Stay of Execution

Stickers

After racing yesterday I was walking across the parking lot at the yacht club after returning the little wheelbarrow we'd used to carry sails and cooler up from the dock. The folks I'd been sailing with were peering at the back of my car, having an animated discussion. Uh oh. I wondered if somebody had hit the car. Was there a dent? As I got closer I realized they were discussing the small square sticker on the back -- a blue W inside a red circle with a slash through it. It was pretty clear they thought this was interesting, unexpected, and a little bit funny. One said, "Well, at least she doesn't have a great big John Kerry sticker across the back." I said, "Oh, please, guys, I wish I hadn't heard that." I think it might be time for a big John Kerry sign on the front lawn.

I don't talk politics with too many people. I certainly don't expect to share political viewpoints with the people I sail with. But in this election it seems perhaps worthwhile to venture into uncomfortable territory and have those conversations. I don't like thinking that my friends have such a deeply different view of where our country should be going.

It's also interesting that in this election it seems socially appropriate to root against someone. "At least she doesn't have a Kerry sticker on there." So my apparently Republican friends find it more acceptable that I would be against Bush than that I would be for Kerry. It is true that I am more motivated by a fear of what another four years of arrogant and clumsy foreign policy and deficit spending could mean for our country than I am inspired by a specific alternative. But I think it's pretty sad that that seems to be okay. I'm certainly more comfortable thinking that my friends have misgivings about Kerry than imagining them to be enthusiastic about Bush.

We went next door to the after-regatta party. There, one of my friends helpfully pointed out a car with a couple of Bush bumper stickers. One of them said, "W is for Women." Aha. I wonder in what way.

Translucence

The almost-full moon was hanging, huge and silvery-gold, over Mackworth Island as I came across the causeway, returning from a full day of sailing. The sky was a lavender-pink and the water was blue and ripply. The tide was low at 4:03 this afternoon and it was flooding in under the bridge, into the Penobscot River estuary. A lone fellow with a fishing pole was climbing over the guardrail on the bridge, staking a place to cast his line into the flooding tide. I don't know what he's fishing for -- are the stripers still running? It was like the most beautiful summer day, except it's the end of September, and the sunset came just after 6. Now I'm home, sunburned and tired, looking forward to a long dark evening, curled up with tea and acorn squash and a piece of blueberry pie and my book.

Axis of Evil

So I've started dating this guy who seems pretty interesting so far.  My criteria are fairly simple for dating: I'm looking for someone cute, fun, and smart.  It is easy to find two out of the three, but all three in one package is harder.  We're in the preliminary stages right now so I'm satisfied on the cute front and am currently assessing fun and smarts.  But one of the interesting things about him is that he's Iranian.  On our first date I had to confess that everything I knew about his country had come from a comic book that I had just read.  He told me not to worry, he'd fill in the blanks.  After all, he said, most of what he knows about the United States came from Superman comics anyway.  Since then I've been learning a little more, in dribs and drabs.  Today we were talking about the government censorship of the media, and the industry of re-mixing films and dubbing them for broadcast on Iranian television.  He grew up watching many American made films, but with scenes cut out, and sometimes entirely different plot premises than the original film had.  And the Iranian actors doing the dubbing would ad lib a lot to the text.  Interesting.  He grew up a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin and other early silent film actors, because those silent films had little to offend the censors (but scenes of men and women kissing were cut) and were rebroadcast again and again.  Also lots of Japanese movies and soap operas were popular.   

Luckily for me the sequel to Persepolis is out and I'm reading that with interest.  I would recommend it even if you aren't dating an Iranian. 

Welcome To This World

Welcome, young baby Transmogriflaw. It is a beautiful place to be alive. And you lucked out with a smart and sensitive mom.

Old Friends

I had a conversation this morning that was peppered with sections of the Bankruptcy Code -- 523, 727, 362(h), 507, plus of course the Chapters: 7, 11, and 13. It's been a long time since I've spoken in Code, and it was fun.

Loafers

One of the ways I've marked fall, without really noticing it, is that I've traded in my flip flops for my loafers. I bought this pair of penny loafers about three years ago, and they're just getting good. Some loafers are sort of stiff and shiny, but these are a really soft leather, more on the moccasin side of the spectrum. They're the medium brown of a good belt and soft, so wearing them feels like wearing no shoes, only more comfortable. I like these shoes because of how they feel and how they look, I think. They're well-made but not new, and although loafers can be a silly and stiff preppy affectation, these are soft and relaxed without being completely informal. They fit me exactly right. I wish more of my clothing felt as naturally a part of me as these shoes.

