21dec01 ...arrivederci

Bags are packed, cookies are cooking, soup is reheating and the car looks like it is in good enough shape to get us to Bellingham to board the ferry to Alaska. If you ever need a sane smart mechanic who can give you no bullshit information on damned nearly any kind of automobile, and you live in Seattle, I do not have enough glowing words to say about my friend and mechanic John. Let me know if you want his number, he is a class act.

I think between me and Kate and Greg we have at least five books each, one game each and three pairs of wool socks each. As I was navigating horrific traffic at and through the airport late last night, it occurred to me that even if the ferry sank in the Inside Passage and we had to get shuttled out freezing in blankets and lifeboats, I would have a better time with my sister and boyfriend in the middle of the ocean than I would have trying to walk or drive down the street in Seattle, during holiday season. I hope you all have wonderful holidays and can be kind to each other. I'll be back in a week.

16dec01 ...yes jessamyn, there is a santa claus, sort of

Today was the big bill paying day since I am leaving Friday for a week on a ferry where I will have no access whatsoever to email or phones or other people except my travelling companions and anyone else dopey enough to go to Alaska for Christmas.

While I was messing around trying to figure out if Network Solutions had refunded the $63 they had mistakenly charged me for a domain that I wasn't allowed to register, I noticed that not only had they refunded my money, but there was another credit on my account .... from Greyhound. Frequent readers may remember the ride from heck I had with Greyhound in October and the subsequent nasty letter I wrote them. [consoling side note, searching Google for "greyhound sucks" gets my letter #1]. I never heard back from them specifically, though I did get a "we are working to resolve the matter as quickly as possible" form letter. Looks like they refunded the complete cost of my ticket, only two months after the original trip. While a note and an "I'm sorry" might have been nice, I'll settle for the cash.

Feeling bold, I then called Bank of America and said "I know I forgot to pay you last month, but the bill showed up very late, and don't you think a $29 fee on top of a $20 credit card bill is a bit extreme?" While I can't say they agreed exactly, they did knock off the fee. So, for an hours worth of letter writing and phone calling, I managed to regain almost $100, and I didn't even need to yell at anyone. If anyone would like me to hassle large corporations in order to get your money back, I work on commission.

14dec01 ...sunny day redemption

In Seattle in December when the sun comes out people begin to spontaneously sing. I am serious. There were singing people on the bus, crooners in backyards and I even hummed a note or two. I am on deadline which means that I was screwing off a lot of today, trying out my healing ankle and getting a bit of that sunshine.

You may have heard over the past week that my alma mater, Hampshire College made a name for itself by being the first college to come out with a statement against the war in Afghanistan. Before I'd even been able to find much information out about what the statement was, the alumni board -- set up post-9/11 to facilitate alumni communications -- got flooded with nasty messages condemning the school and the students. Then I got an email from a concerned and angry alumn who had gotten my email address from the alumni contact list and pointed me to his site: Hampshire Patriots. It's all vitriol and the worst kind of chest-thumping. Dissenting email to the web site is put in a special section for people who "support Hampshire's idiocy". Bleah. The all-campus vote seemed a bit contrived and the tone of the statement a bit heavy-handed, but overall if my old school wants to come out against the war, it doesn't concern me too much. I applaud their chutzpah. I would even applaud the activist streak of the Hampshire Patriots guy if he weren't such a name-calling grouch. I was happy, however, to see many of my old friends' names on the "I support Hampshire" side of things. Hampshire was a good hippie-ish school filled with principled, if a bit strident, well-meaning young people. It seems to still be that way. Good.

My home computer now dual-boots to Windows 95 and Red Hat Linux 6.2. I am invincible.

10dec01 ...spirit of the holidays etc etc

So, on my way to the art museum last week, I twisted my ankle. I just fell off my feet. I do it more often than I would like and probably need to start paying more attention to my footwear. Since my car is only sort of working and I take the bus most places this looked like it was going to land me at home all weekend. Not a huge problem, I like home, but I was sad to miss the Santa Rampage. My pal Robert who was planning to cover the event for NPR, said "we can't do it without you!" and offered to push me if we could track down a wheelchair.

