Trinamick, who is probably the most prolific, yet always entertaining blogger to whom I pay attention, and whose blog I engourage you to read every day, recently asked her readers to share what their favorite toy was from their childhoods. I started to respond when memories of mine flooded out all over my keyboard. I have a nasty habit of blogging in peoples' comment sections, and I was well on my way to doing just that when I caught myself. So this is my post about my favorite toy(s), inspired once again by another blogger.
As many boys my age in the 1970s probably did, I owned a formidable collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox miniature cars. For anyone who might not know of these, they were cast metal cars that could fit in the palm of your hand -- or a match box, hence the name -- and were cast in the shapes of contemporary, as well as futuristic, cars of the day. Most of them had been handed down to me from my brother, the sibling next-up in the family chain. There were even a couple of Johnny Lightning cars in the box. Hot Wheels and Johnny Lightning waged commercial warfare during the late 1960s and early '70s with similar products and accessories, namely miniature likenesses of contemporary cars and flexible plastic tracks on which you could roll your car at unbelievable speeds for hours of fun! You can probably tell who won that war...who (aside from me) remembers Johnny Lightning?
While they were fun (for hours?), I usually grew tired quickly of the silly plastic tracks. I couldn't have put my finger on it then, but today I think using those tracks limited my imagination.
In warm weather I used to lie out by this big tree right next to the street in front of the house where I lived and play with my cars for hours. There were a number of bare patches of loose, dusty dirt in the grass around the base of this tree, and, using the long side of a popsicle stick, I would scrape a path along the bare patches through the tufts of grass all the way from the tree to the sidewalk. This scraped path became a country dirt "road" on which my cars could drive, meandering their way to the sidewalk, which was the "main highway." The area right near the tree was the "town," and the loose, dusty dirt patches were where the homes, businesses and the police and fire stations were. The tires of the toy cars made their own little "ruts" in the dust, which I found to be the neatest part of the whole thing.
Now you may think this is all neat and cute (unless you hate me, and you're wishing a car would have veered from the street and squished my little head before I had a chance to spawn), but I attribute this little bit of my past to my interest and attempts to be a writer. In the time since my days of "playing cars," I've noticed other little kids playing with their cars, and they all seem to do the same thing: they run the car of choice over various surfaces, making their own vocal car sound effects - tires screeching, engines racing, police siren sounds... I did all these things as well, but I also created elaborate scenes with imagined characters who engaged in dialogue and experienced conflict and resolution, though I didn't know the words for those things at the time. I had a miniature fire truck, police car (Ford LTD), two ambulances -- one British (Matchbox) and one "tricked out" (Hot Wheels) (when the British ambulance was dispatched to a crash scene, it always raced there with the classic English Hi-Lo siren blaring!), and one red Ford LTD station wagon that was always the coroner's wagon. Why? I don't know. The other cars were just what the regular townfolk drove around, making their ruts in the dust as they went about their business. And these characters interacted. Some disliked each other, some conflicted, some were in love, and others just didn't care about anyone else.
And I think that's where it started, though I didn't know anything had started until I put a few things together in my head a few years ago. Ever since I started playing with my cars there in the dirt, I quite often imagined scenarios around situations I was in or thought I might find myself in. I think we all think about what we would say if a certain situation presented itself. But I imagined whole conversations around what I would say to somebody in response to one thing, and then what they might say to that, then what would I say, and then what they might come back with, and so on.
I did this right on up through junior high and high school, and even through my stint in the Air Force, sometimes speaking the words of my dialogues out loud, just to occupy the time spent on a lonely guard post through the night.
Then I finished my four years of service and went to university. I was not required to declare a minor, but if I had, it would have been English. And so it was that English was my secondary focus, my undeclared minor, and, wishing to avoid the boring mechanics classes, I opted for writing classes. Late one spring, at registration for the fall semester, I rather haphazardly registered for a beginner's creative writing class. It was open and I got a slot. It was a few weeks later when, bored, I actually read the class description. I broke out in a cold sweat: I couldn't possibly write a short story, let alone TWO, in one semester! I have no freakin' ideas! What could I possibly write about?
Then one evening I caught the PBS documentary show "P.O.V." and its topic was cryogenic freezing. Aside from the nut jobs these people interviewed on camera, there was one supporter who said something like, "Wouldn't it be great if, when we lost a loved one to some nasty, incurable disease today, we could freeze them until a cure for their illness was found, unfreeze them a few years later, cure them of their disease, and have them back with us?"
And I thought, "Sure. That'd be great. But what if the cure isn't found for like ninety years, and th..." And WHAMMO! I had my first idea for a short story! First it was just a vague idea. I made a first attempt at writing, and writing was slow. But then a new idea hit me, and then another, and another. The next thing I knew, 6 hours had passed in the computer lab, it was going on 1:00am, my bladder was full and my joints were screaming, and I had about 75% of the story written! I had my first "flow" experience, where you become so consumed in the task at hand, so intensely concentrated, that almost everything else around you and within you is tuned out. Oddly enough that story was titled "Ice Age," though it has nothing to do with prehistoric animals or an acorn-deranged squirrel.
Next I drew upon experience, taking the legend of a haunted site at an Air Force base where I had been stationed and turning it into a first-person narrative. There were a couple other, less memorable stories written over two semesters of creative writing classes. And then I was done. No more classes. No more writing. I had faced the challenge of writing for a grade, and I had done well. I really enjoyed writing, but I felt limited by the fact that I couldn't come up with ideas to write. My nascent writing career had already peaked before I was graduated.
Shortly after graduation at the end of 1990 thoughts were swirling around in my head, and I hit on this idea for a short story. I will not share it here for paranoid fear of somebody else taking it, but it was one of those flow moments: the ideas came hard and fast, so fast I couldn't keep them straight. The longer I thought about it, the more ideas that came. Finally I had to sit down and organize the thoughts into a rough outline, otherwise I feared the idea would slip away. The more I scribbled, the more ideas hit. Before too long I realized that, even with concise, efficient writing (as I'm not prone to do, in case you hadn't noticed), if it ever was written, this little idea was going to be a novel.
Due to various reasons, such as creative burnout from my job, lack of funds for a computer (I won't write with anything else), and then a serious case of writer's block, it was more than ten years before I sat down and earnestly started chipping away, first at connecting the story's beginning elements with its end elements - I had the two and needed to connect the dots across the middle - in a clear and concise treatment, and then at the actual narrative. I'm several chapters into it now, and I feel with a couple of other writing projects I've generated for myself, and the musical goofing around I've been doing, I've kick-started the next creative surge that may take me much deeper into the novel than I am at the moment.
In other words, I feel like I'm being eaten up by the urge to write. It took starting to write this novel for me to realize that I've been "writing" all my life, with the little scenarios in my head for every little event that might happen. If I could think my way through a career change to one where I could make my living by writing in a creative way, I would do it. I've told people for the past 15 years that I couldn't imagine myself being in any field other than the one I'm in right now, but a career as a writer is the one alternative in which I could see myself.
I feel that perhaps I have unfairly teased my reader (I had a handful of readers when I started writing this post. I'm fairly sure I've bored most of them off by this point) by mentioning this great novel which I will not mention. I will dig out the old stories from my creative writing classes mentioned above, dust them off and transcribe them from hardcopy for posting here. This will take a while since the format and media on which they were written - both hardware and software - are long since obsolete.
Keep your eyes peeled, if you're at all interested, for some original short stories.
Looking for suggestions: should I post them as blog entries, or would you rather they be downloadable from links?
dassall
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
I'm Like Homer...Only Not the Iliad Guy
| You Are Homer Simpson |
 You're just an ordinary, all-American working Joe... With a special fondness for pork rinds and donuts. You will be remembered for: your little "isms" and philosophies on life Your life philosophy: "Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals ... except the weasel." |
Got this from Irb and Sideshow Bob. I'm Homer!! I'M HOMER!! Only, I don't know if that's a good thing.... If I had come up as Ned Flanders I think I would have killed myself.
But my all-time favorite Homer quote is, "OPERATOR!! Give me the number to 9-1-1!" And my second favorite is "Alcohol: the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."
Sunday, March 12, 2006
Farting Musical Notes
I am not a musician. I can’t read a note of music, nor can I play a musical instrument. However, as one may recall, I do have a love of the keyboard, and I have a long history of farting around with them.
Last summer Mrs. Farrago and I upgraded our computers, and I came into possession of my first brand new computer in the 21st century, an Apple G5 iMac. While farting around with it (What? There’s a manual?) I discovered this little program that came with the purchase, called “Garage Band.” I read in the help menus that one so inclined could attach a MIDI keyboard to the computer and use that to pump sounds out of the computer. Ahh, wouldn’t that be nice? I had my old Casio keyboard down in the basement, the one I’d had since I bought the demo model in 1993. It had MIDI capability, but it was the size of a surfboard, so it wouldn’t fit in the tight confines of my home office. So I was content to use the QWERTY keyboard mapped as a musical instrument, which the app calls “musical typing.” Okay, “content” doesn’t fit as well as “tolerant.” Okay, so I never messed with it after the novelty wore off.
Then, one day shortly after my 41st birthday, and immediately after a routine dental appointment, I moseyed through the Michigan Avenue Apple store, where my eyes were grabbed by the flash of a dreamy sight: an iMac, open to “Garage band,” with a musical keyboard attached! The keyboard was marked at only $100, so I used my birthday money and I bought one! (Yes, I had ‘birthday money.’ Shut up.)
Then I gave away my Casio keyboard as a wonderful gift (same link as above...). And after that I propped my new MIDI keyboard, unopened, against the wall next to my desk, waiting for the day I cleaned off my desk and made room for the keyboard. That was in October. Finally, just a couple of weeks ago I finally cleared some space for the keyboard, and I finally was able to play with it.
I have a small repertoire of tunes I play. None of them are very sophisticated, but I like to play them over and over because they’re original, and they’re mine. I occasionally create something new, just hitting some keys and, if I hear something interesting, I explore it. But the problem has often been that I would find a cool sound, play it for a day, and then, since I can’t write music, I would forget it. Well, with “Garage Band” I can record whatever I create into a timeline. Then I can create a second track and record an accompaniment to the first. I can layer sounds and instruments. And then I can look at what I’ve created as notes on a musical staff!! I think I can even print it out as sheet music, but I’ve never explored that possibility.
So, just farting around with the keyboard and “Garage Band,” I hit on a sound and I played with it. About twenty minutes later I had created three tracks with three different instrument voices in a somewhat dark and foreboding tune, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl over what I had created. I called Mrs. Farrago in to let her listen to it. She smiled at me, more amused at the giddy grin on my face than the musical sludge I had just produced. She offered her opinion – unsolicited as it was – and from her words came the title of the song.
So, I present to you a Farrago original, Bad ‘80s Sci-fi Movie Theme Song. Let me know if you download it into your iPod or MP3 player. I want the royalties. (Don’t worry. I don’t sing on it.)
dassall
Last summer Mrs. Farrago and I upgraded our computers, and I came into possession of my first brand new computer in the 21st century, an Apple G5 iMac. While farting around with it (What? There’s a manual?) I discovered this little program that came with the purchase, called “Garage Band.” I read in the help menus that one so inclined could attach a MIDI keyboard to the computer and use that to pump sounds out of the computer. Ahh, wouldn’t that be nice? I had my old Casio keyboard down in the basement, the one I’d had since I bought the demo model in 1993. It had MIDI capability, but it was the size of a surfboard, so it wouldn’t fit in the tight confines of my home office. So I was content to use the QWERTY keyboard mapped as a musical instrument, which the app calls “musical typing.” Okay, “content” doesn’t fit as well as “tolerant.” Okay, so I never messed with it after the novelty wore off.
Then, one day shortly after my 41st birthday, and immediately after a routine dental appointment, I moseyed through the Michigan Avenue Apple store, where my eyes were grabbed by the flash of a dreamy sight: an iMac, open to “Garage band,” with a musical keyboard attached! The keyboard was marked at only $100, so I used my birthday money and I bought one! (Yes, I had ‘birthday money.’ Shut up.)
Then I gave away my Casio keyboard as a wonderful gift (same link as above...). And after that I propped my new MIDI keyboard, unopened, against the wall next to my desk, waiting for the day I cleaned off my desk and made room for the keyboard. That was in October. Finally, just a couple of weeks ago I finally cleared some space for the keyboard, and I finally was able to play with it.
I have a small repertoire of tunes I play. None of them are very sophisticated, but I like to play them over and over because they’re original, and they’re mine. I occasionally create something new, just hitting some keys and, if I hear something interesting, I explore it. But the problem has often been that I would find a cool sound, play it for a day, and then, since I can’t write music, I would forget it. Well, with “Garage Band” I can record whatever I create into a timeline. Then I can create a second track and record an accompaniment to the first. I can layer sounds and instruments. And then I can look at what I’ve created as notes on a musical staff!! I think I can even print it out as sheet music, but I’ve never explored that possibility.
So, just farting around with the keyboard and “Garage Band,” I hit on a sound and I played with it. About twenty minutes later I had created three tracks with three different instrument voices in a somewhat dark and foreboding tune, and I was giggling like a schoolgirl over what I had created. I called Mrs. Farrago in to let her listen to it. She smiled at me, more amused at the giddy grin on my face than the musical sludge I had just produced. She offered her opinion – unsolicited as it was – and from her words came the title of the song.
So, I present to you a Farrago original, Bad ‘80s Sci-fi Movie Theme Song. Let me know if you download it into your iPod or MP3 player. I want the royalties. (Don’t worry. I don’t sing on it.)
dassall
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Travelogue - or, How a Snowflake Can Ruin a Perfectly Good Day
When I first started looking into hotel rooms in the Biloxi-Gulfport region of coastal Mississippi, it looked grim. None of the usual chains had vacancies within 50 miles, due either to the fact that the buildings were still unrepaired of the damage from Hurricane Katrina, or to the fact that they were full of FEMA workers and displaced families. So I looked into flying into Mobile, Alabama, renting a car and driving about 60 miles to Biloxi. I booked a room at a Mobile Hampton Inn and began to peruse available flights.
My host for the shoot in the region e-mailed me and said she had found vacancies in the three casinos that had reopened in Biloxi. It would be more convenient to fly into Gulfport, and even moreso to fly out of Gulfport because the ten-minute drive would allow me more shooting time than would the one-hour drive to Mobile. So I cancelled the room in Mobile and booked into the Imperial Palace casino in Biloxi.
The morning of March 2 was grey and turning greyer as the day progressed. By the time I left the office for O'Hare airport, little snowflakes were floating about, certainly not enough to matter. I arrived at the parking lot a little after 11:00am only to find that the garage was full, so I had to park outside. The City of Chicago, in its infinite wisdom, decided long ago that it would not put the luggage cart dispenser machines out in the parking lots at O'Hare, because, as everyone knows, people who travel with lots of luggage can always check it curbside. Well, the skycaps at O'Hare will not check odd-sized, overweight or excess luggage curbside, and odd-sized, overweight and excess is what I have to carry to get all my video crap all over the country, so when I travel alone I have to take it with me to the parking garage, walk INTO the airport to the cart dispensers, walk with the cart back to my car, load the gear onto the cart and walk all the way back into the airport to "begin" my trip.
I always fly United Airlines, where I have my hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and my Premier Executive status. It's not necessarily that they're the best airline to fly, but they're headquartered in Chicago, so they have a lot of flights every day to just about anywhere in the world you want to go... except Gulfport, Mississippi. So I had to fly, changing planes in Atlanta, on Delta Airlines, with which I have ammassed in the last five years of travel, approximately ten frequent flyer miles. To Delta I am but a mere traveler, cattle to be herded into the tiniest stalls, where a fate of slaughter to be butchered into steaks and hamburger is preferred over a cramped existence. And they cut me no breaks on overweight or excess luggage. So the Delta ticket agent frowned politely as he informed me there would be a 100 dollar charge for the TWO extra bags because, as a mere head in the herd, I am only allowed two. And oops! The light kit is fourteen pounds overweight. That'll be another 25 dollars. Actually, this is par for the course. We're used to paying the extra charges because we have to get it there, and there's no other way with the equipment choices we've made. So I paid the charges, got my boarding cards along with the notification that my flight was delayed at least thirty minutes, and was on my way. Security is always a burden because I carry a betacam camera in a Porta-Brace bag onto the plane. With the new TSA rules, I have to take the camera out of its bag (it IS a video camera, after all) and put it in a bin to run through the x-ray scanner. I also have to take my laptop out of my backpack. Once past the x-ray and the magnetometer I have to put the camera back in the bag, but that requires unpacking the rest of the stuff that I jam into the camera bag so I can fit the camera back in properly, and then repacking the other stuff.
When I finished with security I arrived at the gate to discover that the flight had been further delayed, so the 1:10pm flight was now expected to take off around 2:30. The gate agent assured all of us who had to connect in Atlanta that part of this delay was the result of weather around Atlanta, so air traffic out of Atlanta was delayed as well. We were all but guaranteed to make our connections. My boredom was staved off briefly by the entertaining police "chase" covered live on CNN; a distraught, mentally imbalanced woman had stolen a police SUV -- a POLICE SUV!! -- in southern California and was almost quite literally driving around in circles as police and news helicopters followed her every move. Suddenly there was a roadblock and cops briefly swarmed her, then took her into custody. She wasn't black, and there were about fifty news choppers hovering overhead with three-foot-long zoom lenses aimed at the commotion, so the cops didn't beat her senseless...at least not while anyone was watching. With the suspect apprehended, CNN went on to the real news, and to the weather. They showed the national radar map which revealed, in bold, living color that there was not one drip of precipitation falling out of the sky within 300 miles of Atlanta, Georgia! Air Traffic Control is so full of shit! If there are too many damn planes in the sky to process to the ground in a timely manner, then fucking say so! Don't give us this "weather delay" bullshit.
