Good Night, and Good Luck.

We saw our fourth Best Picture nominee last weekend, the superb Good Night, and Good Luck. I knew little about the film when we entered the theater, and thus was pleasantly surprised to find it tautly written, well acted, and filmed lovingly in grainy black-and-white.

Good Night, and Good Luck. tells the story of reporter Edward R. Murrow‘s campaign against Senator Joseph McCarthy. The film wisely avoids providing detailed background to McCarthy’s crusade against communism; it assumes the viewer has a basic grasp of this piece of American history. Instead, the film focuses almost exclusively on the offices of CBS News and on the men (and few women) who risk their careers to confront McCarthy and his dogmatism. These men are not painted as heroes, but as ordinary fellows doing their jobs. The film uses actual archival footage of McCarthy, letting him damn himself.

This is an excellent film, my favorite non-documentary of the year. (Kris still prefers Crash and Brokeback Mountain.) Granted, there are a couple of opaque points — who is this Don Hollenbeck and why should we care about his story? — but on the whole, the film is tight and cohesive in a way that most modern Hollywood films, with their loose stories and superfluous subplots, are not.

Some other quick points:

I adored the sets.
A person could get lung cancer just from watching this film. There’s more smoking than I can recall ever having seen in any other movie. (Is this why there was a trailer for the upcoming Thank You For Smoking? If so, very funny.)
Alex Borstein plays a young woman named Natalie in this film. Kris and I both thought she looked like our little Aimee Rose.
Why is this film rated PG? I can’t remember anything that warranted this. Maybe it’s all the smoking.

More than anything, Good Night, and Good Luck. moved me. It was inspiring to watch the story of a small group of people standing up to a narrow-minded man abusing his power. There are some clear parallels between McCarthyism and the machinations of the current administration. This film made me realize that I need to do more than just complain in this weblog; I need to do something.

Kris was in a foul mood all weekend.

That’s not true: she started the weekend in a stellar mood. We had dinner with Marcela and Pierre (and their beautiful children), which left us craving more of their company. Kris, in particular, finds their conversation stimulating. While Louis and Ella showed me how to play their favorite games (Peanut Butter & Jelly being the #1 choice), the other three adults sat at the dinner table, discussing politics with wine and candlelight. Kris loves this sort of thing: adult conversation about adult topics.

Recently, Kris has been watching a The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. “I love this show,” she tells me. “Everyone is so smart: the commentators and the guests. It’s great to see intelligent people discuss the issues.” (She’s also become a fan of of the Cursor linked news summaries, which you ought to visit if you haven’t already.) I don’t watch the show with her, but she often gives me condensed versions of each night’s stories.

Last weekend the news had overwhelmed her. “I have this seething anger that no one seems to be PAYING ATTENTION,” she told me.

“You know,” I said during one of her sour patches, “you really ought to give Dave a chance. He’s educated, intelligent, and keenly interested in world affairs. Of all our friends, he’s probably most able to carry on the sort of conversation that you crave. When we were at lunch Friday, we had a fine discussion about the decline of oratory in this country. He told me about the book he was reading, a biography of Lincoln. He’s well-informed.”

Kris sighed.

She wishes I were more keenly interested in world affairs. Like Pam, I bury my head in the sand. I purposely avoid exposure to the news because:

I can’t influence it;
it’s always the same thing over-and-over;
it only makes me depressed.

The truth is I do have strong opinions about most social and political issues. My views aren’t always popular, however, and I find it pointless — even destructive — to argue about politics, so mostly I am quiet. (This is especially true in-person. I am not a good debater. Unfortunately, many of the people who want to debate — Kris, Dave, Dana — are formally trained in the art so that it’s frustrating to argue with them. Even when they’re wrong, they win the argument.) It’s not worth it to me to speak my mind about, say, abortion, if the price of speaking my mind is a strained (or lost) friendship. I speak my voice in the polling booth, and in the money I contribute to various causes. (Although it is true that most of my causes are non-partisan entities like the Oregon Historical Society and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.)

I guess what I’m trying to say, though poorly, is that I’ve been thinking recently about my relationship with the world, especially regarding politics and social activism. I’ve tried to suppress these sorts of thoughts, most of all in this weblog, aside from the usual angry tirade about our President. Maybe it’s time for me to change. Maybe it’s time for me to become more informed. Maybe it’s time for me to care.

Maybe it’s time for me to voice my opinion, the consequences be damned.

Four Things

Ah, it’s a good day for a meme. I don’t do these often, but sometimes they’re fun. And since Frykitty asked, how can I refuse?

