“I’m surrounded by idiots! Present company excluded, of course.” – Nancy

Nancy got food poisoning a couple of days ago. She’s recovered now, but it
was, of course, pretty unpleasant. And from which rat-infested
hole-in-the-wall eatery did she get the food poisoning in the
first place?

Why, the
San Jose Fairmont,
of course.

One of Nancy’s friends (who shall remain nameless) called her on the phone
and learned about the food poisoning. “Oh, no,” the friend said. “Is it
contagious?” Hence Nancy’s subsequent outburst.

Eric’s girlfriend Susan is an amazing woman. How do I know this? Consider
the Christmas gift she gave him: a self-inflating whoopie cushion. Not just
any whoopie cushion, mind you. Self-inflating. Who knew that gag-gift
technology had advanced so far? It’s clear that no matter what Susan touches,
it’s going to be high-end, class all the way.

Not that we didn’t get a lot of enjoyment out of the whoopie cushion — as the
box said, “Hours of Flatulent Fun!” — but Eric’s five-year-old nephew Ryan
seems to be getting the most out of it. Ryan has discovered that if he
places the whoopie cushion under the cushion on Grandma Stenberg’s chair, he
can get Grandma Stenberg to say a Very Bad Word. And now that Ryan has opened
his Christmas presents, he has a pocket-sized voice recorder.
Even now, Ryan has been spotted lurking under tables, hoping to catch another
grownup on tape saying another Very Bad Word. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.

As for my Chanukah presents — they weren’t quite as exciting as the
whoopie cushion, how could they be? However, I did get a couple of wonderful
Onion books. First, Elana and Adiv sent me
Our
Dumb Century. They said that they almost got me a subscription to the Wall St.
Journal, but they wanted to get me something more intellectual-like. Yikes! Me,
a subscriber to the Wall St. Journal? What’s next, little elephant-shaped diamond
cufflinks? Elana, Adiv, I’m not that far gone into
conservative old fuddy-duddiness… am I?

In the same shipment, I got
Dispatches
from the Tenth Circle. The latter was from Mr. and Mrs. Ynolez, who said,

To the Webmaster of Goer.org, We are your biggest fans. Please accept this gift
as proof that someone actually reads your website. Respectfully, Mr. and Mrs. Ynolez.

I can only assume the Ynolezes are friends of Elana and Adiv. Either that, or
they are expert computer hackers who managed to break into Amazon.com
and add another book to my sister’s order — for what nefarious ends, none can say.
All I have to say is, glad you like it… and thank you so much for the gift! I
liked both books very much, and I’ve practically finished Dispatches already.

Also, this marks a goer.org first: positive proof that someone who I don’t know
is visiting the site. Ah, I remember the good old days, when I could count the
people who visited this site on one hand. Now it takes two hands, at least.

It looks like I have a place to live come January 1st, thanks to Mike’s
dad. Rent is far cheaper — and the place is in Sunnyvale, so I’m not exiled to
social Siberia in Fremont or Newark. God forbid anyone would have to cross a bridge
to visit me.

And thus the Campaign to Recover As Much of the Deposit As Possible commences.
I decided to splurge and buy a new vacuum cleaner. A Hoover Windtunnel. Man,
it is so much more powerful than Sam’s crappy old vacuum cleaner that it’s not
even funny. The neatest thing is the dust particle detector, which linked
to a red and green light. When the light turns green, the carpet’s clean!
Who knew vacuuming could be so entertaining?

Anyway, the rental market continues to get better and better.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Example 1: Nancy’s moving
in with Mike, into a two-bedroom in Mike’s current complex. The two-bedroom is only
$100/month more than Mike’s old one-bedroom. Example 2: Pat’s made a few calls —
every apartment manager wants him and Courtney to move in today.
Who knew it could be like this?

I admit, some part of me is a bit disappointed that Mike’s dad is cutting me a good
deal with no fuss. Because I’d really like to go up to an anonymous apartment manager
and actually… you know, haggle. “Well, if you change your mind, you’ve got
my number,” I’d say, grinning as I stride out of the office. Oooh, that would have
been sweet.

M’ris is right:
Creed is awful. Just awful.

Well, I’m on the hunt for a new apartment. Got a few places I’m looking at tomorrow.
I’m feeling pretty optimistic. Besides, if I fail, I still have a place to live,
courtesy of Fred Holy. So not a lot of pressure.

