The Long Silver Braid: Ramblings of an Ex-Pat Journalist

9/11 plus eight: Reposting my 9/11 fifth-anniversary blog (hell, let's make it an annual thing)

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:16:59 GMT

(slightly edited version of what I first posted here on 9/13/2006)
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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.

Tree--Lights in Background
Originally uploaded by nuzpeg

(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.)

Tree with Ribbon
Originally uploaded by nuzpeg

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/" />

Hello?

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:01:12 GMT

Phones and phone accessories are becoming a recurring theme here on the Braid, apparently -- quite by coincidence. Had a conversation with someone today about how, beyond the area code, no one knows where anyone is anymore because everyone has cell phones with prefixes that aren't married to a specific location.

Yeah, I've had a couple of recent experiences where I read someone's phone number and saw the prefix from a town I used to live in, and thought, "Oh man. I actually know where on a map that phone is located." And then I thought, "Oh, how quaint."

'Cause no one has land lines anymore, or if they do, they don't give out the number -- the land line is for, I don't know, dial-up Internet? (Oh, how quaint.)

My current phone made the recent move with me from one end of the Seacoast to the other, and I didn't have to call a phone company once. And what's more, it didn't even strike me as odd, or anything to spend energy thinking about.

Not that we've been geographically tied via telephonic umbilical cord for some time now, thanks to the cell phone. For the last decade or so, we've been able to call from anywhere (well, anywhere you can get more than one bar) without anyone needing to know if we were where actually where we were supposed to be.

This gradual disappearance of the land line takes that to the next level.
I have not yet arrived at a profound insight to share with you all about this development in human communication. I'm sure there's one somewhere, though.

There's a little museum (yes, a quaint one) in Bryant Pond, Maine, near where I spent my childhood summers, that houses the last of the crank phones.

I wonder where they'll put the last land line.

Life is like that

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:03:50 GMT

Who'd've thought that the perfect line for my life-tentativeness (tentativity?) would have come from Ted Mosby in the rerun of "How I Met Your Mother" that aired tonight:

"The longer I put off starting my own firm, the longer it can remain a dream and not something I screwed up at. It's like I'm giving up before I even started."

Where "firm" = comedy, writing, bill-paying work and other stuff.

Thanks, Ted Mosby!

Current events

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:12:54 GMT

You know how when you're in the schoolyard and some girls are jumping rope, you know, the long ropes with one girl holding each end and a third girl jumps in and takes a turn, and then it's your turn, and you keep waiting for the perfect timing to jump in, but the rope never seems to be in JUST the right place JUST when you're ready to jump, and you have x number of false starts and ALMOST jump in but never actually leave the ground, and so you end up never finally just jumping in?

That's how I'm feeling lately. Looking for just the right moment to jump into a lot of things. Bad habit -- I've done a lot of that in my life. One of the myriad unhealthy patterns I've been working to change lately (and, I think, finally starting to see some progress). It's two steps forward, one step back, and then I get tentative about taking the next two steps forward. Ya know?

One current thing I'm being tentative about is standup. Haven't been back out in front of a mike since my two July gigs, and they were in *early* July. Just not in the mood to use my initiative, for a lot of reasons I'm not pleased or proud about that I don't really want to recount where just anyone can read about them (Sorry; it's not you, it's me. I'm also working on my trust issues.) and no gigs have just fallen from the sky into my lap. So there you go.

But don't worry; I'll get back to it. Standup, that is. A friend tweeted me a link to a piece that included Bill Hicks' Principles of Comedy (http://bit.ly/3eS6s7 -- thanks again, Jeff, and thank YOU, Nerdist!), which I am now going to adopt as my own. Going to start thinking about open mics again -- more comedy-specific ones, in Manchester and maybe Portland, instead of, or more realistically, in addition to, the ones closer to home that are more musician-oriented, but that I'll have to keep doing if only to spend less money on gas and stuff.

Unless, you know, my LJ readers were to kick in Help-Peg's-Comedy-Career contributions! (Hey, I should put a tip jar here ...)

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Having just written all that, "jump" strikes me as a really funny word. "Juuuuuummmmmmmmp."

No, no, I'm NOT high. I'm just a word nerd, and sometimes when I hyperfocus on a word, it starts to disintegrate into its component molecules that don't, by themselves, contain meaning.

ACK! You guys just made me miss taping the beginning of "Monk"! Dammit!

"ex-pat journalist"

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 04:04:59 GMT

Yeah, I like that in the title. I thought of that phrase tonight while commiserating with some former colleagues over on Facebook and fell in love with it.

Of course, any writer knows that falling in love with your own turns of phrase is the kiss of death.

Anyway, nice to have the use of my laptop again after a month-ish.

Oh, and I am in the (slooooooowww) process of moving. Long story that I don't feel like recounting.

a phrase I read at work today

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 21:12:50 GMT

"... (A)ttend to or read text to distinguish facts from opinions."

It was hand-written.

Three guesses what word I misread "facts" as.

The silent-but-deadly ones are the WORST.

Step Up to the Mike

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:58:50 GMT

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?

Leave a Message After the Beep

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:11:29 GMT

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.

Boy, I'm really rusty on this blogging thing

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:13:05 GMT

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.

RELIEF

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 07:18:05 GMT

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.

What's on the beach this weekend? -- The Second Season, part 2 -- The answer

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:14:28 GMT

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.

What's on the beach this weekend? -- The Second Season

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 14:11:14 GMT

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.

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 20:07:25 GMT

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.

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 10:30:41 GMT

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 will, dammit.

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:22:49 GMT

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.

Birthday addenda

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 07:41:56 GMT

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.

Old-plus-one (and one day)

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:18:08 GMT

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.

Shared experience, cont'd...

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:25:57 GMT

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.

Shared experience

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:23:24 GMT

"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 ...

Resolution Revolution, take six

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:09:40 GMT

- To keep resolutions.

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

Off to a good start

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:35:14 GMT

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.

Resolution Revolution, take five

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 08:41:21 GMT

- 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.)

Resolution Revolution, take four

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:25:44 GMT

- 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.

Resolution Revolution, take three

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:14:51 GMT

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

- To do more healthy things.

- To act as if.

And there it goes ...

nuzpeg@yahoo.com — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:00:04 GMT

Goodbye to all THAT.

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