Four jobs I’ve had
1. Cauliflower planter
2. Christmas-tree shearer
3. Door-to-door insurance salesman
4. Box salesman

Four movies I can watch over and over
1. Alien
2. When Harry Met Sally
3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4. Star Wars (the ~~first~~ original one)

Four places I’ve lived
1. Canby, Oregon
2. Salem, Oregon
3. Oak Grove, Oregon
4. There is no fourth place (well, I lived in Portland til I was two, but I don’t remember it)

Four TV shows I love
1. The Wire
2. Battlestar Galactica
3. Sports Night
4. Freaks and Geeks

Four places I’ve vacationed
1. Minnesota
2. British Columbia
3. Alaska
4. Crater Lake

Four of my favorite dishes
1. Pepper-crusted filet mignon in port sauce
2. Mussman beef curry
3. Jenn’s barbeque beef brisket
4. Three-cheese Hamburger Helper

Four sites I visit daily
1. AskMetafilter
2. MacRumors
3. Comic book forums
4. ORblogs

Four places I would rather be right now
1. Home
2. Together with a group of friends
3. Reading comic books
4. Isn’t it strange that I don’t have answers like “Hawaii” or “Europe”?

Four bloggers I am tagging
1. Nicole
2. Lisa
3. Tammy
4. Joel and Aimee

And just because I’m difficult, I’ve made up another small list of four things. Who cares what television shows people like? I want to know what books they like! (Maybe Cat can add these to her list…)

Four jobs I’d like to have
1. Novelist
2. Magazine editor
3. Bookstore owner
4. Grade school teacher

Four places I’d like to live
1. New York City
2. British Columbia
3. London
4. Hubbard, Oregon

Four books I love
1. My Antonia
2. Cold Mountain
3. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
4. Bleak House

Four places I’d like to vacation
1. London
2. Kenya, Ethiopia, and Zanzibar
3. Thailand
4. Antarctica

Four more of my favorite dishes
1. Plain chocolate chip cookies
2. Hostess Sno-Balls
3. The lamb platter at Nicholas’ Lebanese
4. Kalamata olives with goat cheese

Scheduled for tomorrow: what the hell is wrong with the world today?

My eBay auctions are going well. I’ve posted twenty-four items now. Eighteen have bids for a total of $530.23. I’ve taken photos for a bunch of other stuff and will post it soon. I’ve got to be careful, though: this whole process is addictive (it’s like free money!) and I’m not exactly sure what sort of burden shipping is going to be. I don’t know how much time and effort it will involve, and I don’t know what it’s going to cost. (I’m offering free shipping on all my auctions.)

I set a personal best on the way to work this morning. It was a three skunk morning, by which I mean I passed three different dead skunks between Canby and the shop. All three skunks were within a mile of each other. My car reeked by the time I made it to work…

Eternal Sunshine

Lisa recently bemoaned the month of February as “the long dark teatime” of the year. I would like to respectfully disagree: February brings the first glimmers of life, is like waking from a long winter nap. Sure some grey days remain and there’s plenty of rain, but at least we have days like today.

Today is beautiful.

It’s sunny. The sky is clear. It’s nearly ten degrees centigrade, and it’s supposed to reach fifteen by the end of the week. I want nothing more than to mow the lawn. Early February in Oregon always features a few days like this, and by the end of the month they become a regular occurrence.

What other harbingers of spring does February have to offer?

Bulbs begin to blossom. The camellias bloom. Roses are pruned, and the caneberries too.
The rains decreases from an average of 5.35 inches in January to an average of 3.85 inches.
The average daily high temperature increases from 7.5 degrees to 10.5 degrees.
The days grow longer: we gain 42 minutes of light in the morning (by the end of the month, my commute is no longer in darkness) and 40 minutes of light in the evening.
Spring Training!
And much, much more!

It’s not February but January that is the long dark teatime of my year.

Super Bummed

I’m not one who generally complains about the officiating of sporting events. Referees and officials have a tough job and they take a lot of grief. I’ve seen poorly officiated games both in favor and in opposition of teams I’m supporting. However, this year’s Super Bowl is the second most poorly officiated game I’ve ever seen.

It makes me angry.

Let’s enumerate the grossest absurdities:

#1 At the end of the first quarter, a Matt Hasselbeck touchdown pass to Darrell Jackson was called back due to pass interference. Was there pass interference? Technically yes, but it’s not anything that would ever be called under any other circumstance. The Seahawks settled for a field goal. (Though admittedly, they still had first-and-twenty after the call, so they had plenty of chances.)

#2 At the end of the second quarter, Ben Roethlisberger scored a touchdown on a third-down run. Or did he?

Roethlisberger fell to the ground with football at his side, the ball behind the plane of the goal. Only after he was on the ground did the quarterback whip the ball forward into the end zone. The official made a delayed call: touchdown. The play was subject to automatic review and was left to stand because the replay was “inconclusive”. You know what? If it had been called the other way (no touchdown), the replay would have backed the call, too. Why? Because there was no touchdown! The Steelers ought to have been held to a field goal and the halftime score should have been 7-3 in favor of the Seahawks. (And yes, the Seahawks could have helped the situation by tackling Roethlisberger a foot or a yard back.)

#3 A few minutes into the fourth quarter, Matt Hasselbeck threw an interception. On the return, he was forced to make a woeful quarterback-esque tackle of the defender. Again the official made a delayed call: Hasselbeck was guilty of blocking below the waist. What the…? This one makes no sense at all. The Steelers were given a bonus fifteen yards, fifteen yards that led to a Pittsburgh touchdown. (On a beautiful play, the prettiest play of the game.)

There were several other questionable calls that went against the Seahawks, and the Steelers were given free passes on a few others. I’m not saying that the Seahawks would have won the game, or that they played well (they did for most of the first half, but not so much in the second), but the Steelers’ lead should have only been 17-14 at the end of the game, and the Seahawks should have been playing for the tying field-goal, not trying to accomplish some sort of miracle comeback.

(I’m not the only one who thinks this Super Bowl was poorly officiated.)

For the record: the worst officiated game I’ve ever seen was the 1995 NFC Championship game between Dallas and Green Bay (actually played in 1996). That one was mind-boggling. Over and over and over calls went for Dallas and against Green Bay. Michael Irvin might be throwing a defender to the ground but the penalty would go against the Packers. Green Bay did its best, but ultimately lost 38-27. To this day I complain bitterly to Sabino (a Cowboys fan, and at my side as we watched) about that game.

Call me a conspiracy theorist, but it sometimes seems to me that officials (in all sports) have been given a mandate from their leagues: “Let this team win. It makes a better story.” For example, in the 1995 NFC Championship, I wonder if the officials were not told: “Let the Cowboys win. We want a Dallas-Pittsburgh Super Bowl that hearkens back to the olden days.”

Just wait ’til next year!

Elliptical

It feels strange — but good — to be going to a gym again. I’ve managed to go nine out of the last ten days. It’s becoming a habit.

It’s clear already that I need to do some work with weights. I’ve never been much of a weight-lifter; I don’t enjoy it. Still, I understand that the importance of building strength, of building muscle. I spent one session on the Nautilus equipment last week, and it was humbling. I used to start at seventy pounds on most machines whenever I joined a gym. I can’t do seventy pounds right now. I can’t do fifty. On some machines, I can’t even do thirty. No wonder my knee and leg are weak!

I much prefer aerobic exercise: the treadmill, the stationary bike, the rowing machine. “You should try the elliptical machine,” the personal trainer told me last week. “It’s a better workout, especially with your knee.” I’d never used an elliptical machine before, and my first experience was awkward. I felt like crouching the entire time, but crouching hurt my back. That couldn’t be the right posture, so I tried to stand up straight, but standing up straight forced me to rock from side to side with each stride. Ultimately, I decided this was the correct form, even though it’s counter-intuitive. (I can’t think of any other exercise where you’re supposed to rock your hips.)

I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to do prolonged aerobic exercise, but it’s been fine. I’m able to go for 30, 45, even 60 minutes without pause. And I enjoy it. I’ve mad a mix for my iPod containing one hundred songs with strong beats. I stride in time with bubble-gum pop music (or “Eurotrash dance” as Paul C. would put it) and the time just flies by.

Meanwhile, I’m also playing a little racquetball.

Fifteen years ago, when I was still in college, I played a lot of racquetball. I was a decent player for that particular population; I won the intramural racquetball tournament my senior year.

I’ve only played once since then, though, and that was a miserable failure. (“We don’t need to wear eye protection,” I told the group. “We’re not that good.” Within five minutes I had smacked Kris in the eye with a wayward shot. She got a black eye and I got a story.)

The presence of racquetball courts at the East Side Athletic Club was a big draw for me, one of the reasons I signed up without much hesitation. The club has leagues at three different skill levels: an A-league, a B-league, and a C-league. I went in on my own one day last week to get a feel for hitting the ball around the court. It was terrible. I had no control over my shot. I signed up for a Friday night instructional class.

No surprise: three of the other class members are kids aged nine, twelve, and fourteen. The fourth is the oldest kid’s father. The instructor is a tall, burly man who has been playing racquetball for twenty-three years. “My name is George,” he introduced himself, “like the President.” George is able to smash the ball with careless ease. Never at my peak could I kill the ball with such fluid strokes.

