True Blue

A flat tire is no way to start the new year.

Well, technically it was the end of the old year, since it happened on Dec. 31. But the bike wasn't back in rideable condition until today. And that's just shameful.

The tires on my commuter were CSTs. I bought them for one reason and one reason alone: they are a deep, vivid blue. The bike is a shiny black Cannondale with white lettering and electric blue pin striping. Shimano makes a frame-mounted minipump in black and electric blue, which looks great on the bike and, as a bonus, worked quite well on the couple of occasions where I actually had to use it. And I found a couple of electric blue water bottle cages, which pick up the color scheme nicely.

I'm stupid about colors. My first "real" bike (after the old Walmart Schwinn, which by the way held up pretty damn well with next to no maintenance for about four years until I gave it to my son and he left it outside a convenience store while he ran inside for "just a minute") was a women's Trek 7.2. I really had no idea how much of a difference it would make to go from 26-inch MTB wheels to 700's mounted with city tires. I felt like I could fly.

But the bike was a nauseating shade of pale powder blue reminiscent of Care Bears and mental hospitals, and in the end I just couldn't get past that. I sold it after a year and got the Cannondale instead. (And might have picked up a couple of other bikes along the way.)

Anyway, I ran those tires for several months - $12 apiece, as I recall - and they proved quite reliable. I liked the way they looked, though they were more royal than electric blue, and since they're 25's they are not nearly as well suited to the crushed-gravel trails which are a big part of my daily commute. Also, they looked really sharp only right after a bath, because it turns out roads are not all that clean. Worst of all, I couldn't even mount the tires myself when they arrived. I ended up just taking the wheels off and doing the walk of shame to my friends at Tsunami (which is fortunately only about half a mile from my house, but even a half-mile walk of shame is about half a mile too far).

So, when the front tire flatted out on the way to work the morning of New Year's Eve, it was time to put the old boring black 32's back on. And somehow knock my front brake completely out of whack in the process. Anyway, it's all fixed now. Thanks Tsunami!

They are so good to me. But I can't imagine they think I am very bright.

Anybody know where I could get an electric blue saddle? The one I have is super comfy, but I'd swap it out in a heartbeat for something that really ties the bike together.

Important Things

I know there's been a lot of talk about swine flu in the media lately, and it's sad and all, but I don't have time for that right now. I'm having a hair emergency.

What? It's humid.

There's this perfect product I really like, so naturally the manufacturer discontinued it. All you can find out there these days are pomades designed to smooth and straighten out your hair, or sculpting mousse and gels that make it all crispy. Soft, natural curls are apparently out. It's sad when what you have goes out of style, but I guess hair is the least of my worries, as far as that's concerned.

At least I know some straight men.

So I ran out of hair goo, and rushed post haste to HEB to get some more, tonight at about 9:15, figuring I'd pick up a fresh eyeliner as well. Alas! HEB has an odd policy of blocking off the makeup aisle after dark, and I haven't quite figured out the reasoning behind that. It's probably so that vampires, stumbling in sleepily to stock up for a long night of murderous debauchery, won't be able to conceal their true nature from their victims through the artful use of flesh-colored foundation (and will therefore have to rely on nightclub lighting and beer goggles like the rest of us). Or maybe cosmetics get shoplifted a lot. Whatever. At least the hair goo aisle was still open - you can't prohibit vampires from shampooing, that'd be discrimination - but my preferred brand no longer exists; so I grabbed a bottle of something that looked reasonably close and got in the 10-items-or-fewer line.

(The blocked-off cosmetics aisle pisses me off, but I do have to applaud HEB for their "10 items or fewer" checkout lanes. Signs that say "10 items or less" make the baby Jesus cry.)

There was a middle-aged couple ahead of me in line. Now, I didn't count the number of items they had, partly because I think that's kind of tacky and ill-natured, but largely because I wasn't sure I'd have enough fingers. They purchased their items and struggled a little bit with the card swiper - it appeared to be the first one they'd ever seen - and then, as the cashier was finalizing their transaction, the woman noticed the gum on clearance next to the register.

"That gum," she said to the cashier, "how much is that?"

"It's a dollar," the cashier responded.

"Let me have a pack of the winter fresh," said the woman.

