Badger Bus

It’s 1979 and I am just barely 26. Hey, I am moving to Madison! My husband is beginning his staggering climb up the professorial ladder.

I should be working on my dissertation proposal, but instead, I take a full time job as a lecturer in the sociology department at UW-Milwaukee. We need the money. Three times a week I commute there, riding the Badger Bus from the terminal on West Wash, the same terminal that is now a block from my apartment, the same terminal that I pass every morning on my way to work.

On the bus, I always sit with Elaine, a woman more than twenty years my senior, but quickly becoming my closest friend in Madison. She taught me how to disregard age in friendship. She is brilliant and extremely laid back – a fantastic combination. I am a wound-up spinning top next to her.

Each trip out to Milwaukee frazzles me. I have never taught before. I am given a class in social psych – 350 students with young-and-know-nothing me there on the stage, and a class in the soc of the family, with a mere 60 in it. I am sure I am a terrible teacher and a complete idiot. Temerity and chutzpah push me through each lecture.

I come home tired. My husband greets me at the Badger Bus station. In the three semesters that I do this, he is never late, not once. We go out those nights, eating dinner, often steaks and hash browns, ravenously hungry at the late hour that I arrive back in Madison.

Early on Elaine tells me she is going to die shortly. I tell her so am I. Except that I am just doing my Polish angst thing and she is not. She dies within eighteen months, from ovarian cancer.

Many people look at age 50 as some kind of a turning point. I am fucking fifty! – they seem to think that this somehow puts them in some pile of wasted human material.

My turning point came at 48, when I passed the age at which Elaine died. I can’t believe that I have now lived four years longer than she did. I never thought I would – it did not seem fair that I should.

The Badger bus plows back and forth between two cities that are as different as can be. I come face to face with the terminal at two periods in my life that are as different as can be.


twenty-six years later, still the same inside

It’s like rubbing the belly of a lobster before plunging it into a pot of boiling water

What a day! All sun and warm temps, what a day!

I had been up since 4, agonizing over how many plusses to give to the paper grades I distributed to my first year law students and so you would think that by late afternoon I would be spent. Wrongo bongo!

I took Mr. B for a little 'pleasure trip' after class. I let him pick out guards for the winter (this post led me to believe I should in some way winterize my guy). He opted for yellow against his blue body. I thought it was a little garish (even though I am SUCH a fan of blue and yellow). I would have chosen the steely metal, but you know, you gotta let the guy preen and show off every now and then.



We did far far west side errands and then I took him to Borders on this warmest of October days. Bliss. A Maisie Dobbs mystery, a low hot sun, a latte and Mr. B and me.




Then came the hatchet. Mr. B, I expect service. I want respect for things that are important to me. I need you to carry your weight. To contribute.




The bags are there for a purpose. You are strong. At Willie Street Bikes they said you were built so well! Do your stuff. Carry my groceries for me, please.

I’m in for a period of moping. Indeed, Mr. B was in a reclining position when I retrieved him at my last rest stop. It was all pretense and high drama, I am sure. No matter. I’m firm. I need him to use his muscle. He and I are in this together, while the guilt-car gently weeps.

…like a cigarette should

So, I was a social smoker once. Times were different. Only goody two-shoes prissy girls did not smoke. Smoking was cool. I hated the way it made my lungs hurt (being one with weaker lungs) but I hated being lumped in with the goody two-shoes prissy girls even more.

So, depending on which set of friends I was with – the goody two-shoes super achievers or the rowdy set – I stayed clear of the stuff or I puffed away with the whole motley lot of them, starting (on rare occasions) when I was 15 and finally saying good riddance to the pretence of enjoying it at around 22.

So, of course, then I proceeded to hate smokers. Take your putrid second-hand smoke elsewhere!

So, now I am past that. In France, Poland, Italy (places where smokers are not yet the devils incarnate that they are here), if they’re puffin’ away next to me, I hardly notice.

Still, it was weird for me to be moving into an apartment that had tobacco written all over its walls. Indeed, my place is in a building that once housed the warehouse where Wisconsin leaves rested, awaiting the train journey to North Carolina where they would be used as cigar wrappers – being too low-grade to serve as the stuff of Lorillard brand cigarettes.

I am looking at the brick walls of my loft, not too long ago covered with dirt and soot and I am impressed with their history, for it was a dirty one and dirty pasts bespeak of complicated lives.

