The 39 Lashes

So, I had a bit of what turned out to be a mental health scare a few weeks ago.

First though, a confession: I had been struggling with cigarette smoking, and had been indulging in them at work (this is the "lashes" part of the entry). I was fully conscious of the health risks that came along with my inability to remain nicotine-free, but this was an addiction that I just couldn't seem to quit. Finally, my shame at what I was doing, the fact that I had to keep it a secret and the thought that, were I to shuffle off the mortal coil at this point I'd be leaving behind both MLW and the mini-BG was enough to strengthen my resolve. So, I decided that enough was enough and went cold turkey.

Some days later, I started feeling like I had a lump of mucus in my throat. Nothing that interfered with eating or was anything other than an annoyance, but when it persisted for a few days, I began to think it might be serious. Then I started to obsess about it. What if it was something serious? What if I was developing thyroid cancer? Or, even better, esophogeal cancer? I was so focused on it that I had trouble sleeping. Eventually, I stumbled across a definition for Globus, which fit what I was feeling exactly. So I relaxed a bit.

A few nights later, I woke up around 3 o'clock in the morning with a slight pain in my chest and some tingling in my left arm. Since I generally sleep on that side, I thought it was possible that I'd simply cut off circulation to my arm. But I was also thinking of my step-father, who had heart problems last fall. So after about a half hour of waiting, I woke up MLW and told her that I was taking myself to the hospital.

In case anyone was wondering, waiting in an emergency room still sucks. There were only about four people there when I showed up, and I may have been the only one who wasn't under the influence of some substance or other. Yet I still had to sit there for a good half an hour to forty-five minutes. I should have realized that this was a sign in and of itself: if I were really having a heart attack, I probably would have been taken right away. At least, I hope that would have been the case.

So some three and a half hours and an EKG, blood test and X-ray later, the doc on duty said that it didn't look like I was having any heart difficulty. And although he recommended that I check myself in for observation, I went home. I tried to sleep, but I was still very anxious. I called our family doctor as soon as their office opened and scheduled an appointment for that afternoon.

Our doc listened to my tale, ordered another EKG (still negative) and another blood test. He also wrote a prescription for me to get a stress test at the local hospital (who knew you had to get a prescription for a test?) and, when I told him about my throat, an upper gastrointestinal workup. I also told him that I thought that anxiety could possibly be contributing to my symptoms. He asked if I wanted anti-anxiety medication, but I told him that I was so exhausted that I didn't think I would have any problems sleeping.

It didn't take me long to call and tell him I had changed my mind.

I was able to schedule my upper GI before the stress test, and it came back clean. So, no esophageal cancer. However, the test had revealed something in one of my kidneys. At this point, I was pretty sure my ticker was in fine shape, and I ended up canceling the stress test. And I stopped obsessing about my esophagus. But now I started to worry about my kidney. Once again I was looking up symptoms on WebMD, finding out the warning signs for kidney cancer, its different stages, survival statistics and the like. I also called my doc's office for another appointment, this time for another blood test to check my creatinine levels and a urinalysis to check for blood.

Long story short, everything came back normal. What I'd not seen or heard (or possibly not wanted to see or hear in my anxiety-ruled state) was that the doctor who performed the upper GI had already made a preliminary diagnosis: renal calculus. Or, as it's more commonly known, kidney stones.

So there's nothing physically wrong with me, although I may be in one hell of a lot of pain in the next few months.

In addition to resolving to finally do something about my weight, something that I've put off doing consistently for a few years now, I've been thinking about what caused me to drop into this spiral of the worst-case scenario. Why did I immediately convince myself that I was likely in serious trouble? And, as MLW pointed out, how the hell am I going to cope when I do have a serious illness? I've got a (cute as all get-out) 3-year-old that needs me to be around and needs me to be able to keep my shiznit together.

That's kind of where I'm at right now. I'm trying to eat a bit more healthy (or at least not quite so crappily) and exercise a bit more regularly. It ain't easy, though; my body isn't terribly thrilled about giving up fatty red meat in favor of rowing my way to a slimmer me. But I've got 20 pounds to lose, and it's not going to get up and move out on it's own.

