half past two

an irish band called the stunning have a song by this name. i went to see them, in cork, on 12/26/1991, with my new irish girlfriend ciara. i dreamed this morning that she broke up with me in an airport as i was returning to her. the song opens, "half past two and because of you / i haven't slept a wink ..."

although at half past two this morning yellow hadn't yet started scratching at the back door, i was awake in anticipation. he started scratching at about three. anticipation can be a terrible thing.

in 2004 and into 2005 i worked the graveyard shift in medical records at the hospital, from ten at night to six in the morning. i worked mostly weekends and was in school during the week, so my schedule was always confused. the absolute worst aspect of that job came at half past two, when i had to spell the switchboard operator for her fifteen-minute break.

in and of itself that doesn't sound so bad, does it? it's only fifteen minutes, and the phone doesn't ring so often at that hour. usually the girl didn't even take her full fifteen. what got me was the possibility of having to call a code.

someone in the hospital could have a heart attack (code 4), there could be a fire (code red), there could be a "show of force" (code orange), someone could abduct a child (code pink), or some other tragedy could occur (code 911, code 10, code 99, code yellow).

the phone would ring in the switchboard room and someone would tell me which code to call. i would immediately go on the overhead page system and call the code: "adult code 4, 5k, room 503, adult code 4, 5k, room 503," or something of that nature. and then call various floors of the hospital to ensure that everyone heard my page.

maybe really not so bad. i don't know; i never had to do it, in the year or so of weekends that i had that job. but the idea of having to do it, the fear, really dug deep into me. i couldn't shake it. i would get to work at ten of ten or so, and for the next four and a half hours, as i sorted charts and filed charts and responded to requests for charts and logged deaths and listened to the bbc world service on the npr station, i thought of little else but half past two and going to the switchboard room.

there were two other guys who worked the same shift, david and james. sometimes two or even three of us were on at once but most of the time one of us was alone for the night. they confessed they didn't enjoy going to the switchboard room and even that they were a bit anxious about maybe having to call a code, but i totally don't think they were torn up about it the way i was.

(the release, however, of it being quarter to three and my being out of the switchboard room, the door closed behind me, and free to relax and enjoy the monotony of the rest of my shift, the bliss, the rapture!)

it's the way my mind works. it pretty much always has. i fixate on something to be afraid of or to worry about and i'm stuck. i obsess. my mind circles around the fear repeatedly. little else gets in or out. it's a mind-trap i fell into each and every shift.

i'm terribly glad now that i don't have that job any more. it's over. i'm not going back. i'm grateful. there's nothing right now that works on me in the same way, and i'm grateful for that too. the closest thing now, and it's not even close, is the notion of yellow scratching at the door at half past two in the morning and keeping me awake for the rest of the night.

which happened today.

obligatory

it's been a few days since i've written anything in this space and even though i don't feel like i have interesting things to say, i feel rather obligated to write something. isn't that awful? you don't even have to read this if you don't want to.

forget about it. go away.

yellow's been on goofy schedule the last couple of nights. at 2:30 in the morning he starts scratching at the panes of glass in the french doors that lead to our back yard. he thinks he wants out, but he doesn't really want out, because when we let him out he just wants to come back in. this happened this morning as well as yesterday morning. yesterday morning i was unable to get back to sleep after even after his hour-long scratching session ended. this morning i fell asleep again at about 4:30, but kara remained awake.

how do you train a cat to not think he wants to go outside? we'll fill a spray-bottle with water this evening and have it ready.

here's a picture of the little criminal, taken earlier this afternoon, immediately post sneeze. he's been a bit sniffly of late. and he's still very needy and affectionate, since rumble's passing. he and eliot tussle a lot these days too, and i don't want any more neck (or other) wounds and abscesses! no more drains! when i hear those scuffling sounds and eliot yeowling i stamp my foot and they scatter.

i'm a wee bit upset that pan's labyrinth didn't win best foreign film, because i do like guillermo del toro. i confess i haven't seen the other nominees in that category, including the winner. i'm glad, though, that forest whitaker took best actor, even though i haven't seen the last king of scotland yet. i've liked forest for a long time. and yay helen mirren! and, well, we saw the departed recently and didn't think all that much of it.

and i'm 53% of the way through main street (page 242). yeah, it's not a short book. it's good, though. it's not totally gripping but i'm interested in seeing what happens next. i enjoy the descriptions of the insular and provincial townspeople. i like that carol, the main character, has sudden highs and lows of mood; they're well-depicted.

