Welcome, 2013

You know what they say about New Year resolutions, right? They need to be specific, measurable, achievable and all that hoo-ha. And I’m working on them for my own life.

But I have…I guess it’s a wish, more than a resolution, and it involves the cooperation of a lot more folks out there.

What I’d like for 2013 is that I do not have to write one single post in response to some nutjob with automatic weapons who empties clip after clip into a church, school, mall, restaurant, office, university, movie theatre or any other public venue.

Work with me, people. We have to do better at this than we did last year.

2012: Whap!

Holy moly—it’s the end of the year! And here’s me unprepared thinking that the whole Mayan apocalypse thing would obviate having to do a round-up of 2012.

My bad!

Looking back on the year there are a few experiences that stand out in my mind:

That whole nightmare with my health insurance cutting me off (without mentioning it to me) five days before I had knee surgery shadowed the entire year, I’m afraid. I’m deeply grateful that people I didn’t know stepped up to the plate to help me out of a serious pickle. I learned a couple of things from that: make sure your check clears the bank. And there are government functionaries who will do their job and make a megalithic corporation back down. God bless ‘em.

I made a commitment to post to this blog five days per week, which turns out to be a considerable effort. You might not think it takes anything at all to come up with the drivel I share with you, but it does. Some days the nonsense just flows. Others I have to Google randomly for hours to find something that either amuses or outrages me enough to share it with you.

However, the House of Windsor can usually be counted on to supply me with something.

Developing back pain that, on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being “shoot me now”) was hovering at an 8, and being severely restricted by having the crappiest health insurance it’s possible to pay into, turned out to lead me to a Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner. Not only did Dr. Woo take me from the 8 to a 4 on that scale at my first visit, he introduced me to the benefits of acupuncture.

Woo was the first chiropractor I’ve ever seen who didn’t start out by taking a flock of X-rays and then schedule me for three appointments a week until my insurance benefits ran out. He felt my pulse and checked my tongue; told me to lay off sugar, drink more water and get out and walk for 60 minutes at least a couple of times a week; and he’s given me exercises to do to strengthen my core muscles.

Until about October, I was exploring the various trails around here several mornings a week. It was pretty painless exercise, actually, and it got me out and about.

Since seeing him and running out of early morning daylight, I finally broke down and joined a gym. Okay, I didn’t join it until December, but since doing so I’ve gone there on average five mornings a week (except while I was in Sedona), cranking out 60 minutes of cardio exercise per visit. I’ve lost about four pounds, which may seem insignificant and indeed is a drop in the bucket compared to what I need to lose, but is still something positive

But I think the biggest thing for me this year was deciding to produce at least the first draft of a novel. As of this weekend I rounded the corner on 95K words. What’s really amazing to me about this is how much better I feel about pretty much everything since I started working on this. I find it a lot easier to deal with moronic recruiters (of whom there is a massive surfeit in this world), ADHD executive directors and the other vicissitudes of the Silicon Valley.

As with the blog, some days the prose flows and some days I have to Google randomly for a long time to spark something. But I’m really glad I took it on.

As for rounding up 2012 in general—I’ll leave that to Dave Barry; he’s been at it a lot longer than I have.

I particularly liked learning about the Predator drones and Waziristan.

Seasonal excess

While we’re still within the confines of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I’m going to pass on a couple of bits of seasonal weirdness.

First up is a toting up of really, seriously tacky Nativity representations. It’s truly hard to choose the worst among them, at least for me. I’m thinking the meat, butter and Spam ones are certainly way up there on the crap-o-meter.

Although the one made up of junk food is also in contention.

A spin-off from this list is the depiction of the life of Christ in…Christmas lights. Up to and including the scourging on the way to Calvary.

Never underestimate the capacity and willingness of people to go to extremes of dreck during the holidays.

He was not a bullfrog

But he was totally a straight-shootin’ son-of-a-gun.

News tonight of the death at age 78 of General Norman Schwarzkopf. I’ll just leave you with one of his comments:

"Leadership is the potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy."

Running on empty

I spent a good chunk of yesterday getting home to the Silicon Valley from Sedona—from about 1030 to 1700, door to door. And of course I have a couple of observations on this process.

USAir has to be one of the saddest carriers still limping along, flying the most dilapidated aircraft that actually make it into the air. Their flight attendants do not inspire confidence when they can’t even read that flight safety announcement. (The one from Flagstaff to Phoenix seriously had the card in front of her face, and she still couldn’t get it right.)

The thing about spending the entire day on airplanes where they give you nothing to eat but a packet of pretzels is that, with only a couple of toaster waffles in you, you arrive home absolutely empty, but too tired to cook anything.

