Category: Uncategorized

The First Major Injury

It might just be me, but I think it’s pretty damn impressive that the volcano in Hawaii has been getting more and more jiggy, but it’s only today after two weeks, that the first major injury was reported.

I don’t envy the victim. Sitting on his third floor balcony, lava splatter hit him on his leg and shattered it below the knee. That’s how it’s been reported.

I appreciate technology more with this eruption. It’s amazing to see those explosions and flows, something that I can see from my home’s safety in Oregon as the volcano blows thousands of miles away. Jaw-dropping is the term I often hear when the footage is described. I, with my limited imagination, think, stunning and powerful.

 

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Cat Day

I guess, to give it a start, it began with the cat.

The rest is backdrop. Setting. Background. This started with the cat and her kittens.

They were totally unanticipated. We were starting another football season. Done in by injuries, my team had finished second, losing in the Superbowl by two stinking points the year before.

Unfortunately, I lost to iBot. He’s the housebot. Thinking I’d be funny and play against casting, iBot has the most masculine personality among the bots. I also made him the most abrasive. So losing to him sucked. iBot isn’t a gracious winner. I guess I should say, wasn’t, since we’re talking about the past.

There were twelve of us, and the eleven bots. Our league was three divisions of four teams each. You played your division opponents twice, and each team out of the other divisions once, for an eleven-game regular season. Then we had the playoffs. Eight teams with the best records squared off.

Cat Day, as iBot officially named it, was the first day of the season. I thought I could take the Lombardi that year. We were playing by the 2030 rules. I had Ben Roethlisberger at QB (my Dad, before he was killed, used to tell me I was a big Roethlisberger fan when I was young), with Franco Harris (Grand Dad’s favorite) in the backfield, Mike Webster at Center (another of Grand Dad’s recommendations) and big Gronk at TE. I’d managed to add Alan Faneca. Wide receivers were Antonio Brown with Larry Fitzgerald in the slot. It was on defense where I’d improved, managing to add Ron Woodson, replacing Sherman, along with Troy Polamalu. I’d had enough money to get the 2010 version of Troy to go along with my 2009 version of James Harrison. I was set.

I’d settled into the Immersion Deck, opening day at Heinz under a gorgeous warm fall day. The crowd was roaring, my beer was cold, and my pizza was hot. TinBot’s Bengals, with Tom Brady under center, was my opponent. TinBot had finished last the previous season. He’d given up a lot to get Brady, although it was old Brady. I expected a good game.

They’d just placed the ball at the twenty when the alarms went off. iBot immediately roared, “Game’s starting. Shut that fucking alarm off.”

Arya said, “It’s an intruder alert. We can’t just turn it off. It must be investigated.”

“You’re fucking security,” iBot said. As Arya said, “I know who I am,” iBot finished, “Get it done, bot.”

“Game pause,” I said, as the only human, and the only one for which an intruder actually mattered. “Delay the starts until the alarm is resolved.”

While every bot except Arya cursed me, I brought up the security monitors. I figured this was a false alarm or malfunction.

“Where is it, Arya?” I said.

The interior cams caught her moving across the domescape. Drones overtook her.

“Don’t know yet, boss,” she said. She carried two weapons. The drones were armed, too. I pitied any intruders Arya might find.

The security net immediately pinpointed a breach back by a drain. That worried me. As the drones closed on the grassy place beneath a big black oak tree and hovered, their cameras picked up the cat.

“A cat,” I said.

“Yeah, we all have fucking eyes,” iBot said. “Thanks for the news report, egghead”

Protecting three kittens, the cat looked unafraid and ready to fight. The kittens looked like they were just a day or two old.

Arya arrived on the scene. She had her weapons ready. “Instructions,” she said.

“Nuke ’em,” iBot said. “The game’s waiting. Kill them and let the games begin.”

“No,” I said.

I had no need for a cat and kittens. I’m not an animal lover. I have livestock but that’s because I eat real food.

But I saw no reason to kill the cats. She looked like my first girlfriend’s cat. The girlfriend was Joy. The cat was Snuffy. Snuffy was male, though.

A cat with kittens in my sanctuary sowed a shitload of questions that required answers. Besides the breach, her presence meant something was going on outside of my fortress. Plus, being in the dome was one thing, but how had even reached it was almost as critical.

Shit. I didn’t say it, but I thought it about nine times in a row. I wasn’t going to start the football season that day. Not until I knew what the hell had happened to my security and what was going outside of my fortress.

So, see, that’s the day everything changed.

On Cat Day.

 

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Observed

Perhaps wrongly, I’m irritated when someone becomes angry with me for not telling them something that I observed about them after someone else tells them about it, because I infer from their accusation that they tell me everything that they observe about me, and I don’t think they do.

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Kindnesses

I suppose I’m not the only one with people in my life who remember every fault, often magnifying them, and hold them against you, and forget the kindnesses you did for them.

The kindnesses were in the past, and this is now, but their anger and resentment is eternal.

