Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Category Archives: such as it is
Now, this is special . . .
We came back from Bakersfield today, and along the way we passed a huge fenced area on the western side of the highway, near the Fink Road exit (Exit 428?) I mean, we’re talking huge, with what look like 15-foot-tall or higher fences, as if they feared being overrun by giraffes. There’s some sort of factory in the middle of all that land, but no signs. Very mysterious. If you do a Google Map search for “Crow’s Landing Fink Rd.”, click ‘satellite,’ and pan left, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
So I googled “Fink Rd. I-5 gated” and came up with this very odd invitation . . .
Perfection
In a perfect world, we would rent a place for a few months, meanwhile checking out homes for sale in a leisurely fashion. But we don’t want to move twice, which means we decide things quickly, make an offer, and hope things move through escrow ASAP.
We have to find a home we’ll be happy with, of course. That’s proving difficult. The current front-runner is at the high end of our price range, but its kitchen is close to being acceptable, it has a huge master suite, and there are lots and lots of fruit trees in the backyard. It doesn’t croon “home” to me, but few homes do. Put a couple of cats and ferrets and a couple dozen tarantulas in there and THEN it’ll croon home. Maybe.
The ideal situation is when you’re so filthy rich you can get a home built to specifications. We’re not that lucky. You have to wonder about the wisdom of that path, though, since folks rarely get the money out they sunk into such a venture. Far better to settle for something less than perfection and realize that over time, you’ll arrive in a space of comfort. Home-buying as arranged marriage, I guess.
Remember . . . email me at malmerkin at gmail dot com since, for the time being, comments are disabled. (Is it possible that hack-proofing my blog could be so easy? Too bad it leaves me with a semifunctional blog!)
D.
Househunting
Oddly enough, it’s a seller’s market here in Bakersfield (if our agent can be trusted). People are getting their asking prices. I can believe it, because three or four of the homes we wanted to see — homes which were still on the market a week ago — are now in the process of being sold.
We looked at six homes today, I think. Maybe three or four left for tomorrow, and that’s it for homes in the right school district & price range. We saw two we liked, one of which is very affordable, and inevitably we saw one nightmare: a place that smelled of dog and was more tear-down than “home,” a place that made me want to shake the seller and say, “What are you thinking?” Even in a seller’s market, that place ain’t gonna move.
None of them is perfect. The one we liked best still needs some work in the kitchen — I need my gas range with the big fat powerful hood. And all of these homes had way too much carpeting . . . but in Bakersfield, people seem to like the tile/carpet combo.
I wish we could do one of those homes-to-be-built. They have ’em in our price range, but it takes forever to build a house. If we can avoid it, we would prefer not to move twice.
Tomorrow: a few more homes to see, and then we make our way home. Quick trip.
D.
When does the ‘relaxing’ part happen?
Sometimes I wonder if I get more rest when I’m on call.
Yesterday, I picked up my new eyeglasses, dropped our Camry off for its 60000-mile tune-up (7500 miles too late, but better late than never), bought an electric drill-powered pump from the hardware store so that we can bail out the tubs that our window-mount ACs sit in, went home and did the bailing-out, went grocery shopping, took myself and Jake down to Supercuts so that he and I could get Supershorn, did some more shopping, came home and swept up, then made a custard sauce for trifle, and then made dinner (gumbo).
All day, I kept meaning to make a dent on the paperwork Bakersfield sent me. Didn’t get to it until evening. I managed to fill out one of the nine-page applications before I hit the wall and gave up for the evening.
That meant I had a bunch more forms to fill out today, and oh boy yes it took almost the whole day to get it all done. The really, truly annoying part of this whole thing is the redundancy. You would think hospitals nationwide could develop one standard form, one size fits all, but NO. And the background checks some of these places require . . . do they really need know every place I’ve lived for the last 10 years?
I recognize a new question on these forms. They want to know if you’ve ever taken more than 30 days off from work. I guess they’re snooping around for Betty Ford Clinic alumni, but what if I had wanted to take off six weeks to travel? Should I have to explain my vacations?
