caleb walker

hair

Today let's talk about my hair. Relax. I mean the hair on my head. Ew.

KR has always cut it real short. We'd take a stool into the back yard and she'd go to town on it, snipping it to a finger's width all over. The prison look, she called it.

Then I let it grow long. Like seven months long. It got curly and unruly. Like seven months curly and unruly.

So a while ago I finally got a professional cut at Clipps by a very young woman. I left the place feeling good, but after a few days my head developed little curls all over the top. It looked like a bad rug. Somehow, I figure, letting it grow long had rebooted its curliness. So the other day I went back to the place. My stylist had recommended some smutch to tame it but I couldn't remember it. The three ladies behind the counter threw out product names, but nothing sounded familiar. Finally one of them said "Round Trip" and I jumped. "That's it! I knew it had something to do with travel."

So I'm trying Round Trip on my head. I feel more like me now that I'm not walking around under a rat's nest.

sitting

Where I've sat:

I used to often sit in the fancy chairs behind the altar at church. That's where the chalice-bearers sat.

A big bunch of tourists stood inside the door of an Istanbul mosque. Most of its space was roped off, but a man came in through a door near the minbar and beckoned me over the rope. I went with him through a hidden door, up stairs, and out on a balcony overlooking the city. Three ornate uphostered chairs were there and he motioned for me to sit in the biggest one. And I sat there.

At my home computer I sit in a Herman Miller Aeron chair I bought on Ebay.

When I was a teenager I once shimmied along the trunk of a tree that had fallen into the river. Once out there over the water I sat and carved "KM SB" into the bark with my pocket knife.

In the story I'm polishing up my character sits on a tree branch from which a boy hung himself.

My fourth-grade teacher drove me and three other boys to Pittsburgh. We sat in the top row of Three Rivers Stadium and saw Roberto Clemente hit a home run.

I've sat in several music venues. One was the Syria Mosque, which Pitt later bought and turned into a parking lot. I saw Laurie Anderson there. Another was Graffiti, my favorite place to see music. The best concert experience of my life was seeing Joan Osborne there. We sat in the balcony to the side of the stage and held on tight while Joan blew the roof off the place.

I once sat in a chair at Ikea to take a rest.

a sunny warm saturday

We've had so few warm sunny days this spring that everyone's out, packing the day with as many activities as possible.

Me, I worked at KR's store while she had a yard sale. I showed a few rugs but nothing went out.

Do you think tomorrow will be a sunny warm Sunday? (Not likely.)

It's Al Franken's birthday. He said this:

"Mistakes are a part of being human. Appreciate your mistakes for what they are: precious life lessons that can only be learned the hard way. Unless it's a fatal mistake, which, at least, others can learn from."

(via writersalmanac.publicradio.org)

 

hb, fey.

Okay, tonight I'm two days late sending a story to my writing group. So yet again the blog gets a light post. And since I was working in Powerpoint (I hate Powerpoint) all day you get bullet points:

• Today was a coworker's last day with us. He and his parents are getting on their motorcycles and riding to Alaska. I'm envious. We all, the whole office, went out to lunch in his honor to a place called Finnegan's Wake. And I learned that, during Prohibition, the only legal time to drink was during a wake, so some folks had a wake for a fictional guy named Finnegan when they wanted a little something.

• Happy birthday, Tina Fey. ("I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.")

• Here's a diagram of a Time-Traveling Fictional Bar Crawl.

plumbing

The utility sink in the basement was clogged. KR dumped Drano in it and plunged it, but still.

Under the sinks is an old drum trap (it took some googling to figure that out). The cap lifted right off since the threads had rusted away. Some probing with my hands (wearing rubber gloves at first, then without since I couldn't feel anything otherwise) revealed that the inlet at the bottom of the trap was plugged. It was a tight reach, under the sink, into the trap, to the bottom of the back wall of the drum.