I’ve been reading a lot about Lorillard since I moved here – about the company’s curious advertising strategies (even as it commanded a tiny share of the overall market with – remember these names? Kent, True, Old Gold…), about its origins (it is, in fact, the oldest tobacco company in the country, dating back to 1760) and I am, for once, satisfied with my city, for it recognized shades of gray in naming a street just this year after Lorillard – my street, tainted and tarnished. Just like so many of us living there now.



sign of the times: only native prairie flowers are used to surround the tempered brick walls; and there are to be no AC condensers, nor gas-based heating units; instead, an elaborate system of geothermal wells built under the parking lot provides steady climate control to the buildings.

close encounters of the Ocean kind

Yesterday, I am pulling up on Mr. B, rushing to make it to class on time and a (random) student, out on a cigarette break outside, hails me.

Hey there, prof Camic? – she says, seemingly trying to match the face with one she has seen elsewhere. I think your loft is awesome!

This arrests me on the spot, even though I am terribly aware of the clock and of the fact that class should be starting in 7 minutes and I have yet to print out my lecture notes.

You know about my loft… You are a blogger yourself? – I ask, tentatively.
More like a voyeur. I read blogs. I read Ocean.

What can I say but: well now, ha ha! I keep it funny over at Ocean, ha ha! All about light 'n breezy entertainment, after all, ha ha!

Not always so funny, is it? – she counters. You can be very serious.

Ohhhh, is she referring to this post or this?

Ha ha, well, sure, right oh, yeah, well hey! (I mean, what else can one say?)

I move on. Knowing that around any corner I may find a person who knows that I last threw up from drinking too much when I was 15.

Listen, Ocean is just a lark, okay? Just a lark. La di da lark.

P.S. Why is it that when the chancellor of the university spoke last week at the Law School (I did not attend) and subsequently we, the faculty, received an email with basically the following: "chancellor’s missive: what we can do to uphold standards and fight moral corruption at the university" (or words to that effect), I automatically panicked, thinking surely it must be referring to faculty blogs, or more specifically, certain faculty who keep larky blogs, or, hey, one particular faculty member who regularly posts on Ocean?

You’re looking maybe for Ocean’s vice of the week feature? Ohhhh, just sit back and read. I have many up my sleeve.

Where Ocean again files a Monday report on vices [def: moral depravity, corruption, wickedness, moral faults or failings, or, at the very least, habitual and usually trivial defects or shortcomings] manifested by its author, on the theory that if I blurt it out here, I will earn myself a clean slate for (vices to be committed in) the week ahead:

Last night’s loft warming warmed my heart. People are way too nice and I do not deserve any of their goodness.

So why is it that I let them work for their grub? That’s a vice! At least a half a dozen literally finished off dish preparation for me and at least two actually cleaned up a pot or two so that I would not wake to the disaster that typically follows one of my cooking binges.

And another vice – sampling wine from practically every bottle that was opened (okay, only the whites!). And with twenty people, the last ones trickling out after midnight, there were plenty that got uncorked. Vicey!

But here’s the one I’ve been saving up for Ocean. It indeed is about uncorking, except, what is it that I uncorked????

So here’s the story: I got up early and began the usual clean up. I am a woman of great attention to detail. You would not know this about me, just reading my blog, but in the loft, everything is in its place. Very neat. Very orderly. And so of course I was going to correct some guest’s erroneous placement of a piece of paper in the recyclables garbage can. I reached in and was about to transfer it, when my evil curiosity got the better of me.

I unfolded the yellow sheet and read it. (Truthfully, I did worry that it was some important page that accidentally got trashed.)

It had four words on it, followed by a question mark:

Do you love me? Some female hand wrote stealthily.

Okay. There were five married couples here (random note: amazingly, only one out of the ten keeps a blog) and another that also belongs to the 'committed' category. Then there were seven without any Significant Other in sight. So it could have been innocent, right? Married woman asks her adored one, in a moment of drunkenness if there’s passion behind that cool demeanor.

But hey, wouldn’t she have waited 'til they at least got to the elevator? Rather than scribble it right there in the middle of chomping on a crostini with gingered beef and wasabi? The more likely explanation? -- a guest is reaching out to touch someone and that someone is not their spouse at all, but the spouse of another.

Too many permutations and possibilities for me to figure it out. Unless… I compare the handwriting with the cards I received.

Don’t worry. Your secret is my secret.

On to one more vice: a run of photos of, well, me (not always in the most flattering poses). Kathy, was that you working my camera? Okay, for once, I have a batch of photos depicting how absolutely insane I become at one of my own dinners. I have no shame. Here they are, interspersed with the sanity of others and, of course, food.


lofty dusk, stuffed figs, all is calm



why are three others working around me at food prep?



make that four others... (is that a tattoo??)



billed as chocolate cigarettes, but looking more like cigars



off goes the apron



urban flight



watching...



still waters? maybe. maybe not.



