Falling on my head like a new emotion

Today officially marks the 25th day of the month during which we've received measurable rainfall. That means it didn't rain for only 6 days this whole freaking month. Note, however, that it doesn't say anything about the sun actually shining on those 6 days. The City also came within a hair of breaking its record for the wettest March on record with just a smidgeon under 9 inches of rain.

I realize that these sort of records seem sort of arbitrary, and don't necessarily mean anything in the grand scheme of climate. But I do find them a useful measuring stick, and it's nice to throw a little weight behind what you observe or feel is a significant deviation from the norm. At last I know I'm not crazy for feeling like I can't remember what blue sky looks like.

I don't think this is a complaint, yet, so much as an amazed observation, since I know that the current weather pattern will ultimately give way to sun and blue sky and comfortable temperatures. And by November, after 5 months without a single drop of rain, it will once again be hard to imagine that water falls from the sky at all. But for now this rain is getting ridiculous. There's a reason I live in San Francisco and not Seattle, afterall. Ok, so I guess it is a complaint.

On the upside, all this rain is turning to snow in the higher elevations and the Lake Tahoe area is breaking all sorts of March and single-month snowfall records. This means the snowboarding is awesome. There's even crazy talk that some of the resorts could be open for skiing on July 4th. Alpine Meadows, for example, had over 222 inches of snow fall at mid-mountain this month alone. That's very nearly 20 feet, people! Good lord. And it's snowing again tonight. Which is exactly why, if the roads are clear in the morning, I am once again going to make the trek and spend the weekend in the snow, carving up the mountainsides.

As nice as it would be to see a little sunshine, I guess I can wait a little while longer if I'm getting to hone my snowboarding skills into May as a result. Here's hoping the mudslides that are sure to start making the news any day now don't actually involve a chunk of Nob or Russian Hills careening into my apartment.

Photo snagged from Thomas Hawk.

A World of Ew

One of my biggest pet peeves (of many, oh so many)? People clipping their finger nails on the bus.
Clip.
Clip.
Clip.
Aaagh!

Toucan Sam

I know this is going to sound weird, and it could be due to my continued congestion from this damn cold, but I was walking home from work this evening behind a woman who smelled just like Froot Loops. Seriously. It was as if a freshly-opened box of the cereal was directly in front of me on the sidewalk. In high heels and a skirt. I have no idea if this is a new perfume scent (eau d' céréale), but it should be. I might consider sleeping with women if they all smelled that way.

Like, totally gnarly, dude

Ok, clearly my concept of snowboarding culture and what's cool with kids these days has gotten snagged on, oh, 1994.

But in an attempt to thwart the advancement of age, the progression of my head cold, and frankly to avoid work, I ditched the office today and went to Tahoe. And it was awesome.

They are currently experiencing some of the best spring skiing conditions, like ever, up there, so my friend Andrea picked me up in her cute little Jeep Wrangler at the ass-crack of dawn this morning, and we, with my roommate too, all played hookie (hooky?) to drive up to the snow and feel like we're hip. As opposed to breaking our hips. Which I almost did. In a spectacular wipeout involving several somersaults and a jacket full of snow. But I'm fine.

They'd had another few inches of new snow (current base depth is 188 inches!) but it was sunny and clear and in the 40's and if I were good enough to guarantee I wouldn't spend time with my face planted in the snow I would have worn a T-shirt and shorts and lots of sunscreen. I still wore the sunscreen, but opted for my snowpants and coat since they're waterproof and I'm already totally not cool.

Sick Boy

I took my last antiobiotic dose last night after 10 days of twice-daily horse pills. My sinuses are still working overtime at gunk production, but at least the accompanying infection that was causing so much pressurized pain is long gone. But guess what? I woke up today with a sore throat and it's gotten progressively worse throughout the day.

I blame my return to work. Our office is basically a giant petri dish for germ culture, with bacteria and viruses moving from person to person in a never-ending succession, circling the building; once it's burned through the population once, it circles back around in new form to start the cycle over again.

I had been lucky this past year, managing to avoid contamination and sickness for nearly the whole year. But I bragged about it, and so this is what I get. Ugh.

How I spent my first day back at the office...

This is me. This is me in South Park....

Stones taught me to fly

The modern age is pretty astounding when you think of it. Huge life-changing culture-altering world-shrinking things happen and we barely even notice anymore. I mean, take my great grandfather who was born in the late 1800's: he dug his basement out of the Nebraska sod with team of mules and it would take days by wagon to travel across the state to do business in the city. But for his 50th wedding anniversary*? He flew a jumbojet to Hawaii in a matter of hours. Air travel has become such a part of life that we totally take it for granted - yet 100 years ago, only a handful of people had ever lifted off the ground.

