Foolish Questions

We don’t do the conventional Valentine’s Day thing. We don’t do a lot of ‘conventional’ type things. It’s how we stay young. Or possibly, it’s how we fool ourselves that we’re staying young. My theory is that by the time you reach fifty you ought to be deeply into the self delusional behavior, or you’ll be sitting home on a Saturday night, watching Lawrence Welk, or whatever it is that old fogeys do nowadays.

Anyway, we usually skip the hard-to-get dinner reservations, the overpriced roses, the diamonds, even though they are the secret to a good marriage*, and the other assorted must-do’s associated with Valentine’s Day. We stay home, I make a nice dinner and we give each other cards. If I’m in the mood to stock up on some brownie points, there might be a box of See’s chocolates for milady. Cause let’s face it, Mary likes See’s a lot better than she likes diamonds. Some time later, like a couple of weeks or so, when the hubbub has died down and the prices drop from extortionary to just pricy, we’ll go out to a nice dinner. So the money we save not getting all the loot we’re supposed to buy each other for Valentine’s Day, is money that we can use to get much more affordably priced loot later. It’s a good system.

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I saw an article on-line today that was discussing whether the increase in the number of smoke alarms was responsible for the decline in deaths from household fires during the last quarter century. Along with the article was one of those parody infographics that I love so well (flash something with an information related graphic anywhere within a thousand miles of an engineer and watch their heads pop up in response, like meercats sniffing the wind), with a pie chart showing 1% of the time the smoke alarm notifies you of a fire. The other 99% of the time the smoke alarm is there to alert you that you’ve been cooking.

We rarely experience cooking related notifications, possibly because we have newer smoke detectors. Or possibly because I’m not allowed to fry anything, ostensibly for health reasons, though I suspect that this is probably more due to Mary attempting to minimize the number of Mike related accidents per annum. So far our smoke detectors have never warned us of a fire (which means they’re 100% effective, since we haven’t had a fire in the house) but have been very, very good at notifying us when their batteries need to be changed. And this will occur, only at night, most commonly at three in the morning, for maximum effect.

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I have coined a term, Preppage, which is the period just prior to commencing travel where one figures out what one is going to pack. As Mary points out, preppage is not actually a word, in the conventional sense; conventional being defined as ‘in a dictionary’. Mary does that a lot, identifying examples of atrocious grammar, appalling spelling, and horrific pronunciation. That most of the examples she identifies come from my own writing and speech, is only bearable only because she’s trying to make me a better person. I know this because she tells me so. I think the difference between our two approaches are a result of her majoring in English at a prestigious liberal arts college while I, the untutored savage, matriculated at a state university best know for a football team and animal husbandry. Two things that have more in common than one might envision.

But as it turns out, I do know that preppage is not a word, at least not one recognized by the panel made up of officious professorial types, that I envision working on authorized dictionaries and the like. I’m sure there has to be such a panel, primarily because it’s a convenient way of sequestering away those self-same officious professorial types from the real world. Otherwise the professors would be wandering about and confronting guys wearing camouflage ball caps with slogans like ‘Git R Done’, and they’ll point out that ‘get’ is misspelled and ‘R’ is just a consonant and not an actual word. Then it all goes downhill from there, and before you know it there’s a couple of broken professor types and a guy named Butch with slightly skinned knuckles. Anyway, since this is my blog and it’s not like I’m making much money at it, I figured that as partial recompense I should have free reign to make up and use words of my own peculiar construction. Which is really difficult, I would have you know, because the automatic spellchecker thingy is always trying to turn words like preppage and the like into real dictionary approved words, so I have to try and trick it by adding an extra ‘s’ or something and then going back and deleting the s. It’s a pain but I persevere. Mary has pointed out that I can turn off the automatic spellchecking feature, but this is coming from the same woman who’s pointing out that preppage isn’t a real word so I’m pretty sure she has some sort of ulterior motive. Probably something to do with emphasizing the usefulness of English Comp Lit over Introductory Pig and Poultry Care and Management.

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Over the summer, whilst we sat before a roaring fire and drank hot toddies as a frigid snowstorm beat against the windows (and before you dismiss this as hyperbole, we have snow well into May), we discussed our upcoming travels. Mary pointed out that among my many manifold failings, I neglected to record our adventures with any of those new fangled photography devices. She might not have used terms like failings, many, manifold, nor neglected, but the intent was clear, if only to one as supersensitive as myself.