One last note of interest: my brain was actually able to manifest symptoms for whatever ailment I thought I might be suffering. When I was worried about heart trouble, my chest hurt; when I thought I might have kidney trouble, my sides hurt. When I knew there was nothing wrong with me, my pains just miraculously went away.

Oh, and in case you're wondering about the other part of this entry's title, I'm currently 39.

My next bit will be somewhat more humorous and will contain dick jokes.

The Midnight Trail

Another concert remembrance from 20 years ago, this time regarding everyone's favorite German electronic act.

Tangerine Dream
September 7, 1988, at Radio City Music Hall.

Going away to college greatly expanded the boundaries of my musical taste beyond the steady diet of rock & roll I'd grown up on in the suburbs. I was already a fan of the world of music, but I had no idea just how expansive that world was until I began bumping up against people whose tastes were distinctly different from my own. It was at college that I really began to delve into jazz, rap, folk, punk, and--most significantly--electronica and ambient. My entrance into these last two categories, which now dominate my musical preferences above all the others, is due solely to my exposure to Tangerine Dream.

I can still remember the pivotal event in late 1986/early 1987 that set me down the path. My friend John and I were in the basement of the dormitory, playing a game of some sort, waiting for our laundry. John had brought down his portable cassette player. John was a big fan of instrumental music, and had even made his own mixed tape of non-vocal bits from such acts as Van Halen and Prince. His girlfriend back home, who knew that he liked that sort of stuff, had recorded Phaedra on one side of a cassette and Tangram on the other, and that's what we were listening to.

As the cassette played, I became more and more fascinated with what I was hearing. I had not heard anything like it in the entirety of my young life, and the more I heard, the greater my interest became. Over the course of the next few months, I raided the local records shops for as many cut-out albums as I could find, and managed to pick up the vast majority of their catalog.

I remember that Tyger was the first album of theirs I bought upon its release--on CD, no less! While devouring the liner notes of the album as I listened to it for the first time (a mixed bag, by the way, on account of the vocals), I noticed an address for an international fan club. One membership fee later, I was fan #320 in the band's first official club in its history. In the days before the instant availability of the 'net, the occasional fan club newsletters were an informational lifeline. It was through that vehicle that I learned about the the band's next two albums (Live Miles and Optical Race), and that there would be a US tour behind the latter! Bliss!

The membership also paid dividends in other ways. A couple days before the show, I get a call up in my room that there's a visitor waiting for me in the lobby of my dorm. Confused, I go down to find a guy who had travelled to NYC from the Netherlands (IIRC) to see the show, had kept my address from the club listing, and wanted to know if I wanted to grab a beer? Wacky. While we were at the bar, he made me a proposition: he was going to be taping the show, so if I bought him a couple brews he'd send me a copy. Done...and done. Over those drinks, I got to hear some of the history of the band from someone whose knowledge far surpassed my own, got some info on past members whose music was worth checking out, and got just a taste of how dedicated some TD fans could be.

What am I forgetting? Oh yeah, the concert!

By the late 80s, TD had largely forgone the long improvisations that had made their 70s concerts legendary. I neither knew this (their boots were pretty tough to come by at that point) nor do I think I would have cared all that much had I known. They played a fair amount of material that hadn't yet been released along with plenty of their recent material and a smattering of "classics" that had been somewhat retooled (little did I know what a thing that would become). We had pretty decent seats, and by the time the encores came around, we hopscotched far enough up that we were within 20 rows of the stage. An absolute blast. Of course, I bought a t-shirt.

The only bummer was the after concert. As a fan club member, I was supposedly going to be able to get backstage. Due to some snafu, this didn't happen. You can be sure that I contacted the club, like only a 20-year-old who feels slighted can do. I'm sure I'd be embarrassed were I able to see it now.

And that gent from the Netherlands? He was as good as his word. A month or so after the show, I got a package with two cassettes inside. I probably still have them somewhere.

Half-awake in a Fake Empire

And now for the "rock" half of my top ten list, numbers 5 through 1.

