An Acceptable Silence

I went and got a massage yesterday because a local chain was having a big breast cancer research benefit day and because I decided I deserved a treat. And as I was laying there, I realized that this was one of the few social situations in which it is acceptable to not talk to the other person. There was silence but no social need to fill it. That's something that's pretty rare these days. Especially in the realm of personal services.

Baristas? Cashiers at the grocery store? Wait staff? All of them will chat at least a little bit. And it's expected that they do. You go to the dentist? They try to chat with you even as they stick fingers in your mouth. Going to get a haircut? Don't get me started. They go for your whole life story.

Part of it is that it's expected by service sorts of employees. But part of it is that people feel awkward spending time together and not talking. Especially those longer exchanges, like a haircut. They're talking to fill the time, to fill the silence.

In a massage, though, you're supposed to be relaxing. They play soothing music. But it still feels a little uncomfortable to not talk to the masseuse. I don't like talking to people that I don't really know for more than a couple minutes, even if they are cutting my hair. But I still felt a little weird about not trying to converse during my massage.

A President Just Like Me

When did successful campaigning for president of the US turn into an 'Everyman' contest? The gold standard for candidates has become being seen as just another guy, someone who might be your next door neighbor, someone folksy and down-home and plain.

Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, showing myself to be squarely in the fringes of society, but I don't want a president who is just like me. I don't want a president who is average. I don't want a president who is folksy and ordinary and guy-next-door.

I want a president who is smart, and shows it. I want a president who is capable, not affable. I want a president who thinks in complexities, not sound bites. I mean, for the most powerful person in the world, shouldn't we ask a bit more?

Wedding bells on the (far) horizon

It's true, I'm engaged. I asked L to marry me a couple weeks ago. We had a nice little picnic by the lake and I don't think either of us stopped smiling for a couple hours straight. I had a ring made for her by a craftswoman on Etsy. I thought I would melt right away when she put it on and told me she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me.

We decided that I needed a ring too. (I could go on and on here about gender roles in female same-sex couples, but I'll save that for another post.) L had really wanted me to surprise her with her ring (which I did), and she wanted to surprise me with mine too.

Last week we were making dinner after getting home from work - grilled cheese sandwiches, one of our favorite comfort foods - and L brought the plates over to the table. There was something non-food-like on my plate. A little black box with a familiar looking ribbon. I opened it to see that L had gotten me a ring by the same designer. It's a blue iolite stone. It looks black in the picture here, but it's really a deep, dark blue. I love having the ring on my finger - it's a constant reminder of the life together we have ahead of us.

Okay, so you probable want to know wedding details. The when, the where, all that. Well, it's all pretty tentative right now, but we're thinking summer of 2010 in the Bay Area (where we'll be living soon!).

Can't Stop the Beat

I was ever so excited when the people living in the 2nd floor apartment just below me moved out a couple weeks ago. They were, at least from my perspective as their neighbor, rather bastards. They left empty beer bottles and stubbed out cigarettes on the shared porch all the time. Even better, they repurposed an empty wine bottle as their cigarette repository, turning it into a stinking miasma of used-up nicotine and stale, festering rainwater.

What bothered me more than this infestation of the porch, though, was their habit of playing music at all hours of the day and night. I don't know what kind of music they were playing, but I do know that it always had a very repetitive, very insistent bass beat. How do I know this? Because I could hear the bass through the floor. At all hours of the day and night. Particularly when I was trying to sleep.

I was excited when they moved out. The people that moved in seem nice, more easy-going and more likely to be friendly, respectful neighbors. They put a hammock on the porch instead of beer bottles. One of them admired my vegetable garden.

But now it's after midnight, I'm trying to get to sleep and all I can hear, all I can think is this pounding bass line reverberating up through the floor and disturbing all the quietest corners of my mind. And I'm roiling with (mostly) irrational hate, hate, hate for these new bastards that have no sense of decency or neighborliness or my need to get a decent night's sleep.

No Books for Prisoners

I read an article in the Wisconsin State Journal today about a program that sends free books to Wisconsin prison inmates that was shut down by prison officials. It's hard to tell who's right and who was being an ass, but I'd think that reading books is something we'd want to encourage in anybody, not to mention those in prison with probably a lot of time on their hands. The prison officials' argument was that the books could contain contraband - sealed into bindings or secret codes created by underlining certain words. Those books are dangerous things! You never know, inmates could hit someone over the head with a particularly large book. This whole idea that books are dangerous reminds me scarily of dystopian novels like Fahrenheit 451. If we let people read, they might start thinking too.

Packing

We've started packing up our apartment to move to downstairs in less than a month. I'm excited about the new apartment, but not at all excited about having to move. True, it's not very far, but it's still going to be a pain. I keep kicking myself that we didn't look at the first floor apartment a year ago. We had the option to. But we were having such sticker shock from the unexpectedly high rental prices in Madison that even the extra $100 per month seemed huge. We thought we were being so good by not looking at it so that we wouldn't like it better and we wouldn't be tempted to rent it because it was more expensive... Well, hindsight is ever perfect, I suppose. One of these days it would be nice to not have to move every year.

Jam

I feel so very domestically accomplished when I make jam. The sounds of the lids popping as they seal is exquisitely satisfying. Canning in general always feels like an accomplishment. I took these berries that I picked and made them into something that I can tuck away in my cupboard and pull out in the middle of the winter to eat. And it's yummy.

I love that we have raspberries in the back yard. What an unexpected gift, to be able to pick a handful of berries as I get home from work each day. Without having to plant them or really tend them at all.