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Joe, Todd, Dylan and I went out to dinner tonight and afterword I returned to Joe’s.  We were chatting when his parents returned having also come back from dinner.  It had been a while since I’d talked with Joe’s parents and his dad and I chatted.

Him: How’s work?
Me: Fine, I’m doing a lot of work with tubing which is new but repetitive.
Him: Have you tried Joe’s Kinect yet?
Me: Yes, it was fun.
Him: You know what my favorite feature is?  Voice commands.  *Yelling into Joe’s room* KINECT, PLAY GAY PORN.
Joe: Dad.
Him: KINECT, PLAY GAY PORN.
Joe: I don’t even think it’s on.
Him: KINECT, GAY PORN.

I hope I can age as gracefully.

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There’s a new engineer at work and he’s trying to be my friend. There’s few things I care for less in a workplace than “try to be your friend” guy when not backed by actions.  For instance, I like listening to books during my lunch break.  He will tap me on the shoulder and ask what I’m listening to.  Today he tried again while I was in a bubble.

Him: Hey, what are you up to?
Me: …listening to The Economist.
Him: I make wine.
Me: That’s nice.
Him: Would you like some?
Me: Now, no.
Him: No, in general.
Me: Not really, I don’t drink.
Him: Oh, I didn’t know you were religious.
Me: I’m not.
Him: Enjoy your lunch.

He’s trying.  How do I make him stop?

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Me: How do you compare the musical influence of Eric Clapton with Kurt Cobain?
Joe: Clapton had the technical wizardry but Kurt just seemed to have something else?

Me: More to the point…
Joe: Zing?  No.
Me: More to the blunt end?
Joe: More to the 12 gauge?
Me: More to the shot?
Joe: More to the buck shot?
Me: We should stop.
Joe: Yes, yes we should.

Context

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I stopped for gas before work, filled my tank and took a moment before pulling out to update my mileage log.  The person behind me didn’t like this and honked and gave me the finger.  I pulled forward, got out of my car.  And walked towards the pump.

Me: May I help you, sir?
Angry Old Man: Yeah, you didn’t pull forward.
Me: I don’t think the moment I took to log my mileage was excessive.
Angry Old Man: You knew I was waiting and you sat there.
Me: If you were in a rush you could have taken any of the other open pumps.
Angry Old Man: You know what you are?  Ignorant.
Me: Of what am I ignorant?
Angry Old Man: You’re just ignorant.
Me: That implies there’s something I’m ignorant of, of what am I ignorant?
Angry Old Man: I don’t talk to ignorant people, so I’m not going to answer.
*His female companion walks out of the gas station store* Her: What’s the matter?
Angry Old Man: Don’t talk to this man, honey, he’s ignorant.
Me: I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Angry Old Man: *yells* IGNORANT!

I picture this man living his life using “ignorant” as his personal attack of choice in all cases.  Someone cuts him off in traffic?  IGNORANT.  Problem with the IRS?  IGNORANT.  Neo-Nazis? IGNORANT.  I feel like I need a word-club like this.  Maybe I’ll just call everyone who wrongs me a Rosicrucian or persiflage.

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My coworkers love when I have parties, not so much because they go but because they get the leftovers.  I had a lot of s’more parts and a goodly quantity of meatballs and those went quickly.  A coworker complimented me on the spicing:

Coworker: You’ve outdone yourself.  The spicing was spectacular.
Me: Thank you?  What did you like about the spicing?
Coworker: I don’t know, it was smokey and fuller tasting and I think there were bits of cilantro.
Me: I don’t think I added any.
Coworker: Well, whatever the dark flecks were added something to it.

I had no idea what they were talking about so I poked around the sauce that was left and found a small grey needle-like fleck.  It was a pine needle and there were about 1/2 a dozen in the portion of sauce I looked at.  I think each time we added a tree to the fire, the cloud of ash that came off would deposit a few needs in the very large meatball pot.  Luckily, these bits having been on fire weren’t a germ vector but just… added to the flavor.

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Pat Moore, my aunt, died sometime last night.  Previously, my plan was to drop off Suzie at the train station early in the morning, go back to sleep, see all my guests out to a late brunch and then drive down to Delaware with my brother and his wife to visit her as she fought late stage bile duct cancer.  I got the news driving back from Somerton station and wasn’t much able to get back to sleep.  I asked John and Ken to leave, canceled my lunch plans and sat and talked with Pat and Clara.  They are both in the medical field and are comfortable with death and generally I am too but I was glad for their company.

