So re: the comedy thing:

Next Monday I'm planning to drive up to Bristol (NH, in the Lakes Region) to give the monthly Comedy for a Buck open-mike thing (hosted by Verausity's Jay Grove) another shot. I haven't been feeling very funny lately, not coming up with any new stuff, battling some depression demons; feeling a little derailed. But since I'm planning to use the set I debuted at Players in Seabrook last month (it's still June, right? then yeah, last month), which from my perspective seemed to go pretty well, at least it only requires some rehearsal and a little bit of acting to cover up the depression, and not any actual creative writing or anything, so I think I can manage it.

Er, Susan Boyle is still a current reference, right?

I was talking with someone yesterday and the discussion turned to answering machines. Remember those? Tape-recording (and later, digital-recording) contraptions you plugged into your land line (remember those?) for callers to leave messages on in the days before everyone had cell phones and portable voice mail? Those things?

I blame answering machines, by the way, for one of my many maladaptive social behaviors -- I can no longer carry on a fruitful real-time discussion. I've barely picked up a ringing phone in three years; now I let the caller leave a message, and I deliberate how best to respond, then call back, fingers crossed that I get THEIR voice mail. With e-mail, my preferred mode of communication for the last 15 years, the delay is built in. I still carry on live, in-person analog conversations, but I spend way more time buffering before responding than I used to. Or maybe that's just age.

(I blame the VCR for another major maladaptive behavior of mine -- the inability to make a decision. Once I no longer had to decide which favorite show to watch in first-run and which to wait for the rerun, or decide between watching TV and going out, well, it was all over.)

But I digress. Today's conversation began with a friend telling me how she leaves an outgoing message-du-jour on her machine for callers. I responded first with delight at the idea, then surprise as I remembered that that had been one of my own favorite activities of the '80s and '90s. I'd come up with a new, hopefully entertaining, outgoing message for my answering machine every week or two back when I lived in the Bangor area. I would spend anywhere from minutes to hours (!) scripting them, tracking down any other necessary audio sources, "producing" them (if you could call my primitive, untrained techniques "producing") -- then recording them over and over and over and over into the machine until I finally got a take I was pleased with. I usually tried to make them funny, but a fair number of them just had a theme built around a song.

Most of them escape me now, but I remember a couple of favorites. There was the one I logged around the time Hurricane -- I wanna say Bob -- blew through, and I used the song "Hurricane" by, um, Peter Schilling, I think? (If I'd had the recording, I might have used the very different Bob Dylan song by that name.) When the Berlin Wall fell, I built a message around Elton John's "Nikita." My favorite funny one had me conversing with God using the "Oh, stop groveling!" bit from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." And at the holidays, I butchered "The Christmas Song" with Frank Sinatra singing it behind me.

I stopped doing those after a while once I moved to NH, partly because I worked from home, but I had an answering machine that enabled me to play separate messages for work and personal calls, so that's not really an excuse. I guess the real reason is just that all the personal drama just sucked all the creativity out of me. In any case, technology has advanced, and the practice seems quaint and outdated with today's new sophisticated message-taking electronics. Sad, really. Now, it's all about the ringtones. And I haven't figured out yet how to get new ones onto my phone to replace the standard-issue ones.

But if I remember correctly, I've got a cassette tape lying around somewhere with some of those old messages archived on it. I'll have to dig it up and give it a listen. That's if I can find a working cassette-playing machine.

Had a *supercool* (that's ironic) Father's Day working my usual graveyard shift, then driving directly to RUM-fid (OK, Mexico) on little-to-no sleep to visit The Dad for like an hour (why does he always give me frozen kielbasa that's just gonna thaw by the time I get home and that I'm never gonna eat anyway? Oh he also gave my Christmas present -- a wallet for all that money that's burning a hole in my pocket, a holiday mug -- I totally love mugs -- and a t-shirt), then took the scenic route along Route 26 back, passing by the old summer stomping grounds, Littlefield Beaches, the setting of that novelish thing I still plan to write.

Oh yeah, that's right -- the novel. Must get back to that someday.

Napped in roughly half-hour increments over several hours at rest areas in K-bunk and Kittery in an unsuccessful attempt to rest up for an evening shift cleaning the gym my boss at the hotel also owns. Have I mentioned how much I HATE cleaning? This was the first time I'd ever done it for pay, and my legs feel like they're weighted down with lead. Carrying the backpack vacuum around for like an hour alone must have burned like 25,000 calories, and yet I hardly look like I've lost any weight AT ALL in the past week. Huh.

Yeah, this is kinda one of those mundane blog posts. Alas.

Soooooooo nice to have my laptop home from the hospital! And to have time to blog, unfettered by the time constraints of using a public computer at the library.

Now if only I could think of something to blog about.

I must say, I'm disappointed in the low response to this one, but whatever. This was even cooler than the fold-out canopy in the shallow water that I posted about last summer, so you guys missed out! Now on to the answer ...

So I'm walking along, and I've pushed the unusual animal tracks to the back of my mind, and soon I sense a horse and rider ahead. I look up, and it takes a couple of moments for my brain to register the whole scene, which is this:











Yes, I know it's only another crappy thumbnail, but you're seeing it right -- it's a camel. I am practically face-to-hump with an honest-to-stu camel. On a NH beach.

So I go up and talk to the guy, but because I'm no longer a reporter I've become kind of lax about pushing for basic information, so I don't ask him his name or where he lives or anything, but I ask him if I can photograph it. He says sure, and warns me that the camel is prone to spitting and other rude behavior. I say, fine, I'm not getting any closer than this, anyway, and start snapping with the cell cam. Another guy who is also walking the beach is also quite taken with the sight, which he is video-ing, and joins the conversation. In response to intense cross-examination (LAX, I tell you!), camel-guy says he just always wanted to own a camel, and yeah, it lives right there with him. Wherever there is.

So some other horses are off in the distance, and camel-guy is all, oh, those horses don't like camels, so he keeps moving, and I'm walking backward trying to make sure I get the shot, because there is no way this is not going on the blog, and eventually he joins up with his wife/gf/whatever, who is riding another horse. But of course there is an inevitable confrontation with the other horse people, which, alas, is not clearly depicted here:




There was a better moment just a couple of seconds before this shot, where a non-camel-toting rider ended up having to jump off her horse, or was nearly thrown off, or something. It was all terribly exciting, and if I WERE still writing for newspapers, would have been a great story. Anyway, near as I could tell, everyone escaped unscathed.

Soooooo glad I went to the beach Saturday. That's one good thing about the hotel job -- if I weren't working graveyard, I'd never get up that early to go walk on the beach and I'd never see stuff like this.

Now that the new beach-walking season is under way, we at the Braid also embark on a new season of "What's on the beach this weekend?"

Our first episode is one for the animal lovers. This time of year, until the tourists invade, it's not unusual to see equestrians riding their mounts up and down the beach, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups. So it's not unusual to see hoof prints.

But I'm walking along this morning when I stumble upon this pair of tracks:




(sorry about the small photo -- I'm having logistical trouble getting my images from phone to blog and haven't worked out the kinks yet)
and thought to myself, one of these things is not like the other. As I kept walking, lo and behold, I encountered the animal that left these prints, and it turned out to be actually the thing that I had first popped into my head upon seeing the tracks.

So, any takers? Post a comment if you'd like to guess. The answer will appear here sometime soon, probably no earlier than Monday.

Uh-oh. There's a lot of scuttlebutt about whether the Susan Boyle thing was contrived. On a show produced by Simon Cowell??? NOOOOOOOOO!!

But boy, I sure hope I wasn't fished in. Not sure that it matters, though, because it still has a lot to say about expectations and the triumph of the frump.

So, I'm thinking back to the blog entry I posted here last summer -- the "Ma'am" entry back on July 25 -- after seeing the smirk slapped off Simon Cowell's face when never-been-kissed 47-year-old Susan Boyle opened her mouth to sing on "Britain's Got Talent." And how maybe we older, plainer, dowdier gals are becoming a little less invisible.

Frump FTW!!!!