Speaking of new places, Nancy and Mike invited everyone to a holiday party. It
is officially the “Smith-Holy residence”, not the other way around as you might expect.
Nancy rightly points out that she and Mike are not the Armorers of God.
And good thing, too. They might have room for one anvil in there at best.

I still am having trouble installing stable graphics drivers for my ATI card.
I keep trying to install the new drivers, but no matter what I do, the old drivers
keep springing back from their coffin and leering at me. Fortunately, I’ve finally
found an FAQ site that explains how to expunge the old drivers once-and-for-all.
This involves a little surgery on my Windows registry. Fortunately my physics
education instilled in me an unhealthy lack of fear of messing with technology
that I don’t understand.

I’ve been having awful trouble with my writing. Trying a little semi-traditional
fantasy. But it keeps coming out like, “Long-ago-in-the-days-of-high-adventure…”
Ugh.

A couple of days ago on the radio I heard a mysterious cover of Linkin Park’s
“One Step Closer”. Instead of an angry young man screaming at the top of his
lungs, this version involved a pleasant sounding woman with an acoustic guitar.
Disorienting, to say the least.

So I strained to hear who the artist was, but all I heard the DJ say was,
“Dean and Naroyan”. Ok, type that into Google… nope. Hmmmm, maybe he
said “Deena Naroyan”? No dice there either… but Google asks, “Did you mean
‘Deena Noroian‘”? Why, yes, as it turns out, I did.
And there she was! And if you
send her an email, she’ll even send you a free mp3 of her cover of “One Step Closer”.
Now, I’m not quite sure who her target audience is — besides possibly me
— since how many Linkin Park fans are also into Lilith Fair guitar music?
And vice versa? But maybe her new album will sell like hotcakes. What do I know?

Speaking of mp3s, I’ve been having a lot of fun ripping all my CDs onto my computer. This
was all accidental. I was just playing around, trying to get my sound card
to work properly. The install CD included a supremely crappy media player.
I got distracted with it… ripped a couple of CDs… and realized, “Hey,
this is pretty neat. I can store all my music in one place… organize my
collection… make my own playlists…” Welcome to 1999.

It’s like when that kid called from Harvey Mudd,
trolling for alumni donations. Well, after I coughed up the money we started
chatting, about NPR of all things. I mentioned
This American Life, and he said,
“Oh, I love that show. I listen to it all the time when I do my homework.”

Hmmmm, I thought. Maybe things have changed a bit since the Dark Ages when I
went to school, but I don’t recall noon on Saturdays being prime time for
doing E&M problem sets.

“No,” he said patiently. “I go to the website
and listen to the archived shows whenever I want.” Like, duh, Grandpa.

Am I turning into Abe Simpson?

I used to be with it, but then they changed what “it” was. Now, what I’m with isn’t
“it,” and what’s “it” seems weird and scary to me.

I can at least console myself with the fact that I never was with it. So I don’t
feel like I’ve lost any ground.

Finally, today happens to be the tenth anniversary of the
first
web page in the United States, at SLAC. I think there were a couple of
websites up before then, but they were
Swiss or
something, so who cares?

We moved Mike and Nancy on Saturday. Phase I (moving Mike) went smoothly.
We were just moving him from his apartment on the 7th floor to the one
almost directly below. The only hitch was that the auxilliary elevator had broken
that very morning, which made the trip four times as long as it should have been.
(“We apologize for any inconvenience,” the sign on the elevator said.) But with
help from me, Don, and Pat, it wasn’t so bad. Even Mike’s
secretary Audrey helped. (And they say it’s hard to find good help these days.)

Phase II did not go as smoothly. We backed the U-Haul truck into Nancy’s
driveway. Then we realized that we had to pull forward a few feet. So Pat
turned the key… nothing. The battery was dead. Not wanting to try
jumping the truck with my Sentra, we called U-Haul. They had nothing
available at all, naturally.

So until tomorrow night, Nancy is sleeping on her couch and fishing through
boxes for clean underwear. I guess it could have been worse. We could have
loaded up the truck and then discovered the problem.