and hey! i finished a draft of a story! i'm actually hesitant to even mention it because it's rather pathetic, what with successful novelist friends all around me, and me finally finishing a draft of a 9-page story of questionable merit. i took those 9 pages (actually only 5 pieces of paper, because i printed it on both sides of the page) to the mandolin on friday morning and saturday morning and read it over, making notes. i have yet to apply those notes to the word document on this computer, but i'll get to that this weekend if not sooner. at the moment i'm enjoying remaining in bed until 6:30 am, even if i'm not actually sleeping. just for scuzz i post page 5, with notes. call it a teaser.

oh i guess that's about it for today. i reckon i've fulfilled my imagined obligation. you can go about your business.

dr west

i have found the best use so far of the tivo kara got us for xmas. it's "the tavis smiley show." i listened regularly to tavis on npr until kuow took him off. he went to pbs, or maybe he was at pbs the whole time also; i don't know. but now he's on pbs in the wee small hours of the morning, quite inconvenient, even for me. i only just started recording his shows and last night we watched an episode (more of an issue, like an issue of a magazine, than an episode of a television program) featuring cornel west and then another issue featuring chevy chase. chevy looked pretty nervous on the show, maybe a bit out of his element, but he was all right. generally i'm not a big fan of his movies, but he knew miles davis and other serious jazz guys as a youngster and those stories were interesting. i believe he went to the same school as my sister, haverford college, but he didn't finish. (incidentally, my sister went on to get a master's degree and a phd, and chevy did some writing, was on snl, and made some movies.)

cornel west has a phd too, and he was a fantastic speaker on the tavis show. he leaned way forward, with his knees spread and his straight back at almost a 45-degree angle, and he talked with his hands. oh, i'd heard snippets of speeches, memes i guess, on npr here and there over the years, but never before a sustained conversation. speaking apparently off the cuff, dr west produced some vivid ideas within beautifully-constructed sentences. his sentence structure was a glory to behold (maybe especially so to me after spending 40 hours a week listening to physicians' and physician assistants' oft-bungled attempts to organize their thoughts on relatively simple medical dictations). i kept expecting him to trail off or abandon a projected train of thought, but he never once did. he kept it all together. the man is clearly vastly and fiercely intelligent and of course he has things of tremendous value to say. he was wonderful on the tavis show. kara and i were thoroughly wowed by him. imagine talking to a person like that! imagine attending one of his lectures at princeton! we were knocked out.

and next week poet nikki giovanni will be on tavis. i met her briefly years ago when i lived in southwest virginia. she probably doesn't remember me.

don't get me wrong: tivo's also very good for "studio 60 on the sunset strip" (speaking of snl), i show i enjoy a lot for its writing and acting, but which, i'm afraid, may be dead.

furnace story

here's a fun little tale of home ownership.

yesterday morning shortly after i started working i noticed that it was a bit chilly indoors. the first one out of bed usually turns the heat up to the mid 50s or so, but the thermostat read 47 degrees. i checked the furnace. the fan was not fanning and the gas jets were not firing. i called our friendly neighborhood gas company, pse. they told me they could send someone out tomorrow (meaning today) sometime between eight in the morning and midnight. i thought that was a mighty wide window but there was little i could say. i shivered through my workday and when my shift was over i made a fire in the woodstove. that in and of itself wasn't unpleasant, to be honest. i do like our woodstove. it makes the house smell good (which is a nice change after all of max's incontinence).

this morning it was 44 degrees when i got up. (i spent last night mostly awake, preparing myself mentally for another chilly day and listening to max's toenails clicking on the hardwood.) a gentleman from pse showed up at a little after nine. i was mighty impressed with that. he took a look and told me that the gas valve was shot. it wasn't opening up to allow gas out. no gas, no fire, no heat. i would need a new gas valve and he didn't have the kind i needed. weirdly enough, i needed the newer kind and he had the older kind. i don't know if that's happened before. the diagnostic visit was free and that was nice.

it was at around nine forty-five this morning, then, that i called washington energy services and was told someone could come around in a few hours, probably before noon. again, i was impressed. same-day service is a wonder. a gentleman from that organization appeared at my door at approximately 11:15. he had the appropriate part and he installed it, with no small amount of grunting. because another gentleman from the same organization serviced our furnace less than 30 days ago, the service visit was free, per the warranty. however, a two-stage gas valve costs $385. so that wasn't so nice.

apparently the valve went bye-bye because the furnace, prior to my having it serviced last month, was horrendously dirty, and filth got into the valve. those darn previous owners (you know who you are!) didn't tend to their furnace as they should have. but the end of the story is a happy one, because now our house has heat again.

why not

it could be argued that this is what i look like. also, it could be argued that i look nothing like this. sometimes it's what i feel like. not really today though. i don't think.

