I'm on vacation, technically. It began Friday evening at 5:30 local time, when I closed down the windows, lowered my standing desk to normal height -- because I live in earthquake country and am paranoid -- did a last scan around the office for any thing I'd need over break, turned off the phone and lights, scanned the office again (see paranoia, above) and left. The last two weeks have a been a blur. The American Thanksgiving holiday in November is not pinned down to any specific date, but rather falls on the fourth Thursday of the month, and this year the placement of days put it as late as it can possibly come.
Thanksgiving marks the beginning of The Holiday Season, when all the retailers kick into overdrive with sales to entice you in to the stores while you're still digesting your holiday meal or, in an alarming trend this year, in lieu of it. I suspect that many of the Typosphere are cut from similar cloth: if not purely anti-retail, then at least I would expect a lot of us are anti-retail-hype, and would sooner drop a typewriter on our feet repeatedly than sacrifice our minds, bodies, and sanity for the promise of a cheap(er) TV or tablet. All you needed to do was camp out in a parking lot for a few days in advance. Happy holidays!
Well, not me, of course. First because I don't buy into the hype. Second, because I can't understand the mindset of people who do buy into the hype and they scare me. Third, because I'm usually up to my earlobes in work and projects, which was the case again this year. 2013 was a success for us at work, I'd say, assembling something of a working process or pipeline of software out of fairly disparate staff and skills, and producing finished projects with release schedules and test plans and impressive-sounding buzzwords. Sitting, as I do, near the starting end of the pipeline, though, I need to get enough things set up for my peers to be able to do their jobs while I'm out. I've been wearing a face that hopefully conveys something along the lines of "I'm very very busy right now and I'd love to talk to you/blog for you/type on you/stop and eat a meal but ask me again in mid-December." Everyone and everything in my orbit has seen The Face. But as of Friday evening, I packed up The Face and headed home.
As a child, I can remember the amorphous stretch of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas as being interminably slow, making paper chains to count down the days (one link per day) and begging for the tree and the trimmings and the lights to somehow will the holiday into arriving faster. As a parent of children, the karmic wheel has turned, and my own kids are wondering why I still haven't hung the stockings up this year, or when all the bins are leaving the middle of the family room so we can start stacking presents up. (The answer is: I haven't found the bin containing the stockings yet.) Being sapped with projects certainly made the time pass, and maybe now that I'm away from work I can again experience the luxury of waiting, of having nothing better to do than to look forward to something.
I don't believe that for a moment, of course. I have plenty to do, not the least of which is locating that damn bin. I want to pull my 2013 NaNo draft out of hibernation and see how good or bad it went, when looked at as a whole. I admit to a certain level of tunnel vision or selective memory with the draft: the ending was odd, and I recall the last quarter or so, but it will be like a fresh, raw text when I sit down to it. I think making The Face offed a few brain cells. We'll see what that looks like. There's shopping to be done and cookies to be made, and my kids are still finishing up school this week, too. Everyone else gets to stop making their Faces by next Saturday, and then our calendar is blissfully blank and tranquil.
Ah, except for a week after this coming Friday, which Richard "The Mad Professor" Polt has declared a San Francisco Bay Area type-in. I'm excited to attend, since I'm sure I'll need some time away from my darling children and their post-holiday hysteria, and I get to meet what looks like a sizeable chunk of the Typosphere. I've got a typewriter to polish up for sure, maybe something photogenic? We'll put our best faces forward.
Showing posts with label jolly holidays. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jolly holidays. Show all posts
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Friday, December 21, 2012
Ujtupocalypse
Whoops, I guess three weeks have passed since I last poked my nose in here. I think as we age, time no longer travels linearly, but swoops and peaks and dips like a roller-coaster gone out of control. How is it that in the heart of Nano I was making regular updates, and now... not so much?
Holiday plans are taking most of my time, but I'm looking forward to the quiet days as we finish off the old year and usher in the new. No typewriters under the tree this year, but that's all right -- I've had a bountiful year. We're trying as much as possible to scale back a bit: focus less on the "stuff" and keep the focus on the kids (which is far more fun anyway.) Aside from the usual hiding and wrapping, my days have been filled with naps and trying to coax sodoku solutions out of my brain. In all: quiet.