Nevertheless, let us not be too quick to curse U-Haul and swear eternal fealty
to Ryder. Ever heard Sam’s story about the time he tried to
pick up a Ryder truck on the weekend? Closed on Sunday, the sign said —
right next to the sign with the company motto, We’re There When You Need Us!
“As it turned out,” says Sam, “they weren’t there when I needed them.
They could have at least taken that second sign down.”

Ah well, on to Good News and Bad News.

Good news, from AndrewSullivan.com:

So after a good long time at the helm, the old cleric finally decided to surrender
his last remaining fortress – the place where it had all begun not so very long ago.
What should we do with him? Capture? House arrest? Public humiliation? I think we
should let Pat Robertson get on with the rest of his life in peace, don’t you?

Bad news: looks like my good housing deal has fallen through, sort of.
I can live there for two or three months, but then I’d need to move again.
Hmmm… the price is right… but as we’ve seen, moving stinks. But on the
bright side, my longing to haggle over the rent (see sidebar) might become
a reality. Be careful what you wish for…

Great news: I’ve sold a short short story, “Watercooler”, to the Bay
Laurel Ebooks anthology,
“Why I Hate Aliens“.
Now we’re not talking a lot of money here… my story is only 1000 words, which means
that according to my calculations I’m entitled to roughly $0.04 per copy sold.
But the important thing is that I wrote something and
someone else liked it enough to publish.
So hooray for me! Besides, all the other books I’ve written in the last few years
have had titles like, “Lucent Computer Telephony Products Utilities User Guide” —
smashing blockbusters for which I have gone lamentably uncredited. High time
we turned that around.

Anyway, I’m feeling pretty good. And fired up, too. Time to turn in, and get
cracking on another story tomorrow night, right after work! No wimpy freewrites,
no journal, no tinkering with the broken HTML tutorial — no,
the real stuff. A bonafide story.

Except… I can’t. I’ll be helping Nancy move. Arrrggh.
We hates U-Haul. We hates them forever.

Well, it looks like poor Spenser might be fully on the road to recovery.
Temperature running steady at 48 degrees, new video drivers and patches for the
motherboard… maybe we are home free. Although who knows, we could freeze
up at any moment here. I keep having paranoid thoughts about that as I
write this. Stay on target… stay on target…

Thanksgiving week was excellent. Not only is Thanksgiving really my
favorite holiday of the year, I managed to get in at least four
homemade meals in a row this year. Always a good thing when you’re a
peanut-butter-on-a-spoon consuming bachelor such as myself.

1. Tuesday night I went over to Brian Gee’s, for some homecooked
   Chinese food. The thing to understand about Brian is, he’s one
   of those guys who moved to the Silicon Valley and was shocked,
   shocked to discover that it’s sometimes kinda hard to meet nice
   girls around here. “Evan!” he’d cry. “This place is a
   wasteland.”

   Well, this year I arrived at the door to his palatial new
   San Francisco pad promptly at 7pm, to find Brian in the kitchen,
   surrounded by at least five or six reasonably attractive
   young women. Clearly Brian is not doing so badly for himself.
   Of course he is handsome, intelligent, funny, ambitious, a good cook,
   blah blah blah, so go figure.

   Anyway, it was refreshing to see Brian. I hadn’t actually hung out
   with him for a long time. How long? Well, when I mentioned to him
   that Amber and I had broken up, his sympathetic, heartfelt response was,
   “Ummm… Amber who?” Somehow I forgot to mention to him that I had been dating
   this very nice woman for the last ten months in the first place. Ooops.

   Apparently he feels this is a sign I need to be
   a bit more communicative about my social life in the future.
   I’m investigating blast-faxes.

2. Wednesday night I had dinner with
   M’ris and Mark and
   Tim. And she served angelsuppa (“angel soup”, I think), which is a
   Norsk dessert of berries (“cloudberries”) and cream. Or for American
   palates, berries and ice cream. Good stuff.

   After dinner, Tim and M’ris and I got into a discussion about Harry Potter.
   Tim and M’ris pointed out that Harry Potter and his friends are all pretty
   one-dimensional — they’re basically good kids, they don’t go through any
   major internal struggles, and they all fit various boarding school stereotypes.
   They’re right — I had noticed this with the unredeemably nasty Draco Malfoy, but for
   some reason I missed it in the other characters. Anyway, on further reflection,
   I think the one exception is Snape. He started out a Death-Eater, but
   had a change of heart; he hates Harry Potter passionately, but dives in and
   saves him when necessary. That’s worth some points, I think.

