Monday was my deadline for a freelance project that had me working like a madman throughout the weekend. I’d thought I was over the hump on this project when I’d completed most of the text. “All” that was left was document layout, a thought that did not strike as much fear in my heart as [...]
Sorry for the dearth of posting, but I’m wrapping up a freelance project that’s due Monday.
Pretty much since I got here, it’s been…
work…
work…
work.
Rough life, eh?
(I did find time to scrawl the below post, however.)
I step onto the balcony — the “deck” — before dawn, a cup of coffee in my hand. It is not unusual to smell smoke on the air here, but the campfire-like whiff I first detected through the open living-room window seems closer, more urgent, than usual. Could a forest fire be raging its way [...]
1. The Cult of Customer Service
When I talk about “how nice the people here are,” what am I really saying?
How not nice the people are somewhere else, I suppose.
Maybe also how different people’s lives are somewhere else.
I notice how nice the people here are when I bring my broken cell phone in to the [...]
Early 21st century communication patterns:
Outgoing text message: At a bbq watching a bear
Incoming text message (respondent 1): A real man would kill it for sport
Incoming text message (respondent 2): @ Pat Park watchin a hooker score fix
Incoming text message (respondent 3): Do u think u could send it to eat my [family member]?
Two observations: (1) [...]
1. Fear
It is night time and the stained sidewalk and roadway are soaked with rain. Exhaust fills the air. This concrete cavern outside the doors marked “Ground Transportation” echoes with engine noises and shouts and the occasional honked horn.
The Budget Rental Car shuttle pulls away from the curb and I sink into my seat with [...]
View of a forest fire from the balcony.
At the demolition derby.
A. goes native.
I go native.
Zuzu checks out the view.
Smoke from fires in Idaho blew into the Missoula Valley yesterday, tinting the sky an evil, sulphorous yellow and leaving a pinkened sun to squint weakly through the haze. Somehow, according to this morning’s paper, the Idaho smoke helped the firefighters battling the local blazes (less oxygen for our fires?). Either way, it was the [...]
This was it, the move to Montana from Baltimore. We loaded the U-Pack trailer over the weekend, spent a sleepless night on a leaking air mattress, and got up Tuesday before dawn to catch our 7:30 a.m. flight from Thurgood Marshall-Baltimore Washington International Airport. I called a cab while A. drugged Zuzu the cat and [...]
Sal mops the floors where I work.
He vacuums the carpets and wipes the baseboards down. He empties the trash.
He cleaned up all the blood next door, in the hallway of the apartment building my boss owns. No one knows how it got there one night, three months ago, although this neighborhood becomes pretty [...]