Thank God for TJ’s holiday-only “handmade” tamales that you can nuke for a couple of minutes.

Supper club in Sedona

I had an unusual Christmas Eve this year. My sister, whom I’m visiting in Sedona for the first time, arranged for us to go out to a “supper club” holiday dinner.

It’s sort of a mix between dinner theatre, a night club and the early-bird special. There was a four-course dinner and then a small, uh, entertainment group (singers, instrumentals and really, really bad patter). Evidently it was the first time this particular establishment has done this, and they hadn’t quite worked out the pre-show organizational bugs, but the food was actually quite good and the musicians were accomplished.

What they didn’t explain was that, in order to get more people into the venue, which isn’t that big, if you were a party of two, they sat you with another party of two. When we arrived at our table, we found that a (retired) couple from Seattle were already ensconced there and had eaten all the choice bits from the cheese platter.

This pot luck seating is one of the reasons I’ve never fancied taking a cruise. (The other one is that I am not what they call a good sailor and I’ve never seen the point in paying money to spend all my time hanging over the rail, if you catch my drift.) To be seated for five hours (less the 90 minutes of the two musical sets) with a prime example of the self-absorbed, self-satisfied inhabitants of the Emerald City was just plain mean.

In all the time I was there, the husband (John) asked me exactly one question about myself—where in the Bay Area I come from. That was just a foil for him to go off at great length about how he and the wife always go to San Francisco, “which is really comparable to Seattle, although it’s not as big”.

Oh, in his bleeding dreams.

The entertainers are obviously well-known to the audience—I expect that in a town the size of Sedona, people get to know the local performers. (The Seattleites assured me that there’s a massive music scene here.) Plus—the fans were clearly well-oiled.

It was actually an enjoyable experience once I got over the whole bad-PNW-fairy thing. Definitely an experience I would ordinarily not have touched with a barge pole. So, hurrah for the Christmas spirit.

Today I’m on my way back to the Bay Area, glad for the break, for seeing my sister and for trying something different.

Holiday flash, Part 6

For Christmas, I’m giving you one more “Hallelujah” flash mob. It’s the first one I ever heard of, put on by the Philadelphia Opera Company on behalf of Random Acts of Culture at the old Philadelphia Wanamaker’s (now Macy’s) store.

If I thought I could be engulfed by one of these flash mobs, I might be enticed into a Macy’s.

At any rate—I hope your Christmas is as surprisingly wonderful as any of the holiday flash mobs I’ve shared with you over the past week or so.

Tech connections

I’m visiting my sister in Sedona for Christmas. Flew out Saturday from Oakland, through Phoenix and then on to Flagstaff, which from the air appears to have expanded since the last time I was through there 30 years ago and rolled my car.

(Yes, that’s right. I did not spin out; I did a 360-degree roll. But that’s another story.)

I brought with me: my laptop, my Kindle Fire HD tablet (an early Christmas gift, with which I’m completely besotted), my smartphone, my Zune MP3 player, a Nikon 35mm DSLR and a Nikon POS camera.

Here’s the thing: because every blinking one of these things has a different connector at the device end for either power or to transfer files, I’ve had to bring with me six bleeding cables. My roll-on was a veritable snakepit of cords.

At least I can use the same cable for my pedometer and the DSLR.

Holiday flash, Part 5

To round off our holiday flash mob week, I’ll return to “Hallelujahs” at malls.

Here it is at a shopping centre in Weinheim, Germany. Auf Deutsch.

And here is my favorite (so far) rendition of it in a mall.

I love the way people pop up to join, and then melt away after it’s over. That is the most magical thing about flash mobs.

Holiday flash, Part 4

So far, the holiday flash mobs I’ve featured have been unsponsored. (Well, the LAX one might be quasi-official, but I didn’t see any ‘sponsored by’ indicators.) So here are a couple with corporate connections. Interestingly—they’re both from airlines.

This comes to us from a carrier I personally have never heard of. WestJet livened up things for late-night passengers at the airport in Calgary.

Now, I don’t know that it meets the criteria for organic flash mobs, inasmuch as participants in these phenomena are meant to appear suddenly, do their singing/dancing schtick and then melt back into the crowd. But it’s certainly stylish & entertaining. & the passengers on the red-eye headed to Toronto looked a lot happier than you’d ordinarily expect.

Plus—that whole Blue Santa thing: extra points for the style statement.

This one features flight attendants of Cathay Pacific strutting their stuff for charity. I’ve got to say that considering these men & women have an actual, you know, day job, they do remarkably well at pulling this off.

I like the woman pushing the service cart through the aisle of flight attendants, flinging packets of peanuts around. Plus—they totally get into it when the Macarena comes up, as it apparently usually does in an airport flash mob setting.