As a United Airlines passenger with Premier status, I enjoy the privilege of boarding the plane in the first group after first class. This privilege always assures me space in the overhead compartment for my camera bag, as it is technically too big to be allowed as carry-on luggage. Any airline employee who balks at its size usually shuts up when they see that it's a $35,000 camera that would surely be crushed in the baggage hold if they forced me to check it. As a Delta Airlines passenger I have no such privilege, so I had to take my chances with the rest of the cattle, boarding in the LAST group, all but assured to have no overhead space. I was lucky and found space -- about ten rows forward of my seat!
The pilot informed us that, due to the weather, our plane needed to be hosed down with de-icing compound, so there would be an additional wait of up to thirty minutes! I began to worry again because I'm certain that planes delayed by "weather" in Atlanta, where the temperature was in the 60s, weren't being further delayed by de-icing procedures! We finally trundled down the runway and, as I felt the fuselage vibrate when the wheels lifted off of the concrete, I looked at my watch: 2:55.
We gated in Atanta at 5:35. Of course, I was in the back of the plane, so when the door opened to let passengers off, it was another ten minutes before I stepped into the airport building. I checked a status board and discovered that my connection to Gulfport had indeed been delayed, but it had taken off just ten minutes earlier...at 5:35... and would be landing in Gulfport in about an hour.
I was directed to the Delta Customer Service desk and informed that the next flight out to Gulfport was scheduled to leave at 8:40pm, however, that flight was full. The next flight after that to Gulfport was at 8:30 the next morning. This would not do, as the shoot was scheduled to start at 8:00am. I had to get there "tonight." The agent told me that there was a flight at 7:00 to Mobile with seats available. Okay, back to plan A... or was it plan B now? Whatever, I'll take it! I called my office and asked our travel person to reschedule my rental car for me to pick up in Mobile and drop off in Gulfport.
Of course, because of Atlanta "weather," the 7:00pm flight was delayed, too. I learned this tidbit of information when I approached the gate desk. The flight was delayed until 8:00, and the gate agents there told me that the flight was oversold, so I might NOT get a seat. Then the departure was moved back to 8:30. Then 8:45. Then 9:00. To my relief they called my name and gave me a boarding card, and I was seated. It was during the flight that I had a brief moment of panic. Luggage. I had no idea where my luggage was or where it might be headed. Did the baggage handlers get the word that I had changed destinations? Did they have time to get my bags onto this plane? Were my bags in Schenectady? OMAHA?!
I arrived in Mobile around 9:00pm (crossing into the central time zone you gain an hour back) and waited for my luggage, but it didn't come out. I found the Delta Baggage Claim office to learn where my bags were.
"My hunch," said the matron of the Mobile Airport Delta Baggage Claim office, "is they're going to Gulfport, the original destination, on the 8:40 flight. It was delayed."
Hmmm. Surprise. "Your 'hunch?' You can't tell me for certain where they are?"
"I don't know, sir. They haven't been scanned."
"What do you mean, 'They haven't been scanned?'" said I.
"All bags are scanned when they're taken off of the plane."
"So you can't tell me where my bags are?" I asked.
"Not until they're scanned, sir."
"Weren't they scanned before getting on the plane?"
"Sir," she said with a condescending smile, "if we tried to scan every bag before we put it on a plane, we'd never get anywhere."
"United Airlines scans every bag onto their planes, and then they scan again when they come off. If you're at Omaha International and your bags were erroneously sent to Schenectady, United Airlines can tell you WHERE THE FUCK YOUR BAGS ARE!" I thought. I didn't actually SAY it because I really wanted to get my bags before the month of March ended. "Oh. Okay," I said.
"So," she said, "you should try to get to the Gulfport airport as quickly as you can to see if you can get your bags when they come off the plane." And, just in case I didn't make it in time, she scheduled the baggage office there to deliver my bags to my hotel.
At 80 miles an hour, I made the drive from Mobile to Biloxi -- a drive the bag claim lady at Mobile Airport estimated at 90 minutes -- in 45. On the way I contacted my host to let her know that the shoot could be in jeopardy if Delta screwed up my baggage delivery. She got on the internet and looked up info on flights into Gulfport and determined that the flight my bags most likely were on was scheduled into Gulfport at 11:30pm. Then she suggested that I get checked into the hotel, do my own check online, and then high-tail it down to the airport to try to intercept my bags if they come off the plane.
I arrived at the Imperial Palace-Biloxi. If you've never been there, picture a building with all of the grandiose hoo-hah of the brightest, brashest casinos of Las Vegas...if you've ever been THERE. Now picture it all alone in the night. Now place amid hurricane ravaged desolation, and you might start to get the creepy feeling of inappropriateness I did. I pulled into the valet lane and had to shout to the valet attendant over the jazz music that blared from speakers tucked into the canopy rafters that I was only going to be a few minutes to check in, get my stuff up to my room, and then come back down to get my car. He shouted back that he would keep it close so that it could be retrieved quickly. I saw him write on the ticket "Keep close."
As I checked in the attractive, young woman at the registration counter asked me how I was doing. I gave her a very brief rundown of the lousy traveling day I had, and she turned to the other registration clerk, another attractive young lady, and said, "What can we do to make him happy?" Well, since my mind dwells in the gutter, when two young, attractive women ponder aloud such a question before me, I picture nothing short of pornographic. I was actually disappointed when she said that she would comp me an upgrade to a suite. My wife wouldn't have approved, anyway.
I went up to my room and, after trying unsuccessfully with both keycards to get the door to unlock, I realized that my room was 2910, not 2901. When I opened the door to 2910 -- on the first try -- I was astounded by the size of the room. An 'L'-shaped living area included a dining table with eight chairs, a sofa, two or three armchairs in the center, a large-screen projection TV (not widescreen or plasma, though) and a bar with stools. The bedroom was probably one-third the size of the living room, with a 'V'-shaped jacuzzi, and a shower big enough for three (damn!). The room had two bathrooms. I would guess that the whole hotel room was about 1,000 to 1,200 square feet! It was obscenely huge, and by far larger than any hotel room I've ever stayed in!
I checked the flights from Atlanta to Gulfport, and I surmised (incorrectly) that my luggage was coming in on a flight at 10:35. I checked my watch -- 10:15 -- and I quickly went downstairs and requested my car from the valet desk. I asked the boy there how long for my car, and he said, "Five to ten minutes."
I stood outside under the annoyingly loud jazz canopy. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. They were pretty busy. At twenty minutes I was getting more perturbed with each valet customer who arrived after I did and got his or her car before I got mine. I'm a very patient person, and I'm not too eager to participate in a confrontation, and even less eager to initiate one, so it had been a full thirty minutes before I finally went back to the valet desk and said, quite loudly, "Just how long do I have to wait for my car?"
The boy -- and I mean that quite literally; he was all of 19 or 20 years old -- looked at the pegboard of keys and said, "Your car will be right down, sir."
I went back outside and watched as the cars came down in waves of twos and threes, and other people got into their cars after only a few minutes' wait, and drove off to their storm-ravaged properties elsewhere in the region. By the third wave of not my cars, fifteen more minutes had gone by. I practically stormed back in to the valet counter. "Could you please explain to me what the hell is going on with my car?" The boy -- a different one, now -- stammered about, looking at the keys on the wall, looking at my ticket.
"Uh, what kind of car is it, sir?" I told him. "What color is it?" Honestly, I wasn't sure. It was parked outside at Mobile Airport, and it was already dark outside when I picked it up. It wasn't white, it wasn't black. It was somewhere in between. Then he took his attention away from me, took the ticket of another customer and sent a porter on his way to get a car. I can't think of another, better word for "livid," but whatever it is, I was it.
"Is there a manager on duty tonight?"
The boy gestured over his shoulder, "We got two right here, sir."
"Not a valet manager. A hotel manager."
"I'll check, sir."
Fifty minutes after first requesting my car, and five minutes after asking to see the manager, each arrived at the valet area within seconds of the other. She was very apologetic and offered tme comps. I told her I was there only for the night, and I don't gamble. She asked me what room I was in, and I think when I told her I was in 2910 she must have thought "Well, there goes the suite comp idea!" Then she said she could comp me dinner. I looked at my watch and said, "I have to go to the airport to pick up my luggage. By the time I get back here it'll be midnight or later. I'm not eating at midnight!" So she comped me the buffet breakfast. Hoo boy. A free breakfast for an hour of my life taken away from me because a bunch of stupid kids lost my car. She told me to ask someone to call her when I returned so she could give me the comp slip, and to give her the opportunity to explain the reason for the delay, once she found it out for herself.
I left for the airport around 11:15pm. The signs along the interstate were helpful, and then the sign on the state road in Gulfport directed me onto the county road that leads to the airport. And then... nothing. No signs, no arrows. Nothing. I could see what looked like an airfield out in the darkness -- blue lights and flashing strobes. I followed the county road, looking for signs, but there were none. I wound up in a sleeping industrial complex and finally determined that I.was.fucking.lost.
I backtracked to the county road and, there, barely visible at the edge of my headlight beams was a sign, non-reflective, that sported a left-pointing arrow and read, "TERMINAL."
At first I thought I was at the wrong airport, as this one looked like it had been destroyed in the storm. But upon closer inspection I could see that the place was undergoing a major remodeling, and this was actually CONSTRUCTION work. I grabbed a luggage cart, offered from a dispenser in the parking lot, of all places, and went inside, hoping to find my luggage in the baggage claim area, abandoned and waiting for me. It wasn't. I went upstairs to the gate area where I found a young family, two children climbing happily on the chairs, and their parents seated in two of their own chairs, barely awake. The man looked at me.
"Is there another flight scheduled in tonight?" I asked him.
"Yup."
I looked at the flight status monitor. It showed only morning flights...for the next day.
"It's not up there," said the man.
"Where is it coming from?"
"Atlanta." Bingo. The 8:40 flight I couldn't get on, the one my host said was delayed until 11:30. It was my last hope. "It's delayed until 12:11," the man said.
Fuck.
Around 12:20 the bags started rolling out into the claim area, and soon enough, to my relief, mine came out, all four of them. When I got back to the hotel I got another ticket from the valet attendant and grabbed two of the bags I needed with me in the room. I turned and walked, debating whether I should even bother with the manager and her free breakfast. I looked up and saw the hotel manager almost sprinting toward me! She handed me a slip of paper with her signature on it and shouted to me over the stupid sound system that this was the comp form I needed to show to the buffet hostess. Then she told me that earlier the valet ticket the attendants place in the windshield had blown out of my car (it was pretty breezy under that canopy) and they couldn't find it. Somebody stuck a different ticket in the car, so the ticket number on the keys didn't match that in the car. It was inexcusable that none of the valets bothered to tell me, and for that she apologized profusely. A whole hour of your life spent fuming - *poof!* Gone. Enjoy your free breakfast. Hoo boy.
So I went up to my huge suite, enjoyed a full twenty minutes of it before I went to sleep and woke up five hours later to pack everything up, eat breakfast, and check out.
The shoot in devastated Pass Christian, Mississippi, went very well, and the return trip out of Gulfport, back through Atlanta, and into Chicago went smoothly and on time, without so much as an unpleasant employee looking down her nose at me.
Why is it when it doesn't matter, nothing happens?
My host for the shoot in the region e-mailed me and said she had found vacancies in the three casinos that had reopened in Biloxi. It would be more convenient to fly into Gulfport, and even moreso to fly out of Gulfport because the ten-minute drive would allow me more shooting time than would the one-hour drive to Mobile. So I cancelled the room in Mobile and booked into the Imperial Palace casino in Biloxi.
The morning of March 2 was grey and turning greyer as the day progressed. By the time I left the office for O'Hare airport, little snowflakes were floating about, certainly not enough to matter. I arrived at the parking lot a little after 11:00am only to find that the garage was full, so I had to park outside. The City of Chicago, in its infinite wisdom, decided long ago that it would not put the luggage cart dispenser machines out in the parking lots at O'Hare, because, as everyone knows, people who travel with lots of luggage can always check it curbside. Well, the skycaps at O'Hare will not check odd-sized, overweight or excess luggage curbside, and odd-sized, overweight and excess is what I have to carry to get all my video crap all over the country, so when I travel alone I have to take it with me to the parking garage, walk INTO the airport to the cart dispensers, walk with the cart back to my car, load the gear onto the cart and walk all the way back into the airport to "begin" my trip.
I always fly United Airlines, where I have my hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles and my Premier Executive status. It's not necessarily that they're the best airline to fly, but they're headquartered in Chicago, so they have a lot of flights every day to just about anywhere in the world you want to go... except Gulfport, Mississippi. So I had to fly, changing planes in Atlanta, on Delta Airlines, with which I have ammassed in the last five years of travel, approximately ten frequent flyer miles. To Delta I am but a mere traveler, cattle to be herded into the tiniest stalls, where a fate of slaughter to be butchered into steaks and hamburger is preferred over a cramped existence. And they cut me no breaks on overweight or excess luggage. So the Delta ticket agent frowned politely as he informed me there would be a 100 dollar charge for the TWO extra bags because, as a mere head in the herd, I am only allowed two. And oops! The light kit is fourteen pounds overweight. That'll be another 25 dollars. Actually, this is par for the course. We're used to paying the extra charges because we have to get it there, and there's no other way with the equipment choices we've made. So I paid the charges, got my boarding cards along with the notification that my flight was delayed at least thirty minutes, and was on my way. Security is always a burden because I carry a betacam camera in a Porta-Brace bag onto the plane. With the new TSA rules, I have to take the camera out of its bag (it IS a video camera, after all) and put it in a bin to run through the x-ray scanner. I also have to take my laptop out of my backpack. Once past the x-ray and the magnetometer I have to put the camera back in the bag, but that requires unpacking the rest of the stuff that I jam into the camera bag so I can fit the camera back in properly, and then repacking the other stuff.
When I finished with security I arrived at the gate to discover that the flight had been further delayed, so the 1:10pm flight was now expected to take off around 2:30. The gate agent assured all of us who had to connect in Atlanta that part of this delay was the result of weather around Atlanta, so air traffic out of Atlanta was delayed as well. We were all but guaranteed to make our connections. My boredom was staved off briefly by the entertaining police "chase" covered live on CNN; a distraught, mentally imbalanced woman had stolen a police SUV -- a POLICE SUV!! -- in southern California and was almost quite literally driving around in circles as police and news helicopters followed her every move. Suddenly there was a roadblock and cops briefly swarmed her, then took her into custody. She wasn't black, and there were about fifty news choppers hovering overhead with three-foot-long zoom lenses aimed at the commotion, so the cops didn't beat her senseless...at least not while anyone was watching. With the suspect apprehended, CNN went on to the real news, and to the weather. They showed the national radar map which revealed, in bold, living color that there was not one drip of precipitation falling out of the sky within 300 miles of Atlanta, Georgia! Air Traffic Control is so full of shit! If there are too many damn planes in the sky to process to the ground in a timely manner, then fucking say so! Don't give us this "weather delay" bullshit.
As a United Airlines passenger with Premier status, I enjoy the privilege of boarding the plane in the first group after first class. This privilege always assures me space in the overhead compartment for my camera bag, as it is technically too big to be allowed as carry-on luggage. Any airline employee who balks at its size usually shuts up when they see that it's a $35,000 camera that would surely be crushed in the baggage hold if they forced me to check it. As a Delta Airlines passenger I have no such privilege, so I had to take my chances with the rest of the cattle, boarding in the LAST group, all but assured to have no overhead space. I was lucky and found space -- about ten rows forward of my seat!
The pilot informed us that, due to the weather, our plane needed to be hosed down with de-icing compound, so there would be an additional wait of up to thirty minutes! I began to worry again because I'm certain that planes delayed by "weather" in Atlanta, where the temperature was in the 60s, weren't being further delayed by de-icing procedures! We finally trundled down the runway and, as I felt the fuselage vibrate when the wheels lifted off of the concrete, I looked at my watch: 2:55.
We gated in Atanta at 5:35. Of course, I was in the back of the plane, so when the door opened to let passengers off, it was another ten minutes before I stepped into the airport building. I checked a status board and discovered that my connection to Gulfport had indeed been delayed, but it had taken off just ten minutes earlier...at 5:35... and would be landing in Gulfport in about an hour.
I was directed to the Delta Customer Service desk and informed that the next flight out to Gulfport was scheduled to leave at 8:40pm, however, that flight was full. The next flight after that to Gulfport was at 8:30 the next morning. This would not do, as the shoot was scheduled to start at 8:00am. I had to get there "tonight." The agent told me that there was a flight at 7:00 to Mobile with seats available. Okay, back to plan A... or was it plan B now? Whatever, I'll take it! I called my office and asked our travel person to reschedule my rental car for me to pick up in Mobile and drop off in Gulfport.
Of course, because of Atlanta "weather," the 7:00pm flight was delayed, too. I learned this tidbit of information when I approached the gate desk. The flight was delayed until 8:00, and the gate agents there told me that the flight was oversold, so I might NOT get a seat. Then the departure was moved back to 8:30. Then 8:45. Then 9:00. To my relief they called my name and gave me a boarding card, and I was seated. It was during the flight that I had a brief moment of panic. Luggage. I had no idea where my luggage was or where it might be headed. Did the baggage handlers get the word that I had changed destinations? Did they have time to get my bags onto this plane? Were my bags in Schenectady? OMAHA?!
