Groundhog

Once again, woodland mammals had no effect whatsoever on the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Imagine me slackjawed in stunned disbelief.

Winter continues. It always does.

Snow fell here over the last few days and nights. I had heard the word "blizzard" bandied about a few times in the days and hours before the actual snow arrived, but it was merely a snowstorm. The difference between the two is an important one for those of us who live in areas prone to either phenomenon.

Thursday night I bundled myself warmly and stepped outside around midnight. So I guess it was Friday morning. I was out hoping to take pictures, but mostly, I think I just wanted to soak in the bright hush a big snowfall brings to Chicago.

I walked around for maybe 15 minutes, and in that time I noticed only one lone automobile shushing by me. It was nearly as quiet out as if I did not live in a city at all. What sounds there were were absorbed nicely by the layer of snow. It was easy to feel like the only soul in the city.

It is never dark in Chicago, not even deep in the night, but a fresh snow makes the whole place glow with refracted light. It's like the light cannot escape. I absorbed as many lumens into my eyes as I could, but it had no effect that I could discern on the overall brightness.

My sluggish camera found enough light bouncing off all the new white to hold focus in the night, even if all the resultant images were heavily tinged in yellows and golds. They were nearly sepias already, so it was not a giant leap for me to finish the job myself when I processed the results.

Here are a few shots from my midnight creeping:




While it crunched satisfyingly under my boots, the snowfall was a little disappointing in terms of actual accumulation.

In the shots, the lights are all severely blown out, which I guess is technically bad photography, but I love how they turned out nonetheless.

*****

And I guess, if you are a bad blogger and stop posting regularly, Blogger will take away the stripey backdrop of your banner at the top of your page. Just another thing to be wary of, Blogwriters. Hope you guys can still enjoy the site without the friendly stripes until I can remember where that thing was in my code and fix it.

Maybe it's a punishment not for the lack of posts so much as that I think it may have been longer than six months since I posted about children or animals, in clear violation of the Blogger terms of service. I think my last post that counts was probably "Sphinx," in which I recounted my difficulties in teaching my cat to quiz me with riddles in our idle time.

The cat, of course, has nearly nothing but idle time. His schedule is clear. I left out the classifieds not long ago, in hopes that he would show some interest once more in computer programming, as he did when he was young. To show his contempt for my plan to get him to start contributing to the household, he or his sister urinated on the pages.

Does this qualify as a cat post now? Can I have my stripes back?

*****

I think this blog is open again, Blogreader. Soon enough, you might find Monday Morning Haiku (often before Tuesday afternoon) and buzzing about a fiction contest sometime in the future. Maybe even the reinstatement of the ill-fated "Ask the Moon" advice column.

But smaller steps are necessary. I feel unreasonably skittish about blogging lately, and I don't want to spook myself right back into the darkness.

In the meantime, as I find my feet again, feel free to drop me a comment, tag me with a meme.

The sphinx position

Boy-cat lopes into the room like he's in a hurry. His body language says agenda. But after the large vertical leap to the surface of the bed, he merely settles down into the sphinx position next to my hip.

He is large. He looks like any other cat, provided said cat wearing several specially-tailored fur coats. His friendliness carries a weight of its own, crossing sometimes into neediness. He would make an excellent George in an all-cat production of Of Mice and Men.

"Ask me a riddle," I say. He looks uncertain, cocks his head and begins purring loudly. Somewhere in his cat mind he seems to have forgotten the order of things, and now the purring is what causes the human to pet him.

"No, a riddle," I point at him sternly, and he looks at my finger. I retract it before he can begin to nuzzle against it. He'll never learn if I keep reinforcing him simply for being alive.

"Rid-dle," I say again, stretching it out in the hope that he will understand English, if only it is spoken slower.

Two rooms away, near one of his sleeping places, a book of riddles lies open for him. I have not read the riddles. Why train a cat to ask riddles you already know? He has licked the side of the book many times, riffling the pages with his tongue, but so far has not moved on to study a second page.

For my part, I only ask for a riddle when he is sitting in the sphinx position. I have placed images of the Sphinx in Egypt, and some drawings of them I clipped from a mythology text above his food bowl. He sees them when he feels hungry, which is always, and it is my hope that he learns to sit like this more often. Sometimes my eyes mist up when I think of us passing the hours on a winter's afternoon, he stumping me again and again with tricky riddles.

He is still purring at my hip, closing his eyes. Is he recalling one of the riddles from the book? I am breathless with anticipation.

"What walks on four legs at..." I stop him before he can go any further. I am crestfallen. I know he is trying, but I am starting to lose hope. I have no way of ascertaining if this is something he simply cannot learn, or if he just refuses in order to punish me for some imagined crime.

"A man," I sigh. "Don't you remember? I taught you that one myself."

I reach out and give him what he wants, stroking the chin of my stupid beast. His purring grows even louder. Big and friendly and hopelessly stupid.

I wonder how is sister is coming along with the jokes I have left for her in the hallway, culled from the wrappers of Laffy Taffy.

