quick story

Candlelight dinner

My new neighbor knocked on my door yesterday afternoon to tell us happy Thanksgiving!! and also that the tree in front of my house was on fire.  A good 50 feet in the air, a large section of it smoldered and smoked, and when the winds gusted, the embers glowed red hot and blew on down the block. Good goddam thing I decided it wouldn't do to try to pretend I wasn't home and instead rousted my snoozing self from the recliner. 

The tree is massive. Planted in 1915 or so, it is now a mighty Ash that towers waaaay above my shrimpy 3-story home. So who flicked a cigarette butt 50 feet in the air and caught the tree on fire? Oh don't be silly. The power cable that ran across the tops of the utility poles out front had evidently been rubbing against the limb of the tree for some time and it became frayed and eventually snapped, firing up the tree and the ground below with 40,000 volts of electricity. And also causing an extended power outage to the southern half of the Island at the height of turkey-cooking time.   

What's Thanksgiving without a visit from my friends at the Trenton Fire Department and PSE+G? I love those guys. But now I need to form a close and personal relationship with the city's tree guys cuz I've got a 75-foot section of Ash leaning out over my house that has been weakend by the red-hot fire that burned halfway through it. 

em the player

Now that I'm bigger than Donald Trump, I thought it was time to step out and hobnob with the city's elite, so on Sat evening I attended the Stop the Wrecking Ball Ball at the Liederkranz Hall on South Clinton Ave.

Hosted by the Trenton Historical Society, the Stop the Wrecking Ball Ball raises money to preserve Trenton's diverse architectural legacy. Due to its current sad state, many interesting buildings in Trenton have been allowed to slowly rot prior to a speedy demolition by real estate developers who want to toss up more office space. Like we need more state office space downtown. Trenton is the state capitol; thus, there's a lot of state offices--80% of the buildings are state offices. The trouble is the state pays no local property tax, so no revenue comes in for services and schools and whatnot. And lord knows all those state worker bees don't want to actually *live* in Trenton. It's too scary. So woebegone Trenton remains woebegone.   

The Liederkranz Hall was a very cool venue. It was originally the clubhouse or whatever for a German singing society; next it became a furniture warehouse and then it was abondoned for some number of years before being resurrected by a public relations firm that's now slumming in Trenton. The cocktail party was on the unrenovated first floor, a large drafty room with rustic brick walls, a worn wood floor, and ceilings too high to see in the gloom. The caterers had set up several hors d'oeurves stations around the room--a shiskabob area, a root vegetable area, and a desserts area. The food was pretty good, but as always I was distracted by the open bar and a big bottle of top-shelf vodka. I topped off my drink about every 10 minutes, for free hee heeee! By the end of the night I was successfully tipsy and surrounded by olde fartes in gowns and tuxedos. The potential-for-serious-trouble quotient was high. And who did I spy among the gowned and cummerbunded? My ex-husband's ex-girlfriend, C, who was evidently working the crowd trying to drum up paying customers for her photography business. My old pal David, who made a very handsome date indeed, deftly steered me in another direction when I decided I needed to shove C down on the floor and liberate her camera. Party pooper.

Hands down best part of the night? The band--The Main Squeeze Orchestra. An all-girl accordian band, they rocked the house with covers of the Beatles, Joy Division, and a spot-on rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody. I don't think the gowned and cummerbunded got it, but I refrained from pushing anyone down because they talked through the music.         

Maggots, spider legs, grubs and beetle backs

i was *starving* half to death. i got up at 6:30 a.m. but still managed to miss the fancy breakfast spread that preceded my second full day of lecture after lecture of impenetrable insider speculation on the future of radio-frequency identification tagging of pharmaceutical products--ie, wireless bugs placed somewhere in the packaging of your physician-prescribed medication, eg, your hypertension medicine, your HiV cocktail, your mood stabilizer, or your erectile dysfunction drug. According to industry, the bugs allow the medication to be tracked from manufacturer through wholesaler to distribution centers and from there to hospital or retail pharmacies. And then on to me and you. As they tell it, electronically tracking drugs through the supply chain will lead to substantial cost economies, labor efficiencies, and the big buzz--say it together now--improved medication safety. Nicely done.

it made my hair hurt.  So i left early, before lunch. My return ticket had me on the Amtrak 2:05 out of union Station, Wash DC, but i scatted out of the conference at 11:00, cabbed hard across town, and shucked and jived up to the ticket-exchange counter with one 40-lb suitcase, one 20-lb laptop computer bag, two briefcases filled with 5-lb each of vendor literature, and one 75-lb purse.  i caught the 12:05 baby! :-) but didn't have time to catch that bite to eat. :-(   

so now i'm hungry and faced with a 3-hour train ride where the only food is Amtrak food. What to do, what to do... yup, i toddled 5 cars up to the cafe car, and--i have *no* idea what overtook me--i ordered a tuna sandwich.

it came encased in a robotically-sealed 50-gauge plastic wrapper. the main ingredient--the tuna--was brown, and there were multicolored hunks of whathaveyou throughout. i plowed ahead and chose not to examine the wrapper for an expiration date or for an ingredient list. instead, i bit right in.

my mind involuntarily flashed to the TV show "Fear Factor" with its bugs and vomitus and excrement that the producers force complete morons to eat, and i put the sandwich down. But i was soooo hungry, so i picked it up again. but it was soooo bad, so i put it down again.

i'm still struggling with the upset digestive system.  if i have to, i'll go to the doctor for something. At this point, i don't care who knows.

