Rolling On One

Over the turnpike, backed up from the tolls,
To Grandmother’s house we go.
The GPS knows the way to navigate the SUV
Through the globally warming drizzle…

That’s as far as I got. Anyone want to collaborate on it, or is it too sad?

After a day on penicillin, my toothache is much better. It’s good enough that it doesn’t bother me at all when I’m not eating, but bad enough when I’m chewing that a root canal is going to be worth it.

Meanwhile, we played Settlers of Catan with Charley, Nicole, Anne, and Matt. Matt clobbered the rest of us, despite its being the first time he played. It helped a lot that Nicole was totally bored with the game and did everything she could to help him win so the game would be over.

Anne baked a gingerbread for part of tomorrow’s dessert, and I started some bread dough for rolls.

I had something of a toothache starting in the middle of last night, when I woke up and wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back to sleep. It was worse in the morning. I was able to get my dentist to see me in the afternoon. It looks as though — because I’ve made an appointment for it by now — a root canal is in my future, where by “future” I mean next week. Darn.

I got home a little late from work because I actually got something accomplished that needed finishing tonight so it has a chance of getting into the system tomorrow. I was too busy indexing stamp mounts tonight to have time to write an entry worthy of the name “entry.”

Over and out —

On Friday night we sat outside for a while around midnight hoping to see some meteors from the Leonid meteor shower. We did see two or three meteors in ten or fifteen minutes, but I didn’t think they were coming from Leo at all. On Saturday night, at 11:45, which was supposed to be the peak of the shower, we went back outside looking and saw two meteors that were definitely coming from the direction of Taurus, not Leo. So I have to say the Leonid shower was a total bust from my point of view. But it’s still a good excuse to sit down and look at the night sky.

We were sitting in the kitchen in Casco trying to think what we needed to get for Thanksgiving dinner (things like enough table space, serving utensils,…) when I noticed some motion in the crabapple tree. It was a grouse, standing on a branch, eating crabapples! That’s three grouse sightings from the house by now. I tried to get some pictures. None of them were the kind you’d want to put in a nature guide to show people what a grouse in a crabapple tree looks like, but at least they show what protective coloration can do.

We went to Windham to look for a folding table and the other things we had figured we needed. We looked first in an antiques mall that we’ve passed lots of off times but not been in before. These antiques mall places are stores divided into small areas that different dealers fill with their goods. It’s sort of like a fleamarket that goes on all the time, with the people who are minding the store keeping track of what dealer gets paid for what items. This one had several drop leaf tables, but none that would fit the space we had in mind and look right in the room.

Next door to the antiques mall was a store packed full with souveniers, dollhouse furniture and kits and building materials, toys, and antiques. It looked as though the owners would look at catalogs and say, “Neat! We can find some place to display that, if we just push some other stuff together a little tighter!”

We drove out the first road to the right in Windham, looking for The Village Knittiot. The road goes out over a bridge onto an island in Lake Sebago, with very pretty water all around, but no sign of the store. When we got back to the main road we determined that the store is right there at the corner, but there were no lights on just after five.

Somewhat reluctantly, we looked through WalMart and almost got a 24 x 48 inch table. Arlene decided it was really too small. We left that parking lot and continued to Lowe’s, where we found a 30 x 72 inch table, which will be comfortable for more people plus have space enough to leave some serving bowls on the table.

It turned out that Borat was showing at the movies in Windham. We looked in a restaurant (Thatcher’s?) right next to the cinema, but it was packed. We looked in Friendly’s, across the parking lot, but there were people waiting to be seated ahead of us, and less than an hour to movie time, and we remembered how slow Friendly’s can sometimes be. We settled for fast food, and got to the movie in plenty of time.

Oh, what did I think of the movie? There were some outrageous scenes (mostly the naked fight and run through the hotel), but on the whole I didn’t think people were made to look so ridiculous as they seem to feel they were. In the rodeo scene, for instance, people were cheering for things like “support the troops” and “kill all the terrorists”, but when Borat was singing things on the order of “Destroy Iraq so that not a blade of grass grows there for 1000 years” the audience really didn’t want to support that sentiment any more. I did think that a lot of it was awfully funny.

With the talk about Borat, I need to say that the only person I know I’ve met from Kazakhstan isn’t like him. It was a woman sitting next to me on the plane home from London in 1999. Here‘s her picture and what I wrote then. And that’s not really a good picture; she was lots prettier than the picture shows.

I was playing with avatars.yahoo.com for a while, after seeing pictures on several blogs. It’s a great way to waste a half hour or hour. I like the wide selection of backgrounds that can be combined with wildly inappropriate people and accessories, like raking leaves on the moon.