don't look too closely. i totally need to clean the scanner's platen.

i had a bowl of smart start cereal just a short while ago, and it was good, but i'm still hungry. i need to find a better way to curb my appetite. better than eating? better than eating crap, i guess. smart start's not crap, though; it's good. i'm going to make some coffee in a few minutes.

i'm off today, and kara is too. it's president's day. i'm taking a bit of a break from writing, just for a few minutes here. the writing is actually going all right this month. i'm writing a bit of a story and naturally i worry that it's stupid, but i am still going on with it. the plan is to write a bit more today and more still on each of the next three mornings. what i have then, on friday morning, will be my first draft, and then i'll spend the last days of the month reading and rereading and making notes and improving.

kara's sleeping. she worked out pretty hard the last couple of days and she's sore. those abs! those calves! later today she'll wash sagan and that'll be good.

i'm on page 109 of the 454-page main street. hence, i'm about 24% through. i'm liking it. it's about a relatively cultured woman from the twin cities who moves with her new husband to a town of about 300 people. right now she's kind of having a hard time, not sure if she wants to fit in or elevate the town to her perceived level of culture. i can relate!

later today i'll go to the store and get some veggies and a spot of wine. this afternoon i'll make my famous pasta sauce. we have low-fat turkey sausage and wheat-enriched pasta and i think it'll taste pretty good.

we'll watch the other recent movie about truman capote and the writing of in cold blood. this one's called infamous. it has daniel craig as perry smith so that's good enough for us. plus it has sandra bullock as harper lee. why not?

max versus star

finally the star island corporation has released the registration forms for the 2007 conferences. i downloaded them and printed them out. hoo boy.

now it's a matter of filling out the forms and writing the check. (it's gotten more expensive over the last decade!) and then it's wait and see about max's health. we have until may 26 to cancel and get our registration fee back. if max is well, relatively, at that time, then we might be in a pickle. if he is alive when july rolls around then we're not going to star. kara can't leave him for that long at his age. it would be too hard on him. the conference itself is a week long and we'd take a few days on either end for travel and visiting with family, so we'd be gone the better part of two weeks.

max does still have occasional moments of cognitive lucency, though he's quite physically unstable. his back legs keep going out from under him and he's frequently incontinent of bladder and bowel. sometimes he stands with his nose against a wall for minutes at a time and i have no idea what's going on in his head. kara says i could go to star without her, if it comes to that, and that's sweet, but i don't know if i want that. we'll see. it's not that i want the old man dead, no sir. he's a good old man, he truly is. at the same time, it would be wonderful to go to star with kara this year.

#68: my 23rd classic

once upon a time, in my reading life after college, i was good about alternating a contemporary novel with a "classic," that is to say, probably some book i should have read during my formal education. or something. i rather fell off that wagon some time back but i think i'll get in (on?) it again. today i finished the octavia butler book - it was good - and i read the introduction (by the author) of main street by sinclair lewis, which is #68 on the modern library's list of the best novels (of the 20th century?). if i might brag, on the board's list (as opposed to the reader's list, which i am for the moment ignoring) i've already read numbers 2, 3, 4, 10, 13, 15, 17, 18, 19, 41, 46 (which was very good indeed), 51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 60, 64, 65, 67, 76, and 88. well, actually, that's only 22 books out of 100, so maybe i don't have bragging rights here.

i would understand arguments against the relevance or what have you of lists such as this. i remember the hubbub when this list was first put out. there were detractors. i don't know if things like this matter. anyway. this lewis book appeals to me right here and right now and i'm going to read it. so there.

(otherwise)

i confess i don't tend to follow contemporary pop music all too closely. currently in the cd player here in my office i have shakira singing in spanish, pete droge, kris delmhorst, and neko case. i do like this newish neko album! apparently she was at the paramount in seattle last night and obviously i missed her. i didn't watch the grammies last night either but i was pleased this morning to learn that the dixie chicks (pictured, right) won 5 awards - i think they won each award for which they were nominated. i do like the chicks. i like texans who don't like bush, and thus i'm sad about molly ivins.

but let's try and smile in spite of the loss of ms ivins. kara and i are going to the paramount again soon too! on friday i bought tickets to see ira glass do "this american life." it'll be our 3rd time seeing ira, so you know we dig ira the most. that'll be on march 7. two days before that, on the 5th, we'll be up in seattle seeing art spiegelman talk about this and that. i suppose our cultural season is beginning.

actually those are all the tickets we have at this point. i don't know what might be next.