Nameless Lion

So, uh...

...I got a lion...

No, really. Look:



Just a lion, you say? Well, he's also representative of my joining the Shameless Lions Writing Circle. So far, we mostly write about lions. But, you know, circular ones. Great, round lions who've eaten far too much from what I gather.

So I am supposed to post my lion, and add him to my sidebar, and then compose a short piece about him. 48 words, max.

48 words?!?

That's not very many. Here goes:

This lion, bestowed on me by Shameless
Is long of locks, checker-clad, and Nameless
his outfit might set your eyes a-popping
his mangy mane suitable for mopping
I'm told that my pal will help my writing
to my relief: I thought I'd read "biting"

So, he's named Nameless Lion, and I guess that's all I have to say about my new furry friend. I've put him in the sidebar as well, but not so close to Bonto the monkey that he gets any ideas. He's under "Miscellany," which he tried to get me to change to "Miscel'lion'y." No deal, Nameless.

If you look at him in the sidebar, sometimes he gets excited and tries to escape his bounding box to say hello. Do not be frightened. He cannot get out.

Should you desire a lion of your very own, click here. They aren't all checkered, your know.

Like gerbils and créme brûlée...

I was reminded of this story while writing a comment to NMJ on her post about finding her new moisturizer smelled like bubble gum.

*****

When my cats were still just tiny kittens with eyes of blue, I had to take them to the vet a lot to get vaccines and such. At one point, I was given a vial of pink fluid and some plastic eyedroppers and told to administer a dose of the liquid to the cats by mouth twice a day.

"Will this be something they'll fight me on?" I asked the bubbly veterinary assistant. I have had experiences before where dishing out medicine involved cornering the animal and forcing it down their throat because they hate it so much. I was wondering if I should purchase falconer's gloves to protect my skin from supernaturally sharp kitten claws.

I'm sure I meant "on which they'll fight me," but she was kind enough to not point out my error.

"Oh, no," the very sweet, very empty girl informed me. "It tastes just like bubble gum!"

"Ah, yes," I replied dryly as she beamed back at me. "Everyone knows how much cats love bubble gum."

I wondered if she worked there in the pet clinic because the uniform was so close to being pajamas.

*****

Weirdly, I searched the entire internet and was unable to come up with an image of a cat blowing a bubble with which to illustrate this post. Does that seem right to you?

150°

At a Dunkin' Donuts waiting for a cup of coffee, an impatient woman joined the line behind me and ordered a large coffee. The woman who took her order was new, still in training, and had some trouble with the cash register. The trainee then asked several times what the woman would like in her coffee. The woman ordering the coffee eventually made a glottal sound like a tiny cough to punctuate the beginning of a short burst of sigh.

"Jesus!" she said. "I shouldn't even be in here. I work at Starbucks!" She threw two singles onto the counter and looked around nervously. She did not seem to notice that I had begun to laugh at her.

*****

Today, at an entirely different Dunkin' Donuts (I like their coffee, OK?) I called my friend Micah, with whom I would be working for most of the afternoon, to see if he wanted me to pick him up something.

"I was just about to call you," he said before I could explain the purpose of my call. "I'm on my way to Starbucks. Want anything?"

I like coffee synergy.

Two days ago, Micah owed me $45. Yesterday, he owed me $50. After I bought him the coffee this afternoon, the total rose to about $52. I do not like where this is going. Especially as the person I know who might most easily break someone's leg is none other than Micah. I can't imagine he will let me hire him to do himself harm should he fail to make good on his financial obligations to me.

Plus, it'd be terrible if word got out that I'm not charging him interest.

To get Micah to smile like that, I just said "look stupid" over and over again in a very soothing tone, like I were giving direction to a small child. I think this shot was immediately after "OK, good, now: stupider."

*****

I think I saw some corner boys in my neighborhood today, standing blithely on the corner. They stood more or less facing one another, but angled so that together they had a nearly 360° view of the surrounding area. They didn't seem concerned about anything in the world, except for the fact that they were clearly watching all sides for trouble. I hope it was just a coincidence, that they were going about some other business. It's not like I don't think there are drugs for sale in my neighborhood, but I'd rather not have such openness about it so near to my home. That's the kind of behavior that usually leads to stray bullets prematurely ending the life of one of the local children, or the teachers at the school up the block.

Or me.

*****

I was up in Wicker Park, where I took a couple of pictures. One of the Double Door (on the Flickr page in color and then again in black and white because I couldn't decide which one I liked better) and the one at right: a currency exchange which was advertising a current temperature which was off by well over a hundred degrees.

To provide an illustration of how hot 150° would really be: when making a latte or a cappuccino, the milk is supposed to be heated with the steam wand until it reaches 140°. That's as hot as you can go without burning the milk.

I was at the same currency exchange many years ago on a first date. I hadn't had a chance to get my paycheck into the bank, so I brought it with me, and this place was the first stop of the date. They refused to cash it (it was for too much money, or so they claimed) and I was forced to ask her if she could pay for everything we did. I cannot recall ever seeing her again.

