motel who might look out and see me.  It might seem obsessive and overgrammatical and bizarre.  Sheesh.   So I drove off, without making the world any better at all.

What People Dressed As

At Saturday night's Halloween party:

• A parsnip
• Asian bird flu
• Middle of the road
• The second best squash player at Harvard
• Cowgirl (2)
• Geisha girl (2)
• Xena the warrior princess
• Pirate (2)
• Rap star
• Classified
• Guy with a bloody nose
• Harriet Miers
• Black Sabbath
• Mia Hamm
• Julius Ceasar
• Gossip
• Various characters from the board game Clue
• Twister man
• Policeman
• 50's housewife
• Little Red Riding Hood
• Snow White
• Schoolgirl
• Barbarella
• 70s promgoers
• a Ghost
• Used car salesman
• Pregnant Jennifer Garner
• The White Stripes
• Longshoreman
• Farmer
• Scuba girl
• Disco girl
• Vampire
• Slash, from Guns N' Roses

There were a variety of other less well-defined costumes; the guy in the bathrobe with the Elvis glasses, the guy with the surfer wig, the guy with the scary mask, the guy with the cardboard thing on his chest, the guy with the bag over his head, and various girls in skimpy dresses or funny wigs of indeterminate significance.  Fun crowd, busy dance floor, good party.

Darkness

Tis the season where so much of the day is spent in the dark.  You wake in the dark, and you eat dinner in the dark.  Tomorrow it will be dark at 4:39 PM.  And there's a month and a half of days still getting shorter, before the solstice and a turning toward the light.  November is always a hard month for me. 

I'm up in the dark packing for a trip to Boston.  Big regatta this weekend.  And I have not one, but two dates while I'm away.  It's supposed to be wet and cold today, sunny and warm tomorrow.  And a Halloween party tonight.  Packing is trickier than usual.      

Panther

I was out a little too hard with the Hooked on Tonics girls last night, savoring our single girl time together before L's wedding in a couple of weeks.  The evening's drinks played with my dreams.  I dreamt that a friend's wife suspected him of infidelity because she found a cabbage in the garbage, and he didn't like cabbage.  Aha!  Must have been put there by a mistress!  In the dream, I both knew this was ridiculous and thought it was a canny observation by the trash-hunting wife.  And then I dreamt that I was sitting on a stool outdoors, watching a bird eat some spilled grain, and a huge sleek black panther brushed past me, then turned around.  I could see it choosing whether to attack me or my dog, and I decided that I couldn't bear to watch my three-legged dog get mauled by a panther.  So I tried to chase the panther away, and it sunk its teeth into my left hand and bore down hard.  I reached for a brick with my right hand, and kicked over the stool.  The dream went on and on, with the panther's jaws locked on my left hand, and me hitting it over the head with a brick. 

No more tonics before bed. 

All Requests: Dancing

Susan asks for a post about the last time I went dancing.

You wouldn't think this would be hard, but the terminology is tripping me up.  The last time I danced was this past weekend, when I got pulled by a friend onto the dance floor at a party and shook it down to "Love Shack" for a while.  But that's not exactly "going dancing."  "Going dancing" makes me think about getting gussied up with some girlfriends, with mascara and cute handbags and the works, and drinking overpriced cosmopolitans and listening to techno music.  If that's the definition, it's been a really long time since I've gone dancing.  By that definition, the last time I did so was in the fall of 2003, with two Antiguan buddies of mine, who were all decked out in bling and led me around the club scene in Portland with the discernment of folks who do this a lot. 

Last month I went out to see a band and knew I would be dancing, and indeed as soon as I arrived I pushed my way up to the front of the dance floor and boogied.  But it was hardly glamorous.  The venue was the American Legion in Portsmouth, NH, and the demographic was married folks in their late 50s.  The crowd wasn't particularly hip, favoring LL Bean plaids and tie dye.  I don't remember what I wore, but I don't think I bothered with mascara and a cute handbag.  I just showed up and danced.

The event was the 40th anniversary of The Fabulous Icons, a band my dad and his brother started when they were in high school, and have kept together, with different accompaniasts, ever since.  When I was a kid they practiced in our basement, and every week I heard the pumping strains of Takin' Care of Business and Louie, Louie and Knock on Wood and Midnight Hour and a bunch of other rock and roll standards, literally shaking the floor underfoot.  My mom tended to disappear on practice nights, so I would sit with the band on their breaks and we would order sandwiches from Pizza Joint or Burger King.  I liked listening to them talking, and I liked that I got to order whatever I wanted for dinner.  They didn't always sound good, and the band went through a bunch of manifestations -- different drummers, a saxophonist, keyboards.  Before she tired of it, my mom used to sing with them sometimes, when I was very young.  They've had a solid threesome for a number of years now, and they sound really good. 

My favorite Fabulous Icons song is "Nadine," a Chuck Berry song with great lyrics.  I missed hearing them play it last month, but I'll be in the front row, dancing, at their 50th anniversary show.

UPDATE: Here's a picture from a 1966 gig the Fabulous Icons played.  My dad is the blonde one. 

All Request Thursday

Is there anything you've been wanting to ask me?  Leave a comment or email me with your request, and I'll compose a post about it.  As usual, I promise no wisdom, but I'll do my best to be honest. 

I think there's a holdover from the last time I took requests, for a post about the last time I went dancing.  I'll get on that.

LexThinking

Dennis Kennedy and Matt Homann are extending on the LexThink project we did together last April.  They've put together an eclectic and free-ranging two-day conference on legal weblogging, and, like last time, have brought together some very smart and interesting people.  I'd been hoping to attend but unfortunately it conflicts with a good friend's wedding.  (I still haven't met Evan Schaeffer, darn it!)  I'll be watching and reading about it with interest.   Sign up for BlawgThink by emailing Matt or Dennis directly.  And I'll see you at the next one.    

What I Saw Today

I saw a porcupine, waddling around in the long grass, eating something.  I thought it was eating windfall apples from the apple tree nearby, but I crept up to watch it more closely and saw that it was actually picking through the grass and pulling out dandelion leaves, and eating those.  I watched it for a while, fascinated.  I got pretty close.  Porcupines are interesting -- chubby things, with these funny strange tails and waddly haunches, but neat little raccoon-like dark brown hands, and little dark eyes in a brown face.  I couldn't help saying, "You're a really cool looking little guy, aren't you?"  He'd been deliberately ignoring me but this affront was too much and he turned and waddled away from me.  As he got further from me I guess he decided I was even more dangerous, because the waddle turned into a clumsy loping slow run.  And then, the coolest part.  He got to a tree and began climbing it.  He was like a slow old man, or a robot.  He climbed stiffly, and slowly.  If I'd actually been a predator, it would have been no challenge to catch him, running or climbing.  Of course, then I'd have a paw or a snout full of spines.  I stood under the near apple tree and watched him climb the far apple tree in wonder.  Did you know porcupines could climb trees?  I didn't. 

Back To the Salt Mines

I took this picture at work on Monday.  Now it's my desktop background.  Life is good. 

We couldn't sail yesterday because of the storm.  Today's forecast is for windy, but not cancel-practice windy.  More like leave practice dog tired and soaking wet windy. 

Separation Anxiety

Since I've been back from PopTech my dog has been sticking close by my side.  She's more likely to follow me upstairs, or to check in periodically to lick my hands and get rubbed.  I brought her out to practice on Monday and she stuck next to me in the motorboat.  She's not going to be left behind, if she can help it.