Once in a great while one of us will occasionally say something like, “Hey, this view of Hong Kong harbor is amazing! Let’s take a picture.” Usually though, it turns out like, “hey, this view of Hong Kong harbor is amazing!” Pause. “I wonder how good the dim sum is in this place over on the corner?” And we’ll miss out on another shot at immortalizing our adventures, though I should note that the dim sum was better than average.

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According to my completely unscienterrific survey recently, I’ve noticed that the taxi drivers in New York and Los Angeles have completely different styles. Yes, I know, why am I using a taxi in LA, what kind of social deviant doesn’t have a car? In our defense, it was just a overnight stop, quick trip to the hotel, and then back to the airport in the morning. No plans to go out on the town, and though this meant we wouldn’t be making the obligatory stop at In-N-Out, we were just steps away from the oldest Hot Dog-On-A-Stick shack in Santa Monica, so it would all be smiles and kisses from the marital partner. We didn’t actually need a rental car, even though we knew this would likely brand us as outcasts and pariahs.

Anyway, back to today’s subject, taxi drivers. New York cab drivers are on the phone from the minute you get into the cab till you alight at your destination. If you’re very, very lucky your hackney driver will have a hands-free set. I should point out that this appears to be a pretty rare occurrence, and should not be counted on by any prospective riders. I haven’t a clue whom the cab drivers are communicating with, though I’ve come to suspect that it’s with each other. I mean who else has the opportunity to converse on the phone all day? One fact that I can state with confidence however, is that the every cab driver will be communicating in a language that is emphatically not English. I believe that the current breakdown is approximately 30% Eastern European, and 55% percent dialects from the Indian sub-continent. The remaining 15% are either some obscure dialect like Udmurt, or possibly Quenya. I have a theory that the cabbies are all part of a vast conspiracy, dedicated to concealing the location of all the best Sri Lankan restaurants.

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Since we moved here to the wilds of Colorado, amongst the crystal clear skies and clean piney scented air I have developed a bit of, well, not really an obsession. More like a thing. Like, when you find a place that sells really good Thai food, and you go back a little more frequently than you normally go to a restaurant, like every week or so. Not quite to the point where people start sniffing the air when you enter a room, trying to figure out where the curry smell is coming from, but close. So not really a passion, just something that you do more than once in a blue moon, or on the third Thursday in months that have an F in them.

I like to make fires and then sit in front of them. Not a fire in a fireplace, inside, all warm and snuggly, with a glass of a solidly decent cabernet. No, I mean fires built in a fire pit, outside, in sub-arctic temperatures, or if you’re very, very lucky, during or immediately after a snow. Where it takes me longer to get on all the cold weather gear than it takes to build up the fire in the first place. A lot of the fun is in the building of the fire. Starting with some newspaper, adding twigs and pine cones, then building a little pyramid of larger and larger branches, all in an attempt to see if I can make a fire, from raw materials, just like they did back in settler days. Though with a barbeque lighter. Which settlers totally would have used, if they had access to a twenty-first century industrialized supply chain.

So after I get my fire lit, I like to sit in front of it, sip some coffee, and think little thoughts. Fire gazing, I’ve come to the conclusion, is not conducive with deep thinking. It works better with small things, like whether the roast chicken I served last night might have been better with thyme sprinkled on the outside before roasting, and why is it that everything in life that is bad for you tastes so wonderfully great, like crispy chicken skin and Thai curry.

Mary will go and enjoy the fire with me, once or twice a year during the fall or spring. My fire thing, however, sitting out on nights where the temperature plummets to single digits, or when it’s snowing, my thing, I do alone.

We recently visited Barcelona and came away liking it bunches. We got to spend three days there on our big-time, wondrous, splendiferous all-expenses-paid trip to the Iberian peninsula. Granted, we had to pay for all the expenses, but one can’t have everything. The only problem with starting a trip to Spain with Barcelona (besides paying for it) is that everything else is less. Not that Valencia, Cadiz and other locales in Spain aren’t quite nice, they are indeed, but Barcelona is a hard act to follow.

First thing. If you do have the opportunity to go to Barcelona, don’t stay at the W Barcelona. We did, but really wished we hadn’t. This makes the second time in about a year that we’ve sampled the rather doubtful offerings of the W chain and we have come to the conclusion that the W is just not our cup of tea. Or glass of beer, in my case. The relentless drive to be hip, trendy and cool, is wearying and although I hate to admit it, Mary is probably quite correct that we are neither trendy nor hip. I’m still holding out, probably in vain, on the cool though. If I had to point at one specific factor that I think most detracts from the experience, other than the constant and unremitting music from bands I’ve never heard of and don’t particularly like, it’s the consistent incompetence of the staff. They are obviously hired for their youth and attractiveness, and the inability to perform the simplest of tasks, like totaling up a bar tab, is as far beyond their capabilities as is high-energy physics. Still they are pretty young things.

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Somewhere in the past couple of months, while traveling, I, at some point, came across a can of Coke. I know this because I have a note about it, but I haven’t a clue where this event occurred. Granted, it is slightly unusual for us to be found with a can of Coke Cola, as unlike our fellow Americans, our intake of carbonated beverages is somewhat less than the average US consumption figure that can be best expressed with the metric of hundreds of Big Gulps per annum. If I had to guess, I encountered the aforementioned can of Coke while I was either in a plane or on a ship, for reasons that will become very quickly apparent.

Sure, you might point out that encountering a can of Coke isn’t that big a deal in today’s world and normally you’d be right. But in this particular case, (heh, case…. oh, come on, yes, it’s sophomoric but that’s the kind of thing you’re going to have to expect if you read this blog), as I was saying, I was given a can of Coke that had a label printed on it which specified that the beverage was for “on-board airline and maritime consumption only”.

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Well, it’s not the Casablanca of our dreams, a dram of brandy consumed while gambling our last thirty francs on roulette, as Sam tickles the ivories. Though truth be told, Rick never got within five thousand miles of Casablanca, since the movie was all shot on a backlot or a sound stage. Even the replica Rick’s Cafe Americain in Casablanca is now defunct. The French are long gone though their influence still lingers.

The overriding impressions I come away from modern Casablanca with are 1) don’t eat the fresh fish because it’s neither particularly fresh nor, apparently, is it put on ice while awaiting sale. 2) All men, especially those in sales, have aspirations to be the Moroccan version of Henny Youngman. Really, I never saw a place where everyone is such a comedian. Or at least trying to be. I almost bought a rug just cause the sales guy was cracking me up, and not because he’s all that funny but its a Borscht Belt kind of humor that most people in the States are too self conscious to mimic.

Overall, I’m glad we crossed this off the bucket list – Casablanca that is, not the visits with the amateur comics. Don’t think I’ll ever go back but it was worth a quick stop.

So we were wandering through yet another London museum, and by now you’d think we’d seen them all, but apparently London museums are almost literally limitless in number. I suspect that when we’re not in England there’s a committee somewhere (Brits are just bonkers for committees, special committees, panels, boards and working groups), creating new museums so we’ll have something to do when we’re visiting. Well, something besides my idea, which is to conduct a comprehensive survey of pubs and fish and chip shops. Prior to our trips to London, I submit my idea of fun, Mary veto’s it, and we do museums.

So on this last trip, we only had a full day before we were to move onwards, further into the dark heart of Europe. We decided to check out the Tate Museum, which is a depository for hoary old paintings from hoary old artists like Turner, Constable, and Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger. Ah, I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking now would be a good time to go and have a few of those Little Debbie Snack Cakes that you were saving for the kids, but what they don’t know, they won’t even miss. Go ahead – treat yourself, you deserve it. If you have to justify it, think about the fact that you’re saving the children from a lifelong addiction to sweets, which inevitably lead to obesity, diabetes and eventually confinement to one of those motorized scooter thingys. When you look at that way, you’re a blooming hero! Oh, it wasn’t the snack cakes? Well, if your question is who is Marcus Gheeraert the Senior or Older I can’t help you. I don’t even know who the Younger was, since the only reason he came to our attention is that he painted this.

Yes, this is why we go to art museums. I mean, yes, it’s true that if it were left up to me, all museums we visit would be filled with lots of swords and exotic firearms and big planes. Mary feels, rightly, that I need a little of the old civilizing influences so I go to art museums, and then afterward we can go to the pub and have  pint while we discuss why the man in the aforementioned painting is not wearing any pants. Sometimes, like in the case of Captain Thomas Lee we manage to have several pints, while we thrash out his pantslessness.

According to online references and the little note placard next to the painting in the museum, Capt. Lee is wearing the dress of an Irish light infantryman from Medieval times. It’s certainly apparent why they were called ‘light’ infantry, as when you’re going without pants, you’re travelling pretty light. Might I point out though, that Ireland is frequently cold, often rainy, and almost always both, and going without trou is either a sign of great personal hardiness, or just a touch of the insane. So that old saw about ‘mad dogs and Englishmen’, well you have a better idea now how they acquired that particular moniker.