   Tim also pointed out that J.K. Rowling snubbed
   this year’s Hugo Award ceremony for
   Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. If so, that’s pretty tacky.
   I certainly hope Rowling isn’t one of those authors who thinks she writes
   “lit-rah-chah”, as opposed to that blight on our civilization, speculative fiction.

3. Thursday night was Thanksgiving. This year I decided that it was time for the
   younger generation to learn the family Thanksgiving secrets. I made the stuffing,
   made the gravy, and prepared, stuffed, and carved the turkey. The one thing I didn’t do
   was cook the turkey… so if Dad gets hit by a bus next year, his secrets
   with the Weber die with him.

   The meal was excellent (if I do say so myself). We ate with cousin David and
   some family friends, Susan Hennings and her daughter Anna.
   Anna is two weeks older than Sarah, and about a foot-and-a-half taller.
   They’ve been friends since they were crawling around on the floor… which
   pretty much puts me and Eric to shame.

4. Friday night was Son of Thanksgiving. We finished most of the turkey, although
   we had to invite yet more cousins to do it. And their girlfriends.
   I made pumpkin pie, but unfortunately I misread the recipe and used 1/4c of
   brown sugar instead of 3/4c. Tee-hee! Everyone was polite about it though.
   “Mmmm, yes, you don’t want to oversweeten the pumpkin pie. It tastes sooo
   artificial.” Some of them even waited a full 90 seconds before reaching for the honey.

   I then went and dragged Nancy out of the house, and we hung out at a bar in Campbell
   (Katie Bloom’s) with Randy and Don and Nicole and Monica and Monica’s Boyfriend Who
   I Can Never Remember the Name Of, Even Though He Can Remember Mine Just Fine and
   Seems Like a Very Nice Guy.

All in all, a mind- and waist-expanding week! I suppose I have plenty more to prattle
on about, but I might as well save it for the near future. I’m afraid I’m going to start
sounding like Liz Smith, or maybe
Jackie Harvey, anyway.
Item!

Every birthday, my Dad would come up with something special about
the number.

Nine: “Three squared!” Ten: “Double digits!” Thirteen: “A Fibonacci number!”
You get the idea.

Clearly, I was doomed from an early age.

Even when I had moved out of the house, he would come up with something during
the traditional Birthday Phone Call. Sometimes he had to reach a bit.
Twenty-three: “A prime number… and you won’t be prime again for six more
years!”

Last year was a bit tough. To get anything significant for twenty-six, you have
to turn to Gematria,
the ancient art of Hebrew numerology. Twenty-six figures
prominently throughout the Torah: among other things, it’s the numerical
representation of the name of God (YAHWEH), the number of generations from Adam
to Moses, and the number of lines that it takes to list the Ten Commandments in the
Torah (I bet you thought it was ten).

Well, this year Dad didn’t have to work too hard. “Three cubed!” I was a bit
concerned about next year, until my cousin pointed out that
twenty-eight is one of those rare
perfect numbers,
the next one being 496.

A perfect number! So much to look forward to…

The National Book Award for fiction went to
Jonathan Franzen this year. Makes me wonder, was that just a little “fuck you”
from the National Book Foundation to
to those who are not proper members of the high-art literary tradition? Hmmmm.
Regardless, I have to admire Franzen… he’s clearly a lot savvier than I initially gave
him credit for. No such thing as bad press and all.

But Franzen is not the only budding young genius in America today. Take Randy.
Randy had a great idea this week. We’re all going down to Santa Cruz and a place
called Zelda’s for breakfast Saturday morning. It’s a bit far to go, but Randy
pointed out that there’s nothing better than coffee and cigarettes on a brisk Saturday
morning by the ocean… except maybe if the coffee is served by attractive young
women in small T-shirts. Who can argue with logic like that?

Perhaps I’ll bring a chess set.

There is another place we all used to go to for a Long Breakfast — Crepes on Cole, which
just happens to be a crepes place on Cole St. in San Francisco. As a bonafide
weenie South Bay person, I used to feel very cool driving up to San Francisco
and twisting through all these side streets to get to this nice little
restaurant. Of course, it was pretty crowded. Which meant it probably wasn’t
obscure or hip enough, but what the heck? It made me happy. I have low standards,
and more importantly, so do my friends.

