Amusing

Stray thoughts as I biked to 10th Street to visit G., and then home again

Posted on by Patrick

On the way there:

  • Man, that wind is cold. Cuts right through my jack­et. I’ll sure be glad on the way home, when it’s at my back.
  • Not a lot of traf­fic, even for a Tues­day evening about 8.
  • C’mon, turn green already.
  • Thanks for giv­ing me plen­ty of space.*
  • I’ll have to make sure I turn off my tail­light when I lock my bike up.
  • C’mon, turn green already.

On the way home:

  • Crap, I left the tail­light on. Oh well, it does­n’t draw a lot of battery.
  • Still not a pile of traffic.
  • I“ll be halfway home before G. gets to his truck.
  • How can the wind be in my face in both direc­tions?
  • Heh. “Plea­sure Chest”.
  • Oh right, wash­board**. This sucks even worse at night.

Lat­er:

  • Oh crap, I left my tail­light on again.

____

* Not sar­cas­tic; the truck in ques­tion went into the oth­er lane, giv­ing me lots of room, some­thing that does­n’t always hap­pen in this town.
** They’re repaving sev­er­al streets in my neigh­bour­hood. So far they’ve done the part where they tear up the old asphalt. The sur­face left behind is less fun to bike on than you’d think.

Interesting, to say the least

Posted on by Patrick

I got a new watch from my wife for my birth­day last month. It’s a great watch, and I like it rather a lot.

My new watch

Today on my lunch break, for no oth­er rea­son than “because I’m a nerd”, I punched my watch’s ser­i­al num­ber into Google, expect­ing to find — I don’t know, maybe its incept date*. Noth­ing much, anyways.

Instead, I found a US Mar­shal for­fei­ture auc­tion list­ing that includ­ed my watch.

My watch's lot

That’s it in the bot­tom mid­dle of the lot.

The things you learn.

[update] Appar­ent­ly, the auc­tion com­pa­ny in ques­tion “sells all the jewelry[etc.] seized and for­feit­ed nation­al­ly for the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice.” So… do I have a drug deal­er’s watch? Was it seized in a tax fortei­ture? The rather shal­low mys­tery deep­ens a very lit­tle bit.

[2nd update] As it turns out, there’s no mys­tery here. What I took to be a unique ser­i­al num­ber was appar­ent­ly in fact a glob­al prod­uct num­ber. So it was­n’t my watch in the prop­er­ty auc­tion; just a watch just like mine.
____

* See, there’s that nerd thing creep­ing in again.

Tonight’s fiction

Posted on by Patrick

So in the midst of set­ting up a judo tour­na­ment, I took time to go to a writ­ers’ group meeting.

At the last meet­ing, two weeks ago, we gave each oth­er sto­ry prompts. Mine was: “A romance between a worm and a giraffe”. I was all, Thanks.

So here’s what I end­ed up with:

Sor­ry? I did­n’t hear you.
.…

Well, I heard that you said some­thing, but not what you said.

.…

Your voice is a lit­tle soft, that’s all I’m saying.

.…

Fine.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, much bet­ter. Where are you?

You can’t feel me?

No. Well, not right now. You know.

I’m in your ear, just inside the out­er ear. Lis­ten, you said yes­ter­day that we need to talk. What’s up, babe?

Well…

Spill it. Spit it out.

All right. Lis­ten, you know, we’ve been, well, we’ve been…together for a long time now, and I’m just, well, I’m just won­der­ing where you see this going. You know?

Eight days is a “long time”?

Don’t dodge the ques­tion. My mother–

Yeah, I thought she might’ve–

Don’t let’s start. Can we start over?

Sure. We need to talk?

Yes. Where are we going, hon?

Well, I’m enjoy­ing myself, I thought you were enjoy­ing your­self too…

I am, I am. Oh believe me, I am.

Why do you need to put labels on things, then? Are we lovers? Are we goin’ to the chapel, gonna get mar­ried? Why can’t two grown crea­tures just, you know, enjoy themselves?

Well…

Babe, if you need to ask the ques­tion, do you want the answer? Think on that one.

That does­n’t even make any sense.

Exact­ly. Noo­dle on that one for a while.

What­ev­er, lis­ten, I just told my moth­er I’d ask. Because she’s got this need to know. You know?

Are you happy?

I… Yes. Yes I am, love.

Then the hell with your moth­er’s nos­ing. You and me, babe, we’re all we need.

You’re right. You know what? Screw her. Screw her med­dling ways!

That’s the spir­it, babe. Any­thing else?

Well…

Thought that might not be all. What now? Your dad wants to know if I fol­low football?

No. This one’s from me. I kind of, well… I want to know… With worms, it’s so hard to tell sometimes…

What? Tell what? Know what?

Well, are you… Are you male or female?

Hmmm. Tough ques­tion, I kind of got both goin’ on, you know? Worms, like you say. Hard to define. Hard to pin down.

I know. But when you think about your­self, you know, do you think of your­self as male, or female?

What’s it mat­ter? This is your dad ask­ing, isn’t it?

No, no. I just… I just want to know if I’m… well. I want to know if I’m gay or straight.

Oh baby. You and your labels.

For next meet­ing, in anoth­er fort­night, I’m sup­posed to have a com­plet­ed out­line of my WiP, the nov­el Once I was you.

Next time: » Shiai!

A blast from the past

Posted on by Patrick

…in more ways than one.

When I was in Uni­ver­si­ty, there was a girl I knew that had a book called 10,000 Dreams Inter­pret­ed*. She point­ed one out to me, and it became my favourite dream ever:

To see a horse in human flesh, descend­ing on a ham­mock through the air, and as it nears your house is meta­mor­phosed into a man, and he approach­es your door and throws some­thing at you which seems to be rub­ber but turns into great bees, denotes mis­car­riage of hopes and use­less endeav­ors to regain lost valu­ables. To see ani­mals in human flesh, sig­ni­fies great advance­ment to the dream­er, and new friends will be made by mod­est wear­ing of well-earned hon­ors. If the human flesh appears dis­eased or freck­led, the mis­car­riage of well-laid plans is denoted.

– source

Lit­tle did I know — until today — that that book was first pub­lished in 1901, and that dream’s been haunt­ing peo­ples’ minds ever since then.

____

* Or some­thing to that effect. Come on, this was 15+ years ago. Some­times I have a hard time remem­ber­ing where I put the cord­less phone ten min­utes ago.**

** Until it rings.