READIN

Tuesday, June 24th, 2003

🦋 Jeremy doesn't understand shopping for clothes

This afternoon, whilst zipping up, I discovered that the wear at the crotch of my trousers had grown from a purely private source of shame to a potentially public embarrassment -- yes I wear my pants until they wear out and frequently beyond, because I don't like shopping for clothes. (The crotch always seems to be the first place to go, I think because of excess fat on my inner thighs -- not working out is another source of shame.) So I said to myself, this afternoon you got to go buy another pair of pants.

I know there is a men's clothing store of some kind on 42nd Street, across from my office; I will just slip in there on my way to the train. Hmm... "Strawberry" -- that looks to be a clothing store of some kind. [Peering in window, seeing lacy undergarments] no, wrong gender... Ah! "Kenneth Cole" should have something suitable for the office. [Peering in window, seeing lacy undergarments] What!? [Coming along to the next window where there are shirts and ties] Ah, that's better. [Ducking in the door and looking at the price tag on the first pair of pants I see] Wait, $54?! Clothing can't cost that much! I think there's a "Gap" on the next block, [Ducking back out of KC and sauntering along, sees a "Banana Republic" sign] OK, that must be what I was thinking of...

So I went along into the Banana Republic, picked up the first pair of pants I saw, was dazed and dismayed by its price tag of $118 [no lie!]; the second pair of pants, "only" $39, seemed like a great deal by comparison. After a bit of hunting I found the fitting rooms and it took me only a couple of iterations of confusion to figure out that the doors were all closed not because they were all in use and the guy standing by the doors wearing a nametag was not a hapless shopper like myself, waiting for the next free one; he was the guy with the key! and would let me in if I only asked him to!!

I came away with a pair of pants -- $40 still sticks in my craw as a lot of money for clothing -- and filled out an application for a Banana Republic charge card, which I was assured would "earn" me beaucoup "rewards". I didn't stick around to find out what the rewards would be, or how I would earn them.

posted evening of June 24th, 2003: Respond

On-the-train reading today is 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme. I found this book last fall in the train station, where somebody had left a box full of old paperbacks. The stories are great -- well about a quarter of them seem to be what John Updike would have written if he had been into experimental prose, not quite my cup of tea -- and about a quarter are just too wordy for me to find a foothole -- but the remaining half are excellent, and moving, and funny. And the occasional odd phrase that makes me grin for a few minutes.

posted morning of June 24th, 2003: Respond
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Saturday, June 21st, 2003

🦋 Window seat

I started taking measurements for the window seat I am planning to build in our sitting room's bay window. I have pretty well in mind what the thing should look like at the end, what I mainly need to do is take the measurements from the space. I have linked to the images as separate files because they are big, and I don't know how to reduce them. Here is a floor plan and front elevation:

The height of the seat (which you can't see because my scanner clipped it off) is 16"; I measured that height from a chair that feels comfortable. That is also good because it is a little over an inch short of the bottoms of the window sill moldings which will be above the seat. (I didn't draw the windows in to this plan but there are three of them, in the places you would expect them to be.) So, good: the length of the seat will be 94", and the width -- oh, now I see my scanner trimmed that off too -- the depth of the bay window is 36", and the depth of the part that is 94" wide is 14"; so I am thinking 32" is a good width for my seat. At 32", the front of the seat will be recessed a bit into the bay.

I want to build the seat as a frame of 2X4's and 4X4's, then cover that with hardwood -- 1/2" thick on the face and 3/4" thick on the seat. I'll use moldings in two key places -- the transition from the seat to the face, and the transition from the seat to the wall. Here is a plan of the frame, with rough dimensions written in:

And here is a plan of what the molding will look like (I have drawn in the window sill molding above the seat here):

I am trying to capture the Victorian style of my house in the profile of the seat. I did not draw the doors which will be in the face, because I have not figured out their dimensions yet; there will be two. I am thinking about cutting gingerbread into the doors to echo the house's eaves but I'm not sure about it -- I don't have a scroll saw and it would be a fair amount of work. The baseboard molding in the room, which will be matched along where the face meets the floor, is about 4" high.

Update: Here are some comments on the design from WoodCentral folks. They have convinced me to go with hinged holes in the seat to access the storage area, rather than doors in the face -- these will be easier to install and to use. I am nixing the idea of scrollwork in the face, too much work.

posted afternoon of June 21st, 2003: Respond
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Wednesday, June 18th, 2003

Quote of the day, from Randolph Fritz posting in D²'s comments section:

Hey, if you think what English teachers did to haiku is bad, you should see what the modernists did with Japanese architecture. Um, come to that, you probably have...

posted evening of June 18th, 2003: Respond

Monday, June 16th, 2003

🦋 Wow, cool

People have started linking to me! I noticed last week that I was on Scott Martens' blogroll; and lo and behold, today he mentions my current introspection series! And then when I zipped over to John Quiggin's site, I see he has linked to my Protestant Work Ethic post.

posted evening of June 16th, 2003: Respond

Saturday, June 14th, 2003

🦋 Planning: A Digression

This is part III of a multipart entry concerning my progress — my status — part II is here.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.