A few hours later I was wheeling into the Nitelite in my brand new ride and my shiny red track suit and my wrapped up foot. I got rolled all over downtown, got to use special elevators to get into bars that I hadn't known existed, and stayed off my aching ankle. People seemed to be amused by the santa-in-a-wheelchair thing -- everybody offered to help push -- and a good time was had by all.

I spend a lot of time grousing about the dumb holiday season and the opressiveness of the Consumer Christian Christmas, but the extra effort Robert made to make sure I could be a part of the part of the holiday celebrating that I enjoy, really made a difference in my December.

In other news, me and my pal Katia think we're going to write a book, or at least edit one.

06dec01 ...fun and misery

Tomorrow I will be donning some sort of Santa suit and meeting my other Santa pals at the Nitelite in downtown Seattle at 7 pm for a night -- and possibly a weekend -- of holiday [or anti-holiday, if you prefer] revelry. Y'all come!

As for yesterday well.... I have a car now and I hate to drive it. I feel like a poser and I'd rather be reading while travelling anyhow. Yesterday I had a long list of errands and I was all set to tackle them by bus -- get mail, get food, return DVD, buy stamps. As I was driving through the University District, my radio shut off. Now for a backgrounder, when I was coming back from Oregon, I took a sharp turn and suddenly all my dash lights came on. The full complement of OIL, BRAKE, CHARGE, ESP [that last one scares me]. I have been trying to reign in my paranoid side which usually conjures itself as hypochondria ["I know everyone thinks they have anthrax lately, but I really do]. So, believing myself reasonable, I ignored the lights. Other people smarter than me have done similar things.

So when the radio died, I knew just what it was. The dash lights dimmed. The wipers stopped. And then, on a major road, at 4:30 pm, the car ceased to function. Here's where my luck began.... I glided it into a parking place, got out cursing, and met my friend Daniel who just happened to be walking by and parked four spaces up. He offered to give me a jump, but couldn't find his battery at about the same time I realized the car would still start, though who knew for how long? I drove it to a side street, debated calling my roommate, called AAA instead. Got some coffee, waited. They came 20 minutes later and towed me all the way home. Cost to me? Free with my AAA membership which cost less than the towing fee would have been.

So I'm back to the way I like it, carless. I will have to do something to fix this before my sister and Greg come up and we all need to drive to Bellingham. And really, who wants to leave the house anyhow?

04dec01 ...shattering assumptions

Tonight, I backed up my hard drive. You heard me. Sat around and spent a lot of time making sure my precious and not-so-precious data will be safe if anything short of a house fire comes through here. HTML files compress really small. And the weirdest thing? It's totally my style to do that. I brush my teeth every night, sometimes even after meals. I floss. I drink in moderation, if at all. I don't smoke. I almost never do drugs. I have safe sex. I wear my seatbelt. I say "please" and "thank you" and "excuse me." I drive people to the airport. I recycle. I take the bus. I wear natural fibers. I cook at home. I write letters to my relatives. I send 50 valentines a year. I pet every domesticated animal I see.

Oh yes, and I believe that capitalism is a corrupt system that neccessitates an oppressed underclass, and if the entire federal government mysteriously fell into the sea, or was overthrown, I would not miss them one bit [except maybe there wouldn't be any bus to ride].

My point being -- one I frequently make -- that it's not enough just to assume that because someone shares your skin color or your workplace or your taste in model train sets, that they are like you. Saying "Oh you're Jewish? Happy Haunukah then!" does not negate the fact that saying "Merry Christmas" to every Caucasian and saying "Happy Kwanzaa" to every Black family is homogenizing what could be an interesting cross-cultural event and turning it into one giant consumer-driven mushpile. I'm in favor of moving from a multi-cultural perspective to an idiocultural perspective -- understanding each person's unique cultural vision and tradition and method of celebration might make your own holiday season richer.

