Pacemaker

Ah!  Now between classes and wrapping up most of the current freelance work I have on my plate, I should have the mental energy to turn in a few Ramblers in the next couple of weeks.  I'm not sure exactly WHAT I'll be writing about, since my brain still has the needle hovering just above 'E,' but if the past is any guide, just the physical act of writing will get some ideas flowing.  And I promise they won't all be the Rambler about Rambling kind.

Other little updates:

The Yarn Barn: I've in fact finished painting the Yarn Barn a few weeks back, and successfully mounted it on the wall in Yesenia's creative space (not the hell sure what we call that room, these days...), but I realized after a couple of weeks that a) the colors I chose to harmonize with the walls in the room were harmonizing too well, to the point that the barn was kind of camouflaged, and b) although I had hung it quite stably, I found that sitting underneath it was giving me deep anxiety.  Putting a and b together, I opted to paint the wall an accent color and to add further (mostly token) support to the bottom edge. The wall has been painted (sort of a mud color, really) and the new 'feet' have also been painted, so all that's left to do is attach the feet, drill holes for them and rehang the barn.  So that should be done this week.. that deadline was in no way prompted by Yesenia's comment that it was turning into another half-finished project.  Being exiled from her creative space is taking quite a toll, and no number of warm baths seems to take that edge off.

Albums: Okay, so there are two albums mostly in the can, and have been mostly in the can for the last year or so.  What's the hold up?  The hold up is that my original plans for bringing in players and singers to respectively handle the guitar solos and backing vocals have mostly come to naught.  I've always had problems with guitar players (a joke that ran so thin during my Copper Man days that I started to bitterly think of it as a riff on Spinal Tap's drummers), but the fact that I've found it easier to get two excellent drummers, a killer organ player, great trumpet work and even a bagpipe solo with minimal fuss while still not being able to lock down a single guitar solo is a scenario that's depressingly familiar.

Hopefully, this is going to change pretty soon.  Backing vocals are the first down, and I've rethought how to approach them from my original conception of a uniform all-male team (Ansley and Bran), recording together in a loose, CSN style.  Since there are two albums, it'll now be broken down to two male singers recorded at separate times for the first album, and a mix of whichever female singers I can round up for the second album, which is helpfully already titled Women in Prison, so there's at least some nice thematic unity there.

Guitar, I don't want to curse, ala PCMA irony gods style.  I'll tell y'all when there's something in the can, and not a minute before.

And after all of this recording is done?  Then what?

I'll get back to you on that...

D.

App

So, my MacBook is in the shop.  Again.  And so is my car - basically, I'm expecting to wake up in a tub full of ice, missing a kidney next.  Any day now.

But I digress.  About five minutes ago, totally at random, I decided to see if there was a Blogger app in the App Store.  And there was.  So it had now been downloaded and is what I'm typing this on.  How's that for timely?

Even without benefit of app, I expect the Rambler to pick up steam in the next couple of weeks - I don't think I have 'seasonal affected mood disorder', or anything like that, but February made me pretty much not want to do anything that required me to be awake and thinking at the same time.  

So: let's see what Spring has in store.  I welcome it with anticipation and iPhone in hand.

D.

March Marches On

You may note that the Rambler has been taking a time out for the last few weeks - this is not-coincidentally related to the fact that my web programming classes resumed in early February.  Somehow, these classes seem to take over my life, even though they're only two nights a week and I'm not paying that close attention, this time around (as my grasp of the material shows).

The classes in this round are Advanced CSS and PHP.  I get the former more than the latter, and learning CSS top to bottom is really one of the two main reasons I'm in the program in the first place. The second reason being Javascript, which I'm starting to dread.  I'm dreading it mostly because it's a language pretty similar to PHP, which means there's actual programming involved, and that's where my ability to parse the internal logic of the code breaks down.

So, expect a number of intermittent posts that consist primarily of me whinging about all this.  I apologize in advance.  I'll at least try to keep the despair entertaining.

D.

The Longest Shortest Month

Man, but I bet everybody has been pretty much hating this last few weeks about as much as me.  Look around, you can see it in their eyes - a weariness, a need to see the sun, the deep-down physical hunger to lay oneself down on a verdant bed of grass in the shade.  

So that's thing one: the weather has really dragged me down.

Thing two is probably more specific to me, although it's still very much weather related - on three seperate occasions in the last two weeks, I have done major cosmetic damage to my newish car.  First time was the day after the biggest storm, when the roads were a lot narrower than they normally are, and the hedges are substantially harder.  Doing a k-turn, I backed up against an icebank wrapped around a big hedge, and put a nice little dent in the rear fender.  Then, about a week later (after a small snow and the resultant plowing), I smacked the front right bumper pulling in my the driveway at about five miles an hour into half of a massive ice block that had been a mountain of snow next to my driveway, but the plow had cleaved it in twain and thoughtfully deposited a gibraltar-sized chunk into the driveway.  There was a loud and depressing crunch, and a quick examination revealed that the bumper had actually shattered at the corner.

THEN: two nights later, driving back from class in Midtown Manhattan, I smacked a pothole on the Palisdaes Parkway.  Hard.  Although I was going the speed limit, it was an immediate blowout.  I limped on until I could pull over at the closed Alpine Scenic Area.  On the plus side, I think I may have set a personal best time for changing a tire.  When I walked in the bedroom around 11:30 to tell Yesenia what had happened, she just laughed.  And really, what else can you do?

According to the assessor, the damage in full comes to around $1100 - which is good and bad news.  The bad news is that it doesn't quite reach my deductible (each item has its own deductible), but it's also about $1000 less than I'd been fearing.  So thank heaven for smallish favors.