I think in general these list blog memes are only interesting if the writer takes the questions as jumping off points and writes at least a short paragraph about them. I mean, 48 yes or nos? or even a short phrase? Why bother. Except that some have to be short. All answers valid for when I wrote them, but I did it over the course of ten days, so when it says “last time” or “now” it’s lots of different last times and nows.

1. First name? Dean

2. Were you named after anyone? My mother’s father, who died a little before I was born. Ashkenzai (Eastern European) Jewish tradition is to name children after a recently-deceased family member. Jewish people usually have a Hebrew name as well as the name they use most of the time. The Hebrew name will normally be the same as that of the person they’re named after, and the everyday name will most often start with the same letter. My grandpa Dean came from Hungary, where his name was Deszo, or maybe Dezso (either way, that final “o” should have a diacritical mark like an umlaut made of two acute accents over it). That’s the Hungarian version of the Latin name Desiderius, which is the male version of the French name Desiree. So my name should have been Desiree, if it were a boy’s name.

3. When did you last cry? Hearing a song Garrison Keeler made up for an audience member, an 80-something woman who was going back to her hometown to care for a relative, that’s what she does, take care of people. It was just so moving that she was getting that recognition on a nationwide show, and that Keeler can do that for his audience. Are you going to make me cry again describing it?

4. Do you like your handwriting? I have since the middle of college, when I learned to do italic handwriting. I couldn’t read my own writing before that. A high-school friend who turned into a girlfriend over summer vacations from college got me a book about italic handwriting from the Reed College (where she was at school) bookstore, and a pen.

5. What is your favorite lunchmeat? I like liverwurst, probably because I only get it rarely. Also hot pastromi, even more rarely. On rye. With mustard.

6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you? hmm, probably

7. Do you have a journal? Just this blog

8. Do you still have your tonsils? Not since I was a toddler

9. Would you bungee jump? No, thanks

10. What is your favorite cereal? I eat cheerios most of the time but I like some of Trader Joe’s cereals with nuts and dried fruit better. Hot cereal, that non-rolled Irish oatmeal – Mc Cann’s, of Odlum & Sallins, is it?

11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? Yes. When I put them on I tie them too tight to come off without untying.

12. Do you think you’re strong? My mother told me to eat my vegetables so I would grow up to be big and strong. When I was in high school I realized I wasn’t going to be big, but I could still be strong. So, yes, for my size.

13. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Would you believe cucumber? I didn’t think so. Buttrick’s mocha chip is my favorite. Or now, Brigham’s mocha almond. At the end of my freshman year in college I bicycled across Massachusetts, at least from Williamstown to Lexington, in two days. For the last 20 miles the thought of a mocha almond cone at Buttrick’s (now long gone, part of Minuteman National Historical Park) was what kept me going. But worth mentioning just because it sounds so bizarre is J.P.Licks’ cucumber ice cream. It’s amazingly refreshing on a hot humid summer day.

14. Shoe size? And exactly why do you want to know?

15. Red or pink? Red. No wimpy colors.

16. What is your least favorite thing about yourself? that I’m barely able to contain my temper. I almost always do contain it, but just barely.

17. Who do you miss the most? My Uncle Bob, who died almost 30 years ago. He was really witty as well as generous, always fun to be around.

18. What color pants, shirt and shoes are you wearing? Black jeans (more often it would be blue jeans) blue shirt, that’s a blue and white Hawaiian print printed on the wrong side of the shirt, and tan running shoes.

19. Do you want everyone to send this back to you? Well, I’d like them to leave their blog address in the comments if they do this. Sure.
20. Last thing you ate? A couple of pieces of candy we got for Halloween. But if you ask in ten minutes, it’ll have been 1/8 of a pineapple.

21. What are you listening to right now? no music going on at the moment

22. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? so long since I looked at a box of crayons…

23. Favorite smell? Baking bread

24. Who was the last person you talked to on the phone? Arlene, to say I was on my way home so she’d know to start cooking

25. The first thing you notice about people you are attracted to? The smile. I mostly go by the smile. More than once there’s been a woman I’ve worked with for months or years that I don’t think is remarkably attractive, maybe even out-and-out plain, and then one day I see her smile a real smile with her whole face, I don’t mean the pasted-on kind of smile when you pull up the corners of your mouth and think that’s a smile, but an all over relaxed happy smile — and I think, I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful.

26. Do you like the person you stole this from? Yes, that would be Theresa, Knitty knitting technique instructor extraordinaire.

