Fri, 18 Nov 2011, 02:20 AM (-06:00)
“What color leash do you want?” the salesman asked as he pointed to the spectrum of options arrayed on the wall.
Izzy was wearing a pink sweater when we adopted her. And a pale pink collar. And moments before we had chosen a pink harness for when we take her walking. So I was having visions of pink and sought briefly to fight them off…
“Not pink,” I said.
Then without missing a beat, as if some other voice was speaking thru my mouth, I pointed to a pink leash on the wall and said, “That one with hearts is ok.”
I mean, after all, with a pink sweater there really is no alternative, right?
Sun, 13 Nov 2011, 04:47 PM (-06:00)
Izzy and Magenta Monkey. One of the two of them is a new addition to the family. Guess which one.
Sun, 6 Nov 2011, 09:17 PM (-06:00)
“I’m going to get this roach,” she said. “But be prepared: I’m probably going to scream.”
I laughed … and then listened.
There was a slamming sound and sure enough there was a short, sharp shriek.
She came back to the phone.
“Screaming,” she explained, “is something I just can’t control around roaches.”
Sun, 6 Nov 2011, 08:58 PM (-06:00)
He was sitting in the back of a 737 on the tarmac in Dallas waiting for boarding passengers to find their seats.
It was raining. He gazed out the window and looked at the puddles of water under the wing and thought of the parched garden and the suffering trees back home.
It had been a long week. He was anxious to be home, and he could already see her smile and hear the dog at the door.
A good long rain, her smiling face and that darn barky dog—those were the things he longed for.
Fri, 4 Nov 2011, 06:41 PM (-06:00)
“Oh, I got your letter,” he said. “I liked it. Thanks.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that and was trying to remember what I had written (as it’s been a several weeks) when he continued.
“I really liked it, because it reminded me of…”
Reminded him of what?
“…it reminded me of when you used to write me those think-plan-do-finish letters and send me those Lego-man postcards.”
I remember think-plan-do-finish, but I’d forgotten writing letters exhorting him to avoid the procrastinating ways of his father. And I’d completely forgotten the Lego-man postcards, although I can picture them now—hand-drawn, 3-D, Lego-like characters tinted with colored pencils.
I was smiling in the easy chair in the dark of early evening on the other side of the living room from Trudy. I tried to wipe my eye discretely so she wouldn’t see.
“Oh, Ben,” she said. “Your dad’s all weepy.”
Thu, 3 Nov 2011, 12:00 AM (-06:00)
So what’s with Greece? Three data points that are refreshingly free of smoke.
1. Kevin Drum has a conversation on Greece and explains how this is not about fixing things but rather a struggle between Greece and its creditors over the huge loses from a train wreck that’s inevitably coming.
2.Yves Smith’s interprets Papandreou’s recent call for a popular referendum on the “rescue plan” that the creditors thought was a done deal is a way to stick it to them, and how the trap is about to snap shut.
3. Barry Ritholtz summarizes the argument that Greece should pull an Iceland, in which they guarantee bank deposits but let the creditors get the soaking their reckless greed deserves.
Tue, 1 Nov 2011, 06:39 PM (-06:00)
We were trying to figure out what to say. What to put into the memo. What was important. And what was not.
I was at the whiteboard jotting down ideas, drawing pictures of how our argument should look. She was typing into a laptop and poking holes in my scribbles and sketches, adding points that I had forgotten.
Then we switched places.
She stood at the board for a while. I sat at the table and typed. And then, having finished the bulk of our work, we switched places again.
“Can we go home?” I asked.
She looked at what I had written.
“Not yet. I need to insert a few commas. So many words, you know.”
I turned to look at her—whatever. I wanted to go home. So I turned to the blackboard and erased our trails while she sat back at the laptop.
When I finished and the board was clean again, I turned around.
“Hmph,” she said. “It doesn’t need commas, afterall.”
And then we went home.
Tue, 1 Nov 2011, 06:26 PM (-06:00)
He has white hair and a long, white beard. If it were Christmas time, it wouldn’t be surprising to see him in a big, red suit.
He talks with a friendly drawl: a tone and way of speaking that makes him easy to listen to. Listening to him, you want to be his friend. And he dresses down: blue jeans, tennis shoes, never a tie. He looks like he sounds: pleasant, low-key, easy to get along with.
So we had a big meeting the other day.
It had been on our calendars for a very long time. A meeting in a big, fancy room with big, fancy monitors on the walls and microphones within the reach of everyone. A meeting with higher-ups seated around a long table that encircled a podium. A meeting where the presenters all wore ties.
William was one of the presenters.
We passed him in the hallway beforehand. He was wearing dress slacks and a long-sleeved dress shirt. And he was wearing a tie. A tie! William was wearing a tie! But as he passed, we noticed that he was also wearing running shoes. Running shoes with his tie.
You know, you gotta draw the line somewhere, otherwise folks might begin to wonder.