I didn’t really cry when my uncle Ted died nor at the passing of any of my grandparents.  I didn’t cry when Nate DeTemple passed nor any of the other camp staff members I knew left us.  But over the last year I’ve become either more emotional or more in touch with my own emotional state and while I don’t want to say I was hard hit by the death of my aunt it left me in tears at several points.  She was my favorite aunt/uncle and her decline was gradual and foreseeable but her passing was still forceful.  After Pat and Clara left I did my general browsing and found that Joe Paterno had died.  Someone for whom I have no strong feelings but lamentations at his passing would drown out any epitaph I’d have for the aunt that none of my friends knew.  My sadness passed to anger.  So I called some people, cleaned up some odds and ends left by my guests and drove to my mother’s house to feed her pet bird who knew nothing of why his owner was missing.

I sat in a dark kitchen and as I threw out my second tear-blotted tissue, I ask myself qui sum ego decet, who am I becoming.

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“Wintry mix” is the worst of weather phenomena when one is having a party outdoors.  Rain? Cancel.  Snow? Have.  Mix? Eh.  I was happy to find that wintry mix had resolved to snow which while keeping a number of people away made a delightful setting for those who did make Operation: Icicle.  I like the idea of a winter outdoor party as a campfire makes light and warmth mirroring the human kind of the guests as fist shaken at the depths of winter, a cry of “we shall not” to the season.

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The First of Many

The primary fuel for the fire is left over Christmas trees.  Here’s two at once.

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Two Trees at a Distance

14 people came out.  I think they enjoyed themselves.

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A Bit More of Everyone

My personal highlight of the evening came very near the end.

Guest: What time is it, I’m starting to get cold.
Me: Quarter to 2.
Guest: Wow.

Thank you to those who braved the “wintry mix”.

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“Can we at least agree on no inappropriate jokes while in the museum?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Ok.”

“Enormity” is a pedant trap as far as words go.  It’s used interchangeably with “immensity” to indicate great size or scope but “enormity” specifically refers to the atrocious.   The United States Holocaust Museum in DC is a place dedicated to enormity and the notion of putting the visitor face-to-face with the heinous.  Visitors start at the ground floor, receive a booklet featuring someone involved in the Holocaust and then work their way down from the fourth floor going chronologically from the rise of Aryanism in Germany to the aftermath of WWII.  Ben, Suzie, and I arrived late in the day about 90 minutes before closing and had to move quickly.

The museum is a paragon of intimacy with the topic.  As few things as possible are behind glass, passageways are narrow and the floor plan is dominated by displays.  If something can be simply presented to the visitor with no intervening protective measures it was.  Rooms are angular and eschew straight paths, nooks and crevasses hold ancillary displays.  We were shooed through the last two floors so I missed most of the displays on opposition and the aftermath which resulted in me winning a challenge.  “Terry, if you cried during the Jim Henson exhibit in New York and not at the Holocaust Museum, there’s something wrong with you.”  The part that would have gotten me was the resistance movement.  I find liberty moving in a way that sheer monstrosity and morbidity aren’t and I didn’t get a chance to see the parts that would have set me off.  I began welling up when I say the exhibit on the Danish resistance but was promptly escorted out then as it was closing time.

After the museum we visited the Washington Monument and the WWII Memorial.

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Washington Monument

I dislike the WWII memorial as it is formulaic and uninspired.  It is neither human nor imposing but simply there.  A glorified park bench.

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Atlantic Gate

The gates are vaguely interesting but the whole structure is a visual speed bump between the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.  Ugh.

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Me: *fart* Excuse me.
Coworker: You have been a bit gassy recently, but then I realized it was because of the weight loss.  So every time you pass wind I consider it a sign of progress.  Keep up the good work.
Me: Thank you? *fart*

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Hazmat training combines things I enjoy like being on the clock while watching powerpoint presentations, a free lunch, and learning how I could die.  As the new guy, I got to be the one that did the sample suit up consisting of boot covers, Tyvek suit, inner gloves, outer gloves, googles, and face shield.  After the health and safety person took a picture of me suited up riding a slide projector like a pony I was told to change back.  I did quickly and when she looked back to where I was standing and saw me back in my normal cloths she did a double take.  “That was the quietest hazmat desuiting I’ve ever heard”.  Everyone else in the room started nodding in agreement and someone said “I didn’t even hear you walk around in the Tyvek suit”.  Maybe I’ve found my calling, hazmat ninja.