Jesus Christ per the gospel of Saint Thomas the disciple

In the cold light of day I have changed my mind a bit — I don't see a need to go about explicating fully my reasons for going to cooking school — take it as read that I did (and how else are you going to take it?), and let me talk about how it ties in to my planning problem.

For as long as I can remember having any opinion on the matter I have disdained planning. (To cut myself off at the pass — no, I don't think this has anything to do with the fact that my father is a city planner by profession — that is a language curiosity, nothing more. Keep moving, nothing to see here.) I went so far, as I became aware of this line of thinking, at one point as to voice it explicitly as my creed — that it is better, more attractive, to fall into one's situation as it arrives; life [so I proclaimed] is a series of incidents and coincidents, and to try consciously to mold this sequence is ... undesirable. Since the time of this assertion I have engaged in a long and complex dance with this line of thinking — have worn it as a badge of creativity and depth; have internalized and forgotten it; have remembered and resurrected it; have disavowed and repented it — I find it extremely seductive, far moreso than I ever did solipsism (of which more some other time, and not as part of this series) — and equally pernicious.

Why is this? The idea is little more than a thin rationale for lazyness and inaction. I have attempted at times to make it sound like something akin to Buddhism (of which I know very little) or Existentialism (brash arrogance on my part -- the idea is about as far as it's possible to get from the thinking of Sartre, of which I know just a bit more than I know about Buddhism, or of Nietzsche).

But what I want to examine is the results of my thinking this way. I would not say by any means that they have all been bad. I "fell into" my relationship with Ellen, which has had highly desirable consequences. I fell into computer programming, which I enjoy; the caveat is that with effort I think I could have made a better path into programming than the one I took. One thing that I really want to get out of this self-examination is a better path forward in my career. (But getting ahead of myself; more later.) I even "fell into" woodworking, which I love, which I think of on the same level as fatherhood, as one of the best things in my life.

The drawback to thinking this way has been all of the roads not taken, the avenues rejected as requiring of me too acute a degree of direction. I am not going to make a list of these right now — I don't know that I would be able to — but my sense is that there are many such. And I believe at root that I would be a happier person, more fully realized, if I had chosen a path of striving. I write as if that choice were closed off to me but recognize that it is not — as I said above I want to make it and am trying to figure out how.

A final note about the nature of the somnambulistic credo under discussion: I used the terms "attractive" and "undesirable" above, advisedly. My proclamation is not an ethic. I think it is probably an æsthetic, and a sensualist one. A sort of hedonism. — To the extent that it is anything more than an excuse for sloth.

As to the subject at hand, cooking school represented a "path of least resistance" in the sense that I was deferring having to make a decision. I was not really deciding I wanted a career as a chef; trust me on this. Now, back to our regular programming. As I relate the path that brought me here, keep in mind the manner in which I was approaching this path.

posted evening of June 14th, 2003: Respond
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Friday, June 13th, 2003

🦋 How did I Get Here?

Part II of a project to assess my current situation in life. Part I is here.

And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful house!
And you may tell yourself,
This is not my beautiful wife!

David Byrne, "Once in a Lifetime"

I'm going to try to figure out how the past moments of my life have led up to this one. This may take a few tries.

Let's take college as a point of origin. Which college? Well let's take Columbia — though I was only there two years and have no degree, I still tend to think of myself as a Columbia student when my mind turns to thoughts of education. I think from my first day at Columbia, a clear chain of causalities can be woven which lead inexorably to the present moment. If not causalities, at least coincidence.

At Columbia, I was studying German Language and Literature. I did not have any clear plan for what I would do after graduating with such a degree except that it involved somehow being in the academe. — "I did not have any clear plan" is understatement in the sense that I was actually vehemently, elementally opposed to the notion of developing a plan. This willful lack of preparation haunts me — I cannot understand it. But its end result is quite straightforward; when I realized that my trust fund money (the upshot of an insurance settlement after I was severely injured in a traffic accident in 1982) was not going to pay for more than two years of Columbia, and that my parents were not going to come forward with the difference (that should be phrased "were not able to" — that is not how I understood the world at 18 though), I was faced with a choice between going deeply into debt to finance a degree which I had essentially no use for, and leaving. It was no choice.

While I was at Columbia I had met Ellen. We decided we would move in together, and that I would use the few thousand dollars left of auto accident money to pay for a culinary education, to prepare for my life's career of being a chef. Wait... what? This is an item that just strikes me as really weird in retrospect, it seems so arbitrary and abrupt. Hmm. I can't glide effortlessly into a comfortable life as a linguist and intellectual. [Looks around, scratching head] ...I've got it! Culinary school! I can pay for that out of pocket, and when I'm done I will be ready to earn my living, and best of all I will be interesting! — This is a drastic oversimplification, even a caricature — at the time I had a decent rationale explaining why I was doing what I was doing, almost believable, at least to me.

So I see my conceit of a clear chain of causalities (or even of coincidence) is unraveling right at the outset; the first two links are miles apart and seem to have no intention of joining up. I think I can come to understand this decision but I will need to go back to an earlier time to do so — and this seems like a critical task to me. I want to make it clear how closely the decision to go to culinary school is related to the refusal to make a plan at college. This is something that has held me back all my life, and I think is holding me back now. I will talk about this in my next post.

posted evening of June 13th, 2003: Respond
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Thursday, June 12th, 2003

🦋 Where am I?