I arrived in Mobile around 9:00pm (crossing into the central time zone you gain an hour back) and waited for my luggage, but it didn't come out. I found the Delta Baggage Claim office to learn where my bags were.
"My hunch," said the matron of the Mobile Airport Delta Baggage Claim office, "is they're going to Gulfport, the original destination, on the 8:40 flight. It was delayed."
Hmmm. Surprise. "Your 'hunch?' You can't tell me for certain where they are?"
"I don't know, sir. They haven't been scanned."
"What do you mean, 'They haven't been scanned?'" said I.
"All bags are scanned when they're taken off of the plane."
"So you can't tell me where my bags are?" I asked.
"Not until they're scanned, sir."
"Weren't they scanned before getting on the plane?"
"Sir," she said with a condescending smile, "if we tried to scan every bag before we put it on a plane, we'd never get anywhere."
"United Airlines scans every bag onto their planes, and then they scan again when they come off. If you're at Omaha International and your bags were erroneously sent to Schenectady, United Airlines can tell you WHERE THE FUCK YOUR BAGS ARE!" I thought. I didn't actually SAY it because I really wanted to get my bags before the month of March ended. "Oh. Okay," I said.
"So," she said, "you should try to get to the Gulfport airport as quickly as you can to see if you can get your bags when they come off the plane." And, just in case I didn't make it in time, she scheduled the baggage office there to deliver my bags to my hotel.
At 80 miles an hour, I made the drive from Mobile to Biloxi -- a drive the bag claim lady at Mobile Airport estimated at 90 minutes -- in 45. On the way I contacted my host to let her know that the shoot could be in jeopardy if Delta screwed up my baggage delivery. She got on the internet and looked up info on flights into Gulfport and determined that the flight my bags most likely were on was scheduled into Gulfport at 11:30pm. Then she suggested that I get checked into the hotel, do my own check online, and then high-tail it down to the airport to try to intercept my bags if they come off the plane.
I arrived at the Imperial Palace-Biloxi. If you've never been there, picture a building with all of the grandiose hoo-hah of the brightest, brashest casinos of Las Vegas...if you've ever been THERE. Now picture it all alone in the night. Now place amid hurricane ravaged desolation, and you might start to get the creepy feeling of inappropriateness I did. I pulled into the valet lane and had to shout to the valet attendant over the jazz music that blared from speakers tucked into the canopy rafters that I was only going to be a few minutes to check in, get my stuff up to my room, and then come back down to get my car. He shouted back that he would keep it close so that it could be retrieved quickly. I saw him write on the ticket "Keep close."
As I checked in the attractive, young woman at the registration counter asked me how I was doing. I gave her a very brief rundown of the lousy traveling day I had, and she turned to the other registration clerk, another attractive young lady, and said, "What can we do to make him happy?" Well, since my mind dwells in the gutter, when two young, attractive women ponder aloud such a question before me, I picture nothing short of pornographic. I was actually disappointed when she said that she would comp me an upgrade to a suite. My wife wouldn't have approved, anyway.
I went up to my room and, after trying unsuccessfully with both keycards to get the door to unlock, I realized that my room was 2910, not 2901. When I opened the door to 2910 -- on the first try -- I was astounded by the size of the room. An 'L'-shaped living area included a dining table with eight chairs, a sofa, two or three armchairs in the center, a large-screen projection TV (not widescreen or plasma, though) and a bar with stools. The bedroom was probably one-third the size of the living room, with a 'V'-shaped jacuzzi, and a shower big enough for three (damn!). The room had two bathrooms. I would guess that the whole hotel room was about 1,000 to 1,200 square feet! It was obscenely huge, and by far larger than any hotel room I've ever stayed in!
I checked the flights from Atlanta to Gulfport, and I surmised (incorrectly) that my luggage was coming in on a flight at 10:35. I checked my watch -- 10:15 -- and I quickly went downstairs and requested my car from the valet desk. I asked the boy there how long for my car, and he said, "Five to ten minutes."
I stood outside under the annoyingly loud jazz canopy. Ten minutes went by. Fifteen. They were pretty busy. At twenty minutes I was getting more perturbed with each valet customer who arrived after I did and got his or her car before I got mine. I'm a very patient person, and I'm not too eager to participate in a confrontation, and even less eager to initiate one, so it had been a full thirty minutes before I finally went back to the valet desk and said, quite loudly, "Just how long do I have to wait for my car?"
The boy -- and I mean that quite literally; he was all of 19 or 20 years old -- looked at the pegboard of keys and said, "Your car will be right down, sir."
I went back outside and watched as the cars came down in waves of twos and threes, and other people got into their cars after only a few minutes' wait, and drove off to their storm-ravaged properties elsewhere in the region. By the third wave of not my cars, fifteen more minutes had gone by. I practically stormed back in to the valet counter. "Could you please explain to me what the hell is going on with my car?" The boy -- a different one, now -- stammered about, looking at the keys on the wall, looking at my ticket.
"Uh, what kind of car is it, sir?" I told him. "What color is it?" Honestly, I wasn't sure. It was parked outside at Mobile Airport, and it was already dark outside when I picked it up. It wasn't white, it wasn't black. It was somewhere in between. Then he took his attention away from me, took the ticket of another customer and sent a porter on his way to get a car. I can't think of another, better word for "livid," but whatever it is, I was it.
"Is there a manager on duty tonight?"
The boy gestured over his shoulder, "We got two right here, sir."
"Not a valet manager. A hotel manager."
"I'll check, sir."
Fifty minutes after first requesting my car, and five minutes after asking to see the manager, each arrived at the valet area within seconds of the other. She was very apologetic and offered tme comps. I told her I was there only for the night, and I don't gamble. She asked me what room I was in, and I think when I told her I was in 2910 she must have thought "Well, there goes the suite comp idea!" Then she said she could comp me dinner. I looked at my watch and said, "I have to go to the airport to pick up my luggage. By the time I get back here it'll be midnight or later. I'm not eating at midnight!" So she comped me the buffet breakfast. Hoo boy. A free breakfast for an hour of my life taken away from me because a bunch of stupid kids lost my car. She told me to ask someone to call her when I returned so she could give me the comp slip, and to give her the opportunity to explain the reason for the delay, once she found it out for herself.
I left for the airport around 11:15pm. The signs along the interstate were helpful, and then the sign on the state road in Gulfport directed me onto the county road that leads to the airport. And then... nothing. No signs, no arrows. Nothing. I could see what looked like an airfield out in the darkness -- blue lights and flashing strobes. I followed the county road, looking for signs, but there were none. I wound up in a sleeping industrial complex and finally determined that I.was.fucking.lost.
I backtracked to the county road and, there, barely visible at the edge of my headlight beams was a sign, non-reflective, that sported a left-pointing arrow and read, "TERMINAL."
At first I thought I was at the wrong airport, as this one looked like it had been destroyed in the storm. But upon closer inspection I could see that the place was undergoing a major remodeling, and this was actually CONSTRUCTION work. I grabbed a luggage cart, offered from a dispenser in the parking lot, of all places, and went inside, hoping to find my luggage in the baggage claim area, abandoned and waiting for me. It wasn't. I went upstairs to the gate area where I found a young family, two children climbing happily on the chairs, and their parents seated in two of their own chairs, barely awake. The man looked at me.
"Is there another flight scheduled in tonight?" I asked him.
"Yup."
I looked at the flight status monitor. It showed only morning flights...for the next day.
"It's not up there," said the man.
"Where is it coming from?"
"Atlanta." Bingo. The 8:40 flight I couldn't get on, the one my host said was delayed until 11:30. It was my last hope. "It's delayed until 12:11," the man said.
Fuck.
Around 12:20 the bags started rolling out into the claim area, and soon enough, to my relief, mine came out, all four of them. When I got back to the hotel I got another ticket from the valet attendant and grabbed two of the bags I needed with me in the room. I turned and walked, debating whether I should even bother with the manager and her free breakfast. I looked up and saw the hotel manager almost sprinting toward me! She handed me a slip of paper with her signature on it and shouted to me over the stupid sound system that this was the comp form I needed to show to the buffet hostess. Then she told me that earlier the valet ticket the attendants place in the windshield had blown out of my car (it was pretty breezy under that canopy) and they couldn't find it. Somebody stuck a different ticket in the car, so the ticket number on the keys didn't match that in the car. It was inexcusable that none of the valets bothered to tell me, and for that she apologized profusely. A whole hour of your life spent fuming - *poof!* Gone. Enjoy your free breakfast. Hoo boy.
So I went up to my huge suite, enjoyed a full twenty minutes of it before I went to sleep and woke up five hours later to pack everything up, eat breakfast, and check out.
The shoot in devastated Pass Christian, Mississippi, went very well, and the return trip out of Gulfport, back through Atlanta, and into Chicago went smoothly and on time, without so much as an unpleasant employee looking down her nose at me.
Why is it when it doesn't matter, nothing happens?
Monday, February 27, 2006
Twenty Year Itch
I never intended this blog to be strictly a “Farrago Reminisces” venue, but it seems to have evolved into it on its own.
My elderly father has decided to sell the “summer cottage” he bought in 1977, gutted, spent ten years of mostly solitary labor fixing up, and then moved into with my mother in 1988. He can’t take care of the house or himself any more, so he has moved in with one of my sisters.
A few weeks ago a few of my siblings (I have six) boxed up a bunch of stuff and brought it to where my father is living now, and I visited last weekend. My sister placed a bunch of papers on her kitchen table and told me that I could go through and take anything from the pile that I wanted, and the rest was going to be thrown away.
This pile was mostly letters to and from me when I was in the Air Force over twenty years ago. I had kept everything that was sent to me, a trait I apparently learned form my mother, as she kept a memento of just about everything I did, up to and through college! When I changed duty stations from Montana to Germany I sent home a box of stuff I didn’t need, and in it were all the letters I had received from everybody whoever sent me something.
At some point before she died in 1993 (because if she had done it AFTER she died…well, that would just be CREEPY!) my mother assembled all of the letters to and fro from my first two years in the Air Force, plus everything she received from me when I was in Germany and in college, in roughly chronological order.
And there it sat before me on the table, along with my birth announcement, a photo of me at age four in the local newspaper stealing candy from the “Easter Bunny’s” basket, my high school graduation “snatch ‘n grab” photo, programs from just about every high school concert and play (plus a couple of community theatre performances) I was in, and local newspaper announcements of my two major achievements in the Air Force, namely completing basic training and not being kicked out.
I took these things home and a week later I opened the bag and reorganized everything. Then, because I had nothing else to do, I opened the first letter, sent to me not by anyone in my family, but by someone from the community theatre with whom, maybe three weeks earlier, I had just finished doing a play.
There was the confusion in my family over my new mailing address. Everybody missing me. How strange Christmas was without me. How my parents were coping, as I was the last kid to leave the house, and now it was just the two of them. Christmas of 1983 was the coldest in the history of Chicago, and quite a few other places in the US, but my Jeep CJ-5, being the only vehicle in the family with a manual transmission, was the family’s savior because, with all of the vehicle batteries laid to waste by the bitter cold, my father and one of my brothers-in-law were able to push start the Jeep, and then use it to jump the batteries and start the engines of the other cars.
There was a letter from my youngest sibling, six years older than I, yet to marry at the time, though he and his girlfriend had just set a date, detailing their ordeal on that cold, cold Christmas. I don’t think he has ever written a longer letter, before or since that one.
And there were the letters from a girl I was dating at the time – if two can be “dating” when one is over a thousand miles away for eighteen weeks – who dumped me the day I came home on my first leave.
And there were my letters, my loneliness, my fatigue, my fear of the new life I had just thrust myself into, and the progression of my growing self-confidence as I was molded into the Air Force’s image of an airman.
I only got about halfway through the pile before I realized it was very late, and I was neglecting Mrs. Farrago again. I read one last letter, one last sibling telling me how much I was missed, relating how my mother was telling everyone about all of the excuses my father was making for not taking out the garbage (which, until the day I left for the military, was my job), and it struck me how special it is to have a family who loves me, who experienced a huge void when I left, and who did their best to keep me informed about life back home, and to keep my spirits up in case I felt like giving up.
It certainly didn’t feel like it at the time, but I was quite inundated with mail during basic training. I didn’t get as much mail as some guys, but I got more than others. And even though each letter pretty much told the same stories as the one before it, each was still an interesting slice of my family’s life. Each was still an interesting slice of my life, as I was brought back to 1984 to re-experience some of the same emotions I felt then.
As I re-bagged the stack of envelopes and papers, it occurred to me that I had done just what I had expected twenty-some-odd years ago when I first stuck them in an old shoebox in my dorm room: I pulled them out after a long time. I read them. I quietly reminisced, and, quite unexpectedly, I mourned on some levels for the passing of those days, for the passing of loved ones, for the demise of friendships that could not stand the stretches of silence, nor the tug of life in opposing directions.
And now I reflect on one of my earliest posts on this blog and realize I have learned of yet another fold in the pox that is the “Mid-Life Crisis”: memories you can’t relive but only revisit; people you’ve dismissed (or who’ve dismissed you) who you can’t really get back into your life.
And you feel ever more so the inexorable creep forward that you can’t reverse, nor can you stop and yet remain of this earth.
My elderly father has decided to sell the “summer cottage” he bought in 1977, gutted, spent ten years of mostly solitary labor fixing up, and then moved into with my mother in 1988. He can’t take care of the house or himself any more, so he has moved in with one of my sisters.
A few weeks ago a few of my siblings (I have six) boxed up a bunch of stuff and brought it to where my father is living now, and I visited last weekend. My sister placed a bunch of papers on her kitchen table and told me that I could go through and take anything from the pile that I wanted, and the rest was going to be thrown away.
This pile was mostly letters to and from me when I was in the Air Force over twenty years ago. I had kept everything that was sent to me, a trait I apparently learned form my mother, as she kept a memento of just about everything I did, up to and through college! When I changed duty stations from Montana to Germany I sent home a box of stuff I didn’t need, and in it were all the letters I had received from everybody whoever sent me something.
At some point before she died in 1993 (because if she had done it AFTER she died…well, that would just be CREEPY!) my mother assembled all of the letters to and fro from my first two years in the Air Force, plus everything she received from me when I was in Germany and in college, in roughly chronological order.
And there it sat before me on the table, along with my birth announcement, a photo of me at age four in the local newspaper stealing candy from the “Easter Bunny’s” basket, my high school graduation “snatch ‘n grab” photo, programs from just about every high school concert and play (plus a couple of community theatre performances) I was in, and local newspaper announcements of my two major achievements in the Air Force, namely completing basic training and not being kicked out.
I took these things home and a week later I opened the bag and reorganized everything. Then, because I had nothing else to do, I opened the first letter, sent to me not by anyone in my family, but by someone from the community theatre with whom, maybe three weeks earlier, I had just finished doing a play.
There was the confusion in my family over my new mailing address. Everybody missing me. How strange Christmas was without me. How my parents were coping, as I was the last kid to leave the house, and now it was just the two of them. Christmas of 1983 was the coldest in the history of Chicago, and quite a few other places in the US, but my Jeep CJ-5, being the only vehicle in the family with a manual transmission, was the family’s savior because, with all of the vehicle batteries laid to waste by the bitter cold, my father and one of my brothers-in-law were able to push start the Jeep, and then use it to jump the batteries and start the engines of the other cars.
There was a letter from my youngest sibling, six years older than I, yet to marry at the time, though he and his girlfriend had just set a date, detailing their ordeal on that cold, cold Christmas. I don’t think he has ever written a longer letter, before or since that one.
And there were the letters from a girl I was dating at the time – if two can be “dating” when one is over a thousand miles away for eighteen weeks – who dumped me the day I came home on my first leave.
And there were my letters, my loneliness, my fatigue, my fear of the new life I had just thrust myself into, and the progression of my growing self-confidence as I was molded into the Air Force’s image of an airman.
I only got about halfway through the pile before I realized it was very late, and I was neglecting Mrs. Farrago again. I read one last letter, one last sibling telling me how much I was missed, relating how my mother was telling everyone about all of the excuses my father was making for not taking out the garbage (which, until the day I left for the military, was my job), and it struck me how special it is to have a family who loves me, who experienced a huge void when I left, and who did their best to keep me informed about life back home, and to keep my spirits up in case I felt like giving up.
It certainly didn’t feel like it at the time, but I was quite inundated with mail during basic training. I didn’t get as much mail as some guys, but I got more than others. And even though each letter pretty much told the same stories as the one before it, each was still an interesting slice of my family’s life. Each was still an interesting slice of my life, as I was brought back to 1984 to re-experience some of the same emotions I felt then.
As I re-bagged the stack of envelopes and papers, it occurred to me that I had done just what I had expected twenty-some-odd years ago when I first stuck them in an old shoebox in my dorm room: I pulled them out after a long time. I read them. I quietly reminisced, and, quite unexpectedly, I mourned on some levels for the passing of those days, for the passing of loved ones, for the demise of friendships that could not stand the stretches of silence, nor the tug of life in opposing directions.
And now I reflect on one of my earliest posts on this blog and realize I have learned of yet another fold in the pox that is the “Mid-Life Crisis”: memories you can’t relive but only revisit; people you’ve dismissed (or who’ve dismissed you) who you can’t really get back into your life.
And you feel ever more so the inexorable creep forward that you can’t reverse, nor can you stop and yet remain of this earth.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Follow-Through
As both of my readers may remember, one of my recent posts concerned my efforts to find an old Air Force buddy.