So, how's the end of the world look from your location?
Holiday plans are taking most of my time, but I'm looking forward to the quiet days as we finish off the old year and usher in the new. No typewriters under the tree this year, but that's all right -- I've had a bountiful year. We're trying as much as possible to scale back a bit: focus less on the "stuff" and keep the focus on the kids (which is far more fun anyway.) Aside from the usual hiding and wrapping, my days have been filled with naps and trying to coax sodoku solutions out of my brain. In all: quiet.
So, how's the end of the world look from your location?
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Thanks
It's Thanksgiving Day today in the U.S., a national holiday dedicated to the legend of a shared meal between the early European colonists and the Native Americans who encountered them. Of course, time and selective memory have softened the truth of that first harvest season into something that's suitable for elementary school re-enactments, where the class is divided roughly into Indians and Pilgrims, and perform a make-believe feast of construction-paper food for parents and family. At least, it was recognized as such in one of my early schools. We moved to another state when I was still fairly young, one that had a deer-hunting season, so the fourth Thursday of November became less focused around making hand-print turkeys and more about the making unique fashion statement of blaze orange hunter's caps with camouflaged coveralls. Thanksgiving became an also-ran to Deer Day.
Now I'm older and more ornery, and bristling visibly at "Black Friday" sales now being superseded by stores opening on Thanksgiving day. Christmas decor is already in all the shops: it's been in place since the first of the month. I still champion the day, though, not just because of its focus on sharing a really big, home-cooked meal concluding with pie* -- well, that is a large part of the appeal -- but because it's a last day of quiet before the rush to the end of the year. This year, the calendar has aligned such that Thanksgiving is the earliest it can possibly be -- November 22. This means we effectively get an extra week to heed to the drumbeat of Christmas mania. You can imagine how I feel about that.
That drumbeat, however, is over 24 hours away. I'm writing this Wednesday evening, and I hope to be offline much of tomorrow. Tomorrow, I get up early as I have every day this month, sit at the keys and try to wring a few more pages of my novel out of my brain, and listen for the sound of my youngest sneaking into the room with the dog diligently behind her. We'll make pumpkin pie, and apple pie, and a raisin pie, and make too much noise as we mix and pour and bake and clean, and then do it all again. The Nice Dishes will come out of the cupboard, we'll wipe off the wine glasses and shake out the good napkins and prop up the hand-print turkeys my daughters make** as they wait and wait and wait for the meal to be readied, as too many people try to do too many things in our too-small kitchen. We'll sit down at last, hungry and tired and ready to eat, and then go around the table as we always do, saying what we're thankful for.***
I'm thankful for many things: things I'll share at the table, things I'll keep private in my heart.
Thanks to all of you for putting up with Rhinos and novels and all the self-indulgence that comes from keeping a blog. Thanks for being part of the Brigade, be it as a participant, or part of the cheering section, or one of the sane people watching politely from the sidelines. Thanks for being one of the nicest groups of people on the Internet, hands down. Thanks for all your scholarship, for your photo essays, for flea markets and for sharing your hobbies.
Thanks for another year, everyone. Can I get you another slice of pie?
* If it's done right, that is. Some traditions should never be lost, and the post-Thanksgiving pie coma is one of them.
** Hand-print turkeys are another tradition not to be trifled with.
*** Highly corny. You're allowed to do this. It's Thanksgiving!
Now I'm older and more ornery, and bristling visibly at "Black Friday" sales now being superseded by stores opening on Thanksgiving day. Christmas decor is already in all the shops: it's been in place since the first of the month. I still champion the day, though, not just because of its focus on sharing a really big, home-cooked meal concluding with pie* -- well, that is a large part of the appeal -- but because it's a last day of quiet before the rush to the end of the year. This year, the calendar has aligned such that Thanksgiving is the earliest it can possibly be -- November 22. This means we effectively get an extra week to heed to the drumbeat of Christmas mania. You can imagine how I feel about that.
