( notes index ) ( last month: December 2000 ) ( next month: February 2001 )

After Carter signed my copy of his book, I wandered over to the area where the TV camera guys and other interested bystanders were watching him sign books. I happened to find a good spot with no one directly in front of me, and just hung out for the next five or ten minutes.

Presently a person armed with a digital camera appeared nearby, and searched for a space through which to take a picture of her boyfriend and Carter. I gave them my spot, since it was wasted on my camera-less self. She took several shots, then had her boyfriend take some of her. I was doubtful much would be seen of the near person's face due to flash wash-out, but she seemed ok with that. It was tricky because there was a delay between when she pushed the button and when the picture actually snapped, and the continuous stream of people walking in front of him ruined several attempts.

After they'd got several successful photos, the nice people offered to take some of me as well, and email them to me. And then, after Carter was done signing, he came over towards us for a brief photo-op, as per the TV people's shouted requests. There was a bit of shoving at that point, but the intrepid photographer still managed to get a few shots, and she sent me one of those too. Since my slacker self hasn't installed Photoshop on my new computer yet, I couldn't get the size down, but here it is. Warning: it's about 400K.

So I get in my car yesterday evening, and start driving home. NPR (via KPasadenaCityCollege) has been left on the radio; it's the replay of KPCC's "Air Talk" show from 9 am.

'Of course, nobody questioned segregation, back then,' said the guest. Hm, sounds like a history sort of discussion. Cool, I won't put my tape on just yet. Wonder what the topic is. 'My father was a segregationist -- everybody was, though my mother, I'm not so sure.' She was a registered nurse, the closest thing to a doctor in their rural area, and helped everybody who needed her. He went on to describe the poverty in which many rural residents lived at that time. Sounds like my Tennessee hill people forebears; wonder what area he's talking about.

Host Larry Mantle then asked the guest a question: "Mr. President ..."

Um. Oh. Cool. ... That would be Georgia, then.

After a little more conversation, Mantle confirmed my guess: 'We're talking with former President Carter about his book "An Hour Before Daylight," and his experiences growing up on a farm in Plains, Georgia. President Carter will be signing his book this evening at the Borders bookstore in Westwood, on Westwood Boulevard, at 7 pm.'

!!!! what time is it? he's there right now!

abrupt mental shift of destination from grocery store to Borders Westwood, total freeway cooperation getting me there fast, got a lucky break parking, hurried upstairs, crowds o people, velvet ropes, TV cameras, here's a line ticket, there's trucks full of books, grab one, buy it, get in line, wind through children's section, secret service guys eyeing anyone who simply loiters around any nearby shelves. I'm about to meet Jimmy Carter.!

The line moved quickly. They had quite the system flowing. Helper on his left takes book, slides it on table to him, he signs in a second flat, slide to helper on other side, who hands book to you, and you're done. But for a moment, as he signed my book, he looked at me, and we smiled at each other. He has friendly eyes, full of energy; his 76 years do not wear on him yet. I think he was having fun. "Thank you," I said. And then I was gone.

Thank you, NPR.

Every Monday the office kitchen is restocked by HomeGrocer.com, who apparently just got bought by someone called WebVan. No more cute peach trucks. Waah.

Anyway, someone is being evil evil evil and leading me into temptation by ordering (last week) chocolate/dark chocolate Haagen-Dazs bars, and (this week) Oreo DoubleStuf cookies. evil evil evil. I was proud of myself last week for resisting the Haagen-Dazs bar, sitting there in the freezer all week, until Friday when I rewarded myself by eating it, having allowed the rest of the office every chance to deprive me. yum. The DoubleStufs aren't going to last that long (they're already two-thirds gone), so I had to go ahead and eat my share today.

Good thing I grew up used to healthy foods, unused to large amounts of sugar and fat at once. One Haagen-Dazs bar, or one doughnut, is all I can eat at one time without starting to feel funny in the tummy. So at least when I do eat unhealthy, it doesn't take much to satisfy me. Thanks, mom, for doing your best to prevent us children from sneaking Cocoa Krispies into the shopping cart.

I was eating dinner with the parents yesterday evening. The three of us sat chatting and eating, with Prairie Home Companion on the radio in the background, and sometimes in the foreground. It struck me that my parents, as children in the thirties (dad) and forties (mom), must have also sat round the table with their families, with a radio variety show playing.

History is everywhere, if you only pay attention.

Happy new year! where applicable. The more holidays the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

Snakes are ok, i guess. We rats are a bit nervous of snakes, but c'est la vie.

It hailed! It hailed this afternoon. Very small bits, and it turned into heavy rain after a few minutes, but there was most definitely hail. I couldn't quite place the sound, when I first heard it; I thought someone was rolling a rather grumbly gravelly cart past the windows outside. But it went on rather long, and I looked out to see little white bits bouncing off the cars and the asphalt.