Well, I'm happy to report three weeks later that Pete K. has responded! It's the right guy, even! He very briefly filled me in on his life since 1987. He's married since 1999 to a beautiful woman who has two daughters from a previous marriage, and they're gorgeous, too. He finds himself in a job that he never could have imagined himself in 20 years ago. He attributes his current success to his wife, saying that after meeting her, things in his life seemed to really click: after two earlier failed attempts, he was able to complete his college degree, and he found the job of his dreams.
I wrote him a long e-mail detailing the few highlights of my life since we last met (marriage, that one evening of sex, my new shoes) and, if he recovers from that, he might even write back again!
dassall!
Well, I'm happy to report three weeks later that Pete K. has responded! It's the right guy, even! He very briefly filled me in on his life since 1987. He's married since 1999 to a beautiful woman who has two daughters from a previous marriage, and they're gorgeous, too. He finds himself in a job that he never could have imagined himself in 20 years ago. He attributes his current success to his wife, saying that after meeting her, things in his life seemed to really click: after two earlier failed attempts, he was able to complete his college degree, and he found the job of his dreams.
I wrote him a long e-mail detailing the few highlights of my life since we last met (marriage, that one evening of sex, my new shoes) and, if he recovers from that, he might even write back again!
dassall!
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Random Thoughts...Literally
Have you ever just been thrumming along about your day and then, with no warning, no obvious trigger, your head fills with the memory of an image from your past? A random thought, unrelated to anything you're doing at the moment, just pops in, and suddenly you're all nostalgic, or angry, or embarrassed about something that you saw or that happened to you years ago?
For me it's mostly places. I'll be talking to someone at the office, pause for a breath, and POW! suddenly I'm recalling an intersection in Lautzenhausen, the small German village that was attached to Hahn Air Base where our unit was billeted when I was there in 1986-'87. Or I'll suddenly recall the entire route I drove from an apartment I had somewhere, to the place I worked at the time. Or the layout of a room in a building at college.
I can't sit here and conjure up these things. I mean, I can, but it's not the same as when they pop up randomly.
It's really weird when it's a thought or a memory that I haven't recalled in decades, like a vision from my childhood, even remembering things from the perspective of a four-foot-tall eight-year-old.
Don't you just hate it when you sit down to write something, but nothing relevant comes to mind?
dassall!
For me it's mostly places. I'll be talking to someone at the office, pause for a breath, and POW! suddenly I'm recalling an intersection in Lautzenhausen, the small German village that was attached to Hahn Air Base where our unit was billeted when I was there in 1986-'87. Or I'll suddenly recall the entire route I drove from an apartment I had somewhere, to the place I worked at the time. Or the layout of a room in a building at college.
I can't sit here and conjure up these things. I mean, I can, but it's not the same as when they pop up randomly.
It's really weird when it's a thought or a memory that I haven't recalled in decades, like a vision from my childhood, even remembering things from the perspective of a four-foot-tall eight-year-old.
Don't you just hate it when you sit down to write something, but nothing relevant comes to mind?
dassall!
Saturday, January 28, 2006
"JFK" 1986
I hadn't yet been born - hell, I hadn't even been conceived, yet - when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. But from the time I was aware of history until the 20th anniversary of that terrible day (apparently the appropriate period of mourning?), I was reminded every November 22 of the day our nation cried. Invariably the question was asked, "What were you doing the day Kennedy was killed?" And, invariably, those i knew who were around and self-aware on that day could remember exactly what it was they were doing when they heard the news.
I was stationed at Wüschheim Air Station in West Germany. I had been in country for exactly one month. As one of the newest airmen on base, and still fairly low in rank, I was put on the midnight shift guarding the GLCM Alert Maintenance Area (an acronym within an acronym!). Working midnights and living in the dorms could prove a challenge with all of the young, single men from all shifts trying to get everything out of life they could while far away from home, so sleep during the day was often elusive and regularly interrupted.
I felt the side of my bed - the top bunk - being tugged. A voice kept saying, "Dude, dude." Finally aware of reality, I rolled violently over to confront my roommate for waking me before the time I had set my alarm to do it.
"Dude, the space shuttle just blew up." He was a joker, and rarely sounded down. But he certainly seemed in shock.
I pictured dozens of scenarios in the blink of my eyes. In orbit. On the launch pad. On the landing strip. Shuttle launches were still new enough that the media paid rapt attention to them; that I paid interested attention in them. I knew one was scheduled to go up, but in my foggy state I couldn't be sure if it had already launched or was still waiting.
"WHAT?!" I sat up. "No way!"
"Yeah," he said.
"What happened?"
"Just fucking blew up," he said as he walked away from my bunk.
I maneuvered to climb down from the bed. "Where? When?"
"Right in the middle of the launch."
Launch pad. I pictured the old, early 1960s era test launches of space rockets, one in particular that lifted a few dozen feet off the ground and then dropped straight back down to the launch pad, buckling and fracturing under its own weight, and then exploding in an all-consuming fireball as all of the energy stored for its trip to space was spent in the fraction of a second.
"They've been playing it over and over on TV," my roommate said as he stood before the television set in the common area of our room. I came up and stood beside him and saw the now-famous shot of the aftermath of the explosion, the main fireball already expanded to its full dimension and now mostly grey-white, the two solid-fuel boosters flailing helplessly in near-space and then self-destructing as they were designed to do should something go horribly wrong, as had obviously happened.
And then the image switched to Challenger on the launch pad, all intact, as if the previous seconds of the broadcast had merely been a horrible nightmare. Three, two, one, liftoff. And seventy-three seconds later the story, the end of which I had already seen, updated itself. And I wanted to cry.
It was on the second or third replay for me that I noticed the odd spike of flame spurting out from the side of the main booster. And it was a few replays afterward that an "expert" pointed it out as abnormal, and certainly something that investigators would be looking into.
And I stood there in front of my television set, short of sleep, wishing they would stop showing the arc of tragedy over and over, and yet unable to tear my eyes away from the images with each replay.
It was not a president. I don't know of any other single American whose sudden, untimely, or even violent death would cause a nation to pause as would a president's, as did Kennedy's. And it wasn't the six astronauts and one teacher whose deaths stopped us in our tracks. It was the failure of something that, to our knowledge, had never failed before: NASA. We had conquered space, we Americans had. We had captured the moon, and the brand name we had affixed to it was NASA. NASA, we had believed, could do anything. NASA, we had come to understand with a sense of awe, could achieve the impossible. And the impossible had happened: failure. Catastrophic, fatal failure.
The nation paused and cried, not only for the seven valiant souls extinguished on that day, but because, despite the lofty goals and astounding achievements our nation had made under the banner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, we saw the first evidence of her crumbling edifice created by the ever increasing demand for perfection in a world of shrinking funds. Corners were cut, the evidence bore out. Oversight was overlooked. Sacrifices were made in order to get the next shuttle into space on schedule. Those who paid for these shortcomings were not just the seven crew who lost their lives that day, but it was every human being who watched in horror as those seven lives were lost, who felt their hearts stop beating for an instant, whose faith in this nation's brain-trust was shaken to the core, or even broken.
And now it's twenty years later. Every January 28th for the past ninteen years we have been revisited by the spectacular imagery of a nation's pride going up quite literally in flames. As we reflect on our tragic loss, we should also reflect on what has been learned since then. There are certain things in our world for which no penny should be spared. I don't speak of the lives of the astronauts. If our goal is the betterment of or the advancement of our species, if our goal is the better understanding of our world through exploration of the space around us, then we should responsibly spend every penny necessary to make sure nothing hinders the process. If we endeavor always to move forward, if we place learning at the forefront of our purpose instead of budget, then we will protect not only the lives of the daring souls who venture forth in the nose of the rocket, but as well the psyches of those left on the ground to watch, cheer, and reap the rewards.
dassall
I was stationed at Wüschheim Air Station in West Germany. I had been in country for exactly one month. As one of the newest airmen on base, and still fairly low in rank, I was put on the midnight shift guarding the GLCM Alert Maintenance Area (an acronym within an acronym!). Working midnights and living in the dorms could prove a challenge with all of the young, single men from all shifts trying to get everything out of life they could while far away from home, so sleep during the day was often elusive and regularly interrupted.
I felt the side of my bed - the top bunk - being tugged. A voice kept saying, "Dude, dude." Finally aware of reality, I rolled violently over to confront my roommate for waking me before the time I had set my alarm to do it.
"Dude, the space shuttle just blew up." He was a joker, and rarely sounded down. But he certainly seemed in shock.
I pictured dozens of scenarios in the blink of my eyes. In orbit. On the launch pad. On the landing strip. Shuttle launches were still new enough that the media paid rapt attention to them; that I paid interested attention in them. I knew one was scheduled to go up, but in my foggy state I couldn't be sure if it had already launched or was still waiting.
"WHAT?!" I sat up. "No way!"
"Yeah," he said.
"What happened?"
"Just fucking blew up," he said as he walked away from my bunk.
I maneuvered to climb down from the bed. "Where? When?"
"Right in the middle of the launch."
Launch pad. I pictured the old, early 1960s era test launches of space rockets, one in particular that lifted a few dozen feet off the ground and then dropped straight back down to the launch pad, buckling and fracturing under its own weight, and then exploding in an all-consuming fireball as all of the energy stored for its trip to space was spent in the fraction of a second.
"They've been playing it over and over on TV," my roommate said as he stood before the television set in the common area of our room. I came up and stood beside him and saw the now-famous shot of the aftermath of the explosion, the main fireball already expanded to its full dimension and now mostly grey-white, the two solid-fuel boosters flailing helplessly in near-space and then self-destructing as they were designed to do should something go horribly wrong, as had obviously happened.
And then the image switched to Challenger on the launch pad, all intact, as if the previous seconds of the broadcast had merely been a horrible nightmare. Three, two, one, liftoff. And seventy-three seconds later the story, the end of which I had already seen, updated itself. And I wanted to cry.
It was on the second or third replay for me that I noticed the odd spike of flame spurting out from the side of the main booster. And it was a few replays afterward that an "expert" pointed it out as abnormal, and certainly something that investigators would be looking into.
And I stood there in front of my television set, short of sleep, wishing they would stop showing the arc of tragedy over and over, and yet unable to tear my eyes away from the images with each replay.
It was not a president. I don't know of any other single American whose sudden, untimely, or even violent death would cause a nation to pause as would a president's, as did Kennedy's. And it wasn't the six astronauts and one teacher whose deaths stopped us in our tracks. It was the failure of something that, to our knowledge, had never failed before: NASA. We had conquered space, we Americans had. We had captured the moon, and the brand name we had affixed to it was NASA. NASA, we had believed, could do anything. NASA, we had come to understand with a sense of awe, could achieve the impossible. And the impossible had happened: failure. Catastrophic, fatal failure.
The nation paused and cried, not only for the seven valiant souls extinguished on that day, but because, despite the lofty goals and astounding achievements our nation had made under the banner of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, we saw the first evidence of her crumbling edifice created by the ever increasing demand for perfection in a world of shrinking funds. Corners were cut, the evidence bore out. Oversight was overlooked. Sacrifices were made in order to get the next shuttle into space on schedule. Those who paid for these shortcomings were not just the seven crew who lost their lives that day, but it was every human being who watched in horror as those seven lives were lost, who felt their hearts stop beating for an instant, whose faith in this nation's brain-trust was shaken to the core, or even broken.
And now it's twenty years later. Every January 28th for the past ninteen years we have been revisited by the spectacular imagery of a nation's pride going up quite literally in flames. As we reflect on our tragic loss, we should also reflect on what has been learned since then. There are certain things in our world for which no penny should be spared. I don't speak of the lives of the astronauts. If our goal is the betterment of or the advancement of our species, if our goal is the better understanding of our world through exploration of the space around us, then we should responsibly spend every penny necessary to make sure nothing hinders the process. If we endeavor always to move forward, if we place learning at the forefront of our purpose instead of budget, then we will protect not only the lives of the daring souls who venture forth in the nose of the rocket, but as well the psyches of those left on the ground to watch, cheer, and reap the rewards.
dassall
Sunday, January 22, 2006
A Boy's Dreams - 1977
I just caught a news story from the web and a video clip from an ABC news magazine program about former teen star Leif Garrett and his recent troubles with the law over his drug addictions.
The video clip showed him on stage singing his sickeningly catchy hit, "I Was Made For Dancing." That clip and his "Tiger Beat" photos brought back a rush of memories of standing in the magazine aisle of the local grocery store while my mother shopped, and looking at all of the magazines aimed at teens. In my day, in addition to Garrett, it was Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson and Shaun Cassidy, to name a few who were within a few years of my age, all of whose photos were plastered on the cheap print in a way most enticing to hormone-flooded teen girls.
Oh! How I wanted to be a teenage heart-throb! I hated those boys for their good looks, supposed talent, and their unfathomably good luck to have been born in the track they found themselves in that made them so irresistible to the very girls who were unaware of - or didn't care about - my existence. Why couldn't I have been blessed with the physical features of Paul-Michael Glaser? Why couldn't I have been bestowed with the physical coordination (and the looks!) of John Travolta? Why wasn't I gifted with a voice (and the looks!) like Shaun Cassidy? Instead, I couldn't run more than ten steps without tripping or colliding with something. When I sang, various game animals emerged from the forest with propagation of their species on their minds. My eyebrows were in the early stages of meeting and my hair didn't lay on my head the same way twice.
So, today, nearly 30 years later, I've stopped running all together, I only sing in the car...with the windows up... I discovered electrolysis and, more recently, waxing, and my hair has quite decidedly left my head for the apparently less hostile climate of my back.
And I look at the sorry mug shot of Leif Garrett, who is now being forced into drug rehab by a judge, and I wonder if, had his gifts been bestowed upon me, and everything I could have ever wanted as a young, teenage heart-throb was laid at my feet, would I just be in Garrett's situation today, looking across the court room at some anonymous shlub with a job and a wife and a kid or two, and wondering what it would have been like - wishing, even - to have had the childhood, the life, of a faceless nobody with his head screwed on straight?
dassall!
The video clip showed him on stage singing his sickeningly catchy hit, "I Was Made For Dancing." That clip and his "Tiger Beat" photos brought back a rush of memories of standing in the magazine aisle of the local grocery store while my mother shopped, and looking at all of the magazines aimed at teens. In my day, in addition to Garrett, it was Donny Osmond, Michael Jackson and Shaun Cassidy, to name a few who were within a few years of my age, all of whose photos were plastered on the cheap print in a way most enticing to hormone-flooded teen girls. Oh! How I wanted to be a teenage heart-throb! I hated those boys for their good looks, supposed talent, and their unfathomably good luck to have been born in the track they found themselves in that made them so irresistible to the very girls who were unaware of - or didn't care about - my existence. Why couldn't I have been blessed with the physical features of Paul-Michael Glaser? Why couldn't I have been bestowed with the physical coordination (and the looks!) of John Travolta? Why wasn't I gifted with a voice (and the looks!) like Shaun Cassidy? Instead, I couldn't run more than ten steps without tripping or colliding with something. When I sang, various game animals emerged from the forest with propagation of their species on their minds. My eyebrows were in the early stages of meeting and my hair didn't lay on my head the same way twice.
So, today, nearly 30 years later, I've stopped running all together, I only sing in the car...with the windows up... I discovered electrolysis and, more recently, waxing, and my hair has quite decidedly left my head for the apparently less hostile climate of my back.
And I look at the sorry mug shot of Leif Garrett, who is now being forced into drug rehab by a judge, and I wonder if, had his gifts been bestowed upon me, and everything I could have ever wanted as a young, teenage heart-throb was laid at my feet, would I just be in Garrett's situation today, looking across the court room at some anonymous shlub with a job and a wife and a kid or two, and wondering what it would have been like - wishing, even - to have had the childhood, the life, of a faceless nobody with his head screwed on straight?dassall!
Saturday, January 21, 2006
The Thrill of the Find
I guess I'm a very nostalgic person. I couldn't wait to go to my first high school reunion back in 1992. The excitement before the 20 year reunion in 2002 was even greater because my wife, a graduate of the same year, same school, was to accompany me. And she had a much better time than she expected to.
A frustration of mine lately has involved the years after high school, the four years I spent in the United States Air Force. Outside of my two best friends from high school, I bonded more closely with a group of guys in two different areas of the world while I was in the Air Force than I have done since. Approximately eight years ago I attempted unsuccessfully to find some of these guys via the internet, and all that attempt yielded was my eventual marriage to Mrs. Farrago(!), but I'll explain that one later.
Two of the guys with whom I was stationed in Germany have been mentioned in this blog, "Rudy" and Vince, both of whom I contacted and visited in the latter months of 2005. Another of the gang was Pete K. Pete was six foot four, overweight by Air Force standards, a heavy smoker and, aside from the physical requirements of the Air Force, rather sedentary. But Pete was a guy who could take a joke as well as he could dish it out, could always be counted on to be there when you needed a hand with something, and was a part of every moment with our small group of guys. He left Germany on leave about a week before I processed out of the Air Force. He had often talked about his mother who worked at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and he was spending part of his leave time to stay with her at her home there. Airmen such as myself processing out of European bases did so at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, which put me in fairly close proximity to a friend I had made in Montana, who was, at the time of my discharge, married and living in the Washington, D.C. area, and to my oldest brother who was then an officer in the Air Force, stationed at Andrews Air Force Base, also near D.C. When I told Pete of my plans, he gave me his mother's phone number and told me to call him when I got free.
I did just that, and one day he took me around the city, as far as he knew it, and to my brother's house on base at Andrews. We spent the day together, and that was the last time I saw or heard from Pete K.