It got me connecting some dots, including the one that has me, at 51, finally cautiously approaching the dream of trying standup comedy (not to mention singing solos!in front of audiences!). And my 47-year-old Top5TV and FB friend, who sings in bands and, like me, wrestles with self-esteem issues. And my new open-mike guy pal's middle-aged female friend, a veteran singer in bands, who is having a crisis of confidence as she struggles to maintain her career in middle age and finds the reception cold.

I'm sensing a pattern, which leads me to this conclusion: This is the dawning of the Age of the Frump.

(DISCLAIMER: I don't know first-hand what the other two women look like, so I cannot speak personally to their frumpiness. But for purposes of this exercise, I'm including them. And maybe even Paul Potts, the cell-phone salesman-slash-Unexpected Voice-from-a-plain-face whose amazing voice slapped the smirk off Cowell's face a couple of years ago on the same show).

We are embarking on an era when middle-aged women who didn't get the memo about yoga and jogging and crunches and Botox and waxing and stuff like that, or who were just too plain tired or beaten down or unentitled or whatever to incorporate them into their schedules -- the women they don't write MILF (or GILF!) songs about -- take our place and find our voice. We're old enough to have learned how wonderful it feels to NOT give a rat's ass what someone thinks when we do something unconventional, no matter how many eyes roll when we get up there to do it. We're mad as heck and we're not gonna ... well, we're not gonna yell very loud, we're just gonna stand over here and be pleasant in hopes someone will notice us. And maybe sing a nice little song, tell a few jokes. Expect a groundswell of ... ummm, people-pleasing. It's what we do.

We're here, we're ... here ... Get used to it. If you want to.

Wait, what was I saying? Boy, I need sleep. Expect this to be edited later.

I really, truly do intend to post here again someday. I mean, a regular, full-length blog entry, not a hit-n-run. Lots o' stuff going on. But for now, this is it.

I can't remember with whom, but I had a conversation with someone recently about which celebrities share your birthday, and I couldn't think of any on Feb. 17. So I discovered yesterday that, as it turns out, I share my birthday with Paris Hilton.

Yeah, there's an argument for astrology.

Dang. I had intended to write here on my actual birthday (yesterday), but I think I got too wrapped up in assembling 25 Random Things over at Facebook. AND racing around trying to work up a Plan B after realizing I had left my debit card in the ATM Monday night and that it had already been destroyed, so there would be no treating myself to dinner out or pizza or what-not, and no getting the oil changed in my car. Also, trying to make sure my car doesn't fall apart before I can get the oil changed and get it inspected and stuff.

So now I'm 51. Had a pretty decent year, considering the circumstances -- made some new friends, mostly through my sporadic temp job; made a conscious effort to spend more time among people, specifically helping out at the church cafe one of those friends runs on Sunday mornings, and that has seemed to help my psyche somewhat; and managed (for most of the year, at least) to keep up with rent and the day-to-day. AND, not a small thing, began taking a baby step toward a long-time goal of trying stand-up comedy. Oh yes -- and got music back into my life by joining a community chorus. I have also signed up to sing a SOLO at our fund-raising cabaret, and this past Sunday had a rehearsal for it that floored me. I have no idea where that voice came from. I hope I can find it again. It was the voice I always wanted -- had never been able to project like that before. Publicly, at least. And have reconnected with some folks who have been out of my life for years. So that's the plus column.

In the minus column, of course, there was also losing my glasses in August and being sans heat and power for five days in December, and staying at an emergency shelter for a couple of days. And currently not having any hot water due to water-heater problems that require accessing the unit through the closet IN MY ROOM, a design element that I fail to understand. And the ever-present spectre of my own personal recession, now swallowed up in the larger societal recession.

Life remains sketchy at the moment, as I sit here at a public hotspot watching fluffy snow fall while I watch TV online.

I'm kind of all confessioned out after that Facebook exercise yesterday, but I wanted to take stock and mark the boundary between the old and new ages here as well, where my blogging journey began and, I hope, continues. Jeez, that sounds really sappy.

The man in the hat is the only man right now. Two of the women are knitting. Two others are setting up sewing machines -- I assume it's some kind of sewing group's meeting day. The rest are watching the TV, rapt.

"That's good," said one older man in jeans as he stood up and left.

Not sure what that was about, but he was among the people gathered in the meeting room of the Seabrook Library to watch the inauguration of Barack Obama on TV. One of seven, plus me.

I came here planning to use the library's wifi and stumbled upon this communal viewing. Good thing; CNN.com was sketchy.

The room is silent save for the TV sound and the soft click-clack of my fingers on the keyboard. I hope it's not too loud for the others; I sat in the back.

Interestingly, to me, everyone in this room is older -- all but one, a guy in jeans and sneakers with a hat pulled over his head, whom I can only see from the back -- seem to be older than me. Senior citizens. I suppose it's because most people are working, or watching with family.

more to come later ...

- To keep resolutions.

Already kept one -- see "Off to a good start," below.

Well-played, 2009. Giving me the opportunity to check off one of my resolutions and even throwing in some inspiration to motivate me to carry it out.

Thus, I have kept a New Year's resolution for what may be the first time ever: Tried standup in front of an actual audience -- in particular the audience at the monthly coffeehouse/open mic at the Unitarian Church in Exeter. (See: "Resolution Revolution, take one" down below there.)


Had dreamed of, but chickened out of, trying standup for like 15 years, and had been mulling over performing at that coffeehouse since fall, and after I had a burst of 3 a.m. inspiration Friday and spent two hours reviewing/editing stuff I'd already written, and writing additional stuff, I talked myself into ... well, into going to the coffeehouse, anyway.

Once there, I talked myself into signing up to perform. Then spent the evening arguing with myself about whether to go through with it. But since much of what I'd planned out was time-sensitive 'cause it pertained to current events (the economy and 2008), it had a now-or-never urgency.

Most of the other performers were doing mellow guitar music or poetry or spoken-word stuff, so I wasn't sure the audience would be in the proper mindset for comedy by the time I went on (I'd signed up for the last slot).

But it went much better than I anticipated, although granted it was a very supportive audience with the expectations bar set very low, not a bunch of potentially hostile drunks like at a comedy club.

So I wasn't up against a crowd that was gonna challenge me. Still, I had an opportunity to respond to someone who interrupted me (in a teasing way), and I got to practice picking a target out of the audience to interact with spontaneously, so there was some real-life experience. And the crowd (I didn't count, but maybe 35 or 40 people) laughed at the right times, and I saw a lot of nods as people related to what I was talking about (a lot of 50-year-old woman-type stuff). I did an OK job of maintaining audience eye contact, although I think I relied a little too heavily on my "portable TelePrompTer" (most everyone used cheat sheets, and I brought my laptop with my notes up with me as part prop, part crutch since there was no way I'd have it all memorized).

Afterward, several people, including some of the other performers, came up and complimented me. So I might give it a try again and see if I'm a flash in the pan or if there might actually be a path to an occasional local paying gig.

In any case, it was a badly needed confidence boost.

So, 2009. Guess the next move is mine.

- To put the fear behind me. Or at least someplace where I can't find it. Which should be easy, given the state of my living space. (See: Resolution about cleaning up this mess.)

- To make a successful DTV transition.

-(I'm purposely not putting in a resolution to lose weight. That's so cliche. Also, I'm totally NOT giving life the satisfaction.)

- To do my level best to get people to stop referring to millennial years as "Two thousand and (whatever)" and start using the "Twenty-(whatever)" format.

- To read more. Things I don't *have* to read, that is.

- To do more healthy things.

- To act as if.

Goodbye to all THAT.

2009, don't you push me. I'm warning you.

- To eat a lobster. Actually, I was considering doing that for New Year's Eve, and might have if I'd known Brown's was open. Although I prefer Markey's across the road. I thought they were both only open weekends this time of year. Anyway, hoping to treat myself at Markey's this weekend.

- To get my groove back. Now that I have rediscovered ... boys ... I gotta get me one of my own.

- To clean up this mess! Literally and metaphorically.

I hate hate HATE New Year's resolutions. In the past, I saw value in them -- putting an idea into your consciousness could help you manifest it -- but after too many unsuccessful attempts at visualizing my desires into reality, I'm going all humbug on its ass.

Nonetheless, I continue to hope (! -- a start) to climb out of the cesspool I have allowed my life to become, so, like Charlie Brown to Lucy's football, here's me running up for one more kick.

