What made you smile today?

TerryDoolittle

What a lovely thing to do for a fellow worker! Good for you!

Thinking of marycat as I write this:

SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW
SNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOWSNOW!

{{terrydoo}}

<blushes at anastasia's post>

i will return to this thread
type out those notes from firenze
write down that observation in the train some days later
and about that walk back home through the dunes alone before sunset, after our organisation's days of meeting were over
- i saw a fox, he was crossing my path, then walking ahead of me, like he was nobody's business, i saw a fox, so near the city!

some time, i will

okayyyyyyyyy!

{{{{{NIMH!!!!!!!}}}}}}

I was just thinking about you before I came here. A comment was made somewhere about intelligent rats.

I took a walk in the snow today. The snowbanks are so high I thought I was back in New Hampshire!

I fixed something that was broken.

And it's my daughters 13th birthday

On second thought, that makes me feel kinda old

21.02

Arriving in Amsterdam to attend a debate, walking from the train station onto the canals, it's the middle of February and - spring! The sun shines a mellow light - looking melancholic in that foggy way onto where the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal curves beyond the Dam as it always does in the cold half of the year - and it's actually *warm* (well, for the season) - while the canalboat swells up and aside the ice floes that the boats before it had crunched into pieces some of the folks in the cafes have actually carried their chairs outside to enjoy the sun.

Later, in a busier part of town, line of cars waiting by the traffic light, one with the roof open - Moroccan guy in it is standing, arms leaning on the car roof, talking into his cellphone, realises, yells at his friend on the sidewalk, "well, give your number, quick!", & while the guy yells he repeats into the phone as the lights change and the cars start starting up again, "zero! six! five! three!", to what is undoubtedly a charming girl on the other end of the line.

On posters on the streets, DJ Joost van Bellen and consorts are appealing for an Amsterdam "nachtwacht" (named after the Rembrandt painting, yes) - a night mayor, kinda, like Rotterdam has one - because Amsterdam nightlife, is the consensus, is washed out. Shocker news of the year is that gay tourism has fallen by 40% or something - off to Barcelona or other hipper, warmer pastures where it's ok to be gay now too. No more extravaganzas, club nights same old same old, everything moribund. So in what must be an utterly Dutch move, this group of DJs and others have come together to come up with new ideas and, by ways of first move, immediately appealed to the city government to take its responsibility and deliver the subsidies.

When a little later in the afternoon I'm wrestling with an Apple computer in a copyshop-cum-internet cafe, a blond bulky guy in painted jeans carries on a blunted conversation about it with a guy and is gently reminded by the girl working there of his outstanding bills - the posters for his candidacy for night mayor, you know.

Going to see "Streetcar Named Desire" tonight

Lssee. . .Big smile came from finishing the duckie afgan late last night.

Note to self: learn how to say no when best friend asks me to make stuff. Nah, she never says no to me.

14.02

After one and a half day of "dune days" - that's like, when the entire organisation goes into the woods to reflect on long-term strategy and all that - I was ready for a break. I don't do well on these group things. I mean, I *do* - apparently, judging form the repsonse (the whole "got to see a whole new side of you" thing) - but I find it exhausting. Meetings and social gatherings interchanged and no break for yourself. But they were "dune days" this year and we were in the dunes that I knew from when around there was my hometown. So I decided to walk back - to the city, it's a two hour walk or so. It was pretty.

An elliptic footpath took me to a place where the view was all-encompassing: to the left, the sandy dunes with their tough grasses, emptyness in layers; to the right, a picture-perfect lake hiding behind some reeds, with a little pine forest guarding over it. More through-views like that would follow. I would veer off the path, passing under a low 'gate' of dry curly branches onto a rabbit's pathway up the hill, and soon look out over a shallow lake, still half frozen over, reeds locked into ice, stock-still, and ripples in the water down where the ice had already given away.

Shortly after that I saw the fox. He passed the road - and this was a brick road, for byciclists - ahead of me, stopped, looked back at me. I did the same. He started walking, looking almost haughty with his wide furry tail and nonchalant slow gait - I slowly followed. At one point, he stood still for a while looking at me as if assessing the risk I posed, and clearly concluded I posed none, as he made a random step or two but without any hurry or determination. He was quite close by. In the end, he turned left into the underbrush, and I was still peering into it as a byclist passed by (frowning about what I could be doing) a few minutes later. I wanted to call Anastasia just to say: "I saw a fox!" - but the battery of my cellphone'd died.

At around three-quarter of the way, the path turned right, and suddenly, after all, came to the final dune, overlooking the beach. Just before topping it, the steps down to the beach not in sight yet, there was one more spectacular little through-view looking back, where in between the dunetops you could see the sea, and all the way down the end the village of Katwijk (I presume): vague and misty in the distance looking as if it were hovering, floating, over the sea rather than residing at its shore.

Turning onto the beach, then, the view was imposing on such a cold day with a light all of its own. The sea an immense sheet of grey, and there where the only slightly different shades of blue and grey of sky and sea met, the enormous, silent colosses of two (oil?) tankers, lying still, it seemed, and dominating the scene in a static, almost cut-out kind of way. The beach itself was astoundingly empty, only a few people walking their dogs, and it was when I looked left, to the Scheveningen beach resort, that the emptiness really struck me: the pier itself, jutting out into sea from an entirely empty beachfront, I have *never* seen that view so empty! It was almost eerie, in a nuclear winter kind of way, or like on one of those postcards you used to have, where the buildings you knew from amidst people, cars and traffic were mysteriously captured in some stony and picturesque emptied setting.

