police on my back

I was supposed to have today off but got asked to work this evening. I need the money, so I said "yes."

My start time was 6 PM, so I left the house at 5:30 PM, which in this here northern hemisphere at this time of year means that it's dark already.

I was almost to my workplace - about a mile from it - and traveling in the left-hand lane on my side when a cop pulled behind me.

The scene:

• I'm on Gallatin Road, a city street.
• There are two lanes of traffic on either side of the street.
• There is a turn lane in the middle of the street.
  

The police cruiser then moved closer to me and turned on the ol' flashing lights. It didn't look like the cop was trying to pull me over, and rush hour traffic meant I was in no danger of speeding, so I concluded that he had just gotten a call and wanted to pass me. Since I had traffic in the lane on my right, I simply slowed down. The turn lane to our left was completely clear, so he could have easily gone into that lane to get around me.

Instead, he pulled closer and stayed behind me. Even though he didn't have his siren on, I then figured "well, he's pulling me over." I slowed down more and he still didn't pass me. I tried to look at the cop to see if he was signaling me, but since it was dark outside, I couldn't tell.

So, still thinking I'm being pulled over, I put on my right turn signal, and cut through the lane of traffic to my right, and then on to the shoulder. In the dark. In rush hour. Because a cop has on his flashing lights and is all up in my tailpipe and seems to want me to pull over.

And the cop didn't follow me. He stayed in the lane we were in, turned off his flashing lights, and went on up Gallatin Road with no sense of alacrity whatsoever.

To which I can only say: huh?

the ubiquity of iced tea

On Thanksgiving Day, we had the traditional midday dinner at my wife's aunt's place. It's one of those meals where there's enough attendees and little enough space around the table that once you sit down, you're pretty much locked in place until the plates are cleared in advance of dessert.

After we had loaded up our plates and sat down to begin mass consumption, two beverage choices were passed around the table:

• unsweet iced tea
• sweet iced tea
  

I don't like iced tea, but I didn't want to make a fuss, and I'm not a person who needs to drink while eating. And somewhat later in the meal, someone noticed that I hadn't chosen a beverage and at that point, I did receive liquid sustenance (in the form of good ol' H₂O).

My point in bringing up this example is that in my adult life, I have found myself at dozens of meals - at workplaces, with significant-other families, at daytime/working-hours parties - where not only was iced tea the only beverage option offered, it didn't even seem to occur to the organizers that some poor miscreant might not want iced tea.

I've tried iced tea plenty. I'm not much for any kind of tea, but I imagine my aversion to hot tea has to do with my lifelong bafflement at how to consume hot beverages (grist for another blog post, that).

But iced tea... oh yeah, I've tried it. As a kid, as a teenager, as an adult, as a quadrigenarian, you name it. And I've never liked it.

Not sweet or unsweet, lemon or no lemon, never, no way. To me, it's like someone put a stick in some water and called it a beverage. It's work for me to drink, and I can't get down even half a glass. The only variant that I've been able to drink a glassful of in one sitting is "fruit tea," and that's grudgingly, and with enough fruit content that it may not quite be tea anymore.

We didn't drink any kind of tea in the house I grew up in, so this beverage was foreign to my own upbringing in West Virginia. But my first wife grew up 15 miles from where I did, and she and her family quaffed iced tea like it was going out of style. In fact, during the nineteen years we were together, her mother never remembered that I didn't like iced tea, resulting in many unpleasant moments for me at meals when I hadn't noticed that I'd been served tea. I'd pick up the glass, and take a big swallow of what I expected to be Coke or Pepsi or at least Big K... and bleagh! mouthful of TEA!

One more example: in the late '90s, I organized and implemented conversion training in three cities for the employees of a bank that my then-employer had bought. In Jackson, MS, I left the catering arrangements to my local counterpart. As I'm sure everyone reading this has already guessed, at every meal during these training sessions - which I'm thinking was ten meals during the course of that week - the only beverages offered were sweet tea and unsweet tea. By the second day, I tried to make sure that I either brought in a couple of drinks for myself or had enough change for the vending machines at the training center. However, I was the only person out of dozens at these sessions that I saw use the machines. Everyone else blissfully quaffed their iced tea.

But I want to know... is it just some weird southern / Appalachian thing to offer only iced tea, and to assume that everyone loves iced tea? Or is it all iced tea all the time everywhere?

ready for the crush

Recently, I began playing U2's Achtung, Baby (one of my favorite album titles) for the first time in a lonnnng time. Maybe for the first time in more than ten years, even though I like the album very much.

And during the first of these recent listens, I realized that I'd been slightly misquoting "Zoo Station" for a lonnnng time.

In discussing the song, I'd quote the lyrics as

ready to let go of the steering wheel
i'm ready
ready for what's next

All of those lyrics actually appear in the song, so I'm not just making it up out of whole cloth, or having a mondegren moment.

But "ready for what's next" comes early on, and far away from "ready to let go of the steering wheel." The line that actually comes after "ready to let go of the steering wheel" isn't "ready for what's next," but "ready for the crush."

Nevertheless, the way I (mis)remembered it is important, because it says what's important to me about the song and how the song relates to my life. Over the years, my memory had simply pared it down to the thesis.

I've made a lot of changes over the last three or four years. While I had a modicum of happiness where I was before, it was only a modicum. I wasn't really happy. There was always something wrong.