Unfortunately, the transaction had already been closed out, so the woman decided to pay cash separately for the gum. But comically, while she was fishing slowly in her purse for a dollar, the cashier voided the transaction. So the cashier rang the whole thing up over again, became confused when the woman attempted to pay for the entire purchase with a dollar, they finally arrived at an understanding, and the man began once more trying to figure out how the card swiper worked. Meanwhile, the woman noticed the price of the gum as it flashed up on the checkout display and began bickering with the cashier because the amount was more than a dollar. The cashier attempted to explain the concept of sales tax. The woman wasn't having any of it. People in the non-express lane one over, who had arrived in line much later than I did, were finishing up and leaving. The haggling continued.

Finally they concluded everything to their satisfaction, completed their purchase, took their bags, and left. The clerk rang up my hair goo, I swiped my card and got my receipt, and I overtook the couple in the parking lot halfway to my car. I strode past them with rather needless flamboyance, I'm afraid. I wanted to make a point. Stupid slow people!

Karma will probably catch up with me either in the form of swine flu or of being sucked dry by vampires, but at least I'll have good hair.

oh noes!

Just look what the kid dragged in:


Katie swears she is only kittensitting for spring break, but I'm pretty sure I've heard that one before. Fortunately I'm very hardhearted and not at all fond of cats. So you can't pull anything over on me.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a parent, I've found, is to introduce your seven-year-old to icanhascheezburger.com. Not because it's in any way inappropriate for children - well, maybe, sometimes - but because your child will never let you near the computer again, and will drive you up the wall with her incessant LOLing. Also, she'll insist on reading the captions to you. After five or six of them your brain starts leaking out through your ears.

Today at work I had to send an email out to all our field offices. Normally, our agency is not allowed to accept any gifts, which is unfortunate as the travel industry is prone to bringing us cupcakes, cookies, and other forbidden delights without notice; but there are a few exceptions; our annual conference coming up is one of them. One of our sponsors is giving out something perishable, so they intend to send out their attendee gifts ahead of time instead of handing them out at the conference.

"This is just a heads-up that you'll be receiving something from our sponsor," I wrote. "I just wanted to let you know that it's been reviewed to ensure that it meets our policy and you are allowed to accept it."

"You can has!" I wanted to write (but didn't). "But you can not has cupcake!"

I mentioned the incident ruefully to one of my coworkers. "More road trips," he told me sternly. "Less internet."

This kitten's name is Lola (rhymes with cherry cola), and she's one of five or six small, adorable creatures Katie's friend brought to school today to find only-temporary, just-for-spring-break homes for. Right. Sure. It's embarrassing, what people will resort to, isn't it?

Good thing I'll never fall for it. Ooh! Oooooh! She just yawned! Ooooooooohhhhhh!

I See Dumb People

...But not if they see me first!

Oh, wait.

This morning the panicmonger gave me a call. Yesterday evening I had sent her and Robert an email attaching some documentation for them to approve. The email began in the standard way: "Attached for your review, please find..."

Robert sent a reply to both of us this morning that he had reviewed the documentation and it looked good.

Then my phone rang.

"Where is the documentation?" inquired the panicmonger.

"Um. You mean the file attached to the email I sent?" I asked, confused.

"Yes, where is it?" she asked.

She must be asking me where the original is saved, I reasoned. "It's on my hard drive," I told her.

She laughed a little. "Well, how am I supposed to review it, then?"

I wondered if this were a trick question. "Um. It's... attached to the email?"

I heard her clicking around on the other end. "Oh, I see it," she said.

Somebody should buy her a bottle of peroxide, because the drapes don't match what's on the other side of the window.

I also got e-yelled at (bold type, not all caps, which the clueless sometimes innocently employ even in these enlightened times) by a client contact today. I didn't really fault him, because I am, after all, a faceless bureaucrat. I try not to be good at it. The client objected strenuously to providing some necessary paperwork I'd asked for, and copied the head of my division on his angry email to me.

So copying the same people, I wrote back apologizing for the frustration, explaining the necessity of what I had asked for, and offering to provide any help I could; but he did not appear to be mollified. The division head stopped by my cube a little later.

"That guy is an idiot," he told me, "in case you hadn't noticed. He also has a thing for yelling at women. We like to call him Shit-for-Brains, so don't let him get to you. I thought I shouldn't tell you this in an email."

I don't know why not. What does he think I'm going to do, publish it on the internet?