I'm reminded of that every time I take off. While some people are gritting their teeth, take-offs are when the magic happens for me. The engines roar, you're pushed back into your seat, the nose of the airplane points skyward and suddenly with a stomach-dropping woosh the rumble silences as the wheels leave the runway and you and 300 tons lift gracefully into the air. It's physics at work: aerodynamics and lift and 4,000 gallons of fuel, and it's incredible.

Then somewhere around 15 minutes in, after shaking our turbulent way through the wind and clouds climbing to cruising altitude, I realize that I hate flying. I'm trapped for the next several hours in a pressurized tube hurtling through the atmosphere at 500 mph with a bunch of annoying people and no leg room. Every jolt of turbulence brings to mind scenes from "Lost" or "Cast Away" and reminds me of things like metal fatigue. I mean, those enormous wings are hanging from the fuselage on the tarmac, and now, here 6 1/2 miles above the ground the fuselage is hanging from the wings. Have you ever really watched the things bending up and down? Really, what's to prevent them from snapping off save a few rivets?

I used to divert my attention by staring out the window and interpreting the features of the earth below, like a magnificent topo map writ large and in stunning detail. But window seats are no place to squeeze a 6'4" man for hours on end, so instead I now sit in the aisle where only one knee will get crushed by the reclining seat back in front of me (the other one is left to get smashed by the drink cart). I can usually still catch glimpses of passing clouds and enough of the ground to gauge where in the country we are. But lately all the people sitting in the window seats have been closing the shades, leaving me claustrophobic and completely without external reference to synch with the motion of the plane. If you're not going to look out the damn window, don't sit there! I want to know when the ground is getting close so I can steel myself for landing.

And then there's the landing. During take-offs you are majestically defying gravity, but landings are where you're surrendering yourself to it fully and hoping for the best. Plummeting from 35,000 ft to sea level in the course of 20 minutes, the turbulence returns, there are cross winds, runways of specific lengths surrounded by water or houses. Weird mechanical noises resonate through the cabin as landing gear (hopefully) is lowered, flaps extended and who knows what else, and I can't blare my music to distraction because I was forced to turn off my portable electrical devices. Little movements seem significant when I see the nearing horizon roll and our terrifying speed becomes increasingly apparent as the houses and cars whiz by below. 300 tons of metal and wiring and people and toothpaste and underwear are dropping out of the sky, hurtling with intent towards the looming ground.

I may take for granted my ability to be in New York in 6 hours, but I really never quite forget that only a hundred years ago, people were only riding horses and driving oxen, and those things rarely broke**.

*I think... I was young and may have the specific event wrong.
** Unless you're Colin.

See what's become of me

Today I had a day all to myself. After spending 14 straight hours in a Wal-mart yesterday*, I slept late, watched HBO in the hotel, and then went exploring in fabulous downtown Greenville, SC. Which was actually quite nice. There's a cute little tree-lined downtown area with lots of shops and bars and restaurants and which ends at the Reedy River where it passes through the heart of town. The river is a broad shallow thing that slides over worn, rust-colored slabs of ancient gneiss and tumbles into a waterfall where textile mills once stood. Now nestled there is a perfect little park with the waterfall as its centerpiece, and a curved cantilevered suspension bridge arching gracefully out over the falls.

So I found a dry rock in the middle of the waterfall, plopped down with my feet dangling over the edge, and took an extended nap in the sun. Lying there with the warm rock at my back, awash in the sound of rushing water, I was probably more relaxed that I'd been for months.

Ok, so the fact that it was 85 degrees didn't hurt. I love that about spring - the weather is totally schizoid. It was snowing here last weekend and today was 85. Meanwhile it was snowing in San Francisco this weekend. Seriously. I'm sort of bummed I missed it (the snow, not the pile-up), and it's killing me that I'm not snowboarding in Tahoe with all the new snow they're getting. Also, here's hoping the severe weather in the Midwest this weekend doesn't affect me here as the front passes through tomorrow.

So what did I think about while napping? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. My mind was blank. I was so exhausted that I didn't use the time productively at all. But, it was a welcome break nonetheless. I'm almost done. And I'm SO looking forward to getting home.

