My pictures from Seattle are up at Flickr! I’ll write about the trip tomorrow.
Off week
No Unrequired Reading this week, dear readers. Too many things going on for me to do much web-surfing. Go hang out in the UR archives for your fix. I’m working on a lengthy writeup about yesterday’s travels and conversations. Meanwhile, you get a standard Seattle pic (till we get home and have a decent online connection and can upload our bazillion pix to Flickr):
Random Seattle Stuff
Last night I remembered that, on my first trip to Seattle (August 2001), I almost decided to stay based solely on two factors: the summer weather here is gorgeous, and the sell Cherry Coke in 1-liter bottles.
On that first trip, it took me three days before I saw any black people. I’ve seen a bunch already this trip, even though the first black guy I saw that time, Sonics coach Nate McMillan, has moved on to Portland. Not sure if there’s been any demographic shift, or if the downtown area I’m staying in is more “urban” than the neighborhoods I generally hung out in on my other trips.
There’s a lot of construction downtown.
Ambien will help you get 7-8 hours of sleep even if you took a 5-hour nap earlier in the day.
That is all. We’re heading out soon to meet up with my buddy, the Brooding Persian, for lunch. Later, it’s on to the Flying Fish to drink and dine with a bunch of Amy’s friends, along with a cameo by another of my buddies from Annapolis.
I took a couple of pictures yesterday, but haven’t had time to process them and post, so you’ll have to wait on that. Our hotel’s kinda near the Space Needle, so I promise to get a bunch of pix of that and the EMP before long. And, of course, we’ll visit the co-located Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, even though the balloting is totally driven by RBI totals. . .
Rainmaker
Sorry for the lack of posts, dear readers. I’ve been busy wrapping up the March issue, which was a doozy. Amy & I are heading out on a mini-vacation to Seattle today for her friends’ wedding. It doesn’t promise to be great weather (I’ve been to Seattle in February once before), but we’ll bring back the best pics we can!
Politics and the Turkish language
I busted out the Eco Chamber twice last weekend, to get to books I hadn’t previously given the time to. For the flight out to San Diego, I took Ella Minnow Pea
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the novel was even briefer than its 224 pages, since so many of the letters ended a few lines into a page, and several pages were devoted to brief single sentences. So I finished the book during the flight, along with the in-flight mag and its crossword puzzle. I enjoyed it, but now had to find another for the trip home.
During a Saturday morning shopping expedition — tied into my picking up a prescription for antibiotics to make sure I don’t get any weird infections from the cut in my finger — Amy & I stopped in at a Target. I decided to buy something from the Target book section, which I thought would be an interesting challenge.
I soon learned that it would be an uninteresting challenge. I was at a loss, facing either Barack Obama’s bio, or one of several “creative rewritings” of Pride & Prejudice
Then I noticed a face-out display with Orhan Pamuk’s new novel, Snow
I’ve read a little more than half of the book, and find it compelling despite itself, which is (I think) Pamuk’s intent. The novel is overwhelmingly political, taking place in a border city that’s torn between political Islam and military rule, and Pamuk’s choice of epigrams shows that he knows how weighed-down a novel can become by politicking. He manages to avoid it by (I think) representing the flaws in the various points of view, not championing anyone, and not giving credence to the “artists must be apolitical and free!” vibe that undercuts a lot of novels that attempt to deal with their time.
I’ll let you know if it holds up, but at this point it’s a knockout winner over the leaden, dreadful novel it reminded me of on the surface: Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello
You stay classy, San Diego. I’m Ron Burgundy?
We made it back from San Diego, dear readers! My friends’ wedding was wonderful and joyous, and I got to embarrass myself when I was called one to do Just One Thing: introduce the new couple.
I stood by the gate that led into the reception in the courtyard of the church, got everyone’s attention, and announced, “It’s with the greatest joy that I introduce Ian and Jessica Kelley!”
At that moment, the delivery truck for Raphael’s Party Rentals pulled up outside the gate. Ian & Jess were not in this pickup truck, and the photographer was not excited about taking pictures of the bride & groom with Raphael’s truck in the background.
So the wedding planner asked the truck to move. I waited till I definitely saw the happy couple a few steps from the gate, and said, “It is with slightly less spontaneity but just as much joy that I introduce Ian & Jessica Kelley!”
And everything worked out. There are even pictures, if you don’t believe me. (Amy will post hers soon, and they’re SO much better than mine, so check back at her site for them.)
In-N-Out
We’re here for 44 hours in San Diego! Of course, I made a mess of the trip before it even started, by slicing a nice bit out of my finger last night, which led to nearly 3 hours in and around the emergency room of the hospital where I was born.
