Year: 2002

Seattle’s two daily papers printed the same AP photos on their front pages and their sports pages today.

The foliage rising up from the sudden drop-off beside the one-lane dead-end gravel road. The car, its trunk open, leaning over the ledge at a forty-five degree angle, no tires touching the ground. The driver standing in the road, stunned. The hikers, hopeful Samaritans, verifying that their cell phones are also getting no signal.

The five-lane freeway on a busy night. The car stalled in the center lane. The cars screeching to a stop behind it. The drivers taking a breath and accelerating back into traffic at the first opening. The driver and passenger in the stalled car, eyes wide with panic, visible to the other cars for a moment as they whip past, sitting ducks.

The small hand on my watch sweeps around the watchface at twice the speed of the Earth’s rotation.

There’s a tiny window cut out of the watchface; it’s only a few millimeters across. It’s next to the “3” printed on the watchface. The numbers one through thirty-one are printed next to the outside edge of a wheel that turns behind the window. The numbers are just large enough for one of them to be seen through the window. The wheel remains stationary (relative to the rest of the watch) throughout most of the day. At the beginning of the last hour of the day it begins to turn. It continues to turn until the next number is completely visible through the window, at the end of the first of hour of the following day.

The number in the window corresponds to the day of the month. It goes out of sync five times a year, on the first day of each month that follows a month with fewer than thirty-one days. At some point, during the first few days after the number in the window goes out of sync, I’ll pull out the little knob on the side of the watch and reset the number in the window. I used to reset the number in the window by setting the watch forward twenty-four hours (eighty-six hours on March 1, 2001). But while resetting the watch on May 1, 2002, I discovered that if I only pulled the knob out half as far as it would go, I could set the number in the window without affecting the movement of the watch hands.

I also adjust the watch when I move between time zones. This is usually done on airplanes. I’m always careful to feign casualness, while at the same time making it clear to my seatmates what I’m doing. As if I was saying, “I have to do this so often that it’s second nature.” I think they usually see through my facade though.

I flew to Phoenix last spring. Arizona doesn’t adjust for daylight savings time, so Seattle time and Phoenix time where in sync and I didn’t adjust my watch. Daylight savings time ended while I was in Phoenix; so I only adjusted my watch on the flight back to Seattle.

Photos from the Orcas Island trip.

Exploring the tide-pool, we found some very interesting creatures as well some creatures that we were happy to leave to the sea.

(Most of) The stunning 360 view from the top of “Mt.” Constitution.

Also, click through the horizon photos for June 24 – June 27.

It’s a sunny Saturday evening and I’m out of step. I try out elements of my regular habits, but they don’t fit comfortably.

I lay down to sleep in my own bed. My blankets seem unfamiliar.

There’s an almost empty carton of milk in the refrigerator. It’s not yet expired, but it tastes stale.

The dishes need washing.

CDs cases are not put away. My pile of unread books is looming. When did I buy these? Who says they’re mine?

Robert calls and asks for help. He’s a stranger, how did I get involved in this?

I walk down to the waterfront to take some pictures. I hobble back behind The Aquarium, my back stiff from kayaking.

I over-caffeinate at Bauhaus and read Murakami. I’m finally starting to get a grasp on the book, sitting there among a dozen people whom I’ve seen a million times but have never spoken to. I was away and now I’m here and so are you.

The vacation is fading from my mind, but I’m still far away from Seattle.

We drove up to Anacortes and took the ferry over to Orcas.

We had some time before check-in at our cabin, so we spent an hour or so snapping photos on a lake-side trail. We were in the habit of saying hello, after greeting other hikers on the trail, so we said hello to a man who was moving dishes from a picnic table to the trunk of his car. He was middle-aged, expressionless, and wore a flannel shirt.

“It’s a great day isn’t it?” he said.

One of us agreed and the next thing we know, we’d received as much information about the island as can be fit into the time it takes for two people to get into a car. Among the new facts in our possession: The best place to watch the sun set on Orcas Island is at Obstruction Pass.

We waved good bye to the friendly man and continued our vacation.

Over to Orcas Island until Thursday. You’ll barely notice I was gone.

Today neither Ingrid nor Jessica can say for sure that she remembers who the other is; but Ingrid was at Re-bar for Jessica’s twenty-first birthday party four years ago. I was curious about Ingrid, so at one point during the evening, I sat down and said hello. Truth be told, my usual reaction in those circumstances would have been to avoid eye contact and not talk to her. But someone had taken my seat while I was in the restroom.

Ingrid’s icebreaker was this: “So. Jeff. Do you practice ascetics?”

I hesitated and said that if I was practicing ascetics, I wasn’t doing it consciously, since I didn’t know the meaning of the word.

I don’t remember how the rest of the conversation went – except the end. Ingrid asked me, “Do you want to dance?” And I answered, “I can’t dance.” To the untrained ear that means “I’m not really interested.” In my case though, it meant, “I can’t dance.” Oh well. C’est la vie.

Almost four years later, Ingrid and I found ourselves sitting at Re-Bar again, in what may have been the very booth where we had our first conversation. I turned to her, ready to say, “So. Ingrid. Do you practice ascetics?” But I chickened out and said something else instead.

It worked out in the end. I posted something oblique about Ingrid the next day. Then, knowing it would lead her to her entry eventually, I emailed her a link to Beans For Breakfast’s sister site. (This is a technical violation of the Good Blogger’s Rules of Conduct. But I defend it by claiming that the entry works on a basic narrative level as well as on a help-me-get-a-girlfriend level. There’s something for everyone.)

We had each other’s attention again. A bunch of stuff happened after that, but you don’t want to hear about it.

Sidebar: In the Jessica entry, I was going to claim that I’m a cynic. Cynic wasn’t quite the word I wanted, so I looked it up on thesaurus.com and of course one of my words was “asceticism”.

Yesterday my friend Jessica surfaced. Nine months ago, she sold everything but her guitar (though she couldn’t play it) and moved to New York.

We walked around downtown and she said how strange it felt to come back and stride around in her old life again for a few days. Her and her mother will shortly be packing her mother’s belongings into a truck and hauling it to Florida. After that, she doesn’t know what she’s doing or where she’s going. But she’ll probably take her guitar (she knows how to play it now).

Jessica believes in everything and I barely believe in anything – so I always had a good time picking on her. (She appreciated that, I could tell.) I didn’t get many barbs in this time around and I’m not sure why.

Two teenagers are playing catch with a football as I walk past the bus tunnel. The older one backs up onto Olive Way, usually a busy street – no traffic at the moment due to lazy Sunday traffic and maybe a trick of the stoplights. The kid on the sidewalk passes the ball with an exaggerated jerk of his arm. The kid in the street puts his hands out behind him, ducks his head down, catches the ball behind his back, but immediately fumbles it. He picks up the ball and jogs back to the sidewalk, the light has changed and two cars – one from each direction – will converge shortly on his spot. The kid steps onto the sidewalk beside me and tosses the ball back to his friend. I continue my stroll up Olive, but am interrupted a moment later when the ball falls down beside me and gets tangled up in my stride. I look back and see the kid several yards away, jogging over to pick up his missed catch. I pick up the ball (it’s surprisingly soft – it needs to be inflated a little), and toss it to him backwards from my crouching position – in sort of a modified hike. The ball comes down a few feet short. The kid stretches his arms out as far as possible, but it hits the sidewalk and tumbles away.