I did say to the guests: you need only bring oreos. trust a therapist (not mine!) to be a good listener.

Urban flight

So it was a challenge: come up with a menu for tonight that represents the very urban-ness of my loft. For my first big dinner here, cook up stuff that fits with the brick walls and steel pipes and screaming fire engines and guns blasting and construction trucks making their daily morning racket. Okay, maybe not so much the guns and the fire engines, but you get the picture. This food cannot be tame. It has to zing, it has to, according to commenters, pile high and fuse market flavors. It has to have street character and restaurant sophistication.

So I decided to take myself to the Italian neighborhoods of New York. Pile on the cannelloni, the cannoli, but make it modern! Spice it up! And fuse it – bring in the wasabi, the Serrano and Fresno peppers, the lemongrass, the lavender.

I turned on the TV last night and there on Bravo, I hear the familiar music of the Godfather. Perfect. Let my work begin. Here’s the menu. Eight mains, four desserts, twenty people. Let’s see if anything comes of it.


Grilled figs with Fantome goat cheese, honey and rosemary

Crostini with gingered beef and wasabi flavored crème fraiche

Flatbread with assorted roasted peppers, hot chiles, scallions and mild cheese

Gougeres with aged Parrano cheese

Diced heirloom tomatoes with Chianti Classico olive oil, Balsamic vinegar and slivers of Parmesan

Cannelloni with grilled zucchini, shrimp and thyme butter

Puff pastry with caramelized onion

Grilled shrimp on lemongrass skewers with Asian lime sauce



Key lime tarts with toasted meringue

Chocolate cigarettes

Orange cannoli with coffee mascarpone filling

Baked moonglow pears and berries, with lavender flower topping



always start with the dessert

in my little town...

...I grew up believing
That life is boring.

I changed my mind.
Though anyone looking at this first October day may get the impression that I have simply joined the ranks of the Madisonians who basically love to do the Madison thing, all organic this and healthy that and actively engaged in the community, etc etc. and that’s it – what else could you possibly add to this basket of symbiotic perfection?

And I have indeed succumbed, to some extent. Pulling on some raggy clothes, last seen yesterday, on me, not bothering to even shower, I set out for the market this morning. I am only six blocks away. I can walk. I feel wholesome (if grungy). The sun hasn’t broken the city horizon yet. I am an early bird.

At the market I throw down several twenties in support of sustainable agriculture. I am with the land and the people who grow things on it. I talk to farmers and cheese makers. The moonglow pear guy uses words like epistemology. Or was it nomenclature? Or both? Not that I undervalue the intellectual inclinations of the men and women who till the land, but believe me, the average farmer in Poland does not muck around much with either epistemology or nomenclature. But hey, this is Madison.



eerily, they glow



much needed for tomorrow


I look at the kid who is part of the brood at Avalanche. She looks like the kind of waif of a child I would want to raise on a farm were I into raising kids on farms. That family is so together, so all about wool knits and cottons. And they’re doing well. I buy their stuff at Whole Foods all the time. It makes me happy to find and purchase their bags of greens. I feel like I am helping put the little ones through school. (Or – are they home-schooled?)





The flower family always throws in extras – they give you yellows if you want more yellows, they coddle you and infuse you with their own flowery joie de vivre.




I get a blueberry bar for my coffee which I have yet to consume. This is a morning run, a pre-breakfast thing. Wholesome, remember? The bar is additive free, wheat free, sugar free, gluten free and a bunch of other frees I have by now forgotten. It’s not free-free, but it is Madison-like free.

I pick up a latte and head to the loft.

Okay, so a little glitch here: I have a lot of food. And flowers. And a cup of coffee. And my wrist and thumb have yet to heal from my June bike accident, especially since I ignored the advice of the doc who told me to go do some hand therapy. (Hand therapy sounds sissy-like. I’m no sissy.)

I am struggling. I am thinking that I ought to get a backpack. Wait, I live an urban existence. I have never seen anyone in NY carry groceries in a backpack. Forget it.

On I go. I am about to cross the tracks to get to the loft (third, fourth and fifth windows on the top, from the left) and I see the construction vehicles again. I ask what the fuss is about. They have been grinding away at the space between the loft and the tracks for days. If there is some super highway going up right under my lofty windows, I want to know about it.





But no! This is Madison. They are putting in a new, beautiful bike path, linking the lakes with the city – and mainly, creating even more venues for Mr. B and me. Right under my nose! View remains undisturbed. I can take endless photos of the capitol from my loft. And I can go for wholesome rides everywhere.

So all this is what creates bliss, right?

