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And The Group Sex The second and last pint of blood was taken today in Palo Alto for the operation coming up on the 6th. Nice people, easy and interesting process. I've never seen a thermometer of the kind they used to take my temperature, a thin plastic strip maybe 1/2" wide, three inches long and wafer thin you could bend like paper. Put it under your tongue for a couple of minutes, take it out, wait a brief period and the temperature is displayed to the tenth of a degree in a series of little dots. Note the temperature, throw the thermometer in the trash. A disposable thermometer like a disposable needle. Pretty neat. In a comparing of cultures series of emails between friends at work the other day (St. Patrick's Day, what else?), I commented that Icelanders (Great grandparents on my mother's side.) spent the days running naked from hot saunas into the cold snow and engaging in group sex. An emailed reply wondered if we weren't better known for ice fishing.
Well, yes. Ice fishing. There is that. Ice fishing has a particular
Ice fishing you do alone, sitting over a hole in the ice, staring into the black water below. If you're lucky, you catch some fish, enough fish to eat that night so you can replace the calories you've expended keeping your body warm during the day out on the ice. A kind of delicate balance, don't you think? Nature's little teeter totter tester to keep your attention. I don't much like the cold. I can imagine such an existence, though, living on the shore of a lake, walking out onto the ice in the morning with a stool and some sort of fishing kit. What do you use for bait? A piece of the fish you caught the day before, I suppose, that's what we used when I was a kid fishing for salmon out off Whidbey Island at Point No Point. Do you go to the hole you fished the day before, or do you punch a new one in a more likely spot? What makes a likely spot? So it's January and the fish peter out and the fish larder outside the house grows emptier and emptier until it begins to whisper your name softly in your sleep: "No fish, no fish...." What do you do? Did my great grandparents know any of that? I, for one, would have hit the local travel agent on the run with a backpack and an American Express. Got on a flight to California and hit the beach. Bought some shades. Kicked back. Given up fish. Told stories to my friends about the saunas and the group sex. |
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character of its own. When you live up north, I mean way way up north
where its really dark for a really long time in the winter months, I
suppose you do get in a sauna every now and then, although I don't know
about running out into the snow. That seems more of a media stunt. And
group sex? Well, there are always rumors of group sex going around now,
aren't there, whether you're in Iceland or not, but it's always somebody
else's group and somebody else's sex.