* And I do mean straight... a sample conversation with the technician with whom I was working:
Myron: So, you ain't from around here.
Me: It's that obvious? Ha ha. Yeah, they flew me out here to check out several different sites.
Myron: Where from?
Me: California.
Myron: Where in California?
Me: Northern California.
Myron: Where abouts?
Me: Our office is in San Francisco.
Myron: Oh-ho.
Me: Yeah. Here, let me carry that big heavy TV. So how about that Barry Bonds?

Seriously? I can get weed easier than antibiotics?

You know, getting sick sucks under any circumstances, but when you come down with something while you're away from home, it's horrible. So this sinus thing: I knew last week that it was turning into a sinus infection - there's no ignoring the building pressure and pain behind the face. Weirdly, I could breathe clearly, but it felt like someone had stuffed a terry-cloth towel behind my eyes. For several days I hoped it would clear up on its own, but when the pain above my left teeth started, I knew I was screwed. Within a few days I couldn't chew on the left, so there was nothing for it - I needed antibiotics and couldn't wait til I got home. I'd be screaming in pain upon descent and final approach, and that generally upsets the other passengers.

Thinking it was that simple, I called my doctor hoping he could just call in a prescription to Walgreens. Yeah, no it doesn't work that way. I'm out of state, the Doc can't help. I have to go through my insurance company. I call them. They say I either have to pay out of pocket or go through my medical group, so they connect me. My medical group says that's bullshit - there's nothing they can do and I have to go through my insurance. I call my insurance again and get a list of doctors in the Greenville, SC area, but the guy says I have to call a different number to find out if any of them are covered under my plan. Uh... So I call the other number and they say their system is down and I have to call back later.

I do my own research and find a walk-in urgent care center a few miles from my hotel that might take my insurance. I call my insurance back later, after lots of ibuprofen. Finally someone helpful says, by the way, that I'm not covered to see any of the doctors on the list my previous call provided. Out of state I can only go to an emergency room or urgent care center, and look, the one I found on my own is covered. Of course they're closed, so I get to wait until tomorrow.

The place was awesome - complete with blinking neon sign and abandoned shopping cart in front. But I got my prescription for antibiotics and Vicodin, only had to pay my usual co-pay, and within a day and half the pain from my left maxillary sinus went away.

Wasn't that easy? Oy.

It's What's For Dinner

I'm trying to avoid yet another fast food joint or familiar chain restaurant, but I still decided against this particular spot in Asheville, NC.

Take me home...

Things have been looking a little grim lately, what with all the Wal-mart and the late nights and now a pending sinus infection. Granted, the sinus infection is pretty much right on schedule, making this the third time in 5 years that I have enjoyed the mind-numbing blinding pain and discomfort in February or March.

In another long-standing personal tradition, while alone in unfamiliar settings I went exploring today without a map down some country roads and found a lovely mountain to hike. I've wandered to the highest point in the hills of Alabama, climbed Stone Mountain Georgia, hiked the Catskills and circled the Finger Lakes in New York while on similar work trips, and today I hiked to the top of a random mountain in the Blue Ridge Mountains here in North Carolina.

Actually, I tried to climb Mt. Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi, but the Blue Ridge Parkway was closed in that direction. So I turned around and headed in the other direction towards the Great Smoky Mountains, hoping instead to reach the highest point on the entire highway, but it was closed in that direction too. I am unclear why the closures - it's been dry enough here that there or brushfires raging, so I'm ruling out snow, rain, downed trees, landslides, and the like. But who knows, despite being in the 50s, I was seeing ice in the shadows (and one gimongous person-sized icicle hanging in a tunnel waiting to decapitate an unwary bicyclist), so the ground is still clearly butt-cold.

Anyway, I climbed Mt. Pisgah which is over a mile high, but at 5721 ft, is still 963 ft lower than Mt. Mitchell. Oh well. Cold Mountain was nextdoor, so I got to imagine Jude Law in Civil War rags emerging from the woods. And it was still a stunning view from the top -- one I'd like to see when the rhododendrons or dogwoods are in bloom, perhaps. I'll share pictures once the crazy pain between my eye sockets subsides some.

In other news, just as the Alabama country roads were littered with armadillo roadkill, smattering the roads in North Carolina are so many raccoon remains that it boggles the mind.

Give me a squiggle!