#5: Ween - La Cucaracha. This was one of those albums where a single song ensured it a spot on the list. In this case it was the epic "Woman and Man," which includes a brain-melting guitar solo that goes on for somewhere in the neighborhood of half of the song's 10-minute running time. Pure wankery genius.


#4: Arcade Fire - Neon Bible. I placed Arcade Fire's debut album in my top ten when it came out, and in retrospect I think I may have fallen a bit hard for the band's hype. This album is substantially better--it feels just as anthemic, but more focused and, if I do say so, a bit Springsteenian.


#3: M.I.A. - Kala. Another second album that runs contrary to the idea of the sophmore slump. Production is noticably improved from her debut, and the number of musical references has increased exponentionally. "Paper Planes" was built on The Clash's "Straight to Hell," referenced Wrecks 'n' Effect's "Rump Shaker" and used gunshots and a cash register to punctuate a ditty written in the persona of the most horrible immigrant imaginable. Probably my single of the year.

#2: Radiohead - In Rainbows. Does anything else need to be said about this album at this point?






#1: The National - Boxer. This has to be one of the most under-appreciated albums ever to appear on about a bazillion top ten lists. It's #10 on the Village Voice list, yet not one word is wasted on it. Over at Idolator, the person responsible for commenting on the lists (sort of like the Christgau of the Village Voice, if Christgau was actually still at the Voice) noted that he would have preferred actual wallpaper to the album. This for something that came in at #7.

Why the indifference? My guess is that it's because of the fact that it's an album that you actually need to pay attention to in order to appreciate it. Unlike most of the other stuff that comprised top ten lists the world over (and the albums listed directly above this one), Boxer does not kick you in the genitals and demand you listen. Instead, it's all about subtlety: complex rhythms that don't announce themselves, an intentionally diminished dynamic range, and a singer who sounds like a random mutation from the genetic material of Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave.

There are also lyrical nuggets liberally spread all over the place. Taking a page from my buddy-in-blogging, I'll note that The National were also responsible for my lyric of the year, from the song "Mistaken for Strangers:"

You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
As you pass in the night under the silvery Citibank lights
Arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
Oh you wouldn't want an angel watching over?
Surprise, surprise, they wouldn't wanna watch
Another un-innocent, elegant fall into the un-magnificent life of adults

It's most definitely a grower, and the more I listened to it, the more I liked it. Obviously, it isn't for everyone.

And there are absolutely no gunshots.

Intension and Objective

I know both of you out there have been waiting since the calendar flipped over to aught-eight for my list of the top ten albums from last year, and I hate to disappoint.

This time around, I went about my list making a bit differently. Instead of a hodge-podge of musical genres touching each other and potentially mixing together (can't have that!), I broke down my list into two discrete halves: ambient and...non-ambient.

Admittedly, this was done partially for the novelty of being able to do it. But there was also a pretty small pool of 2007 albums to choose from in House Beach Ghost, and considering the fact that ambient makes up a significant portion of my musical purchases, the ratio of ambient:everything else in my list is pretty indicative of my genre preferences.

In any event, here's the ambient half. It probably doesn't need to be said, but none of the albums listed below would be eligible for the hardcore seal of approval.

#10: Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue - 2350 Broadway 4







#9: Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd - After the Night Falls / Before the Day Breaks. Released separately, but I'm counting them as one entry since they're thematically linked. BTW, a Bronx cheer to Darla Records for not only releasing these as separate CDs, but for also stating in their marketing copy that these two albums "...are not ambient." Yeah, actually, they are.

#8: Steve Roach - Arc of Passion.








#7: Stars of the Lid - And Their Refinement of the Decline.







#6: Patrick O'Hearn - Glaciation.

Riddle Song

If you've ever seen the movie Animal House (and good lord, is there anyone under the age of 5 who hasn't?), you're probably familiar with the iconic scene where some earnest folkie is serenading some ladies on the steps of the Delta House during the toga party, when Bluto takes his guitar from his hands, smashes it to bits, then hands the remnants back to the stunned folkie with a demure "sorry."

