finally

...got some code written today. oop requires a lot of plumbing work. make sure it works before putting up the sheetrock. (so to speak.) tonight called a bunch of people for the party and was happy to hear many voices who were happy to hear mine: liz and craig, cindy, alan and cameron. i just felt warm and relaxed and happy because even if i don't get to see these people that often they're still family to me because i carry them in my heart.

sunday too

a day of simple pleasures. a shredded beef burrito at taco del mar, a walk with my baby down the burke-gilman trail to fred meyer, with the sole expressed mission to pick up a couple of bottles of generic benadryl. people have planted pretty flowers along the path, everyone's out today, lots of moms on bikes with babies riding in second seats behind.

we stop at the garden center to say hello to barb's friend wendy who used to throw ceramics with her at pottery northwest. they're already starting to put the chistmas stuff up on the shelves. "well, we don't have anywhere to store it, so we start putting it out now. sometimes when people put it off too long they find out we've sold out." (like putting it off 'til oh, say, October?)

we sit in the starbucks and i watch barb have a restorative double tall soy split latte. i say hi to the punked-out woman working at what used to be vista optical but now appears to be another optical place that sells glasses within five years of the current fashion. i walk in at 20 minutes to 5:00 and she is anxiously awaiting 5:00 and freedom from trying frames on people's faces.

and we walk home, past the shell of fremont red apple, not nearly as many people out on the street for the second day of fremont oktoberfest as for the first day, and i still count myself among the luckiest humans living that i can enjoy a day like today.

a beautiful saturday

scott wilbur came over pretty early and actually got me out of the house to walk to marketime for lunch and snacks. saw ronnie there, bought him a sandwich, gave him some dough, and he gave me a "Pride in America" (or something similar) calendar that'd bug me if it wasn't from the Disabled American Veterans. he looks to be doing pretty well, and that is a good thing. we see many youngsters heading down the hill to go to oktoberfest, aka come to fremont and get shitfaced celebration. normally it's nice to be gone this weekend, but in the absence of that possibility let's just say staying indoors watching the fighting catolicos of notre dame run away with one against the huskies seemed the smartest thing to do.

then scott and i pulled out guitars, i a 12-string, which we hadn't played with i don't think since i bought the case for it, what, two years ago this xmas? (a $250 taylor. CASE.) as always tuning and keeping a capo on it were mutually incompatible goals but we did kind of n-joy playing "solitary man" and "my cup runneth over" and "katie" with the 12. so now my fingers and my toe both hurt.

midway through, bob feingold calls after some of the woodford reserve tom and joanie sent him home with. we talked about his ex- ma'lynn, who's in the hospital with "complications" from back surgery that may leave her paralyzed. shit, that's some kind of complicatin. i know her divorce from bob was pretty unpleasant, but the karmic comeuppance seems a little x-treme. (though who knows what evil stuff she may have perpetrated in a former life.)
had to get out the door to get a script at bartell's by 7:00. only the message on bartell's phone machine was wrong--they close at 6:00. ha ha, joke's on me. so they called over to the 24-hour bartell's on south queen anne and they filled the prescription instead, so it only cost me like 45 minutes of driving around. it was good to get home.

whew

today is a resting day. i spent a week debating whether to keep this going as Mark's Sore Feet Blog but decided instead to be happy my feet were gradually getting better.

i've spent a couple of weeks designing the little website at work. a week ago monday i got carol zander to sign off as my internship advisor, then met with her wednesday. the deadline to get the contract filed was a little tight, but we made it.

the other big occupation has been the dead computer. the hard drive began making the clicking noise of death about the time jose and tracy were here, then died for definitively shortly thereafter. naturally i had neither hide nor hair of recovery disks. for some reason hp marketing figures it's better to have a recovery copy of the system on a separate partition, only what happens if your boot disk goes south? you're hosed, that's what. take it from me, you don't want to have to restore even two years' worth of music, art, homework, applications to play music and print disk labels and so forth.

i also underwent a physical. dr fred smith our godlike m.d. said he didn't see anything "shocking" on my readings. i feel like i've dodged a bullet.

earlier in the week scott and i and barb and fred saw carla bley at jazz alley. i'd seen her twice, which is apparently the only two times she's come to seattle to play (one time in duo with steve swallow--about the time they released their first duet record--and once conducting a big band headed up by Jim Knapp (then head of the jass program at cornish) playing her music. This time she brought a quartet, and it was amazing to hear what a telepathic degree of interplay they developed. even if billy drummond drowned things out once in awhile. later i discover carla and steve have been playing with the horn player andy shepard for years and the trio actually recorded an album last year. called "the lost chords." carla's written so many amazing pieces you can pick out any six or seven and have a great, varied, funny, touching set. in her playing (very compositional, subtly directive--this band's got each others' moves down col) and in several of the compositions she seemed to be exploring theme-and-variations (e.g., of "The Star Spangled Banner"--or "Three Blind Mice") pretty deeply. funny, that's what beethoven did too.

so that night barb and i talked and hit a breakthrough. she was worried i wanted her to contribute 50% of money. i was worried that my lack of enthusiasm about having kids had permanently damaged the marriage. so we forgave each other. and there is such a glow around us.