Our first class was spent learning the rules (games only go to 15 now instead of 21, and the tie-breaker only goes to 11!) and learning proper technique. The training on technique helped me most. No wonder I was unable to control my shot in my earlier practice session: I was setting up wrong. Also, my grip on the racquet was too short.

George talked to me after the class. “You’re alright,” he said. “You still remember most of this stuff. Go practice. Reserve a court and just practice hitting the ball until you can get it to come off the wall straight nine out of ten times.”

And so I did. I spent an hour this morning alone in a court hitting the ball of the front wall until it would come back the way I wanted it to. Then I moved ten feet toward the back wall and did the same thing. Then I switched to my backhand. Then I tried to keep control of the ball while killing it. Then I tried to generate a consistent serve. For an hour I hit the ball over and over and over, getting a feel for it. I felt good about my progress.

When I had finished, I stopped to watch a doubles game in progress. The four players all looked like George: tall, muscular men, and bald. (Is baldness a requirement for racquetball players?) Watching them, my progress seemed inconsequential. These large men slid around the court with grace and finesse. Their easy swings absolutely killed the ball. They dove for balls, they climbed the wall, they flicked their wrists and the ball carried the entire length of the court. They hurtled their bodies to the ground with casual abandon. I wish.

“Maybe they’re in the A-league,” I thought as I left the club.

I look forward to continued work on the elliptical machine, and to re-learning the game of racquetball.

TRACKS MONKEYS WITH LASERS

My anti-television zealotry is a matter of public record. I avoid the idiot box as much as possible. It will probably come as some surprise then to learn that I’ve found myself addicted to Beauty and the Geek, a “reality” show offering from the Warner Brothers network.

From time-to-time I find myself bored and listless. Every few months this leads to an hour or two of television flipping (a privilege for which I pay hundreds of dollars a year). That’s right: only about four or five times a year will I sit down at the television and flip through to see what’s on. This urge struck me on a Thursday night a few weeks ago, and I stumbled across the first episode of Beauty and the Geek. I’ve been watching ever since.

The premise is simple: eight Beauties and eight Geeks are brought together in a luxury mansion. The Geeks introduce themselves one-by-one to the Beauties. After each introduction, a Beauty picks a Geek as a partner, and the two spend some indeterminate amount of time (weeks? days? months?) living in the same room, teaching each other about their worlds. The Geeks teach the Beauties about computers, about history, about politics. The Beauties teach the Geeks about fashion, about dating, about confidence.

It’s all very cheesy, and all so heavily edited that it’s impossible to know what’s really going on. As viewers, we can only base our reactions on the fractional footage the producers choose to show us. (And can I mention that I am not the J.D. Roth listed as one of the show’s producers. I’m sure that’s Mr. “Fun House”, Mr. “Johnny Quest”, my Hollywood counterpart, with whom I’m still dying to make contact. It would be hilarious.)

At first, Kris mocked the show even more than I did, but then something curious happened. I was watching an episode I’d had to download (because I’d forgotten it was on), and Kris stood behind me at the computer desk for twenty minutes, watching and commenting. Funny how that happened.

One of our favorite aspects of the show is how whenever a contestant’s name is flashed on-screen, it is accompanied by an identifying tag. (And always the same identifying tag.) For example, whenever Sarah’s name appears on-screen she is identified as a DENTAL HYGENIST. Wes has our favorite tag: TRACKS MONKEYS WITH LASERS.

The Beauties include:

Amanda (HAIRSTYLIST) — my favorite Beauty, easily the most attractive of the bunch. (Plus she was moderately intelligent.) Unfortunately, she was the first eliminated.
Brittany (COLLEGE STUDENT) — sweet and kind and all that, but man the show paints her as a dim bulb. (“There are types of screwdrivers?” “I like the parts of the books that have pictures.”)
Cher (BEER SPOKESMODEL) — actually rather intelligent, if a little bossy. Of the two intelligence tests for the women so far, she’s won both.
Danielle (COCKTAIL WAITRESS)
Jennipher (CAMP COUNSELOR) — looks like the most fun of all the women.
Sarah (DENTAL HYGENIST) — sort of a non-entity except that the show constantly shows her “nipping out” footage from the karaoke contest. (Which is fine by me.)
Thais (MODEL) — eliminated.
Tristin (COCKTAIL WAITRESS) — attractive enough, and not as dumb as her partner (Chris) makes her out to be, but lordy how she weeps. The tears never stop. Eliminated.

