CALL ME SNAKE

I’m not buying, nor am I loving, the latest generation of McDonald’s ads, filed under the “I’m Loving It” theme. Take the ad with two attractive young working women (as opposed to “working girls”) chatting away like soulmates after buying coffee at McDonald’s. What a preposterous situation. Who ever made a friend–bonded with someone else–by virtue of having purchased something at McDonald’s at the same time? It’s a fast-food establishment, meaning that people move in and out fast; they’re not looking to chat up the person behind them, in front of them, or even next to them in line. They want to get the hell out of that alienating environment as fast as possible. So the ads make absolutely no sense and of the billions of people who’ve visited McDonald’s I doubt there are two who’ve had an experience remotely like that depicted on TV.

My kids [like others,  I suppose] sometimes act crazy. My wife worries about this but maybe it’s just normal. I mentioned their occasionally bizarre behavior to my older, wiser brother-in-law who has two kids in their 30s, as well as two teenagers. He laughed it off, saying:  “You know what they call children, don’t you? Psychotic midgets with a good prognosis.”

Three and a half weeks ago, I was involved in a minor fender-bender in  a parking lot in Arizona. “Minor” in these cases means it’s probably going to set you back $1500. I gave the guy my phone number, wishing I hadn’t. The first week I kept waiting for the call, but nothing. The second week, I wondered when he’d call. But after two weeks, I put it out of my mind. Then the other night, my daughter handed the phone to me after dinner. A voice that sounded vaguely familiar said: “Hi, we met at the Grand Canyon.” And I was once again reminded of the great line from  the movie, “Out of the Past,” when Robert Mitchum says something like: “Just when you thought you were out, THEY PULL YOU BACK IN.”

A friend  told me that at a place he used to work at, the tradition was to put a cake on someone’s desk during their last day of work in preparation for the farewell party at the end of the day. “Come to think of it,” my friend said, “that would be a good way to fire someone. They show up for work and one day find a cake on their desk.” Ever since I heard this story, I half expect to find a cake on my desk in the morning. I have these concerns about finding a cake on my desk, despite the fact that I’m self-employed. And if I do find a cake sitting their one day, given that I work for myself, I’m not sure how to interpret that statement.

Overheard in the locker room of the Cambridge Y: “It’s gonna get cold again, down into the single digits. On Sunday it’s supposed to be 12.”

I’ve barely gotten used to the idea that we don’t have Romney to kick around anymore, and now I have to get used to the even better idea that we won’t have Bush and Cheney to kick around anymore. I’m bursting with enthusiasm for the Obama presidency. He seems determined to work hard and do a good job, and people all over the world are rooting for him. I hope he can take advantage of all that good will and actually get it done.

But much as I’m happy to be able to say President Obama, I’m equally happy (and perhaps even more so) to have Bush and Cheney out of the government. It’s hard to believe we got rid of them before they got us into a war with Iran. As if Iraq and Afghanistan weren’t enough. But they really are gone, Bush it seems for good. Let’s hope nobody is stupid enough to give Cheney another shot at ruining the country.

We had an old friend over for dinner last night, someone whom I worked with more than 30 years ago while I was still in college. After dinner, he was “treated” to a slide show of our recent trip to Arizona, which my wife and kids had prepared on her laptop. Afterwards, he asked how long our trip was.
“A week,” I said. “Well, actually about six days, not counting the days spent traveling.”
“Only six days?” he said. “It seemed like a year.”

I might be weird but I’m fond of the word missive and use it often. But it’s not familiar to some and perhaps mathematicians. And when I refered to some papers that were unexpectedly posted on the math archives as “missives,” one mathematician told me to use another word, as people would not trust missive and would be looking for a “hidden agenda.” Rather than try to fight that irrational battle, I tried to use a more neutral term. Does anybody got a problem with “papers?”

A physicist from Cornell was kind enough to read a draft of a chapter I wrote and he caught a typo, among other lapses. “In that quote from me, do you think we could say ‘fleshed out the idea’ rather than ‘flushed out the idea’?” he politely asked.

Two days ago, I wrote about getting hit in the face with a hockey stick. But yesterday I got beat up even worse–by fellow bloggers who thought I was an idiot for playing pickup hockey without a helmet and a crybaby for whining about it afterwards when I took the shot in the face. “There’s no crying in hockey,” someone wrote. (I like that line.)

“Was the writer expecting the other players to take extra care when he’s around with no helmet? (Maybe next time he could hang a baby on board sign around his neck to make this more clear to everyone),” someone else chimed in. (I have to admit, the “baby on board” line was pretty darn good.)

Several others contributed to the pummeling and maybe I deserved it. I certainly do think that it is advisable to wear a helmet when playing hockey although, as I explained, I’d just gone skating with my family and hadn’t planned on playing hockey, which is why I was ill-equipped (not that I own the equipment anyway). Maybe my biggest crime was writing a crybaby post. But the way I feel about that is that if you can’t whine in your own blog, where can you?

The other day I was talking to a guy at the Y about–what else?–playing handball. He was about my age, and in pretty good shape, having taken up basketball some years before at the age of 48. He used to play hockey but gave it up because of injuries. I told him a friend of mine (now 50) had just taken up the sport and was trying to drag me into it as well. “Don’t do it,” this guy advised. “There are too many ways to hurt yourself in hockey. Ways you haven’t even thought about.”