I had always assumed, based on the few lines that actually appear in the movie, that the song had been made up by the film's writers. So imagine my surprise when, while listening to yet another one of the mini-BG's CDs, I hear those familiar words and discover, to my horror, that the pain doesn't end there. Here are the lyrics in their entirety:

I gave my love a cherry that had no stone
I gave my love a chicken that had no bone
I gave my love a story that had no end
I gave my love a baby with no crying

How can there be a cherry that has no stone?
How can there be a chicken that has no bone?
How can there be a story that has no end?
How can there be a baby with no crying?

A cherry when it's blooming it has no stone
A chicken in the shell it has no bone
The story of how I love you it has no end
A baby when it's sleeping it's not crying

So the first question that immediately popped into my head was "Why in the world would anyone want to sing this song?" I mean, those lyrics are so insipid they make Vanilla Ice sound like Mark Eitzel in comparison.

Coming rapidly on the heels of that thought, however, was this one: Even if it were possible that the song was performed by oh-so-serious young men and women in an attempt to woo whoever the hell it was they were desperately aching to boink back in the day, how can you now, 30 years after Animal House was released, perform that song in anything other than an ironic fashion?

My first, and prevaling, theory is that these folks have absolutely no idea that the song has been reduced to a half-minute joke and there's nothing ironic about their performance whatsoever. They are those earnest folkies from back in the 60s (or their descendants), and they really, truly believe in the beauty of this particular tripe.

My second, tin-foil-hat theory is that they're trying to re-introduce the song by targeting today's toddlers in the hopes that some day, maybe 20 years hence, a new breed of earnest folkies will once again woo their potential one-night-stands with those timeless words. (As they cruise on their hoverboards, wearing the latest temporary-tattoo clothing and fighting off zombies with their gravitron phasers).

One thing I do know: if I hear the beach ghostlette start cooing those lyrics while strumming on an acoustic (or plucking her recently acquired mbira--and no, I'm not kidding), I'm going to laugh at her. I've already set aside some spare cash to pay for the therapy.

Everything Falls Apart

A brief consumer report for those of you who prefer to get their sneakers on the cheap: stay away from Target's Pro Spirit brand.

I love sneakers. They're my default footwear except when I'm at work, when it's too hot or it's snowing. However, I hate trying on shoes, since there's generally some size variation between manufacturers. So when I find a brand, I tend to stick to it. Ten years ago or so it was Reebok, but nowadays I'm pretty much a New Balance guy. This is due in no small part to the fact that they have a factory store in Brookline, Mass, where I happen to have family. So every time we're in Beantown, I make a point to go the store, pick up a few pairs of sneaks at a considerable discount, and I'm generally good for a couple years.

Last year, my last pair of NBs got tossed after the Great Crapalanche of '07 (which I don't believe I've blogged about--feel free to thank me). This was not something that I could live with for long, lest I start wearing out dress shoes walking to and from work. The mini-BG and I were truckin' through Target, probably on a wipe-related errand, when I wandered into the shoe section. And there they were...bargain sneakers. And they had pairs for less than $20! Score! So, I tried on a few pairs and found one that fit well. What I didn't know was that, in this case, cheap was synonymous with disposable.

Around two weeks after buying the sneakers, I was lacing up when the laces on one shoe ripped through the eyelets. Some emergency repair work kept them usable, but it was just a harbinger of the what was to come.

Shortly after the eyelets ripped, the heel on the other shoe began to collapse, which turned out to be because the heel support was comprised of a lattice of cardboard. Then, the pieces of clear plastic embedded in the heels (whose purpose was, evidently, purely decorative) began popping out. And then the top and sole of the sneakers began to separate. That was enough. The next time the family went out shopping, I cracked open the wallet and spent the dosh on a decent pair of New Balance sneakers. Over a month later, and they're holding up well, thank you very much.

By the way, if any of you want an alternative to simply throwing out your old sneaks, they can be recycled. If your town doesn't offer special household waste recycling days, Nike has a program where you can drop them off at one of their stores and even mail them in. So don't just throw 'em out!

Tunnel of Love

More words for your enjoyment repurposed from Rate Your Music. This time, I reminisce about a couple of concerts I attended almost 20 years ago. Enjoy!