KR brought me a silver pasta server, which would probably have helped clear the clog, but it would have been a suicide mission for the utensil. I used my fingers to clear most of the gunk. Then a wire coathanger to finish, jimmying it around until all the water in the sinks drained into the trap and out the outlet pipe. 

My fingernails are stained black as a reminder of this non-handy man's great success.

gone fishin

The forecast called for rain and thunderstorms all day, so I went to a picnic with coworkers. Fishing was the featured activity, but I didn't bother to buy a license or develop an interest in fishing so I sat with the other landlubbers and made friends with a dog. It didn't rain.

When I played Little League I was terrible. When I played basketball in junior high I was terrible. Then I played in a softball league one summer while I worked at CMU. I was terrible. 

The other day I was saying this to KR and she said no, I was good at softball. How could that even be? 

Maybe like this: A few years ago KR and I were walking in Squirrel Hill and I stepped into Beacon against the light to see if there were any cars coming so we could cross. She grabbed my arm and I jerked away violently. It frightened her and me too. It had been a purely reactionary, involuntary, unfiltered action in response to KR's protective move. I think of that moment every time I cross that street.

And KR has no recollection of it.

Memory funny.

continuation

The birthday celebration continued tonight at D's with NP over pizza and beer. One beer each. She gave me the new Paul Simon CD, in which he sings "Is it Be Bop a Lula? Or ooh Papa Doo?"

And I've got not much else to say tonight. Sleep well, everyone.

hb km

It's my birthday today. Edwin and Sofia took me to lunch at the sushi buffet and as we were finishing our tea the disco lights came on. (Disco lights??) Someone must have leaned against the switch. But they stayed on. Then two young waitresses came to the table with a cake and sang Happy Birsday. It was so sweet all I could do was smile.

Then I noticed one of them held a gong. A nice little "bonngg" would be a nice little stinger on the end of the song. But she banged on that thing as if it were a fire alarm. My ears are still ringing.

Tonight KR and I went to Brgr where we fought the urge to walk away and go to Mad Mex after a run-in with the hostess. We'd have to wait to sit downstairs or she could seat us immediately upstairs. She explained that we couldn't get draft beer upstairs. She said that there's not enough pressure to have taps upstairs. 

I didn't understand. "You can't carry beers upstairs?" No, there's not enough pressure... "So we can't order beer and have it carried to our upstairs table?" No, there's not enough... "Okay." So we sat at the bar for a few minutes until she came over and asked us to settle up because she had a table for us upstairs. Where we could have sat as soon as we came in. I'm still confused.

Anyway, thanks to all four hundred people who wished me well on my facebook page. 

reservations

I got us reservations at Legume for Friday. Legume is my favorite restaurant. Sure, the food's good and all, but the owner/hostess and that one waitress make every visit a warm experience. We're greeted by name. We're lingered over. We're given special treatment. It's one of my favorite places to spend an evening.

This is the place where I'll try anything. I've tried (yuk) oysters. Head cheese. Pork belly. I drew the line at marrow, which KR ordered and gobbled up - using the little spoon she was given, then picking up the bones and licking them clean. I was once in the neighborhood at dinnertime and bought a gingerbread to go. They gave me two take-out boxes, one for the whipped cream. It was the most ginger-y gingerbread I've ever experienced. It reminded me that gingerbread has ginger in it.

It's a BYOB place, so people bring their own prefered beverages. We've seen, several times, people come in not only with their fancy wines, but also their own glasses, as if the bistro glasses Legume provides weren't good enough. We once saw a table of elderly women set a bottle of vodka on their table.

So Legume is moving in about 10 days and, honestly, I'm nervous. They're moving farther away. They're acquiring a bar. They're gaining size. I'm nervous that all these changes - all good things, sure - will change the place too much. As if the small space and BYOB and location made it what it is and any changes will make it something else. 

But of course the owner/hostess and that one waitress will still be there, so maybe my fears will be unfounded. In any case, we'll visit to welcome them to their new space and wish them well, secretly hoping that some of the familiar remains.