What's in my coffee this week? I sure don't know.

03dec01 ...things I used to know about myself

There was a time when I was almost never online and it spanned from 1968 to about 1997. Before my first job involving computers and before my first apartment with broadband access. Before I had ever worked in a library. I had a computer and I used it for letters, stupid games, and tax stuff. I just recently filled up my first hard drive on my first computer and was clearing it out this evening. Archiving and tossing, reading and remembering. I have pictures of people that I don't even know anymore, although I know they still live in town. I have a dream journal that I don't even remember keeping; it spans four months. It's pretty raw and it embarassed me to read some of it. I was married for a while and there are old pictures of a grinning me and a grinning husband in a glowing past life that barely exists. Not that my current life is shabby by comparison, but coming across a picture of your ex lying on the old beat-up couch in an earlier cookie cutter apartment wearing only a surgical mask, you can only think "what kind of life was that?" and then "I wonder if he will ever try to run for office?"

When he and I first met, email was a new and unusual way to flirt and we used it for increasingly arcane wordplay. He had written me asking some sort of coded and hidden "how many feminists..." joke and I had replied in this odd eleven line poem where the first and last letters of each line spelled my answer. I was a poet? Which life was that?

Ontogeny recapitulates philogeny, irregardless of the mediA
Nevertheless persistence at overanalysis leads to confusioN
Ever searching nebulous illusive veracities that lie beyonD
Fearing lack of any concrete substance, resultant anaethemA
Evangelical zeal pitted against heavyset, deep rooted slotH
Making unlikely bedfellows among idealism and failed utopiA
Idiosyncratic idiolectics inveigle increasing interrogatioN
Nonsensical nomenclature narcissistically noted, not needeD
I irascibly, impart intemperate info; itself ideal-invadinG
Self-salubrious serendipitously scoping some semantic snafU
Talking typing tall-tale telling towards tawdry titlilatioN

Please note the equal line lengths, and total alliteration in the last five lines. And I thought I was smart this week because I got procmail working correctly. December reflections, based as they are upon not enough light and too much coffee, are often odd.

01dec01 ...today is world AIDS day

Today is World AIDS Day and I find myself in the bizarre position of not having known anyone closely who has gotten sick. I find this hard to believe, but I keep racking my brain. Some of my best friends are gay, you know. Despite this ridiculousness, I still have a story to tell.

A few years back, my then boyfriend decided to participate in the AIDS Ride from San Fran to LA. I went along as a volunteer on the support team. My job was to ride the Sag Wagon which was the bus that took all the riders who couldn't finish the day's ride back to the night's camp. There were a lot of depressed people on that bus who felt like dorks and losers and I spent a lot of time just talking to people and cheering them up. "Are you kidding? A loser? You rode 28 miles today! Heck, I can't even ride a bike at all...." At night I'd get to camp early and set up the tent and get stuff ready for when Len finally made it back.

One night, camp was on this gorforsaken airport field where the wind whipped through at 30 MPH and made setting up tents all but impossible. Me and this other guy were trying to set up our tents in the same place and were having a tough time of it. We decided to pool our resources and get our tents up together. As we worked, I noticed that while he was much taller than I was, he was gaunt and pale. His arms were covered with KS lesions. He got tired easily. His boyfriend was doing the ride, so the two of us were sort of keeping house for our men. He was sweet and mostly stood by as I wrestled with the tents, holding an end down for me. Once we were done, he immediately lay down to take a nap.

That night, after we were all in bed, I could hear him and his boyfriend softly speaking to each other in the tent. Then later I could hear him snoring. I have always been a bit of a prima donna sleeper, noise and light bother me and I have a tough time getting comfortable. Snoring usually drives me insane. That night I knew that next door there was a very sick man sleeping in the arms of someone who loved him and the snoring meant that he was still alive. I've never viewed snoring quite the same way since.