I resolve:
- To write more. I mean, for money. Sorry, I love all one or two of you who read the Braid, and it's fun to have a vanity outlet, but girl needs to get paid.

- Building on that previous one: To finish writing a piece longer than a newspaper article, and get it published. I'm aiming for a book -- either of the ones rattling around in my brain would be great -- but would settle for a short story or, hell, even a good-sized magazine article. And: To rediscover the joy that writing -- the writing process -- once brought me. And maybe use fewer dashes.

- To find a way out of this scary depression that involves me staying alive. The less said about that, the better.

- To muster the courage to try standup comedy. I mean, in front of an audience, not just in my head.

Just to bring the power-outage story full circle, which I neglected to do before now: Water was also restored later on the same day as the power/heat, and so we were able to return home. That was Tuesday, Dec. 17. As I write this, I understand that power had been restored to most everyone in NH as of yesterday or maybe early today. So, yay! You just don't realize how civilizing a hot shower is until you don't have access to one; that's what I took away from it.

It was one of those experiences that you say, well, I'm glad to know I can survive it -- you know, having to go hunting for 'net access and such -- but I hope I never have to do it again. Kinda like (for me) climbing Mt. Katahdin back in 1984 or thereabouts: Glad I'm able to say I did it, but I'll never forgive the friends who told me it wouldn't be that bad and that Knife Edge was just an easy little pathway between peaks. Granted, though, the experience kind of clarified some things in my head at the time and helped me make an important life decision as I sank to the ground in a blubbering, acrophobic mass about 3/4 of the way across Knife Edge. Could probably use something sudden and undeniable like that now instead of the slow-motion kind of shock to the system I've been experiencing for a few years now. Not very helpful for clarifying future paths when, just as you get comfortable at one level, the bottom drops out AGAIN and you fall still farther down.

So, wait, isn't it some kind of holiday today? Well, dayum. Have a merry happy, or a happy merry, everyone! As I write this, darkness is settling over the ocean, that Pretenders Christmas song is on 'BLM on the car radio, and I am borrowing a beach hotel's wifi. It is very peaceful.

But now it's time to go see if I can track down some canned yams.

The numbers of shelter denizens had dwindled over the previous day, and so the atmosphere in the building had been shifting a bit. The one lady left of my little group from the other night said the lady in the wheelchair had had to leave for lack of sufficient accommodations for her disability. My informant did not know what had become of her. The lady whose husband in Arizona told her to keep flushing toilets just seemed to disappear. There was still a lot of food, but less, oh, commitment to it. Having gone to a chorus rehearsal during the evening, I missed the regular dinner hour. For once, I was around at 9:30, but was told there would be no Chinese-food delivery this night. I sulked away to my area of the multi-purpose room with a bowl full of cruller and cookies, only to have a shelter worker track me down a few minutes later to tell me that Chinese food had, indeed, been delivered after all. So I had my fill. (And thanks, New Country Buffet!)

I dawdled getting myself going this morning at the shelter, while activity was more intense than I had previously seen: Seems the Police Department hosts an annual luncheon for the town's senior citizens, and today was that day. And my section of the multi-purpose room was Ground Zero for preparations, apparently -- people were in and out, moving folding tables and what-not, for like an hour.

So as I said, I dawdled while all this was going on, but eventually tore myself away from my computer screen to face what I was certain would be another disappointment. The lady at the front desk of the rec center said we shelter people were welcome to attend the luncheon; I had time to run some quick errands before then, and headed off. As expected, the library had not yet come back on line (though fortunately, I neglected to mention yesterday, the one in Hampton had, so no more wifi guilt trips at beach establishments). But I stopped by the house anyway and headed for my room. Took me five whole minutes to realize: Whoa -- is that air blowing out of the heat vent? I flipped the light switch and, lo and behold, there was light. And it was good.

Still no water, though.

I'd noticed my roommate's car outside when I came in, but didn't notice my roommate sitting in it till I went back out. Asked her about the water situation, and the ensuing conversation revealed that she wasn't yet aware of the new developments and power and heat.

I left her to deal with the water thing while I snagged that free lunch (and won a gift certificate to my favorite breakfast place in a raffle!) and set off to fulfill a work assignment, then plant myself at the Lane Library in Hampton.

Upon my return home later tonight, there was water on top of the power and heat. And so it was good all around; tonight, I sleep in my own bed, watch my own TV, on my own terms.

But the TV news tells me that there are still more than 90,000 without power, and some school districts may end up cancelling classes for several weeks. So while it is over for me, the crisis is not yet over. And there are now snowstorms on the way.

I toughed it out at home until Saturday, I guess it was, when my roommate/landlady turned the water off: Turns out, she had walked into a wet mess in her end of the house after the pipes apparently burst. No evidence of the same on my end, but cold or lukewarm showers are not fun without power or heat. Not being able to take one at all was what sent me to the shelter.

In Seabrook, the Red Cross has been set up at the Recreation Center on Route 1, a building I previously had only stepped inside to vote. I regret I have not come to know but a couple of people there by name since the weekend, but trust that the welcome has been warm.

As I was to work the graveyard shift Saturday night, I only went to the shelter in search of a shower and a few hours to shut my eyes, if not sleep. I explained that upon my arrival to the lady at the front desk who had me sign in, and another lady showed me to an area of a larger multi-purpose room with one of those accordion room dividers, away from the noise of kids shooting baskets in the gym. As we walked down the corridor, she pointed out the kitchen and told me that showers were indeed available. She pulled a gym mat down the hall to my area, the better for me to sleep on. I was informed that, while pillows were available, we were to provide our own blankets and toiletries, so I trekked back home to retrieve those items in the dark.

Given the early-evening hour, I had my assigned area to myself; too early for most to go to bed. On the other side of the divider were the sounds of a big-screen TV and conversation. I learned that that was the kitchen area, where volunteers were serving up a choice of chowder or mac and cheese. After weighing whether to shower, sleep or eat first, I ultimately settled on filling my stomach, and chose mac and cheese. Sat at a table and, not really in a sociable mood, didn't partake in conversation with the couple of other refugees there. Took a shower that was warm and comforting, once I clued in to the tricky "hot" and "cold" opposite-labeling system. Clean and fed, I then settled in for a few hours of elusive shut-eye, and left after snagging a crab rangoon from the Chinese food that was delivered at 9:30.

Went back last night after another disappointing powerless day, this time to spend the entire night. Parked myself in front of the big-screen with another bowl of mac and cheese, dividing my attention between the news on TV and small talk with a genial group of ladies -- one whom I recognized from the previous night, one who was in a wheelchair and one whose husband has been directing her efforts to keep the pipes in their house from freezing by phone from Arizona. Their chitchat ranged from their own power-outage stories (keep flushing the toilets, says the Arizona husband) to politics to the latest rumor about when the power might be back. (Not until Thursday? Really?) I've yet to hear any anger directed toward public officials and their handling of the restoration efforts, as I've seen out in the real world. Frustration, yes, but not really anger.

I again crashed on the other end of the multi-purpose room; feeling more comfortable in my surroundings, I plugged in my laptop to watch some podcasts and play a few rounds of Spider Solitaire before drifting off to a good sleep that kept me in its clutches right through the nightly (apparently) Chinese-food delivery. During the night, I was joined by a married couple, one half of which (I assume the male half) snored loudly from their spot against the wall on the other side of the room.

Today was my first daytime there. This morning I chatted with Emily, who cleans the rec center. I offered to help one of the Red Cross volunteers who has been out soliciting much-appreciated donations from local businesses ("local" meaning "nearby locations of national or regional chains" -- thank you, Shaw's, KFC and whoever else has been donating food), and she said, "No, we're here to serve you." Well, I know, but jeez, I'm just fleeing a cold, dark house; I'm not ill. Well, if you don't count my never-ending cold, at least. Anyway, there's no reason the able-bodied among us couldn't, you know, help out.

After a breakfast consisting of some of my favorite snacks -- Little Debbie oatmeal cookies and those chocolate wafers -- a banana, a donut, some cookies and (finally!) coffee -- I attended to a car-cleaning task the details of which you don't want to know after seeking the expert counsel of Clyde, the head custodian at the rec center. He also supplied me with disinfectant, paper towels, a pail of water and Creamsicle-smelling deodorizer. No, seriously, if you don't already know the story, you don't want to hear it.

