Occupy Big Days!

We got married on my birthday. People assume this is so I would remember the anniversary, But a great deal of my life, I have forgotten my own birthday. In fact, I woke up the day after my 19th birthday realizing I had missed it... and so had everyone else. I didn't say anything to mu housemates. A few weeks later, around someone else's birthday, David asked, "Don't you have a birthday coming up, Miles?"

"Nope."

"But I thought, wait! We didn't miss it!"

"Don't worry about it."

"Oh, no! I'm sorry!"

(I think I did a great job of acting; I had them convinced I was feeling hurt but trying not to show it. But only for a minute, or it would have simply been cruel. I laughed and told them I'd forgotten, too.)

One friend remembered (Hi, Helen, wherever you are!), but she was in the middle of Nowhere, NY, hitchhiking, without a phone nearby (well before cell phones existed). Even my parents forgot. I had a lot of fun with that.

At any rate, Sharon picked my birthday because it seemed romantic. She has often wished she hadn't (her exact words are usually, "What was I thinking?") but she's still the best birthday present ever.

I usually remember our anniversary, but it helps that she asks what I want for my birthday. 8^)

Occupy Taco Hell!

When I was almost 11 we moved from El Paso, TX to Augusta, GA. We went from having great Mexican everywhere to NADA. I think the grocery store had three Old El Paso products (refried beans, taco shells, and Spanish rice) that was the sum of "Mexican food" available in 1966 in the deep south.

After a few years heard about a Mexican restaurant coming to town. The whole family was excited excited, but Mom and I could hardly wait. We were there opening day. We were a little nervous because it looked like McDonalds.

It pretty much was a Mexico themed McDonalds. You probably guessed it... Taco Bell. (Or as I tend to think of it these days, Taco Hell.)

Their overall food quality was better then (so was McDonalds'), and at least it was Mexican-ish. We wanted to laugh and cry at the same time; we were so disappointed, but... they had tacos! Sort of. We ate it.

It was only after Taco Bell showed up that the grocery store started carrying taco mix!


In Atlanta in the 1970s and early 1980s, there was a scarcity of Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants. The one Tex-Mex (labeled Mexican) restaurant we found on Ponce de Leon (Pepe's, R.I.P.) was good, if a little subdued, spice-wise. Most of the Mexican-run Mexican restaurants were heavily Americanized (or more accurately, deep south white folk-anized) because of local tastes.


Now I'm back in Texas. The area is lousy with good Mexican and Tex-Mex (with Chuys heads above all others in the latter category). And yet... Taco Bell abounds.

To each their own. You can have your Taco Bell. I'll stick with fresh ingredients and flavor, thank you very much!

Occupy Christmas Presents

A month or so before Christmas, Sharon said, "Honey, all I really want for Christmas this year is a round trip ticket to see Esther, Eric and the girls. It's expensive flying the day after Christmas." How could I say no? Of course I got her a couple of other things to open that morning (ear rings and clothes), but the ticket was the main thing one.

We did something similar for me. In late November I needed to buy a djembe. I wanted a medium size, such as a 14", to have reasonable bass but not need a trailer to move. I was going to get a plain one and ask one of my artist friends to decorate it, but fell for a nicer djembe with a tribal mask design-- which cost more. "Why don't we let this be my Christmas present?"

Sharon looked at the price tag. "That can be one of them."

I added a padded carrying bag, a Shure SM58 and a cable.

"OK, I guess that works."

Of course, she had a couple of things for me to open as well, some candy and two more, lovely, tie dyed tees by Happy Hippy Rose. (The third tie dye, the one with the djembe, was a birthday present.) And I had a couple of things for her to open.

One of the nice things about doing it this way is that it was very easy to not focus on the materialistic side of Christmas on the day. I love it when a plan comes together-- even when it's not mine.

Occupy Ourself!

