Sit On My Lap
Sunday, in the afternoon. The laundry is finished. The drier is still not drying the way a drier should, so it took four or five hours to dry clothes it took two hours to wash. Still, they're done. The shirts are clean and I bought a new pair of Dockers Saturday. Sears had one pair with a 31" inseam. They asked me if I wanted a Sears charge card. I said no, you never have my size in stock. Oh, they replied. Yes, I said. Time to go to L.L. Bean or one of the other P.C. mail order style clothing outfits and order some 31" inseams over the web. One commodity at a time. Started with books. Moved on to prescriptions. Then airline tickets and motel rooms. I added train tickets, but I screwed those up, so now I'm back to buying them over the counter. Groceries, one of these days. The excitement. It just builds and builds.
Monday, back from the office and the Windows 2000 class in San Francisco. Nice day in San Francisco. Bright colors. Not too warm. Standing room only on the train from Oakland all the way under the bay to San Francisco, but standing for eleven minutes is no big deal. You really don't even have time to think about what might happen if the earthquake, the big one, should hit just as you're off Treasure Island, where they used the cheap cement in constructing the tunnel. I should have gone over to that Critical Mass bicycle get together on Friday. I talk myself out of too many things for the wrong reasons.
Beth and I had lunch at a Chevy's Tex-Mex restaurant in one of the Embarcadero Center buildings. Large room, reasonable food. The class itself is OK. Nothing that you couldn't get from studying the book for $1,700 less than they charge for this class, but it's not my money and I'm not complaining. I took notes. I was awake. I raised my hand and asked self aware clever sounding questions like some hyperventilating youngster. Well, not quite, but close. I know the routine. I didn't get too heavily into Freecell until later in the afternoon. Monday, four days to go, and counting.
I feel quite laid back at the moment. I dutifully turned on the Republican National Convention and listened to two or three speeches about how wonderful it was to live in America as I sat here writing.
I feel, most of the time, that it is a wonderful thing to live here in America, but I'm not sure I want to listen to what otherwise seem to be rational adults exhort their delegates to, what, give up their backsliding internationalist Republican ways and return to the fold? Many of us still harbor hopes the British will come back again one day and burn Washington. Get 'em all this time, arrive when Congress is in session. There has been some comment in the press recently that the movie The Patriot beats up unfairly on the British, which I'm sure it does. I don't have to explain to anyone out there how movies are promoted. I can assure one and all, however, there are absolutely no anti-British attitudes endemic in America. There are still one or two Irish-American bars over in San Francisco where you can get your clock cleaned with an ill advised British accented utterance, but we gave up on any animosities toward the British early in the last century. So come back, please, and burn Washington D.C. Tomorrow would be nice.
Monday night football is now playing on the television. (Do you feel this is wandering?) San Francisco is playing an exhibition game. I may watch some of it. I assume they are losing. The TV magazine says there's an Ally McBeal episode on at 9:00, something about a Tina Turner wannabe contest that I've seen before. I am noticing that I am not able to watch very many Ally McBeal reruns, but when you start with the photo of a cute puppy dog, you have to go the whole route and finish by saying something about Ally McBeal. Come sit on my lap, Ally McBeal, because if I sat on your lap, you'd break. Tina Turner indeed.
BACK TO THE:
