Message in a bottle, yeah
May 15, 2010
As I recall, I only ever did this one time in my life when I was pretty young. I think it was in the little stream that goes through the Indiana University campus where we summered when I was little. I loved that stream, and a message in a bottle seems like something I would have done there.
Today, I was working with a much larger canvas???the Mississippi River. My office is only a few blocks from it and I met Tori for lunch at the sushi restaurant Origami in the same general direction, so I declared to my coworkers that I was taking a long lunch and set out.
I didn???t actually have a bottle so I had commandeered a small plastic jar that previously housed colored toothpicks. (We photoshoot quite a bit of food preparation at work so we actually have a pretty well-stocked pantry.) My note read:
“I am a member of a web site http://tweaktoday.com, which has daily missions for its members. Today I am sending a message in a bottle.??I dropped this jar in the Mississippi River at the Hennepin Avenue Bridge in downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, on May 14, 2010. Its first obstacles will have been the Upper and Lower St. Anthony Falls and U.S. Lock & Dam #1. If it made it through all that without being destroyed, please do me a favor: surf to http://tweaktoday.com/missions_accomplished/2010/5/14 and let me know that you found it.”
I printed it on bright yellow paper so that maybe the jar would be more noticeable in the water and perhaps thus be more likely to provoke interest should someone see it along shore. Then just because, I also included a little plastic alien. Cracker Jack it isn???t, but I was trying to do what I could to promote a response by the finder.
As it turns out, the St. Anthony Falls and Lock and Dam were not the first obstacles my little jar encountered. I biked over to Origami and as I sped around the corner from Hennepin Avenue onto Washington Avenue, the jar flew out of my shorts pocket into the road. I screeched to a halt (well, you know, as much as screeching is necessary when you were only going 12 or 13 mph to begin with) and parked my bike on the sidewalk. Trafffic on Washington was still stopped for the red light, but turning left right behind me from Hennepin was a city bus. I dashed into the road and snatched the jar back from what certainly would have been a flattening with just moments to spare. I oriented it the other way in my pocket and went on to have an enjoyable lunch.
Once at the river after lunch, it took me a few minutes to find the perfect spot from which to launch the jar. I first went to a place where steps take you right down to the water, but I quickly determined that I wouldn???t be able to throw the jar far enough to get it into water that was moving forward in a decisive manner and that it would probably just bounce along the bank for not very far. I took the photo and concluded that I had to go onto the Hennepin Avenue Bridge (in the background) and drop the jar from there.
A few minutes later I was in place about a third of the way along the bridge. I was paranoid about getting ticketed for littering, so I waited about five minutes until the gap between pedestrians was large enough that I felt I could make my pitch without anybody being very sure about what I had done or being so interested that they felt the need to stop and chat about it.
In hindsight, I should have gone further toward the middle of the bridge. The jar caught the current, but it looked like its trajectory was going to take it into the Lock and Dam to the right in the photo (more hazardous) rather than more toward the middle to the Falls (more natural). Hopefully it will make the pass through the lock with a little pleasure boat rather than a freighter. And I really hope somebody finds the jar and picks it up and responds, preferably from out of town or, better yet, out of state.
My mailbox ??? it balances out
May 11, 2010
Such a thrilling topic. It???s not. The significant thing about my mailboxes through the residences is that most have ended up being the one that contained the master lock for the mail carrier. I???m happy to help out, but a lot of times it means that my missives get squished because the panel has to be able to be closed back up, and my Saturday grocery flyer is in the way. On the other hand, as a result of not having had any credit cards for a number of years, at least half the time I don???t have any mail at all. Overall, I can???t complain.
Childhood food memories, part 2: family routine
May 5, 2010
When you were a kid, was there something that your family always did on a particular day of the week? The one I remember was grilled cheese sandwiches and sardines in front of the tv on Sunday nights.
I have doublechecked with my parents who are visiting this week and according to their accounts, I am actually merging two memories.
Usually we ate in the kitchen, at the table. And as I believe I have previously recounted, I often had the unpleasant experience of remaining at said table until I had eaten the last bite of food on my plate. When this involved liver, particularly chicken liver, a large part of my evening was wasted.
But on two nights of the week, I knew I would be safe. On those nights, we ate fun stuff in the living room in front of the tv while we watched my parents’ favorite shows.??
The appointment viewing that I remember was for Mary Tyler Moore and All in the Family, and Lawrence Welk and Andy Williams. But I got my meals mixed up.
Those shows must have been for pizza night on Saturdays. On parent or the other would run downtown to pick up a pie from John & Toni???s, and then we???d sit on the living room floor and dine while viewing.
The routine I remember more vividly was Sundays, when we???d have grilled cheese sandwiches and sardines. My dad says the show we watched was Ed Sullivan, of which I have no recollection. But I do remember that minding the sandwiches in the oven was one of my early cooking responsibilities. My mom would prepare the sandwiches and pop them in to brown, and I was in charge of telling her when they were toasted and ready to be flipped. I took this duty very seriously.??
When the sandwiches were served, the plate was garnished with sardines. I thought it was just something we did; my dad said it was a tradition in his family. This weekend I enjoyed the combination for the first time in thrity years and it was delicious.
Childhood food memories, part 1: bowl licking
May 5, 2010
This is a tale of two eaties???one depravation and one satisfaction. We are American. In the big scheme of things, my family and I didn???t (and don???t) want for things. My 10-year-old self would both beg to differ and look forward to next week.
In the context of this conversation, one of the best times I had as a kid was helping my friend Denise make a cake. She was a year older than I, and I???m going to guess we were about nine and ten. I come up with this estimation because at the time, Denise???s next door neighbor was Tracy and a strong memory I have about Tracy is that Melanie???s song ???Brand New Key??? was popular. Maybe we we were more like ten and eleven and by that time Denise had become my flute mentor in band.
But there are two things that I most remember about Denise. Her dog Tippy, a yappy Pomeranian, chewed up the pink car in my Game of Life that I???d take over to her house because we loved playing. Denise was the one who first told me that fuck meant ???to get married in a not nice way.??? Denise???s chemist dad brought home for me the substances needed to make my own super-bounce ball for a science project. I accidentally wiped out on Denise???s brand new banana seat bike while she was inside eating supper and I never fessed up. And when Denise made that cake in my presence, I got to lick out the bowl.
That was an incredibly big deal to me because not only was I not given autonomy in making a cake in the first place???though I often got to hold the hand mixer and lick off the beaters???but my mom was a firm believer in every drop of batter going into the pan. When Denise made the cake from beginning to end, I was aghast when she seemed to leave half of the mix in the bowl, certain that she???d get in trouble, and then overjoyed when she asked if I wanted to lick out the bowl. I was absolutely gobsmacked that she didn???t want to herself, but I guess that???s the blas?? attitude you develop when you get to do something all the time.
As an adult, I leave a satisfactory amount of batter in the bowl every time. And you know what, Mom? It turns out just fine.
Appreciate your hot shower
May 3, 2010
It was brought to my attention a week ago just how for granted I take things like water, both potable and, as it applies here, hot.
I don???t ask for style from my person hygiene routine, only cleanliness. In February, I stopped combing and blow drying my hair after my daily shower because I discovered that as my hair gets ever longer, the absence of those two actions allows the natural curl to flourish. I did not stop taking the shower itself, though.
However, due to my own laziness and fiscal irresponsibility, I ignored paying my natural gas bill to the point where my service was cut off. Since it was the end of April (and now the first weekend in May), that wasn???t too much of a problem from the heat standpoint. But from the morning shower standpoint, it was nearly devastating.
The gas company doesn???t let you off easy. They freak you out. Their website says things like, ???Please allow two to five business days for your payment to be processed. After that, please allow five to ten business days for your service to be reconnected.???
It was on Thursday that I came home to find the disconnection noticed stuffed between my doors. It was too late to make a payment yet that day. I freaked out. I love my shower. I had plans to go out Friday night.
I have this Pavlovian routine with my hot water heater which is fueled by gas. At some time in the evening after about 8:00, I run the hot water for a minute or a few, until I hear the burner poof on. That way, I know I???ll have water as hot as I desire for my shower the following morning. When I don???t do that, the water is warm, but not satisfyingly hot hot.
So when I read the disconnection notice, I didn???t think about the dishes to do on the kitchen counter or the loads of laundry that I still haven???t done. No, my only thought was please let the water be lukewarm enough to be tolerable for a shower Friday morning.
It was. Barely. But enough. It was like when you were a kid and went to the swimming pool in August. The water had been sun-warmed all summer and it felt a little cool when you first jumped in, but after a few minutes you were used to it. Only difference was, I wasn???t out in the high summer sunshine.
I called the utility company to make payment arrangements and was thrilled to find out that the gas guy could come over Saturday morning to reconnect the gas and relight the pilot lights on my furnace and hot water heater. He said to give the water forty-five minutes to heat up.
I did, and it was my most enjoyable shower in some time.
April 27
Time is an illusion
May 1, 2010
Meet the masters of my morning, Alarm Clock, Bathroom Clock, and Kitchen Clock. Together, they perform the amazing feat of getting me out the door and to work relatively on time.
I???m lucky that my office is pretty flexible about arrival time. My bosses only ask that we are there by 9:30 and put our eight hours in. Some people get there much earlier, some of us get there right around that time.
I am not a morning person, and even though I adore sleeping and wish I did more of it, I often stay up later than I meant to; case in point right now, though I did just get home from a show. But you will notice that I am not going right to bed, even though it is midnight:30 and I want to get up promptly tomorrow morning to fit some things in before I need to be someplace at noon.
So in order to increase the chances that I???ll do the responsible thing day after day and get to work on time, I engage in self-trickery with my analog clocks. You know, the ones that are willing accomplices because they aren???t governed by a network time server. Alarm Clock is set five minutes fast, and Bathroom Clock and Kitchen Clock are set about seven or eight minutes fast.
When I use Alarm Clock, I rarely don???t set it for on the hour, whatever hour that is. I don???t believe in the seven-minute snooze???what use is that? You can???t work up a good head of sleep in seven minutes. No, I work with sixty-minute snoozes because I reset the alarm time, and that???s easiest to do in whole hours. Very occasionally, I???ll reset it for half past, but not usually because that would take, like, fifteen seconds to wait for the minutes to get to 30. I want to be back in bed, man.
By the time I stop at my computer to check in with my peeps on the way from my bed to my shower (because I???m so pathetic that I can???t wait half an hour until I could multitask it with eating breakfast), it appears to be about twenty after the hour. I get anxious and move fast.
Summer is a wonderful thing because I can ride my bike to work, which takes about eight minutes less than walking to the light rail station, waiting for the next train, and enduring the seven minute ride. Work is 1.75 miles away and the bike ride takes about 10 minutes. I know how to hit the traffic lights.
But if I do take the light rail, I know that my preferred carriage, the 9:11, almost always comes two minutes early, so I???m doing alright if I???m walking out the door when Kitchen Clock says 9:10.
The light rail platform clocks are obviously on a network time server because they match my iPhone exactly. For the rest of the day, then, I???m on precise time until Alarm Clock takes back over at bedtime and I think, uh oh, I???m getting to bed five even more minutes later than I meant to.
I love to sleep
April 29, 2010
Don???t most people? I would think so. But I know one person, @aaronh, who seems to have superhuman abilities to exist on subhuman amounts of sleep. Four or five hours a night for weeks on end? Come on. I???m tanked if I have two nights in a row of seven or fewer.
I know other people who keep vampire hours and don???t go to bed until the wee hours of the morning. But that???s a little different, because @someToast doesn???t seem to knock himself out getting up in the morning, so the quantity of hours is probably still there.
I, on the other hand, neither stay up late nor scrimp on hours.??
That doesn’t mean that I don’t often feel like I wished I had slept more. In reality I get seven to nine hours of sleep most nights. The exception is Thursday nights when I stay out late after bowling, whooping it up at karaoke. I get to bed between 1:00 and 2:30, depending on how much I???m singing.
But most of the time I go to bed between, say, 11:00 and 12:30 and actually get up at 8:00. Since I???ve been writing this blog, bedtime has crept later. I sit down for some quick writing and the next thing I know, what I thought I???d dash off in thirty to forty minutes has taken me an hour and a half,??????????1` (cat landing on laptop) and it???s an hour later than I had in mind. That lateness is facilitated as well, I believe, by my afternoon coffee habit, which I am seeking to get out of this week. Caffeine has a marked effect on me and even if it???s only mid-afternoon when I have some, it???s enough to keep me feeling peppy later than I should at night.
Sleeping more than is practical isn???t helped by the fact that I have a nice bed, and give myself a sleeping environment that is low on temperature and high on covers. When you???re that comfortable, can fault be found that you just want to stay there? And if you???re laying down you might as well stay asleep. Plus, for me anyway, when I???m half-sleeping in the morning because my subconscious knows that I should really get up so it doesn???t let me fall fully back to sleep, my other subconscious is going to town giving me absolutely wacky dreams. I like those dreams a lot and I treasure the experience. It???s especially fun when the dream involves people you see frequently in life and is so vivid that the next time you that person, you have to wonder for a few seconds whether that actually happened or not. Sometimes in those dreams, I even do fictional work work, such as writing It???s a Baby Armadillo, and hang out with people I???ve never met.
There???s nothing not good about sleeping. Plus, you get to snuggle with critters.
Favorite childhood book
April 28, 2010
For my first several years, we lived right across the street from the library (pictured below). At first, of course, my mom would check the books out for me. But then came the magical day when I was old enough to have my own library card. Boy, did I put it to use. In the summer, if I wasn???t at the swimming pool, I was reading. You could only check out six books at a time, for two weeks. I never needed the full two weeks, especially when I was was burning through the Nancy Drew books. And when I had finished with Nancy Drew, I took up with the Hardy Boys. I don???t really remember anything about any of the plots, only that I read them all.
(Just today there was an article about the 80th anniversary of Nancy Drew.)
I always liked to read, and right through high school, I continued to read quite a bit. In junior high, I made it through most of Robert A. Heinlein???s books. In high school, I tried to get into Kurt Vonnegut to impress a boy I liked, but I just couldn???t (on either count).??
When I was very young, I remember summer vacations at my grandparents??? and reading every book from my mom???s bookcase. A lot of those World War II era stories, I didn???t get. But I remember loving The Little Engine that Could. Back at our own house, I remember being vaguely scared of Where the Wild Things Are.
What is your favorite book from childhood?
photo of library by Google Street View
book photos from here
March 17, 2010
What did you want to be when you grew up?
April 27, 2010
I wanted to be a writer. Who didn???t? Who doesn???t? From childhood, I had visions of writing novels for a living. That, or raising horses. The two interests dovetailed one time only. The only novel I have ever finished was a short one about intrigue on a Thoroughbred farm, completed when I was about thirteen. When I discovered the author Dick Francis around the same time and my mother hesitantly let me buy one of his books, I thought I was in heaven. Unfortunately, my writing career did not parallel his.
As late as my seventh year in college, I still sort of thought that the writing thing might come together.??
I had an eight-year effort in getting my bachelor???s degree. My parents both zipped through in four years and were horrified when I dropped out two and a half weeks into my first semester, and not much longer into my second semester. Then I tried it out at a couple of technical/vocational colleges in the area before returning to the university for a couple of more or less successful years, if you were judging by the fact that I actually completed semesters.
I got the bee in my bonnet that I wanted to live in Minneapolis and so decided that the easiest way to accomplish that would be to transfer schools and move into the dorm. Nothing to it. But it soon became apparent that I???d have to graduated eventually and thus would have to choose a major.
What all did I pass by on the way? Communications, music, computer programming, journalism, graphic design, and a few that I???m forgetting. I eventually settled on English as my major, just English. I never had any desire to teach but I needed to pick something. I was good at reading. I???d worry about the rest of it later.
I did graduate but found that without the journalism or communications angle, there were no writing jobs. So I went back to school and ended up getting a commercial art degree from yet another technical college, and thus began my graphic design career.
I guess I lucked out, because at my current position we do most of our work for book publishers, and one of those publishers put us in charge of everything about a new imprint they created. That meant we were responsible not only for the graphic design and production of those books, but also for finding the authors. It happened that I and a couple of other people were interested in writing, and thus began my writing career.
I am not writing novels. I am writing supplemental materials for beginning readers, as in, five??? to eight-year-olds. I have to my credit such scintillating titles as It???s K, The Jelly Bean Machine, and It???s a Baby Gazelle! It gets fun when I both write and design a series (the books are always in series of at least six).
I backed into being a writer and I guess I shouldn???t knock it; I have technically achieved my desire to be an author. How many people can say that they???re immortalized in the U.S. Library of Congress? I can!
I have the hots for Anthony Bourdain
April 21, 2010
Maybe that???s overstating it a bit. But he does give the impression that he???d be a blast to hang out with. And I have dreamed about him. So I bought the opportunity to see him in person on Friday.
I don???t have any idea what his ???show??? might consist of. Is he hawking a new book? Does he tell stories about the making of ???No Reservations???? Is he going to editorialize for an hour? Does he have a stand-up routine? Dunno.??
Tickets were mostly sold out by the time I got around to making my purchase. See, I originally didn???t make an effort because for a number of weeks I was under the impression that he was appearing on the same evening as Craig Ferguson, whom I also adore and who, when push came to shove, was the one I chose. But as I was leaving the box office, I just happened to pause at the Anthony Bourdain poster to sigh at it and be sad that I had had to make a choice. Then it jumped out at me. The date on the poster was not the same as the Craig Ferguson ticket I was holding in my hot little hand. I could go! I turned around and marched right back to the nice young fellow at the box office window who probably already thought I was a loser for buying the first single ticket.
There were two choices on the seats???about halfway back on the main floor of the auditorium, or on the end of a couple of short rows in the orchestra pit. I went for it. I will be up close and personal (though slightly off to the side). I will sit there, attentive and steeled for the possibility that he might pick on people in front.??
Seeing this ad today in the Downtown Journal got me all excited again. Bring it on, Tony!
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 