Some random bob

I think I blew my blog wad on the kasese blog... and I'm also feeling like this space was good for diverting the demons while I was divorcing, disserting, dissecting every damn emotion I had. But it never had much of a personality, and the voice is so... intra-me. So I've been thinking I need another voice to stretch and another space, one that pushes me to keep the scholar part in the scholar practitioner fantasy as well as pushes me to explore a bit.

While I'm pondering that, some random.

1. A resolution for 2009: wean the computer out of my bed. I don't know when I picked up the habit of co-sleeping with my computer (well, I know when -- as soon as I was no longer sleeping with a woman who forbade it as strictly as she forbade the wet destruction of library books when I dragged them into the shower), but it's supplanted books too much of the time as I topple to sleep. And sure, nothing really wrong with reading a year's worth of Ask the Pilot columns before sleeping (it really just makes my shiny macbook a Big Kindle, I guess), but it seems wrong to fall asleep with $2000 worth of metal on my chest, a hum of anxiety about ElectroMagneticWaves or some such nonsense. I seem to have succeeded, more or less, in prying the need for continual email out of my psyche, in letting my treo self-destruct and not replacing it -- I should be able to shift this too.

2. I knit a dalek. For a xmas gift for F. I was stupidly delighted by it. I'm so weird sometimes.



I got it from this pattern:

Extermiknit!. Which was not too bad, though a bit hard to follow because no charts, and a few errors here or there. But the MAIN issue was the SCALE. Doesn't the picture on that site look like it's a wee cuddly thing, like maybe the size of one of those giant microbes??. Nope. That sucker is the size of a human baby. Stuffed with old tights, some of my sister's old jammies, and black beans. F likes it.

3. For NY's, we were in seattle. The next day we drove north a bit, to a park near Anacortes, and walked out on the beach and looked at birds. I took my camera out of my case to capture a wintry loon (the camera, I note, that I bought after I lost my other camera TWICE in Scotland), handed the case to F and promptly dropped it in the water.

I was kind of content to let it join the sea, but I couldn't quite be certain that there was nothing in the little pocket. So after peering under the dock for a while to try to gauge the tide, we went back to F's truck and ate some sandwiches, then went back. By now, it was following a little course that hugged the (very high) dock, and much closer to shore.

We had the idea to lasso it, but of course had no rope. (For some reason F had removed what looked like a serial killer kit out of the back of his truck -- he was driving around ropes and crampons and an ice axe for a while, for no apparent reason). But there WAS bullwhip kelp, so I roped me up about 15 feet of it, and F took the position of a careful curler on the dock (HURRRRRRY, I yelled, but he didn't get it, not being a canadian) and tried to sweeeeeeeep the case to shore.

He was making steady progress when we caught the attention of a little family on the beach. A harley riding couple, their daughter, her friend. Mr. Harley couldn't resist jumping into the action, and he began hurling rocks at it. Under the theory that if he could hit the spot right behind it, he'd create a little ripple that moved it cloooooser to shore.

So this went on for a while, F sweeping with the bullwhip kelp from the dock, Mr. Harley hurling rocks, us womenfolk encouraging the men in their Hunt. The wee camera case ($15 at Staples, I'll point out) bobbed closer and closer. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. "You go bob," yelled out Mrs. Harley, in fact, though when I said, "thank you Bob!" he said, "my name's Ken -- she calls everyone Bob."Bob," he said.

So it came really close, teasing the footing posts or whatever they're called, and I reached in... and stepped in... and the tide kept scooting it just out of reach... and then suddenly, it was 10 feet away again.

"I'm goin' in," said Bob. And he did. Rolled up his pants and rolled into the icy water, impervious. Rescued it with casual aplomb.



Then his daughter took our picture, and they told us about a neat little B&B they had stayed at nearby, and we wished each other a happy new year.

And F went home and washed the seagull shit off his goretex.

Happy 2009!