My employer is building a new, six story headquarters because we are growing like crazy. As it turns out, we are growing even crazier than planned so the new building will be full by the time we occupy it. We've asked whether the building could be taller and were told no. So imagine my surprise today when I was given the proposed building usage by floor, including "floor 8: boardroom and labs".

My first guess was that we had talked the city into more floors, and the seventh was a super secret, unplottable floor, perhaps patterned after Number 12, Grimmauld Place, which would be pretty cool. Xilu suggested that perhaps there will be no seventh, and the eighth floor will hover. I like that idea even more because it would mean our anti-gravity research has paid off and our stock price will go through the roof-- assuming we know where the roof is, because that depends on the number of floors. My boss ominously hinted that I wasn't on the "need to know" list, which inclined me toward Xilu's idea.

But one of our copious Davids explained that seven and eight were actually part of the parking garage connected to the building.

Now there's a concept! Have the board meet in the parking garage! That will attract only the best people to our board. In case it's not obvious why, here's a short list of the pros and cons.

Pros:
- If board meetings go late, they can hear whatever band is playing on the roof at Momo's. We are, after all, in the Live Music Capital of the World.
- An excellent view of the sunset.

Cons:
- Exhaust fumes
- Skateboarders
- Austin weather varies from 15 on severe winter days to 115 on severe summer days.

Pros:
- Free sauna on severe summer days

Clearly the pros outweigh the cons, unless the board members all die from extreme temperatures and exhaust inhalation. In that case I'm sure we could get some of the skateboarders to fill in if we promise them the free food and drinks the board would otherwise consume, and access to the exclusive upper floor via elevator. After all, skaters gotta skate.

A Silver Spoon in Mom's Mouth

Mom grew up on the wrong side of the tracks in Selma during the Great Depression. Technically they weren't dirt poor; there was plenty of dirt. But not as much of everything else.

The youngest of three girls, all quite lovely, Mom was occasionally spoiled as the baby of the bunch. One of her uncles, a cab driver an hour away in Montgomery[1], used to come visit on Saturday. He'd give her a double handful of change-- mostly nickels and dimes.[2] It was usually around five dollars. Today that will barely buy you a fast food lunch; back then it could have fed the family for a week. But her uncle was adamant that his princess could spend it however she liked, so she and her sisters or friends blew it on ice cream, sodas and movies.

Given that movies cost a dime and sodas a nickel at the time, this is the equivalent of blowing several hundred dollars a week on movies and sodas today. She did occasionally buy something she wanted or needed, or presents, but overall, they didn't have much.

When Sharon and I were getting married, Mom was appalled that we weren't registering for fine china, glassware, silverware, etc. It meant a lot to her to have nice things, and she was adamant we deserved them. But there were a lot of things we needed (we had next to nothing) and stuff we couldn't use every day was not high on our list.

We went back and forth for a couple of weeks. Finally, she threw out the big one. "What of the president comes to eat?" I'm pretty sure I laughed, or at least snorted.

"Mom, Jimmy Carter is President. While I don't see him coming to eat with us, I think he'd like it eating on everyday stuff, like just folk. But if not, he could go eat somewhere else."

Aghast at what her son had become, she gave up.

Or so I thought. Fast forward at least a decade.

Mom found some silverware at an estate sale. The chest was hand painted (stenciled?). She bought it for us as a gift. She said it was really cheap; I was never quite sure if that was the case, or if she was afraid we wouldn't take it otherwise. We would have; how do you turn down a loving gift from your Mom or dad?

We only use it a few times a year; we really should use it more (frequent use keeps it shiny!) Whereas a lot of wedding silver tends to be heavy and ornate, this is simple and light, and I love it. I don't normally notice the utensils I use for eating unless there's a problem, but I love using these. (The serving utensils are clearly not original, but we're pretty much a mix and match family, so that works just fine!)

Mom could be very gracious, but one of the times she could be a sore loser was when she thought her kids were settling for less than they should. I'm glad she won this round.

[1] The world was bigger then, and the roads rougher. Especially in Alabama.
[2] Trivia fact: Dimes were still 90% silver at this time.

