Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

Woke up to *snow* this morning--big beautiful fluffy flakes falling down... down... And all the more beautiful and magical since I knew that I could just enjoy it and go home. If I lived here, it might not be so delightful if I knew I'd be spending part of the day with a shovel in my hand. Nevertheless... SNOW! How gorgeous.

Snow Fact #1
Once melted snow has evaporated/dried out of my hair, it leaves it feeling super soft. (Is there some way I can patent this? I can just see it now: Snow Treatments for Hair. I'll be rich!)

Snow Fact #2
Catching a snowflake on your tongue is harder than it looks. (Actually, the odds are you will catch something, but you have to be willing to look like a complete idgit walking down the street with your head back, mouth open, and tongue lolling out. I guess that's why only children and dogs manage to do this with impunity.)

Snow Fact #3
Or How to Make a Perfect Snowball
1. Gather up a large portion of freshly fallen snow, as much as two hands can comfortably hold. (I know that there are some hardened snowball soldiers out there who prefer icy snow for the smart stinging quality it administers, but I prefer fluffy snow for the nice scattering effect it displays upon impact.)
2. Shape snow into a sphere of roughly even proportion. Tamp it down to give it some heft.
3. Take careful aim and hurl it at your nearest "enemy." This can be anyone from your next door neighbor to the family dog, but it is particularly effective on teenagers.
4. Repeat ad infinitum.

Snow: $0
Seeing a snowball connect with my teenager's head: Priceless.

Hobbitus Giganticus

A lot of the affection in my family is expressed through food.

For instance, I'm staying at my folks house, and go down to breakfast to find waiting there enough food to feed a small army (or perhaps a family of Hobbits). My mother immediately launches into a catalogue of all that's available: "There's oatmeal with raisins on the stove, and some bacon. I can make you some eggs if you like. There's also homemade cinnamon bread on the counter and biscotti in the cupboard. The water is hot if you want tea. Do you want some toast? I can make toast...." This, by the way, is all said in a single breath with no room for comment or response.

Within hours of this repast, my parents are taking us out to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. While my mother complains about the "heavy metal" music they've selected to play (actually some kind of Chinese techno dance music), my father's fortune cookie informs him that he needs to get in touch with his feminine side. I have Monty Python-esque visions running through my head.

We return home and, after a long nap (I was doing homework--no rest for the wicked), we had a "light" dinner of bean stew and squash, with oatmeal cookies for dessert. There is always dessert. Dessert is it's own food group in my parents' house.

I invited my parents to watch 3:10 to Yuma. I don't know why. I should know better by now. I keep suffering under the delusion that my dad likes cowboy movies. Also, watching any movie with my folks is an exercise in futility. My dad can't always hear the dialogue and my mom keeps up a running commentary to explain everything (most of which is wrong) or to inject her opinion (most of which is negative). The finesse of finely crafted dialogue and the subtlety of human interaction is completely lost on them. If it's not written for a 5-year-old, either sweet or historical (preferably both), and have a happy ending, they want none of it. Which basically leaves one with the choice of Rogers & Hammerstein or Disney. (Not that there's anything wrong with that).

I have come to the conclusion that they must be Hobbits, or some distantly related branch thereof. (Doesn't the family name "Kleine" mean "small" in German? Hmmmm.) Adventures meet with stern disapproval, or at minimum perplexity, and the answer to just about every problem is a good solid meal.

Ah, well. We may not see eye-to-eye about a great many things, but at least the food is always good.

There's a Kind of Hush

I just realized that I went through this entire day and never gave a thought to my erstwhile marriage.

I've been divorced for ten years, and was married for ten years before that. If I'd have stayed married, this would have been our 20th anniversary.

Go on. Pinch me. I don't feel a damn thing.

A friend of mine once told me that he kept a bottle of champagne in his fridge so that he could celebrate small victories at a moment's notice. I tried that. The same bottle sat there for years. I guess I've never been very good at celebrating the little victories. I keep waiting for something big to happen.

The thing is, my life has never been better than what it is right now. I'm exploring my own personal Final Frontier and enjoying it. So. Very. Much. Too bad they don't make Hallmark cards for that.

Maybe the big thing I've been waiting for is already here. It's My Life. Maybe I should be opening that champagne bottle every day....