But really, as long as he doesn't yell at me in person, I'm fine. The sociopath in me enjoys the challenge of winning over a really tough customer. In this case, anyway, I can't give in - if I did, the work I'm preparing on his behalf simply wouldn't be approved by people who have a lot more authority than I do - but he didn't upset me.

The third dumbass in this post is me, for recounting two stories I've already told in person or via email to pretty much my entire readership already.

How's That Again?

Going out to eat should not make you feel like a dumbass.

You know those restaurants where they have a big board posted by the door that says "How It Works" and then when you get to the front of the line, the staffer asks you, "Have you ever been here before?"

On the other hand you have your traditional types of places, where nobody has to explain anything. You sit down and a waiter takes your order; or it's a buffet, or cafeteria style, or fast food. These are better because, no matter how friendly and patient the staffer is whose task is to explain the rules to you at a non-traditional-format restaurant, you can't help seeing it from his perspective. Oh look, it's Faceless Customer. He comes in here all the time. But he still just... never... gets it. Geez. What the hell is wrong with this guy?!

Last night I dreamt that a friend and I went to grab a quick breakfast taco at some place with a weird system. There was a long line snaking out the door, but we walked right up to the counter and placed an order and paid. This upset a few of the people in line and a fight nearly broke out; the staffer behind the counter explained - a bit huffily, too - that this was the way it was supposed to work, but the people waiting were still not at all happy. Novices. So it's probably not a good idea to come up with a concept for a new restaurant in your sleep.

But next time you go to Freebird's and the guy behind the counter asks you if you've ever been there before, furrow your brow, say, "Yes, I come in here all the time, but it's still not quite making sense to me. Could you run over the rules again?" You'll be a big hit.

The Tao of Now

Anything could happen, and very likely will. And even if it won't, how do you know? Can you predict the future? Of course not. You're just some mortal schlub, trying to muddle through day-to-day existence in a way that (1) won't hurt anybody* and (2) will be enough fun to make life worth living. So just try not to be caught unawares.

This is what's called a Philosophy, unless it's just called a personality disorder; but quite frankly I've never been able to tell the difference.

Currently I'm sitting on the front steps awaiting the arrival of the least philosophical person I've ever known, my ex-mother-in-law. She's bringing my son back from an extended visit, and, God help us! she wants to Talk.

If I only spoke Croatian, and she only spoke Klingon, the communication gap couldn't be wider. There's no hope whatsoever of achieving anything by talking. I've been sitting here trying to figure out if she even begins to realize this; though I think she's probably not on a level to realize that any school of thought might exist more transcendent than that which produced the pop-psychology book her insanely controlling daughter-in-law gave her for Christmas, to help her be less controlling. After all, if she were, we might actually be able to Talk.

Not that I lay any particular claim to sanity, myself. It's just that I'm pretty sure that whatever else is wrong with me, I'm not very stupid.

And her real goal is not my son's well-being, though I'm sure she thinks it is. Her real goal is to have Influence, to be Important, to Matter. Well - yeah. I think that's most people's goal. We have friends we do genuinely care about, but those friendships ring hollow if we don't think our friends care about us. We fall in love, but do we really want our loved one to be happy? How much of love is pure vanity: we want to be indispensable to someone? We want someone not to be able to get by without us.

Viciously, once we start being a vast suck on the lives of the people we need the most, the only ways we can find to make ourselves more indispensable are the very ways that will make those people wish more that they could be rid of us. The buzzword is (or, ten years ago, was) "codependency." Make somebody need you so they won't be able to get away; then you can suck just as badly as you like. They'll resent the hell out of you, but they can't leave.

Perhaps if I were a stronger person I would have simply responded to ex-MIL's request for "the Talk," "No thanks, that's okay, thanks very much anyway." She'd have a conniption, but it's not the conniption I'm so frantic to avoid. It's the self-righteous belief she would carry away that I obviously Just Don't Care - not about her, which, well, why should I? - but about my son. Calling me a lousy mother probably hits me in my very weakest spot. Because I don't really think I am much good.

And with her, "the Talk" puts me in the position of defending something I personally find indefensible. But I can't get into that.

I need a better personality disorder. I'm on the porch with citronella torches glowing and cicadas chorusing and Prokofiev wafting out through the open screen door. The light is still bright, and the air is warm. She could show up in five minutes or never. Personally, I'd just like to stay right where I am at this exact moment. Philosophy isn't working for me. I'm not ready.

--------------------------------------
*Assuming you're not an asshole, of course.