The blind homeless man/woman on the train. Before I get started here, a quick side note: I am not sure if this person is a man or woman. But we'll call them a woman. If you have ridden the F train (and probably the others) you might have seen the homeless blind person who comes into the car and sings like Billie Holiday. This woman has this eerie, soulful voice that sounds like it's coming from an old radio and she's on her last leg. It's oddly powerful, tragic, sad, sometimes annoying, and all that.
She's blind and comes through the subway car with her little cane... tapping on the floor as she walks almost keeping a beat.
Naturally there is a twist. Last night I am walking out of our building and almost run into her on our street. She's counting her paper money and has her cane tucked under her arm. On the train, she seems feeble and old. Walking up my street, she has a swagger. And we make eye contact.
Bravo!
What I like about grapes I am taking this fun wine course (it's the next level - remember, I took one last spring as well). FYI (1): I hate studying. FYI (2): I hate exams. So. There you go.
Over the past few months I have been filling my brain with fun facts about grapes and how to train them and vineyard pests and types of soil and... oh my. A lot of stuff.
Grapes in general. You gotta give love them.
Sure, it's easy to grow grapes as long as it's sunny and warm. You can water them every day and you'll get big ol' fatty grapes and all is well. Naturally, the rub is that those fat diluted grapes usually make fat diluted wine without a lot of character or depth. For the wine that we pay attention to, those little grapes have to work for it. In a lot of areas they don't allow irrigation. Or they are grown in gravely soil. Or the weather barely allows them to get ripe. Or small children call them names.
They have to be tough. They have to push their vines deep down into the ground to find whatever moisture there is - all the while fighting off bugs and hail storms and hungry baboons (baboons!) Not sure what my point is. You don't baby grapes it seems. Somehow I think there is a life lesson there or a child-rearing book waiting to be written.
Dear Pony, When your baby comes, plant him in the ground. Don't give him a lot of water or minerals. Maybe surround him with nice smooth stones that will store heat for when it gets cold at night. Don't let him slouch or ball up on the ground as he will get moldy. Pruning is tricky.
December, when a boy's thoughts turn to throwing things away. I'm on a roll. Watch out - if you don't nail it down, I will throw it out. The past couple of week have found me in cleaning mode filling garbage bags full of the detritus that you build up in an apartment after 7 years.
The main items in my craw are analog media. Yea, I know - analog is cool. I suspect people who say this don't live in 400 square feet apartments with loose floor boards that guarantee that you can never play records on your turntable because breathing will make them skip. Do I really need hundreds of slides from advertisements I shot for that silly film festival in NC? Garbage. Stacks of cassette tapes from bands on major labels? Garbage. VHS tapes of the Simpsons from 1994? Sure, that might be fun for the commercials... but, yea: Garbage.
A lot of these items can now be found at the Salvation Army on Atlantic Avenue.
Talking to robots My boss is always having to call someone's customer service or billing department because we use lots of vendors here in international cubicle world. He sits all of three feet away from and we are separated by a very non-sound-proof cubicle wall. (Hence he can't really talk shit about me - at least at his desk (not that he would (I mean, I hope not))) Today he was on the phone trying to go through some sort of menu to get to a human and it was a few minutes of his almost teen-like exasperated talking to the phone robot. Yes. Yes. Seven. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. 8-9-2-4-1-5-2-5-5-2-5-1-5-6-3-3-0 No. 8-9-2-4-1-5-2-5-5-2-5-1-5-6-3-3-0 Yes. Cancel account Cancel account Yes.
The tone of your voice changes when you talk to these phone robots.
Jesus is back! He rose again. Yesterday. Unfortuantly, I don't have a new photo of him.