Over the past few years I had made a few attempts to find Pete through phone books and the internet, usually finding no mention of his name in either. Nor could I find his mother's name mentioned in any references in and about Williamsburg, Virginia. Then today I made a glancing attempt, just entering his name in the Google Search window. The only close hit was a Peter K. in an obituary for a woman, born in 1937, who died in October of 2005 in Oneonta, New York, named Annette S. It was certainly a near miss, since upstate New York is a long way from Colonial Williamsburg. But as I read on, Mrs. S. had been married only 15 years to Mr. S., and had once worked in the Visitor Relations office at Colonial Williamsburg!
I found Pete K! I can't be one hundred percent certain until the Pete K. I found, whose address I tracked down in the Yahoo! people search, responds to the letter that goes out on Monday, but how many Pete K's. can be out there whose mothers once worked at Colonial Williamsburg? The downer is that it took the death of his mother to get his name published in a newspaper which has an online entity. I made sure in the letter to express my condolences to both Pete K's., the one who IS the right guy, and the one who ISN'T.
So that was my excitement for the day. I'll keep this blog posted on Pete K's. response, if any, to my letter.
dassall!
A frustration of mine lately has involved the years after high school, the four years I spent in the United States Air Force. Outside of my two best friends from high school, I bonded more closely with a group of guys in two different areas of the world while I was in the Air Force than I have done since. Approximately eight years ago I attempted unsuccessfully to find some of these guys via the internet, and all that attempt yielded was my eventual marriage to Mrs. Farrago(!), but I'll explain that one later.
Two of the guys with whom I was stationed in Germany have been mentioned in this blog, "Rudy" and Vince, both of whom I contacted and visited in the latter months of 2005. Another of the gang was Pete K. Pete was six foot four, overweight by Air Force standards, a heavy smoker and, aside from the physical requirements of the Air Force, rather sedentary. But Pete was a guy who could take a joke as well as he could dish it out, could always be counted on to be there when you needed a hand with something, and was a part of every moment with our small group of guys. He left Germany on leave about a week before I processed out of the Air Force. He had often talked about his mother who worked at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, and he was spending part of his leave time to stay with her at her home there. Airmen such as myself processing out of European bases did so at McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, which put me in fairly close proximity to a friend I had made in Montana, who was, at the time of my discharge, married and living in the Washington, D.C. area, and to my oldest brother who was then an officer in the Air Force, stationed at Andrews Air Force Base, also near D.C. When I told Pete of my plans, he gave me his mother's phone number and told me to call him when I got free.
I did just that, and one day he took me around the city, as far as he knew it, and to my brother's house on base at Andrews. We spent the day together, and that was the last time I saw or heard from Pete K.
Over the past few years I had made a few attempts to find Pete through phone books and the internet, usually finding no mention of his name in either. Nor could I find his mother's name mentioned in any references in and about Williamsburg, Virginia. Then today I made a glancing attempt, just entering his name in the Google Search window. The only close hit was a Peter K. in an obituary for a woman, born in 1937, who died in October of 2005 in Oneonta, New York, named Annette S. It was certainly a near miss, since upstate New York is a long way from Colonial Williamsburg. But as I read on, Mrs. S. had been married only 15 years to Mr. S., and had once worked in the Visitor Relations office at Colonial Williamsburg!
I found Pete K! I can't be one hundred percent certain until the Pete K. I found, whose address I tracked down in the Yahoo! people search, responds to the letter that goes out on Monday, but how many Pete K's. can be out there whose mothers once worked at Colonial Williamsburg? The downer is that it took the death of his mother to get his name published in a newspaper which has an online entity. I made sure in the letter to express my condolences to both Pete K's., the one who IS the right guy, and the one who ISN'T.
So that was my excitement for the day. I'll keep this blog posted on Pete K's. response, if any, to my letter.
dassall!
A Funny Thing Happened...
Ever since my wife and I returned from Paris, we've had a heightened interest in wines. Okay, we're wine snobs. Last weekend we went to our first tasting at a local wine merchant here in Chicago, and this weekend we returned. The sommelier was a woman in her mid- to late fifties, suitably friendly and knowledgeable, and trying to keep up with the pourings for, and the questions and comments from the small group of people crowded in front of the tasting table.
A young, attractive couple came in and the sommelier seemed to be familiar with them, perhaps a family friend. The young woman placed her purse on the floor against the wall in an area somewhat behind the tasting table, and then she joined in the tasting. Very soon her cell phone, tucked in her purse, began to ring, so she went to her purse to retrieve it.
The sommelier said, "Is that your sister calling?"
The young woman answered, "No. She's in Champaign this weekend."
The sommelier gasped. "Champagne?! Oh, my! That's wonderf..."
"No," the young woman interrupted, smiling. "Champaign-Urbana. Downstate."
"Oh," grunted the sommelier, somewhat disappointed, and very embarrassed.
There was a group chuckle as everyone in the room realized and forgave the sommelier for her wine-world frame of mind.
dassall!
A young, attractive couple came in and the sommelier seemed to be familiar with them, perhaps a family friend. The young woman placed her purse on the floor against the wall in an area somewhat behind the tasting table, and then she joined in the tasting. Very soon her cell phone, tucked in her purse, began to ring, so she went to her purse to retrieve it.
The sommelier said, "Is that your sister calling?"
The young woman answered, "No. She's in Champaign this weekend."
The sommelier gasped. "Champagne?! Oh, my! That's wonderf..."
"No," the young woman interrupted, smiling. "Champaign-Urbana. Downstate."
"Oh," grunted the sommelier, somewhat disappointed, and very embarrassed.
There was a group chuckle as everyone in the room realized and forgave the sommelier for her wine-world frame of mind.
dassall!
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
A Smile in the Dark
In a recent post, Mr. Schprock contemplated his mortality in The Human Condition, which inspired me to comment on his blog that he had inspired me to borrow yet again from him for one of my own blogs. That was approximately 11 hours before I actually sat down to write and, frankly, I can't remember what aspect of his post I was going to spin off.
But I have spent the day thinking about what he wrote, and what is in my mind right now is a whirl of thoughts: some I've had for a while, some I hadn't thought about in a long, long time, and some that Schprock rattled loose in my brain today. I've been planning a post about my elderly father, but I'm going to need a large chunk of time for that one. I've also been mulling a post about my dog, also "elderly." What it all seems to be centering around right now is the sense, and the fear, of loss. I know I'm looking at the last years of my father's life. My dog, the first ever that was all my own, and which I've had since she was eight weeks old, is probably in her last year of life. My wife and I had to have her dog put down in the summer of 2004, and losing him was like losing my own.
I guess the first real sense of loss I ever felt was when a neighborhood friend died. I was probably around age 14 or 15. I come from a large family, so the concept of losing a loved one wasn't new. My paternal grandmother passed away when I was six years old. Four years later my father's brother died from lung cancer at age 55. Though these people were family, I wasn't all that close to them. Each of their deaths was a shock, and there was sadness in my heart, but I didn't really know them all that well. They weren't a part of my daily life.
I was an active kid, running all over my neighborhood playing with other kids on a summer day until night fell, and my mother would have to call me in. I was age ten or so. These were the heady days of the 1970s, when kids fell out of trees and got hit by cars and fell off their bikes...and nobody was sued over it.
Mr. Martin lived at the other end of the block from us, in the second house from the end. He lived alone, with the exception of his dog, Shep, and I would often see Mr. Martin walking with Shep up or down the block, on their way to the local grocery store or to the bakery. I never saw Mr. Martin without Shep. No one ever did. Mr. Martin was blind, and Shep was his guide dog. That's today's term. Mr. Martin told me that Shep was his "seeing-eye" dog. I have always loved dogs, so whenever I was outside and I saw Mr. Martin, I called to him and talked, and patted Shep on the head. Shep was a good-natured German Shepherd, as all guide dogs need to be (good natured, not necessarily German Shepherds), and she always accepted her head pats with appropriately subdued joy.
I was intrigued by the obedience displayed by Shep, and I was amazed that Shep wasn't just listening and following Mr. Martin's orders, but she was acutely aware of the world around them, and was actively guiding and protecting her master. As they approached a street Shep would halt. If Mr. Martin tried to step into the street when a car was coming, she would hold him back until the danger was gone. If there was an obstacle on the ground before them, she would guide him around it. So I was drawn to the pair whenever they were out.
One summer Saturday when I was near death from boredom, my mother suggested I walk down the street to see if Mr. Martin needed to have his lawn mowed, and to offer to do so if he did. I figured he already had someone else doing it for him, but I followed her suggestion, anyway. I knocked on his door and asked him, and he told me that he was just about to do that himself.
Huh? How could a blind man mow his own lawn? I actually pictured this crazy cross-hatch pattern in the yard with tufts of wildly growing grass untouched all summer long. Mr. Martin walked to his garage (there was even a car in there, but he told me he didn't drive it much anymore!) and pulled out the lawn mower. He then went back into the garage and dragged out a section of extension ladder, the kind you lean up against your house to get up really high. I watched him as he laid the ladder on the ground and felt along it to make sure that it was lying parallel to the sidewalk. Then he pulled the one end until it reached the walk to his front step. He started up the mower and maneuvered it over to the ladder and pushed the wheels against the ladder rail. He then pushed the mower along the ladder, cutting a perfectly straight line to the end of the ladder. Next he grabbed the ladder by the side farthest from where he had just cut, flipped the ladder over onto the freshly mowed patch, and then ran the mower back along the edge, cutting the next strip. He did this, maneuvering the ladder down the length of the yard and following the same pattern until the grass was all cut. He came up to me and said that he was certain there were strips and clumps of grass that he had missed, and that he would be happy to let me take the mower and cut them for him. I finished that, and he invited me in for a glass of ice water. I asked if he had any "pop," and he told me he was diabetic, so he couldn't have that stuff in the house.
I was amazed at how self-sufficient the man was: he cooked for himself, he washed his own clothes, he did his own shopping. He told me that whenever he cashed a check (I would imagine now that it was Social Security, or perhaps a pension or disability -- he lost his sight in adulthood) he asked the teller at the bank to identify the bills for him, and then he would bend the corners of the bills according to their denomination so he knew what he was handing to a store clerk. And at the store he would ask the clerk to then identify the bills in change for him so he could do the same thing.
I peppered Mr. Martin with hundreds of questions, and he answered all of them with good cheer and a smile. I regularly stopped by to help him mow his lawn or sometimes read his mail to him. He showed me his braille typewriter and gave me a basic lesson in the Braille alphabet. I began to visit him just to visit. During the summer it was probably once every other day or so. In the winter it was more difficult, but I would stop by on weekends every once in a while.
One summer day I was playing "guns" with a bunch of the kids in the neighborhood. This particular time it was sort of like hide-and-seek with toy guns. If one of the other kids saw you, pointed his gun at you and yelled "POW," or "BANG!" or made his own trademark sound effect for a gunshot, then you were out. It was no-bounds, so that meant it wasn't confined to someone's yard, or a block of yards. It covered the whole block, both sides of the street. I had sneaked down the alley and let myself in to Mr. Martin's back yard, but he was on his back porch and heard me open the gate. He called out to see who it was, and when he heard my voice he welcomed me in. I told him that I was hiding from my friends, and he invited me to stay a while. I neglected to tell him that we were playing guns, and while we sat in his kitchen drinking ice water, I pulled my realistic toy pistol from my pocket. Suddenly Shep started barking and growling in that plaintive way nice dogs will do. She was pretty old and didn't move from her spot, but she made quite a racket. Mr. Martin yelled at her to quiet down, but she wouldn't. Finally he asked me if I was doing something she didn't like. I told him that I didn't think so. Then he asked me if I had anything in my hands, and I told him I had my toy gun. Mr. Martin smiled and said, "Give it to me, please." I did, and Shep stopped howling immediately and lay her head back down to the floor. Thus disarmed, I finished my ice water, chatted for a little while longer with Mr. Martin, and then I made my way back to my friends.
The next summer I paid Mr. Martin a visit, and Shep was gone. When I asked him about her he told me that he had to take her to the vet to put her out of her misery. That was probably the first time I ever heard that phrase. I asked him if he was going to get another dog, but he said no, that he was too old, and that it would take him too long to get used to a new dog. I asked him how he got around without her, and he told me that one of his sons came around every few days to bring him things or to take him places. I remember he looked very sad and lonely.
It was merely a coincidence of time and timing: my age, advancing to junior high school, meeting a new core of friends and having more things to do and places to go during the summers, but I gradually stopped visiting Mr. Martin. I was approaching my teenage years, and he was just an old guy down the street. He didn't need some gangly kid coming around all the time.
A couple more years and I was in high school. I couldn't recall the last time I had ever seen Mr. Martin. Then one day my mother told me that Mr. Martin had passed away. She was going to pay her respects at his wake, and she asked me if I wanted to go with her. I can't recall today the reason I declined, but I didn't go. I remember thinking that I wasn't affected by the news of his death. It was a shame, and all that, but I didn't really know him.
When my mother returned from the funeral home I asked how it was, were there a lot of people there. She told me that it was just his sons and a few people from the neighborhood. I know she didn't say it in this order to cause me guilt; my mother wasn't wired that way. But she told me that she remembered how I used to go down to his house all the time, and then I didn't visit him any more. He died a very lonely man.
And suddenly the burden of the man's final, lonely years bore down on my shoulders. I felt that I could have, at the very least, dulled the sting of his loneliness by stopping in for a visit every now and then, like I did when I was a little kid. But I didn't, and his life in the dark was intensified by silence and solitude. I remember that night. When everyone else was asleep I lay in bed thinking about Mr. Martin, wishing I could turn back time, wishing I had not been such a selfish teenager, wishing I had spent more time lighting Mr. Martin's darkness. Grief and shame were upon me. I sobbed into my pillow for what felt like hours. It wasn't that I felt responsible for his loneliness, but I sure felt like I had done nothing to ease it. And, deep down inside me I realized I had lost a friend, someone I had cared about, someone who had, by mere, humble example, taught me important lessons, not about life, but about living, about playing the hand you're dealt with dignity and self respect.
A sign of how powerfully I feel his loss and my guilt to this day: I've spent the last half-hour writing through tears. I haven't thought about Mr. Martin, not in any depth, for several years. But whenever I do think about him, I remember mowing his lawn, Shep, and the incident with the toy gun. And I remember lying there the night of his wake, crying uncontrollably, grappling with the pain of my own ignorance.
But I have spent the day thinking about what he wrote, and what is in my mind right now is a whirl of thoughts: some I've had for a while, some I hadn't thought about in a long, long time, and some that Schprock rattled loose in my brain today. I've been planning a post about my elderly father, but I'm going to need a large chunk of time for that one. I've also been mulling a post about my dog, also "elderly." What it all seems to be centering around right now is the sense, and the fear, of loss. I know I'm looking at the last years of my father's life. My dog, the first ever that was all my own, and which I've had since she was eight weeks old, is probably in her last year of life. My wife and I had to have her dog put down in the summer of 2004, and losing him was like losing my own.
I guess the first real sense of loss I ever felt was when a neighborhood friend died. I was probably around age 14 or 15. I come from a large family, so the concept of losing a loved one wasn't new. My paternal grandmother passed away when I was six years old. Four years later my father's brother died from lung cancer at age 55. Though these people were family, I wasn't all that close to them. Each of their deaths was a shock, and there was sadness in my heart, but I didn't really know them all that well. They weren't a part of my daily life.
I was an active kid, running all over my neighborhood playing with other kids on a summer day until night fell, and my mother would have to call me in. I was age ten or so. These were the heady days of the 1970s, when kids fell out of trees and got hit by cars and fell off their bikes...and nobody was sued over it.
Mr. Martin lived at the other end of the block from us, in the second house from the end. He lived alone, with the exception of his dog, Shep, and I would often see Mr. Martin walking with Shep up or down the block, on their way to the local grocery store or to the bakery. I never saw Mr. Martin without Shep. No one ever did. Mr. Martin was blind, and Shep was his guide dog. That's today's term. Mr. Martin told me that Shep was his "seeing-eye" dog. I have always loved dogs, so whenever I was outside and I saw Mr. Martin, I called to him and talked, and patted Shep on the head. Shep was a good-natured German Shepherd, as all guide dogs need to be (good natured, not necessarily German Shepherds), and she always accepted her head pats with appropriately subdued joy.
I was intrigued by the obedience displayed by Shep, and I was amazed that Shep wasn't just listening and following Mr. Martin's orders, but she was acutely aware of the world around them, and was actively guiding and protecting her master. As they approached a street Shep would halt. If Mr. Martin tried to step into the street when a car was coming, she would hold him back until the danger was gone. If there was an obstacle on the ground before them, she would guide him around it. So I was drawn to the pair whenever they were out.
One summer Saturday when I was near death from boredom, my mother suggested I walk down the street to see if Mr. Martin needed to have his lawn mowed, and to offer to do so if he did. I figured he already had someone else doing it for him, but I followed her suggestion, anyway. I knocked on his door and asked him, and he told me that he was just about to do that himself.
Huh? How could a blind man mow his own lawn? I actually pictured this crazy cross-hatch pattern in the yard with tufts of wildly growing grass untouched all summer long. Mr. Martin walked to his garage (there was even a car in there, but he told me he didn't drive it much anymore!) and pulled out the lawn mower. He then went back into the garage and dragged out a section of extension ladder, the kind you lean up against your house to get up really high. I watched him as he laid the ladder on the ground and felt along it to make sure that it was lying parallel to the sidewalk. Then he pulled the one end until it reached the walk to his front step. He started up the mower and maneuvered it over to the ladder and pushed the wheels against the ladder rail. He then pushed the mower along the ladder, cutting a perfectly straight line to the end of the ladder. Next he grabbed the ladder by the side farthest from where he had just cut, flipped the ladder over onto the freshly mowed patch, and then ran the mower back along the edge, cutting the next strip. He did this, maneuvering the ladder down the length of the yard and following the same pattern until the grass was all cut. He came up to me and said that he was certain there were strips and clumps of grass that he had missed, and that he would be happy to let me take the mower and cut them for him. I finished that, and he invited me in for a glass of ice water. I asked if he had any "pop," and he told me he was diabetic, so he couldn't have that stuff in the house.