Other than personal errands, there is little to do at the shelter itself but watch TV or play board games or table games or shoot hoops. Wait; that's kind of a lot to do, now that I think of it. Anyway, it occurred to me, watching clusters of electricity-deprived people sitting around with their eyes turned blankly up toward the TV screen in the lobby waiting area or focused on the big-screen in the kitchen, that if I were home, that's exactly what I'd be doing. I've watched some TV at the shelter, but if I sit in front of it too long I feel kind of, I don't know, infirm, like I'm in a nursing home or something. Funny how it took this situation to bring me to the realization of how much time I waste watching that screen.

Note that I did not say that I would stop, however.

First, the good news: Power was back on last night at the graveyard-shift weekend hotel job, so there was none of this bundling up with my feet in front of the propane heater for six or so hours, expecting Jack Nicholson to slice through the wall any moment, as I had the previous night. Of course, because the lack of electricity Friday night left me unable to do my usual work, which requires a computer, I had to double up last night, and without certain necessary figures that were not readily available because of the timing of the power outage, it was unpleasant.

Now, the bad news: Still nada at the homestead, so it looks like the shelter again for me tonight. Spent yesterday evening there to rest up before the graveyard shift. Hot shower, free food. Simple surroundings and a big-screen TV. Could be worse. (I'm writing now from the beach cafe I stumbled into the other day.) I urge anyone who is inclined and able to spare the cash to donate to the Red Cross, which is running shelters like the one in Seabrook all over NH and probably also in Mass. and Maine. This, of course, isn't the first natural disaster and won't be the last, and my request is for all those to come as well as for what we're trying to recover from now.

I do wish the shelter could open earlier in the day. After working graveyard, it's a herculean effort for me to stay awake until 4 p.m.

Starting to see signs of tears in the social fabric. Driving home this morning, I noticed four people standing by the road on Railroad Street holding a sign referencing "Day 4" without power. I didn't catch the whole sign, and they weren't there when I went back by later on, but, wild guess, I'd wager they weren't expressing satisfaction with the power-restoration efforts.

Also, one of my invisible Internet friends who is (or was) without power in Massachusetts expressed a thought that had also crossed my mind: Whenever I see someone who has electricity using it to illuminate a gaudy holiday yard diorama, I wanna jump up and down and scream, "Hel-LO! Dark and cold over here!" Funnel some of that juice my way, ya know? Kinda like how I feel when I see retailers trying to get hurting consumers to part with their money during a recession. But that's a rant for another day.

Yesterday, I got rickrolled after a fashion: While driving home in the late afternoon, I saw lights on in homes along the route. My heart quickened as I turned the corner onto my street and saw some homes with lights on -- including the Christmas lights on the neighbors' house -- and allowed myself to hope that our power was back. Alas, it wasn't. There's an elephant-sized generator or something in the neighbors' yard that appears to be powering those Christmas lights. Could probably power the whole street.

I'm thinking of taking the suggestion of another invisible Internet friend that I wrap myself up in those Christmas lights. If they didn't get the intended message, well, hey, it's one way to keep warm, right?

So on Thursday, there was some freezing rain/ice in the afternoon, but when I went out that evening, it had turned to rain. I am a dolt, so I did not consider potential ice-storm ramifications and was not prepared to return from movies and errands around 11 p.m. to find the power out at the house. I toughed it out -- with no TV and my laptop out of juice, I went to bed and huddled under the covers, well, to the extent that one person can "huddle."

Yesterday, still no power (and thus, by the way, no heat, although at this point it wasn't yet horribly cold), and I was jonesing for some Internet contact, so I went in search of access. Route 1 was a mess -- Seabrook businesses were all shut down, and Hampton appeared to be trying to get something going. I waited in an endless drive-thru line at Dunkin' in Hampton for a coffee. With libraries closed (and thus, no 'net), I aimlessly drove around, enjoying the terrible beauty of the ice on the trees and keeping an eye on gas prices and gas lines and brainstorming ideas for wifi: Hmmm... Stop'n'Shop in Exeter was open, and it has a Starbucks inside, but no -- it was closed, as was the S'bux in Seabrook, of course. McD's? All closed -- a hopeful sign as a drive-thru line formed at the one in Seabrook, but alas, the inside was closed.

I realized that I kind of missed working in the news biz on days like this.

Eventually I found my way to the beach. The restaurant at the Ashworth Hotel was open, so I gritted my teeth and bought lunch -- a nice BLT -- so I wouldn't feel guilty about using their wifi. Sat there for like four hours. Briefly talked to a guy who fled a powerless house in Milton with his wife and daughter and drove 40 miles to the beach before they found a hotel room. An older couple saw me checking my email and asked me to check the latest numbers of people without power. At the time, it was like 300,000-plus. It's gotten higher since.

Turns out, I was to get no relief by going to my graveyard-shift weekend hotel job: It, too, had no power or heat. So, eight hours in the battery-operated-light-illuminated dark and a cold snapped only by a propane heater the boss left. Cold, but not intolerable. Brought my reclining beach chair in from the car, bundled up and stuck my feet in front of the heater.

Back home this morning: Still no power or heat, and now also no water -- roommate probably turned it off to avoid bursting pipes. Also, it was very, very cold; I could see my breath inside I slept for a few hours, then emerged in search of wifi again. (Didn't want to take undue advantage of the Ashworth.) Today, it's the Seagrill in Seabrook, where I mollified my wifi guilt with an Italian sandwich.

If the power still isn't on at home, I may spend the evening at the local emergency shelter set up for power-less residents before going to work at the hotel for what I hope isn't a repeat of last night.

It's only temporary, right?

Sorry if the writing seems rushed. It's because it is. No particular reason; just not in the mood to dress it up. I used up all my good humor on my invisible Internet friends. Let me just leave you for now with this thought: How weird to have a nuke plant practically in your back yard and not have power for (so far) two days.

Idea!

Given my propensity for procrastination ...
Could I perhaps procrastinate procrastinating, and thereby trick myself into doing something productive?
Or would that just cause a short-circuit in my brain?
I'll get back to you.

The post-mortem-nepotism hiring of Tim Russert's son? Skeevy. Transparent. It's not your job to raise him.

He's not network-ready.

Don't drink and blog.

I can think of nothing profound to say, but I wanted to mark this occasion here: We have elected Barack Obama, and decisively.

I am so proud of my country.

Also, bought gas within the past few days for $2.03. But then next time the cheapest I saw was $2.09; hope it's not permanently on the upswing, but I have noticed the price drop has been slowing lately.

But dude. We elected Barack Obama.

John McCain: Classy speech. Not-so-classy supporters.

Sarah who?

Yeah, I just cracked open a bottle of wine. Couldn't find a corkscrew, so had to punt and push the cork down with a knife. So, wine -- crunchy style.

We. Elected. Barack. Obama.

Yes. We. Did.

Free-IQTest.net - Mensa IQ Test

Blurrrrrg.

Autumn songs that evoke pleasant memories for me:

- "The Reach," by Dan Fogelberg. He lived on the Maine coast, or was at least a part-time resident, and this song perfectly captured the feeling. I love the changing colors of the leaves in my home state, but there is nothing like the quiet of a fall day on the coast. I know the area he refers to, having been offered a teaching job (which I ultimately declined) in Deer Isle-Stonington, and think of that autumn drive down Route 15 past rocky fields and vivid trees against a clear blue sky whenever I hear it. That job episode happened when I was engaged to my first ex-fiance, serendipitously the same time period during which "The Reach" was released. It also reminds me of a lovely September Saturday I spent sailing in that area with a date whose family had a *compound* (you know, like the Kennedys) there, along with his aunt, uncle and some friends of his.

- "Autumn," (duh) by the Edgar Winter Group or whatever his band was called. It's on "They Only Come Out at Night." OK, this is a bit of a cheat, 'cause the memory is really a summer one of a high-school boyfriend -- one that I now believe I let go of too soon -- and of a particular summer dance at his high school's parking lot where we slow-danced to it. I came to think of it as "our" song for our short-lived courtship, and sadly, I can't even think now of how it goes. I'll have to see if I can find it online. He was a nice guy, that boyfriend -- much nicer than the other high-school boyfriend I later squandered so much energy and self-esteem on, and he was truly sad when I broke up with him. I'm sad now because I can't really remember how I rationalized the decision to give him his ring back, and wish I hadn't cut the relationship short. He's the only guy I've ever regretted initiating a breakup with.

