Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: February 2009
No padding
I’m relatively thin right now — a byproduct of the Santa Rosa stress factory, that recent stomach bug, and being in a car three hours a day (less time to be stuffing my face). So my butt lacks padding. This became painfully obvious by the fourth hour in the airport. Yes, my plane got delayed. I wouldn’t mind those “arrive two hours early” rules quite as much if they would get me in the air on time. But no, at SFO (San Francisco International), departure times are suggestions.
Today, for example, I arrived two hours early, and was pleased to note that my flight to Burbank was on time. The boards continued to list it as “on time” fully five minutes after the departure time had passed. No plane, no word as to what had happened. The nervous nellies among us milled about. The seasoned travelers continued farting around on their laptops, oblivious to the delay. Finally, the boards were corrected to read a departure time of 5:00 (original departure time, 3:15 PM), but that was still just a suggestion. I don’t think we made it into the air until 6 PM.
SFO has one runway. ONE. So there’s always a hell of a line-up to the plate. When we finally made it in line, we had 11 planes ahead of us, and it must have taken 20 to 25 minutes to get those planes into the air. How does an airport get “international” status with only one runway? That’s insane.
I could have flown out of the Santa Rosa airport, but I would have had to fly into LAX, which is a nightmare all unto itself. Maybe next time, if there is a next time, I’ll try that instead. The way I did it was the only way I could swing a one-day turnaround (I’m coming home tomorrow evening), thus conserving precious paid time off days.
Anyway, I made it. I’m here in Burbank, spitting distance from Bob Hope’s Airport, enjoying my exceptionally spacious hotel room at the Airport Marriott. I had dinner tonight with one of my pals from residency, and tomorrow I’ll have a no doubt low stress interview with folks who are, by several different accounts, cool people. That’s not the worrisome part. The worrisome part is flying back to SFO.
D.
Neighbors
So I’m gonna go interview in So Cal on Tuesday, and I’m flying out tomorrow afternoon. So Cal means there’s at least a theoretical chance we could live near the coast, thus meeting the all-important cool weather criterion. We could, for example, live in Malibu:
Robert Redford, Mel Gibson, Barbra Streisand, Richard Gere, Sally Field and Whoopi Goldberg (to name just a few) all own homes along the exclusive Malibu shore.
and that means I could be obnoxious to some really, really famous people.
Hey Sally — lookin’ pretty hot for your age! Who’s your surgeon? Whoopi, I’ll never forgive you for Star Trek TNG. No. Seriously. Cannot forgive. Cannot. Mel! Kiss my hairy Jewish ass! And Richard? Stay away from my ferrets!
But sadly, even with a tanked real estate market, there’s no way we could afford Malibu. Even Santa Monica . . . best we could do MAYBE is an overpriced apartment (they call ’em condos but they’re located in apartment buildings, so you tell me). But Malibu? Best we could do would be an old water tank on a rubbish tip.
Which sounds cool, actually. They put those tanks atop hills, after all. We could have a tank with a view.
D.
VD! Yay!
Yes, Happy Valentine’s Day.
I made Karen a sweet potato pie. Actually, I made Karen AND Jake a sweet potato pie, but since Jake didn’t like it, I guess I made it for me and Karen. I wasn’t going to eat more than a forkful but how could I resist Jake’s uneaten pie?
I found the recipe on Cooks.com. The pie light and fluffy, not heavy like a store-bought pumpkin pie. Maybe that’s why Jake disliked it so much. He’s used to leaden fillings and par-baked crusts. This crust was well baked, baby, cuz I nuked it!
Recipe below the fold.
The trick with call . . .
is to steel yourself for a stress-filled sleepless night.
As you’re eating dinner, you know you’ll be interrupted and you’ll have to fress cold noodles later. After you’ve bolted all your food, undisturbed by your pager, you’re pleasantly surprised.