I was amazed at how self-sufficient the man was: he cooked for himself, he washed his own clothes, he did his own shopping. He told me that whenever he cashed a check (I would imagine now that it was Social Security, or perhaps a pension or disability -- he lost his sight in adulthood) he asked the teller at the bank to identify the bills for him, and then he would bend the corners of the bills according to their denomination so he knew what he was handing to a store clerk. And at the store he would ask the clerk to then identify the bills in change for him so he could do the same thing.
I peppered Mr. Martin with hundreds of questions, and he answered all of them with good cheer and a smile. I regularly stopped by to help him mow his lawn or sometimes read his mail to him. He showed me his braille typewriter and gave me a basic lesson in the Braille alphabet. I began to visit him just to visit. During the summer it was probably once every other day or so. In the winter it was more difficult, but I would stop by on weekends every once in a while.
One summer day I was playing "guns" with a bunch of the kids in the neighborhood. This particular time it was sort of like hide-and-seek with toy guns. If one of the other kids saw you, pointed his gun at you and yelled "POW," or "BANG!" or made his own trademark sound effect for a gunshot, then you were out. It was no-bounds, so that meant it wasn't confined to someone's yard, or a block of yards. It covered the whole block, both sides of the street. I had sneaked down the alley and let myself in to Mr. Martin's back yard, but he was on his back porch and heard me open the gate. He called out to see who it was, and when he heard my voice he welcomed me in. I told him that I was hiding from my friends, and he invited me to stay a while. I neglected to tell him that we were playing guns, and while we sat in his kitchen drinking ice water, I pulled my realistic toy pistol from my pocket. Suddenly Shep started barking and growling in that plaintive way nice dogs will do. She was pretty old and didn't move from her spot, but she made quite a racket. Mr. Martin yelled at her to quiet down, but she wouldn't. Finally he asked me if I was doing something she didn't like. I told him that I didn't think so. Then he asked me if I had anything in my hands, and I told him I had my toy gun. Mr. Martin smiled and said, "Give it to me, please." I did, and Shep stopped howling immediately and lay her head back down to the floor. Thus disarmed, I finished my ice water, chatted for a little while longer with Mr. Martin, and then I made my way back to my friends.
The next summer I paid Mr. Martin a visit, and Shep was gone. When I asked him about her he told me that he had to take her to the vet to put her out of her misery. That was probably the first time I ever heard that phrase. I asked him if he was going to get another dog, but he said no, that he was too old, and that it would take him too long to get used to a new dog. I asked him how he got around without her, and he told me that one of his sons came around every few days to bring him things or to take him places. I remember he looked very sad and lonely.
It was merely a coincidence of time and timing: my age, advancing to junior high school, meeting a new core of friends and having more things to do and places to go during the summers, but I gradually stopped visiting Mr. Martin. I was approaching my teenage years, and he was just an old guy down the street. He didn't need some gangly kid coming around all the time.
A couple more years and I was in high school. I couldn't recall the last time I had ever seen Mr. Martin. Then one day my mother told me that Mr. Martin had passed away. She was going to pay her respects at his wake, and she asked me if I wanted to go with her. I can't recall today the reason I declined, but I didn't go. I remember thinking that I wasn't affected by the news of his death. It was a shame, and all that, but I didn't really know him.
When my mother returned from the funeral home I asked how it was, were there a lot of people there. She told me that it was just his sons and a few people from the neighborhood. I know she didn't say it in this order to cause me guilt; my mother wasn't wired that way. But she told me that she remembered how I used to go down to his house all the time, and then I didn't visit him any more. He died a very lonely man.
And suddenly the burden of the man's final, lonely years bore down on my shoulders. I felt that I could have, at the very least, dulled the sting of his loneliness by stopping in for a visit every now and then, like I did when I was a little kid. But I didn't, and his life in the dark was intensified by silence and solitude. I remember that night. When everyone else was asleep I lay in bed thinking about Mr. Martin, wishing I could turn back time, wishing I had not been such a selfish teenager, wishing I had spent more time lighting Mr. Martin's darkness. Grief and shame were upon me. I sobbed into my pillow for what felt like hours. It wasn't that I felt responsible for his loneliness, but I sure felt like I had done nothing to ease it. And, deep down inside me I realized I had lost a friend, someone I had cared about, someone who had, by mere, humble example, taught me important lessons, not about life, but about living, about playing the hand you're dealt with dignity and self respect.
A sign of how powerfully I feel his loss and my guilt to this day: I've spent the last half-hour writing through tears. I haven't thought about Mr. Martin, not in any depth, for several years. But whenever I do think about him, I remember mowing his lawn, Shep, and the incident with the toy gun. And I remember lying there the night of his wake, crying uncontrollably, grappling with the pain of my own ignorance.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Paris Journal, 31 December 2005
31 December 2005
Saturday
Slept WAY in today. We missed the 11:00 cutoff for breakfast at the hotel, so we went for a walk in the opposite direction down boulevard Saint Germain than we had walked in the previous few days. We encountered a café that was open, so we sat down and had omelets, wife a fines herbes, and I a fromage. They were pretty good, though I wasn’t too crazy about the runniness at first.
We walked to find Alcazar, the nightclub/restaurant where tonight’s dinner was to be held. It was generally in the same place as Ze Kitchen Galerie and La Grenouille. Afterward we walked to Notre Dame again to take the kind of picture I wish we had taken when we were here in 2002. Of course, this time the sun was partially out, and made for a weird, uneven lighting, and so our photos look like we’re in a studio with a Notre Dame backdrop hanging behind us! But it is still better composed than the one co-worker number one took three years ago.
At Notre Dame. There are probably shots with better, natural lighting, but this is the best pose. Please don't tell wife I put her photo on the net!! (Photo credit: Farrago)
We walked from there and tried to find the Cité Metro station, but it didn’t appear to be on Ile de la Cité where the map showed it to be. It’s there. I know it is. We just couldn’t find it. We walked across the bridge to Rive Gauche and the Chatelet Metro station. From there we traveled to the Concorde station. We went up to Place de la Concorde, and then we walked down the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. We figured to use the last day of our museum passes, but when we got to the entrance of the arch there was a sign on the door that read, in effect, that the museum had closed at 4:30, due to the holiday. The funny, unfortunate-translation-of-French-to-English part of it was that the sign read, “…will be closed exceptionally…”
C'est moi au-dessous l'Arc de Triomphe! (Credit du Photo: Mme. Farrago)
This is an unretouched photo; the sky really was that blue...in this photo. The white balance was set for incandescent light (yellow), so the blue really popped. A hint for you photo novices out there... (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
We took a lot of photos of and with the arch, and then we headed back to our hotel via the Metro. There must have been half the population of Paris riding the Metro because we couldn’t even get on the first train that pulled into the Charles de Gaulle Étoile station. The next was just as crowded if not more so. When we finally wedged ourselves in, it was like being in a stampede, only no one was moving. In the crush I lost the eyecup to the video camera I borrowed from work. We finally reached the Saint Germain des-Pres station, and we went to our hotel to get ready for dinner.
We called co-worker number two to see when he and his girlfriend were leaving for the restaurant. He told us they were going to leave around 7:45. We knew that it was at the very least a 15 minute walk, and if one doesn’t know where he’s going, it could be even longer. He could not be convinced that they should leave earlier and declined our offer to walk with them. He said they couldn’t be ready in time, anyway.
We were a private party, sectioned off in a semi-soundproof loft, and just about every one of us had a camera. we were snapping photos, and the regular club folk were being kept away from our room, so the rest of the club wondered what famous celebrity(ies) were partying in there! Just us nobodies! (Photo credit: Farrago)
Wife and I were the first ones there, by about 15 minutes. The waiters gave us champagne and hors d’olives (yes, you read that correctly). The rest of the crowd all trickled in by about 8:30, and the slow procession of dinner commenced. There was a duck foie gras, and then a serving of scallops, then the roast “breast of fowl,” followed by a strawberry/raspberry/meringue thing that really wasn’t all that good, except for the whipped cream on top. Wife got a little buzzed and was snapping crazy photos with the Nikon, and most of them turned out to be really funny, interesting photos…if you could get around all the ones where co-worker number one was mugging.
One of wife's champagne-and-wine-inspired shots. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
At midnight there was a mysterious voice on the P.A. system counting down from ten, and suddenly it was 2006. Except for the shower of streamers and confetti that fell from the ceiling at the moment, it went almost otherwise unnoticed.
As the dinner was cleared and the restaurant cut off our champagne supply, a contingent from our group was organizing for a walk to The Great Canadian, but wife and I were pretty tired and fuzzy, so we called it a night.
Happy New Year!
dassall! Maybe more later...
Saturday
Slept WAY in today. We missed the 11:00 cutoff for breakfast at the hotel, so we went for a walk in the opposite direction down boulevard Saint Germain than we had walked in the previous few days. We encountered a café that was open, so we sat down and had omelets, wife a fines herbes, and I a fromage. They were pretty good, though I wasn’t too crazy about the runniness at first.
We walked to find Alcazar, the nightclub/restaurant where tonight’s dinner was to be held. It was generally in the same place as Ze Kitchen Galerie and La Grenouille. Afterward we walked to Notre Dame again to take the kind of picture I wish we had taken when we were here in 2002. Of course, this time the sun was partially out, and made for a weird, uneven lighting, and so our photos look like we’re in a studio with a Notre Dame backdrop hanging behind us! But it is still better composed than the one co-worker number one took three years ago.
At Notre Dame. There are probably shots with better, natural lighting, but this is the best pose. Please don't tell wife I put her photo on the net!! (Photo credit: Farrago)We walked from there and tried to find the Cité Metro station, but it didn’t appear to be on Ile de la Cité where the map showed it to be. It’s there. I know it is. We just couldn’t find it. We walked across the bridge to Rive Gauche and the Chatelet Metro station. From there we traveled to the Concorde station. We went up to Place de la Concorde, and then we walked down the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. We figured to use the last day of our museum passes, but when we got to the entrance of the arch there was a sign on the door that read, in effect, that the museum had closed at 4:30, due to the holiday. The funny, unfortunate-translation-of-French-to-English part of it was that the sign read, “…will be closed exceptionally…”
C'est moi au-dessous l'Arc de Triomphe! (Credit du Photo: Mme. Farrago)
This is an unretouched photo; the sky really was that blue...in this photo. The white balance was set for incandescent light (yellow), so the blue really popped. A hint for you photo novices out there... (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)We took a lot of photos of and with the arch, and then we headed back to our hotel via the Metro. There must have been half the population of Paris riding the Metro because we couldn’t even get on the first train that pulled into the Charles de Gaulle Étoile station. The next was just as crowded if not more so. When we finally wedged ourselves in, it was like being in a stampede, only no one was moving. In the crush I lost the eyecup to the video camera I borrowed from work. We finally reached the Saint Germain des-Pres station, and we went to our hotel to get ready for dinner.
We called co-worker number two to see when he and his girlfriend were leaving for the restaurant. He told us they were going to leave around 7:45. We knew that it was at the very least a 15 minute walk, and if one doesn’t know where he’s going, it could be even longer. He could not be convinced that they should leave earlier and declined our offer to walk with them. He said they couldn’t be ready in time, anyway.
We were a private party, sectioned off in a semi-soundproof loft, and just about every one of us had a camera. we were snapping photos, and the regular club folk were being kept away from our room, so the rest of the club wondered what famous celebrity(ies) were partying in there! Just us nobodies! (Photo credit: Farrago)Wife and I were the first ones there, by about 15 minutes. The waiters gave us champagne and hors d’olives (yes, you read that correctly). The rest of the crowd all trickled in by about 8:30, and the slow procession of dinner commenced. There was a duck foie gras, and then a serving of scallops, then the roast “breast of fowl,” followed by a strawberry/raspberry/meringue thing that really wasn’t all that good, except for the whipped cream on top. Wife got a little buzzed and was snapping crazy photos with the Nikon, and most of them turned out to be really funny, interesting photos…if you could get around all the ones where co-worker number one was mugging.
One of wife's champagne-and-wine-inspired shots. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)At midnight there was a mysterious voice on the P.A. system counting down from ten, and suddenly it was 2006. Except for the shower of streamers and confetti that fell from the ceiling at the moment, it went almost otherwise unnoticed.
As the dinner was cleared and the restaurant cut off our champagne supply, a contingent from our group was organizing for a walk to The Great Canadian, but wife and I were pretty tired and fuzzy, so we called it a night.
Happy New Year!
dassall! Maybe more later...
Sunday, January 08, 2006
Paris Journal, 30 December 2005
30 December 2005
Friday
I never bothered to set the alarm last night, so wife and I slept in this morning until around 10:00. We got ourselves ready and we hopped the Metro again to Saint Michel and the RER C, this time bound for le château Versailles. The further southwest the train traveled, the murkier the weather looked, until we saw snow falling past the windows of our train car. Gare Versailles-Rive Gauche is the end of that particular line of the RER, so we knew we wouldn’t have any trouble knowing which train to board on our way back…or so we thought.
Once outside the station at Versailles we followed signs posted to guide the way to the chateau. We arrived at an intersection, looked in the direction to which the nearest sign pointed, and off in the mist was a grand palace. We walked toward it and, once across the last street and onto the chateau property, we were assaulted by icy snowflakes stinging our faces in a vicious wind. Fortunately there was a short line into the three-day-pass-holders entrance, so our agony was short-lived.
Le Château Versailles, home of kings and queens until the common folk got fed up with them! (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
The place was beautiful, as expected, and huge, as expected. After about our thirtieth royal chamber we got tired of seeing so much opulence and finery and sort of zombied our way through the last fourth of the self-guided tour. We stepped outside into the cold and decided, rather than find the next part of the property to which our passes earned entry, to just head back to our hotel.
The Hall of Mirrors at Le Château Versailles. I don't know if it was the quality of the glass of the time, or if the chateau needs to replace its housekeeping service, but the mirrors were pretty scummy looking, and hard to see reflections with any detail. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
Near the end of the walking tour one is guided through this very long hallway adorned with statue after statue of famous historical figures who, I'm guessing, were French, or who made France their home for some stretch of time. In this photo, wife tried to see what was up his "skirts." I won't say anything other than what we saw up there was rock hard! (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
We stepped out into the wind only to be pelted by small crystals of hail or sleet. Neither of us had thought to bring the umbrella, thinking that the forecast was for snow, if anything. So we hunched forward and trudged across the huge – and now very slippery – chateau cobblestones on our way back to the train station. It is about a ten-minute walk from the chateau, and in that time we became coated in a thin sheet of ice, as we discovered at the train station! We tried to make heads or tails of the schedule board, but it took us quite a while – long enough to miss a train – to figure out that we could board any train heading out, as all of them went through the center of Paris.
Back at the hotel I ran down to boulevard Saint Germain to purchase a couple of crepes from the kiosk kitty corner from our hotel. Actually speaking French, I ordered one strawberry crepe and one Nutella crepe, though, honestly, when I ordered the strawberry, or fraise, I thought I was ordering raspberry, which is actually framboise. I took them back to the room where wife and I shared them both.
Dinner tonight was at La Grenouille, which means “The Frog.” There was a frog motif, to be sure, and there were frog legs available on the menu, but the charm of the place was on the walls and ceiling: hats. After about an hour of sitting, drinking wine and eating our appetizers, the matron of the house placed a hat on my head. I didn’t see what it was until wife took a picture with our camera and showed me.
I was somehow bestowed with the honor of "leader" of our group, either by our group or by the matron, so I was the first to receive a hat. I think it's becoming, don't you? It's my color, anyway. Note some of the other hats on the wall in the background. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
My embarrassment was shared shortly by the rest of the crowd which, tonight, consisted of wife and me, of course; Polish co-worker and family; and co-worker number one and family. Within a few minutes we were all wearing hats of various shapes and sizes, the best being that of a green, flowery type placed at wife's and my request on co-worker number one’s head. I think the best looking person with hat was wife.
The matron of the house, whose name I neglected to get, was quite a character herself. She doesn't speak much English, but that was okay, as I speak very little French! About 2/3 of the way through dinner she came out in this getup to great shock and laughter from us and others in the restaurant. (Photo credit: Farrago)
My appetizer was the escargot, which I shared with wife, Polish co-worker's daughter, and co-worker number one's child number one, both of whom had never had it and whom I challenged to just try it. Wife let me have a couple of her frog legs. My main course was the Beef Bourguignon. It was okay. Wife had the lamb chops. I tasted hers and, of course, felt that I had again chosen the wrong thing for myself.
The first red wine was a mistake. It was an Alsatian wine that seemed anemic. The next bottle was another Margaux. It wasn’t as good as what we had at Georges last night, but it was still very good. I had the crème brulée for dessert while wife had the mousse au chocolat. Mine was typical (good), but wife's mousse was actually kind of grainy.
As we filed out the rest of the group was heading back toward The Great Canadian, but wife and I headed back to our hotel.
dassall! More later!
