signed, sealed, delivered

yesterday i ordered two large "obama '08" yard signs.

i was gonna wait 'til the man secured the nomination, but the numbers are in, and they're indisputable. the democratic nominee is barack obama (hillary will just have to come to terms with this fact...hopefully sooner, rather than later).

so i ordered my signs.

and while that's good, it's not the best part.

the best part is that our next door neighbor, one gladys kravitz*, is a rabid republican.

in '04 we were obliged to endure her bush-cheney sign (not to mention the ongoing nausea-mare of bush and cheney themselves).

in '06 we were treated to local gop propaganda, notably a big "mike mcgavick for u.s. senate" sign. thankfully, that didn't work out so well, for gladys or mcgavick, who lost in a landslide.

all the while, we kept our peace. we displayed no counter-propaganda. we put no stickers on our bumpers. we especially did not shout at her windows through a bullhorn.

those days are over. well, except for the bullhorn-shouting part. though we reserve the right to bust that out later.

the signs are on the way.

but wait. it gets better still. turns out gladys's live-at-home son, we'll call him rimbaud, is in the obama camp. we know this because the boy attended the washington state caucuses, kinda sly-like, without mom noticing. and, he was one of the many gathered in the teachers' lounge who did not vote for clinton.

isn't it rich?

we assume at some point we'll see a "mccain" sign up next door (though it turns out many hard-right wingers don't find mccain sufficiently insane---go figure). in addition to some strategic vandalism on that front, we contemplate with great joy the deployment of the obama yard signs.

the gloves are off, gladys.

no prisoners.

* no, not really.

the fairness doctrine

newsflash: life isn't fair.

if it were, a young woman, full of promise, wouldn't have been shot dead last week in chapel hill, nc.

if it were, another young woman, in new york, wouldn't be getting rich from her bad choices and her notoriety.

if it were, eliot spitzer...well, come to think of it, eliot got what was coming to him. he deserves to be an ex-governor, shamed out of office and currently very uncomfortable in his own home. if it is, in fact, still his home, and his wife hasn't run him off as well.

life wasn't fair to mrs. spitzer, either.

eve carson was student body president at the university of north carolina. she was popular with peers, respected by faculty, and pretty in an effortless, 22-year old kind of way. by all accounts, she made the right choices to get where she was. but because life isn't fair, she was killed early one morning, for a handful of credit cards and her car.

now her friends and family are left to do whatever people do to keep breathing in such circumstances. at the moment, i can't imagine what that might be.

ashley alexandra dupré is the high-priced call girl who helped spitzer crash and burn so spectacularly. her life hasn't been idyllic. she was abused in her youth, dropped out of high school, left home, used drugs and spent time on the streets.

somehow she found her way into a high-paying prostitution gig, used the money to record some music, and eventually stumbled across the former governor of new york.

life wasn't fair to ashley. it's doubtful that her childhood dream was to be a hooker. but suddenly, despite a plethora of bad choices in her 22 years, all her dreams are coming true. she's making a bundle of money on her songs, and being offered seven-figure paydays to exploit her new celebrity.

since i have a daughter, i empathize with the parents of both these girls. one child, gone forever, the other a prostitute at the center of a national scandal. it's bizarre. surreal. a turn of the wheel that grinds people under.

things happen for a reason, some say, but i don't believe it. there's no rhyme or reason to these stories...or any others, near as i can tell. life is many things, but rational ain't one of them.

and it surely isn't fair.

souls foreclosed

we like to think we live in a nice, friendly neighborhood.

we like to think we can count on each other for some important things, like keeping an eye on the kids, or jump-starting a car on a cold morning, or watching over the house if we're away.

we like to think we live amongst people who don't swoop in like vultures to buy the neighbors' house in a foreclosure frenzy.

but according to an e-mail i received recently, people are scoring GREAT DEALS on houses in OUR NEIGHBORHOOD due to the wave of foreclosures nationwide.

apparently it's an INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY to invest in real estate that may not come along again IN OUR LIFETIME.

isn't that great?

an infomercial on one of the local tv stations echoed the e-mail, only louder, and with testimonials.

"we swooped in and bought our neighbors' house, and we feel great about it," said one effervescent couple.

