shortest hiatus ever

I said I wasn't going to post, but I have been driven to it -- I am at a client site, and two women have been discussing the Anna Nicole Smith story, in great detail, for at least 30 minutes. That was their change of pace from a lengthy resume of travel plans for a wedding in Indianapolis. If you are an American, those were your tax dollars at work (sort of like me posting snarky comments to my blog). On a more personal note, it was all I could do not to jam a pencil into either ear and rupture the ear drum, if only to make it all stop.

Argh.

a deliberate hiatus

I see that it has been the better part of two weeks since I last posted something to this blog - the lack of posting was deliberate. Between work, three other blogs that I either contribute to or write (one of which has been shamefully ignored), the need to attend to some of the time-consuming details of family life, and an interest in resuming something approaching adult literacy, I just haven't had the wherewithal.

While I remain convinced that I am fascinating and my children more so, I never intended to start an online diary. It's time to take a break, abd I am not sure whether I will get back to posting in this specific blog or just delete it.

If you're one of the few dedicated souls who reads this routinely -- Kirsty, Melody, David (Appy Linguist), Kim, David (recently retired from blogging from Munich himself), or an occasional McMuffin -- I've appreciated your attention and will certainly continue to visit. If you have any interest in my other blog, which is sport-related, go here, otherwise I shall see you on your sites.

eyebrows

I went to get a haircut today, not from the usual geriatric. This one decided that my eyebrows needed trimming (they did) and proceeded to massacre them without asking. Not only are they uneven side to side, and uneven on their own, but the base hair is so fair it looks like he's shaved half of them off altogether. In fact, that's what I thought he had done. I was in a rare old mood when I got home.

R assures me that you can tell from more than 6 inches / 15 cm away that I have the full length of eyebrow but I am not convinced.

"See you in three weeks," he said as I left; in the unlikely event that I go back I shall take some sort of mask. Silly old bugger.

pathos?

I found William slumped in a heap yesterday, in the corner of a box. He's a teddy bear who has been L's constant bed-time comfort for a long time -- as recently as our trip to California for Christmas, he was the only thing that she was worried about forgetting.

There have been other interlopers -- various dolls, stuffed animals, even a bear who goes by "Other William" -- but never for long.

So I asked L today why William was in the box in the living room, and she told me that she's not frightened of going to bed anymore, so she doesn't need him.

Today William, tomorrow Daddy?

It's chilly

It's officially 24F / -4.5C outside, but the wind gusts are pretty strong and roughly aligned against the front of the house.. for those of us avoiding finishing up some work while sitting on the couch with a laptop, that can mean only one thing: strong inside breezes and cold feet. Urgh.

riding on the metro...

Not the old song by Berlin.

I've been riding the DC metro for the last week now that I'm on a project downtown, and I've been struck by four things:

1) I'm much much less grumpy at the end of the day for not having to spend over an hour in traffic to get home.

2) Want a reminder of how segregated DC really is? Look at the train and platforms at transfer stations to see the difference between say, the Red Line versus the Yellow and Green lines. It's remarkable but not in a good way.

3) Older male federal employees seem to have given up on their appearance at a rate of about 6 in 10. The subset with comb-overs are particular over-achievers in this category. Who on earth do they think that they're fooling, with their strands blowing about in the slipstream of trains while they are standing on the platform?

4) At the other end of the spectrum, there are a lot of fairly to very attractive single women in their 20s in DC. I had heard that demographically this is the case, but it's not pertinent for my purposes so I hadn't really given it any thought. However, a quick train ride at rush hour provides an illustration of the imbalance. I'd have to think that for any male over the age of perhaps 22 and without any serious physical or mental shortcomings, when it comes to finding female companions: if you can't make it here, you can't make it anywhere.

if you want to go out...

R and I were having a terrible time coming up with Christmas gifts for one another, and we ended up doing something that will probably make a one-time present seem a bargain: we agreed to one proper meal out per month in 2007.

Our debut was this past Saturday, and the bar has been set pretty high. Usually when we go out for your actual three course meal at least one course proves to be ho-hum, but this was all pretty good -- in my case, the spinach and feta salad, the duck risotto, and the ricotta cheesecake. I'd have liked a little more of the blood orange syrup on the cheesecake, but that's just me.