Ironically, my other friend (the current hockey player, as opposed to former hockey player) invited our family to join his at the Cambridge Skating Club’s outdoor rink that very night. The back portion of the rink is set aside for a “casual” game of hockey, as they use a tennis ball rather than puck to lessen the chance of someone getting hurt. I didn’t join in at first, preferring to skate with my kids. But as they were content with their friends, and didn’t really need me (or necessarily want me hanging around), I joined the pickup hockey game.

It started off pretty casually, with some fairly young players mixing in with the teens and adults but by the end it was my friend and I and a bunch of 16-year-old hockey nuts.I was a bit rusty, having played just two times in the last 40 years, but I kept up with the kids pretty well.

Until one of them raised his hockey stick and smashed it into my face, cutting me on the forehead, eye, and side of the eye. “How do you feel?” the kid asked.
“I feel like I got hit in the face with a hockey stick,” I replied.
The kid didn’t apologize. He just told me: “You should have been wearing a helmet.”

At that moment, I knew why so many fights break out in hockey. But I walked away as I was bleeding pretty bad–on my forehead and side of the eye–and making a general mess of things. As I was sitting in the warming hut with some ice packs and paper towels on my face, I thought of the prophetic line I’d heard earlier that day: “There are a lot of ways to hurt yourself…”

Yesterday morning, I went cross-country skiing along the Charles River in Cambridge with a friend. As I’d recently gone cross-country skiing in the White Mountains of Arizona, I didn’t expect a spin along the river would be too exciting. But I’m glad I went. The city and woods along the river looked really beautiful with the fresh snow, and it’s nice to take advantage of those moments when they come.

I  recently got a note, on this blog, from a cousin I hadn’t talked to in years. I heard from an engineer in Arkansas that I’d met years ago at the Jet Propulsion Lab thanks to this blog. And CALL ME SNAKE has also helped me keep in touch with an old high school buddy (and an occasional cribbage rival) who’s now based in Tennessee.

Part of the idea of blogging, as was explained to me by one guy before I got into the game, is to try to push yourself to have at least “one good idea a day.” Just one blogworthy item to put down, and the bar in terms of “worthy” can be set pretty low. So you try to do that, put something out there, and then comes the fun part: You see what comes in.

I still remember the first time I posted something on CALL ME SNAKE more than four years ago. In less than a minute of putting that online—whatever it was I posted—I got a comment from somebody I didn’t know, and that blew me away. That element makes this a new kind of experience that’s different from any of the means of expression that were available before.

I got a strange call the other day. Someone from a Thai restaurant in Cambridge that I sometimes go to said they received a fax with all kinds of personal information about my wife. He told me it wasn’t a good idea to send information like that around so freely.

It didn’t make any sense to me but he had the fax with her name and phone number on it so I knew he wasn’t making it up. Yet I couldn’t figure out what happened until my wife got home from work and said she had sent a fax. Evidentally she got the fax number wrong and it ended up at the restaurant. The good news is that the mystery was solved. The bad news is that I didn’t even get any pad thai out of the deal.

I’ve had a bad habit of leaving things in the streets these days. Two days ago, I found our hub cap in the middle of the street. And yesterday I found my daughter’s snow boot in the middle of the street. As to how the boot came to be there–in the middle of the intersection of Western Ave. and Kinnaird Street–well, that will take some explaining. It started with my daughter leaving her snow boots at school on Monday, rather than taking them home. On Tuesday, my daughters took their scooters to school [a distance of about a mile], deciding they’d rather walk home. So I put the scooters in my saddle bags, strapping them together so they didn’t fall out. That left just enough room for one snow boot in each. But then I stopped at the grocery store (“Whole Paycheck,” as some call it) for dinner stuff. In order to fit some of the heaviest grocery items (like olive oil) in one of the saddle bags (along with the scooter), I had to squeeze two snow boots in the other. I stopped at the hardware store on the way back as well.

All was fine until I got home and realized I had just one of the boots. I had the sense they were pretty expensive and was determined to find it if at all possible. The main thing I had going for me was that few people have much use for one boot. If only I could find it. I biked back to the Whole Paycheck and retraced my path, even stopping at the hardware to see whether they boot might have fallen out in a small snowdrift. No luck. I went down Pleasant Street to Western Ave., and still no luck. I was getting close to my home and nervous that there was still no sign of the boot. When I reached Western and Soden, I saw something dark a block ahead and sure enough, it was the boot–right in the middle of the intersection–but it had not been run over so far as I could tell. I got it home without further incident–just in time for todays snow/sleet/freezing rain/rainstorm. [Editor’s note: This was written yesterday during the snow/rainstorm but due to a technical gliche I was unable to post until now.]

After helping my wife get the ice off the car this morning, I came inside to get the kids ready for school. (Mr. Mom to the rescue.) Gazing out the window, I saw a hub cap in the middle of the street and wondered whether it might have come off of our car. Before I had a chance to do anything about it, a car ran it over. A second later, I ran outside to retrieve the hub cap which, sure enough, had come from our car. But I have my doubts as to whether it will be of much use now.

I just returned from a week in Arizona and part of that time was spent at a hotel that advertised tennis courts and handball courts. I was a little skeptical but that’s what the brochure said. So my dad and I brought our handball gloves and other equipment. When we got there, the first thing I did was check on the handball court. It was still there all right–the building right next to the tennis courts. Only they were using it for storage. What a drag. That meant I had to spend time hiking in the beautiful red sandstone mountains around Sedona rather than stay inside playing handball in a sweaty gym. It’s almost enough to ruin a vacation. But not quite…