- "Weekend in New England," Barry Manilow. Yes, I'll say it -- I like Barry Manilow. I own five or six of his albums, although I'll allow that I bought all of them back in the day, and I would be unlikely to spend the money on them today. But his music always spoke to me, and this song made me realize that I grew up in a special part of the world.

OK, so far just three. Hmmmm... Guess I'll also throw in

- "November Rain" by Guns'n'Roses, but it's a borrowed memory, not my own. It's the song to which one of my friends and her then-future husband fell in love. For me, though, it evokes memories of capping the work week at UMaine with drinks at Margarita's in Orono with the office gang.

I just reminded myself of another one,

- "September," by Earth, Wind & Fire. The specific memory is of fall sorority rush during college. One year it seemed like that song was as ubiquitous a theme for rush events as "Pieces of April" had been for high school proms.

Back story: Last week, I took a wild spill from a moving vehicle during a work-related event, which I'm happy to report I survived. The next day, in relating the story of my fall to someone, I mentioned that as I was plummeting toward earth, I was hoping I wouldn't pull a Christopher Reeve on impact and end up a quadriplegic. The person's reaction: An admonition not to let such thoughts enter my head, because thinking them would ensure that they would be made manifest.

That triggered an equal and opposite reaction from me that's become a mini-obsession for me over the past few days.

OK, folks, word of warning: Do NOT even start with me on that crap, which I blame on Oprah and that insipid book, "The Secret." Unwanted things happen whether you envision them or not. For that matter, so do good things, although I have less experience with that end of the spectrum. As I said to this person: Did my mother die when I was 11 because I envisioned it? No. (And do not try to talk me out of this. Yes, the cancer happened to my mother, not to me directly, but when you're an 11-year-old girl, your mother's death is also something that happens to *you*. Profoundly.)

To broaden it beyond my own life: Was the Holocaust just the collective failure of six million Jews to want badly enough for it to stop? And to ludicrously extend the example to a recent pop-culture reference, Amy Poehler as an exasperated Hillary Clinton perfectly captured it in that "Saturday Night Live" sketch when Tina Fey's Sarah Palin suggested that her own elevation to vice presidential nominee was a result of "wanting it." Poehler/Clinton (the real-life Clinton having clawed and scraped during the Democratic primary for every vote she got, even after it was clear to everyone else that she had lost) noted sardonically that, yes, perhaps not wanting it badly enough was what cost her the party's nomination.

I agree that there is value in maintaining a positive attitude, if only because people like you better when you're not exuding negativity and that in itself can initiate a chain reaction in a positive-ward direction, but that is a function of human nature, not of what pictures appear in my, or your, head. Do NOT expect me to believe this tripe that something good or bad happened just because I visualized it. Believe me, I have visualized plenty of good things that have NOT happened (or else I would have won the lottery years ago, become a famous humor writer, and married George Clooney), and have not visualized plenty of bad things that HAVE happened.

And I will go so far as to suggest that the attitude espoused by the person I was talking is an unintentionally cruel blame-the-victim approach that is not helpful when one is in pain, whether physical, emotional, mental or spiritual.

Further, I will posit that unpleasantness is a necessary aspect of life. There's a quote I remember latching onto when I was younger, and I apologize that I can't remember the source: "No one ever had the rainbow till he had the rain." (As I reread this, I suspect it comes from one of those sappy Top 40 songs that populated the soundtrack of my youth.) I've come to believe that one can't know soaring joy without also knowing deep sadness, or appreciate beauty without also recognizing ugliness. If I remember my high school science correctly, and it's quite likely that I don't, even an atom needs both positively and negatively charged particles to hold together.

And with that, you may commence gagging. But keep thinking good thoughts.

Anyone else savoring the image of a bunch of Wall Street execs living in FEMA trailers?

If you know nothing else about me, know this: I have long harbored a (not-so-)secret desire to do stand-up comedy. However, there is an obstacle: Fear. Not just of speaking in front of audiences, but also of bombing. I'm not always like this, but I'm in a phase right now where I'm having difficulty dealing with things like rejection, public humiliation, bad news, all that stuff that's an expected part of building any kind of career in standup.

So, the other day I'm doing my seasonal job, giving school groups tours of a local orchard, in which I try to inject humor wherever I can. I say, "try," but really, it's often just off-the-cuff stuff. That seems to work best for me, at least in this setting. And when I try to repeat it, it doesn't always play as well the second time.

So I'm giving a tour, and after one of the stops, one of the class chaperones comes up to me and says, "You're funny." I thank her, and for some reason am compelled to tell her about my secret desire to do standup. So the tour continues -- we're walking, we're walking, we're picking apples -- and at the end, the lady comes up to me again and reinforces that she thinks I'm funny. I again thank her, and make polite chitchat with someone who's paid me the highest compliment anyone can possibly pay me. Then she says she'd like to hire me to come entertain at her house. I play along; "Cool," I grin. "So I can contact you through here?" she says. "Of course," I affirm, thinking maybe she's played out this fake I-want-to-give-you-a-gig banter quite long, and maybe it's not really fake and she really wants to hire me to come entertain.

So that's as far as it's gone; so far, no gig. But I mentioned that conversation to my invisible Internet friends, one of whom, encouraging my standup aspirations, urged me to work out at open mike nights. Which, I replied, I'd thought of before, but could never find one local enough or regular enough for my convenience and bank account (thinking particularly of COMEDY-specific open mikes).

So tonight, I mentioned all of this to yet another friend, who told me about a monthly coffeehouse at a local church that kind of functions as an open mike night. Well hey, it's better'n nothin', and might be a way to build up some confidence, in front of a mellow, affirming audience rather than boozy, belligerent bar patrons. So see what happens when you put something out to the universe? Sometimes, the universe nudges back.

... That's where I am right now. No particular reason, except my dial-up connection at home is really slow, which can be annoying sometimes. OK, all the time, but usually I just put up with it. So, I brought my laptop with me when I went to chorus rehearsal tonight, and am blogging from a nearby hotspot, wondering if people driving by me on the street think I'm weird. But honestly, this can be almost as frustrating, because even though I'm like 2 feet away from the hotspot, the connection seems shakier than me trying to walk in f!@&-me pumps. Anyway, my friend Amy from one of my sometimes-jobs wrote and told me that if I wanted her to visit my blog I'd have to write more, so Amy, this one's for you.

Yes, about chorus -- I used to sing in community choruses all the time, or a lot of the time, when I lived in Maine. Went through junior high and high school and college (both times!) singing, then after I got into the grownup work world, sang for a few years with a group in Bangor called the New Renaissance Singers. I think that was my favorite, because I found the music very, I don't know, evocative, or something. Anyway, it spoke to me. Or rather, sang to me. And it gave me my first (and only, except for one verse in a production of "Godspell") solo, in one of our concerts (I think it was in a piece called "Pavane") and my first (and only) paying singing gig, as part of an octet that performed somewhere locally that Christmas season. (That smaller group also performed at Cumstock Hall at the Theater at Monmouth -- be still my heart! What a gorgeous and prestigious venue! Amy, I know you must have heard of that place.) None of which is to suggest that I can actually sing. I can contribute solidly to an alto section most of the time, but I'm way too unable to project, and breathe in all the right places, to reliably solo.

So anyway, since a few years before I moved to NH, I haven't sung in any kind of formal group at all, unless you count the Band of Five during an alcohol-soaked gathering of TopFive.com contributors in Vegas in like '99. But that was hardly formal, and was barely a group, and I only did one song, and I thought I knew that better than I actually did, so we don't count that, but someday I will have to put vanity aside and watch the tape. I think I cut out the singing when I started working at UMaine in '93; not sure if that's accurate, and if so, why, unless it's just that it always made me tired and work started early the next morning. But in any case, once I moved to NH and became an independent contractor, the work schedule was too unpredictable, and my personal life too drama- and depression-ridden, for me to be able to carve out time for a choral group.

