Geez, it got cold quickly! I just started wearing shoes (not sandals) last week. Fall came so early this year that I feel like I missed it. But I’m glad to have some winter. It started early in the Dale three years ago, but they the winter was warm and depressing. Maybe we’ll get some nice winter wonderland this time around in Charm City? I’d better get some better fenders for my bike! My storm windows are closed at home, and I actually wore my scarf at lunch yesterday at a nice cafe’.
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We have been watching scary movies, documentaries and “Treehouse of Horror” episodes out the yingyang. It’s awesome. I was reading some Poe, but I’m holding off on more of that until closer to the 200th birthday perhaps.
Well, as much as one can at a catered event when the speaker is nicely dressed and using multiple expensive technologies to express her wisdom. I know there are a lot of assumptions we all make (yes, you and I, too!) about poverty and about those living in it. But in talking about avoiding stereotypes and generalizations about class, we keep reminding ourselves that these generalizations are false. But then we use them and act like they are hard-and-fast. This happened repeatedly. And some of them really strike me as not only unreliable but also false.
For instance, in talking about humor, we were told that members of lower economic classes use it to defuse negative situations but that anyone in the middle class doing it might be seen as disrespectful. Pile this on top of the statement that “business” procedures and customs are based on middle class ways of thinking and doing, which we were also told. Unless I’m more of a dreamer than I thought, I can swear I have seldom seen middle class people show signs of feeling disrespected by people using humor to lighten the mood. And when I have, it seemed more of a personal issue than a class issue. Maybe humor is universal? Or, at least, class-less?
I don’t know where I’m going with this. It just makes me sad and makes me think about what I spend money on.
And thankful for my full belly tonight.
And you should see my office.
I toasted my recently passed-away Uncle Harry today at the Taste of Waverly. When he lived in Boston (while I was small), he would spend his vacation in Maryland with the family — to include playing in the pool and yard with the boys. He enjoyed a beer, some crabs, the cigarettes he used to smoke a long time ago and people he cared about nearby.
He was one of the sweetest people I have ever known.
He was a fan of Pabst. The smell of “regular” beer always makes me think of him. More so now.
[Taken with my new camera!]
I’ll be happier when I get a new camera to document the earliest autumn in recent memory though. But today, it’s raining, possibly storming later. My knee’s been bothering me, and I enjoy the bus. So I rode in that noisy beast’s belly today. Grabbed a coffee at work just now, crossing the street on cold sandaled feet and under the cheap black umbrella I bought at South Station in Boston eight weeks ago today. It reminds me of fall 2002, when I lived in Boston and when we had a spectacular fall. We went to Salem and celebrated Halloween like never before. Walden Pond on what might be the most beautiful fall day I have ever lived through.
It also reminds me that, this time five years ago, I was speeding (literally, doing like 90 mph because I was an idiot) toward Baltimore to get married. Regardless of how the wedding actually went (what, with certain family members who — admittedly — tried to ruin it because they didn’t like our style and our refusals of their suggestions), October 4th is my favorite day. And regardless of the stressful, infuriating, quick event our wedding was, October 4th was also the day that we got together, back in 1997.
So while people keep asking me how many years October 4th makes, I qualify my answer that it’s eleven for me. My wedding was not when I was committed. It was not even when I was publicly committed. It didn’t change how I feel about my wife at all. Nothing can.
And I was just in time. I am looking forward to my commute Wednesday and beyond, with this nice weather coming. I’ve been feeling like a sucker (but not a “light weight“) for having the ACs in lately, but it’s not like you just put them in a box and are done with it.
I’m ready. You can come out now.
I should be thankful. We had a relatively mild summer, especially at the end. And, really, as far as a hot week in early September goes, this isn’t so bad. But it felt like it yesterday afternoon, as I patched my second tube in three days in the afternoon sun, on the side of the road, after a crappy day.
Dang it, I don’t start my new job and move into my sweet new office until next month. Here’s a workspace from my dissertation, in the fall of 2006, which feels like last month.
My stomach is killing me, which is why I’m still up. I could go for some of that chai tea right now.
Photo Friday: The Office.
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