Open Thread (beta version)

April 10th, 2007

(Cake recipe swapping, Favorite Beatle discussions, Mary vs. Rhoda, or anything else slightly off-topic that you care to discuss.)

purge

April 8th, 2007

It’s a very wintry Easter here. Vide snow peeps on my deck.

But despite the weather, I’m engaged in some heavy-duty rebirth-and-renewal type activity. My office has been growing more and more dysfunctional since Read the rest of this entry »

birds

April 6th, 2007

It’s still the dead of winter here in Vermont. But man, I’m so grateful to be at home with my birds instead of flying around the country in a virus-ridden airplane. Here’s a little movie I made this afternoon. First, juncos. Then chickadees. Then a hairy woodpecker having a vigorous bath.

DTWOF episode #507

April 4th, 2007

I’ve gotten all cattywompus with the strips. This is the episode I was desperately trying to finish before my vacation began on March 21… Read the rest of this entry »

swamped

March 31st, 2007

I’m back from my vacation. I’m afraid I’m going to make a post without reading through all the comments on the last one because I have so many millions of things to do. But thank you all for carrying on in my absence. Whatever it is you were carrying on about.

In internet time, this post is several epochs late, but whatever. This was Memoir Week on Slate, They ran a bunch of reviews and essays focused on “the issue and aesthetics of writing memoirs.” They asked various memoirists, including me, to write about whether and how they let the people who appear in their books know about it.  So here’s a short piece I wrote on that topic.

I’ll return after I’ve dealt with the backlog of things that built up in my absence. Why do people take vacations?

DTWOF episode #506

March 20th, 2007

Here’s the episode I wrote before leaving for Miami. Today I’m going to try and figure out how to do the next one on the road in Albuquerque. I have to go find art supplies, then a Kinko’s or some place that can scan the drawings when I’m done. I’m not sure whether I’m going to manage it before my vacation officially begins on Thursday. Is all this backstory annoying you? Maybe I should just post the cartoons and shut up.

Read the rest of this entry »

Basket case out of Carolina

March 20th, 2007

If one has to be stranded, Charlotte was a nice enough place for it. But there was something deeply disturbing and disorienting about my forced sojourn there. I was starting to feel like Ishmael on the becalmed Pequod. Yesterday, thank god, the wind picked up, and I blew out of there. Read the rest of this entry »

travel update

March 17th, 2007

Thanks for all your kind advice about my predicament. But I think I’ve got a plan. I was going on vacation on Thursday anyway. An actual vacation, something I haven’t done in years. So I’ve decided to just go early, and fly to New Mexico directly from North Carolina on Monday, without going home first. I spent the whole day on the phone. It’s costing me a pile of money to change my flights, but then it’s costing me a pile of money to just stay put. So why not?

I’m sorry to have dragged you through my little drama.

you can’t get there from here

March 17th, 2007

After getting a busy signal for five and a half hours straight, I finally got a human at US Airways. I was on the phone with him for an HOUR–that explains the long wait times, if it’s taking a #*$@ hour to re-book each of thousands of stranded passengers.

Maybe those weren’t computer keys I heard clicking, but some kind of abacus-based flight reservation system. At last the guy tells me, placidly, that the next flight out is on Tuesday. TUESDAY? I shrieked. Isn’t US Airways adding flights, or increasing plane size, to accommodate the backlog of stranded travelers? No, replied Mr. Placid.

I can’t quite believe this. I really can’t get home until Tuesday. I would rent a car in a second and just hit the road, but apparently everyone else thought of that before I did, and there are none left. I suppose I could start walking, but I left my coat in my car at the Burlington airport since I was going to Miami.

Oh, god. That reminds me. I also left a burrito in my car. I meant to bring it to eat on the plane, but forgot it in the last minute craziness. Now on top of everything else, I’ll have to fumigate my subaru.

limbo

March 17th, 2007

I’m still stranded in NC. I heard drums outside on the street and thought maybe it was a local anti-war demo, but it was just a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Thanks to Aunt Soozie for letting me know about the peace rally in Fayetteville, NC. I couldn’t get there even if I had time, because there are no rental cars to be had in Charlotte, for love or money. Amtrak is sold out too.

US Airways is still not answering the phone. And it’s hard to focus on anything else because I have to keep re-dialing them manually on my primitive hotel phone. What are the stranded people doing who can’t afford hotels? As it is, I’m spending all the money I made going to Florida in the first place. I just booked my room for another night, and did some laundry in the sink. Maybe I should start pricing real estate.