Downhill

I'm not a huge fan of the Winter Olympics. Once you've seen a few people strap themselves to something and fling themselves down a mountain, you've seen practically the whole thing.

I've tried to get into the spirit of things and I sat down with a sandwich over the weekend and fired up the tube just in time to see commercials and two guys talking. Later I tried again and it was commercials and some athlete who was such a weenie I wanted to punch him in the face. I'm not sure which sport but I think he did something with a snowboard. I tried again the next day and it was commercials and then this lady who went and saw polar bears.

I don't remember polar bear watching being an Olympic sport.

Then last night I wanted to watch the figure skating because I like that event and I'm a recently converted Johnny Weir fan. No one is more surprised than I am.

My DVR wouldn't tape Lost and Olympics at the same time. I thought those gadgets were supposed to be able to do two at once but my machine is old and crotchety and is doing a weird popping thing which means it's going to break the minute I need it to record something I'll die without. Time for another trip to my favorite to swap it out again.

Of course I wasn't going to skip Lost so that got DVRd and I sat in front of the TV and watched more commercials and hoped for skating. I finally got a magazine to read during the commercials. The whole time I tried I saw one skater and the TV said I could watch more skating in 27 minutes and I said screw it and went to bed. This morning I found Johnny's short program online. The Internet wins again.

Stay At Home Husband

This is at the elementary school near our house. I was trying to get the camera as high as I could. You can see the shadows of my arms

Bob started sabbatical in January and doesn't go back to teaching until September.

I almost wrote "doesn't go back to work" until September but it's not like he's sitting around the couch ordering me to bring him another sandwich.

He's got a bunch of projects he's working on and he's taking classes. And he's also way more involved in domestic contributions. My favorite is that he's doing most of the laundry.

During the first couple of weeks while we were transitioning to the new routine, I never thought I'd make it.

He was there when I left. He was there when I got home. He spent most of the day without a lot of contact with other people. The minute I hit the door he wanted to tell me all! about! his! day!

We had a couple of major shouting matches where I said I need to put down my purse and change into my sweatpants and enjoy 15 minutes of peace and quiet when I get home from work. And he would be all defensive about just wanting to connect with me when I got home.

Now that we're settled in, I like having him on sabbatical. He's way more relaxed and doing all kinds of things that feed his hungry mind. Last week he went to MacWorld in San Francisco for a few days. Normally I look forward to a few days with the house to myself but not this time.

I always give Bob a hard time because he has no concept of how much I eat. Whenever he makes my plate I say: think of how much you think I would eat and then cut it in half. And he still hands me plates mounded with pasta or giant blobs of meat and sauce. Most of the time I insist on fixing my own plate.

I guess I have no concept about how much I eat either because I had all these menu plans. I thawed out some tomato soup that I made last summer. And I had a few potatoes and leeks that were in their last days so I made a pot of potato leek soup. And I a few other plans but it took me the entire time to finish the potato leek soup.

This morning we divided into A and B Teams and worked on trip planning. He did trains. I did accommodations. I'm finally feeling like we're really going somewhere.

Come Sail Away

This is part two to the photo I posted here. I don't love boats. There are times when I will get on a boat without drama but generally I'd rather just not get on a boat. We have a whole series of photos of me on boats doing my boatface which I will have to post someday. Boatface is an uphappy face.

My father grew-up in a huge port city and he does love boats. And his family. I don't think we ever did anything in our visits to Hamburg that didn't include a harbor cruise, a ferry trip, a river taxi or whathaveyouonaboat.

The photo above is from a ferry we took to an island called Föhr. It was windy and cold and August. We went to visit my cousin who was at a summer camp. My note on the back of the photo says: "Notice the windswept seas."

Here's a quote from the travel journal [as in original]:

There was a nice beach and lots of little beach seats. Unfortunatly it was very, very cold with and icey wind blowing. We had a nice lunch and we walked around through the shops. This island is like Denmark - kinda. There are windmills and some of the roofs of the houses are thatched with this straw stuff.
The ferry journey home was very rough and it rained all afternoon.

I uploaded a bunch of photos earlier this week thinking I'd have them when I posted and then I never had enough time to post them all.

Here's my other main story:

I started my personal webpage in 1996. Back in those days you got a website from your Internet provider. My url was: www.teleport.com/~prentz. And you had to learn some basic HTML and FTP your files where you were instructed to.

You can see early versions on archive.org.

Try this.

I started with blogger in 2001 and got my own domain in there somewhere.

A couple weeks ago I got a message from blogger that they weren't supporting FTP any more.