"this was a great opportunity for us to kick our neighbors to the curb," gushed another.

i'm exaggerating only slightly. in fact, the less discerning in the audience would notice the hyperbole not at all.

what have we come to that some of us will greet our neighbors cordially on the weekend, and emotionally eviscerate them on monday? that some so-called friends will talk the neighbor talk, but walk the republican walk?

we've come to no damn good, that's what.

they say a fish rots from the head down, and in some cases that's true.

but that's no excuse for people who, by appearance, are just like us, but when times get tough...have no heart at all.

a world away

occasionally i see myself on a skiff, looking for marlins, in the florida keys.

in this little fantasy, it's just me, old and alone, on the last few miles of a long journey.

i don't know why the keys, except maybe that the water there is warm and iridescent blue, and that after the global-warming hurricane years, what's left of the land there is barren. and cheap.

as i'm old, with no one to worry about except myself, i don't worry about the next storm so much as the next meal. the next fish into the boat.

but, importantly for my old bones, the air is warm, and humid, and keeps the aches from being too bad.

i've kicked my caffeine habit, and i've given up the wine and beer. none of it is readily available, and i have no way to keep anything hot. or cold. just room temperature, which is a pretty consistent 82.

i don't know where the children are. and they have no way to reach me. they were both pretty well set up after their mother passed, and i didn't feel like i had a lot of value to add to their lives. the boy never really liked me, see, and the girl...well, she was always so self-posessed and happy. what use did she have for a tired, disheartened old man?

there's no internet, no news, no outrage to channel.

i don't miss it.

i rise with the sun, sleep at sunset. i breathe, and, on really good days, manage to stay out of my own head and out of my own way for hours at a time. it's very refreshing.

and quiet. even the storms, noisy as they are, don't disturb the soundless days and nights.

i fish. and swim. and walk. i watch the sky, and meditate on the finite and the infinite.

nothing gets resolved, but then again, no one ever said life was easy.

it's just an occasional fantasy. it doesn't come around often. i have no idea what it means.

and it's not so bad. it just is.

well, that wasn't so bad

the spaceneedl winter vacation is over.

in its place is a passel of memories that can only be characterized as memorable.

let's start with the weather. it was warm. very warm. and sunny. the only way rain was falling from that sky was if somebody turned on the fire hoses.

which, apparently someone did.

a couple weeks before our visit, there was a fire in the condo building where we were staying. it didn't seem to amount to much, from what we could see, except that all the amenities were closed. the pool. the hot tub. the game room. you know, the places to send the children so we could drink in peace.

all shut down.

backtrack.

prior to the trip, our large transport vehicle went out of commission. the alternate little car, while a very comfortable ride, is little. it hauls very little gear. so we were obliged to rent an expensive car-top carrier for all our stuff.

insult to injury update: it took 4 hours to get the rack installed.

the drive up to canada was long, made longer still by the backup at the border. the new gps device gave us bad advice, so instead of taking the truck crossing, we queued up with the rest of the sheep at the peace arch crossing. mrs. spaceneedl expressed her dissatisfaction with gps technology several times.

finally...finally, we rolled into whistler village, picked up our keys to the condo, and, bleary-eyed, read the "sorry for the inconvenience" sign posted in the elevator.

we spent the rest of our first night on the phone, insisting on new accommodations.

the next day mrs. spaceneedl and i snowboarded while the children skied circles around us. in truth, we approximated some snowboard-like motions, punctuated by intense, painful falling-like motions. the children simply left us behind for the entire day. occasionally they would wave and laugh at us from the chairlift.

afterward, we looked forward to an idyllic evening of a horse-drawn sleigh ride over the snow-covered hills of the chateau whistler golf course, followed by a fun and tasty fondue dinner.

halfway into the ride, mrs. spaceneedl suffered an asthma attack.

once a bona fide horse person, she now is at risk of a pulmonary event if she even thinks about horses. okay, that may be a slight exaggeration. still, on this night, the proximity to a team of beautiful draught horses, combined with the cold air, put the missus into an asthmatic fit.

and her inhaler, which she should never be without if she's even thinking about visualizing the word "horse"? back at the condo.

which, thankfully, was only a half-mile run away.

by the time i got back, she looked as if she had been visited by the angel of death herself. she was surrounded by restaurant staff, all yammering on about their experiences with asthma and their sure-fire cures.

after due consideration, we decided to go with the inhaler. eventually it did its job, and eventually we enjoyed a caloriffic meal. with alcohol.

we returned to the condo and retrieved a message that our plea for new quarters had been granted. we were physically and emotionally exhausted, but figured we had raised too much of a fuss not to move to the new place. which turned out to be a big upgrade. a huge hot tub, a heated pool, a game room with a big-screen tv.

the rooms, where we collapsed, were nice, too.

the next day we got up and did it all over again. the kids laughed and waved. mrs. spaceneedl, tired of being mocked, ditched the snowboard in favor of skis. apres-ski, there was an off-course injury incident at the tube park, but by blind luck, it didn't involve either of the little needls.

later, we ate. later still, we slept. the next day, the sun shone again.

on the way home, we ignored the advice from the gps, and took the truck crossing route. the device seemed genuinely disappointed each time we bypassed a recommended turn. "recalculating," she said, inconsolably. we shaved a good hour off our trip.

