Books Lying Open
¤ Middlesex, Jeffery Eugenides
¤ DAW, The Best Fantasy of the last Thirty Years
¤ The Color of Magic, Terry Pratchett

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Excessive heat.

Answer of the Day:
¤ Because the sun, it burns us.

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your parental visits mostly result in an extreme loss of sleep.

emember how the last few blog entries have been like, all long and full of news items and personal stories and all that type stuff? Well, you just cling to those memories, since it's now Monday evening, it's hella hot (well, hot for the Bay Area of CA), we're about ready to have dinner, and this paragraph is the sum total of my blogging since Thursday evening.

Over the weekend, I worked furiously (in a good sort of way) on editing and rewriting troublesome portions of my ongoing fantasy novel, and never even gave a thought to blogging. My working extended to Sunday night, when I usually compose Monday's update, to the point that I wrote from 1-5am or so, stopped from exhaustion, and was brushing my teeth with the computer already turned off when I though, "Hmm, isn't it Monday morning? I don't recall blogging..."

I wasn't about to wake up enough to blog then, and I knew we were going to run some errands Monday afternoon, so a very late blog was unavoidable. But since this site generally gets more traffic on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, I may have gotten so tardy with the blogs that everyone has given up on seeing a fresh one Monday morning anyway.  If so, this weekend will do nothing but reinforce your preconception.

I've got no news today since while I surfed over the weekend I wasn't ever in an, "I've got to comment on that!" sort of mood. It comes and goes, my precious. We didn't do much, I stayed home twice while Malaya did various things for long hours, but since I was in a working mood and got a lot done I was pretty okay with that. Our outing on Monday was a return trip to the mall, one occasioned by a bit 30% off clearance sale at Macy's. Malaya always needs more suits for work, and since Macy's has good ones for $300, that eventually go on sale for $80, and then sometimes survive to be marked down to $50 or less, she was hoping. As it turned out, the $50 ones were still $50, and they had only put the 30% off on the $100 clearance suits, and she didn't like any of those enough to pay $70 for them. She did pick up a sharp-looking black suit for $50, and we once again failed to find a single thing in The Gap that was worth buying, even with the $20 store credit I've had since last fricking Xmas.

This time we were sick of looking and failing, sick of enduring yet another rack of pre-faded $50 cargo pants, so I offered Malaya my gift card for fifty cents on the dollar. She just had to find something for about $20 that she wanted, and she could have it for $10. True, I'm being a bit of a chisel with my sweetie there, but the Gap-tificate was my Xmas prezzie from my only semi-beloved step sister, and it's not like I'm asking Malaya to liquidate her presents to fill my closet.

The problem was that once she started looking at clothing at The Gap, she had the same problem I have. I.E. "This spaghetti-strap tank top is nice, but it's $18. The one I'm wearing was $6 at TJ Maxx." That's exactly what I think when I'm looking at The Gap's $35 cargo shorts when the exact same clothing is $17 at Target and $12 at TJ Maxx -- $8 when it's on clearance.

So yes, we once again left The Gap with our gift cert intact, and as far as I've seen from The Gap's prices (3-8x higher than at discount stores) and very limited style selection, (They basically have like three types of casual men's clothing in 3 colors and 1 pattern: black, gray, drab green/brown/beige, and camouflage composed of the other colors.) we're likely to keep the gift cert unspent forever.

Besides being a very productive (though non-blog writing) weekend, it was also a damn hot one. The hottest all year in our area, and yes, July and August are supposed to be the hot months here, with average temps in September somewhat cooler, and October much cooler than that. It's not really that hot here even when it's hot, mostly since we don't get humidity in the summer. It was maybe 90ish here the last 3 days, but it cools down nicely after dark, and with low humidity 85 in the shade with a fan on you isn't that bad. We had at least a dozen days last summer that were hotter, to the point that it was difficult to sleep at night. It's supposed to cool down on Thursday and for next weekend, but since I have zero faith in any forecast being accurate within +/- 10 degrees more than a day in advance, I'll believe it when I see it.

I'd like it to be cooler next weekend, since my mom is coming up for a visit from hot(ter) San Diego, where I used to live, and I'd like to impress her with how nice and cool the summer weather is here. Not that she can't look online for daily temps, and not that she hasn't been regularly visiting the Bay Area for 20 years, but you know...

I'll talk more about mom's visit when it happens, but the one funny thing as of yesterday was on Malaya. She's been attending a weekly martial arts class for the past month or so, going Sunday morning every weekend, and sometimes on various weeknights as well. She loves it, and I always wanted to get into doing some martial arts also, but the Saturday class is a good 20 miles from here, on roads that are always full of traffic, and she's got to get up before 8am to make it on time, and she's seldom home before 1pm. I'd like to go, but not enough to get up 4 or 5 hours earlier than usual, on a weekend, and when it means being gone for 5 hours.  That's why I can't imagine every playing golf again; the time you have to expend to do it is just outrageous.  I feel guilty playing a computer game or watching TV for 20 minutes at this point, since I've got so much work and so many other/better things to do with my time.