For the paucity of people, there were all the more birds, preying on the random harvest of the tide: shells and whatnot lying where the waves had withdrawn from, birds of all sizes, from seagulls and big black birds to tiny birds pit-pattering on little feet, some twittering in the loudest chatter.

I have no knowledge of birds, but a few had already caught my eye in the dunes: the huge bird floating high overhead in one great sinking arc, black wings spread; the two birds who flew in circles but returned to sit on adjoining branches, as if alone in this cold.

05.02

I was riding back to Utrecht on the train home. It was rush hour, but by walking to the very end of the train I could find a place to sit, a bench of my own even.

The two benches on my left, facing each other, remained empty until Amsterdam Amstel, where the offices are. Two guys got in, in their late twenties, the living personificiation of corporate, macho, uniformistic culture. Dressed in the same kind of suit, they walked in both talking into their cellphone, self-importantly asserting this or that should be bought, sold or dealt with, rushed, continuing some kind of stock-market-like workfloor aesthetics.

On the two benches facing each other down the row, a wholly different couple. Lively, cheerful girl, twentysomething, looking easy-going and confiding in her friend, the silent but understanding, laid-back but introvert kind of guy. I looked on and, not being able to concentrate, listened to their conversations.

The girl had just come back from Africa - some kind of field study, aid work kind of stint. She would have. She was telling about some random experiences, then focused on the main thing: men. Oy, this guy whom she had something going on with, and he was really in love with her, but then there was that guy over here. She didnt know. She really liked this guy, but you know, there were the cultural differences, he would expect this or that from her, and she would never accept it, and of course she could never live with someone who did this or that. She never mentioned the word "love", asserting, instead, "he is a good guy, really" ... but she just didn't know how to weigh this against that and there was that other guy -

I was taken aback not so much by her "drang" for adventure, but by the sheer self-evidence with which she was juggling these stories, these *people*, in the air as if they were mere objects. She, now, was the king of the world; she was of this age where it is there for you to pick and choose from. The more I listened to her, the more I was taken aback by the sheer - egoism, that seemed to drive these stories, because that was what it was, bottom line.

This is when I looked again at the two guys. They were dead tired, and had put their cellphones down in a discouraged kind of way, slumping back into these suits that suddenly seemed too big for them, hulking over them. They wanted to sleep but couldn't, too tired to talk to each other and, really, nothing to say - all they seemed to want is be home, with someone whom they *had* something to say to. Burger King dinners on the small shelf over the trashcan - no time to cook, no chance to take care of themselves. They seemed very young, suddenly, vulnerable even.

Or another day-to-day illustration how, folks, things are just not necessarily what they seem to be.

Terry..you finished that already?
Oh yeah..you've been vacationing....
fine job!!

I like the dunes, the beach can give much comfort when needed.

Today...well, a lovely Sunday morning, quite normal with the Sunday paper strewn about, sharing cinnamon rolls, great pots of coffee....
however... a bit of a surprise was waiting for me.

I recently aquired some guppies, one of which was pregnant, and although a few I have lost unexplainably, the big pregnant gal was hanging on...till Friday night...she was just doing so badly that on Saturday morning I had to scoop her into a net and float her on the top of the tank as she was so distressed I thought she would end up in the filter, a goner.
Well, Sunday morning comes, and I dread going over to the tank, feeling that she must certainly have gone by now, how sad. To my surprise...she wasnt alone. In fact..she had lots of company!!! Not only was she distressed, the poor gal gave birth...talk about surviving the worst! Well, with a little bit of assistance, got her and the babies into one of those netted tank breeding forms, and after waiting all day to see if shed have any more, shes had enough, and shes back into the little net floating beside her brood. She still doesnt look good but, I was happy to have saved her bunch of little wee ones, and they certianly have made me smile. They are so very fragile and so lucky to have been netted with Mom away from the other fish...13 Ive counted, and although that isnt a great deal in the guppy world, its certainly nice since Mom might not make it through another day. Hopefully she will straighten out, and hoepfully they will get through as well....in the meantime...smiles abound.

Smiles for the guppies.

Yeah, finished the stitching. . .If I never a another effin' duck again, I'll be quite happy.

http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

made me smile for a mo ;-)

that made me laugh out loud. not just lol, but, you know, actually laugh, in real time. thankee, haaaabeeeeeeebeeeeeeeeeee.....

25.02

Looking out of the airplane taking off from Amsterdam and seeing the lakes down there, and noticing that many of them were still or half frozen over - smooth surfaces adjoining rippled ones.

Looking out of the airplane on the way back from London after 8 PM, in the dark, and the plane took a long low sweep over the city, flying over it west to east at pretty low height - such an immense expanse of lights, a veritable beast of a city spreading out from where it merged into darkerness near one horizon to where it did the same near the other, strips and lines and squares and circles of larger smaller still and moving lights pinpointing as many people moving travelling sleeping shopping grumbling working all with some task some reason to choose to be somewhere in that bizarre coagulation of being - sudden acuteness of the contradiction of so many people more purposeful and determined then anywhere in doing their logic part in what, from above, as a whole seemed beyond surreal, beyond comprehension

that was actually more scary - more inducive of melancholia than of smiles

A2K coming back on-line!