(....but oooh! what a headache that would be....)

Give Me Two Good Reasons

It's Monday morning, and once again Mom has to drag her son out of bed.

"Ah, Mom," he grumbles sleepily. "I don't want to go to school."

"Give me two good reasons why you shouldn't go to school," his mother replies.

"The kids all hate me! And the teachers all hate me!"

"Well, that's not good enough. Now get out of bed."

"Give me two good reasons why I should go to school!"

"You're 42 years old, and you're the principal."

Luck in Microcosm

I've never been able to figure out if I'm lucky or unlucky. The truth is, I don't think I've been handed more than an even dose of each. Take this day, for instance...

I went into work for a few hours. I'm still in training, so it was cake.

Afterwards, I was driving home and had some time on my hands, so instead of passing the Hwy 17 turn off, I took it over the hill and on down to Capitola to enjoy a little sea and sky. And I kept telling myself, this is crazy, you're wasting your time, you have homework to do, you have papers to grade. But this other voice was saying, No, no, it's okay, you need this, it'll be good. So I just... Go.

And you know how when you're looking for a parking place down by the beach, and there are just scads of people and cars everywhere, so when you finally do see a parking space, it's like a mirage, it's like it's not really there. Well, that happened to me. I drove right past it because I just couldn't believe it was true. By the time I turned around and went back, someone else had grabbed it. But that one was a little further up the hill, a little farther off the beaten path. So I thought to myself, in the thinks that I think, you know, I may still get lucky. And I won't miss it this time, I'll be watching for it, and this time I'll believe.

And there it was. Down on the front row, right in front of Zelda's. You couldn't ask for better.

So I dropped some quarters in the meter, checked my clock so I wouldn't be late, and went for a walk. The sun was shining, the gulls were wailing, the breeze was blowing. And I thought to myself, in the thinks that I think, that I'll never want for diamonds as long as I can have the ones right out there, reflected off the sea in a million million bright fragments. What a gorgeous day.

Are you waiting for it? Do you feel that "other shoe about to drop" feeling? That wicked twist of fate feeling? You see, I forgot. I walked back to my car, heedless and unmindful of luck or fate or what-have-you.

And there it was: a ticket on my windshield. Oh, I wasn't late. I'd made sure of that. It was a fix-it ticket for my expired registration tags. How did this happen? I don't even remember getting the notice. It was too too cruel. I didn't even know they could do that, that a cop could just be strolling by and notice your tags and give you a ticket for that. I thought they had to stop you on the highway or something.

So I crumpled, like an old kleenex. That bright shiney feeling? All gone. I know, you have to ask, am I really so sensitive to let a fix-it ticket ruin my day? Yes. Yes, I am. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Sarah was wailing "It's just not fair!" in the middle of the Labyrinth.

As I drove out of town, I noticed that the New Age shop, Avalon Visions, was holding readings. For a brief moment, I toy with the notion of going in. But no. What can they tell me that I haven't already learned from a thousand books, from a thousand days just like this one. Don't I know Me?

Yeah. I know Me.

Engineering Humor

"Do it with Frequency til it Hertz."

~slogan on a t-shirt on display in the Engineering Building, SJSU

Valentine

Advice for the Short Term Renter

"Don't live in the world as if you were renting or here only for the summer, but act as if it was your father's house. . . Believe in seeds, earth, and the sea, but people above all. Love clouds, machines, and books, but people above all."

~Nazim Hikmet, 20th century Turkish poet

Tooth and Claw

Well, I don't know if it was my invoking my heroes that called up all my horrors, or if it was the discussion in my Victorian Lit class about our innate fear of being consumed, but last night the whole of Jurassic Park escaped (or was let loose) and went ramping through my dreams. They were all there, from the T-Rex on down. There was even a Yeti and a giant spider.

Through the course of the night, I experienced the terror of being sniffed over (more like blasted over) by the T-Rex's hot breath while I held my breath in a petrified pose, clawed and snapped at while balancing precariously along a high fenceline (a fenceline that logically if I had been able to clamber up on, the velociraptor should have been able to as well--and perhaps that was part of the terror), and desperately tried to hold the handle of a door closed while something tried to scrabble through it to get at me from the other side.