But still, it does mean that my next few days are going to be a little complicated - dealing with insurance company, body shop, and car rental, all while still going to work, getting to class and watching with grim anticipation as the Polar Vortex rolls in for another round.  I mocked it once before, and now I understand its power.  I wish I knew what to sacrifice to it to appease the Angry God of the Northern Wastes - apparently, my fenders and front tire were not penance enough.

D.

Story Ideas from the Subconscious

Here's what was in my head this morning when I woke up:

• All the animals decide that the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics is their ideal platform to finally tell humanity to cut the crap.  They elect a single mare (named Winnie) to be their representative, and focus their willpower to grant her the power of speech for fifteen minutes.  During the ceremony, as planned, she breaks from the parade, shrugs off her rider, and walks up to the stands to address the stadium crowd and the viewers at home.  Everyone is impressed with the sophistication of what they think is an animatronic horse, and the animals' message to humanity is lost in a series of tweets and talking heads raving about Russian showmanship.
• A famed architect has developed a method of finding the living spirit of a building by building a model of it out of dried straw, which he then converses with.  
• The military convoy has gotten caught in a severe blizzard, and the soldiers have to find a way to survive in the frozen wastes for several days.

- D.

The 1 and Only

Like all epic quests of yore,
here is a map of the territory.

Normally, when I have business on the East Side, I park uptown around 116th and Lexington and take the 6 downtown.  Makes getting in and out quick and painless.  Yesterday, though, traffic across the GWB was slow and I felt like parking on the Upper West Side instead.  It's right around Columbia and I simply like the neighborhood better, and at the back of my mind was the possibility that we would grab dinner in the city and the area around 110th street and Broadway is packed to burstin' with great, diverse and not-too-pricey restaurants.

Of course, that complicates getting to the East Side, normally, with lots of transfers and adding a lot of time to your trip.  But we were meeting just east of Central Park (60th and Madison, to be exact), which is also right at the southern end of the park.  And there's a crosstown train right there, that you can conveniently pick up at Columbus Circle and 59th.  But I made great time coming in, and decided to simply walk from the Columbus Circle stop across town.  And it was lovely.

I met up with Yesenia, and on the way back, I asked if she wanted to walk back across town to get on the 1, or take the subway.  She opted for the walk.  And it was also lovely.

We got to the 1 at Columbus Circle around 4:30, so rush hour was just moving to full throng.  But we got on the train right away, and it was a partial express, up to 72nd.  Wonderful!  We'll be back at the car by 5:00, and home by 6:00 (if we don't eat in Manhattan, that is).

The train pulls in to 72nd street, and here's where the plan derails.  Not the train, of course - the train stays on the tracks.  It's just that it stops working and will not leave the station.  The doors close, the doors open.  They close, they open.

Pause.

Close, open.

Close, open.

The conductor, with increasing agitation after each series of attempts, calls on the P.A. for some unknown persons at the back of the train to stand clear of the doors.

The train, already packed full when we pulled into the station, keeps getting somehow even tighter as the train sits in the station.  The minutes pass, five, six.  Then, the conductor, again:

"This train is out of service.  THIS TRAIN is OUT of SERVICE!  All riders must exit the train.  RIDERS EXIT THE TRAIN!"

We move as one out to the platform.  It's the only way we actually can move, we're all packed so tightly together.  Yesenia and I and thousands of other riders wait outside the now empty train.  Inside, a pissed MTA employee strides the entire length of the train, checking (I presume) for stragglers.

A couple of more minutes pass.  Then the automated station announcer:

"The. Next.  Uptown.  One train.  Will arrive in.  Twenty-five.  Minutes."

The entire crowd groans.  Yesenia has had enough, and starts up the stairs.  I follow, trying to discuss a plan with her.  "We're not getting a cab," I point out, "I don't mean that I'm opposed to taking a cab, it means that there's no way we're going to be able to flag one, now."

Yesenia: "How about the bus?"

"It's about the same speed as walking."

"We can walk."

"Fine with me."

We climb up to Broadway and proceed to walk the forty-three blocks to the garage.  Slushy lakes ring small mountains of dirty snow at every crosswalk.  Night has fallen.  And it's a forced march, rather than a lark.  I have not had anything to eat all day, except a cup of tea about ten hours earlier.  It is most definitely not lovely.

Every ten blocks, I call out the number of blocks remaining.  We hold hands.  Well, our gloves cling to each other with our hands inside.   We discuss dinner options.  Eat uptown?  Get pizza up in Rockland?  A few balloons are floated, but the pizza option is the mutually agreed upon conclusion.

About an hour later - after pausing at a favorite bakery to pick up some dessert carbs - we reach the garage.  It's another ten minutes there, while the lone employee deals with five customers and moves all the cars himself.

Surprisingly, after all that, at least the drive home is pretty quick.  And we discover that well-earned pizza is pizza that tastes good.

D.

The Illicit Rambler

Very VERY slow day at work today, as about 70% of the department opted to work from home, today. Which option sounds quite nice, but since I live about five minutes from the office, I felt that if anyone should be in-house in case an emergency design situation arose, it might as well be me.  But since the work is so thin, I'm sneaking a little time for a Rambler.  Such a rebel!

BTW: I can't imagine a more first-world 'problem' than an emergency design situation, but they seem to happen with depressing frequency in every industry I've worked in, and always seem to have life-and-death level impact for those that come running to you with them, creative brief held aloft in one hand, flaming like an Olympic torch.  And the sweat they're covered in?  Flop sweat, of course.

Anyway^®, working from home would be wonderful, especially since Yesenia is also working from home today and the idea of both of us sitting on the couch by the fire firing off emails and tweaking code is almost painful to contemplate in light of where I'm actually sitting.  Which is a cube.  Under fluorescent lights.   Also a first-world problem, but you can still feel sorry for me.

D.