Friday
I never bothered to set the alarm last night, so wife and I slept in this morning until around 10:00. We got ourselves ready and we hopped the Metro again to Saint Michel and the RER C, this time bound for le château Versailles. The further southwest the train traveled, the murkier the weather looked, until we saw snow falling past the windows of our train car. Gare Versailles-Rive Gauche is the end of that particular line of the RER, so we knew we wouldn’t have any trouble knowing which train to board on our way back…or so we thought.
Once outside the station at Versailles we followed signs posted to guide the way to the chateau. We arrived at an intersection, looked in the direction to which the nearest sign pointed, and off in the mist was a grand palace. We walked toward it and, once across the last street and onto the chateau property, we were assaulted by icy snowflakes stinging our faces in a vicious wind. Fortunately there was a short line into the three-day-pass-holders entrance, so our agony was short-lived.
Le Château Versailles, home of kings and queens until the common folk got fed up with them! (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)The place was beautiful, as expected, and huge, as expected. After about our thirtieth royal chamber we got tired of seeing so much opulence and finery and sort of zombied our way through the last fourth of the self-guided tour. We stepped outside into the cold and decided, rather than find the next part of the property to which our passes earned entry, to just head back to our hotel.
The Hall of Mirrors at Le Château Versailles. I don't know if it was the quality of the glass of the time, or if the chateau needs to replace its housekeeping service, but the mirrors were pretty scummy looking, and hard to see reflections with any detail. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
Near the end of the walking tour one is guided through this very long hallway adorned with statue after statue of famous historical figures who, I'm guessing, were French, or who made France their home for some stretch of time. In this photo, wife tried to see what was up his "skirts." I won't say anything other than what we saw up there was rock hard! (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)We stepped out into the wind only to be pelted by small crystals of hail or sleet. Neither of us had thought to bring the umbrella, thinking that the forecast was for snow, if anything. So we hunched forward and trudged across the huge – and now very slippery – chateau cobblestones on our way back to the train station. It is about a ten-minute walk from the chateau, and in that time we became coated in a thin sheet of ice, as we discovered at the train station! We tried to make heads or tails of the schedule board, but it took us quite a while – long enough to miss a train – to figure out that we could board any train heading out, as all of them went through the center of Paris.
Back at the hotel I ran down to boulevard Saint Germain to purchase a couple of crepes from the kiosk kitty corner from our hotel. Actually speaking French, I ordered one strawberry crepe and one Nutella crepe, though, honestly, when I ordered the strawberry, or fraise, I thought I was ordering raspberry, which is actually framboise. I took them back to the room where wife and I shared them both.
Dinner tonight was at La Grenouille, which means “The Frog.” There was a frog motif, to be sure, and there were frog legs available on the menu, but the charm of the place was on the walls and ceiling: hats. After about an hour of sitting, drinking wine and eating our appetizers, the matron of the house placed a hat on my head. I didn’t see what it was until wife took a picture with our camera and showed me.
I was somehow bestowed with the honor of "leader" of our group, either by our group or by the matron, so I was the first to receive a hat. I think it's becoming, don't you? It's my color, anyway. Note some of the other hats on the wall in the background. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)My embarrassment was shared shortly by the rest of the crowd which, tonight, consisted of wife and me, of course; Polish co-worker and family; and co-worker number one and family. Within a few minutes we were all wearing hats of various shapes and sizes, the best being that of a green, flowery type placed at wife's and my request on co-worker number one’s head. I think the best looking person with hat was wife.
The matron of the house, whose name I neglected to get, was quite a character herself. She doesn't speak much English, but that was okay, as I speak very little French! About 2/3 of the way through dinner she came out in this getup to great shock and laughter from us and others in the restaurant. (Photo credit: Farrago)My appetizer was the escargot, which I shared with wife, Polish co-worker's daughter, and co-worker number one's child number one, both of whom had never had it and whom I challenged to just try it. Wife let me have a couple of her frog legs. My main course was the Beef Bourguignon. It was okay. Wife had the lamb chops. I tasted hers and, of course, felt that I had again chosen the wrong thing for myself.
The first red wine was a mistake. It was an Alsatian wine that seemed anemic. The next bottle was another Margaux. It wasn’t as good as what we had at Georges last night, but it was still very good. I had the crème brulée for dessert while wife had the mousse au chocolat. Mine was typical (good), but wife's mousse was actually kind of grainy.
As we filed out the rest of the group was heading back toward The Great Canadian, but wife and I headed back to our hotel.
dassall! More later!
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Paris Journal, 29 December 2005
29 December 2005
Thursday
After all the drinking and the late hour getting in last night and, no doubt, the lingering effects of jet lag, I couldn’t sleep. We got in bed around 1:00, and I was probably asleep by 1:30. I woke up at 3:45 and, despite how hard I tried, I could not fall asleep again. I got up and wrote e-mails and posted to my blog. I lay down again around 7:00, and I slept until roughly 9:00am. Wife hadn’t slept well, either, so we sort of just dragged through the morning.
After a breakfast identical to the one we had yesterday, we went down to the Saint Germain des-Pres Metro station and bought a carnet and two three-day museum passes. We rode the Metro to the Saint Michel stop where we walked through the underground correspondences to the RER C line, where we boarded for L’Hotel des Invalides. The weather was pretty darn cold, and we were a little disoriented when we came up to street level. Once we got our bearings we found Invalides pretty quickly.
L'Hotel des Invalides. When a soldier's career was over, he had little to do but beg for money on the streets. One of the French kings (Henry VIII, I think the literature read) grew tired of seeing them on the street, so he built this as a retired and disabled soldiers' home. (Photo credit: Farrago)
Inside we visited the war museum. The first wing consisted of tons and tons (and I mean that literally!) of suits of armor that have been preserved through the centuries in the collections of kings and noblemen. Some were fairly basic, but others were quite ornate and beautiful and HUGE! This wing also included early firearms used in battle. Some of them were quite ornate, as well. One wouldn’t think anybody would want a “pretty” rifle, but apparently kings couldn’t fathom the use of such a weapon that came from a run-of-the-mill mold. Some of them were actually quite comical. Unfortunately, the museum displayed a sign that forbade photography, even though other people were snapping happily, so I guess that’s just “unfortunately” for me, a rules snob. So no photos.
Because of our mutual sleep deprivation, wife was not feeling too well, and we moved on. We discovered a World War II exhibit that was really pretty neat-looking. It started on the fourth floor and viewers made their way through one level to the stairs and then down a level to the next one, and so on. We managed to get through the second level down when I, too, started feeling a little off. It was very warm in the building, and I had my coat on but unbuttoned. Suddenly I got very warm, and taking my coat off wasn’t enough. It was getting late, anyway, so we decided to leave. Getting back out into the cold air was actually good for us, as we both began to feel better immediately. We took a couple of silly photos with a cannon and a forced perspective (See Keeping a Low Profile in Paris), and then we went “home” to get ready for dinner.
An Enigma encoding machine used by the German Wehrmacht during World War II. The codes generated by one of these machines were broken by the Allies who kept the breakthrough a very tightly held secret, thus enabling them to fool Hitler's generals into thinking the Allied invasion of France would center on the narrowest point in the English Channel, at Calais, France. (I'm a bit of a WWII buff, so I broke the rule and snapped this photo!) (Photo credit: Farrago)
Georges is the restaurant on the sixth floor of Centre Georges Pompidou, home of the Musée National d’Arts Moderne. It fits the motif of modern art with its rubber, steel, and plastic décor. We sat down to dinner with Mr. & Mrs. Co-worker Number One, Mr. & Mrs. Supervisor, and Mr. and Mrs. Polish Co-worker, who brought along their 19-year-old daughter, who is just too old to be stuck with the kids, dammit. We were served by Julian, a young man who had a very good command of English, and who was, on top of that, a great waiter. He suggested the wines, and we had a very nice Bordeaux. With interest in refining our wine choice, he next suggested a Margaux. I don’t know if that’s a region or a vintner, but it was nice and smooth, and we will look for it at the local wine store near us. I had two appetizers: the soupe crème de légume, and the raw oysters. Wife had an appetizer of finely sliced scallops and smoked salmon.
My oysters. I guess it's a rare occurrence for someone seated at a table to take photos of his food. Others in our party thought I was weird to do this. Oh, wait. They think I'm weird, anyway. (Photo credit: Farrago)
My appetizer(s) was followed by a very thick veal chop which everyone said was the largest veal chop they had ever seen. I don’t do veal all that often, so I couldn’t add comment. Wife's main course was lobster claw meat in a curry sauce. My meal was complemented with a dessert of a very fine chocolate cake, almost molten in the middle.
A shot of my dessert, catching wife in the act of trying to steal a bite! (Photo credit: Farrago)
Wife's dessert was a very sweet pink raspberry foofy meringue thing. I tasted it and thought, This is one time I DON'T wish I had ordered what she ordered! (Photo credit: Farrago)
It was another night of eating too late, drinking a little too much, and going to bed on a full stomach.
dassall! More later!
Thursday
After all the drinking and the late hour getting in last night and, no doubt, the lingering effects of jet lag, I couldn’t sleep. We got in bed around 1:00, and I was probably asleep by 1:30. I woke up at 3:45 and, despite how hard I tried, I could not fall asleep again. I got up and wrote e-mails and posted to my blog. I lay down again around 7:00, and I slept until roughly 9:00am. Wife hadn’t slept well, either, so we sort of just dragged through the morning.
After a breakfast identical to the one we had yesterday, we went down to the Saint Germain des-Pres Metro station and bought a carnet and two three-day museum passes. We rode the Metro to the Saint Michel stop where we walked through the underground correspondences to the RER C line, where we boarded for L’Hotel des Invalides. The weather was pretty darn cold, and we were a little disoriented when we came up to street level. Once we got our bearings we found Invalides pretty quickly.
L'Hotel des Invalides. When a soldier's career was over, he had little to do but beg for money on the streets. One of the French kings (Henry VIII, I think the literature read) grew tired of seeing them on the street, so he built this as a retired and disabled soldiers' home. (Photo credit: Farrago)Inside we visited the war museum. The first wing consisted of tons and tons (and I mean that literally!) of suits of armor that have been preserved through the centuries in the collections of kings and noblemen. Some were fairly basic, but others were quite ornate and beautiful and HUGE! This wing also included early firearms used in battle. Some of them were quite ornate, as well. One wouldn’t think anybody would want a “pretty” rifle, but apparently kings couldn’t fathom the use of such a weapon that came from a run-of-the-mill mold. Some of them were actually quite comical. Unfortunately, the museum displayed a sign that forbade photography, even though other people were snapping happily, so I guess that’s just “unfortunately” for me, a rules snob. So no photos.
Because of our mutual sleep deprivation, wife was not feeling too well, and we moved on. We discovered a World War II exhibit that was really pretty neat-looking. It started on the fourth floor and viewers made their way through one level to the stairs and then down a level to the next one, and so on. We managed to get through the second level down when I, too, started feeling a little off. It was very warm in the building, and I had my coat on but unbuttoned. Suddenly I got very warm, and taking my coat off wasn’t enough. It was getting late, anyway, so we decided to leave. Getting back out into the cold air was actually good for us, as we both began to feel better immediately. We took a couple of silly photos with a cannon and a forced perspective (See Keeping a Low Profile in Paris), and then we went “home” to get ready for dinner.
An Enigma encoding machine used by the German Wehrmacht during World War II. The codes generated by one of these machines were broken by the Allies who kept the breakthrough a very tightly held secret, thus enabling them to fool Hitler's generals into thinking the Allied invasion of France would center on the narrowest point in the English Channel, at Calais, France. (I'm a bit of a WWII buff, so I broke the rule and snapped this photo!) (Photo credit: Farrago)Georges is the restaurant on the sixth floor of Centre Georges Pompidou, home of the Musée National d’Arts Moderne. It fits the motif of modern art with its rubber, steel, and plastic décor. We sat down to dinner with Mr. & Mrs. Co-worker Number One, Mr. & Mrs. Supervisor, and Mr. and Mrs. Polish Co-worker, who brought along their 19-year-old daughter, who is just too old to be stuck with the kids, dammit. We were served by Julian, a young man who had a very good command of English, and who was, on top of that, a great waiter. He suggested the wines, and we had a very nice Bordeaux. With interest in refining our wine choice, he next suggested a Margaux. I don’t know if that’s a region or a vintner, but it was nice and smooth, and we will look for it at the local wine store near us. I had two appetizers: the soupe crème de légume, and the raw oysters. Wife had an appetizer of finely sliced scallops and smoked salmon.
My oysters. I guess it's a rare occurrence for someone seated at a table to take photos of his food. Others in our party thought I was weird to do this. Oh, wait. They think I'm weird, anyway. (Photo credit: Farrago)My appetizer(s) was followed by a very thick veal chop which everyone said was the largest veal chop they had ever seen. I don’t do veal all that often, so I couldn’t add comment. Wife's main course was lobster claw meat in a curry sauce. My meal was complemented with a dessert of a very fine chocolate cake, almost molten in the middle.
A shot of my dessert, catching wife in the act of trying to steal a bite! (Photo credit: Farrago)
Wife's dessert was a very sweet pink raspberry foofy meringue thing. I tasted it and thought, This is one time I DON'T wish I had ordered what she ordered! (Photo credit: Farrago)It was another night of eating too late, drinking a little too much, and going to bed on a full stomach.
dassall! More later!
Friday, January 06, 2006
How To Piss Off God
Or At Least A Stocky Nun...
This week we shot for a video that will be used as part of a fundraising effort for a Catholic high school. It's a very small, inner-city school that was started in the 2004-'05 year, so they're struggling to fill the classrooms.
Today the producer and I came in from lunch and tossed our coats on the teacher's chair in the classroom where we were going to shoot the next series of interviews. When the interviews were done, we were told that a class was coming within the next five minutes to this same classroom, so we needed to clear out our stuff. I grabbed the coats and went out into the reception area, right outside the principal's office. There was a chair there which we had thrown our coats over in the morning, and I was about to put them there again when, out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like a coat tree that I hadn't noticed before. I picked up the one coat I had already draped over the chair and turned to hang the coats on the coat tree.
Fortunately for me I stopped to notice that the coat tree was actually a six-foot tall, two-foot wide, brass crucifix before I actually hung any coat there!
Now, though I am atheist, I am a recovered Catholic, so I know the significance of the crucifix. I wasn't worried about the wrath of an unseen deity, but I did feel relief that I had avoided a certain flying knee-drop from the school principal, Sister Mary Steamroller, had I committed such an offense!
WHEW!
dassall!
This week we shot for a video that will be used as part of a fundraising effort for a Catholic high school. It's a very small, inner-city school that was started in the 2004-'05 year, so they're struggling to fill the classrooms.
Today the producer and I came in from lunch and tossed our coats on the teacher's chair in the classroom where we were going to shoot the next series of interviews. When the interviews were done, we were told that a class was coming within the next five minutes to this same classroom, so we needed to clear out our stuff. I grabbed the coats and went out into the reception area, right outside the principal's office. There was a chair there which we had thrown our coats over in the morning, and I was about to put them there again when, out of the corner of my eye I saw what looked like a coat tree that I hadn't noticed before. I picked up the one coat I had already draped over the chair and turned to hang the coats on the coat tree.
Fortunately for me I stopped to notice that the coat tree was actually a six-foot tall, two-foot wide, brass crucifix before I actually hung any coat there!
Now, though I am atheist, I am a recovered Catholic, so I know the significance of the crucifix. I wasn't worried about the wrath of an unseen deity, but I did feel relief that I had avoided a certain flying knee-drop from the school principal, Sister Mary Steamroller, had I committed such an offense!
WHEW!
dassall!
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Paris Journal, 28 December 2005
28 December 2005
Wednesday
Got up at 9:00 for our first full day in Paris. We both showered and went downstairs to the lobby for breakfast. I am failing miserably at speaking French. It’s not that I’m saying the wrong things, necessarily. It’s that I’m not really trying to speak French at all. I mean, I’m TRYING to try, but whenever I open my mouth, it comes out in English.
(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
Breakfast consisted of a piece of ham…sort of like a slice of lunchmeat rolled up and presented for comsumption…and a hard-boiled egg, and a basket of breads. Wife got the pain au chocolat. We also had cafe americain and jus d’orange.
We went up to the room and made sort of a game plan: find the mooring for Les Bateaux Vedettes, the location of tonight’s group function, and find as well the restaurant where our smaller group was reserved for dinner. Then we were to go to Notre Dame to see what it looks like inside.
(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago.
It’s still pretty damn cold outside, so the walk to the Seine was not the most comfortable. We were able to navigate fairly easily. Wife got her bearings for the place much more quickly than did I. We first found the restaurant, Ze Kitchen Galerie, and then beyond there was the river and Ile de la Cité. Pont Neuf is just east of the westernmost point of the island, and Pont Neuf is where Les Bateaux Vedettes is. We took a few photos along the way, and at the very tip of Ile de la Cité.
We then walked east along the river on the island that is Ile de la Cité, past le Palais de Justice and un gendarmerie, until we arrived at Notre Dame. The scaffolding that was there in 2002 is now gone, fortunately, but the view of the main entrance is blocked by a large, decorated Christmas tree. We took a ton of photos of each other there. It would have been great to have had the tripod for shots of both of us, but carrying it in this cold would be a monster bitch.
An interior view of Notre Dame cathedral. (Photo credit: Farrago
We headed back to the hotel in a meandering path, originally with a mind to find Thursday evening’s restaurant. The cold was penetrating our clothes, so we decided just to go back to the hotel. When we got to our block, we made a quick detour into Monoprix, a grocery chain store, for a sandwich jambon et emmentaler, which we brought back to eat in the room with the tea service I brought up from the lobby.