in the end, no one got hurt, some fun was had, and i progressed significantly, snowboarding-wise. despite numerous falls (which were painful way out of proportion to speed and slope), i'm ready to go back and try again.

next year. maybe.

you know how to whistle, don't you?

february in canada is supposed to be cold. and snowy. followed by more cold.

conducive to the kind of winter activities picture postcards and fond family memories are made of.

that's why months ago the spaceneedl family booked a fabulous vacation at whistler, one of the top-rated winter resort towns on the planet.

strangely, nothing on the fabulous whistler web site said anything about rain.

the ski forecast for this week, of all weeks, calls for highs near 50, lows in the upper 30s. with rainshowers. does this sound like a winter wonderland? or does it sound more like a big bowl of slush?

now, maybe slush is easier on the body when falling off a snowboard. then again, we may not find out, because rain and boarding don't seem like an ideal combination.

mrs. spaceneedl and i have been to whistler several times over the years, in winter and summer. it was always a great place, regardless of the season, because there was lots to do. ski, skate, golf, roller blade. shop. eat. drink. etcetera. not necessarily in that order.

the key difference between now and then, of course, is the addition of the little spaceneedls. back in the day there was no one saying, "i'm bored!" or, "i don't wanna eat at this restaurant." or, "i wanna go swimming for the fourth time today."

back then we were free to do anything, or nothing, as we saw fit. now we're obliged to be resourceful. which we're capable of...to a point. if the skiing and snowboarding and horse-drawn sleigh rides are off the table, we're going to have lots of hours to fill. if the rain does come, across the three days they're predicting, the tenor of the trip will veer into the nearest slushbank.

the whistler website lists an assortment of traditional winter activities, along with bungee jumping, heli tours, and a zipline thingy. it's highly likely that mrs. spaceneedl would veto any and all of these. probably for good reason.

on the summer page we find "flightseeing," bear viewing, atv tours and the like. count those as a big oh-for on the mrs-meter.

if the run-off from the mountain is horrific enough, maybe we can do some white water rafting on our snowboards. that'd be some good family fun, wouldn't it?

unexpected automotive update: the spaceneedl family truckster went into the shop yesterday for routine maintenance, and was diagnosed with some unexpectedly serious deficiencies. so we'll be driving to canada in the civic. where will we stow the bungee-jumping gear?

upside update: the sun is shining today. in the PNW, that's a vacation in itself.

obama-rama

for ten years, the spaceneedls languished in a dark political purgatory, surrounded by soulless social conservatives.

then we moved to the pacific northwest, and into the light.

today was caucus saturday in washington state, and the spaceneedl family walked to the polls amongst a horde of like-minded liberals. it was glorious.

the crowd converging on our elementary school was astonishing. boisterous. celebratory. democratic turnout across the state overwhelmed nearly every caucus, surpassing previous records by double and more.

they ran out of sign-in forms, then chairs, then standing room. people packed into every nook and cranny, while children wove in between.

before the vote, everyone agreed that democrats were lucky to have two strong presidential candidates to choose from.

then nearly everyone went for obama.

it wasn't even close.

just the day before, obama supporters packed key arena past capacity, while 3,000 more looked on from outside. it was the largest political rally in state history.

governor chris gregoire officially endorsed the illinois senator earlier in the day, adding her voice to the obama chorus.

today, some clinton supporters played the gender card, saying it was time for a woman, this woman, to be president. what about hillary's, uh, electability problem? nope, doesn't exist, they insisted.

i disagreed, agreeably, but vowed to support hillary, should she get the nomination.

then, to a younger woman wearing a barack button, i said, "but i hope it's him."

it's time to move into the light. all are welcome.

ow ow ow ow ow

there's never a chiropractor around when you need one.

like now, fer instance.

i traveled to san diego earlier this week, and stayed in a very cool downtown hotel. the sign said courtyard by marriott, but it was completely unlike the sterile, cookie-cutter courtyard by marriott you'd expect. lovingly poured into an old bank building, it was one of the most unhotel-like hotels i've ever seen.

soaring ceilings, original teller windows, huge vault doors, marble everywhere...it was like walking into a time warp, back when banks projected an air of authority and respectability and responsibility instead of fabric panels and laminated teller mats and subprime loans.

here's a meeting room set up in the former safe deposit box vault. it's memorable all by itself, never mind if the door triggered shut automatically and locked everybody in until morning. which it didn't. i'm just saying, is all.

this is all irrelevant preamble to the fact that the pillows in the bed in the unhotel screwed up my neck something awful. i don't know how, i don't know why, but sometime late monday night slash early tuesday morning, my neck and shoulders got in a twist and have stayed there ever since.

i'm too busy at work to get up and go to any kind of appointment. and sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day does not help the situation in the slightest. but do chiropractors have saturday hours? they do not.