Bruce Springsteen
May 16 & 19, 1988, at Madison Square Garden.

These two shows are without a doubt the most radically different, from a purely experiential perspective, that I've ever attended. But first, a digression...

Even though I was raised in Jersey, I had somehow managed to completely miss out on the vast majority of Bruce's catalog up until the year 1984. Back then, it was impossible to be a school-age teen in the Garden State and not know who The Boss was--if your peers weren't listening to him, chances were good that he'd be featured in the local media at some point. I remember our local rag covering the opening of the Continental Airlines Arena, which was a pretty big deal at the time. Bruce, of course, was the first artist to perform there (he was supporting The River at the time).

My ignorance of all things Bruce ended one summer when I accompanied my family to a company picnic. It was a pretty large affair (or perhaps I'm remembering it as such) in a field in New Brunswick. All of the teens who attended were given their choice of a free cassette: Thriller, Born in the U.S.A. and some other Columbia artist. I hadn't yet (grudgingly) accepted MJ's musical genius, so I went with the Boss. It didn't take me long to get drawn in to the music, and I soon became a convert. Later, I would actually start paying attention to what Bruce was singing, and my interest in him as an artist would grow exponentially.

So, of course, I subsequently miss what is probably one of the most storied concert tours of the 80s (at least from a Jersey standpoint), when Bruce played stadiums for the next year (two years?). Born in the U.S.A. tour t-shirts were ubiquitous at my high school. For some reason, I didn't go. Maybe I wasn't a full-blown fan at that point, maybe I couldn't get tickets, maybe I just decided it wasn't something I needed to see. Obviously, this was a mistake that I would have to rectify at my earliest opportunity.

That opportunity didn't arrive until I was at college. Bruce was supporting his Tunnel of Love album, and was scheduled for a stand at Madison Square Garden. Now, this was a time before some of you whipper-snappers might remember, where if you wanted to buy a ticket you had to pick up a telephone or perhaps even present yourself at a physical location that specialized in the sale of tickets! None of this clickety-clickety-purchase nonsense! So there I was, the morning tickets went on sale, dialing and dialing and dialing (back in the Dark Ages, there was also no such thing as automatic redialing; if you wanted to retry the number, you pressed every single one of the digits again) and getting nothing but a busy tone. By the time I finally got through (if I even did) the entire run had sold out.

Well, I thought to myself, fuck that; there was no way that I wasn't getting a ticket. Luckily, there were alternate means of procuring them: I simply located a copy of the local phone book and found the number of a "ticket reseller." And procure I did, to the tune of around $100. To put that number into perspective, the face price of the ticket was $22.50, so I paid more than four times what the ticket was worth.

Now, you'll recall that this was in the dark ages before the Internet, so the only way you could tell where you'd be sitting was to look at a seating chart in the same phone books that you used to buy your illegally marked-up tickets (coincidence?) and approximate. Unless you were really familiar with the venue, you'd not be able to match your row number to your actual position.

I think you may be able to guess where this is headed: the seat was terrible. Literally at the very side of the stage and all the way up, positioned precisely so the majority of the speakers were facing elsewhere. Most of the show I got to see the side of Bruce's head as he addressed the audience in front of him. But for the most part, it didn't matter. I was thrilled to be there, even if I didn't have the level of familiarity with his work that I would in later years and wasn't able to readily identify what was being played.

I find out soon after that I was not the only Springsteen fan at my college. Turns out, the girlfriend of one of my buddies was an absolute Boss freak and when she found out when tickets when on sale she got on line, got a wristband and was one of the first ten people to get tickets. Good for her, right? No, good for me, 'cuz they had an extra ticket that they'd be willing to sell. My first question, thinking about how much I'd just blown on my other ticket, was "How much?" Ticket price, I was informed. And where were the seats? Eighth row.

I think you can guess what my answer was. Needless to say, it was one hell of a more enjoyable concert than my first experience. Musically, I believe it wasn't all too different than the one I'd seen a few days prior, but it sure as hell sounded better, and it was nice to be able to see the faces of the people performing the music. In fact, I'm relatively sure that Nils Lofgren pointed at me and asked (by way of pointing at his instrument and then at this ear) if his guitar was sufficiently audible.