That drumbeat, however, is over 24 hours away. I'm writing this Wednesday evening, and I hope to be offline much of tomorrow. Tomorrow, I get up early as I have every day this month, sit at the keys and try to wring a few more pages of my novel out of my brain, and listen for the sound of my youngest sneaking into the room with the dog diligently behind her. We'll make pumpkin pie, and apple pie, and a raisin pie, and make too much noise as we mix and pour and bake and clean, and then do it all again. The Nice Dishes will come out of the cupboard, we'll wipe off the wine glasses and shake out the good napkins and prop up the hand-print turkeys my daughters make** as they wait and wait and wait for the meal to be readied, as too many people try to do too many things in our too-small kitchen. We'll sit down at last, hungry and tired and ready to eat, and then go around the table as we always do, saying what we're thankful for.***
I'm thankful for many things: things I'll share at the table, things I'll keep private in my heart.
Thanks to all of you for putting up with Rhinos and novels and all the self-indulgence that comes from keeping a blog. Thanks for being part of the Brigade, be it as a participant, or part of the cheering section, or one of the sane people watching politely from the sidelines. Thanks for being one of the nicest groups of people on the Internet, hands down. Thanks for all your scholarship, for your photo essays, for flea markets and for sharing your hobbies.
Thanks for another year, everyone. Can I get you another slice of pie?
* If it's done right, that is. Some traditions should never be lost, and the post-Thanksgiving pie coma is one of them.
** Hand-print turkeys are another tradition not to be trifled with.
*** Highly corny. You're allowed to do this. It's Thanksgiving!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Rescue Me
Chalk up another point for having a typewriter around. When I was gathering up the Valentine's Day gifts for my wife yesterday, I came to the sudden realization that the card that I'd picked up weeks earlier was a birthday card, and not for this particular holiday (the curse of having the two dates fairly close together: I tend to handle all the cards and gifts in one trip.) Solution: pull out the Silent Super from the foot of the bed, raid my kids' rooms for scissors and a glue stick, and concoct a last-minute art card, complete with a jagged typewritten heart on the front. It took two tries, as attempt #1 looked more like an actual anatomical heart than the traditional Valentine shape. Add a couple of rubber stamps and a cheesy typewritten ditty, and now her box of candy has a seasonally-appropriate mash note to go with it.
Roses are red
This typewriter is green
This is the most last-minute Valentine
That you've ever seen!
OK, we're not talking poet laureate here, but it sure beats "Happy Birthday."
The day was saved by a Smith-Corona Silent-Super.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Yikes
December 10th already? Egad, this month is flying by. Pie-baking and cookie-decorating ruled the day, and on Monday, the promise of meeting the Big Guy Himself. My daughters prepared their letters today before dinner: handwritten, of course. Does St. Nick even have an email address? And how do you know it's not an outsourced elf on the other end?
These are the kinds of things I worry about.
These are the kinds of things I worry about.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Train Trip
In the U.S., Labor Day weekend typically marks the end of summer and the beginning of the school year. My older kids have been doing school for a couple of weeks now, but the holiday gave us a chance to squeeze in one last hurrah. Our destination: "Gold Rush Days" in the historic section of Sacramento, our state capitol. We roused the kids early and headed off to the local train station to start our day.
Doesn't everyone look excited? Well, no, but they should. Train travel is eminently civilized, as Adwoa routinely proves. Sadly, this entry will not have glamour shots of typewriters-in-the-wild as her posts do. It's about 7:30 AM in this photo, and the kids (not shown) are alternately sleepy/excited about the trip north. They've been up here before, but this was my first time.
Boarded and heading out now, we're heading for the bridge near the middle of this photo, which spans a long eastward-reaching bay. If one were to put a boat in the water and paddle west, you'd eventually pass beneath the Golden Gate bridge. This is an industrial area, with oil refinery storage tanks visible on the hillside. This is a typical morning view, with the fog still coming in from the bay.