The cut was of the grotesque variety that can’t be stitched up, so treatment consists of “keep pressure on it”. They gave me two doses of Surgifoam to keep pressed on it, but that’s all melted away, so now I’m just wrapping it in sterile gauze and surgical tape, and taking antibiotics to prevent gangrene. This post is being typed without the use of the middle finger of my right hand. Which, I should point out, I cut while slicing a lime for my G&T last night. Adventures in gin, indeed.
On the plus side, we’re in San Diego! And my best friends are getting hitched! Off to the rehearsal dinner! (even though we sneaked over to In-N-Out for burgers a few hours ago.)
Come Fly Without Me
This week, my boss & I went over the year’s conference schedule, to figure out who’s going where. As it turns out, due to a couple of local-ish shows and changes in our production schedules, I’m not going to have to do too much business-flying this year. It’s a nice change from the past 3 years, which saw plenty of work-flights and lots of Xanax-ingestion.
I can trace my air-anxiety to a takeoff to Phoenix in October 2003, where the first 90 seconds out of Newark were the most harrowing moments of my life. Since then, I’ve been a nervous flyer. Not in extreme “Get me off this plane!” ways, but I tend to take bumps pretty seriously. It’s silly, and I’m able to get over it sometimes by preoccupying myself with music (the louder and more techno-y, the better) or that aforementioned anti-anxiety drug.
I bring all this up because Donald at 2Blowhards has a great post about Scary Airports:
The airports I’ve flown into that make me nervous tend to be those in cramped locations. National Airport near Washington and New York’s LaGuardia are two examples. National is tucked next to the Potomac River and its main runway is about 6,900 feet long (and seemed shorter the last time I used it, 15+ years ago). La Guardia’s runways are about 150 feet longer, but the airport is boxed in by Long Island Sound. Unless you’re landing to the north (and waving at friends in the Shea Stadium parking lot), landing approaches are over water.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with coming in over water. Although I recall that a flight during my trip to Sweden & Denmark in 2004 allowed passengers to look through cameras on the plane’s exterior, as part of the in-flight entertainment. The approach over water (I think it was coming into Paris for the connection at CDG) was a little disturbing from nose-cam.
Anyway, give his post a read, and make sure to check out the comments, which are fantastic.
(Bonus: a YouTube video of planes landing at the incredibly wind-cursed Wellington airport in NZ!)
Toodle-Oo
I’ve been too busy/preoccupied to write about last weekend’s trip to St. Louis for my niece’s birthday, but here are two sets of pix from there: the Bataan Death March at Creve Coeur Lake Park, and Liat’s birthday get-together.
Balling
The itinerary for the first day of our St. Louis trip was as follows:
- 9:10am flight to St. Louis
- Land 11:30-11:45am
- Get baggage (we needed the full-sized suitcase to bring along the birthday presents for my niece) and rental car
- Get lunch at Amy’s favorite Vietnamese restaurant, Mai Lee
- Check into hotel
- Get to my brother’s school by 2pm so I can play basketball with him, a bunch of high school students, and another teacher.
Now, it was #6 that I found a bit problematic from the moment my brother proposed it. See, I haven’t picked up a basketball in at least three years, and I’m several days away from turning 36. I didn’t relish having to explain a massive sports-related injury to my coworkers next week.
Still, basketball was a secondary religion to me and Boaz, behind pinball. Since Bo knows he’ll never be able to top my pinball-achievements, I figured it’d be fine for me to offer my sacrificial self up on the court this afternoon.
So while I packed last night, I pulled my high-tops from the closet, inspected them for scorpions or mice, and stuffed them away in the big suitcase, along with some shorts and a T-shirt. And today, five minutes after checking into the hotel, I headed out to get my ass beat by a bunch of 15-year-olds.
Funny thing: It turned out not to be so bad. I held my own on defense, managed to sky for some rebounds, and hit some wide-open jumpers, as well as a shot or two in traffic, from offensive rebounds. I was actually amazed that I could move as quickly as I did, and that I didn’t have any significant pain in my back. I guarded Boaz most of the time, except when I got tired and decided to stop chasing him through screens. He torched me, which was to be expected, but he was pleasantly surprised at how much life I showed on court. He also admired some of my defensive footwork and the ways I closed out some of his angles to the basket. I’m firmly convinced that all the basketball acumen I’ve picked up in the past year comes from reading Charley Rosen’s basketball column at FoxSports.com.
Anyway, I’m not tooting my own horn here, because I still sorta sucked. My passes were terrible, the release-point on my jumper is laughable, and I did a lot of “lurking” on offense, which is my strategy for avoiding getting the ball and having to make decisions. But still, it was a lot of fun, and I got back to my old basketball practice of sweating worse than Patrick Ewing.
It’s off to dinner with some of Amy’s friends tonight, then breakfast with another friend of hers tomorrow, before we have the birthday party for my niece on Saturday night. I don’t plan on getting back out on the court anytime soon, but it was nice to know I can still bust a 15-year-old with an elbow to the kidney during a back-screen.