At 4:30 or so co-worker number two called me to ask if we knew where the boat trip was, and I told him I did, but I didn’t know what time we were to meet. He said that bossy co-worker had told him, so we decided to walk to Les Bateaux Vedettes with co-worker number two and his girlfriend. We left at 5:15 with a meeting time of 5:30, for a departure time of 5:45. It took us more like 25 minutes to walk there, and we must have been just a minute from missing the boat! Time sure seems to go faster here, even if you’re not having so much fun.
The boat disembarked from the mooring for its one-hour tour while bossy co-worker was pouring champagne into our plastic flutes. The tour guide began narrating the trip, and our group was soundly hushed by the people in the seating section next to ours because they couldn’t hear the narration over our chatter. I felt like the stupid, loud, boorish American I didn’t want to be perceived as. We reached the Eiffel Tower and the boat began to turn around. Wife suggested we go outside for some photos from the stern of the boat. It was the best idea, despite the cold. Owner stopped and chatted with us a couple of times out there. We left the Eiffel Tower and headed back past the boat’s mooring, out to Notre Dame and beyond before turning back again and heading “home.”
The Eiffel Tower in all its glory, as viewed from the Seine. (Photo credit: Farrago)
Since wife and I were the only ones who knew where Ze Kitchen Galerie is, the rest of our dinner group put us in the lead. We arrived around 6:50, but our reservation wasn’t until 7:30, and the restaurant staff said they were closed at the moment. It was decided that we would go for drinks, and co-worker number two, appropriately, was appointed the leader for finding a bar. We wound up at The Great Canadian, a pub owned and run by an expatriate Quebecois. The bartender was Pascal, another Quebecois, who was pretty cool, and who suggested another bar for us to hit after dinner.
We had our drinks (wife and I had wine) and returned to Ze Kitchen Galerie. The menu was fish heavy, and I should have ordered fish. The young pork I ordered was fine, wife let me taste her fish, and it was outstanding. We finished dinner and encountered some confusion over the “tip.” I think we got it squared away with the understanding that it was the “service charge” that’s included in the price, and that it goes to the waiter, and that the “tip” is something extra you may wish to give to the waiter, but it is not included in the bill, nor is it required.
Co-worker number two was once again put in charge of finding the pub Pascal had recommended, and he had put us all on the lookout for a place called “The Islander.” Wife and I thought it would and should be on the island of Ile de la Cité, but co-worker number two said no, that Pascal had told him that it was up the Quai and on the left. We went up to rue du Pont Neuf and turned left, but there was nothing called “The Islander” to be found. Co-worker number two's girlfriend kept insisting that we go a little further along the Quai, but co-worker number two was ready to give up. So his girlfriend ran ahead and, within a few seconds, shouted that she had found it. We caught up to her and all had a huge laugh, as the place we had been looking for was The Highlander! Pascal, being a Quebecois said the "H" of "Highlander" like he and all other Quebecois say it: they don't say it!! So it sounded to co-worker number two like "Islander!" And it sucked. It was smoky, and the drinks they served were made with cheap, non-call liquors. Nobody liked the place.
We finished our drinks, so to speak, and headed back to The Great Canadian. Pascal tolerated us well and, upon reluctantly accepting a co-worker's offering of twenty Euro of company money as a tip, lined up a round of shots he called “minus forty windshield washer,” a concoction of booze that included Curacao (sp?) for the blue coloring.
Quebecois expat Pascal prepares to kill us with his crafty concoction. (Photo credit: Farrago)
That ended the evening and the Polish co-workers and wife and I left co-worker number two at the pub. Wife and I helped Polish co-worker and family find their way to boulevard Saint Germain and then we directed them along to where they should find the street where their hotel is located. Bed time=1:30am!
dassall! more later!
Wednesday
Got up at 9:00 for our first full day in Paris. We both showered and went downstairs to the lobby for breakfast. I am failing miserably at speaking French. It’s not that I’m saying the wrong things, necessarily. It’s that I’m not really trying to speak French at all. I mean, I’m TRYING to try, but whenever I open my mouth, it comes out in English.
(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)Breakfast consisted of a piece of ham…sort of like a slice of lunchmeat rolled up and presented for comsumption…and a hard-boiled egg, and a basket of breads. Wife got the pain au chocolat. We also had cafe americain and jus d’orange.
We went up to the room and made sort of a game plan: find the mooring for Les Bateaux Vedettes, the location of tonight’s group function, and find as well the restaurant where our smaller group was reserved for dinner. Then we were to go to Notre Dame to see what it looks like inside.
(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago.It’s still pretty damn cold outside, so the walk to the Seine was not the most comfortable. We were able to navigate fairly easily. Wife got her bearings for the place much more quickly than did I. We first found the restaurant, Ze Kitchen Galerie, and then beyond there was the river and Ile de la Cité. Pont Neuf is just east of the westernmost point of the island, and Pont Neuf is where Les Bateaux Vedettes is. We took a few photos along the way, and at the very tip of Ile de la Cité.
We then walked east along the river on the island that is Ile de la Cité, past le Palais de Justice and un gendarmerie, until we arrived at Notre Dame. The scaffolding that was there in 2002 is now gone, fortunately, but the view of the main entrance is blocked by a large, decorated Christmas tree. We took a ton of photos of each other there. It would have been great to have had the tripod for shots of both of us, but carrying it in this cold would be a monster bitch.
An interior view of Notre Dame cathedral. (Photo credit: FarragoWe headed back to the hotel in a meandering path, originally with a mind to find Thursday evening’s restaurant. The cold was penetrating our clothes, so we decided just to go back to the hotel. When we got to our block, we made a quick detour into Monoprix, a grocery chain store, for a sandwich jambon et emmentaler, which we brought back to eat in the room with the tea service I brought up from the lobby.
At 4:30 or so co-worker number two called me to ask if we knew where the boat trip was, and I told him I did, but I didn’t know what time we were to meet. He said that bossy co-worker had told him, so we decided to walk to Les Bateaux Vedettes with co-worker number two and his girlfriend. We left at 5:15 with a meeting time of 5:30, for a departure time of 5:45. It took us more like 25 minutes to walk there, and we must have been just a minute from missing the boat! Time sure seems to go faster here, even if you’re not having so much fun.
The boat disembarked from the mooring for its one-hour tour while bossy co-worker was pouring champagne into our plastic flutes. The tour guide began narrating the trip, and our group was soundly hushed by the people in the seating section next to ours because they couldn’t hear the narration over our chatter. I felt like the stupid, loud, boorish American I didn’t want to be perceived as. We reached the Eiffel Tower and the boat began to turn around. Wife suggested we go outside for some photos from the stern of the boat. It was the best idea, despite the cold. Owner stopped and chatted with us a couple of times out there. We left the Eiffel Tower and headed back past the boat’s mooring, out to Notre Dame and beyond before turning back again and heading “home.”
The Eiffel Tower in all its glory, as viewed from the Seine. (Photo credit: Farrago)Since wife and I were the only ones who knew where Ze Kitchen Galerie is, the rest of our dinner group put us in the lead. We arrived around 6:50, but our reservation wasn’t until 7:30, and the restaurant staff said they were closed at the moment. It was decided that we would go for drinks, and co-worker number two, appropriately, was appointed the leader for finding a bar. We wound up at The Great Canadian, a pub owned and run by an expatriate Quebecois. The bartender was Pascal, another Quebecois, who was pretty cool, and who suggested another bar for us to hit after dinner.
We had our drinks (wife and I had wine) and returned to Ze Kitchen Galerie. The menu was fish heavy, and I should have ordered fish. The young pork I ordered was fine, wife let me taste her fish, and it was outstanding. We finished dinner and encountered some confusion over the “tip.” I think we got it squared away with the understanding that it was the “service charge” that’s included in the price, and that it goes to the waiter, and that the “tip” is something extra you may wish to give to the waiter, but it is not included in the bill, nor is it required.
Co-worker number two was once again put in charge of finding the pub Pascal had recommended, and he had put us all on the lookout for a place called “The Islander.” Wife and I thought it would and should be on the island of Ile de la Cité, but co-worker number two said no, that Pascal had told him that it was up the Quai and on the left. We went up to rue du Pont Neuf and turned left, but there was nothing called “The Islander” to be found. Co-worker number two's girlfriend kept insisting that we go a little further along the Quai, but co-worker number two was ready to give up. So his girlfriend ran ahead and, within a few seconds, shouted that she had found it. We caught up to her and all had a huge laugh, as the place we had been looking for was The Highlander! Pascal, being a Quebecois said the "H" of "Highlander" like he and all other Quebecois say it: they don't say it!! So it sounded to co-worker number two like "Islander!" And it sucked. It was smoky, and the drinks they served were made with cheap, non-call liquors. Nobody liked the place.
We finished our drinks, so to speak, and headed back to The Great Canadian. Pascal tolerated us well and, upon reluctantly accepting a co-worker's offering of twenty Euro of company money as a tip, lined up a round of shots he called “minus forty windshield washer,” a concoction of booze that included Curacao (sp?) for the blue coloring.
Quebecois expat Pascal prepares to kill us with his crafty concoction. (Photo credit: Farrago)That ended the evening and the Polish co-workers and wife and I left co-worker number two at the pub. Wife and I helped Polish co-worker and family find their way to boulevard Saint Germain and then we directed them along to where they should find the street where their hotel is located. Bed time=1:30am!
dassall! more later!
Paris Journal, 27 December 2005
I was a poor travel journalist, so, unlike my stated desire, I posted to my blog neither as frequently nor as richly as I had hoped. If you'll bear with me, I will spend the next few posts transcribing the personal journal I did write, omitting or changing the names of people who may not wish to have their likenesses posted on the internet...like my wife, for instance...
PLEASE, if this bores you, PLEASE, tell me to stop, PLEASE!
As a reminder, the owner of the small company I work for treated us to a New Year's trip to Paris. The total number of people, with spouses and children, was 38. We were broken up into smaller groups for easier accommodation at hotels and restaurants, but we kicked off our stay with a large group dinner, and we rang in the new year the same way.
27 December 2005
Tuesday
After the departure ordeal, the actual flight went very smoothly, with the exception that the seats were intensely uncomfortable. Wife came up with a very good idea, though: Each seat upon our boarding the plane had a plastic bag on it which contained a blanket, a pillow and earphones. Wife put her blanket and pillow underneath her thighs, and said that it really relieved the pressure on her butt. I tried it and it worked tremendously.
Neither of us could sleep, though. I finally did manage about a half-hour nap, and it seemed to have been just enough to keep me going through the day.
We landed around 12:15pm, Paris time, and immigration and customs were a breeze. The shuttle situation, however, was not. There were four shuttles scheduled to take each group to its hotel, but, because of the three-hour delay in Chicago, there were no such shuttles to be had. Someone called the shuttle service, and they sent one large bus to bring us all to our hotels, but the driver wasn’t the most fluent in Paris street, so we did a little backtracking and searching. Eventually we did make it to our hotel, au Manoir Saint Germain des Pres, near the Ile de la Cité.
L'Hotel au Manoir Saint Germain des-Pres. (Photo credit: Farrago)
We unpacked our bags and wife lay down for a nap while I went down to the front desk to ask about the breakfast schedule, the internet setup, and if they had any power strips. The hotel has no power strips, so the desk clerk, who speaks very good English, directed me to a supermarket just literally around the corner. I went there, found the power strips, but decided not to get one.
Wife was fairly asleep when I returned, and I set to making sure the laptop worked with the WiFi internet system here (it does), and I sent a brief message home to father-in-law to let him know that we had arrived safely, and with a delay. I propped myself up on the bed to watch some television, but I nodded off myself for approximately a half hour.
At 5:30pm we got ourselves ready for dinner. By 6:15 we were down in the lobby with co-worker number one and his family. They took a cab for themselves, and wife and I waited for co-worker number two and his girlfriend to come down, and we shared a cab with them to the Eiffel Tower. Bossy co-worker was there waiting for everyone with lift tickets in hand to go to the Restaurant Altitude 95. After some initial, minor confusion, we managed to get on the right lift and get to the restaurant. Owner had already picked out the menu, so all we had to do was sit there, drink wine and talk until the food came. It was an appetizer of gravlax (smoked salmon), which was outstanding. I’m not a huge fan of smoked salmon, but this was creamy and tasty, and just excellent! Following it was a course of haricots verts and what we believe was a nice chunk of filet. Very good. Dessert was upside down apple pie with a dollop of ice cream on top. Also very good.
We spent the dinner seated across from freelancer and her husband and 5 year old daughter. She is an adorable kid, and she seems to enjoy the vegetarian lifestyle her mother leads her through. After dinner Owner bought everyone lift tickets to the top of the tower. It was pretty damn cold, and wife and I knew we didn’t want to go all the way to the top. We went to the second level, took some photos and went back down. Cab to the hotel, undressed, bed.
A view of the lower of the two floors at the 1st level of the Eiffel Tower, with the city beyond.(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
A view of the Eiffel Tower from the Eiffel Tower. The white lights are part of an hourly, ten-minute display of randomly flashing lights all over the tower. Imagine five-thousand camera flashes going off all over the tower for ten minutes. Jeez, I wish I could show you the video!(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
View from the tower, I guess this would be looking south. Below is the great garden from which the tower is best viewed. The lone, tall building in the distance is Tour (tower) Montparnasse. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
From the Eiffel Tower, a view of the river Seine. I don't know the street which crosses over that brightly lit bridge. Slightly above center in this photo is the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest erection for himself. No, wait. That sounds horrible. ...Napoleon's greatest self-inspired erection. There. That's much better. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
dassall! more later!
PLEASE, if this bores you, PLEASE, tell me to stop, PLEASE!
As a reminder, the owner of the small company I work for treated us to a New Year's trip to Paris. The total number of people, with spouses and children, was 38. We were broken up into smaller groups for easier accommodation at hotels and restaurants, but we kicked off our stay with a large group dinner, and we rang in the new year the same way.
27 December 2005
Tuesday
After the departure ordeal, the actual flight went very smoothly, with the exception that the seats were intensely uncomfortable. Wife came up with a very good idea, though: Each seat upon our boarding the plane had a plastic bag on it which contained a blanket, a pillow and earphones. Wife put her blanket and pillow underneath her thighs, and said that it really relieved the pressure on her butt. I tried it and it worked tremendously.
Neither of us could sleep, though. I finally did manage about a half-hour nap, and it seemed to have been just enough to keep me going through the day.
We landed around 12:15pm, Paris time, and immigration and customs were a breeze. The shuttle situation, however, was not. There were four shuttles scheduled to take each group to its hotel, but, because of the three-hour delay in Chicago, there were no such shuttles to be had. Someone called the shuttle service, and they sent one large bus to bring us all to our hotels, but the driver wasn’t the most fluent in Paris street, so we did a little backtracking and searching. Eventually we did make it to our hotel, au Manoir Saint Germain des Pres, near the Ile de la Cité.
L'Hotel au Manoir Saint Germain des-Pres. (Photo credit: Farrago)We unpacked our bags and wife lay down for a nap while I went down to the front desk to ask about the breakfast schedule, the internet setup, and if they had any power strips. The hotel has no power strips, so the desk clerk, who speaks very good English, directed me to a supermarket just literally around the corner. I went there, found the power strips, but decided not to get one.
Wife was fairly asleep when I returned, and I set to making sure the laptop worked with the WiFi internet system here (it does), and I sent a brief message home to father-in-law to let him know that we had arrived safely, and with a delay. I propped myself up on the bed to watch some television, but I nodded off myself for approximately a half hour.
At 5:30pm we got ourselves ready for dinner. By 6:15 we were down in the lobby with co-worker number one and his family. They took a cab for themselves, and wife and I waited for co-worker number two and his girlfriend to come down, and we shared a cab with them to the Eiffel Tower. Bossy co-worker was there waiting for everyone with lift tickets in hand to go to the Restaurant Altitude 95. After some initial, minor confusion, we managed to get on the right lift and get to the restaurant. Owner had already picked out the menu, so all we had to do was sit there, drink wine and talk until the food came. It was an appetizer of gravlax (smoked salmon), which was outstanding. I’m not a huge fan of smoked salmon, but this was creamy and tasty, and just excellent! Following it was a course of haricots verts and what we believe was a nice chunk of filet. Very good. Dessert was upside down apple pie with a dollop of ice cream on top. Also very good.
We spent the dinner seated across from freelancer and her husband and 5 year old daughter. She is an adorable kid, and she seems to enjoy the vegetarian lifestyle her mother leads her through. After dinner Owner bought everyone lift tickets to the top of the tower. It was pretty damn cold, and wife and I knew we didn’t want to go all the way to the top. We went to the second level, took some photos and went back down. Cab to the hotel, undressed, bed.
A view of the lower of the two floors at the 1st level of the Eiffel Tower, with the city beyond.(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
A view of the Eiffel Tower from the Eiffel Tower. The white lights are part of an hourly, ten-minute display of randomly flashing lights all over the tower. Imagine five-thousand camera flashes going off all over the tower for ten minutes. Jeez, I wish I could show you the video!(Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
View from the tower, I guess this would be looking south. Below is the great garden from which the tower is best viewed. The lone, tall building in the distance is Tour (tower) Montparnasse. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago)
From the Eiffel Tower, a view of the river Seine. I don't know the street which crosses over that brightly lit bridge. Slightly above center in this photo is the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest erection for himself. No, wait. That sounds horrible. ...Napoleon's greatest self-inspired erection. There. That's much better. (Photo credit: Mrs. Farrago) dassall! more later!
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