I naively thought I'd have spare time in the Carolinas while on this business trip thingy to catch up on movies (I brought my Netflix disks), write lots of e-mail (I brought my laptop), enjoy some reading (I brought 2 books), and explore a new location (I printed out pages of restaurants and hiking trails and sites to see). Alas, so far I have seen nothing of my surroundings but the I-85 interchange between my hotel and the local Wal-mart store. Otherwise I've been in that Wal-mart store exclusively. I've spent so much time in that store that I know the greeters by name (Mary in the mornings, Jimmy until 11pm), at least 5 members of management know me by name, no one in the store so much as blinks an eye when I reach through the glass window to open from the inside the secure locked records/computer room in the back of the store. Seriously, of the last 36 consecutive hours, I've spent 35 hours in the Wal-mart. Who needs sleep when you can bask in the glow of fluorescent lighting?

Kill me now.

Green eggs and spam

I just took a break from cleaning out my fridge (since I'm going to be gone for a few weeks and I can't rely on my roommate to monitor the sanitary situation in the kitchen) to sign on and check my e-mail and futz around online for a little bit. Now, I have an e-mail address just about everywhere you can imagine (aol, gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc.) so checking email can be somewhat time-consuming. Especially since finding the few important messages buried amongst the bajillion junk messages requires some effort. Basically, I kept signing up for different accounts because the previous one was getting hard to manage as the spammers found me.

I'm sure you're all as good as I am at spotting and deleting the announcements about penile enlargement systems, career advancement advice, mortgage rate reductions, requests for account information, hot teen school girl lesbian action, Nigerian investors, and septic system chemical ads, without even opening them anymore. But occasionally a particularly cleverly disguised one gets through, and every once in a while I'll open one on purpose just to satisfy my curiosity given the sender or the subject line. And there's that underlying fear that I might delete a legitimate attempt to contact me from some long-lost person whose e-mail address I might not recognize.

And so this evening, sitting in my inbox was a single such ambiguous message from a potentially valid e-mail address with the subject: "I'm so glad I found you!" Of course I opened it and of course it was spam. I was greeted by a picture of a bare-breasted blonde holding a hand-written note saying "I love Zach". Demographics aside, holy freakin' crap are they getting good at targeting junk mail in very specific ways. It makes me wonder if this woman sat there snapping photos all day long with notes for Bill and John and Yuri and Amichi and Julio...

The best part though? The website it's promoting is called "Coochiejar"

Killing me softly

I didn't intend for this space to devolve into a bitch-fest, but that's my current state of mind, so a bitch-fest you shall have. It will be short-lived, thanks to my well-balanced brain chemistry.

I don't know if this is the case with any of you fine people, but the short work weeks actually seem longer than the normal ones. Thanks to the dead Presidents, I didn't have to come into the office on Monday*. But I suppose trying to combine 5 days' worth of work into only 4 makes those days drag into interminability. Combine that with an elevated stress level for all the projects coming down the pipeline, and pile on preparing to be out of the office for 2 1/2 weeks starting Monday**, and you can imagine what a doozy this week has been. The fact that it's 8pm on Friday and I'm still at the office instead of getting my drink on (or just going to bed sounds kind of nice too), is pretty indicative of the sort of week I've had.

Naturally this brings up many issues of the sort that I should really be delving into under my "Work in Progress" heading here. For example, what am I doing continuing to devote so much time and energy to something my heart's just not in? But in true Zach style, I'm going to put off that ginormous Can-O-Worms for a future discussion***.

For now, I have more media to deliver and documentation to write. If not sooner, I'll write again, and probably a lot, once I've arrived in the heart of Appalachia. Later y'all.

* Which doesn't mean I didn't have to work on Monday. No no. I've had to either remotely connect to work or physically be in the office every night between 9 and 11 pm for the last 2 weeks to deliver daily media updates direct from NBC in Torrino to our own programs. I'm usually still up at 11pm anyway, but something about doing work at that hour for 14 straight days has really wiped me out.

** I found out this week that a hypothetical business trip was now fully, uh, thetical, and I'm flying out on the 27th for a 14-17 day stint in western North and South Carolina. Yee, I say, yee-haaw.

*** Aaaaaand I just answered my own question, methinks.

Melt With You

I don't want to be an alarmist here, but this whole global warming thing is getting out of hand. It seems that every week some new study is released detailing another frightening statistic or doomsday scenario. Today, for example, it was announced that Greenland's glaciers are dumping twice as much ice into the ocean as 5 years ago - meaning existing estimates of future sea level rise are all too low. The ice may be 2 miles thick, but 36 cubic miles of it is pouring into the Atlantic a year, compared with just 12 cubic miles 10 years ago.