27. Favorite drink? In summer, Pilsener Urquell. Non-alcoholic, in summer, a 50-50 mix of schweppes quinine water and orange juice. Winter, cocoa made from cocoa powder.

28. Favorite sport? I was a wrestler in college, haven’t participated in any competitive sports since an after-work softball game 12 or 15 years ago. Spectator sports, to watch in person, ice hockey. But it’s useless on TV and good only as a sleep aid on radio.

29. Eye color? brown

30. Hat size? 7 3/4?

31. Do you wear contacts? Never tried. Drugstore reading glasses.

32. Favorite food? My mother used to make a dish we called Chicken With Herbs. Can’t think of anything I like better.

33. Scary movies or happy endings? Happy endings

34. (Theresa says, “Number 34 has been missing from all the ones I’ve seen”. One blog I saw had for 34 “If you could live anywhere, where would it be?” That takes more thought. Maybe Bern, Switzerland. I loved Yerevan, Armenia, except that it was entirely too hot, so it’s out. I like the arcaded streets in downtown old Bern, and never knowing what language I’m speaking. It helps that it was independence day there both times I was there. The Swiss are better with watches than calendars; they celebrate the 4th of July on the 8th of August.

35. Summer or winter? Or spring or fall.

36. Hugs or kisses? I’ll have to go with hugs. I’m an old married guy and haven’t kissed anyone except my wife since 1976. Truth. I do feel that hugs are allowed.

37. Favorite dessert? I make a lime chiffon pie that can’t be beat.

38. Who is most likely to respond? don’t know

39. Least likely to respond? don’t know that either

40. What books are you reading? I’m a third of the way through The Half-Blood Prince. Usually books, plural, is right, because I have a bad tendency not to finish books I start. At the moment I think singular is right, unless you want to count things I started a year ago and never finished.

41. What’s on your mouse pad? Optical mouse here, a Keith Haring mousepad at work

42. What did you watch last night on TV? well, my brother-in-law had the golf channel on, and this old house, but I wasn’t paying all that much attention

43. Favorite sounds? Loons calling on a northern New England lake

44. Rolling Stones or Beatles? Beatles all the way.

45. The furthest you’ve been from home? The furthest in miles would be the Hakone checkpoint in Japan. If you haven’t ever heard of it, it has the kind of cultural significance that the Mason-Dixon Line, the Maginot Line, and Cumberland Gap have all in one. It was a defensible point on the one road from western to eastern Japan. The Tokyo area, Kanto, and Osaka area, Kansei, are called “east of the barrier” and “west of the barrier” because of it. Bill Kretowitz and I took the bullet train one or two stops from Tokyo to Odawara, where one of the salesmen from our company drove us around sightseeing for the day. I think Hakone was about the furthest we got. BUT, what I always think of as the furthest was the church in Haghartzin, Armenia, in terms of both feeling the most different from home and being, among the places I’ve been, the hardest to get to and the least likely that I’ll run into someone else who has been there. Except for my daughter, who was with me and arranged the excursion. She’s been to Thailand, but she agrees with me that Haghartzin was the furthest from home she’s ever been. To get there required a plane to London, a plane from London to Yerevan (one stop, in Tiblisi, Republic of Georgia), a hired Volga car from Yerevan to Lake Sevan, and a hired worn-out Zhigouli car that needed expert coaxing by its driver to get us from Lake Sevan over a mountain road to Haghartzin and back. Story at this link on my old journal. Getting to Hakone only took a nonstop flight from New York to Tokyo, a high-tech train ride, and a comfortable car ride.

46. What is your special talent? Well, juggling and riding the unicycle. But those are less talent than practice.

47. Where were you born? Women’s Hospital, Manhattan

48. Who sent this to you? I saw it on Theresa’s blog, http://spellingtuesday.com.

Here are some pictures from the weekend ready to show.

1. FO, or it will be if the ends get woven in, herringbone knit shawl from Fryeburg fair yarn. I need to get a closeup so you can see the herringbone pattern:

2. Progress on first sleeve of Matt’s sweater. The picture doesn’t show the nice strong navy of the dark yarn:

3. Chainsaw reposing after use Sunday. Since I’m a small guy, I got the smallest chainsaw I could find. I went for easy to carry and easy to start rather than heavy-duty. In fact, this one is marked “for occasional use only.” It’s entirely possible it’s not enough of a saw for my needs, but it did what I wanted it to do so far. I was glad I wasn’t carrying anything heavier than this 14-inch saw all the way around the property, which has few trees bigger than eight inches in diameter on it. I was cutting logs up to five or six inch diameter, tops, mostly smaller.