But now that I'm minimally employed, I've got all kinds of time! So I've joined the Hampton Community Chorale. And joy of joys -- we're even singing one piece I've sung before, maybe even with the New Renaissance Singers -- "Lo, How  a Rose E'er Blooming." (Tonight, we also sang another -- "Gloucester Wassail" -- although I'm not certain it will be permanently in our repertoire.) So that's nice, as is the fact that someone I knew from my previous life as a correspondent is in the group. The rest of the music also is lovely, although some of it is verrrrrry difficult, and/or in foreign languages like French (such as a piece that also has "Pavane" in the title, although it's not the same piece I solo'ed in) and German! My previous directors would always have us hum the melody first before making us add the words in foreign-language pieces, but this director does not do that, so I find myself defaulting to the English line, catching myself and having to force myself to look at the foreign line. So far, I'm enjoying it, and I told someone tonight that as long as I can afford to put gas in the car to drive up here, I'd like to continue with the group. In other words, kind of a week-to-week thing.

(slightly edited version of what I first posted here on 9/13/2006)
---------------------------------------------
The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.

I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.

But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.

I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if some of the details are smudged. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.

A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.

My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.

As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.

I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.

I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.

I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for some of my favorite Ground Zero photos.
(Ed. note/2008: OK, so it's not a *yellow* ribbon, and it's too dark to really see. The second photo shows the tree at dusk, against the Ground Zero skyline.)


That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.


Additional NYC photos:


from my first visit, Oct. '01
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N02/sets/72157600517898256/detail/
and
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N02/sets/72157600517163045/detail/
from the April '02 visit with the beams of light
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9333849@N02/sets/72157600517898120/detail/" />

BTW, you'll notice that Seacoast Traffic (I've got a great rant that I've yet to write -- look for it!) and Seacoast Gas Price Report now each have their own links over there in the sidebar. Also, I've set up links to my own Reviews, not that I'm qualified, but I have opinions and you're welcome to them; and Non Sequiturs and Miscellaneous Personal Essays, which both are catchalls for stuff that doesn't fit neatly into other categories, one for short and one for longer-form ramblings.

These, of course, join the pre-existing Invisible Woman and Seacoast Beach Read categories. All of these serve as archives for entries that begin their online life on this page. Some of my faves will remain on this page until I get sick of them, in addition to being archived, where they will continue to live once I've deleted them here. (Got that?) 'Cause I'm all about the customer service.

Update on the organizational changes here that I was talking about the other day ... You'll notice over to the left, there, in the sidebar, there are individual links to entries about traffic/gas prices, 50-plus woman stuff and beach-type stuff. I suspect traffic will soon have its own link, as gas prices threatens to overwhelm that area if my enthusiasm doesn't peter out and I keep doing it, but we'll cross that link when we come to it.

Also, I think what I'll do is keep this here page for recent (and possibly miscellaneous) entries, and after a certain point (a week, maybe, or a month, depending on volume and my own initiative) archive them in the appropriate location.

All subject to change, of course, 'cause I've discovered that reposting these suckers on their own topic-specific pages is a pain in the butt.

Just so's you all know, 'cause you can probably already notice something different here if you've been reading along, I'm shifting things around a bit.

From here on, you'll be able to find my extremely helpful gas price report on its own page, along with observations on Seacoast traffic (see "Seacoast traffic/gas" link in the sidebar, over there to the left).

AND, I'll be posting entries specific to life as a woman on the brink of her golden years (ugh) under the "Invisible Woman" link, also over there in the sidebar.

Eventually, I'll probably have a separate location for beach entries, too, and maybe for workout entries, but those aren't set up yet, if they ever will be.

I may cross-post those more specialized topics here at least for a while, but if you don't want to wade through other stuff to find them, you'll know where they are. This page will, additionally, continue to be a catchall for entries that don't fit neatly into the other ones.

It's been way too long -- 12 years -- since the last time I donated blood. Used to do it regularly, often at the earliest bloodmobile available after I became eligible again. I started when I was 17, a good habit I'm thankful Dad instilled in me. As I became entrenched in the working world, the intervals between donations lengthened, but I never stopped completely, either catching a bloodmobile or going to the Red Cross Blood Center in Bangor.

I intended to continue it once I moved to NH, really I did, but various personal dramas and a brutal work schedule made it difficult to fit into my day. I did donate once, the first December I lived in NH, before driving back to Maine for the holiday. Since then, whenever I've seen posters announcing blood drives I would tell myself, oh, I need to remember that, but somehow never did, except for once. After 9/11, when there was such a push to get people to donate and such an outpouring of people doing so, I did try, at St. Michael in Exeter, but the line was long, and I was under a time crunch, and well, it just never happened.

Broke the drought today. There was a Red Cross blood drive at the beach, which you might think would be perfect for me, given how much time I spend there. But the drive only went until 4 p.m. (tip to the Red Cross -- schedule the drives later and get people coming off the beach, AFTER they've been swimming) and I had other things to do before I could go to the beach for *fun*, so I ended up making a special trip to give blood. No big. What it meant , though, was circling around a couple of times to look for acceptable (free, on-street) parking and, finding none, circliing around a couple more times scouting for acceptable (close to the bloodmobile) *metered* parking. A satisfactory one opened up as I was about to give up. Then I had to estimate how long it would take so as not to pump in more quarters than necessary. I certainly hope whoever gets my blood appreciates the effort. (Tip for the Red Cross -- validate parking!)

I call giving blood the poor woman's physical -- iron check, temperature check, blood-pressure check. The process is essentially still the same as it always was, with some technological advancements. I've failed the iron test sometimes in the past, and once or twice had to have my blood spun in the crit (I think that's what it's called) as a backup or whatever when it didn't float to the bottom of the fluid fast enough for their liking.  Now, of course, it's all digitized, and mine was 13-point-something, well above the 12-point-something needed to be eligible (guess taking myself out to breakfast wasn't such a bad idea, except maybe for my cholesterol).  My temp was 98.6 -- actually 98-point-freaking-6. I hate being so on-the-nose, but I like the '60s song. My blood pressure was 102/70, on the low side like I like. Despite my advanced weight (thankfully they didn't make me stand on a scale), I at least can continue to thumb my nose whenever Dad insists I should follow a high-blood-pressure diet just because he has to. But with those stats, I told the R.N. who processed me, I've never felt so bland. When it comes to giving blood, bland is good, she said, then launched into the excruciating series of questions about my health and, uh, let's just call it "history," that never fails to make me take stock of certain aspects of my life and end up feeling like I've wasted a lot of time -- now more than ever. Huh -- maybe there's another reason I've been avoiding these things.

That's the point where the poor woman's physical turns into the poor woman's therapy session. This time, I kept it down to one tissue, especially when the R.N., who was cool to commiserate with me instead of slapping me upside the head, related a personal tidbit of her own that put my own problems into perspective. Somewhat. That was a cool bonding moment.

But it wasn't all heavy. One of the other nurses was a dead ringer for Turk on "Scrubs," so I was enjoying that bit of eye candy, and joined in when he started singing along to "Maneater" on the radio. And there were a couple of cute younger men in the waiting area who actually acknowledged my presence without calling me "miss" (see the "call me ma'am" post). And of course, there was the free food and juice (the latter made me kinda glad I never had kids and  missed the whole juice box trend -- those things is complicated!). And on this occasion, there was a lovely view of the beach and, out the other window, better people-watching than I remember at other bloodmobiles. I told the staff they should have set up the cots on the roof of their little RV so we could catch a few rays while squeezing every few seconds. AND, they were giving away free Red Sox t-shirts.

It was after 5 before I got back to the beach for my more accustomed purpose. I wasn't supposed to get the needle stick area wet, so it's a good thing "swimming" to me usually just consists of "wading in up to my waist and letting the waves wash over me." But have you ever tried to do that and still keep your inner elbow dry?

Every time I hear this, I tell myself if I hear it one more time I'll scream.

This is me, screaming, after hearing it again tonight, a neighbor's reaction on the local news to a violent tragedy -- in this case, a double homicide in West Paris, Maine, very near where I spent my summers as a child. In fact, one of my best childhood friends spent part of her formative years there.