someone told me recently that chiropractors are charlatans, or cannibals, or some such perjorative. i understand the ambivalence, as not everyone has a positive experience or outcome with chiropractic. it's worked for me in the past, however, so i'm prepared to grant the practice more latitude than some. i'd rather have my neck cranked around than, say, take pain killers and muscle relaxants that don't come in a bottle filled with fermented grape juice. if you see what i mean, and i think you do.

in the meantime, i'm going to call and set up a massage appointment somewhere. it couldn't hurt.(then again, maybe it could. and maybe that would be a good thing.) this place sounds promising: "the relaxing swedish deep-tissue day spa." the web site features smiling swedish masseuses showing off ms. olympia physiques, and smiling swedish administrative assistants filling out insurance forms and waiving deductibles. everyone goes home happy.

the very thought of it has me feeling better already.

what'll you have?

there's a new wine shop near our house.

we're doing our best to help it succeed.

in '06 we bought a wine chiller at our children's elementary school auction. it came with half a case of good bottles of wine, each costing more than we'd ever spend at the grocery store.

one of the bottles was a '91 cabernet sauvignon, something from caymus vineyards, i believe. let me go check...

okay, this is it:

i googled the bottle for the label at left, and guess how much this bottle is selling for right now...$349.

it was nowhere near that when we bought it. wine is an appreciating asset? who knew being a lush could also be lucrative?

the bottle is too expensive to drink. i mean, how can we enjoy a $350 bottle of wine? we can't. we're, like, $10-15 a bottle people.

it's a conundrum.

take, for example, the kim crawford sauvignon blanc above. it's from marlborough, new zealand, and it's marvelous. it has a green pepper finish to it that is characteristic of other new zealand sauvignon blancs we've tried. it's dry, but very flavorful. and you can get it at costco, for the love of cheap wine.

our basement stays cool, year-round, perfect for storing wine. so we bought some pre-fab wine racks from pottery barn, and they fit perfectly into a niche at the bottom of the stairs. i've just gotten them filled, for the first time ever. bottles from the new store, mostly.

it's an eclectic collection of reds and whites, mostly inexpensive, with a couple bottles making their way into the chiller now and then. this one, for example...

the last grgich hills chardonnay we had was at a business dinner in a fancy hotel in san francisco, circa 1990. the wine was an '87, and it was one of the few bottles in my life that i remember specifically. it was that good.

hopefully the '05 will be equally enjoyable.

there's very little point to all of this, except to say that we drink our share of wine. we heard somewhere that it's heart-healthy, in moderation, and really, that's all the rationale we need. besides, we like it.

and as some of you may know, we like to share it with friends.

a toast, then, to all y'all.

namaste.

p.s. bon, you'll have to go check it out.

i don't know much

look at this face
i know the years are showing
look at this life
i still don't know where it's going
i don't know much
but i know i love you
that may be all i need to know
i don't know much
but i know i love you
and that may be
all there is to know

a cold, dark, winter day in the pacific northwest finds the spaceneedl family indoors, moving slowly, feeling none too eager to get out in the world.

except for missus spaceneedl, who is busy businessing in boston. she left the morning after i returned from miami, so by the time she returns (late tuesday) we won't have seen each other in 10 days.

could be worse. our neighbors, who got married about six months ago, have split up. i don't know how they could live together for more than a year, plan and pull off an extravagant outdoor wedding, then just, plahh! hit the wall in less than half a year.

according to her, the fighting started practically as soon as the wedding ended. there is no "according to him," because he's gone back to the midwest, which doesn't sound like much of an improvement.

i know, "this kind of thing happens all the time"®, but i still don't get it. nor do i get the corrolary, "it's better that it happened now instead of five years from now."®

i'm not a big fan of conventional wisdom, because it doesn't apply. it doesn't take individuals or a billion variables into account. why is it better that it happened now? are you sure it's better? you know these people? you know the future? no? then why are you running your mouth?

sorry. i'm cranky. my neighbor's biological clock is ticking loudly, and she's heartbroken, about seventeen different ways. "a woman doesn't have to be married to have a baby," mrs. spaceneedl reminds me. this is true, but it ain't optimal, either. parenting is hard enough with two--i don't know how single parents manage. financially, logistically, emotionally, or otherwise.

this morning's clouds have turned to rain. it's 3:30 in the afternoon, and it looks like it'll be dark soon (though today never really got to be all that light). in the interim, the little spaceneedls and i have been to the climbing gym, where lots of couples were clambering around, smiling, having fun.

the requirement there is that you work as a team; one climbs while the other belays. you do your job, pay attention, make sure your partner doesn't hit the floor. or the wall. the agreement is non-negotiable: don't let me down, don't let me get hurt, and i promise to do the same.

there's never any ambiguity if the agreement is broken.