Now, I recognize that the planet is a dynamic system and has undergone periodic shifts in temperatures and climates in the past. So this hardly represents the end of the world (except perhaps as we know it). Change is nothing new; life will go on and organisms will adapt. There's recent evidence (taken, coincidentally, from the very Greenland ice sheet which is now melting) that some of the past shifts happened far faster than anyone suspected: 100s of years instead of millennia. I'll even admit that there's a small twisted part of me that's fascinated by it all and curious to see how things will turn out. I mean, we could see some of the most dramatic climatological shifts of human history - the sort that helped shape human evolution in the first place. Isn't that kinda neat? And we might bear witness to the sort of mass extinction we can otherwise only infer from the fossil record.

What freaks me the hell out about all this, however, is the likelihood that this is all happening as a fairly direct result of human activity; that the train has already left the station and has enough momentum to continue even if we began applying the brakes now; and that it'll happen so rapidly as to cause chaos of both the social as well as environmental sort - shifting crop zones, extensive droughts, flooded cities, migrating populations, emergent diseases. Plus, there's the tragedy of losing what we know and love; it's depressing that someday soon we could have walruses and caribou only in zoos, beetles could destroy the evergreen forests of the Rockies, the Alps could be ice-free, and the coral reefs of the Caribbean and Pacific could be sterile and lifeless.

I'll really miss the polar bears.

Surprise

You know, several people have told me their iPods are psychic and, when set to shuffle, tend to play just the right song at just the right time.

So this morning, as I was waiting for my coffee and bagel at the little place across the street from my apartment, reading some blurb about something in my Economist, what do you suppose comes through my headphones?

In a coffee shop in a city
which is every coffee shop in every city
on a day which is every day,
I picked up a magazine
which is every magazine
and read a story then forgot it right away.

They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
and the little plastic castle
is a surprise every time
it's hard to say if they are happy
but they don't seem much to mind.

I'm telling you, Ani Difranco was singing to me. And dude, I've got to get out of this rut.

Single Awareness Day (SAD) part II

I'm not generally one to mope and fret about having been single for every Valentine's Day ever, but I'll admit that everyone else's giddy glee grates on my nerves. It's not that I feel sorry for myself for being single but I certainly don't need my nose rubbed in it like it's a stain on the carpet. And there really is only so much of this pink and frilly heart-shaped doily chocolate-covered smoochy rose-petalled hand-holding pepto-bismol laced gag fest that a boy can take. But I'm not bitter. Oh no, not me.

Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt

Cake and glory could have been ours. I'm kicking myself. I should have known the answer without having to run half-way across town.

"If you're not spaced out, you'll find Vena Rd and Al will be close by. Across the steet there's a flowery business whose name matches a famous and just-concluded festival for artists whose medium is 1.4 inches wide and full of holes. Find a lucky number that's up. Look inside and you'll see a fast monarch who likes to take a spin. What are the two words above the man with the newspaper?"

Venard Alley is right next to the Sundance Floral Shop a block away from my apartment. Across the street is my laundromat with a big 7-up sign in the window and filled with Speed Queen Dryers. Every time I do my laundry I stare at the murals on the wall of the guy reading his newspaper beneath the Caffe Trieste sign. Aargh!

We did not win. But, as always, we had a terrific time running around the city interpretting cryptic clues and hunting for hidden treasures. No dodging dragons or ducking beneath tubas or crossing the parade route this year though - we got trapped in the crushing crowds instead. Next year, I'm taking charge of the map.

Dog-tired

I don't have the energy to type much this evening, but wanted to get a post in just to help stave off the slow decline and inevitable death of my blog. I returned last night from a week visiting the fam in balmy Denver. Which was great, as always (I miss them, I do), but not exactly relaxing. What with the wonderful weekend snowboarding at Copper Mountain in the crazy snow, the flurry of my 4 and 6-yr old nephews who operate on energy levels I'm just not used to in my usual sedate existence, their new adorable ankle-biting puppy, and lugging all my snowboard equipment home from the airport on public transportation, I'll admit there was a part of me that sighed a little sigh of relief upon walking in the door to my apartment.
Sadly that teeny sigh faded when I realized it was well after midnight and I had to be at work this morning...

Single Awareness Day

There's a lighted sign above "The Hungry I" adult shop that I walk past on my way to work every day, and it currently says, "Valentine's Day is coming. Will you be?" Despite my annoyance at the reminder, I had to laugh.