I told him to turn it up.

Get Ready to Wiggle

I'm not quite certain how I managed to pull this off, but I somehow managed to avoid contracting the flu that had afflicted MLW and the mini-BG. After my last post, our nanny also came down with the bug, so it's not like it wasn't contagious. I did have some persistent indigestion in the form of gas for a couple days, but that was the extent of anything untoward.

Mind you, me being the only person in the household not coming down with an illness never happens. MLW has an immune system like a...like a...well, something both healthy and sexy. So I'm counting myself extremely lucky.

In other news on the family front, the beach ghostlette has been going through an interesting stage the past few days of requesting that I adopt the persona of "Daddy Wiggle." This despite the fact that she really doesn't watch the Wiggles much anymore (although she did ask if she could see them in person this week). So in order to adopt this persona, all I have to do is attempt an Australian accent (which, while pretty bad to begin with, usually slips into an even worse attempts at Cockney) throw in the occasional "beauty, mate," and add the word "wiggle" to pretty much every noun in existence: wiggle toddler, wiggle cat, wiggle bet, and so on, ad infinitum.

What's particularly interesting about this phenomenon is that she's being much more reasonable about everyday requests when Daddy Wiggle makes them. Usually, dinnertime is a series of unending (and increasingly forceful) reminders about eating the food in her bowl. However, Daddy Wiggle only needs make these requests once.

So, the way I figure it, this is because she either:

--Likes the Wiggles
--Likes Australians
--Prefers Daddy Wiggle to my actual personality
--Wants to make certain her father keeps his role-playing chops up to par
--Is preparing for her own entry into the gaming world

Alternate theories being accepted in the comments.

The Sword of Damocles is Hanging Over My Head

The new year has not gotten off to a healthy start here in house beach ghost. Both the mini-BG and I came down with head colds immediately after Christmas, and I'm still somewhat congested a couple weeks later (by the way, there's nothing quite like waking up in the morning and coughing up a semi-hard lump of dark green phlegm. Yum!).

Then, the mini-BG woke up around 2 in the morning on Sunday night/Monday morning complaining that she was not feeling well. After injesting about .01ml of Children's Tylenol, she began vomiting, a process that she would repeat throughout the night at approximately every hour and a half. MLW began feeling nauseated yesterday morning, and felt so bad by the time she got home that she went directly to bed and has barely left it since. The beach ghostlette is still not 100%, but after a day of eating very little and drinking her own weight in fluids, she's probably over the worst part. Hopefully MLW will also be improved by the time I get home.

But I have a hunch that I'm going to be spending some quality time with the plumbing by the time the week is out. I'll let you all know what color things turn out.

And to All a Good Night

We interrupt the frequent publishing schedule of this blog to bring you the Christmas holiday.

Happy holidays all!

One for the Books

With our nanny enjoying a two-week vacation and MLW away on business, this turned out to be a historic week. Since I had precious little vacation time remaining, I needed to juggle daytime care for the beach ghostlette, and this was accomplished via assistance from a vast number of family members.

However, this past Friday I had to do something that neither MLW or I had ever had to do before--put the beach ghostlette in day care. So what, right? Well, the little one is now 3, and has never had the day care experience before. More importantly, neither have her parents.

So, I leave the house with the toddler (late, of course) and walk down to the waterfront where the center is. We get in and there are three women and about four kids who are already there. We had been telling the little one that she was going to "pre pre-school," so her initial reaction we entered was to walk around and take a look at everything. Although she appeared a bit tentative, her expression seemed to indicate that "hey, this ain't so bad."

I stayed with her for about 10 minutes, getting all her stuff put away, leaving instructions for the aides, helping the little one use the toilet, what have you. Just before I left I gave some dried cranberries and waved goodbye, watching as she sat at the table and munched on her snack. I realized I had forgotten my bag about a minute later (paging Dr. Freud), but when I looked at her again she was still chewing away, looking as if she hadn't yet decided whether this was all a good or bad thing. I could have watched her for another hour, but I was already late for work, and I knew me standing there wasn't going to helpful.