Nowadays, things are different. Instead of resigning myself, I've made an effort. I've taken a lot of chances, at least by my standards. Even when events didn't turn out how I might have liked, I've gained from every experience. I've found out that I can actually get the things I really want. I've finally lived.

I'm not sure if I let go of the steering wheel or if I finally took hold of it. Somehow, I think I did both.

And I am far, far happier for it.

Don't get me wrong, my life isn't without challenges. But now, when I face those challenges, there's a tranquility at the eye of the storm because I feel better about myself and my life.

Both sets of lyrics turn out to be true.

I was finally ready for what's next.

I am ready for the crush.

hatful of grumble

McGavock Pike, December 2nd, 2008

Since 'tis the season to be charitable, we're assuming that the e's completely sold out on the day after Thanksgiving.

"it is time to purge this place of the cult"

An NPC just said the titular line to me while I was doing this quest in World of Warcraft. I might safeguard a copy of "She Sells Sanctuary," but other than that, yeah, let's purge those hookless morons all to hell!

I remember them being pretty popular on WRVU back in '88 when I moved to Nashville, in some sort of "so uncool they're cool" reverse hipster move. Now, if it was AC/DC, well, they deserve some nods from the cognoscenti - if they'd emerged four years later than their actual debut, a lot of people who scoff at them would revere them as much as they do the Ramones - but... the Cult? My mind's still thoroughly boggled by that. I know a few weeks ago I blogged about sons of Jim Morrison that I like better than the Doors, but Ian Astbury is proof that the bombastic excesses of the progenitor sometimes still predominate in the DNA. Plus Asbury is far more dumb than his hero, and Jimbo himself wasn't always the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Also, I kept wishing the Cult would keep dropping parts of their name with every release. Remember how they went from "Southern Death Cult" to "Death Cult" to "Cult"? I kept waiting for them to be the "ult" or even just "C" (though "C" will always really be for "Cookie"). Now that, I could have respected.

i know when to fold 'em, i just don't know how to fold 'em

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! And I want to send out a special "happy birfday" to my friend Sue!

I've got a lot of blog ideas bubbling around and should have more time off over the next couple of weeks than I've been having, so expect more posts, probably in concentrated bursts (i.e., several in a day instead of only one per day). It's just a matter of writing up my notes.

Today's "thing I've been meaning to mention" is inspired by my straighten-the-house efforts to clear the dining room table for tonight's nice just-me-and-the-wife dinner (the family event is a midday gathering at her aunt's): For the life o' me, I cannot fold clothes.

It's one of those things that the people who already know how to do it seem incapable of explaining, or at least I feel incapable of understanding what they are telling me.

When I'd ask my mother what to do, she'd give a simple two-step direction, then her hands turned into a motion blur. And out of the blur would emerge a perfectly-folded shirt: sleeves tucked neatly in back, center of the shirt (design, if a t-shirt) facing up and looking crisp, like something from a store shelf. And then I'd try to follow her directions, but the moment I started to make folds on the sides, the sleeves would escape my grasp and enter some kind of gravity field where they absolutely defied all efforts to be submitted. Instead of my mom's perfect rectangle, I'd end up with something decidedly wrinkly, lumpy, and irregular, whose surface area could only be measured with an arcane calculation that would trip up even the most-prepared math field day contestants.

Then my mom would shake her head and just do it herself.

It was like when I'd make an attempt to learn to swim. I remember conversations with my ex-wife about this topic, usually while she was supine in epic relaxation aboard her yellow float at the pool, while I clung for dear life to the side of the shallow end:

"How do you float?"

"I dunno, you just float."

"But what are you doing?"

"I'm not doing anything. You just relax and float."

"You must be doing something. Because when I do nothing, I sink."

"Here, I'll show you."

She'd slide off her float into the pool, and demonstrate floating.

"Looks to me like you're doing something. You're moving your legs a little, wiggling your arms every now and then. You're making adjustments."

"Well, to me, it's not doing anything. I'm just floating."

"Yeah, but you're doing something."

"Well, try it and let me see what happens."

So I'd relax, let the water lift my legs up, and try to do nothing...

...and my butt would start sinking to the bottom immediately.

Then she'd look at me like my mom looked at me when I was trying to fold shirts, shake her head, and exit pool left (usually not pursued by bear or by Rush).

Surely, some of you, dear readers, must be able not only to fold but able to explain how to fold. If so, I'm all ears. Or, since this here blog stuff is readin', all eyes, I guess.

Oh, and for those of you who read this via RSS, sorry for the early appearance of a blank post. Somehow "enter" got pressed when I was still working on the title, so you got nothin'! Hopefully you clicked on the post and eventually got something. Well, you wouldn't be reading this unless you did, would you? :)

suddenly, it's last summer

Today I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR, and while host Terry Gross was talking with actor James Franco (being a baseball nut and a Reds fan, I almost typed it "John Franco"), she mentioned Pineapple Express as a movie from "last summer." My immediate reaction was "no, that wasn't 2007! That was this past summer!"

Then I realized that she also meant 2008. But I have always found this specific "last" formulation misleading. To me, the summer of 2008 won't be "last summer" until at least January 1st, 2009, and maybe not even until June 21st, 2009. Until then, it's "this past summer."

I hear this most often in sports, where a number of talking heads and writers start talking about "last season" a minute after the regular season ends. For the sports calendar to turn over to "last" for me, we need to be in the next season. So for me, the 2008 baseball season won't be "last season" until pitchers and catchers show up for Spring Training in February 2009.

However, this will be my "last" blog entry until my next one goes up.