Early Morning Breakdown

(From the college years...)

I've never been a morning person. The closest I came was during a certain semester in college when I had an 8AM class. Previous 8AM classes had been routinely destructive to my GPA. But this time I had a deus ex machina, a sky rack-- a bed on stilts so high the mattress was a foot from the ceiling. My desk sat under the sky rack; my clock radio sat on the desk. I intentionally did NOT put a ladder on the bed. This meant I had to stand on the desk and haul myself into the bed-- hard enough at night when I was tired, but almost impossible when I was barely awake in the morning. To make sure I got down in the morning I would set the clock's radio to the most obnoxious station possible, with the volume all the way up. That was the only noise I couldn't sleep through. So long as I set the alarm and slept in my bed, I got up.

I was in full zombie mode, walking into walls, searching for brains (my own), but I was up! It worked pretty well throughout the quarter.

Fast forward to final exams. On the morning of the third in a row 8AM exam (after staying up til the wee hours each night cramming), the alarm went off. I forget whether it was bad disco music or bad country music, but I came close to murdering the poor clock. Once mostly dressed, I sat down on the sofa to put on my socks (I'm not sure why, as I almost always went barefoot). Suddenly the light in the room changed drastically. This was seriously spooky. I stared around the room, confused. What just happened? Then I saw the clock. I had fallen asleep sitting upright on the edge of the couch, with my right leg over my left knee, sock half on. Frozen like a statue, I'd slept through the exam. Instead of "The Thinker", I was "The Sock Putter On-er".

That was the point I gave up having to do anything regularly at 8AM for any length of time.

Lemon Tree, Very Tasty!

A year or so after moving to Georgia, we went on vacation to Florida for spring break. We visited relatives all along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.

In Delray Beach, we stopped to spend the day with Dad's Uncle Fred and his wife. This delightful, slender, couple-- who seemed about a hundred years old at the time-- had the two, coolest, craziest lemon trees we had ever seen, about four feet tall and four to five feet wide. The lemons were bigger than most grapefruit, almost as big as my younger brother Bill's head. Very tangy, a little sweet, not bitter at all. They offered to let us take a couple. Bill picked the largest lemon on each tree.

Once we were home, mom made some lemon meringue pies. She made four pies from one lemon. Seriously. And they were awesome, as befits pies made from lemons so big Texas was jealous.

Bill took a lemon to school (William Robinson Elementary School) for Show & Tell. He was in either first or second grade. His teacher, who shall remain nameless, "corrected" him, explaining he had a grapefruit. My brother insisted it was a lemon and explained that Mom had made two pies from half a lemon. The teacher called him a liar and made him sit back down.

This story came out, slowly, at the dinner table, when Mom or Dad asked Bill how Show & Tell had gone. I remember the gasps from the other kids (and me), mom's indignation, the quiet fury on Dad's face. We almost felt sorry for the teacher. Almost, but not quite. She'd grossly misjudged our brother. She had impugned not only his honor, but the whole family's. We siblings all felt personally impugned because we knew she'd have called us liars as well. She was doomed, and rightly so.

Dad went by Willy Rob first thing the next morning to discuss it with Mr. Strelec, the Principal (a great guy, who rightfully later became the county's Superintendent of Schools). Mr. Strelec called the teacher in and asked her what had happened. She looked right at him and Dad and told the same story as Bill had. She admitted calling Bill a liar.

I don't recall all the details, but I do recall the quiet victory, the joy in justice, on Dad's face as he relayed the teacher's withering under the Principal's response. She called Bill up in front of the class and apologized for calling him a liar, explaining that he had been correct. Dad and Mr. Strelec were there, and Dad was under the distinct impression that had they to been there, she wouldn't have done it. She seriously resented having to. Bill was vindicated. We all were.

The teacher was gone the next year. Hopefully she learned some life lessons from this, perhaps about integrity, the very virtue she said my brother lacked. "Let she who is without sin cast the first lemon."