Swelter

Man, it's hot and humid again. I had been enjoying the milder weather, but looks like there's another heat wave coming through.

Fallen

I was productive today, got over 3100 words written for the long piece I'm working on (I still have that aversion to calling it a "book" until it's done; right now, it's novella length). Anyway, I was pleased I got that done, although I know I will have to revise the stuff as I'm going through it -- my drafts are very clean, but in terms of plot, I'll definitely need to go back and revise and QC everything and make sure it all sorts out properly, the pacing, all of that. Not the kind of thing I worry about at the first draft stage, but it's still something in the back of my head, as I work on it.

I cleaned up around the apartment; had to be done. The in-laws are nice enough, but where they go, chaos follows. I cleaned up the boys' room, the living room, and the kitchen. Much better.

I'm cooking potato gnocchi tonight, with a tomato-mascarpone cheese sauce, and Brussels sprouts, which I alone apparently enjoy. I really want to get the boys to eat more veggies. That's on my To Do List, without making it a big damned deal. I always loved vegetables; my mom always cooked with a lot of'em, and I had almost no vegetable aversions. I want the boys to have a well-balanced diet, to be good (and varied) eaters.

It still amazes me that B1 is nearly two inches taller now than he was a year ago. He's growing so tall so quickly. He takes after my father and me, definitely.

The boys were cute today -- they really, really didn't want to go with Exene's family. They wanted to stay with me. Both said that. B1 said "Nothing's fun without Daddy!" and B2 had his own version of that, saying he wanted to stay with me. I told them I was going to be writing, and that they'd have fun at Legoland, where the in-laws were taking'em, among other places. But they still really wanted to be with me.

The sun is setting earlier. It's filling the apartment with pumpkin-orange light. Fall is coming. I love Fall. My favorite season. This summer really flew by. It's extraordinary just how quickly 2010 flew by. Man. It's not done, yet, but Fall is fast approaching.

I'm going to go enjoy the evening light.

Bubblelicious

This morning had me shooting bubbles out the window with B2, using a couple of trippy bubbleguns the boys had gotten from their relatives. They're awesome -- they have flashing LEDs on them, and shoot a wonderful stream of bubbles. I wanted to unleash them on club kids last night -- it's like an Instant Rave. Good times! But B2 and I managed to nearly fill the cul-de-sac behind our building with a barrage of bubbles. The wind was carrying them everywhere, but we managed good coverage. Fun!

Ghost Train In Vain

This guy, so keen to plumb the depths of the Ghost Train legend, has now become part of it...

Man, Waiting for Ghost Train, Killed by Real Train

Whew

Traffic was bad tonight, but I always enjoy it, because the city's full of activity. Just the boys and me tonight. We're watching "Transformers" and having dinner. Nice day, great weather. Work was annoying, but I got through it. Definitely ready for the weekend, which I'm going to make good use of, just get a lot of stuff done. Have my list of things to do.

Scrubbing

One public transit pet peeve of mine: health care workers who wear scrubs on public transit (particularly, but not exclusively, city buses). I'm not a germ fiend, but any time I see various health workers in their scrubs on the buses (and I see it all the time), I just can't help but wonder. I don't know if anybody's done cultures of city buses, to see what's there, but I imagine there are a lot of germs there -- particularly on those fuzzy seats; I imagine the old hard-shell plastic seats were somewhat less germy, but the fuzzy seats that replaced those are probably little septic gardens. And scrubs at least nominally carry the onus of being worn in a place where cleanliness matters, or should, where you might have all sorts of immunocompromised patients there whose interests might not be well-served by somebody coming into their hospital room wearing funky scrubs that were worn not only through the city, but on the buses. Some time may be saved and some "Hey, I'm a health care worker" social status preserved by wearing scrubs on the buses, but is it worth it if it exposes your already-sick and/or injured patients to outside germs?

Stemming the tide

I think about this a lot (below). Our country's falling behind...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/08/25/129422571/climate-energy-and-stem-cells-ceding-the-frontier

The wingdings pound their angry, reactionary drums on these issues and the rest of the world moves forward, leaving us behind.

Transitory

Wonderful summer day again -- that perfect blend of warmth without excess humidity, lots of sun, breezes. Good stuff.


This evening was irksome, commuting-wise. The bus I needed wasn't showing up, and so, rather than wait forever for that, I hoofed it to the El. Great moment when this Latino guy and I were racing up the three flights of stairs to catch the train we needed (if we hadn't sprinted, we'd not have made it), but there were tourists at the top, like corks in a bottle, requiring some adroit public transit juking to get around them and dive for the open train car doors before the train left (the engineer was kind, gave us a split-second grace period to get in there. Once inside, the Latino and I exchanged knowing grins, like "Hell, yeah. We so made it." Not a bad accomplishment during rush hour, which impacts even the El (like if you miss one of those trains, it can sometimes take awhile to get the next one, depending on the traffic through the Loop, and even then, the trains can be packed).

I smelled delicious fish-n-chips cooking at one of the local neighborhood taverns. I noted that for future reference. Haven't had that in awhile, but I am jonesing for it.

Gonna work on my weekly short story this evening. SF story. Dark, darkly comic, dystopian. Good times. Muahhahah!

Shady Lane

I was never a fan of Pavement, but this is one of theirs that always sticks with me, like I can hear it and it'll stick in my head all day...

Pavement, "Shady Lane"

Of course, it being a Spike Jonze video, it's sort of deliberately "avant garde" and whatever. But the tune is memorable, regardless of the video.

Days of Future Past

This NPR piece amused me, how we've passed various "future" dates from all sorts of movies, and how quaintly unrealized those various futures were, and what they say about the present times that spawned them, and how real life is far more complex and rich than these imagined futures.

Funny that this came up, as I was watching an episode of TRANSFORMERS with the boys, where this politician uses doctored media to fan anti-Autobot flames in the populace (aided by Megatron, naturally), propagandizing people into thinking that the Autobots are the bad guys, which gets them booted off the planet, leaving it for the Decepticons. Anyway, a fairly straightforward demagogue narrative that communicates that this is a bad thing.

But watching it today, you can't help but think that this is what we have now -- the talk radio and Fox News circuits create a reactionary echo chamber that crafts its own reality, affecting how people react to the world around them in various invidious ways. It wasn't a reflection of the prescience of the kiddie show, so much as it showed the debasing of our political culture by a demagogic faction, and how much damage that had done. In the episode, of course, the bamboozled people realize the error of their ways; in real life, people most certainly haven't; if anything, they've gotten worse!

Bruschetta

Made some more bruschetta. I had fresh basil, but forgot to use it!

Finally

Got the pix out of iPhoto's clutches! The lake looked like the ocean this morning. A little tiltycam on the top one. Whoopsie! But I kept it because the colors and contrast were so nice.

Sunny

Lovely summer day. Great light, good temps. I snapped some pix, need to get them uploaded. iPhoto's being a dick, so I have to sort that out.