The Geeks include:

Brandon (ASSISTANT NEUROBIOLOGIST) — a complete cipher aside from his lousy fashion sense. Eliminated before any personality could show through.
Joe (SPEED CHESS CHAMPION)
Josh (MUSEUM CRITIC) — a thin matchstick of a man, Josh is a neurotic mess, like a hyper-attenuated Woody Allen.
Karl (DUNGEON MASTER) — a nice enough guy, but very geeky.
Ankur (M.I.T. GRADUATE)
Wes (TRACKS MONKEYS WITH LASERS) — what does that mean, exactly, “tracks monkeys with lasers”? We don’t know, but we shout it every time it flashes on-screen. Even I have to admit that Wes’ makeover was shockingly successful.
Tyson (RUBIK’S CUBE RECORD HOLDER) — a nice guy, and Kris’ favorite. He brought multiple Rubik’s Cubes to the show, and somehow managed to integrate them into a lot of scenes. Eliminated.
Chris (HAS ONLY KISSED ONE GIRL) — brainy and brash, but also a bully. His machinations from the get-go cause the rest of the house to gang up on him (and his unfortunate partner, Tristin) until he was finally eliminated.

Every week, the couples are presented with a challenge. In the first challenge, the Geeks had to perform karaoke (to Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded”) while the Beauties had to give an impromptu speech on political affairs (social security, pollution, etc.). In the second challenge, the Beauties had to set up a computer, download a song, and burn it to a CD, while the Geeks had to decorate a bedroom. The most recent challenge was team-based: each Beauty gave her Geek a makeover and prepared him for a round of speed dating.

At the end of each episode, the challenge winners pick two couples to head to the Elimination Room where they are asked questions. The losing couple is kicked off the show. (Kris is certain that the Elimination Room is rigged.)

Dumb, yes, but entertaining. I’m going to grant myself this vice. There’s only a few weeks left of it, anyhow.

“I wonder what my geek quality would be,” I said as we got in bed last night. I was thinking something along the lines of WEBLOGGING FOR FIVE YEARS.

“That’s easy,” mumbled Kris. “LACKS SELF-DISCIPLINE.”

I took the “How Geeky Are You?” quiz on the show’s official web site. I scored a “You’re Very Geeky”, of course.

Sabino and I had a brief discussion about downloading television shows yesterday. We were singing our regular chorus of praise for Seinfeld (he owns all the DVDs; I want to borrow them). He told me how much he loves The Office: “They don’t even have to say anything and I’m laughing.” Sabino is excited by his new DVR. “We can pause a show to put the kids to bed and come back to finish it later!” I told him that I have the same thing, essentially, because I download the shows off the internet. “But isn’t that illegal?” he asked. I tried to convince him it was something of a legal grey area, but he didn’t seem to buy it.

Look at it this way: I would not be watching Beauty and the Geek right now if I hadn’t been able to download the two episodes I missed. I wouldn’t watch The Office or Battlestar Galactica unless I could download the episodes I missed. (In fact, I haven’t watched any of the second season of Battlestar, but I plan to catch up in a single marathon session soon.) But because I can download these missed episodes, I continue to watch. And when I watch I write up long weblog entries like this, entries that are essentially free advertisements. For this a television network is going to sue me? If they do, they’re insane.

Mission Accomplished

I’m back!

And how did I do on my goal-oriented vacation? Well, I’d say it was the most productive and successful vacation I’ve ever had. I didn’t do a lot of relaxing or goofing around (though I did play some World of Warcraft, no surprise), but I return to work feeling refreshed, fulfilled, and invigorated. It’s true that I didn’t complete everything on my list, but I did finish a hell of a lot. Perhaps most surprising is the fact that I didn’t do any writing at all, neither for this weblog nor for the Woodstock Writers Guild. It was difficult to restrain myself, but I’m glad I did.

I’m back now, though, and I’ve got lots to say. Let’s break it up into chunks:

Academy Award Nominations
Of the five Best Picture nominees, Kris and I have already seen Brokeback Mountain, Capote, and Crash. We need to see Good Night, and Good Luck and Munich. There were no real surprises in the nominations. What is surprising is that there’s some talk that Crash is the biggest competition for Brokeback Mountain (though most everyone thinks the latter is a shoe-in). It has to be said: Crash may be mainstream, it may be heavy-handed, it may be filled with stock characters in trite situations, but it’s a superb film. (In fact, we’ve got it coming from Netflix so that we can see it for a second time. Also of interest: on IMDB’s top-films list, Crash is the highest-rated of the five nominees.)