For some odd reason that only my Unconscious will ever know, the whole of the action took place in and around a large rambling Victorian mansion, with plenty of dark rooms and hallways to get lost in along with creaky floorboards to give one's position away. Somehow I managed to avoid capture and a subsequent bloody death.

Suffice it to say, when I woke up I was exhausted, as if I had been running for my life all night long. Because I had.

Why can't I dream of Harrison Ford?

Myths I Have Been

I have the oddest notion that if ever I were to visit a palm reader, he or she would have the hardest time finding my destiny in my palm because every story I've ever read or heard would come crowding to the surface, like a tattoo on the underside of my skin.

I have taken a fancy to the mythopoeic idea that we carry all our myths inside of us, and they rise to the surface and inform us in a very organic way about the trials and challenges we face in our daily lives. It's not fragmented and disorienting like a split personality; rather, I think it's empowering and enobling, allowing us to recognize that complicated being we know as "I."

Therefore:

I have been Nancy Drew...

I have been Princess Leia and Han Solo and Luke Skywalker...

I have been Guinevere and Morgana and Arthur...

I have been Odysseus and Penelope and Circe...

I have been Frodo and Boromir and Aragorn...

I have been Eowyn...

I have been Arkady Darrell...

I have been Moreta...

I have been Miranda...

I have been Rose Tyler and I have been the Doctor...

I have been the Little Mermaid...

I have been Captain Janeway...

I have been Pandora...


And I will be again.



Listening to: Portishead's Dummy

Shadow Boxing

The Shadow Opera website has been updated!

Great practice today. We auditioned a percussionist and he was really good. His addition made all the difference in the world. And it was fun!

We're adding a few new songs by Fiona Apple and Sarah McLachlan: stuff I just love to sing. And I have to say, I'm in love with Robert Plant. I will never ever get tired of singing his songs. Never Ever.

There's something about really great music--I mean *really* great music--that just taps into something elemental... not that it's simple necessarily, but that it is pure. There is a lot of technical skill that goes into this--a lot of effort--but when it comes together, suddenly... suddenly we are more than the sum of our parts.

I'm also singing in a choir on Friday nights. It's a small informal group, but we're learning a lot. I'm hoping to brush up on my music reading skills--something I have never been very skilled at. We're making beautiful harmonies and having a good many laughs in the process. By the end of the evening, whatever small tight ball of stress has built up in my middle over the course of the week has unwound and disappeared.

Laughter and singing have this much in common: breathing, deep and full. No wonder I feel high.


Listening to: Sarah McLachlan's Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

The Pen is Mightier than the Sliderule

I am amused... and unamused.

I have taken up a graduate assistant position in the Engineering Department as one of my new "jobs." The professor needed someone to help grade papers for his tech writing class (to the tune of 100 pages per week--eeek!).

Now the upside of this is that I get exposed to some really neat ideas. I mean, I'm just not going to be reading about Albert Borgmann's focal things and practices, Cognitive Radio, Stretchable Silicon, and Trojan Particles in an English class. That part's brilliant, just fantastic.

However, I am also forced to endure some of the most torturous use of the English language I have ever witnessed. To whit, a random sample: "Technology, generally, means application of science and knowledge like designs and productivity but it becomes to like, now a days, industrial or commercial objectives which leads human life to a agonizing critical position that never ends til one realizes the diminutive gap between technology and contemporary society or forthcoming life."

I don't even know where to begin deconstructing that sentence.

On the other hand, there is something gratifying, and more than a little amusing, about my having some influence (positive, I hope) on the writing skills of these future Engineers. To paraphrase the words of the great Dolly Levi, "Knowledge is like money: It should be spread around encouraging young things to grow."

REBOOT: January 2008

DAGAZ

"Change"

I keep hearing that 2008 is going to be a year of change. If January was any indication, then this will be true in my life at least. In January, I got my very first speeding ticket, went to a fabulous New Years Eve party (wait... the ticket was received on the way to the party, so I guess it wasn't January yet...), and walked away from a job without having a very clear idea of where I was going.

Just that fast, I got a new job--one more in line with my future career--and here I stand at the dawn of a new day. Why is that so surprising?

On a whim, I randomly pulled a rune from my runeset and the above turned up. 2008 is the Year of Change, huh? It's gonna be *my* year. Bring it, Baby.