Nope. Bliss lies elsewhere. But these trappings, they sure as hell make life in (downtown) Madison a good thing, they really do.

the shop around the corner

When my daughters were little, I took them regularly to Fraboni’s, the Italian deli and grocer downtown, on the corner of Regent and Park. We lived on the far west side, but we drove in just so we could load up on Fraboni’s gnocchi. No one in Madison had better gnocchi. And of course, once there, we’d get thinly sliced salami, olives, Parmesan-Reggiano, pasta and so on. I probably could buy this stuff elsewhere, but I liked getting it there.

The Fraboni family knew my girls by name. They would say things like: Oh, they’re growing so fast! I’d indulge in an Italian nougat candy at the register. The girls preferred the cookies. We left happy.


the Fraboni's dude

And then I stopped going. I got busy, the daughters got busy and satisfactory gnocchi could be found elsewhere. One makes compromises.

The other day as I was telling someone how good it is to live downtown, I was asked about the grocery store situation. I hesitated on that one. I need a car for food shopping. Nothing within walking distance of the loft. Maybe when Trader Joe’s is up and running on Monroe (looks to be a half hour walk – just like shopping in Poland!), maybe then I can hike over…

And then, this afternoon, as I was making up a grocery list for my week-end of heavy duty cooking, I thought: there isn’t a place in town that will have this one particular item. Except maybe Fraboni’s.

I went there at dusk. I looked around – it had been years (decades?) since I had stopped by. The old discolored map of Italy was gone. The shelves were filled with many types of balsamic vinegars from Modena. The nougat candies weren't at the checkout counter.

But the family was still there. The son was now one of the proprietors. I asked him about the ingredient I was looking for – he called his mother to talk about it, to check whether my rather weird usage of it would work. I looked around at the cheeses, the sausages, at the shelves that weren’t exactly arranged, the ones that always, in their disarray and devotion, had a distinct taste of Italy.

A five minute walk from my loft, that’s it. My grocery store, just down the block.

It’s all fun and games until someone breaks a leg and asks for a divorce

Reading Ocean from the last several months would have one believe that I do not work. It isn’t that I post huge amounts, or that anyone would be inclined to say – man oh man, there is no Nina out there, everything is on Ocean and Ocean is about everything. It’s just that I never mention anything related to my work here.

Of course, Ocean is a mere smudge on my day – a lovely (for me) effervescent smudge, with colors and ebbs and flows, but a smudge nonetheless. Moods come and go, flowers bloom, leaves fall, and all this never makes it onto to the Ocean floor.

Still, many have said that Ocean works for them because it is so…personal.

Gulp. Personal? Oh dear.

Okay, so I do happen to work and I do happen to teach. Something equivalent to 2.25 classes per semester (Torts and Family Law this fall). And predictably, ever since I started blogging, each semester, a handful of students from my classes will in some way let me know that they read my blog.

I do send out little tests: I mention something that one would get only if one read Ocean and I canvas the room, looking for that small flicker of acknowledgement, that wink, that tiny grin that tells me They Know.

This fall, their faces have revealed nothing at all. No guilty admission after class, no wink, no reference, no email and, most significantly ----- no comment.

Because in fact, this is the first semester where I am teaching with a blog that has a functioning comments section. The opportunity for (pseudo-anonymous) punchy-ness is there, and I am waiting for that irrepressible shot from the hip, of the caliber where I am sent to my proper place in the corner, quivering.

As for the personal stuff appearing herein -- okay, so I have to live with the fact that a student may potentially know a hell of a lot more about me than I do about them. I have come to accept that. It’s like throwing up in public.* You reveal your weaknesses and hope that all witnessing your transgressions are a forgiving bunch.

As a final note on teaching and blogging and the relationship between the two, I want to say that I have two groups of students (in my two classes this semester) that are astonishingly wonderful. I will protect them with all my might and so references to them and their peculiar and adorable idiosyncrasies will not appear on Ocean.

*BTW, my Ocean is my huge indulgence. Let it be known that I have never thrown up in public. And it has been more than 35 years since I have had so much to drink as to make myself ill, so don’t hold your breath waiting for a sordid description of such an event here, on Ocean. It’s not gonna happen.

Reade-ing the minds of New Yorkers

While in New York a couple of week-ends back, I walked enough to worry about getting a foot blister. I had neglected to wear socks and the shoes were getting awfully comfortable in their up and down rubbing motion against my heel.

Not to worry! I said. I’ll just step into the next Duane Reade and pick up bandaids and socks. While there, let’s throw in some chewing gum and water.