Across the bridge and heading north now, and you can see what I like about living here. When we first moved, the brown hills of late summer looked dead to me, coming as I did from a very wet climate. Now it just looks normal to me, and green hillsides seem strange. We rarely see rain between April and October, so most of the summer the hills are golden like this. That's the fog rolling back along the top of the hills. We're "inland", which means we have temperatures about 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit above what's felt in San Francisco, just a few miles on the other side of these hills. Today promised to be a hot one: it did not disappoint.
About half an hour more to the north now, and you can see that we're moving away from the hills. We passed some kind of hot-air balloon launch, just a handful of them, rising up in the morning air. That might have been my second choice of travel, if there were some way to do it on the ground. I've got a few pictures of Sacramento, but most feature my kids, which I don't like to post publicly, so you're going to have to settle for a few establishing shots, and more narration. Unlike most of Switzerland, there's simply not that much history in the U.S.: our oldest monuments and structures may date from the late 1700's at best, and in California, it's even younger. Most of the "olde timey" booths and actors were recreating the 1850s or later. So, quite a few tents selling modern takes on period fashion, like these hat pins:
And most of the acting was of the Wild West variety, including a mock shootout:
Not shown: the small Women's Suffrage demonstration that wound through the crowd just before this show, which mortified my teenage son. He kept us safely out of embarrassment’s way on the opposite sidewalk. In the spirit of recreation, the streets are covered in dirt, and with all the horses and horse-drawn equipment making laps around the city, a number of other "natural" products as well.
By this point, it was early afternoon, and getting hot. These guys had the right idea, waiting it out in the shade. We headed in for lunch and air conditioning, and planned out the rest of the day. Tragically, we seemed to have missed "The California Fire Brigade Rescues the Burning Brothel" show. Another opportunity to mortify my son wasted, though we did manage to rattle him quite a bit when we explained what a brothel was. Loudly.
After lunch, we took in the Red Circle Dancers, and by "take in" I mean "accidentally happened across." My wife and I insisted on forcing the kids to get educated, dammit, so we stayed and watched. This show, plus the Buffalo Solidier tent shows that Gold Rush Days depict a Kindler, Gentler, More Equitable Wild West. By now, the kids were in Full Grumble Mode: it was hot, and the crowds were picking up. Conveniently, there are a number of museums right in this section of Sacramento, and they all offer free admission during this weekend, so we circled the troops and headed off for the nearest one, passing a few costumed ladies from the brothel show en route, giving my wife and I the chance to point them out. Loudly.
Naturally, the insides of the museums are generally far too dark for photography, at least with the small lens and sensor on my digital camera, but I did manage one retro-typographical shot, near the historic presses and Linotype machine in the area sponsored by the local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. Of course I had to see it up close, and for a small donation, had a old-timey Western WANTED posted made up for my daughter. I explained the whole process as they ran the paper through as only an obsessive can, and the volunteer working the press offered me a job. I might have to go back...
Being the contrarians that we are, our family went through this museum backwards, starting with California's role in modern agriculture, and then rewinding through the two world wars, early settlement, and the gold rush that made this area famous. A few typewriter spottings, including a Pittsburgh and a Sholes in a very dark cabinet (sigh), and a three-bank "Noiseless" set up on a display. No pictures, alas, but they're there. Our youngest -- age three -- had taken charge by this point, and was pulling us past the displays in search of Something Less Boring (bad news, kid!) so we left the county history museum and headed next door to the train museum.
Now, I am not -- mercifully -- a Train Nut, and aside from an HO scale layout I had as a kid, I've never seen the draw of trains. There's a small section devoted to train-related toys, a display celebrating the completion of the trans-continental railroad, and several restored engines and cars inside. But the high point of the trip -- as my kids promised -- was a walk through a restored Pullman passenger car and matching dining car. The Pullman is rigged up so that it has a slight rocking motion, and plays a loop of sounds and lights through the windows simulating a nighttime ride. I had to go through twice. Ah, so very, very elegant. I'd ride one of those in an instant, even with the teeny-tiny berths. I'd like my time machine now, please, and a cross-country ticket. (Also spotted: a Royal QDL inside the glassed-off luxury compartment.) Sadly, I had to sacrifice a third trip through in the name of ice cream -- I'd planned on hiding in a berth and just taking a nap -- so we left the museum behind and headed out in search of a final treat. Typically, we happened along another crowd, this time around a demonstration of a period cannon.