Anyway, the funny part is that Malaya and I have been trying to think of stuff to do with mom and the stepdad when they arrive, and a couple of weeks ago Malaya floated the idea of taking them to class with her on Saturday morning. The instructor also does Tai Chi classes, the class is outdoors in a nice area, it's not too far from China Town in SF, etc. My mom and stepdad could watch class, participate in some modified form, go sightseeing if they got bored, etc.  It all sounded lovely, and Malaya mentioned this half a dozen times by saying, "go with me to class..." "take them when I go to class..." etc. Always words to that effect. The key word of course being "me." She never once said, "go with us," in which the key word is... "us," meaning "Flux gets up at 7:30am when I know his usual schedule has him getting into bed around 6:30am."

Her verbiage all changed yesterday when we were talking about this again, and Malaya said something about how I'd need to start changing my sleeping time around. I asked why, and she said, "So you can get up at 8 and go to class with us next Sunday."  I assumed this was some sort of verbal typo, but when I asked for clarification I didn't get it, and she acted amazed, as though there'd never been an instant of doubt whether or not I was going to go with her and them to the class. There hadn't been any doubt; I'd always assumed she was going on her own, and if they wanted to come with her they could. I'd actually been sort of surprised that she was so eagerly volunteering to take my parents along with her, but I figured since she was going anyway she thought they might enjoy it and they could all do something together while I caught up on sleep, and maybe drove out to pick them up afterwards (since Malaya generally rides BART to class). How wrong I was.

The only other news of note over the weekend was my poor car getting hit again. Last time it was by a clueless granny who backed into me in the middle of the street. Read about that one back on May 25th. This time I got rear ended while stopped at a traffic light in downtown Lafayette, not five miles from my own home. And it wasn't like I stopped on yellow and he didn't, or I popped out of a driveway unseen -- I was on Mt. Diablo Blvd., a very busy two lane road (2 lanes each way, with a middle island with trees, bushes, etc in it) that goes right through the heart of town. It was broad daylight, early afternoon, and traffic was quite heavy, so I was driving maybe 15 MPH at tops, and the light ahead of me was red, and I was about the 8th car in line. There were even more cars in the right lane, so traffic in that one was already at a complete stop. I wanted to turn left at the light, but there's only room for about 4 cars in the temporary middle lane there, and back where I was there are bushes, trees, etc, so it's not like I could have driven up over the middle island and turned, even if such an activity was legal.

Anyway, I was stopped, and well-stopped, I'm talking complete halt, sitting there waiting for the light to turn, when suddenly... thunk.  My car jerks forward about a foot. For a minute I thought I'd slipped off the clutch or the engine had stalled out; if you've ever driven or ridden in a stick shift where someone lets the clutch out while standing still and in gear, you know what the lurch forward feels like. It was about like that, but a bit more so. I did have it in gear and apparently let go of the clutch in surprise since my car was not running when I looked into the rear view mirror, wondering WTF.  And saw a white sedan very, very close behind me.

I began laughing, at least inside, since after all, it was just 3 months ago that the old lady backed into me coming out of her driveway, when my car was in the middle lane of a three lane street and she was about one driving test away from no longer having a license.  My first thought was that it hadn't been a hard enough bump to do any damage to my car, since my Saturn coupe has plastic doors and bumpers and things just bounce off of them. My second thought was to hope that the idiot who had just run into me had an old Mercedes, or a pick up, or some other vehicle with a steel exterior and those ridiculous ornamental metal bumpers that do nothing but look pretty, and cost $2400 to have a dent removed the first time someone nicks it with a shopping cart. Since I knew I wasn't going to get any money out of it, or bother with their insurance bullshit, my only hope for karmic revenge was that their car would be damaged substantially. Of course if it was then I'd have to get their insurance info and maybe even photos, since I couldn't trust them not to get my license plate number, concoct a story about a hit and run, and try to pin it all on me and my reckless habit of driving in reverse down major thoroughfares and smashing into innocent white sedans.

So I got hit, and seeing that the driver of the car behind me was getting out, I got out as well, and walked back to see what the damage was. Even though I was pretty sure there wouldn't be any. Much to my disappointment, it was not a new car, or an expensive car. It was a shitty old Toyota, about a '94 Camry with an astonishingly dirty hood and a tragically-undamaged front bumper. The driver was an olive-skinned guy, perhaps Greek or Middle Eastern, with short black hair, a thick moustache, and numerous words of apology spilling out his mouth.

"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" was all he said, over and over again, during our 10 second conversation. I was still too surprised to be appropriately snarky, so I just looked down at the junction of our cars, then looked back up at him, and muttered something to the tune of, "Well, there's another scar for my poor car."