It occurred to me the other day that as I get older I have less interest in the Best Picture category and more interest in the Documentary Feature category. We’ve watched some fantastic documentaries over the past few years: The Fog of War, Fahrenheit 9/11, Spellbound, Capturing the Friedmans, etc. This year, two of my favorite films are documentaries: Mad Hot Ballroom and the stunning Murderball. (We just watched Murderball last weekend; it’s easily my favorite film of the year in any category.) I’m not sure how the pedestrian March of the Penguins got nominated over Mad Hot Ballroom (other than Penguins is the second-highest grossing documentary ever). We’ve got another nominee — Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room — on the way from Netflix, too.

Eastside Athletic Club
I signed up for a year at the gym.

Given my past record, this is a foolish choice. I’ve done this several times before, but only twice have I ever made real use of my membership. (The last time was in 1997-1998.)

What’s going to make this time different than all those other times? I can’t say that it will be different, of course, but I must say that things feel good: the gym is five minutes from our house; it’s directly off the highway on my drive home from work; the clientele is fitness-oriented instead of social-oriented; the facilities are fantastic, and include five (six?) racquetball courts, a full-length pool, an enormous cardio room, and all sorts of separate fitness rooms (women-only, free weights, spin room, yoga room, etc.).

During the past week I met my goal by attending the gym every single day. In fact, I exceeded my own expectations. I got on the rowing machine the very first day (I consider the rowing machine a pain-in-the-ass but a necessary workout for me), I learned how to use the elliptical machines (it took me about ten minutes to realize I wasn’t supposed to squat and go for an even motion), and I spent an hour yesterday afternoon alone on a racquetball court becoming reacquainted with the way the ball moves. (The only downside so far has been my meeting with the personal trainer. During our interview, he was completely disinterested and distracted, more focused on making googly eyes at the P.Y.T.s than on helping me.)

Objectives
As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t meet all of my goals, but I came close. Actually, I never expected to get everything done; my lists were just too ambitious. Still, most of the important stuff has been completed and I’m back on the Getting Things Done system so the other stuff should be finished before long. In fact, I intend to spend most of the weekend focusing on those uncompleted objectives.

eBay
At long last I’ve managed to post some eBay auctions. (Or will have when they start to “go live” at four o’clock this afternoon. Check here to see what I have to offer. It’s all geeky stuff.) It’s been five years since I sold anything on eBay, and the process seemed daunting. It was daunting, but I was impressed how easy things were after I scheduled the first auction. (And I love that you can schedule auctions in advance. It costs a dime per auction, but it’s worth it.) eBay remembers your settings for shipping, etc. so that you don’t have to re-enter the information over and over and over again. I’ve scheduled fourteen ten-day auctions, and I’ll be surprised if they don’t combine to fetch me $500. (Cosmic Encounter alone should sell for upward of $150.)

Anyhow: I had a fantastic vacation. I feel great. I look forward to resuming my daily entries about the minutiae of my daily life.

Goal-Oriented

I intend to take the next week off from weblogging.

In an effort to build some positive inertia, I’m taking vacation days from work on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. This will give me five(-and-a-half counting this afternoon) days to get done some pressing chores.

On the agenda:

~~dinner with Marcela, Pierre, and the Beautiful Children;~~ Done! Delicious!
~~Asian Dinner at Mac and Pam’s~~ Done! Fun!
~~diagnose network back-up issues at WACO;~~ Done!
complete the rough-draft of a story for the Woodstock Writer’s Guild;
complete the book purge begun two months ago, which includes:
- ~~posting the valuable books on eBay~~ Done! (And a system is in place to this repeatedly in the future.)
- taking the un-valuable books to Powell’s
- ~~mailing The Tick to John~~ Done! (Shocking!)
- ~~re-organizing the remaining books~~ As done as it’s going to get for a long time.
~~clean the~~ workshop; (two-thirds finished)
organize all my tools, both shop and garden;
respond to all unanswered e-mail (hi, Andrew, Bill, and Amy!);
exercise every day (~~Sat~~ 304 cal, ~~Sun~~ 417 cal, ~~Mon~~ 515 cal, ~~Tue~~ 327 cal and strength, ~~Wed~~ racquetball — Done! I exercised everyday!) — ~~I’ll sign up for a one-month membership at a gym and force myself to go every day, hoping to override my tendency to remain at rest~~ Done! (I even have an appointment on Monday with a “personal trainer” — good grief!);
~~make one nice dinner for Kris (and Tiff?);~~ I made Hamburger Helper two days in a row — does that count?
~~Prepare taxes for Sabino, including my labyrinthine Computer Resources mess~~ Done!
build a shelf for Kris;
~~get myself back on the Getting Things Done system;~~ The system is in place again and now I just have to follow it
and a whole lot of other little things.