it's a flawed analogy, i know. relationships are fraught with ambiguity. but the premise is sound. you work together, day after day, year after year, and you've got a chance at whatever permanence we're allowed.

it beats the alternative.

and that may be all we need to know.

past ostentatious, on to vulgar

there's no way to sugar-coat this thing, so i'm just gonna come out with it, kinda like ripping the band-aid off quickly:

tomorrow i'm flying to miami for a national sales meeting.

wait, there's more.

we're all staying at the ritz-carlton, south beach.

there. it's out. and some of you are prolly saying, "lucky son of a mother somethin' somethin'." can't blame you. the idea of it doesn't suck.

but here's the thing...i don't particularly feel like going. for me, there's no dressing up business travel. no matter how much lipstick you put on that pig, you're still working. you're still "on" at all times, even during the expensive dinners, when you'd like to be diving into the exquisite bottles of red wine that cost three times what you'd ever spend on your own dime.

you can't get too loud, or too silly, or act like you're enjoying it too much, because...well, because it just ain't a good career move.

the fact is, the company had an amazing year. if ever a bunch of people had reason to celebrate success, this is it. furthermore, 2008 and beyond looks pretty darn good as well. so maybe the circumstances and the fabulous venue will spark some kind of wild, spontaneous funfest.

it would be entirely justified.

here's another thing. the ritz-carlton, south beach, in the middle of winter. just using those words, in that particular order, costs thousands of dollars. the ritz people own the rights, after all, and can charge any damn thing they want, because people will pay it. which makes this a very expensive post.

i'm trying to imagine making the kind of money it'd take to be able to come to the ritz-carlton, south beach, in the middle of winter (tm), and not worry about how much it costs. me, i'd be scurrying around like a howler monkey trying to squeeze every bit of value out of every waking second, in a vain attempt to justify the expense. in fact, i'd forego sleep entirely in that pursuit, necessitating a post-vacation recovery vacation.

my imagination, at its most vivid, pales next to the splendor that is the ritz-carlton, south beach, in the middle of winter (tm).

you know what? to hell with it. i'm gonna get into the spirit of this thing and get a little crazy. i'm gonna wear the comfy robe. and work out at the wondiferous fitness center. and maybe even entertain a foo-foo beach drink with an umbrella in it.

i will do these things, not for myself you understand, but for others. i will do this despite the fact that, at the end of the day, it is still business travel. and as god is my witness...i will never stay at a holiday inn express again.

ba-rock star

i worry about barak obama.

in fact, i've worried about him for more than a year now.

the closer we get to november, 2008, the more he resembles another charismatic candidate, at another crucial time in our history: robert f. kennedy.

especially on occasions like this...

The closing anecdote is based on an incident at a rally in Greenwood, S.C., where, on a miserable morning, with a meager crowd, a single black woman in the audience first revived Obama's spirit by shouting out encouragement and then got everyone chanting, responsively, "Fired up!" "Ready to go!"

As he tells the familiar story, Obama segues from a conversational tone to a shout and explains that the chant has now become his trademark and slogan. So, he tells his listeners, "I've got one thing to ask you. Are you FIRED UP? Are you READY TO GO? FIRED UP! READY TO GO!"

And then, as the shouting becomes almost too loud to bear, he adds the five words that capsulize his whole message and sends the voters scrambling back into their winter coats and streaming out the door:

"Let's go change the world."

And it sounds as if he means it.

In every audience I have seen, there is a jolt of pure electric energy at those closing words. Tears stain some cheeks -- and some people look a little thunderstruck.

at a time when political audiences are deeply suspicious and cynical, obama possesses the rarest of gifts: the capacity to inspire. his words are direct echoes of kennedy, whose campaign rallied millions in his drive for the 1968 democratic nomination. kennedy's momentum looked unstoppable in los angeles, during an event at the ambassador hotel...

“We're a great country, a selfless country and a compassionate country, and I plan to make that the basis of my running. And now on to Chicago and let's win there.” – Bobby Kennedy, June 5, 1968

moments later, kennedy was shot.

i met obama in chicago in october, 2006. more accurately, i watched him work a crowd outside the chicago tribune building, and got to shake his hand a couple times. what stood out to me was how charged the atmosphere was around him, and how vulnerable he seemed.

near as i could tell, he was accompanied by just one bodyguard. more importantly, the soon-to-be-candidate was fearless in approaching people, stopping to talk, extending a hand. it was a thrilling moment, but also disconcerting. anyone with an agenda and a gun could've put him down, then and there, with little trouble. given u.s. history, that prospect is not so far-fetched.

since that day obama has became more than just a democratic presidential candidate. he's now the frontrunner, or nearly so, in several states. as a result, his security has improved dramatically--in such matters, the secret service doesn't take chances.