When I was little, if this happened we would run outside afterwards and try to get together a "snowball's" worth, and then our snowballs tended to live in the freezer till July. a family of packrats, yessiree. I was tempted to run outside for a snowball this afternoon, but the bits were so small it looked like getting a good handful would be difficult. And then the rain melted them pretty quick anyway.

But it hailed! And in Los Angeles, that's fun. None of those killer Oklahoma softballs or whatever. Just some little bits of frozen different.

The fuel spill in the Galapagos is, at least, not as awful as it could have been, or so run the latest stories. It doesn't have any direct relevance to the U.S. president, but it can't help but remind me of all my nagging fears relating to the new guy (I like Tehshik's idea of "I Bush II"). The only way to guarantee that no oil accidents will happen in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge is not to drill there.

Some of this California electricity shortage may be because of poor planning and/or profiteering, but there aren't enough people talking about how it illustrates our dependence on large amounts of energy. This is the time when we should be going full-bore on two fronts: developing other, sustainable, renewable, sources of energy, and reducing our consumption of it. I'm not hearing a lot of talk about either of those, which frustrates me.

Oil is a finite resource. (Want to be really depressed? Some people don't know this. My mom met one.) Sooner or later, if we keep sucking it all out of the ground, there will be no more, and then we'll be forced to find something else whether we like it or not. Why not make the transition now, while we still have some left? It just seems so blindingly obvious.

sigh.

Few people seem to ever wonder what the lives of ancient people were like, and how they were similar to and different from our own. I suspect that many people have a vague attitude that previous generations were a bit slow, compared to their modern all-knowing selves. We forget how many shoulders we are standing atop. People who lived many thousand years ago were us, in all the important ways. The artists who painted the ancient hunt in those thirty-thousand-year-old caves reveal talent comparable to any later artists who have hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge to help them refine their skills.

Even disregarding the potential for great achievements, the daily lives of everyday people a couple thousand years ago were, while "nasty, brutish and short," more similar in fundamentals than I think most people realize. I'm reading a book called "Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens," by James Davidson, in which he quotes one Timaeus of Taormina:

In Agrigentum there is a house called 'the trireme' for the following reason. Some young men were getting drunk in it, and became feverish with intoxication, off their heads to such an extent that they supposed they were in a trireme, sailing through a dangerous tempest; they became so befuddled as to throw all the furniture and fittings out of the house as though at sea, thinking that the pilot had told them to lighten the ship because of the storm. A great many people, meanwhile, were gathering at the scene and started to carry off the discarded property, but even then the youths did not pause from their lunacy. On the following day the generals turned up at the house, and charges were brought against them. Still sea-sick, they answered to the officials' questioning that in their anxiety over the storm they had been compelled to jettison their superfluous cargo by throwing it into the sea.

Yesterday I finally got to the sort of writing that was the real purpose of my resolution (which is still unbroken, ha!). I ended up deleting half of the result, but half of it remains. Even better, I had a good phone talk with a good friend. No mere workweek of heavy overtime can faze me now.

friday is a favored day of the week.

especially since my phone is now fixed.

It seems that I am not allowed to have all of my mechanical devices working at the same time. First, when I bought my computer back in December, the speakers didn't work and I had to get new ones. Then my DVD player developed a quirk wherein it might refuse to turn on if it doesn't feel like working. So I've just left it on constantly since managing to turn it on the third time (slow learner -- also too lazy/thrifty to take it in to get fixed just yet). Then (as mentioned below) my old car went kablooie and made me ride the bus for two days. Now I've got my wonderful new car that I love, and my apartment's phone line has gone dead, since sometime over the weekend (there was one message on my machine, from Saturday). I do have a cell phone, but my computer can't use it to go internet.

I'm so happy about my car that I almost don't care (yet). But I am a little nervous about what's left to break. My cellphone would maybe be the next logical thing. Bad, but I'm willing to "trade" if my regular phone is fixed first; the odds are low I would need the cell for safety reasons, since I rarely have yet. My heater? Inconvenient, right now, but not the crisis it would be if instead of Los Angeles I lived in, say, Boston. My fridge? I just bought two jugs of milk yesterday; that would be bad. or rather, they would. But I guess I could survive for a while on room-temperature juice bottles.

Such a hard life I have. What a beautiful day it is today, so clear.

the lord of the rings trailer was way too short. and flashed so fast you couldn't see a way lot. though the last mountain-trail scene was money.

thirteen days was a good movie too, which was nice.

five minutes to spare.

The movie "Thirteen Days" opens today, an event noted by me because it will have the first "teaser" trailer for the first Lord of the Rings movie in front of it. Go go go! As far as the actual movie, it does have Kevin Costner in it, but at least it can't be as bad as Wing Commander or whatever people were going to in order to see Star Wars Ep.1 trailers. Though that might have had an MST3K sort of charm to it, I don't know.

I LIKE rain. except when I'm driving in a heavy storm of it at night, and no one can see the lane lines on the streets, especially on Santa Monica Boulevard through the construction, where the lanes are sketchy temporary anyway, and there are lots of exciting puddles.