Scott Martens wrote a fine post last night laying bare the inputs and parameters of his life; and inspired me to do likewise. I've had a vague, gnawing feeling of dissatisfaction [all my life and particularly] these past few months and I think I'd like to make a stab at figuring out where it's coming from.

Three questions are principally interesting to me here, viz.: "Where am I?"; "How did I get Here?"; "What do I Think About It?" I know the answers to all of these im ganzen und großen, particularly the first two but the third also; however I have not yet formulated these answers word by word. I think that doing so will give me insight that is not available while the answers are bouncing around my head. I believe the most natural order to answer them in is the order in which I've asked them here, and will do so in this post and two more. Note however, the questions all deal with similar subject matter so there will likely be some overlap between what I am saying in these three entries; I am not going to interfere unduly with the natural order of my thoughts to satisfy strictures of the rubric I have asserted. Happy reading! And drop me a line to let me know what you think about it. So,

My Circumstances

I live in South Orange, New Jersey (USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Galaxy, Universe, Mind of God), in a lovely old Victorian house, with my wife Ellen and daughter Sylvia. I am thirty-three; Ellen is older than me and Sylvia is younger. Our dog Lola is an 8-year-old Shih-tzu who has been with us through four residences. Sylvia, 2 1/2, has been with us for only two. (This house is however the third place she has lived; the first year of her life was spent at the Shanghai Children's Welfare Institute.)

I commute to Manhattan, where I work for Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), writing code to support a statistical arbitrage trading strategy. My "daily grind" consists of: Catch NJTransit train at 6:35. The station is just across the street from my house, about 2 minutes from walking out the door to being on the platform. Sometimes I will take the 6:50 train instead. Ride to Hoboken. Catch the PATH train at 7:05 or, mutatis mutandis, 7:20, and ride to 33rd Street. My office is at 43rd and Lexington; if the weather is nice I will walk, otherwise take my third and fourth trains of the day, the "F" and the #7. I like to buy a cup of coffee from Oren's Daily Roast in Grand Central Station (brewed coffee that is — I have never been very partial to pressed). Depending on a number of variables I arrive at the office sometime between 7:40 and 8:10. Work lasts until around 4:45 — sometimes later but rarely later than 5. Occasionally I leave at 4:30. Reverse the commute and I am generally back home at 6:00, where I have dinner, spend some time with Sylvia, and put her to bed.

So that is how I spend the great majority of my waking time. Things I like to do with the remainder are, work on my house and yard, build furniture, and play rural blues guitar. The work on house and yard is in some sense an outgrowth of my interest in woodworking — I mean to say, woodworking has gotten me interested in using tools and fixing things, which extends nicely to the duties of home ownership ("duties" read expansively, I guess). I am since January the secretary of the Central Jersey Woodworkers' Association, the first club in which I have participated actively since college. (I realize as I write that that I was active in the Long Island Woodworkers' Club when we lived in Queens; but not to anything like the same degree. And before that, nothing since back to college.)

I have some friends in town; through Sylvia, I know the parents of many of her coevals, and get along with just about all of them. Just tonight, I had a nice conversation with her friend Natalie's father Norman, whom I had not met before. And through my neighbor Jim, I know several disreputable types, old hippies, from the area. Some of us (Jim, Bob, Janis, Doug and I) get together on Saturdays to play non-purist blues, the genre my former guitar teacher described as "folk and dead". — All of us play guitar except for Doug, who plays bass; Janis often plays banjo or bass; Jim occasionally plays violin or bass and I occasionally play concertina or violin.

And what else? I like food, pretty enthusiastic about it, tending especially towards barbecue these days, and good beer... That pretty much describes it. I would like to say something about my workout regimen; but alas, anything I said in that regard would be a lie.

posted evening of June 12th, 2003: 4 responses
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Here it is: a table of html escape codes!

Update: here is an even better table.

posted afternoon of June 12th, 2003: Respond

🦋 School tomorrow

Sylvia's last day of school is today, which is generating some grief for her -- we have not been able adequately to convince her that she will be going back there in a few weeks for summer camp. Today she and Ellen came upstairs to wake me up (I'm sleeping upstairs while Ellen has a cold), and we chatted about the day to come.

I said, "Will you be going to school today?" and she thought it over for a minute before answering with a question: "Tomorrow?" "No, tomorrow's Friday, you don't go to school on Friday." This provoked an extended outburst, she was crying and repeating "Tomorrow, school tomorrow"... Ellen and I talked to her about how she would have a short vacation and then go back, but I'm not sure how much of it sank in.

I like how she is using "tomorrow" now. It is the first sign I have really seen (or at least, understood) of her thinking about the future. Ellen bought some supplies for her birthday party (not for a few more months, but there was a big sale on Clifford paraphenalia) and now she points to the Clifford piñata and says we will play with it tomorrow.

posted morning of June 12th, 2003: Respond
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