Technical Difficulties Vanquished

Well, maybe not fully vanquished but we're back to square one, and have a usable laptop, and Internet in the home.

Meanwhile you've missed my reporting on: the peculiar reflections on the water this morning, some exciting professional developments, an email exchange with the ex-boyfriend that made me think about how I approach relationships, a dog I met named Mr. Noodles, my shin splints, why I need to lose 6 pounds in a week, and the way the trees are looking these days. Also what I have been reading. I have been doing a lot of reading. And more thoughts, in the shower today, about why bankruptcy is such an interesting field. Oh, and these amazing clouds I saw on Monday night, lit up from beneath with the pink light of the setting sun, and the way one cloud slightly lower than the band of other clouds cast its shadow UPWARDS onto the clouds above it because of the low angle of the sun, and so there was a dramatic band of blue where the shadow of the lower cloud was cast onto the bottom of the clouds above it, carved in a sharp line and standing out like a dark grey-blue streak amidst the rosy orange-pink glow that was cast on the bottoms of all the other clouds. I've never seen anything like it. Best that I didn't have my computer because I wouldn't have been able to describe it, I'm sure. Also the wedding dress I helped my friend buy on Monday and the vaguely ominous message my car is flashing at me that I am trying to ignore.

But I'm afraid I'm more of a faucet than a reporter, and now that all these observations and thoughts have moved through me I don't feel much of a pull to think back and try to regurgitate them here as though they were fresh thoughts. So we'll just have to hope the next few days hold something interesting that I can blog about. Lucky for all of us that's a pretty low threshold.

Technical Difficulties Persist

My laptop is at the computer doctor, having its hard drive "cloned" before it dies. If this works, I'm good to go and I've basically purchased my same computer for a couple of hundred dollars. If it doesn't work, I've got to start from scratch.

My biggest loss will be the hours and hours I spent loading all my music into a digital library. I like the Creative Soundblaster solution reasonably well, but if I have to do it again will load music files onto an external hard drive or perhaps buy a box with a big hard drive and not much else just to hold my music.

Meanwhile life doesn't stop just because one's computer breaks, and I realize how much my laptop connects me to the world. I set up things by email way more often than by phone, and I keep track of my schedule electronically. So without a computer I've been a bit adrift. I've come in to the public library (where I am now) and used their machines to respond to important emails and send documents, etc. Since I've been unemployed I've cut back on buying books and have been using the library heavily for books and music. It had been a few years since I'd been in here -- silly of me, really, because it's a great resource.

The farmer's market is right outside the library doors. It's all oranges and reds and bright purples -- sunflowers, cosmos, tomatoes, summer squash, pumpkins.

Technical Difficulties

My laptop is periodically, but with some regularity, failing to see its hard drive. Or booting and then freezing with a message "initiating physical memory stack dump" or some such. It's working for the moment. I'm trying to send all the files I need to my Gmail account. But my entire music library is on the HD. I am not sure how to save it.

Crap crap crap.

I may be offline for a while. If you need to reach me, please call rather than email.

A Force Even More Divine

So the funny thing about today's wedding was that the officiant, an unpredictable fellow who didn't know the happy couple all too well, made the decision, unknown to all of us, to feature me prominently in his homily.  He started off something like this: "Three years ago, a couple met at a party.  They had only two things in common: a belief in a higher being, and a friend named Sherry."  At which point he turned to me, in my seat up on stage in front of the whole congregation where I was sitting with the other reader, and smiled and pointed me out to the assembled throng.  So then he continues: "We all should thank Sherry, of course, for bringing the happy couple together, and for her instincts that the two of them would like one another."  And he turns to me again with the pause and the smile and the big gesture.  I'm sitting up there wondering whether I'm supposed to wave, or what?  "But there was another force in their lives, besides Sherry," (another gesture in my direction) "a force even more divine than Sherry," (at which I'm tempted to roll my eyes, ham it up a little -- a force more divine than me? how could it be?), "a presence that knew the couple even more intimately than Sherry...."  I'm thinking, should I reassure the congregation that I don't know the couple as 'intimately' as all that?  It goes on like this for a while.  From where I'm sitting I can see the bride watching him closely, and maybe it's just me imagining it but her smile is a little forced and she's looking like she doesn't have complete confidence in this guy and what he's going to say next. 

He actually did quite a good job, once he got off of me and the Force Even More Divine Than Sherry and got onto the couple and their journey into a deep and solid love.  But it was a very funny beginning.