even so, the concern is real. it may be unfounded, and the parallels with rfk entirely superficial...but america is a troubled nation at a volatile time. torture is being done in our name, and we are being spied upon by our own government. what other machinations might be in the works? there are, after all, a lot of powerful people out there who don't want anyone to "go change the world."

if you're the praying sort, you might want to add a few words on the subject tonight.

i'm not the praying sort...so i'll just continue to worry.

want-need-want-need-want-need-want-need

i'm not asking for anything for christmas.

there is nothing mrs. spaceneedl could buy at fred meyers or world market or nordstrom or rei that i actually need. she'd basically be throwing money at a vast retail wood chipper, and getting nothing of significant value in return.

my children, however, want everything they see on the kid-advertising cartoon channels, of which there are dozens and dozens. a riotous digital barrage incites them to spend mommy and daddy's money on an array of extruded-plastic with a half-life of 5,000 years and a useful life of five seconds.

they're children, of course, and therefore defenseless against aggressive, amoral advertisers turning them into wide-eyed, drooling, chanting shopping zombies...just like most adults, come to think of it.

this is not a post about rampant consumerism and tinsel-plated holidays. one might just as effectively stick their head in the ocean and yell at fish. which i would gladly do if the water here were 35 degrees warmer.

no, i think it's a post about limited resources of all kinds, and how we're encouraged to use them up in the most frivolous ways. psst, hey bud, you got 20 bucks in your pocket? here, i'll trade you for this string of blinking red chili pepper lights.

psst, hey lady, you got a couple free hours? well, sit down right here in front of this electric box and let the artificial images and sounds wash over you. trust me, your brain won't feel a thing.

mind you, i do not stand in judgement of those who spend 20 bucks on chili pepper lights or a couple hours in front of the 42" hi-def lcd video monitor. i am many things, but "transparent hypocrite" is not one of them. most of the time.

i'm just observing that it's way too easy to fritter away our way-too-finite resources on such things, knowing full well that time spent watching a ball game played by steroid-fueled sociopaths is time we'll never get back and will have a hard time rationalizing when we're looking back on a lifetime of poor consumer decisions.

just as few will say, "i wish i'd spent more time at the office," fewer still will say "i wish i'd seen roger clemens throw more 'roid-rage fastballs at people's heads."

mrs. spaceneedl laments the dearth of "holiday spirit" at our house. she misses the idyllic holidays of her childhood, and spends much energy this time of year trying to recreate them. i ask, "do you suppose the holidays were great fun for your parents, or were they just as exhausted as we are and making the best of it?"

the question gives her pause, and gives me time to put up a string of chili pepper lights on our charlie brown christmas tree.

holiday retail question: why hasn't the estate of charles m. schulz ever marketed a line of "charlie brown christmas trees"? i bet they'd make a fortune.

anyhoo, i'm not asking for anything for christmas.

but neither will i object if a bottle of veuve clicquot champagne with my name on it shows up under our tree. and if that's accompanied by a gift certificate for a thalassotherapy massage for two at the wickaninnish inn, who am i to be ungrateful?

if 'tis the season to fritter resources...we could do much worse.

oxygen, stat

fat and out of shape is no way to go through life.

so i've joined the Y.

this is part of the my "live on one side of the world, work on the other" dilemma. as noted previously, until i remedy that situation, i'm obliged to make the best of it.

what i've missed most about not being on the seattle side is the basketball. well, that and my family, i guess i should add. not necessarily in that order. family, then basketball. okay? may i continue? thanks.

the no-longer-new job precluded the hoops games i was accustomed to over the past several years. since i'm old, it didn't take long for me to fall way out of basketball shape.

i missed it. there's nothing like being fit enough to play basketball. you feel like you can do anything, fitness-wise, attitude-wise, and wise-guy-wise. if everything is harder when you're tired, everything is easier when you're in basketball shape.

anyway, my company recently moved into new space--even further from home. that's the bad news. the good news is, the Y is practically next door.

which means i can now occasionally sneak out at lunch for a game or three. which i did this week, twice.

it wasn't pretty. my conditioning is pitiful and i have no game whatsoever. the fact is, i have no natural aptitude for the game--but i am willing to try really hard.

what i don't understand is how the people i'm playing against keep getting younger while i keep getting older. is that fair? that's not fair. how old are you, junior? 23? got any kids? a house? a job?

didn't think so. and, it doesn't matter. you either run with the big dogs or you stay on the porch. i'm tired of being on the porch. i'm not a porch guy. yet.

that day will come soon enough, and when it does, it's forever. though i'll delay it as long as possible, inevitably it'll hurt more to play than to wish i were playing.

until then, however, i can still run up and down the court, play adequate defense, box out, and put up some bad shots. i can try really hard, and get back into basketball shape.

if that's as good as it gets, i'll be perfectly content.

because for me, that is as good as it gets.