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“Drop a dime.”

Talking with my nieces and nephews whose ages range from 18 to mid-thirties, I asked, “Do you know the expression, drop a dime?”

No. None of them knew it. They asked about it, and I explained it.

Drop me a dime and I’ll tell you what I said.

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I Catch Myself

I catch myself

berating others for being cruel, short-sighted, stupid, insensitive, or inattentive

and

 

I catch myself

doing the same damn stupid things that I berated them for doing

and

 

I catch myself

remembering other times that I did these stupid damn things

and

I catch myself

reminding myself that we’re all human, with foibles and inconsistencies

and

 

I catch myself

realizing that I’m just as fucking flawed

and

 

I catch myself.

 

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A Sign

It’s a sign that things aren’t going well, computer-wise, when you try to reach http://www.isitdownrightnow.com to see if a website is having problems, and you can’t reach it because it’s down.

Amazing how frustrating something like the inability to reach one or two sites makes me.

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A Little R & R

I’ve been away, traveling across America (southern Oregon to western Pennsylvania) to visit with Mom and my sisters and their families for Mother’s Day. It was an impressive gathering. All five of Mom’s children were present, along with spouses, children, and grandchildren of three.

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Mom and my little sisters

Besides that, to celebrate my older sister’s birthday, we did a Gateway Clipper Sunset Dinner Cruise. Fun and informative, we saw Pittsburgh’s bridges and buildings from the Monongahela, Allegheny, and Ohio Rivers, or we danced to the DJ’s music. Oh, yeah, and we had a buffet dinner, and we drank.

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A large group of teenagers were on our cruise. When the music broke out, they appropriated the dance floor by forming a large circle. People then danced inside the circle. I wasn’t familiar with this practice, but others assured me that it started with the first homo-sapiens centuries ago.

The young ones were friendly and inclusive. I requested “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang for my sister’s b-day. When it started, they all let out a whoop, and then began dancing and singing the song. Sis got up to dance to her birthday song, and they all started dancing with her. “Happy twentieth,” one girl called to my sister, who replied, “Twenty-fifth.” “Can’t stray too far from the truth,” my sister later confided.

Fun as that was, more fun was the “Cupid Shuffle”. All were familiar with this, and it was terrific. Most didn’t know how to cha-cha, though, but one of my little sisters had it nailed.

One of my younger sisters organized everything for us. She’s my little sister (one of three), but she’s also a grandmother. My sisters are all attractive, intelligent, and accomplished, so I’m always nursing a suspicion that I might have been adopted. Of course, I inherited Dad’s face, arms, and hair, and Mom’s chest, shoulders, and legs, so there’s no doubt I wasn’t adopted.

My younger sister and her husband were also our hosts for several days of eating and partying. They took such great care of us. Her husband, Pat, is a fellow who remembers everything that I tell him. Told him once that I like Blue Moon with orange slices. Guess what he had on hand for me? I’d mentioned in a previous visit that I prefer other cheeses over American, so he had sharp cheddar available for my cheeseburgers. They’re good people.

Oh, the food was good. I immediately transformed into a glutton. I don’t regret it.

I didn’t write during that period. That wasn’t planned. As other writers have noted and been quoted, writers don’t take vacations. No, I didn’t sit down at my computer or even pull out a notebook, but I wrote in my head. I did attempt to get up and go write in the early mornings, but frankly, I was lazy, and chose sleep.

So now, a little R & R is required: reconnect and recommence. That is, reconnect with my novel and characters (done, thanks!) and recommence my writing routines and rituals (done, thanks!)

Time to write like crazy, once again.

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All That’s Left

Inflammation surged in her right shoulder through several days, demoralizing her. Pain afflicted her with the smallest motion, dressing, cleaning, even brushing her teeth and combing her hair. Trying to think through options, she put bread in the toaster and considered conversation with her rheumatologist. He disliked giving cortisone shots. What else was there for the agony?

The toast popped up. Flinching her shoulder at the sound, she cried out in pain and fell to the floor, where all she could do was laugh and cry. Sometimes, that’s all that’s left.

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Re-affirmed

Once again, I’ve been reminded that travel brings out the best and worst in coffee. People have different ideas about what tastes good, but they’re also part of geographic trends. “Isn’t that good coffee?” they ask, handing you some swill.

Which challenges politeness. I always err toward gratefulness. Coffee’s aroma helps ground me and restores my balance, to give nothing away about what the caffeine does to stoke my will to live. “Yes, yes, it’s very good coffee,” I reply. If pressed, I’ll mention, “It’s not quite what I would usually drink, but this is delicious. Thank you.”

Unless, of course, my taste buds are so offended that they’re lobbying my brain to spit it out. Then I swallow the coffee and say, “Mm mmm,” and complain privately later.

Some of that hotel and aero-plane stuff really pissed off my taste buds, though. I was afraid they were going to stop speaking to me. But then, they were given pie, and they were happy.

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