I'm tired of seeing people on the news after events like this saying something like, "This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here." Often, they're people from somewhere else, somewhere more populous, somewhere with a higher crime rate, who came to these places thinking they could escape it completely. I'm tired of people thinking that moving to an area like Bangor or West Paris, Maine, or Exeter or Colebrook, NH, or Rushville freaking Indiana, will insulate them from the world's ugliness.

Here's a news flash: Ugliness is everywhere. The inner city doesn't have a monopoly on that. Beautiful, out-of-the-way places like Maine, New Hampshire and ... well, other beautiful, out-of-the-way places don't get a pass. Babies get cooked in ovens in Lewiston, Maine. Unstable people go on murderous rampages in Bangor, Maine, and across northern New Hampshire. (And some of those occurred in the '80s, even before the Intertubes!) Husbands kill wives, and wives husbands, and parents children, all over the place. Sure, the incidence might be lower here (hence, the higher crime rate where *you're* from), but we're part of the world, too. Violent crime doesn't leave a bag of burning dog poop on our front doorstep, ring the doorbell and run away snickering. It comes in, makes itself a sandwich and puts its feet up on the coffee table. Hell, sometimes it has a key 'cause it grew up here.

So if you're from, say, South Central Los Angeles, or Washington D.C., or Roxbury, Mass., and you're thinking it would be really nice to move to the greener grass, oh, by all means come. The air is cleaner, the sky bluer and water clearer. But just don't think for a minute that what you're trying to leave behind won't follow you over the rainbow.

"This kind of thing isn't supposed to happen here"? This kind of thing shouldn't happen ANYwhere.

Every so often -- not very, but sometimes -- I become possessed of the idea that I'm going to cast aside my generally sedentary lifestyle and become the active person I once was. Hence, my  return to the beach walks I mentioned in the beach-debris post earlier this month. For several years, I would walk Hampton Beach year-round, in all kinds of weather. On a good day, I'd walk it (in the dry soft sand) end to end and back, intensifying the workout by climbing up and down the dunes on the state park beach at the southern end. On a bad day, the walk would be shorter and less intense, and if it was low tide, might take place on the harder, wet, easier-to-walk-on intertidal sand. In previous lives, walking had been a mainstay of my regime, but I had often grown bored with the route or the monotony or whatever and eventually petered out.

The beach walks never got boring for me, because they were at the ocean, and I always seem to be mesmerized by the ocean. Nonetheless, they ended about three or four years ago, when my life became hinky, or rather, hinkier even than it already was. Hinky in ways I hadn't previously experienced and wasn't easily able to cope with.

I began those walks again with the onset of warm weather this year, and although I haven't been entirely faithful to a routine, I have managed to get out usually a couple of times a week.

This week, I added biking. I've tried to include it in the past, but always grew bored with the route (I was limited by not wanting to deal with hills). But that was before I moved to the coast. Its flatter terrain makes it ideal for me, and better still, stretches all the way to the beach. Just one problem: The bike I had when I lived inland was somewhat worse for the wear after I left it out in all manner of inclement weather, and didn't seem worth sinking money into.

But this week, I went out in search of cheap wheels. Having no luck at the department stores, I stopped at a place on the Route 1 causeway in Hampton, where there was a sign out front advertising bike rentals, on the off chance that they also sold used bikes.

I was in luck; after showing me several bikes that either weren't what I was looking for (mountain bikes) or well out of my price range ($300???!), the proprietor showed me an older 21-speed men's bike. It needed front brakes, but he said he could remedy that in a couple of hours, just didn't want to put the time and money into it until the bike was spoken for. The price was right(ish): $75-$80. I agreed, paid the man, and he said I could pick it up the next day, which I did.

That day rained, so I waited until this afternoon for its inaugural ride. I set off around the "block," heading down the residential road that ends at the marsh and turning right before that point onto the little causeway with the clearing that looks out over the harbor. The bike was riding really nice, so rather than complete my intended circuit, I turned left and headed off toward Seabrook Beach on Route 286. I had visions of going all the way to at least the parking lot overlooking the harbor in Seabrook, but amid the gathering weekend beach traffic, began to get a little spooked at the prospect of approaching the T-intersection with Route 1A, where two lanes of traffic can turn left at the light, and one of them can also turn right. I hadn't, after all, bought a helmet yet, and couldn't visualize where it might be safest to cross so as to remain on the right-hand side. So, when there was a break in the traffic on 286, I crossed the road and doubled back toward home.

All told, probably five or six miles; not a bad first day's effort. The price of the bike, truth be told, was a little steeper than I'd like to have paid for a used bike, but I figure if I can use it for short errands instead of the car, maybe in the coming months I'll save enough on gas that it'll pay for itself. Hell, at current prices, I'd just have to forgo a tank and a half.

So, the journey begins.

Don't let anyone kid you; being a 50-year-old woman may look glamorous in the movies, but in real life it's not all that and a bag of fiber wafers. You're too old to pull off belly shirts, but too young yet to qualify for senior discounts. Shopping for bathing suits becomes an even fresher hell than usual.

Worse -- too often, you're invisible to the rest of society. People brush you aside, or simply walk through you like you're Patrick Swayze in "Ghost." Young men look right past you, even while you're carrying on a conversation with them, 'cause they just ain't gots the time to waste actually paying attention to you. I had to grow my shocking silver hair (not a badge of age, incidentally; I found the first glint of gray in my brown hair at 14 and was half-n-half by 25, at which point I was pleasantly surprised to learn that a lot of people actually liked it) down to my butt, Emmylou Harris-style, just to minimize the chances of getting lost in the crowd. (And to give my blog a title.)

If they're not looking through you, they're overcompensating with condescension. Case in point: Yesterday, I brought my car in to the nearest chain lube place for an oil change. As I headed outside to drive off after paying, the 12-year-old who had worked on it brought me up short by cheerily wishing me, "Have a nice day, miss."

"Miss." This was not the first time. It's still only anecdotal, but my trendspotting antennae have detected an unmistakable acceleration in the incidence of this salutation, chiefly within the service industry, in direct proportion to my advancing age. I remember (sort of) back in my -- what, 20s? 30s? -- the opposite rite of passage: the first time a store clerk called me "ma'am." A little part of me died that day as I realized I'd probably never again get carded trying to buy beer or get into a dance club. Has even "ma'am" now passed along with my waning fertility?

This latest indignity, though, makes me think wistfully upon the "ma'am" days. "Miss"? Really? The first time it happened was jarring, perhaps because even when "miss" was more age-appropriate to me, I never used it. Instead, I adopted what I considered the more progressive-sounding "ms." as my courtesy title of choice, happily checking off the option on magazine subscriptions, health forms, employment applications, announcing to the world that I was a Modern Woman. "Miss" just never sounded much like me to begin with, at least not since I was around 13 and latched onto a feminist movement I didn't yet even understand. But what's going through the heads of these people? Do they think I don't know how old I am? Sure, I don't wear a ring, sure, I'm not married, so technically, in Emily Post-world, I AM still a "miss," I guess. But I can't even delude myself -- however youthful I feel inside or however childish I behave outwardly, however many times a week I wear tie-dyed t-shirts, all it takes is a look in the mirror or an all-too-frequent bad knee day to snap me back to reality. If I can't fool myself, surely I can't deceive you, whippersnapper. Now get off my lawn.

I suppose, though, there'll come a day when I look back even on this stage fondly. That day -- the day I give myself the full Kevorkian -- will be when someone, somewhere, describes me as "__ years young."

Turns out, not all my friends have LJ accounts and so can't post their guesses to the weekend's beach-debris puzzler. So, in order to drag this thing out way beyond its sell-by date, I'll post them here.

Blair posits:
Andy Goldsworthy's tent?

(Whoever THAT is. [google google] Oh. NOT a porn star.)

And Reid sez:
Looks good! I'd say some kind of fishing net holder.

(Maybe, Reid. We'll see.)

And Travis wonders:
Is it the framework for a windsurfing apparatus?

(Another good guess.)

Are any of them right?

Answer... all in due time, my friends. All. In. Due. Time.

I've recently resumed a favorite former pasttime that I've let slide in the last three or so years -- walking on the beach. What's new to me this time, thanks to my current wacky schedule, is doing it in the early morning: On weekends I work graveyard, and I find I'm more likely to do the walk if I stop at the beach on the way home, rather than stopping off at the house first, which would leave me vulnerable to being distracted by shiny objects ... like TV ... and sleep ...