Afterwards I tore through the music section at the local Borders, and also picked up a book called The Ghost Map, about the mapping of an 1854 cholera epidemic in London and how it led to real advances in epidemiology as well as the mechanisms of a cholera outbreak... all part of 2007's "read more" campaign.

one last snippet...

...related to our friend C. Last Sunday, Rr started to tell us, "C died." Yes she did, we answered. "She go to hospital." Yes she did, we replied, she was very sick. Now we're thinking that Rr is really absorbing what she's been hearing us talk about with L.

"She bit by lion!" Okay, maybe not.

We tried to tell Rr that C was not in fact bitten by a lion, but she was adamant that lion attack was what did C in. We then had to mediate an argument between L and Rr about the merits of this version of events.

It's the randomness of our conversations that keeps things interesting.

no more complaints about being pestered in the loo

At least I only have to contend with small children coming and pestering me while I am shaving. Large hunting cats would be be a turn for the worse...



BBC NEWS | South Asia | Leopard creates bathroom mayhem

Lightening the mood

I mentioned in yesterday's post about the memorial service that the last song was hard on everyone: for those who would know the difference (i.e., not me) it was "Hallelujah," by Jeff Buckley.

Today R and I were talking, and she said that she had been hearing "that song" in her head several times -- so L said, quick as anything,"Oh I know what song it was! [sings] Who let the dogs out! Woof woof woof!"

I don't think she knew quite why we laughed so hard, or why we were so relieved, but she was pleased anyway.

[BTW, the root of her reference: one of her friends got some high-tech karaoke-for-kids device for Christmas, and the two of them were attempting to sing along with "Who let the dogs out" the other day.]

Memorial services are not fun...

We went to a memorial service for our friend C today. I hadn't realized quite how involved she had been in reproductive health issues -- unusually for Washington, she didn't talk shop much -- and equally I had no idea that she played the oboe... funny what you learn about people. Anyway, a couple of hundred people had a 90 minute sniffle, I don't know if any of us feel any better, but at least it was a way to show her family that we cared.

One thing that was kind of interesting was that people spoke as they had known C in the sequence of her life, and pictures were shown throughout and between their remarks. Even the men in the audience, who had managed to retain stiff upper lips when C's girls came in at the beginning to light a candle for their mother, lost it at the end, following the reading of some thoughts from her husband, when a series of pictures of them together ended with one of her waving at the camera.

Every time I turned around, it seemed like R was trying to comfort their Ethiopian nanny -- she's just as devastated as everyone else, but since she's not an official part of the family I suspect she's getting overlooked. Hard not to, but still.

The funny thing is, it was otherwise a really nice day. It was freakishly warm here, at 73F / 23 C (Global warming? What global warming?) -- so we went to the zoo, which was mobbed. We ran into a bunch of boys from L's nursery school class who were at a birthday party, and then friends from around the block who were doing the same thing. They have 2 girls much of the same age as L and Rr, so all were happy to wander around the zoo together.

And after the memorial service, our friends J & S were kind enough to order in pizzas and provide us with cold beer and talk about anything else. Which was good of them.


Having been somewhat insomniac of late, I passed out on the couch at about 10, for perhaps an hour and a half; R was kind enough to give me a kick in the ass on her way to bed so I wouldn't be there all night. I decided that today's as good a day as any to start doing more of the things I like, so I was rocking the dish-washing tunes on the iPod, carefully tucked into a back pocket. Our 16 year-old neighbour was kind enough to baby-sit for the girls and she had made cookies with them, so there was plenty to be done... I started listening to my list of shame, some truly cheesy songs I bought with an iTunes gift card for my brother, and moved on from there.

I don't know if C would be cheered to know that she was indirectly the cause of my shimmying around the kitchen listening to the Specials suggesting that I enjoy myself, or typing right now while the Super Furry Animals remind me that wherever I lay my phone, that's my home, but she was and I hope she would be. I think I shall listen to Stickshifts and Safety Belts by Cake -- because along with the aforementioned SFA tune, for R and I it's "our song" -- and then get my sorry ass off to bed.

Peace out, and don't forget to hug someone you love.