Serenity Restored!
Parked at 3pm on Friday, stolen at 5 or 6 pm, reported on discovery Saturday evening, much lamented...
On Monday I went to get a parking permit for the Honda so we might get and put a rental car in its place in the garage where it won't be ticketed for existing on the street in Berkeley. The Parking Enforcement people asked "Do you know you're other vehicle has a ticket?" I said "Hot Diggidy!", was made fun of roundly by the clerk for sounding like a hick, found out where the ticket had been issued, ran down the street to activate the cops and walked to meet them where the van was parked, five blocks from my house. The Bad Guys sorted our stuff and removed the expensive stuff they wanted, but left the heirloom silver pitcher from my grandmother Craig and the van in working order with only minor damage. I'm feeling VERY glad to have Serenity back, have purchased a brake pedal lock anti-theft device, and am most grateful for all your support during the crisis.
In Other News
Fall is officially here. The shorts are being switched for sweaters in my closet and I need a jacket every night as I walk in the neighborhood. Ahhh. Birthdays and other new beginnings galore. Intense memories. Aidan's Birthday on the 23rd was particularly difficult. Spent it alone as much as possible, which was very good. Not looking forward to December.
A report from the trip to D.C.
Richard Page and I went to D.C. this month to record the International Forum on Globalization's Teach-in addressing the "Triple Threat: Climate Change, Peak Oil, and Extinction." The weather was unbelievably beautiful, we drove back and forth in cabs, and came back alive, against all expectations. Throughout we avoided employing any false solutions to the big three. We traveled in no hybrid vehicles, generated no nuke-you-lar power, and shipped no house-pets to feed children in the Amazon. OK, well, there was that one pig we sent back to Equatorial Guinea only to discover he wasn't from there originally and that we had created another displaced person, of sorts, but you can only do your best, after all.
I was called on the carpet at the National Gallery.
To enter it is required to stop at one of the long tables that blocks every door to the outside and interact across said table with security guards who will ask questions and prod in bags with a garden variety dowel or other arm length stick of their choice.
After being in the building for some time we needed to get to the cafe. I approached a nearby security detail and, stepping up behind and between them, discretely inquired as to which direction we should go. They leaped to the side like John Cleese in Fawlty Towers and the younger of the two insisted "you are on the carpet!" Not sure about how to take this revelation I looked at the floor.
There was, as he insisted, a carpet there.
I was, not to put too fine a point on it, on it.
Not wanting to unsettle him too much further I became agreeable.
"Yes I am!" quoth I.
Said he in reply, "You can't be on the carpet, sir!"
Reluctant to gainsay him I could not prevent a certain downward glance as I observed in all honesty, "Nevertheless, here I am."
"Step off the carpet, sir, and come around to the side," said he.
Moving the 1 1/2 feet required I asked him again where I might find the cafe.
Regarding me with great suspicion, he pointed in a direction that turned out to lead, eventually to the vicinity of the cafe.
By the time we arrived it was closed.
I had been called On The Carpet and, to be sure, I had been.
more later...
Special Hidden Bonus Track
An excerpt from Lisa's lecture notes:"The heightened period for order occurs from age two to three. The child will close drawers, move chairs, put things in their proper places. The child's sense of external order is black and white and he is disturbed by changes (and other David Bowie songs, the Sensitive Period for Glam Rock occurring much later in the child's development)."
Labels: conference, conflict, daily, season, travel
| posted by Unknown @ 9/29/2007 03:55:00 PM