sorry if i got a little link-happy there. maybe that'll stop now. in other news, quite early on saturday morning, before 7:30, our new treadmill arrived. we're happy about that. kara had a rough time last week without a treadmill. perhaps foolishly we celebrated the treadmill by going out to breakfast at the hob nob. and on friday evening a mere boy came to our house to "detail" our bathroom sink. i don't know what's involved in "detailing" but this fellow was in and our of our house in a minute and a half, so i hope he knows what's involved. he said the new sink would "probably" go in there just fine. (now i'm getting quotation-mark happy. sorry.) the new sink will probably arrive in the next month or so. that'll be a good thing too. if it fits.

john ashbery (pictured, left) has a new book out and i'm excited about it. what's it called, you ask? a wordly country. (penultimate link this post, promise.) i'm reading positive reviews and i'm waiting for paperback. if he were coming to town i'd certainly try and see him. i don't know if he travels much. i should look into that. i saw him in seattle shortly after i moved here, round about the year 2000. i had him sign my copy of self-portrait in a convex mirror, and that's something i treasure now.

have i mentioned? last week i received my copy of mailman's first novel, woman of ill fame. (ultimate link, end of story.) she's an old college buddy of mine, another ireland aficionado, and she seems to be enjoying this success. her second novel, hexe, comes out later this year, if you can believe that. congratulations, mailman! she's a busy woman, recently married and pregnant too! holy crap!

otherwise ... i don't know. eliot needs to be shaved soon; he's starting to look like a pomeranian. not really. kara last night accidently gave sagan the tramadol meant for max. sagan's so good about taking pills and she was right there, eager. so we think she slept pretty well; she woke up okay this morning, and i suppose that's a good thing. i slept quite well last night too, even without a tramadol. i dreamt of being a bus driver; i was looking for a place to park my bus. i was driving up on the sidewalks, even though that didn't seem like quite the right thing to do. there was something significant about all of that, where to put my bus, but i don't recall now what it might have been. ideas?

o e butler

i'm reading the last book by octavia butler, fledgling. i've read only one other book by her. i think it was parable of the talents but i'm not 100% sure about that. it could have been parable of the sower. it wasn't kindred, though i have a copy of that one. wait - it was mind of my mind. yes, that one. i admit i've liked the idea of her for a long time, without actually reading much of her stuff. i like that she was an enormous black lesbian with a tremendous deep voice who wrote racially- and sexually-minded science fiction. is that weird? maybe. i don't know. i like that she occasionally shopped in the bookstore where i used to work, so i saw her sometimes. she bought trashy romance novels that she said she read as candy. so anyway i'm reading her last book, fledgling, and i'm liking it a lot! it's a twist on the vampire genre. it's engrossing and unpredictable. for some reason i'm into vampires (in a minor way - i don't dress up or anything). so i just wanted to say that i'm enjoying this book and thinking of this woman who died a year ago this month.

last day

what i'm blue about today is that it's the last day of our holiday. it's gone by so fast! ah well. we still have today. and it's silly to dread going back to work, because i rather like my job when all is said and done. at the same time, at times like this i curse the concept of the 40-(plus)-hour workweek and the industrial revolution and the loss of the largely agrarian civilization that once was. money, money, money. damn it all. even if pennies will soon be worth five cents.

speaking of money, we probably blew more this weekend than we would have if we'd gone away. there were two big-ticket items and some meals out. on wednesday last, my last day of work before this break, kara succeeded in running her treadmill into the ground. the motor died and when she tried to fold it up (as it's meant to fold) the frame cracked. she'd had the thing for seven or ten years and she used it pretty hard. on thursday we bought a new one, a nordictrack. it'll be here saturday. it's nice; i'll use it too.

also, yesterday, we bought a sink for our bathroom, to go with the faucet we finally received a month or so ago. someone will come by in the next week or so to give us a quote on installation, but the sink itself is paid for. we're excited about the sink too.

and movies! thursday we went to see pan's labyrinth and friday we saw children of men. both were quite excellent. guillermo del toro, the director of the former, also directed the devil's backbone, also an exceptional genre-bender. he's fantastic with visuals. there were some scenes in his film that made me wince in horror, and there were some elements of the plot that kara and i questioned afterward, but overall it was impressive. children of men, directed by alfonso cuaron (who also directed y tu mama tambien) and starring clive owen (a definitive favorite of ours), also had some scenes of horror that were difficult to watch. clive is so very good, though, and it was an excellent movie. i liked it a lot. we made some good cinematic choices.

and, as i say, we still have today. we need to go to the grocery store in a big way and i think we'll wait until the stupid bowl starts. i might do some housecleaning, if you can believe that, and some more laundry. otherwise, some last-minute relaxing and perhaps crossword puzzling, until our all-too-brief holiday comes to a senseless end.