It looks innocent in the photo, just there in the middle of the lawn, but was enough to give a massive chest-pounding THUMP when fired. You can see there's quite a crowd now, and still more as we fought our way down for ice cream. A bit of a line greeted us at Sacramento Sweets, but the air inside was cool and diabolically (or diabetically) sweet-smelling. We all came out with ice creams bigger than our heads, and polished them off in short order.
The last stop of the day was the military museum, by request of my son: one can only take so much gingham and calico and brothel-talk. I was less awed by the displays of superior firepower and more by the ice-cold water available in the downstairs fountain. High temperatures for the day were expected to be in the upper 90s, and we met and exceeded expectations. After admiring all the forms of lethality on display, it was time to gather up the kids and trundle back to the train station for the return journey. As we clacked along in big aluminum and steel tube, I have to admit that my mind was still back in Sacramento, sitting in a private berth behind that QDL, rocking gently side to side as a night many generations gone slipped by outside the window.
Doesn't everyone look excited? Well, no, but they should. Train travel is eminently civilized, as Adwoa routinely proves. Sadly, this entry will not have glamour shots of typewriters-in-the-wild as her posts do. It's about 7:30 AM in this photo, and the kids (not shown) are alternately sleepy/excited about the trip north. They've been up here before, but this was my first time.
Boarded and heading out now, we're heading for the bridge near the middle of this photo, which spans a long eastward-reaching bay. If one were to put a boat in the water and paddle west, you'd eventually pass beneath the Golden Gate bridge. This is an industrial area, with oil refinery storage tanks visible on the hillside. This is a typical morning view, with the fog still coming in from the bay.
Across the bridge and heading north now, and you can see what I like about living here. When we first moved, the brown hills of late summer looked dead to me, coming as I did from a very wet climate. Now it just looks normal to me, and green hillsides seem strange. We rarely see rain between April and October, so most of the summer the hills are golden like this. That's the fog rolling back along the top of the hills. We're "inland", which means we have temperatures about 15-20 degrees Fahrenheit above what's felt in San Francisco, just a few miles on the other side of these hills. Today promised to be a hot one: it did not disappoint.
About half an hour more to the north now, and you can see that we're moving away from the hills. We passed some kind of hot-air balloon launch, just a handful of them, rising up in the morning air. That might have been my second choice of travel, if there were some way to do it on the ground. I've got a few pictures of Sacramento, but most feature my kids, which I don't like to post publicly, so you're going to have to settle for a few establishing shots, and more narration. Unlike most of Switzerland, there's simply not that much history in the U.S.: our oldest monuments and structures may date from the late 1700's at best, and in California, it's even younger. Most of the "olde timey" booths and actors were recreating the 1850s or later. So, quite a few tents selling modern takes on period fashion, like these hat pins:
And most of the acting was of the Wild West variety, including a mock shootout:
Not shown: the small Women's Suffrage demonstration that wound through the crowd just before this show, which mortified my teenage son. He kept us safely out of embarrassment’s way on the opposite sidewalk. In the spirit of recreation, the streets are covered in dirt, and with all the horses and horse-drawn equipment making laps around the city, a number of other "natural" products as well.
By this point, it was early afternoon, and getting hot. These guys had the right idea, waiting it out in the shade. We headed in for lunch and air conditioning, and planned out the rest of the day. Tragically, we seemed to have missed "The California Fire Brigade Rescues the Burning Brothel" show. Another opportunity to mortify my son wasted, though we did manage to rattle him quite a bit when we explained what a brothel was. Loudly.
After lunch, we took in the Red Circle Dancers, and by "take in" I mean "accidentally happened across." My wife and I insisted on forcing the kids to get educated, dammit, so we stayed and watched. This show, plus the Buffalo Solidier tent shows that Gold Rush Days depict a Kindler, Gentler, More Equitable Wild West. By now, the kids were in Full Grumble Mode: it was hot, and the crowds were picking up. Conveniently, there are a number of museums right in this section of Sacramento, and they all offer free admission during this weekend, so we circled the troops and headed off for the nearest one, passing a few costumed ladies from the brothel show en route, giving my wife and I the chance to point them out. Loudly.