It took one more block to come across a Duane Reade drugstore. Inside, it took a little longer to find what I was looking for. On the corner of 35th and fifth, it was one of their two-floor set-ups where nothing seemed logically placed and finding things required either rambling around some, or asking a clerk for directions. Luckily there were plenty of Duanies to ask and so I was soon on my way.

I write all this because this morning I was reading an article that demonstrated to me that I was just a peg and a pawn in the Duane Reade master plan, a typical sucker who was breathing life into a growing monster of a chain.

Because Duane Reade has really taken over the city. There are far far more DRs than there are Starbucks coffee shops or Food Emporium outlets. So how is it that this ugly little store with scrawny interiors, somewhat overpriced items and bizarre layouts has eeked its way into every handful of blocks of Manhattan?

I don’t usually paste article paragraphs into Ocean, but I cannot resist it this time because the piece (found here) says as much about New Yorkers as it does about Duane Reade’s executive officers who have simply figured out what the average urban type is looking for on her or his daily run through the city (as contrasted with the suburbanite):

Duane Reade ought not to be successful. The prices aren’t particularly low andthe staff isn’t particularly helpful. And the often cramped and disorganized stores offend the boutique sensibilities of New Yorkers.
…
[Yet] what the stores sell gives a pointillist portrait of the New York consumer. Unlike most drugstores, where prescriptions make up the majority of sales, half of Duane Reade’s sales come from food, cosmetics, and the like. That runs from insoles and corn pads—because New Yorkers walk so much, Duane Reade sells twice the industry average—to foods for the society-X-ray palate. “We have four-foot-long sections of rice cakes. Put those in a suburban store and they all go stale,” says Charboneau. “And we have these soy crisps, which are not the best-tasting things. But they fly off the shelf.”

Make up? The store developed its own line of cosmetic because the top national brand (Cover Girl) appears to target the blonds and the blue-eyed types and New York hasn’t too many of those. And there’s more of that savvy pulse reading going on here:

When New Yorkers make their way to the pharmacy counter, their selections are heavy on sex and therapy and ambivalent about kids. The top-selling sedative, ranked nineteenth nationally, is one of the top five drugs sold at Duane Reade. Also popular here is Viagra, and a couple of anti-AIDS drugs are in the top twenty. But what New Yorkers really specialize in is birth control: Three contraceptives rank in the top 25 of Duane Reade sellers, while no contraceptive breaks the top 50 nationally. “There is no birth-control pill that’s No. 1 in any market except here,” Cuti [the man who made DR what it is today] explains. “It’s the nature of the city. It’s where the action is.”

The aisles are narrow because New Yorkers don’t mind being bumped, and skuzzy because urban types aren’t that bothered by dirt. But they hate lines and so DR has twice the average number of salesclerks ready to hustle you out:

“When I’m catching somebody out of Penn Station moving 100 miles per hour, they want service and they want it quick,” says Cuti. “It’s, ‘I’m carrying my bag, I’m ten minutes late, the dumb train was late, I got to get the Tylenol and my bottle of water as quickly as I can.’"

In the end, it’s all about real estate – figuring out which crummy space will work wonders for the next store (they have 250 of them up and running thus far) and getting a long term lease cheap. But that aside, I have to say that Duane Reade should be on every vistor’s list as a quintessential New York experience. Except, you probably don’t need to make note of it in the tour books. Inevitably you’ll hit on the store during an NYC stop. They have us figured out: Viagra, corn pads and rice cakes – just what you need to survive a day in the city.





In that set of NYC blocks, there must be at least six Duane Reade stores.

Kitchen, confidently

So I intend to cook big time this week-end. A few assorted odd types are coming to the loft Sunday, to help warm the place up and I told myself it’s time I did something more with the stove than just turn it on for my morning latte.

It’s depressing to realize how much care I took with moving my kitchen paraphernalia from the spacious suburban place to the smaller loft unit and how little I have used any of it since I have been here. It’s disgustingly pristine at the moment.





Time to take out the variously shaped tart tins, the pastry scrapers, the double mesh strainers and get to work.

But on what? I lack a theme. I am stumped. Random nibbles? I am yawning as I write this. Substantial salads? I can see the splattered vinaigrette on my new couch, the soggy lettuce that’s been sitting out too long. Oh God, I have to do better than that.

National themes? Last time I meandered over to the kitchens of the Eastern Front, I found my table laden with foods that were as heavy as the granite on my new kitchen counters. It was nice, it was fun, it was then, now is different.

Got it! The theme has come to me as I type this: Urban Foods! How appropriate! How edgy and sleek! How urbane!