But once I get home I can be comfy and warm, and cook spaghetti, and splatter sauce across my just-cleaned stovetop, and cuddle in my blankets listening to the wind and wet outside, and play Civilization II until midnight. That part (aside from the sauce) is cozy.

It's also entertaining, yesterday afternoon and this morning, to hear everyone tell of their adventures with driving and leaks and things that would make us the laughingstocks of any place that knows what real weather is like. But that's ok, because after they laugh at us, they still have to deal with it. Whereas this is rare enough that it's rather more fun than otherwise, scary streets notwithstanding.

leather alloy-wheeled moonroofed six-cylinder-engined automatic joy shall be mine this weekend.

i'll have no money afterward, but c'est la dolce vita. or whatever.

I wanted to boil a couple of eggs for lunch just now.

I had to look on a website (the American Egg Board) for help because I wasn't confident I remembered how to do it. Do I let them boil (how long?), or turn the heat off as soon as it reaches boiling? How long should I let them stand? We did this every Easter when I was growing up, and other times besides. Why can I never remember?

saved from my sad-ness by the web.?

I tend to remember new year's resolutions for at least a week.

my kitchen is clean.

cars, while nice, can be done without for a few days at a time.

however, I'll have to get to work (and back) on the bus tomorrow. with rolling laptop case in tow. possibly in the rain. an Adventure, that's what it will be. yes.

i prefer trains. too bad LA doesn't do trains. yet.

So car is in shop until at least Monday. I'm not sure the long story is suitably interesting, but if I can make it so, it'll probably be in form of a medianstrip column, due to length. Short version: my car died yesterday evening just outside work. With help of tow truck driver #1, I got it going and managed to drive it (on surface streets) to within walking distance of home. However, it died again a few blocks short of the 76 station and a second tow truck was necessary. Getting home last night took me about three hours longer than usual, all told.

This is part of why I want a new car instead of a 14-year-old one.

complete non sequitur follows.

I just remembered while typing the date that today is my paternal grandmother's birthday. Were she still on this plane of existence, she would be 104. Sadly, she died the year before I was born. I wish I could have met her. My dad made some reel-to-reel tape recordings of her and a couple of her siblings talking about old times, so I have heard her voice, at least. But really those tapes just make me want to meet her all the more.

I wonder how long it will be before living to 100 becomes common. I would certainly like to participate in that phenomenon.

What is it with the Odyssey all of a sudden? We hit the Year of the Monolith (great work, whoever pulled that in Seattle), and the Coens do a take on it, and then I get into my very own version this evening.

which i'm too tired to describe now. suffice it to say when I finally got home, my car was no longer with me. but at least *I* made it.

That ("OOOH!") was the full text of a bumper sticker I saw on my way back from my doctor appointment this afternoon. It amused me out of all proportion.

Shortly afterward, a song came on the radio that I once had (and still have) a strong love for, but somehow never got it on CD and now I'm blanking on the song title. I think it was by New Order:

I feel so extraordinary
something's got a hold on me
I get this feeling I'm in motion,
a sudden sense of liberty

This is the kind of song you need to be hearing while barreling along the interstate; inching through traffic to it isn't quite as satisfying. But the sticker and the song, plus the license plate frame when I got off the freeway that read "Sunday in the Holodeck with Data," added up to a lovely amusing afternoon that completely made up for having four test tubes' worth of blood drawn.

I am in the process of finding myself a shiny new car. My original target had a few power-window and cruise-control type goodies, a V6 engine and automatic transmission, and no luxe extras beyond that.

Then my dad and I went to check them out at our local dealership, and I took a couple of test drives. Aside from confirming my preference for the V6 engine, there was an unexpected side effect. "The leather seats are more comfortable, and they wear better," said my dad.

We got home, and were looking through the printouts I'd made from some auto websites. My mom, looking at the pictures, said, "You need the alloy wheels, they look so much better than the standard ones."

The alloy wheels are commonly found as part of the "luxury package," which is alloy wheels and a power moonroof.

And my parents wonder why I have trouble working within a budget.

My sole resolution this year is to write at least a few words, somewhere, every day.

We are now living in the twenty-first century after the birth of Jesus. Amazing what an impact the right voice in the right place at the right time can have upon the world.

I think all religions are cultural variations on the expression of fundamental truths. The root ideal of all is simply to be good to others, to live in harmony with the world as much as possible.

Through every action or inaction, you change the world, every day. In small ways, perhaps, but life is made of details. And you never know when small local events might have larger repercussions.

Action: a smile, a glass of water, that calms someone in the midst of chaos. Inaction: letting someone inconvenience you, without snapping at them. Choosing to create, to the best of your ability, instead of kicking others' sand castles. All the actions and inactions of everyone in the world, every day, creating a pattern of ones and zeroes that forms the Big Picture, that no one can ever see whole.