Naturally, the insides of the museums are generally far too dark for photography, at least with the small lens and sensor on my digital camera, but I did manage one retro-typographical shot, near the historic presses and Linotype machine in the area sponsored by the local newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. Of course I had to see it up close, and for a small donation, had a old-timey Western WANTED posted made up for my daughter. I explained the whole process as they ran the paper through as only an obsessive can, and the volunteer working the press offered me a job. I might have to go back...
Being the contrarians that we are, our family went through this museum backwards, starting with California's role in modern agriculture, and then rewinding through the two world wars, early settlement, and the gold rush that made this area famous. A few typewriter spottings, including a Pittsburgh and a Sholes in a very dark cabinet (sigh), and a three-bank "Noiseless" set up on a display. No pictures, alas, but they're there. Our youngest -- age three -- had taken charge by this point, and was pulling us past the displays in search of Something Less Boring (bad news, kid!) so we left the county history museum and headed next door to the train museum.
Now, I am not -- mercifully -- a Train Nut, and aside from an HO scale layout I had as a kid, I've never seen the draw of trains. There's a small section devoted to train-related toys, a display celebrating the completion of the trans-continental railroad, and several restored engines and cars inside. But the high point of the trip -- as my kids promised -- was a walk through a restored Pullman passenger car and matching dining car. The Pullman is rigged up so that it has a slight rocking motion, and plays a loop of sounds and lights through the windows simulating a nighttime ride. I had to go through twice. Ah, so very, very elegant. I'd ride one of those in an instant, even with the teeny-tiny berths. I'd like my time machine now, please, and a cross-country ticket. (Also spotted: a Royal QDL inside the glassed-off luxury compartment.) Sadly, I had to sacrifice a third trip through in the name of ice cream -- I'd planned on hiding in a berth and just taking a nap -- so we left the museum behind and headed out in search of a final treat. Typically, we happened along another crowd, this time around a demonstration of a period cannon.
It looks innocent in the photo, just there in the middle of the lawn, but was enough to give a massive chest-pounding THUMP when fired. You can see there's quite a crowd now, and still more as we fought our way down for ice cream. A bit of a line greeted us at Sacramento Sweets, but the air inside was cool and diabolically (or diabetically) sweet-smelling. We all came out with ice creams bigger than our heads, and polished them off in short order.
The last stop of the day was the military museum, by request of my son: one can only take so much gingham and calico and brothel-talk. I was less awed by the displays of superior firepower and more by the ice-cold water available in the downstairs fountain. High temperatures for the day were expected to be in the upper 90s, and we met and exceeded expectations. After admiring all the forms of lethality on display, it was time to gather up the kids and trundle back to the train station for the return journey. As we clacked along in big aluminum and steel tube, I have to admit that my mind was still back in Sacramento, sitting in a private berth behind that QDL, rocking gently side to side as a night many generations gone slipped by outside the window.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, December 29, 2008
Surviving the holidays
Somehow, we've made it through the Big Day, the day that gets small children up at 3:00 to stand next to mom and dad's bed and stage-whisper "How many hours until Christmas? Only one more week before school and work resume out here. The jolly old elf did not, in fact, slip a typer under the tree which is probably a good thing, considering. The kids did come through with a new demonstrator fountain pen and bottled ink combo from Levenger in a jazzy "Bahama blue." It's a pleasure to use on thank-you notes as we wile away the last days of 2008. The computer has been off most of the time, which is nice, quite frankly. There's time enough to stare at the little screen later. I've also been actively ignoring the novel synopsis in favor of playing with the kids (and the new Wii) but I'm going to need to get off my rump, and get typing again. I'm reading to start laying down some electric blue ink on that typewritten stack o' pages.
Hope everyone in more Northern climes is staying warm and safe these days. See you folks in the New Year.
Hope everyone in more Northern climes is staying warm and safe these days. See you folks in the New Year.
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