Okay, but what do I mean by that? Damned if I know just yet. Write me if you have ideas.

idle talk over a paintbrush

My man Jason and I had a talk yesterday. He asked: how is it downtown? (He recently bought a house with his partner, not too far from where he works – west of Middleton, which is pretty west, if you know Madison).

I could not lie. Great, I said, it is great! All last year I kept coming home to a big empty house and before the night was out, I would be bummed to the core. My thrill would have to come from seeing the plumber arrive early at a neighbors’ house as I would try to second-guess which of their toilets might be leaking.

These days my sense of isolation is gone. I left it somewhere there with the sagging gutters and chipped roof shingles. Toilets and plumbers are not the thrill du jour anymore.

Longing, I smelled longing in the air. Jason, who is possibly the best color guy on this side of the Polish/German border, is not one to complain so he kept quiet. Very quiet.

He painted and snipped (did I detect a sniffle?) and I watched his talented hands do such beautiful work even as the elaborate tattoos on his trained, muscled arms seemed to sag in a dispirited kind of way. We stayed in our comfortable silence --- a favorite way to be, very intimate, very “I understand you” kind of thing.

When we spoke again it was about the condo boom downtown, about trips to big cities – topics that had the big E (escape) written all over them.

A year. I give him a year. He wont stay away longer than that.

Happy birthday to someone

Hey there, friend living south of the (WI) border, happy birthday to you!

I hope you appreciate the great trouble I went to, to send you a present. When I figured out I was not going to see you in the week of your birthday, I was determined to go out after work yesterday to search out some gifts for you, so that you would have stuff to open today.

First I went to Borders. There were two items there I knew you’d like. I bribed Mr. B to serve me well and we pedalled over.

I made my purchases and proceeded out the door. The alarm sounded. I went back in. The sales clerk again demagnetized my purchases. I went out again. The alarm went off again. I was asked if I had some culpable stuff on me. I was coming from the office! No heavy metal, no chainsaw, nothing!

Still, I handed over my briefcase, I handed over my purse, I handed over my bike helmet. And the alarm sounded nonetheless.

I was determined to figure out why. I took off my jacket, my glasses, all of it. By now EVERYONE in the store was watching. And still the alarm went off.

The store manager said it surely had something to do with the shoes. I reassured him that these were ancient shoes, with the tell-tale paint mark from when I proceeded to spontaneously repaint my older daughter’s dorm room when she was a sophomore. That was over four years ago. I had worn these shoes to Borders many a time without problem.

When the clerk suggested that it may be something about Victoria’s Secret underwear (I could not tell if she was joking), I decided to fight the impulse to explore further and just go through to the sound of alarms wailing and people laughing.

My next stop was at Banana Republic. I went in, just to add something to the package that I then overnighted to you, and the alarm went off. I raised my hands and said – shoot me if you will, I appear to have a magnetic personality, or charged Victoria’s Secret panties (fyi, it’s the yellow pair, with bright oranges, so avoid them to be on the safe side).

They waved me through, I did my purchases and prepared to leave. All clerks were warned that the damsel who sets alarms off is about to exit and all should pay her no heed. So everyone stared as I exited.

No alarm sounded. At all.

I lost my magnetic personality somewhere amidst the racks of the Banana Republic store. But I remain a good, albeit demagnetized, friend.

So happy birthday to you!

From the ninny-of-the year.

Monday: it's Depravity or Corruption time!

I was muckin’ around with topics for a post-of-the-week the other day. I threw out some ideas of things I might write about were I to do this kind of regular feature. But I wasn’t serious. Still, several bloggers followed up and told me that if I did not do “Vice of the Week” here on Ocean, they would do it on their own blogs.

I hate it when the competitive spirit pushes me to do things I would not otherwise do. That may be a vice in itself. I could not swallow the idea that Vice would meander over to another blog. It had to happen here, on Ocean, or not happen at all.

This week-end I reviewed my vices of the past week. They were either terribly boring or terribly conventional. I do have to say there was a lot to choose from.

All got rejected. Blog feature was about to die.

But then, a teeny tiny vice crept into my day today and the Monday Vice (of the Week) feature was born.

Oh, it’s not exciting. I did not engage in sex to gain favors, I bribed no one (that I can recall at the moment), I did not torture small animals [though I repeatedly told Tonya to donate her pooch for science or, at the very least, send her out on a boat in the middle of the lake and see if she swims home (I meant Lake Michigan, not Mendota)].

But know that by definition, my vice does not have to be filled with pathological acts of cruelty and mental imbalance to qualify (though even there, my own mother could find enough fodder in my daily life to make this work – though that may be more a reflection of how she regards me than how I regard myself).