I spent at least half a day thinking: "I didn't even know there were other choices."

I re-read the stuff a million times and I think I get it know and I did some homework and I think what's going to happen is that I'm going to find a new host and change platforms. I'm not asking for technical advice, I'm covered.

This is something I've thought about for the past several years but to paraphrase Kenman I never wanted to spend a day-and-a-half staring at my computer and saying, "Shit."

I might possibly get to it this weekend although I have a chore stack that I intend to tackle. I get Monday off and I think I'm going to make it a not writing day and prioritize all these other things that I've been putting off.

So, if you try to find my site and it's a hopeless mess. That's what's going on.

The Truck is Here

North Sea in Summer 78. I don't know why I'm putting this photo with this post.

Back in the eighties I had a job in Hollywood at a film camera rental place. Every morning, I think at about 10am, a food truck would come.

Maria, the receptionist, would announce the arrival of the truck but for some reason, the big boss didn't want her to make the broadcast over the system intercom. She had to go to each individual extension.

My desk was near hers and every morning I'd get to hear it. Maria was (is?) an actress and she'd have to say it about 30 times often with great enthusiasm:

The truck is here.
THE TRUCK IS HERE.
The TRUCK is here.
The truck IS here.
The truck IS HEEEEE-RRRREEEEE.

And so forth. I've been out of touch with her for eons but if I had her phone number I'd call her right now and holler: The truck is here.

The truck food was pretty good. One of my favorites was the quesadilla which had a cilantro-y salsa folded inside and was the perfect combination of outer crunch and inside melty cheese. I don't think I ate any other food from the truck.

Pointless Wanking

One of my Clarion West instructors Connie Willis signs her latest book for me.

Since the beginning of the year I've been trying to get this story revised and ready to submit. It's a long one and has given me an extra amount of headache since the very first draft.

That one was set aside for a little rest and I started preparing a different story for submitting. This one was a lot more fun which was a refreshing surprise. I thought maybe I was always going to find revisions agonizing.

My point is that I've been putting almost all of my free time into these stories and I'm starting to feel a bit frazzled on everything else. As soon I get them both submitted I'm taking a day to do maintenance which includes house things, yard work, errands and probably the taxes, also the millions of photos and duplicates I have in various unlabled folders and the 50 URLs I have saved in a folder in my desktop to look at later. Why do I do this to myself?

I can't help it. I saved them, now I have to look.

I did finally get a few more of those old photos scanned and will share later this week.

The Most Depressing Sundries Shop in the World

When we moved into the new office building about 18 months ago, among the first thing we did was check out the restaurant and the sundries market.

After moving we went to the restaurant bar for happy hour. It smelled like beer and had the ambiance of a bar in an airport hotel. We decided never to go there again. It later went out of business. It's like a haunted restaurant now because all the stuff is still in there, including the hard liquor, and occasionally there will be a light on and a few chairs moved around, but no people.

We also only went into the sundries market one time. Co-worker smokes. She didn't have his brand. She didn't have his back-up brand. We never never went in there again.

The sundries market was tiny and didn't even have good candy. The whole place reeked of despair. There was a 50-ish lady who is the only person I ever saw working in there and she never smiled. It wasn't like she was a person who doesn't smile much, it was like she was about 5 minutes a way from swallowing a box of paper clips to end it all.

One day the place was locked up and there was a big sign that the business license was expired. But she returned. And she seemed to be trying. There was a sign that she now sold coffee. Two sizes. Small and large. There was a sign they now served Chinese food.

Our law clerk last summer bought soda from there even after I told him it was the most depressing sundries shop in the world.

I didn't even like to walk past it. I always thought it was too bad they didn't get some charming person in there and paint the walls and sell yummy baked goods.

A couple of weeks ago I noticed a sign that they had new management. I saw two new people working in there. Bummer lady is gone. They wear bright green smocks and it looks they have colorful signs up and a big display of sandwiches.

I don't know for sure because I still can't bring myself to go in there.

News on the Radio

Today's my mother-in-law's birthday.

I had a good week but I woke up at 2:30am this morning and I'm completely droopy right now. I had an epic post planned but the scanner decided to go crazy on me so we'll have to look forward to it later.



Here's one of the shots from the Europe trip. I wrote on the back, "Arc D'Triumph Aug 78." I love the cars.

Tonight's update is that I sold another story, "Estelle Makes the Casino Run," which will be available online on June 1st. The table of contents is here: Innsmouth Free Press.

I'm excited to see my name turn up in one of my Google vanity alerts from something other than my own blog.