He kept apologizing, and since we were in the middle of the street and there wasn't enough damage to either car to bother with, I just said, "I don't care." and got back in my car and started it up. He must have been counting his lucky beans, since the instant I pulled forwards he turned right and shot into a gas station parking lot, which is not at all where he was going initially. I figured he was relieved that he hadn't hit some woman's new Honda; the type of driver who would actually care about a smudge on her rear bumper and would get his insurance and bill him about $2k for the totally unnecessary repairs. And that he was getting the hell out of sight before I changed my mind.

In retrospect, I should have been a dick and pointed out the numerous visible dents on my rear bumper, demanded his insurance info, and then tried to get him to give me cash for about half the price of repairs. I didn't though, since after all, my car's got several much worse dents than the ones he provided, including a couple on the rear bumper.

I do wish I believed in karma, though. The one time in my life I backed into a car in a parking lot and did a tiny bit of damage to her fender, 1) it was mostly her fault for pulling in the wrong way in a one-way alley, sitting 3 feet from the curb, and being too clueless to blow her horn to alert me when I was backing towards her at 3MPH, and 2) it cost me about $700 for a dent I wouldn't have even considered charging someone else to fix if it were my car. I have bumped 2 other cars very slightly in my life, both times when they were in front of me, were turning right, the road was clear, they started to go, and when I started rolling forward and looking to the side to see if it was clear for me I suddenly found that they had chickened out and were still sitting there.  I didn't have to pay for repairs either of those times, but on the other hand I've dodged half a dozen accidents by avoiding other vehicles at high speed (usually SUVs), my car has been hit multiple times, doing visible damage at least four times, and I've never charged any of those people for the repairs. Yet I know that sooner or later I'll make a mistake and bump someone, probably when they should go, don't, and I expect that they will and aim for the spot they should no longer be. And it'll probably be a new Mercedes with the sort of metal exterior that guarantees any impact is a huge dent, and I'll be even poorer than I am now, with higher auto insurance as well.

Anyway, since that last impact I've been wondering if really want to ever get a nice car. After all, some idiot will just bump into it, either in a parking lot or on the road, and what will I do then? I can easily overlook a scratch (or several of them) on the fender of my '97 Saturn SL1. But what if I were in a Ferrari, or even a nice Lexus or something like that? I would love that car, I would keep that car washed and waxed and spotless, and I would not be happy about a dent, no matter how tiny, in the fender, or side door.  Yet at the same time, I would hate to be one of those assholes with no perspective on life who fucks other people out of hundreds or thousands of dollars for minor car repair when they could quite easily overlook the damage. After all, there are a lot of cars out there, and it's simply inevitable that your car will come into contact with another one from time to time. From doors opening in a parking lot to miscommunication at a stop light to a foot slipping off a brake pedal in a red light line. Shit happens.  I understand that, yet at the same time I want my hypothetical nice future car to remain unblemished, at least when the blemishes aren't my fault, and I don't much want to spend my own money, even if I hypothetically have a lot of it, to repair a dent that someone else put there by driving like an idiot/not paying attention.

 

 

Recently, after he hadn't been spun around for a long time and was lurking in the area, I started plopping him into my chair when I got up and Malaya was sitting next to me. At first he always leaped down quickly, and I thought he'd just keep doing that, until one time he stayed and slept for a while, and then he stayed the next time too, and suddenly a week later he was sleeping in my chair almost every time we returned home. He's acclimated himself to it to the point that he'll even get into Malaya's office chair, which is smaller and lighter than mine, faux-leather rather than cloth, and far more likely to spin around or even move, since hers is on a plastic mat for easy rolling while mine is just on the carpet. It's actually gotten pretty annoying, since he's now up in my chair like 10 seconds after I get up, and he does this all the time. It's obviously no work to lift him up and put him on the floor or in another chair, but just the fact that he so immediately leaps up and makes himself comfortable is exasperating, if not outright annoying. The fact that he never would have learned to like this sort of chair again if not for my intervention is something of a contributing factor as well, of course.

In the photo you see here, Dusty was in the chair while Jinx was being feisty, so I put her in the chair beside him, expecting fireworks. They never share this sort of personal space without licking turning to yowling turning to wrestling, with Dusty usually trying half-heartedly to bite Jinx's ankles.  This time though Dusty kept looking off to the side, lost in his own little kitty world, and Jinx laid down, saw Dusty's ever-flicking tail, and grabbed it and bit at it. It made for a cute photo, at least.

And speaking of cute photos, here's one of Malaya, taken during our recent day trip to Placerville and the surrounding areas, when dad was visiting. I took several of her sitting on this bench since she looked extra cute, and she was moving around (taking her sunglasses off her collar to pose without encumbrance) when I snapped this first one, resulting in me missing her face and getting mostly her torso. So no, this shot isn't cropped at all (at least not on top), it just worked out with her lips barely in view like that.

There are two other shots showing her clearly that will go up with the whole vacation page, so if you've been wanting a clearer look at her (sans the face, since she wanted it blacked out still) you'll get your chance soon enough. And no, she's not naked in either shot. She's posing with my dad next to a gold mine in one photo, and we're not that type of family.

At least not on my side.