This is an ambitious list, but I’ll do my best to tackle everything here. All of these are things that have been in stasis for weeks or months. It’s time for me to get off my ass!

This afternoon, however, I’m going to ~~head outside with the Gates girls and get that darned tree cleaned up.~~ Done! (Or at least as done as it’s getting ’til spring — look for photos soon.)

What do other people do when they’re unmotivated? When I’m motivated, I can plow through chores like nobody’s business. (I’m not quite the force of nature that Jeremy is, but I can certainly get things accomplished.) I’ll even go through prolonged periods where I’m happy to make sure things are done quickly and well. Most of my life, though, is a mass of procrastination. How does one avoid this? How do other people stay on-task?

Saga Without End

If you thought you’d heard the last of our weather woes, you were wrong! Chapter one was the flooded basement, chapter two was the leaky roof, and now comes chapter three.

It was a warm and sunny afternoon Monday, relatively speaking. That is to say it was not particularly cold, and there was no rain. My mood was giddy. “Perhaps,” I thought, “there really is something to Tiff’s theory that I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder.” On the drive home, I cranked my new classic rock CD mix. There’s nothing like Styx cranked to eleven on a sunny afternoon.

Once home I decided to walk to the store to buy a bathroom scale. I carried my iPod and marched in time to the pulsing beats of techno music. There’s nothing like techno cranked to eleven on a sunny afternoon. After much deliberation, I selected a scale with a digital readout and a body fat indicator. Upon returning home I was somewhat dismayed (okay, really dismayed) to discover that a third of me is fat. Since something like 60% of our bodies is composed of water, that leaves only 7% of me to be anything else. Scary.

To take my mind off this bad math, I decided to play some World of Warcraft-based capture-the-flag. There’s nothing like playing video games on a sunny afternoon. I had just captured the flag and was returning to my base when the doorbell rang. (In real life, not in the game.) What a dilemma! I had the flag and needed to capture it for my team. If I just left, I’d letting the team down. Yet the door needed answering. After a few moments of indecision I just got up and left the computer.

The man at the door introduced himself as Randy, our new neighbor on one of the back corners of our property (replacing the drunken idiots). “Did you know that one of your trees fell over?” he asked. I did not! We walked to the back of the property to survey the damage. A tallish tree of indeterminate species had become uprooted, had fallen across the fence into Randy’s back yard. We spent about half an hour talking amiably, discussing what to do with the tree, but the whole time I was worried about my game of capture-the-flag.

It was a warm and sunny afternoon Tuesday, relatively speaking. That is to say it was not particularly cold, and there was no rain. My mood might have been giddy if I were not faced with the prospect of purchasing power equipment. I’m not a manly sort of man, and, for example, chainsaws are as mysterious to me as computers might be for a logger. I stopped at the hardware store on the way home from work, and I examined their chainsaw selection. I narrowed my options to two models, both gas powered, but it took me twenty minutes to decide on the 16″ Poulan Woodsman 2150 LE saw instead of the 14″ saw. When I got home it was too late to cut anything, but not too late to play capture-the-flag.

It was a cold and damp afternoon Wednesday, typical for this time of year. My mood was apprehensive. When I got home, I pulled on my work boots, my work pants, and a warm sweatshirt, then headed to the shop to puzzle out the chainsaw. I spent twenty minutes reading the manual before I even opened the box. Much of it was baffling: bucking, bar length, chainbrake, kickback, etc. I took my time, though, and soon had the chainsaw operational. It roared with delight at the sight of all our trees. “Let me chomp that redwood,” it said, but I ignored it. “Come on,” it said. “How about that little apple?”

I carried the chainsaw back to the fallen tree. I made my first cut directly at the base of the twelve-inch thick trunk. Midway through the cut, the tree groaned and cracked, then shifted its weight, pinching the chainsaw and almost crushing my leg. It occurred to me that this was no trivial task. This tree was fucking heavy. I’d been treating the job as a light-hearted romp but there were some serious forces at work here. (Namely gravity.)

I stopped to reconsider my plan. “Maybe I should take some weight off at the top of the tree first,” I decided.

I walked around the block and knocked on the neighbor’s door. Randy’s wife, Miriam, took me to their back yard — a thick morass of mud — and showed me the damage. The tree had fallen onto the fence (a barbed-wire contraption erected by the previous owner of our house) and directly onto a stout metal post that had been used to anchor a clothesline. There were branches splayed every which way. The entire tree was entangled with some sort of vine.