Groupie em

My neighbor B has some sort of turbo-charger on board. He's got 4 kids, works a challenging job, is president of the school district, and as a side thing, he coproduces concerts at the local cathedral, a Grand Venue if ever there was one. plus he and his partner S are stand-up stand-ins for me, because katie spends about as much time at their house with Naomi as she does at mine.

Anyhoo, point of the post. When he put out an emergency call the other night for overnight hosts for his latest performers, a traditional folk music group from Tsibili, Republic of Georgia, who are touring the states, I was more than happy to provide a few beds. They didn't roll in until midnight or so, but i regathered my slumbering hospitality energies and enjoyed a lovely Stolichnya with the band, Fodor, |gor, and Gregor. Lone foggy observation: when they talk together it all sounds like "ishka bishka dovbro kobrovka." I'm pretty sure they were saying, "ooo, lovely American lady. but where is her big American breasteses?"

Missed diagnosis

There's a reason I’m the medical editor and not the practitioner. I witnessed a medical emergency the other day while I was in Boston. It was at the 8 am opening session. I got there a few minutes late, and it was a full house, but I found a singleton seat about 5 rows from the back of the grand ballroom.

I was paying attention, kind of, and then the noise started up. I scanned the back of the room, and I could only see him over the heads of the audience seated around me--a sea of maybe 1000 health care clinicians.  An old guy, sorta overweight, grey suit and hair, was lurching/hopping/shuffling across the back row in the room while making a sound that I had previously not heard from a human being—a sort of high-pitched barking and wheezing that you might expect from a seal with croup. So, not being interested in the opening didactic, my attention stayed on the back of the room. The guy hopped and honked and HEEEZED! his way along the back row while those around me politely focused on the speaker.

Well-considered medical editor em diagnosis? epileptic fit.  Any minute I expected someone from this overflowing sea of clinicians to step up and give the man a fat shot of Depakote or something. It's my professional opinion that a fat shot of something good can be a big help in most any unpleasant situation.

He humpty-danced himself my way and then pulled upright not far from me, and there I saw a woman clutched below him, and he seemed to be riding her like a cowboy.

How odd. But odder still, no one appeared to be paying any attention to this strange tableau, except me of course, bored em.

Heimlich maneuver successfully accomplished, the patient smiled and hugged the man.

These people are way too calm. Wonder if they're on anything.

mmmm, authentic clam chowder

I flew up to Boston,Massachusetts, this morning in that little crop duster that goes out of Trenton/Mercer Airport. The steward again filled the dual role of steward/pilot, and he did a serviceable job--the ride was swift and smooth but LOUD, as I believe the plane is powered by a gross of Briggs and Stratton lawnmower engines piled somewhere in the bowels of the aircraft.

I knocked out in record time—2-3 minutes after the wheels lifted off the tarmacadam. I am good at sleeping on planes--like a baby in a car seat. In fact, it’s my super power, well, that and folding laundry (I am *exceptional* at folding, especially jeans--you have to yank that sickle-shaped part of the crotch out if you want the pant legs to fall all nice and smooth).

I’m in a bit of pain, however. As my head bobbed contentedly and my jaw slackened, my neck folded in on itself and soon the leading edge of me was no longer my chin, but my larynx, kind of like the neck of a Flamingo.

Oy, only 2 days and 800 miles from the em armamentarium of powerful pain medication.

       

Repairman Day!

em manor was crawling with repairmen last Wed. Guys in tight faded Levis and t-shirts, men in khaki trousers and button-down shirts stitched with the company logos, alpha males wearing leather utility belts all a-dangle with Tools of the Trade and smelling of No. 4711.

·    PSE+G man was on hand to fix the 5-month-old furnace;
·    Sears appliance repair guy came in to investigate the 8-month-old dishwasher that can’t manage to wash mayonnaise off a knife;
·    Comcast cable guy installed the new cable TV box and clicker with All-Access Everything;
·    Brinks dispatched 2 men to shore up the em perimeter with an ultra-high-security system of sirens, lasers, and motion detectors that are monitored by well-trained, capable security officers 24/7; and finally,
·    Electrician man followed up on the furnace when PSE+G man floundered. He poked one button and fired up the em furnace. One button. :-/

I almost felt like cooking a bunch of steaks for lunch.  Well, for a minute or 2.