My mother-in-law picked her up shortly after noon and reported that the mini-BG had been on her best behavior and had enjoyed herself immensely. I'd not really doubted it, since she has already been establishing her independence.

But I've got to admit, that somewhere deep, deep down--perhaps only a little bit--my heart was breaking.

Surfacing

Ding, dong, the New Beast is dead. Well, okay, not dead, but delivered. Under word count slightly, but on time. This project was without question the most difficult one I've ever undertaken. So much so, in fact, that I don't think I'll ever work on one like it again. I'd not realized at the start that the process would be quite so painstaking, and that having to remain stringently faithful to the setting on which the game was based would prove so difficult. But it was.

Truth be told, it would not have been possible to finish on time with a manuscript that was even vaguely coherent if it weren't for the willingness of MLW to make time for me to write. If I were to calculate an hourly rate for the work that I generated over the life of this particular project, I'd probably weep. MLW has always allowed me plenty of space to devote to this hobby, oftentime to the detriment of her work life and our home life. This time, I'm not proud to say I demanded more from her than was fair. And although I've said as much in private, I think a "public" statement is also in order: Thank you, honey--I'm sorry.

Almost two weeks after I sent in my piece of the puzzle, I still feel like I'm slowly emerging from the morass of the last few months. A gradual re-awakening, if you will, made more ironic presently because of the fact that I'm so, so tired.

Busy Prepositions

Hey, I remember you!

My apologies, dear blog, but much of my non-work life has been consumed by work on the New Beast, which is living up to its name. There's been plenty of topics I could blather on about within your nifty little interface, but precious little time to do them justice. Or, well, string together a few sentences in a random, occasionally coherent fashion, as is the usual style with my posts.

But I've not abandoned you entirely, dear blog. Just almost entirely. Forecast calls for a "return to normal" sometime in November.

Home at Last

MLW, the mini-BG and I spent Sunday at my mom and stepfather's (in a potty-training test of wills, but that's a post for another time) and then I stayed the night while the wife and child went back home.

After being transferred, the expectation was that my stepfather would be going under the knife early on Monday afternoon. When Monday morning rolled around, this time got pushed to later on Monday afternoon--and then he was pushed to Tuesday. Turns out an emergency case had come in, which had to take precedence. While completely understandable, the patient was getting a wee bit antsy. In a classy move, the hospital gave him and my mom a special dinner for two: surf 'n' turf. Unbelievably, some hospitals have recognized that their food service was, if you can imagine it, not quite yummy, and have even more incredibly decided to actually upgrade their culinary experience.

So Tuesday rolls around, he's dosed up on morphine and taken into surgery, while my mother, aunt, uncle and I get to...wait. And wait. And wait.

The operation was, from what the surgeon described, pretty much textbook. They needed to do four bypasses, but they had no issues harvesting the veins or attaching them. When we were brought in to see him, I pretty much knew what to expect, having had to watch the mini-BG go through it. He actually looked better than she did, partly because he was almost completely covered by blankets. He was intubated, and had a number of IV leads and a tube in his chest to drain fluid, but he looked pretty darn good, all things considered. The nurses still had some work to do on him, so we left the hospital and I went home. When I got there, it felt like I had been away forever.

Yesterday, he regained consciousness and they removed some of the leads and tubes, including the one down his throat. He was, as we expected, cranky as hell, and stated flat out that he wanted no visitors for the next day or so in order to get more sleep. He has stated his intention to be home by Saturday--more power to him.

The kicker to this entire experience was the fact that my stepdad had a pretty low risk factor for heart problems: his cholesterol was low and he had regular stress tests and EKGs. What he also had, as my mother discovered, was a family history of heart trouble. Had he not been smart and gone to the hospital when he first start having chest pains, the outcome of this ordeal would have been much worse.

Doctor Doctor, Gimme the News

So it's going to be bypass surgery. He's going to be moved to a nearby hospital known for their excellence in heart care and more than likely have the surgery Monday or Tuesday.