As you’re checking into your hotel*, you know you’ll just barely get your bag into the room before the ER calls with a lip laceration or a peritonsillar abscess or some deep neck pus. But that’s okay, at least you’ve checked in. But they don’t call. You check your pager, and all the bars are full on the battery indicator.
You begin to wonder if no one loves you, but then you remember that (A) you’re only two hours into call, and (B) you really don’t want to be called, do you? Not before your shower.
The shower is never as nice as you expect it to be, even with all that nice hot water and strong water pressure, because you’re asking yourself: would I hear my pager over the water?
Okay, so now you’re blogging and you figure, I’ll just barely have time to finish this before the pager goes off.
You realize in horror that Motel 6’s cable package includes neither MSNBC nor Comedy Central.
You know you’ll be up all night . . . and as you drop off to sleep, you’re wondering when the fun will begin**.
D.
*Motel. Motel 6, to be exact. I have a heater, a comfy bed, a hot shower with good water pressure, a TV, and internet access. What do I need with Marriott?
** I haven’t had a night call since early August of ’08. Does it show?
This is so good . . .
that I probably already blogged it. If so . . . sorry!
From Cracked.com, The 10 Most Sexually Unappealing Craig’s List Postings.
And now we’re looking at the 15 most sexually unappealing porn titles. Faces with Braces, anyone?
D.
Gauze
In childhood, in dreams, there was always a different world, a safe place: a kid-sized door in the back of a closet leading to a toy-filled, sunlit room; a gingerbread village hidden among foothills that formerly hosted only chaparral scrub; a turn from a desolate road leading to lush grassy meadows and laughing children.
Sometimes I think that’s where our notions of heaven come from. Populate those landscapes with dead relatives and voila, there you are. You’re safe, you’re warm, you’re with people who love you.
Sometimes I wish I could pull away the gauze that keeps me from seeing it here on Earth.
D.
And this is fun why?
Okay, I’m twitting now. My handle is Azureus9, if you want to follow my twits.
Why am I doing this?
Discuss.
D.
Quick shout-out
Over at Daily Kos, Devilstower has posted “a still decidedly unpolished chapter from a book on how social conservatives wed fiscal conservatives in a process that took a century.”
Yeah, I know that quote doesn’t make it sound too interesting . . . but the bulk of the chapter concerns sisters Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin, two of the more interesting characters you’re likely to meet on this rainy Sunday morning.
D.
Getting lonely around here
Soon after I began blogging, I remember reading an author’s comments about why he had stopped blogging. It may have been Cory Doctorow, or maybe one of the other literary youngbloods. He wrote that blogging was a lot like stand-up comedy. You need to be fresh, you need new material, and eventually it gets to be rather wearying.
Well, that’s a paraphrase of something I read four years ago. I may have mangled it. It certainly captures how I feel.
I’ve settled into a new and by necessity tiring routine: I work long days five days a week (except on my day-off-without-pay), somehow manage to get most of the cooking, cleaning, and shopping done, catch up on chores on the weekend, try to answer all my emails. Since this job ain’t forever, I’m in search mode, too. It’s hard getting phone calls from potential employers or partners at 8 PM when I’m corpse-tired and not wanting to be bright and interesting and engaging. I’ve already blown off two possibilities, each time because of a bad vibe. Oh, and there was a third. Good vibe that time, bad location.
But I digress. All of this stress and fatigue has taken its toll on the blog, and correspondingly, my readership. I think a lot of people have given up on Balls and Walnuts and I can’t say I blame them. I’ve had to focus on the job and writing has become a luxury. I’m hoping the muse will rouse from her slumber once my life shifts into a more normal routine, one not involving 2.5 to 3 hours of commute time daily, but in the meantime, I feel like a dear friend is in a coma.
Something is missing and I don’t know how to get it back. I don’t know, maybe what I really need is a velvet merkin.
(more…)
27 Jennifers
Since no one commented on this bit from yesterday, I’m-a-shovin’ it down yer throats:
I really dig that song. Lyrics and more below the fold.