Driver em

Katie rides the bus to school now. The *long* bus people. sheesh. In fact, it’s probably at least 50 yards long.  I, unfortunately, have to drive her to the bus stop--at the first hint of dawn--because she now attends public school in the school district where her father lives, and they ain’t sending a bus out Trenton-way. In fact, the district has an armed force of District Eligibility Officers who are tasked with keeping us po' folks out of their crapass schools. These guys lurk around school bus stops looking to snag Trenton parents trying to sneak their kids into the "good schools" out in the ‘burbs by pretending to live out that way. And there are penalties for this--expensive penalties: they bill you at the student per diem rate. Ouch.

According to district rules, however, Katie and Joe are eligible to attend school in the suburbs-they need only wake up in the district (at their father’s house) 3 mornings a week. But on the other 2 mornings, it’s a mad dash to the bus stop. On more than one occasion, we’ve hit the bus stop at 50 mph with doors flying, just as the bus driver collected the last kid at the stop onto the bus.And only once have we ended up out of position behind the bus and had to chase her to her next appointed stop. That bus driver knows how to giddyup those 50 yards of sleak yellow school bus on down the autobahn! The careening vehicle in her rearview was no distraction whatsoever. But now she's beginning to recognize my car as the lunatic white sedan that launches itself sideways under her front wheels, and she waits for Katie to tumble out and slink over to the bus with not the slightest hint of mortification.

Problem is that Katie's father has had his fill of Katie's fledgling puberty-fired ways, and he has delivered her back to me along with all of Katie's belongings, boxed, onto the floor of my house with a thump and a snarl. "Her behavior is UNACCEPTABLE!! She can't come back!!"

Whatever dude. Good thing I've got this whole Flying Under the Radar thing going, so if those District Commandos ever stake out her bus stop, they'll never notice us.    

Crash bang run

Squirrels and mutts and the occasional drug dealer I can handle. Measly annoyances. Gargantuan Lexus sedans? No.

Running, Saturday morning, as usual. I went up around the north end of the Island, stopped to have a word with the neighborhood beat cop who was parked on the side-street in the shade reading the newspaper--
"You catch the perp who burgled my house yet?"
"Nope."
"Argh. Well, nice day, eh?"
"Yes indeed."
Scurried across the highway to circle through Glen Afton, the rich-folk neighborhood, and stopped to have a word with one of the locals over there who used to own the house next door to me (yes, I will stop for anything). As I chugged up to him I noticed that he was sort of dragging his leg and holding his arm funny, like maybe he'd had a stroke or something--
"Say, they're selling your old house again."
"Yeah?"
"Yup."
"Well..."
But the screeching tires and sounds of car on car on roadside objects interrupted my runner's tranquility, and my finely-tuned runner's leg muscles took over and ran me up into his yard and around the back of the nearest tree.

OK, yes, it was 20 yards away, but I swear it sounded like a train wreck, coming right at me. I sheepishly looked out from behind my tree-barricade at the handicapped guy down by the highway, and we made our way over to the drivers. The weirdest damn things happen to me when I'm running.

animal lover

the Trenton cop and i chased that little white Schnoodle dog all the way down the hill at Hilvista blvd--i took the left flank and he took the right--and then up the other side of that steep hill where it turns into Sullivan Way. But the damn thing would squirt through our outstretched leg and arm barricades just when we got close and go scurrying off in another direction, in heavy traffic.

i was outfitted for the event, as i was on my Sat morning run and all warmed up to give chase, but the Trenton cop was in his cold-weather uniform and oxford shoes, and carrying 30 or 40 lb of hardware around his waist. i easily beat him to the dog (score!), but the dog was faster than both of us, and when it reversed direction and ran back up the hill on Hilvista Blvd, i offered to wing the animal in his leg with the gun, but the officer politely declined and got back in his cruiser to continue the chase with lights and sirens. stupid dog.

it was a big day for animal adventures. As i finished my run, i chugged along my street and, just as i was looking up at them, 2 squirrels fell out of a big pine tree along with a good-sized pine cone, which made for a surprisingly loud tha-thump when they all hit the pavement.  As Len Burman says, "Nobody was hurt!" The squirrels picked themselves up and ran off in separate directions. They knew they better run too, because they looked an awful lot like the squirrels who used the Christmas lights last year to swing over to the birdfeeder before i moved them. They had the last laugh that time--they chewed all my lights down--but who's laughing now, eh? stupid squirrels.

and just to provide a bookend to a weird day of animal encounters, Jah's little commando mutt rushed me yet again and bit me hard on the foot and then did that furious head-shake with my foot still in his jaws. stupid mutt.