Went out for a visit last night and he was up and walking around. Now it's down to waiting once again.

I Wish I Wasn't Flesh & Blood / I Would Not Be Scared

I'm pretty certain that I must get my inability to disguise my emotional state from my mother, because I could tell something was wrong before she had even spoken 10 words on the phone.

Turns out, my stepfather had awoken early in the morning with chest pains. By the time she called, they had already been at the hospital for several hours. An initial stress test wasn't totally enlightening, but neither were the signs that encouraging.

As the day progressed, some of the holes were filled in. He'd not had a heart attack, but there was definitely an obstruction of some sort. Tomorrow morning he'll be undergoing a coronary angiogram to find out the precise extent of the blockage. Remediation could range from a stent to a full-blown bypass. Frankly, neither option enthralls me, but then again I'm sure he's not looking forward to it either.

I got to speak to him later in the day, and he seemed in fine spirits. My mother told me not to bother driving out, as there was not much to do but wait. But waiting is very, very difficult.

More when there's more to report.

Slow Show

So, a few weeks ago I began working on a new writing project, the exact nature of which, as with other projects I've mentioned here, I'll be keeping under wraps at present. I'll also continue to refer to the project as a beast (or more specifically, a Beast), but I think naming projects after Frankenstein movies is growing a little thin--or at least it seems that way, since I've not actually taken any time to look up any more names. Please feel free to list them in the comments!

After discarding a few options -- okay, after discarding one option (Beast 2.0, which seemed too Web-trendy) -- I've settled on The New Beast.

It's a bit marketing heavy, like I'd reformulated Coke or something -- okay, it's pretty much exactly like New Coke, isn't it? Perhaps I need to go back to the drawing board on this one.

In any case, The New Beast is a dream project for me in many respects, particularly since it's based on a property that I already enjoy immensely (and which will hopefully be getting a lot more exposure in a few years). However, it does present challenges that I've not had to deal with on past projects. Namely, the world in which I'm writing is already well-detailed, and I'm not really adding new material so much as collecting it from different places and presenting it thematically. It seems somewhat akin to taking pieces from different jigsaw puzzles and making a new picture from them. So there's a lot of research and precision involved, and combined with the fact that I'm a slow writer on the best of days has made this particular project particularly challenging.

Still, I'm making good progress thus far and I'm quite amped for this to see this publication. And while I had intended this post to convey a "yup, haven't really been updating the 'blog much, don't expect it to change and here's why" message, it would appear that I've alreday contradicted it.

Next: More about music!

East Side, West Side, Everybody's Coming Down

I can now report--with no small measure of pride--that the beach ghostlette is able to sing the entire first verse of "Meet the Mets."

Complaints from Yankees fans can be submitted in the comments field.

Waterfalls

So, a couple weeks ago I was interviewing people for a position at my company. As I was headed to the lobby I stopped at the bathroom so I could double-check that I was somewhat presentable (a challenge on most days).

I leaned over the sink to take make certain that there was no detritus hanging out of my beard...

...and promptly got water directly on the crotch of my pants. Khaki pants, naturally. Y'know, the kind that best displays water.

Now, I could have made the candidate wait a few extra minutes while I applied paper towels to my groin (which itself might have raised a few eyebrows), but I chose expediency over potential embarrassment. To her credit, the woman interviewing didn't mention it.

Trouble

My increasingly infrequent posts seem to be adopting a practically Seinfeldian tone of late ("Hey, d'ya ever notice..."). Eventually I'll be able to get back to full-on blather mode, but Work / Child / Other has dropped posting pretty far down on the list of things to do.

So, for now, another anecdote of bite-size length:

Last week, the mini-Beach Ghost was sitting in her high chair, playing contentedly with a few amorphous blobs of Play-Doh. Since I'd just gotten home, I was on my way upstairs to get into casual clothes. Here's the exchange that followed:

Me: "Daddy has to go upstairs to get changed. Do you want to come with me?"

Mini-BG: "No."

Me (two seconds later): "How 'bout now?"

Mini-BG (immediately): "How 'bout no?"

Yup, the wife and I are in for a world of hurt 10 years from now.