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What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust. |
Monday, September 25, 2000
Two years ago: Submarine Races
Three years ago: Naked Ladies
I set off on my drive to Seattle around five in the morning. Jack just barely woke up to croak a goodbye. I woke him because he'd asked me to; he wanted to get into work early after being on a business trip most of last week, and taking Friday off as a sick day. Otherwise I'd probably have just tiptoed away.
I like the first part of this drive, with a mostly empty road from Bellingham to Mount Vernon. As it gets later, and I get into more populous regions, all these other cars dare to drive at the same time as me -- the weasels!
South of Everett, I heard a traffic bulletin on the radio -- there was a terrible accident on 405, the highway that would take me directly to the office. I decided to skip 405, and head all the way to Seattle, then duplicate my normal trip from Seattle on 520 and the floating bridge. ("The floating bridge" always sounds like a romantic, fanciful phrase, like the rainbow bridge to Valhalla in Norse mythology, but it's literally true. The lake is too deep to build footings, so they float most of the bridge on pontoons.) I ended up getting to work just ten minutes or so later than normal, so that wasn't too bad.
* * * * * * * *
We had a company lunch at our favorite Spazzo. This was in honor of our young java dev high school intern, Jonathan, since his applets have been making a big hit on our website. I offered to drive some of us, since Chip would have to leave at one o'clock or so. Jonathan sat beside me, the better to appreciate the coolness of the Volvo station wagon. He's a big car geek. Kellie was in the back.
When we pulled on to the highway, we all groaned simultaneously! There was an incredible backup right dead ahead. It hadn't occurred to me to check the traffic map, at eleven o'clock in the morning! So I immediately bailed and headed to the next exit, planning to take surface roads past the Microsoft campus. Unfortunatly, that road was backed up also, due to construction, and no alternate routes presented themselves. We were sure that Chip and Pete would get there before us. But no, we beat them there which surprised me.
Lunch was great, as always. Pete's reaction to eating such exotic foods always tickles me. He's had to eat a lot of new things since coming to work for us. Jonathan hadn't ever had tapas, either. We always get the spread sampler (tyrosalata, escalavida, baba ghanouj, hummus and tzatziki), plus electric goat cheese, spanokopita, and one or two other things. The calamari was especially good!
Chip had to leave before the dessert platter, poor fellow. The rest of us feasted. Jonathan was suitably impressed with the gorgeous carmelized sugar basket the coffee mousse comes in.
Of course, we were a bit lethargic when we got back to the office. (Okay. I was lethargic.)
* * * * * * * *
I had to leave work a bit early in order to make a cable TV appointment. I'd agreed to be there from four to six pm. I walked in the door about three minutes after four, to hear someone leaving a message on my answering machine. I dropped everthing and dashed to the bedroom to pick up. "I'm here! I'm here!" The cable office was calling to say that the workers were in the back alley with their truck.
Apparently this was such a tough trouble ticket that two units were assigned to it. One guy was very cleancut and skinny; the other reminded me of Dante from Clerks!
They had to cruise back and forth between the cable box on the back steps, to my apartment, then back out to check the cable run along the outside of the building. It ended up that the trouble was in the cable box, but we didn't find that out before replacing the coax that ran between the far corner of my living room, and the back of my huge armoire entertainment center. I was impressed with their cleverness; they fastened the new piece on to the end of the old, and pulled it through! (I did a good portion of the pulling, because they felt I'd know better where to step and clamber without disturbing any of my stuff more than necessary.) They also installed a new digital cable converter.
I was pleased by the results of this! The local channels that used to have some ghosting, are ghosting no longer. It was the old cheap coax I was using that was letting the signal through.
Said "Dante" as he first walked in to the apartment, "Did you just move in?" I could understand this since there were stacks of boxes around the place (from 1999 cleanup efforts), and the cable was non-functional. Then he glanced at a box full of porn that was on the top of the stack. "Hey, nice Penthouses!" I just laughed. But that shows how much he knew -- they weren't Penthouses, they were copies of Penthouse Variations! A very different thing, you know.
* * * * * * * *
After they left, I clicked through all the channels, and used the time to do some cleanup. I took that microfiber cleaning cloth and got rid of some serious dust, and did some clearing away and throwing away of stuff on the table that sits behind my couch.
Jack told me he attended a bail hearing for A----, who'd turned herself in yesterday. She broke parole by running away last January. The judge set bail, with conditions that Jack didn't think A--- could meet (like staying in the house except when escorted by Jack or his designated adult until Thursday), so he didn't pay the bail money.
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