The online Webster’s says this about vice:

a : moral depravity or corruption : WICKEDNESS b : a moral fault or failing c : a habitual and usually trivial defect or shortcoming

So you see, a very small bitty little act could qualify. And I am going to start small. In fact, within one hour of waking up today, I had myself a vice. Here, see for yourself:

In the past weeks, I yet again have refused to pick up the mail from my mailbox on the theory that it looked boring. And when I did retrieve it, I shoved it in an obscure spot (under the bed perhaps?) and promptly forgot about it.

So that when I picked up the phone this morning to find out if an email message in my Inbox was spam or for real, I found that my newly established phone service at the loft had been shut off for nonpayment of the very first bill (that apparently came some 30 days ago).

(Personally, I think they should have sent at least one warning and allowed me to redeem myself, but hey, I am not the CFO of SBC and so I cannot tell them how to run their business.)

What is pathetic and vicey about all this is that it was my very first bill in my “new life” at the loft and I fucked up (oh, sorry, I guess we have ourselves vice number two, all in the same day! How sweet!) right from the start.

Bet you can’t top that.

P.S. The phone service is up and running. To compensate, I sent them a check and then, full of shame and remorse, called and gave them my credit card number. In effect, I paid twice, but hell, who cares. I needed to feel like a whole person again.

rhymes with cupid

A helpful reader gives tips about hooking up my DVD cables. I follow his instructions. No picture. A Madison blogger comes over and looks at the cables, gives a twist here and there but changes nothing. He turns on the DVD, puts in a disc, presses this button and that and voila. We have a picture.

How stupid of me to struggle for so long with cables. How doubly stupid to fail then at pushing the right buttons.

The only noble thing to do after the embarrassment of being a moron is to head over to El Dorado on Willie Street and close the place down.

Finished

Done. Totally done. Unpacked at the loft. Last box made it to the recycling bin. I am now completely moved in.

The first act of celebration? A ride on Mr. B to the Indie Café, where I encounter students, the more serious ones, congregating early Sunday evening to get their assignments in order. Me, I am done, finished, exhausted. No one will force me to crack anything tonight that would require effort, textbooks included.

A latte, leisurely sipped, nothing more. Done. Yes.

sushi, sex and chocolate

In the movie the 40 year old virgin, the protagonist flashes back to unsuccessful attempts at sex in his younger years. Circumstances (or, as Althouse argues here, powerful religious conviction) cause him to remain a virgin at 40.

It reminded me of Tonya, Ann and I setting out to see a show together. Our attempts were foiled by fate each time. The most dramatic illustration of this was when Ann decided to have a full blown collision, totaling her car on the way to a showing of Sideways last January.

Were we destined to never sit in a theater together? To demonstrate to each other who laughed the loudest? (Ann claimed earlier that she was a “laugh leader” in movie theaters. Ha. I say ha to that.)

Yesterday we made yet another attempt to join forces with the multiplex crowds of suburban Madison.

At first it did not look promising. One person picked a showtime at a theater on the far South side. Another argued that the crowds were likely to be more with-it on the West side of town. To which someone responded that we may as well fly to another city, as the crowds in Madison tend to be dead, regardless of which side of the compass you find them at.

That seemed extreme. We stayed in staid Madison.

Still, it was not a straight-shot to the comfort of plush chairs. When we arrived at the specified time, not a minute late thanks to the expert driving of the Person With the Leased From a Friend Car, it appeared that the show had started a good half hour earlier.

Did we give up? No!

When all is failing and you think fate is slapping you down once again, you, of course, go have sushi. It’s seductive, it’s sensual, it’ll set you in a giddy mood. (It was also close by.)











Our waiter, far from 40 and I’ll bet anything himself not a virgin, sings high praises for the movie. That’s a good sign. I wish he were in the theater raising the mirth levels to above tepid.

We make it to the theater. I manage to bring in a Godiva chocolate bar and a latte. How can you watch a movie about the pursuit of sex without filling your mouth with the creaminess of a solid piece of chocolate?

Maybe it was the chocolate that did it. Certainly it was not the tentative crowd. I haven’t laughed so hard in a movie in along time.

Mostly though, as for the Virgin in the movie, the spell of foiled attempts and no-shows for us was broken. Already, seconds ago, Ann sent this email: We should see "The Aristocrats" (recommended by our waiter).

Hooking up

Blast it. All my life I have wanted to do it right. I have hated it in the past, when signals have been mixed, or when you just didn’t feel you’re connecting.

Maybe I am too blunt here on Ocean. Maybe. Few bloggers would openly admit to these embarrassing failures. But when I get discouraged I turn to my blog and last night, indeed, my hooking up fell short of expectations.