I have to keep reminding myself that these intrusions exist for a reason . . . that there ARE impaired physicians out there (hell, I’ve known a few) and hospitals have every right to protect themselves and their patients from such folks. But still, it’s irksome to have to use a justification I wouldn’t wish on anyone. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of.
Anyway, it’s done, it’s history, it’ll be in the mail tomorrow. I need to get proof of my negative TB test and I need to make arrangements to have a bunch of titers drawn. They want proof of my Hep B status. Surprised they haven’t gotten around to demanding HIV tests, but I guess that’s still too much of a hot button, eh?
Time to relax. I wonder if that old game Populous is freeware yet? I feel like playing God.
D.
I have done the deed, so the deed is done
Pop-up that appeared when I tried to sign my new contract:
Please confirm that you agree to the contract and that your signed name is Baculum P. Walnut. By clicking on OK, you will have signed the contract. Once you have signed the contract, the contract is signed. Click on Cancel to stop this process.
Betcha didn’t know my first name was “Baculum.”
D.
The need for speed
Picture it:
I’m catching the Red Eye from Portland back to San Francisco International, which means I have to be up at 4:30 to make my flight. Night before my trip, I’m in bed by 10, but the hours tick away as I lie awake, fretting about my now-history Portland interview. It’s 10:30. Six hours of sleep? I can function on six hours —
It’s 2:30. Yeah, I can function on two hours of sleep. Not well, but I can function.
Every half hour, something roars by the window. It’s the most massive street cleaner I’ve ever seen, the mega-Zamboni of street sweepers, and I find myself wondering why it has to clean the same street again and again.
Nice thing about the Red Eye, it gets its tail into the air on time, and before I know it I’m picking up my Toyota from long term parking. I couldn’t sleep on the plane, still too distracted over Portland.
All I can think about is getting home. Fast.
Young men have lost their appeal
Bad enough my flight was 2 hours late flying out of Ontario. (Ontario CALIFORNIA, Rella!) No, they had to seat me in front of some 400 pounds of male twenty-somethings, two exemplars of Jocko testosterosus. They reeked of alcohol and blood and bluster. I remembered a dozen or more of the drunks I sewed up during my residency, tough guys who weren’t so tough when you came at ’em with wimpy little 25 gauge needles. Big men.
I wish I could have slept, but their mouths never stopped. Remember Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen’s you know how I know you’re gay? routine in 40-Year Old Virgin? Imagine that, without the humor. Imagine Beavis and Butthead grown up. Heh heh heh. Shut the F$%# up! No, you shut the F$%# up! You F$%#’in shut up or I’m gonna kick your ass so high it’ll be like, high. No, you shut the F$%# up or so help me I’ll break your nose. It’ll be so fun to watch you waah like a baby.
I figure they had to be at least 21, right? Because the stewardess served them booze. Like they needed more. Fortunately, our prop jet was noisy enough I couldn’t hear most of their conversation. Only when their laughter descended into argument (about once every five minutes) could I pick out the words. You’re so ugly you’re like, uggg-leee. You’re so ugly my butt gets better dates.
I predicted that when the plane stopped, they’d be the first out of their seats, and they would charge to the front of the plane. And I was right.
D.
Old Grandfather
After a productive (and certainly thought-provoking) interview in Bakersfield today, I drove to Ontario. This is a 2.5 hour drive, more or less: 99 to the 5, 5 to the 210, 210 to the 57, 57 to the 10. In Southern California we name our freeways, but most of these are unnamed. 210 is the Foothill Freeway, and 10 is the San Bernardino, unless you’re heading west, and then it’s the Santa Monica. 57 is the Orange. Makes for interesting directions.
210 through Pasadena and Arcadia qualifies as Old Stomping Grounds, methinks, but you wouldn’t expect a freeway to provoke memories. (Not unless you count the 110, AKA Pasadena Freeway, which every car-lover MUST drive at least once in his life. Wikipedia says it “is now known as a dangerous, narrow, outdated roadway” — primarily because the curves were engineered for a max speed of 45 MPH, and some of the on ramps are so short as to be merging death traps. But driving the 110 is an experience no one ever forgets. You’ll need to have this on tape, though, for background music.)