all i want for christmas

three bedrooms, two baths, 1,800 square feet, and a water view.

somewhere in the san juan islands.

mind you, the same configuration in hawaii would be better still. but there's a little matter of access. and by that i mean access to a bank vault full of thousand-dollar bills.

case in point: behind the oahu property we recently rented was another home up for sale. it was, basically, a double-wide with an awning and an attached deck. it wasn't waterfront, and near as we could tell, may not have even had a water view.

it was, by any standard, a ridiculously humble abode, and it could've been ours (or yours, or anybody's) for the low-low price of $1.75 million.

the fact is, there aren't many places in the world that are warm, waterfront and within our means. so, like most people, we're required to manage our vacation expectations. and by that i mean, "rent."

that said, mrs. spaceneedle and i have decided it would be nice if we had a family vacation home somewhere--a place to which we could retreat on short notice, a place we could get to know over the course of years, a place we could live, perhaps, in our rapidly approaching old age.

somewhere like the san juan islands.

we spent the thanksgiving holiday on orcas island, and found it agreeable. not too close, not too far, not too crowded, not too desolate. we took the ferry out of anacortes this trip, but spoke to some folks who jump on a kenmore air flight that departs from lake union and drops them off an hour later, right in front of the rosario resort.

sounds pretty good, right? yeah, as it turns out, orcas island property (and old age, apparently) is beyond our means. so we're looking for investors.

if you have a love of the san juans and a quarter of a million dollars you can't decide where to park, we need to talk.

we need to talk about 3 or 4 months a year, at least one month per season, on one of the most scenic islands north and west of seattle (but south and east of, say, vancouver island). we need to talk about our mutual love of marine mammals in the wild, and grilled salmon on the table. of pristine water views and bucolic wooded woods. of an investment that will secure our place in the annals of family vacations and our place in the sun when global warming really takes hold.

if you don't have a $250 large on hand, no problem. we'll entertain the idea of undeveloped land, upon which we can pitch a nice tent, until such time that we can afford to build something slightly more permanent. like one of these.

keep in mind, the clock's ticking. water-view real estate ain't getting any cheaper, and we ain't getting any younger. i can feel old age settling into my joints as i type.

act now! buy now! location, location, and that third thing, whatever it is!

hyperventilating. must. find. paper bag.

hhhumph.

okay. i'm fine. thanks for caring.

we now return you to reality, and our regularly managed expectations.

* * * * *

update: when we find our spot of land, we'll start by building one of these on it. maybe a whole compound full of them. yurts rule.

to boldly go where others have gone before

i ain't down with this. not one bit.

paramount studios is gearing up to shoot a new "star trek" movie, featuring the characters from the original series.

not the original actors, mind you. same characters, different faces.

i'm a big fan of the star trek franchise. i have been, i realize, for decades. so i should be happy to see another installment, with an all-new (old) enterprise brought to life with the latest digital legerdemain.

but i'm not.

kirk should always be william shatner. sure, he was overwrought, but that was part of the fun. spock and leonard nimoy are indistinguishable. and no one, but no one, will ever replace james doohan in his signature 'scotty' role.

i know, it's silly. it's just hollywood fiction and now completely about the money. i should care about this not one bit.

can't help it. it feels like they're trying to take something valuable from those of us who embraced the originals for all their quirks and flaws. it feels like they should just leave this fond memory of my childhood well enough alone.

it feels like i'm getting old.

take a look at the actors in that link. cripes, they're children. they don't have the chops of deforest kelley or george takei. they have none of the gravitas of patrick stewart or kate mulgrew. to quote shatner from one of the star trek movies, "i don't think these kids can steer."

creatively, i also object to the completely derivative nature of the project. as if the failure of upn's retro 'enterprise' experiment weren't instructive enough. why would anyone want to go down the "butch and sundance--the early days" road again?

it's pointless. and lame. and it diminishes the franchise.

i know. i should wait to see the damn movie. it might be the greatest thing since klingons and tribbles. and maybe i'm just afraid i might like it. because, really, i don't want to like it. i like the old characters, and the old characterizations. the idea of throwing them over for a bunch of upstarts feels, i don't know, disloyal.

after years of watching the plot lines mature, and the actors grow old, and the series itself evolve in myriad directions, i'm loath to let go. then again, enjoying the premise all this time requires a certain suspension of disbelief. perhaps resistance is, in fact, futile.

we'll see. maybe the old magic can happen--one more time.

the narcolepsy machine

evenings at the spaceneedl household...

we eat dinner. we drink wine. we watch a bit of tv.

and we fall asleep on the couch. or in the chair. or just about anywhere in the vicinity of the fireplace.

it's warm. it's mesmerizing. it's just too darn comfortable.

hours later we wake up, barely coherent, and complain about the fireplace.

