Walls come tumbling down

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November 2001

November 2001

November in Minnesota usually means the onslaught of winter and a rapid drop in temperature. However this year, it's been a tropical 60-70 degrees. The only snow I've seen was a sprinkling at the end of October that went within hours; a far cry from the tundra that was Minneapolis this time last year. As I write though, we're expecting some snow tonight.

Last night's meteor shower (Leonid) apparently was a bit of a disappointment - I was fast asleep but Natzoid informed me this morning that the cloud cover was a little too thick. Being an old git, staying awake beyond midnight is virtually impossible. Try again tonight, but if it's going to snow, I suspect we'll be disappointed once more.

Email this morning came in the form of a message from friendsreunited.co.uk. I signed up to this a couple of months ago and have corresponded with several old friends, thought about contacting some others and monitored the site for people who I actually would like to get in touch with (Phil Roberts and Phil Bevan from Teesside). Unfortunately, this morning's email was from either my ex-wife or her mother and was a petty attempt at an insult. The email chastised me for not mentioning my daughter from my first marriage, Lori, who lives with her mother in England. It called me a "low-life half wit". I wondered why this omission was so offensive given I have no contact with Lori, my name cannot be mentioned in her presence and my parents aren't permitted to display any photographs of me in their home. In addition, gifts I send are refused and I am banned by my ex-wife from receiving photographs of Lori. So I'm left wondering whether or not the omission is the issue or just the raw hatred. I reacted by adding the email address of the sender to the 'immediately delete' list and forwarded it to the abuse email account on the site. Insults by email are hardly the way to ease a very tense and disagreeable situation. They serve no purpose. Three and half years ago, I would have reacted strongly to an email of that nature, but today I see it only as a pot-shot from a bitter and vindictive party, who incidentally has no good reason to be that way.

I spent yesterday evening watching several TV shows on wolves but actually spent more time watching my dogs' reactions to the various sounds that wolves can emit. The howling and baying are apparently fairly complex communications used to convey various emotions to the pack. Somewhere in my dogs' inherited memory, these sounds made sense and sent a message. Manic sniffing of the TV preceded a fruitless investigation of the space at the back of it. Today the trauma that was wolves has subsided and the dogs are back to being mellow. I have discovered that they are not fond of mushrooms or pealed carrots although they do like carrot peal. Smoked pig's ears are always a hit.

The last week or so has brought mornings back to being normal and civilized. This has been facilitated by the delivery of 3 boxes of 240 PG-Tips pyramid teabags by a company in Florida. Ordered over the internet, they were delivered with an invoice and a list of other goods that are available from them. The transaction was efficient enough and I dutifully tracked my teabags as they were transported across the country by UPS ground, but there was a lack of satisfaction with the process. Given the anonymous interactions that constitute an internet purchase, you would have thought that a thankyou card or something would be included that would make you feel that there was some human interaction. Throw in a packet of Jammy Dodgers or McVities Digestives? After all, $65 for three boxes of teabags is a bit on the expensive side. Had I received something that would have given the impression that thought had gone into the transaction or that someone valued my custom, I would have been far more likely to revisit the site for my much longed for English goodies.

Sundays have settled into a fairly comfortable routine over the last couple of months, only interrupted by the occasional trip to the airport to pick up Sammy after her visits to her dad's or my departure to some remote destination on the globe. Sundays mean national public radio's 'Car Talk' with Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers, and 'A Prairie Home Companion' with Garrison Keeler. 'The news from Lake Wobegon' details the events in the town of Lake Wobegon and the exploits of its Lutheran, Scandinavian inhabitants. It's a few hours of comfortable entertainment. I really should join NPR. Dinners are usually big and carbohydrate heavy to prepare us for returning to work or school. After the refined entertainment of NPR, Sunday evenings give way to popular culture on Fox including 'The Simpsons' and 'Malcolm in the Middle'. The kids go to bed and Natzoid and I are left beating ourselves up about what we didn't manage to do over the weekend and what we need to do next week. Then comes the financial appraisal and realization that once again, we're short of cash. We shouldn't complain. The evening usually ends with my despair at having to go to a job that I have long since grown weary of. What started up as a fun start-up company has given way to American public company full of middle-managers and jobsworths. On a lighter note, my first patent was filed last week. The fun part is over and it's now time to look for the next idea. Maybe Monday, it will arrive.

Next week, we're heading down to Illinois to Natzoid's parents for Thanksgiving. We now have two days to get the van licensed and fixed...as usual, just in time delivery. This will probably be the first time we've driven the van in snow. The projection is for a mild winter and given the brutality of last winter, I hope the projection is right.