After spending a few minutes surveying the wreckage, I devised a plan of attack. I fired up the chainsaw. For the next half hour, I methodically sliced my way through the mass of branches, cutting the wood to manageable size (though not attempting to trim it to any sort of final, usable size).

As the light turned gloamy and a heavy rain began to fall, I returned to our side of the fence and attacked the main trunk once more. Again my cut into the base of the tree was stupid: the moment the chainsaw had passed through, the fat log shifted, sliding heavily toward the fence, several hundred pounds of unstoppable force. The tree butted into thick mud with a thunk. Nothing was damaged (not even me), but only from sheer luck. I spent a few more minutes cutting before the chainsaw suddenly stopped, turning itself off. It restarted fine, but the chain would not turn. I turned it off and restarted it, but still the chain would not turn.

A close examination revealed that a little twig had managed to find its way into the, well, I don’t know what to call it…into the body housing where the chain winds itself up and around. The twig was stuck, but after some coaxing, it came free.

It was here that my troubles began.

Even after removing the twig, the chain would not turn. It would not turn when the power was on, and it would not turn when the power was off. Worse, eventually the chainsaw refused to start at all! Worse still, when I let the chainsaw sit for a spell, oil oozed from the lubrication “port”, an opening I cannot see.

Frustrated, I gave up and called it a night.

And that’s where we are this morning: we have a tree that is half-sawed, a fence that is half-damaged, and a brand new $160 chainsaw that half-works. I’ll try to take the bar and chain off this afternoon, try to see if I can spot what’s causing the lubricating oil to leak. I’m not sure I know what I’m looking for, though.

During this entire process, I keep hearing Walter shout, “You’re out of your element, Donny!” I’m better off playing computerized capture-the-flag.

Thai Yum

I was rummaging through the damaged sections of this web site last night, looking for an old entry, when lo-and-behold I found my long-lost recipe for Thai tuna salad.

J.D.’s Thai Tuna Salad

2 cans water-packed tuna
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon lime juice
1 teaspoon brown sugar (palm sugar, if you have it)
1 teaspoon Thai chilies, minced
1 tablespoon shallot (or green onion), chopped
1 clove of garlic, minced

Mix all ingredients. Use as you would normal tuna salad.

I’ve been craving this stuff for months. It’s delicious. For some reason, though, I never wrote out the recipe but only stuck it on the weblog. I’m glad to have found it.

What I really wanted to find, however, was my good recipe for myang kham sauce. I’ve tried several, but only one was any good. (The others were various degrees of awful.) I think that the following is the good recipe, but I’m not sure. I’ll whip up a batch today or tomorrow to check.

Myang Kham — tasty Thai leaf-wraps
(or Miang Kum, or however you want to spell it)

Sauce

1/2 cup minced ginger

1 tablespoon shrimp paste (not sauce)

1/4 cup water

1/2 cup minced shallots

1 tablespoon fish sauce

palm sugar or honey (or brown sugar?) to taste

Combine sauce ingredients in small saucepan and heat over medium heat until well-blended. Allow to cool some before pouring into serving dish.

Fillings
1/2 cup each of:

unsalted, unseasoned roasted peanuts

roasted, unsweetened coconut flakes (roast in oven)

peeled ginger cut into 1cm cubes

shallots cut into 1cm cubes

lime cut into 1cm cubes

dried shrimp (I use the stuff found in the Mexican section of supermarket)

whole “mouse dropping” chilies (I use ladybird (aka skypointing or just Thai) chilies but into pieces)

Leaves
The Portland-area Thai restaurants use large spinach leaves. I’ve used spinach leaves in the past, too, but I’ve been unable to locate leaves the size and uniform quality that the restaurants use. Recipes often call for “wild tea leaves”, though I’ve never found these. Apparently red lettuce or butter lettuce is acceptable, too.

To Eat
Take a leaf and fill it with a pinch of each filling. Add a dollop of the sauce. Wrap the leaf around the ingredients and pop it into your mouth. Delicious!

Myang kham was the very first Thai dish I ever tasted. Paul and Amy Jo introduced us to it at Typhoon! about eight years ago. I was very wary of trying a new cuisine, but with one taste of myang kham I was hooked. In fact, I credit this one dish with turning me into an adventurous eater.

Before this meal, I was both picky (possessing a long list of individual items I didn’t like to eat) and un-adventurous (unwilling to try new types of foods). Now I’m one of the most adventurous eaters I know! In fact, I often crave foreign cuisine. If I could eat Asian food (or Middle Eastern food) every day of the week, I would.

(I’m still a picky eater, though. Broccoli — yuck!)

Reminder: Amy Jo has opened From a Corner Table, her weblog of food-related adventures.