we trudge off to bed, and complain that the bedroom is just too darn cold. "it's like the arctic tundra in here," mrs. spaceneedle laments. so we bundle up and we snuggle up and we go comatose for a few brief hours.

the following day, it happens again.

it's become a routine. not an ideal routine, perhaps, but a routine nonetheless.

no-vember

this is getting out of hand.

i sat down with a calendar yesterday and realized i'll be in the office 5 days in november.

that's one day the week of the 13th, three days thanksgiving week, and one day the last week of the month.

i'll be traveling the entire rest of the time. it's very safe to say that'll be a personal, single-month globetrotting record.

admittedly, a week of that will be vacation time. no complaints about that. and really, i'm not complaining about the business travel either. it's a busy time at spaceneedl sprockets*, and the company is doing well. which means everyone is running around like crazy.

compounding the hubbub, we're relocating to new offices the first week of the month. three separate facilities will be thrown together under one roof, for the first time ever. that'll create its own excitement, in many and unpredictable ways. it'll be a weird experiment in sociology as the new product development people learn to interact with non-engineers, the marketing team gets crossways with the finance folks, and the famously cranky IT types field frantic calls from everyone.

but that fun will have to begin without me, for the first little while, anyway. i'll be in boston and washington, d.c., and points beyond, attending trade shows and telesurgeries and sitting behind two-way mirrors drinking bad coffee and stress-eating m&ms.

okay, that sounded a little complain-y. which i don't mean to do. really.

fact is, this upcoming field work is important and necessary and part of a big "strategic growth" thing. yada yada. i'm glad my superiors feel my contribution is at least semi-essential in the big scheme of things. it's nice to be appreciated.

this doesn't exactly dovetail, i realize, with my previous epiphany about work, and my need to be closer to home. but these issues will continue to be kind of intractable for awhile.

as noted, november's booked...and it's historically impossible to get anything accomplished between the first of december and the first week of january. our national sales meeting is mid-january, so in effect we're jumping from late october to february. wheeee!

this is getting out of hand.

* not the company's real name. nor is it, strictly speaking, "my" company. i just work there.

now, where did i leave that heart...

oh, yes. now i remember.

mrs. spaceneedl and i lived in san francisco, back in the day. it was a good run, for awhile, if you overlook the incredibly high cost of apartment living. and the occasional earthquake.

one quake in particular, the 7.1 loma prieta event, stayed with us a good long while. we were living in the marina at the time, and if you recall anything about the news coverage, much attention was paid to fires and the buildings toppled into the streets.

most of that footage came from the marina district.

we were fortunate. our building, while heavily damaged, was still standing. after a few days, we were able to retrieve our belongings and move to firmer ground, in mill valley.

i had earthquake dreams for a long time thereafter. i'd wake up in the morning, certain we'd had another big one. never turned out to be the case, thankfully. then we moved to minnesota, where the tornado dreams started. fun with the subconscious mind.

once we left the bay area, we rarely looked back. we visited a couple times, briefly, for a wedding and a trip to monterey, but spent very little time in the city.

so my current trip here has been a fascinating experience. so much has changed, and if i had time to venture out to some old stomping grounds, i suspect i'd find that much remains the same.

yesterday would've been the perfect day to climb up to the marin headlands for a view of the bay and the golden gate bridge. it was a perfect day, sunny, warm, crystal clear. the kind we had too few of this year in seattle. so it would've been nice to sneak off and take advantage of it.

unfortunately, my schedule is slammed. i'll be wearing a path between the hotel and the moscone convention center, and not much else.

this afternoon, if the weather holds, i'll go for a run somewhere around here...maybe relive the glory days of my bay-to-breakers run of a few years ago.or, maybe something slightly less ambitious.

san francisco is a great city...and somehow i had lost touch with the reasons that's so. but all it takes is a brief walk through these streets to set things straight.

home will always be seattle, but in many ways my heart is still here...

see at last, see at last...

...thank god almighty, i can see at last.

i had lasik yesterday. today my vision is 20-20. it's a miracle.

of medical science.

there was no pain, very little discomfort. the procedure took less than 15 minutes. i went home and slept through the night, and when i woke up...there it was.

the world, in HD.

lines are crisper, colors are brighter. if i didn't know better, i'd say the world tried a new detergent.

as a result of my reconfigured lenses, i may need reading glasses. if so, i'll opt for something unsubtle. something from the elton john collection, just for the hell of it.

okay, maybe not quite that extravagant.

but something that celebrates my newfound vision.

let us close with a few thoughts on the subject from brother murphy..

I can see! I can see! I have...I have legs. I have... Oh shit, look at this. Legs! I can walk. Jesus, praise Jesus. I appreciate this. Oh, this is beautiful. I can't believe... Thank you. I don't know what to do it's...Look at me, this is too much.

What a happy day!