There had been an earlier attempt, quickly aborted for lack of time. But last night was different. The light was right, my mood was primed for it. So what happened?

I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. I just don’t know.

UPDATE: This morning I figured it out. In situations like this, you need to find some young dudes who know about these things and can give you a few pointers. So I went to Best Buy and asked the guys there what I had been doing wrong. I showed them a sketch of my failed efforts and they set me straight. It’s the positioning that matters.

UPDATE 2: I’ll include a sketch of what I believed ought to have worked (broken lines), as well as what I should have been doing (straight lines, drawn by the BB guys). I don’t know why the instructions in the TV and DVD boxes don’t make it easier on you, I really don’t.

a return to Ninaland

Suddenly, for the first time in months and months, I have time. Oh, just don’t engage me on the topic of work projects I am behind in. Irrelevant. At the end of the day, I come back to having time.

Time to look for the deserted, neglected Mr. B. [Hey buddy, I have a present for you; I bought it in NY in this cool store on Spring Street; get a load of the colors! it’s from Ocean and me. I get a deflated response – as if much of the air had left him due to more than a month of neglect. I note that he's turned greasy, so that when I rub against him, as inevitably I am wont to do, it totally dirties my pants. Ah well, I was prepared for this – there’s some make-up groveling I have to do here. I take him out of his cramped quarters and we go for a spin together at the end of which, I finally introduce him to the loft.]


a bell for Mr. B


Time for a latte with a pal. (When did I stop those? Okay, I did not stop those, but I felt guilty during each and every one this past month.)

Time to swing by and visit Mai. [Hey there, another pair of pants to tuck and trim! You look well? Better. I have everything ready for you. Nina, would you help me make a video about sewing? Oh Jesus, I have no special talent for that! A photo, I can take a photo. Here, see how well you look! Wait, please, I have to comb my hair! Mai is dressed spiffily again. It’s Friday. Where will she go after she puts in the last tuck this evening? Whom will she meet up with? She is from Vietnam. Is he from Vietnam? I’ll find someone who can help you with the video…]




Time to go to Borders and look at books. Time. When I was 10 or 11 I read a book that I loved to pieces (I wont mention the title because it has since been shamelessly turned into a movie, so totally inadequate that it has ruined all my best memories of the original text, which was lovely, really lovely). It is about an efficiency expert who, in the 1930s, basically created ways to cut back the number of seconds it took to do, well, any number of things. Toward the end of the book he dies of a heart attack and it’s all totally sad (except for the fact that his kids then went on to write this book about him). But I have always for some oddball reason, remembered the last line of the book. It goes like this (and I am certain that I am not off, not even by a word):

(so, his friend asks him at some point) But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?” And he answers “for work, if you love that best. For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure. For mumbelty-peg, if that’s where your heart lies.”

I had my share of mumblety-peg today without tossing any knives into the air.

At what point do you think your speaking patterns should take a spin through the laundry cycle?

Yesterday, a friend who is more or less my age wrote this to me (and a bunch of her other friends):

I know I am swearing more. I enjoy it, but are there other and perhaps darker reasons why I find myself swearing more?

Jeepers. That’s scary. Imagine sliding into an abyss of routine cursing, where four letter words are something you find yourself reaching for in even the most innocent of times. Holy moly, I hope this never happens to me!

I mean, gosh, swearing is so undignified. If you insert the “s” word with any regularity, it does sound like, at some level, you are preoccupied with your bowels. The substitute – c*** can’t be any better.

My friend found herself calling forth in a public setting (among law profs no less) a part of the anatomy that oftentimes receives prominent coverage in skuzzy magazines. The people were rightly shocked. Goodness gracious, wouldn’t you be offended if someone asked about slanginess of the word **nt?

I was forced, nonetheless, to send a reply to her. She is a friend after all, living in a distant state, asking us, Midwesterners, with strong values and good manners, to comment on her increasing ventures into those parts of the dictionary leafed through mostly by adolescent boys.

I am honest. I had to admit it. Though I’m not one who likes the mention of poop in every sentence (blog or otherwise), recently I found myself in an argument with a friend where every other word seemed to deal less with the subject matter of our dispute and more with an act of copulation. It was more spirited that way! You can’t make a point by shouting “you are so gosh darn weird.” Gosh darn doesn’t have the same dramatic impact value as, well, its dirtier cousin.

The NYTimes got it right a couple of days ago (Science section, here) when it highlighted our longstanding committment to linguistic vulgarity. It causes people to stop and listen. Desparate types may need to resort to it more, but even us here on the sidelines, we need to fucking wake you up every once in a while. Life doesn't have a bold key to grab your attention and make your heart race.