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 Did you find everything you were looking for? asked the grocery store clerk. I brightened. Finally! The chance to say no!
"Alas. You were out of Frosty Paws and my favorite ice cream. Frozen novelties let me down."
I don't know what I expected - sympathy, a coupon for ten cents off rutabaga, an urgent jotting down of my damning indictment. Nothing. They're interested in your answer, but apparently only in a general, well-how-about-that sense.
II keep backup supplies in the freezer, so Jasper did not go without. I will have to do with a different Carb Smart ice cream tonight – Chalky Dry-Nut Vanilla with a Ribbon of Glue-flavored Nougat – but I can bear it.
Hot day; rainy. Spent the morning on the Fourth of July Strib column, and I am proud of this one: managed to write a fireworks column without recycling any of the stories or observations I have peddled for the last two decades. The thought of writing a Fourth column elated and depressed me – the former emotion came from the quiet Sunday contentment that my subject matter was in hand, but I wondered what the hell I could say about the day I hadn’t written before. Then came the idea: the biography of the 18th century American exporter who wrote the first warning label for firecrackers. It wrote itself.
In the afternoon we went to the Guitar Center to buy an amp for Garageband. It’s been a long time since I went to a guitar store, and I was amazed by the quantity of merchandise; never mind the silly HaRd Rawk axes or the innumerable cheapo Strat knockoffs - they had some vintage Fenders in hues you associate with tailfinned death-cars, and a butterscotch-finish Les Paul that made me weak in the knees. I didn’t know whether to buy it or ask for its neck in marriage. I might go back. (My Strat, she is a heavy burden – literally, the thing weighs nine tons, and as much as I love the whammy bar the guitar is incapable of staying in tune.) Gnat amused herself by playing all the guitars like harps. She sat in my lap as I tried out some pedals. We’ll have to go back; I can only imagine that “going to the electric guitar store with Daddy” might be one of those key memories that leads her to think I’m far cooler than I could ever hope to be.
Bought a device to get the guitar into Garageband. Doesn’t work. I thought it might be the guitar; perhaps the pickups are shot. But my hotshot mike I bought to do the Diners doesn’t work, either. Another joyless afternoon of troubleshooting awaits.
But not tomorrow. Tonight is two-column today, tomorrow I finish them up and head off to a mandatory office meeting, AND wait for the deliverymen to bring the new dining room table and ceiling fixture AND usher in the contractors who are repainting the kitchen / family room, peeling off the wallpaper from the dining room, and installing a new light fixture. Some might regard this as an act of vandalism, given the beauty of the wallpaper – it’s a reproduction of a 1915 William Morris pattern from the year of Jasperwood’s construction – but it’s dark, and makes a dark room darker. The light fixture is the original item from 1915, and it’s astonishing it lasted this long. A lovely Art Nouveau light. But it yields about 15 photons. The replacement, combined with the lighter paint, will make the room glow instead of glower. As for the kitchen and family room, well, the color no longer appeals, and reminds me of smoker’s teeth. All this starts tomorrow.
So this is it for now. Typical Tuesday bleat – except for this: A Gallery of Urban Decay. The Commutator Factory. Enjoy; see you tomorrow. (And there’s a new Fence as well.)
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Perm link: here.
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