So what’s so evocative about the 210? This mountain range, the San Gabriels (here’s the big version):
Mt. Wilson is the old man of the mountain, who unfortunately has his head in the clouds in this photo. I had forgotten how much this range had reminded me of a sleeping giant. These are childhood memories, largely tossed aside even by age 10 or 11; but yeah, as a kid I could see shoulders, gangling arms and legs, a bald head bristling with antennae (there are lots of radio towers up there — also hidden by clouds). As I inched along the 210 in 6:15 PM rush hour traffic, I kept sneaking peaks to the north. Mountain ranges are not constellations, after all. They change appearance by the mile, and I wanted to catch the profile I knew so well from the 60s.
And suddenly, there he was, Old Grandfather, silent and slate-blue, just as I had remembered him.
You can go home again, but what waits for you exists only in geologic time.
D.
Ice cream with chunks of Toffler
After dinner, I loaded up my laptop and GPS into my backpack, along with my defunct Blackberry (which I use as an alarm clock, address book, and eBook reader), my cell phone, and the little gizmo that lets me log onto the hospital computer from a remote terminal, so that I can answer my patients’ emails. If I was into the iPod thing I’d have loaded that into the backpack, too. Tomorrow, when I leave my car in long term parking, I’ll take my Blue Ant Supertooth* and toss that into the backpack, too. Yes, I can fit all the electronics I need into one rather-heavy-now backpack.
I like to tell my son about our junior high school computer, the one that filled a room and looked like HAL’s memory from 2001. Most of that monster’s memory was dedicated to understanding Basic, and what little was left over could be taxed by a Blackjack program.
Earlier still, in our home growing up we had a built-in black-and-white TV with a built-in fish tank above it. (How’s that for intelligent design?) I can’t remember that TV ever working. TVs back then had radio tubes (pause a moment to explain radio tubes to my son) and a dial to change the channels. My parents still have one of those dial-type TVs, and gets decent reception on one channel. I showed it to Jake the last time we visited.
We still own a CRT-type TV, but we rarely watch it. It used to be our good TV. Nowadays, I turn it on if I’m working in the kitchen, peeling shrimp or what-not. I imagine we’ll replace it soon with a flat-screen TV. Considering how infrequently we watch it, we probably ought to sell it before we move. Sucker weighs a ton.
Not that the flat-screen TV is a lightweight, but considering the size of it, it’s amazing I can lift it. Meanwhile, our stereo from 20+ years ago languishes in boxes, and I’m beginning to wonder about the utility of hanging onto our VCR. VCRs. We have two. Not counting the one I used to have in the Crescent City office.
With any luck, my son should live well into his 80s, and maybe beyond. I wonder sometimes about what we’ll achieve with regard to life extension. But even ignoring that, Jake should see the late 2070s or even the 2080s. What will we see together? What will he see that Karen and I won’t live to see? Will all that gear I lug in my backpack fit into a wallet? Will it be built into a fancy set of eyeglasses, the ultimate heads-up display? And when will we start internalizing this gear?
As a sometimes science fiction writer, my mind wanders to stories where technology has allowed us to cheat death. If we could load the sum total of our knowledge, our personality quirks (mannerisms, diction), our logic and style and creativity into an AI, would anything be missing? We’ll probably see an AI beat the Turing test in our lifetimes; will we see one so sophisticated that we can’t tell a loved one apart from his AI doppleganger? I suspect so. At that point, have we cheated death?
. . . Which is what it’s all about, at least for me. It’s not my own death I fear (not MUCH, anyway!) but the death of loved ones. As I’ve said a hundred times, if I were a better Buddhist none of this would bug me. I’m simply too attached to this business of living.
D.
*cuz some of us don’t like looking like Borg, and besides, those other thingies hurt my ears.