and today

feeling some signs of improvement in the foot. i need to stay off of it, period. barb up working early in the day (i slept 'til 11), then came down to keep me company while we watched this miracle planet on the tivo. she was even nice enough to hang around while i watched the mariners drop another one. i still think felix hernandez is the shiznit, but this wasn't one of his more stellar outings. he got hit on a few times early in the game and they never really recovered. but he has composure to burn, not to mention a deadly curveball.

ah, well, at least the seahawks lost today, too. q: what is the difference between medical care in america and mike holmgren? a: medical care in america is sometimes worth what you have to pay for it.

watching rome while barb jets off to sheri's. sheri's job situation didn't take the bend in the right direction she'd hoped. she's still stuck working really unpredictable schedules, wants to bag out, is holding onto the house but figured mike would be there to help her pay for it. barb says sheri went out to mike's folks' house to take him some stuff back. mike and jon were still living there. on the way back out to the car mike tried to convince sheri to give it another go. poor man. there is a species of guy (my stepfather was one) who have only a very tenuous grasp of reality, though they do have a picture in their minds and they tend to dismiss evidence contrary to that picture out of hand. (President W is another.) mike is a kind, sweet man, he just needs to grow up. and i don't think sheri was able to help him with that.

i am so grateful to have a friend who loves me so much. and to be married to her. there is no total security, but what security there can be is all the way there.

i write my dad e-mail for the first time in a few weeks. mostly about the internship and the visitations with john and jose. when a few weeks go by without communiques i do what he does, i.e., worry. erma's been on and off unwell, sarah is holding on just barely, and my dad who should be enjoying retirement has to worry about them all. in this he teaches me, as he taught me in so many other ways. to be man, a mensch, a stand-up fellow, you gotta stick with those you love to the very end. And hope against hope that they learn to take care of themselves, and you all pitch in when you need to.

football commentary

we're at someplace 7:20 4th quarter. oh, my, o'keefe for cal just ran 71 yards for a touchdown. "that may nave slamed the door... and filled the streets," sez keith jackson.

update: well, texas and ohio state was a real barn burner too, but tx managed to take advantage of a couple of buckeye mistakes to come thru with the victory. ditto lsu over asu, and i'll bet the coon-asses have a hell of a party out there in the desert with all those cute rich girls. scott, bless him, came over to keep me company for these as well as the pathetic mariners game. barb too. she went out shopping earlier and came home fried from the saturday shopping madness. i will admit that this is something i would miss from working full-time like i am now. the idea that you have time during the day to do the things that 9 million other people are forced to do on weekends gives you a lot of breathing room. ditto being able to drive, etc., when other people are mostly not clogging the roadways.

but barb made a great salad and veggie corn dogs and we watched the games clear thru 'til she went upstairs to work, then watched dancehall queen which clearly chris blackwell hoped would propel his dancehall artists the way the harder they come did his early-reggae artists. (only it didn't have subtitles.) i bear down and finally get all the bills paid. online banking roolz. maybe i can just sleep all day tomorrow.

what the hell is this?

today i am at home tending a tender foot. last weekend with jose in town from l.a., along with his lovely loved one tracy, and barb and scott did a lot of walking around the bumbershoot weekend. (i'll post reviews of stuff on my arts/politics/laffs site.) by tuesday i was alternating pain days between the ball of my foot and the bottom of my big toe. today it's more the latter but barb is being nice about getting me stuff and just stern enough to keep me completely off my feet.

so now i am starting a new blog. this is the diary one. not the art or politics or satire one.

this week has featured my first borderline-technical efforts at my internship at bd&a. they're nice people and they go home at night. my time is pretty unstructured right now, and it's a challenge to me to MAKE structure. but i'm trying to learn some asp.net. i got the one-line time program to work before i went home friday.

but man, this injury is making me crabby. i love to walk and can't. exercise good resolutions (they have a gym at work too) are now on hold. and i have my first physical in a year and a half on wednesday, where i'll come in 20 lb. heavier and my readings probably correspondingly worse. and maybe i can get them to look at this foot, too.

this is also the week the c drive on the upstairs main computer decided to make the clicking noise of imminent oblivion. i tried everything but reformatting, but by wednesday windows wanted nothing to do with it. so i prepared to buy another 300gb and move the new o/s over from some easy download on the h-p site. only--there is no download site! but they'll sell me the cds for 12.08 (the cost of the cd + packaging + $8 mailing, uh huh). then the website didn't like my credit card. jesus lord i try to be a cooperative high-tech man of the ought-oughts. i talk to the tech support on the chat line, not tie up a place in the phone queue. i look for solutions on the internet. but no dice. this also is my fault for not making the backup disks before the c drive crapped out. but in my naivite, i actually believed the c drive would not crap out two years after i bought the computer. joke's on me!

so instead i site here procrastinating paying the bills online and watching those roaring cal golden bears hand the huxxies their canine behinds on a platter. oh joy, this could be a really bad husky year.

i have to decide if i'm going to keep these lowercase letters. muscle memory wants to make caps.

barb: upstairs working on pretty clay things.
cats: murphy asleep on the big brown chair from the guest room, cowboy in a coming-and-going patch of sun.