Notes In The Margin

This week has been quite a trial, but, looking back on it, it seems that all the things that went wrong were about stuff that we own and rely on. And could probably do fine without, if we had to.

The Jeep has been acting flaky for some time. We had it worked on a few weeks ago, and they fixed something (new radiator) but not actually what we took it in for, which was that sometimes it just quits. Sometimes this happens when we're stopped. Sometimes when we're moving. Kind of scary when we're moving. Well, on Monday it quit while we were miles from home, but started up again. And on Tuesday it quit and wouldn't start again.

Turns out it was a loose wire, which took hours to find and seconds to fix.

The van has been out of service for some time - the brakes don't work.

Also, for the last few weeks, my laptop has been flaky. Long pauses in the middle of doing fairly mundane things. It became evident on Monday that my hard drive was on the way out. Perhaps if I had caught that a while back, I could have isolated the bad blocks and fixed the problem, but I didn't find it until it was pretty far advanced. On Tuesday, it got critical, and on Wednesday, I spent most of the day trying to get files copied off of it so that I could take it in for service.

Oh, wait. No cars.

Taxis are few and far between in Lexington, and there wasn't anybody nearby and handy to give me a ride. But I called Mr. Taxi, and they promised someone would be there in 10-15 minutes. It took 50.

When I got to Elan Technologies - the only certified Apple repair place in Lexington - the guy behind the counter treated me almost with contempt, or, at least, as though I was an enormous inconvenience to him, rather than as though I was there to help him pay his mortgage. Few things bug me as much as dismissive customer service. I'd almost rather someone be rude than just ignore me. Anyways, he promised that maybe, if nothing more important came up, he'd try to have a look at it by Friday. But, you know, maybe not. We're awful busy. With, you know, important stuff. Bye now.

So most of this week I've been working on Maria's laptop, for which I don't have a VGA adapter, so it's been on a 13" screen, while I'm mostly used to working on the 27" screen.

But, all of this is surmountable. The Jeep is fixed, and I expect I'll have my laptop back some time this month. Or, you know, maybe next month, if nothing more important comes up.

I just finished reading When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. It won the Newbery award this year, so I figured it would be worth reading.

I found the book rather disappointing. In the last few pages, all of the bizarre and confusing things that happened through the book are all explained, and everything falls in place but the fact is that until that moment, the book is hard work to get through. I think it's unlikely that my kids, anyway, would persist through to that Ahah! moment, and so would dismiss the book with their usual designation of "boring."

Added to that, the book relies heavily on the reader being familiar with "A Wrinkle in Time", a book which (yes, I know, it's heresy) I can't stand. So, if you're familiar with Wrinkle, and if you liked it, perhaps this will resonate with you. But it really didn't work much for me.

Here's a review that completely disagrees with me.

Sixes

February 12, 2010

I would never choose
a pastime that involves ice.
Hard, unforgiving stuff,
and, what’s more, cold.

She dances out there,
a swan among ravens,
flowing gracefully over ice
not quite as smooth as the glass
she imagines.

She imagines being Sasha Cohen,
even as girls in my generation
imagined being Michelle Kwan
beaming from the Kiss-and-Cry
as the judges unveil
their perfect sixes.

For the Weekend Wordsmith - Skates

Whale

February 12, 2010

Did you know
that a whale’s aorta is so big that a baby
can crawl through it?
And did you know that a diplodocus
weighed 17 tons, but had a brain
the size of a small lemon?
And did you know that Star Wars
was filmed in Tunisia,
and the Jawas spoke Swahili and Zulu?
And did you know, Daddy, Daddy,
did you know? Did you know
that I love you, and that the tallest building
in the whole world is in Dubai?
Did you know?

For the Weekend Wordsmith - Whale.

Away

February 12, 2010

From my balcony, I see the planes
roaring out of BWI on their way
to somewhere I’d rather be.

From my bed I hear them
all through the dark hours as
I try, unsuccessfully, to kill
another night away from you.

(For the Weekend Wordsmith, "balcony")