Phew

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Could have been very embarassing.

Hentahtayn Me!

In case you're missing all the action, best Achewood story for ages has been running the past couple of weeks; ever since Ray's mom came to visit way back in January: The Great Outdoor Fight. It's gotten so's I can't wait till midnight these days, to read the next installment.

Oh - and does anyone know what a Frappr is?

Reality Bound

Amongst the many interesting discoveries we made this weekend during our too, too brief vacation to Philadelphia, perhaps my favorite is that the automatic sliding doors that bookend the corridors of Amtrak trains do not re-open themselves should you find yourself caught in the gap when they decide it is time to close. This is not some elevator: this is a train, by God. Instead, though you be laden with baggage and too few hands, you are compelled somehow to find some spare extremity with which to hit the large black "Open" pad. I can attest that shouting "Shazaam!" does not work. Rather later than necessary I noticed that each door has two such pads: one at elbow height, and another at ankle height; so the coach designers have clearly thought the problem through. The thick-necked conductor, too, who collected our tickets was clearly of the Ernest Borgnine Academy of Railroad Bulls, holding visibly repressed the urge to beat our vagrant skulls to mush with his trusty sap. Perhaps oddly, I find this very reassuring: for I can now say with some conviction - not, I admit, necessarily in truth - that all across the anglophone world, railways are imperiously unhelpful; from the design of their carriages and stations (escalators Up at 30th Street, but not Down) to the sullen glower of their staff. That train to Philadelphia could have been the 8.13 to Weston-Super-Mare, though the two be thousands of miles apart. This was my first venture onto an american railroad: here in Los Angeles the list of prohibitions placed upon the traveler are longer even that those at the beach, and I will not set foot upon their poxy trains if I can at all help it.

The city itself was a revelation - it is gorgeous, and filled with delights for the casual tourist. City Hall with its gigantic statue of William Penn - which, until quite recently, had to be taller than any surrounding building - built in that Parisian style that reminded me immediately of the Paris opera house for some reason (an impressionist memory that, if ever there were); and next door the exquisite Freemasons' Temple, surprisingly loud for a secret society. My poor feet, though, are blistered to high heav'n with all the walking. We spent much of Saturday at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, hiding from the rain. We did not, needless to say, attempt to run the "Rocky" steps but there were - I swear - around a dozen people doing exactly that when we arrived. My only complaint of the museum itself is that the lighting in some sections was a little too intrusive, often obscuring the paintings with reflected lamp glare, but really the only museum or gallery I've found to have that beat is the Getty here in Los Angeles. What I loved about it was that through every doorway or opening could be seen some painting or exhibit, positioned as though the doorways themselves were used to frame them. This could be a standard trick across the museum world, but for the life of me I cannot say I've ever noticed it anywhere else, though I very quickly did there? I think perhaps my favorite painting was Rubens' "Prometheus Bound", if for no other reason than I have seen this in many a book, and for a rather shocking detail never before noticed by this tittering schoolboy eye? But there were many others that simply struck me, the way that some paintings just do, to stand and stare and gawp and wallow. One other curious detail - the labelling. In most cases the labels would record Title, then Artist, then Blurb: except in the American section, where the labelling read Artist, then Blurb, but with Title added almost as an afterthought to the Artist line, that I had often to look hard to discover what a painting was called?

Would we go back? Absolutely - although there are other cities and places on our list that we must visit first.

Could we live there? Well... My wife, bless her, is filled with the sun-kissed native Southern Californian's romance for Rain and Weather of all sorts; but as I've tried on so many occasions to persuade her, this is a abstract longing that is not to be confused with reality. But I could tell her of hateful rain and biting wind till I was blue in the face, it wouldn't have the tiniest impact of a couple of minutes in the real thing. So No, after all that, we won't be moving anywhere cold and rainy. Praise Be.


Now we're back, and back to the grind. I cannot promise any further posts, nor even regular visits to your own sites: the project I am engaged upon has a tiny team developing brand-new technology, and it is all consuming I'm afraid. Still: it has been very nice this popping-out to the Outside World.

Perverse Observations...

Here is a simple truth, spoken without comment: at the age of forty-three I have now been carded more times while attempting to buy cigarettes than ever I was at the age of fifteen, while attempting [and succeeding] to get rat-arsed in bars.

Shamed!

Shamed to respond, finally, two months into a new year, with a jingling "Tap-Tap" from Madame-X.

Is this thing on?

Not hardly: I haven't had a day off in months, or a night off for that matter, being thoroughly-embroiled and entangled by panic of Work. Twenty-hour days with an occasional splat of exhaustion: such is the life I chose.

Writing tonight from another state, a faraway state, at the end of a course with an hour or two before dinner. The eve of our first, brief, vacation since the Red Sox wonthe World Series while we hooped-it up Midtown Manhattan. Sat in a cheapo grubby hotel somewhere in the Garden State where Enterprise car rental refused to deliver a car for my accompanying Goddess.

Did you know - you probably did, you bastards - that it is forbidden to Turn Left anywhere in New Jersey? What the heck is up with that? No Left Turn, not anywhere. Made for some interesting navigation of the mere half a mile between here, our hotel, and there, the company I've been visiting. Three miles that way before a mile-wide turn this way.

Anyhoo: we are not vacationing in Jersey, not even here in this small town whose name I misheard as Madame Hades: Persephone????? - thought it was the codename of a project? No: it's up wi' the craws in the morning, headin' oot for the airport at 5am for a train, not a plane, to the bad old City of Brotherly Love for a couple of days tourist-trailing and museum-hopping Downtown Philadelphia. At least I think it's Downtown - neither of us have been there before, so what the hell do we know? A nice hotel, it ought to be, and treading green footsteps of Benjamin Franklin and Continental Congress, and split-cast Liberty Bells. Mock all you like - as my workmate did, who remarked "Oh Philly? Isn't that the Garden of Delight."

Mock all you like; I don't care. I'm on vacation.

Dammit.