Problem is, I always let Pat drive. Which meant that last year, when Rachel and Ben
were visiting, I tried to take them to Crepes on Cole. And you guessed it — I missed
a turn and we got lost. Bam! There went all my SF hipness, gone in a flash.
Fortunately, after we goofed off most of the day, Rachel insisted that we drive the
Golden Gate bridge. I was a bit dubious. But Ben was no help at all, and Rachel…
well, let’s just say that if that girl wants to cross a bridge, ain’t nobody stoppin’
her from crossing that bridge.

So we crossed the Golden Gate at sunset and the bridge performed on cue. Spectacular.
San Francisco saves the day (and my hipness) once again! Although I could have sworn I heard it
snickering as we drove out of the city. Or was that Rachel in the back seat? Hard to say.

For Halloween, we had a whopping four trick-or-treaters. One small child, three
teenage girls. At least they all wore costumes… I heard that in
Sunnyvale, kids were just wandering around in street clothes. Is Halloween
getting worse every year? Is anyone even trying?

We saw “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Sleepy Hollow”. I hadn’t seen
“Sleepy Hollow” before… not a bad flick. Is it just me, or did both of
the scarecrows in “Sleepy Hollow” look like Jack Skellington (with and without
pumpkin head?) One thing bothered me… Ichabod Crane struck me as
a bit inconsistent. I mean, in one scene he’s in hand-to-hand combat with
an invincible headless ghost. And a few scenes later he’s up on a chair, frightened
of a large spider. What gives?

Anyway, we had Nancy’s chili and Don Little’s garlic tri-tip. And plenty of
leftover Halloween candy.

As for my birthday, that went… ummmm… rather well. Friday night we
went out as planned. We went into the back room of La Bodeguita del Medio.
Everyone bought me free drinks. And I smoked a cigar. It was very Gentleman’s
Club (but not the strip-club-with-plush-chairs variety). Then we went
to F&A’s. Mental note: if you decide to regress about seven years and
drink past your limit, make sure you have lots of good friends around to
apologize to Security and haul your sick, sorry butt home. Woo! Do I still
know how to party or what? Sad, sad, sad.

Well, presumably the next time this happens, in another seven years, it will
be for a more noble cause. “Drink all ze mojitos, Señor Goer…
or ze hostages die!”

The BBQ the next day went on, although I was thinking of cancelling it up until
about three hours before. Renee King showed up briefly! She was on her way to a wedding
reception. And she seemed unimpressed by the fact that there were only two other guests
when she arrived. Well, Renee, if you’d only come an hour and a half late like all the
cool people… Boy, that lady knows how to kick a man when he’s hung over
and down. That husband of hers, Whatshisname, is clearly a bad influence.

I should mention that due to my
weakened condition, I specifically requested “Number” candles on my cake, rather
than lots of little ones. I hope this is not a sign of things to come.

Fortunately, although I did not make it to the store, my friends covered for me
admirably. Barbara showed up right on time with piping hot baked potatoes
and all the fixings, just when I was thinking, “Damn, we need a starch.” I
don’t know how she managed to keep those potatoes hot all the way from
Campbell. That woman defies the laws of Thermodynamics.

Hmmmm… better add “defies laws of Thermodynamics” to The List.

I found a picture of me
and Amber on
Marissa’s website. That was
the day I handed Marissa her belated birthday gift, a handy-dandy Rebellious Young
Writer’s Manifesto Kit (TM).
At first, I was encouraged by her enthusiasm. But lately, I’ve been disappointed in her.
She hasn’t been rushing out and organizing meetings, distributing flyers, writing angry screeds,
and promoting The Movement. No, it seems she’s been buckling down
and writing fiction. What the heck is up with that?

I wonder if I’ll have any trick-or-treaters this year? It seems unlikely, since my townhouse
is essentially part of a retirement community. But you never know. At least Mike complimented
me on my jack-o-lanterns. He seemed impressed that I could carve one with curvy features using
just a regular kitchen knife. I don’t know how I accomplished this monumental feat.
Maybe I was channeling the spirit of Martha Stewart. That’s right, Mike! Fear my l33t
pumpkin-carving skillz!

Anyway, folks are coming over in a about an hour to watch scary movies and eat some
pasta and garlic bread. Time to cut this short.