{"id":2156,"date":"2008-07-28T07:27:31","date_gmt":"2008-07-28T11:27:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2156"},"modified":"2008-07-28T16:24:08","modified_gmt":"2008-07-28T20:24:08","slug":"flying-fish-will-never-be-able-to-walk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/flying-fish-will-never-be-able-to-walk","title":{"rendered":"Flying fish will never be able to walk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday’s company picnic turned out to be pretty boring. The turnout was much lower than last year’s at the same location (enjoy the 2007 slideshow!<\/a>). I split around 1:30 p.m. and took a nice drive through Harriman State Park<\/a> for the slightly roundabout trip home.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure why I felt so disengaged from it; I had a couple of decent conversations with coworkers, but there were few significant others on hand for the event, which meant we were spending the day with the same people we see every day in the office. The young’uns (anyone younger than me) seemed to have a good time, playing beer-wiffleball or something, but I felt kinda intruder-y among them.<\/p>\n

I bought the new Paul Weller record last week and it occurred to me that no one in my office would have any idea who Weller was, nor would they ever have heard the Jam or the Style Council. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way; it just struck me that my time isn’t theirs.<\/p>\n

So I hung with some of my older coworkers, but their conversation led to a spirited game of beer-pong. I knew that the only way I’d have fun at this picnic was if I started drinking, and afternoon drinking makes me pretty sluggish. As opposed to nighttime drinking, which makes me witty, vivacious and impossibly charming. And invulnerable (to criticism)<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Or maybe I was hungover from the previous day’s reading of Camp Concentration<\/em>. The best books can do that. Regardless, I felt utterly out of place, and so I shot hoops for a little while with the worst basketball of all time, then started my drive home. Sorry I don’t have any fun stories or good pix to post.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

On the plus side, it was a weekend of new milestones for Rufus! On Friday night, I gave him full run of the upper floor of the house (sans kitchen) for 2+ hours while I picked up Amy at her train and got dinner. I have no idea how to positively house-train a dog, and I was a little nervous that he might not be familiar enough with the lower floor, so I put a gate at the top of the stairs and lit out for Radburn.<\/p>\n

He was typically (which is to say, unbelievably) excited when we got home, and I immediately conducted a room-by-room inspection. He’d gone up on both the sofa and my chaise (I put towels down on both to, and discovered paw-shaped impressions on them), but had no accidents! I took him outside and he relieved himself for about five minutes straight. So I’m going to take that as evidence that he’s house-trained! (Not that I’ll leave him outside of his crate for a full work-day, but at least I know I can go away for a couple of hours without a problem.)<\/p>\n

A night later, a heavy thunderstorm rolled through the area. It woke us up around 4am on Sunday morning, and I assumed that our boy had already decamped to a corner of the guest bedroom to hide. But after another flash of lightning, I noticed that he was still curled up on his bed in our room, snoozing away. Given his past reactions to thunder, I was amazed. Especially because I was ready to hide in a corner of the guest bedroom at that point.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

But it was a pretty quiet weekend. I read a ton, and now I’m trying to figure out how to get back to my Monday Morning Montaigne<\/a> project without carrying around an 1,100+ page hardcover of the essays, since the edition I’m reading isn’t available on the Kindle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday’s company picnic turned out to be pretty boring. The turnout was much lower than last year’s at the same location (enjoy the 2007 slideshow!). I split around 1:30 p.m. and took a nice drive through Harriman State Park for the slightly roundabout trip home. I’m not sure why I felt so disengaged from it; … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Flying fish will never be able to walk”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61],"tags":[221],"class_list":["post-2156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis","tag-paul-weller"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-yM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2138,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-72108","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":0},"title":"What It Is: 7\/21\/08","author":"Gil","date":"July 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Against the Gods, and Bottomless Belly Button What I'm listening to: Court and Spark, by Joni Mitchell, and Hearts and Bones, by Paul Simon What I'm watching: Dazed and Confused, and Sunshine (not the 87-hour Ralph Fiennes movie of the same title) What I'm drinking: Rogue Dead\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000W23LAM","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2128,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-7708","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":1},"title":"What It Is: 7\/7\/08","author":"Gil","date":"July 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: The July issue of The Atlantic (on my Kindle!). There's an article by Fred Kaplan on Donald Rumsfeld that I found fascinating, because it looks beyond The Big Mistake and finds that Rumsfeld actually pulled off a lot of significant accomplishments as defense secretary. Also, Zenith, which\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000IMVNQU","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2154,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-72808","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":2},"title":"What It Is: 7\/28\/08","author":"Gil","date":"July 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Finished Against the Gods, Camp Concentration and Bottomless Belly Button this week, but haven't decided what to read next. Maybe Archy & Mehitabel. I oughtta catch up on the past 2 issues of Monocle. What I'm listening to: 22 Dreams (Paul Weller), and West Indian Girl and\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 1 comment","block_context":{"text":"With 1 comment","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-72808#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B000W23LAM","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5079,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/all-the-things-you-try-to-hide","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":3},"title":"All the things you try to hide","author":"Gil","date":"March 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"One Saturday morning in the spring of 1998, I woke up and thought about Stacy Guess. I hadn't kept up with him in the five years since I'd graduated college, and decided to look him up online. This was pre-Google and pre-Wikipedia, so it took some effort. Also, computers were\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Squirrel Nut Zippers\"","block_context":{"text":"Squirrel Nut Zippers","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/tag\/squirrel-nut-zippers"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B003A97CDQ","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5615,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/chick-magnet","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":4},"title":"Chick Magnet","author":"Gil","date":"October 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Last night \/ this morning, I watched God's Cartoonist, a documentary about Jack T. Chick. I'd seen his comic-book-style religious tracts since I was a kid. Tammy, our next-door neighbors' mom, made it her Baptist mission to save our souls. She'd leave general interest ones on us, but when I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"English - This Was Your Life.gif","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/English-This-Was-Your-Life.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":14961,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-466-gil-roth-and-aaron-finkelstein","url_meta":{"origin":2156,"position":5},"title":"Episode 466 – Gil Roth and Aaron Finkelstein","author":"Gil","date":"December 28, 2021","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 466: Gil Roth and Aaron Finkelstein \"Once you start stripping away the things you were using to distract yourself, and you're stuck with what's left, you see what really matters & what you reinvent to start distracting yourself again.\" Our final guest of the year is .\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gilfinkcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gilfinkcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gilfinkcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gilfinkcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/gilfinkcomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C480&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2158,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2156\/revisions\/2158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}