Spent a chunk of time browsing the stacks at Myopic Books, one of my favorite bookstores. The store is crammed with books on several floors. It is simply lousy with books of all types and vintages.

The fiction section—which starts on the rickety "balcony" and continues on the first floor—requires a map and a guide to navigate properly. There are cats roaming the aisles, or sleeping on the ledges. It is a terrible store to enter in hopes of finding a specific volume, but, as my friend Craig pointed out, it is a wonderful place to come across a book. I came across a couple of books for myself, and bought a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday for Craig, because I think he'll really like it.

"Hey, that's the dude who died recently," he said as I handed it to him.

"Yes," I said, somewhat wearily. "The very same...dude."

*****

Still have not quite untangled myself from the Dayworking. I expect Monday will end it, though. I hope Monday will end it. Should any of my coworkers or my supervisor log in to check my blog, I would really like to be done now, please.

Craig asked me what I was doing at work today. I told him it would be really difficult to answer the question without going into a lot of detail about what it is I actually do. Craig, like most people, has no clear idea what tasks I actually perform for money.

"I half expected you to say 'graphic arts stuff,'" he said.

That's certainly going to be my response next time.

*****

I have no intention of showing you pictures of all the people I mention on this blog, but I happened to have some fairly nice portraits of both Craig and Micah on hand.

*****

How have I been blogging for this long without ever using "coffee" as a tag?

This oversight has been corrected.

Impressionist Monday

I am pleased to report that I accomplished exactly nothing today. I needed a break and I took one.

Aside from little spurts of wakefulness, I slept until I would have been leaving work. Guess I needed that.

This evening, I hauled out the new camera and played with it a little. It is astoundingly clear to me that I need to purchase a faster lens and a tripod. The sensitivity of the new camera is such that, standing on the porch to capture some similar shots to last night's, the shutter remained open sometimes for half a minute or more. There is no way for me to not shake the camera slightly and ruin the shot in that amount of time. I like nighttime and hate using a flash, so I'm gonna have to see what's out there that might help me.

I figured I might as well try to create some beautiful mistakes, and a couple samples are on my Flickr page. The two currently at the top (one of which heads this post) felt about right for me today. Dark and swirly, a little chaotic.

There are also some pictures of my cats, who had agreed to serve as models for portraits, but ultimately could not hold still long enough. They continue to disappoint me in many ways—they're incredibly lazy, for one thing—but I thought they could at least handle a simple photo session. Instead I had to follow them all over the place and make little clucking sounds to try to trick them into looking at the camera. The black and white double exposure (one-and-a-half exposure, really) to the left is kind of nice, though.

I'm feeling a bit better than I did last night, and I want to thank all those who left such friendly and supportive comments. Not feeling funny, but not feeling all that bad, either. Thanks again for your kind thoughts.

I had nothing to say for a little bit

Aside from working and working as though I were the protagonist in an old country song, I haven't done a whole lot this week. I discover that I am a couple of days older and deeper in debt than when I last posted. I apologize for this. I know that I am the only source of entertainment for some of you, and I hope that none of you had to resort to watching television, spending time with your families, or reading books. Nobody wants that.

I kept up on the reading of blogs, though; my personal stash of favorites that I keep in the clickables section (I'd call it a blogroll, but fear that may be trademarked by a service I do not use). I found it more difficult than normal to post comments, though. And starting with this post, I am adopting the scattershot approach to tags I see used so well on Julia Buckley's site.

I think my recent bout of work has caused some friction between the person I've been and the person I'm in the process of becoming. And to get the work done, the person I have been had to win out this time. That guy neither keeps a blog nor works on novels, though, so I'm hoping to find a better balance of these guys in the future. It's tough work, changing.

The holidays don't help. There's a tendency to slide into depression. It started for real on Sunday, and I tried to combat it by assembling an Xmas tree in my living room. I've never really put up a tree in my home before, but I went out and bought a cheap-o prefab one at Target. You don't even have to put lights on it. Already done. Of course, given the money I spent, it looks like something that even Linus would have left in the lot.

About eighteen months ago I bought some old glass ornaments at a garage sale. Some of them may well be older than me. On a couple of them are little scorch marks from rubbing up against those old-fashioned, fire hazard lights. I put on a selection of palatable Xmas tunes I put together a few years ago and started to hang them from the tree. My cats were immediately mesmerized, and I thought they were going to bring the whole thing crashing down the instant I left the room. So far they've been respectful, although I did locate the bag of extra bulbs on my kitchen floor yesterday, repeatedly punctured by something small and sharp. I can't formally accuse them until I hear back from the lab.

The Xmas activity helped a little, but the impending death of my laptop and my newly broken tooth, coupled with the sub-freezing temperatures and the return to my legitimate paying work, have added up to a strange week.

I'm still in a bit of a funk (and not the good kind I might get from listening to too much George Clinton) but should pull out of it within a day or two.