Added weekend bonus to early-morning walks: No fighting beach traffic (much) at 7:30 a.m.

So I've made it semi-routine on the weekends, as long as I can find free street parking at Hampton Beach. (When I work up to walking on the dry soft sand, which requires more exertion, I may include Seabrook Beach. But for now, Hampton offers the best options -- I like walking on the harder intertidal sand, but if the tide is in, something I don't keep track of and don't know till I get there, Hampton has that nice sidewalk. Seabrook doesn't have a nice hard surface with an unobstructed ocean view, so there it's either low-tide sand or soft sand.)

A cool thing about walking on the beach is that you never know what you'll find washed up on shore. Usually it's nothing more interesting than a battered lobster trap, but I've also seen what looked to be a discarded Christmas tree.

Today, as I approached the beach from Bradford Avenue, I was greeted with this sight:





I was instantly fascinated, and I wasn't alone. There weren't many people on the beach at that hour (by now it was around 8 a.m.), but a small group of us stood at water's edge contemplating the object, maybe 50 feet out, easily the largest piece of flotsam I had seen in many years of beach walking. Some sort of thing off a boat? A contraption used in sailing, perhaps? Some kind of frame? An oil derrick ready for Bush to lift the offshore-drilling ban? The possibilities were mind-boggling. I happened to have my cell phone, so I started snapping pix, and ended up wading out to the object, not taking time to remove my shorts. Which got wet. But I ended up with this (excuse the finger in front; I haven't yet mastered this cell-phone-photography thing):





We onlookers ultimately were able to figure out what it was; can you? I'll post the answer tomorrow ... or later this week ... or sometime.

The first time I went to New York City overnight was after 9/11. Before that, I'd visited once, in 1986 -- jumped at an opportunity to attend David Letterman's show, then at NBC, on a work-related trip to cover a local man's appearance on it for my newspaper. But that was an in-and-out trip on the same night, with a limo ride to and from the airport in Newark, and the tall buildings, while fascinating in the way they formed a manmade canyon that let in little of the late-afternoon June sun, intimidated me. As did all the people, all those scary New York people.

I'd been through it one other time, on Amtrak, in 1992 or thereabouts. Stopped at Penn Station, but didn't get out to see the city. Not that I would have: I was afraid of NYC, all crime and rudeness as far as I knew. Sometime in the mid-'90s, I actually even made plans to go to the city for an informal gathering of Internet acquaintances, but backed out at least partly because I was afraid. Me, who'd had no problem driving on LA freeways in a rental car. Afraid -- somehow, NYC always seemed like this fortress whose walls contained all manner of frightening things. How would I get around? Where would I stay? How would I know if it was in a bad area (or should I say, a *worse* area, because all of Manhattan was Big and Bad to this girl from a Maine mill town now living in New Hampshire)? What if I got mugged? Boston was about all the city I could handle, and even that was frequently scary.

But then the planes hit and the towers fell. History was happening some five hours away, and I was a reporter, after all; this was something I should witness. I had new Internet friends who lived in NYC, still a fortress but now with a gaping wound. Also, with tourism pretty much trashed by the attacks, hotel rates were within my range, or close enough. Going there became my prime directive. I sucked it up, figured out that the best way for me to get into the city was by commuter rail from New Haven, and went. This was in October 2001. The 18th or 19th, I think -- I had purposely decided not to go on the 11th for fear of another attack on the one-monthiversary. I went behind the walls of the fortress and found it surprisingly accessible.

I have no grand point to relating this other than to regurgitate on or about the fifth anniversary a memory imprinted indelibly on me, even if I have trouble remembering some details. And, well, I have this blog now. I might as well do something with it besides indulge my depression in posts locked from everyone's view but mine.

A priority for me during that trip, as for all of the tourists who were starting to dribble back in and of course for New Yorkers, was to make a pilgrimage to the still-smoldering Ground Zero.

My first visit there was with my Internet friends. I remember an acrid-sweet smell wafting from the site as we walked at night along the perimeter, at the time still a couple of blocks away, delineated by sawhorses (forgive me; I've forgotten the names of the streets around there now), looking at it from this angle and that, trying to make sense of it, to get a handle on it. I kept overlaying the map in my mind from the news coverage on top of what my senses were perceiving to try to understand what was what. I had no real reference point; the only time I had personally seen the towers had been from the air, strangely just a few months earlier, when I had missed my planned flight to Las Vegas via Cincinnati and ended up on a flight that connected in Newark. That flight from Manchester, NH, to Newark left me with a freakish memory in retrospect: As we flew down the Hudson in what must have been the smallest jet ever made, the flight attendant pointed out the World Trade Center (not that it was hard to pick out), and I made some flip remark about how easy it would be for a plane to fly into those buildings. I didn't mean fly into them *deliberately*, necessarily, but that remark haunted me when it was jarred loose in my head at some point after the attack.

As we walked the perimeter during that first visit to Ground Zero, I also remember being inappropriately giddy and making nervous jokes that, in retrospect, I hope didn't offend anyone within earshot. I went back another day that week in the daylight and found myself -- my reporter's sensibilities offended by signs admonishing visitors not to take pictures of a very public disaster scene -- surreptitiously snapping shots at one point of entry to the site with my digital camera. At another point, not surreptitiously, I stood on a planter on another street farther away to get photos that captured as much of the site as possible. I was overwhelmingly moved by the impromptu memorials, the wall close to the site that stretched around a whole block and another one up at ... damn, what's the name of that park? I want to say Union Square; is that one? Up around 14th Street somewhere? Early in the aftermath, that park or somewhere near there had been the line civilians weren't supposed to cross, and a memorial had sprung up there.

I think it was during that second visit to Ground Zero that I had an encounter with a New Yorker Not Of My Acquaintance. I had become disoriented looking for the subway station to get back uptown to meet up with my Internet friends for dinner, and was wandering somewhere around, as I recall, City Hall. A man with glasses discerned my situation and directed me to follow him -- no easy task, as he kept a pace about twice as fast as I was comfortable with. My impromptu guide stayed what must have been a comical-looking several paces ahead of me, turning around periodically to talk to me, or rather yell to me, as he kept walking at that inhumane speed. That was how he told me of the many friends he'd lost in the towers. As I recall, he was from Staten Island, and a lot of his neighbors worked in the towers. I just remember listening reverently as this guy who had no idea who I was spilled what must have been his deepest pain in brief bursts as he turned around every few steps. He never looked me in the eye; he just kind of talked at me, like this was now part of the tour of Lower Manhattan.

I also did some more conventional touristy things during that trip, doing my part to bolster the NYC economy. One Internet friend and I took the Circle Line boat tour around Manhattan. I got a ticket into Letterman's audience, no doubt easier for the lack of tourists, and did some souvenir shopping around his Ed Sullivan Theater. Those souvenirs remain prized possessions -- a mug with a graphic rendering of the Twin Towers and, especially, a T-shirt bearing the FDNY logo. It's my favorite T-shirt now, and I make it a point to wear it every Sept. 11.

I've been back to NYC two or three times more since that first visit. The April after the attacks, when I heard that they would be shooting twin beams of light into the air as temporary stand-ins for the towers, I wanted to see that for myself. I sat on the sidewalk on a nearby street near the new perimeter, a couple of blocks closer than the previous October, as I recall, and just looked up into a beautiful April night sky pierced by the twin rays. It was night, and I was alone, yet I felt none of the fear that had once kept me from visiting the city even in daylight. I remember noticing trees along the sidewalk -- those small, perfect trees that cities bring in for aesthetics -- and being impressed that a hard city like New York would make room for nature. (Yeah, I know -- Central Park.) One such tree, with a yellow ribbon tied around it, formed the frame for my view of the lights and for one of my favorite Ground Zero photos.

That's the last time I went to Ground Zero, and I haven't been back to the city since almost a year after that -- I think, about three or three and a half years ago. Now, finances are a much bigger issue for me, so a hotel stay is out of the picture. I can't take time away from work, and I can't justify spending the train fare even for a quickie visit. I imagine a day will come when I get to go back; I have yet to fulfill a childhood wish of catching a Broadway show, after all.