Category: neck deep in the zeitgeist

We were flying home from Vermont about five years ago and our flight from DC to RDU was cancelled because of a big storm “I don’t remember which”. I had to fly out to San Francisco the next day for work and decided to rent a car and drive us all home. I picked a Jeep something-or-other because of four-wheel drive and ground clearance.

A few hours later we were on I-85 in Virginia, in a hundred-mile corridor of trees, stuck motionless while two people from the highway department cleared downed timber from the road with a chainsaw and front loader. We couldn’t go forward. Going back was no safer.

The pines all around us were swaying more violently than I’d ever seen. I looked in the back seat at my sleeping boy, knowing I could do nothing to protect him if one of those trees fell on us.

This remains the worst decision I’ve ever made. I’m on the verge of tears as I write this, remembering the shame and helplessness I felt.

Please be careful, my friends. Nothing is more important than keeping yourself and your loved ones safe.

On further reflection, the reporter must have said that food banks from all over California are cooperating to help with high demand from fire evacuees. This makes a lot more sense than the way I heard it, that they are cooperating to help hide a man from fire evacuees.

In my air travel experience, “full flight” means mostly full and “completely full” means a handful of empty seats. You know it’s really, actually full if they’re repeatedly making dire warnings about checking bags.

The gate attendant just said, “This will not be a full flight,” so I assume it’ll just be me.

As much as I appreciate the craft beer movement, it left me behind a while ago. Nearly every new beer I try these days tastes like it should be called “Death By” something: Death by Hops, Death by Malt, Death by Belgium, Death by Alcohol Poisoning.

from a 2013 Facebook post

“Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

We are visiting the De Young Museum’s “Cult of the Machine” exhibit, showcasing early 20th-century art that explored machinery, automation and industry and how they affect our lives for good or ill. I find myself absent-mindedly massaging a tendon in my right arm, sore from too much typing.