Light for the new year

Let’s start out 2016 with manifestations of light in morning glory. These were some of the last photos I took in the Valley They Call Silicon.

Dawn refracting against clouds in the West:

A rainbow as I went to breakfast with a friend on Christmas Eve:

And sunrise as it came to my final labyrinth walk on Christmas morning:

And rest...

It’s the last day of 2015, a year that completely wore me out.

Perhaps it’s A Sign that the battery on my pedometer died yesterday, while I was 35,000 feet above middle America, and that when I get the new one today, I reset it to Eastern Standard Time. Because in the next few days I have to figure out how to reset a lot of things in my life: recharge my physical, mental and emotional batteries; reorient myself to the Metro D.C. area; and recalibrate my thought patterns for the new job, which is different from anything I’ve done before.

Ordinarily I’d wrap up the year in a few hundred trenchant words, but to tell you the truth, I just don’t have the bandwidth for that today. I can’t wrap up the job search, the death of friends, the decision to walk off a metaphoric cliff or any of the rest of it. Instead, I’m getting a pedometer battery, and then I’m going to Wegman’s, just to look around.

After that—I don’t even know. I just know that I’m ready to ring out the year.

California, here I go

As of 0915 today (Lord willing and Virgin America for once taking off on time), I have ceased to be a resident of California. For two months I shall reside in the District They Call Columbia, within spitting distance of Congressmorons and other lowlifes, while I explore the area and decide where I’d like to live on a more permanent basis.

During this time I’ll be living out of suitcases and bin bags. For a couple of weeks, I’ll even be without a car, until mine catches up with me. That’ll make me feel terribly urban, I can tell you. And very un-Californian.

But I can use that time to find my way on foot around the city, get my feet under the desk (when my employers find me one), and generally reorient myself.

What a slice.

"We deliver for you"--NOT

More than two weeks ago I submitted the very-hard-to-get hardcopy Change of Address form to the USPS, setting 22 December as the date they should stop delivering mail to my old place and begin forwarding it to my new one in D.C.

I cleared out the mailbox on the 23^rd, and hoped that that was the end of it. But no—I went by on the 27^th to find five new pieces of mail addressed to me, which had been newly delivered after my cut-off date. Since I’m turning over the keys to the property management company today, I found this frustrating and enraging. They basically just blew off the CoA. So I had to go online and re-submit, in the tenuous hope that at least the computer system will spark some action—like, maybe, automatically pull my mail out of the delivery queue for redirection.

They make the hardcopy form hard to get (it’s not out on their counter with other forms; you have to ask one of their rude and charmless humanoid staff for it) because they clearly want you to go online to submit the change. An online form puts the data immediately into their database and saves them the labor costs of paying someone to translate the postcard details to their system. I get that.

But here’s their business model: they charge you for the privilege of saving them the work and possible data entry error. Yes—you make life easier for them, and save them a few bob, and they hit you up for $1.05.

But get this: they say they have to do this to you, for your security:

Where in the hell does that come from? How does charging you $1.05 have anything to do with security? It’s just another money-sucking scheme. (And I’m sure they hired consultants who arrived at that bizarre price point as the “sweet spot” where people would just fork it over without bitching.)

So, what I wonder is—if you don’t have Internet access, or a credit card—what are you meant to do? I guess you’re just not supposed to get mail. And if you do, you better not be moving, because you’re totally stuffed. They obviously toss out the official-but-non-revenue-generating postcard forms and do whatever they please.

Oh, but here’s the other thing: that unicorn CoA postcard doesn’t come as a single piece of paper any longer. It’s buried in a packet of “moving deals”—from Lowe’s, Best Buy and I don’t know what all. And the online form has the equivalent. Once you agree to let them suck $1.05 from your credit card, here’s the “confirmation” page:

Thanks, USPS, for being a crass, incompetent, lazy-ass organization with attitudinal staff and no discernable value proposition. Because people moving any distance really appreciate the way you put obstacles in their path and add stress to their lives. You continue to set standards for underperformance and don’t-give-a-damn customer service right here in the 21^st Century.

Gratitude Monday: Friends of the year

On this final Gratitude Monday of 2015, I’m spending the day watching as everything I own (except a couple of bin bags’ worth of clothes) is loaded onto a moving truck for storage. It’ll be there for the next two months as I explore the Metro DC area and figure out where I want to live this time around.

This has been a great and terrible year, one that’s worn me out. The best part of it has been my friends, who believed in me, encouraged me, made me laugh, listened to me rant. They sent cards, they took me to performance art, they made introductions, they offered their homes and their cars.

Basically, they got me through it.

So, as I run the mop over the plastic fake hardwood floor one last time before I turn the keys over to the property management company, let me say again: I’m deeply grateful for my friends.

Sing in exultation

Ah, the Big Day at last. Let’s pull out all the stops, open our hearts and throats, and fill wherever we are with joyful sounds. What better to do it with than “Adeste Fidelis”?

I associate this one with midnight masses, the anthem that sends folks out bundling up into the cold night toward whatever their Christmas celebration entails. What is love most about it is the descant on the verse that starts out “Sing, choirs of angels.” That sucker just makes my chest tighten, whether I’m singing it or hearing it.

Here are my pals at King’s College, Cambridge, doing it for you.

Happy Christmas to us all.

Sleep in comfort, slumber deep

My, how Advent has flown past—Christmas is almost upon us. So let’s have another carol about the baby, another lullaby.

There are plenty of songs about Mary, about the shepherds, the king-magi, etc. Even one about some freaking drummer boy, which I never understood, because what the hell is some kid doing out in the middle of Judea in the middle of the night in the middle of winter (or early spring, if you’re some kind of killjoy purist) with a damn drum? Like any parents would have put up with that nonsense for a New York minute.

I like today’s because it’s from the perspective of the animals in the stable. They respond to the notion of a newborn in their midst by offering their warmth, literally. I can see their breath as they snuffle and snort around the manger in that cold night. I confess that I don’t know that much about the large animals, but having a cat next to you pushing out the KTUs (Kitty Thermal Units) at a rate of knots can make all the difference in nippy weather.

I also don’t know that much about the history of this one. “Hajej, Nynej, Jezisku” is Czech, possibly from somewhere between the 14^th and 16^th Centuries. We know it in English as “The Rocking Carol”, and it does indeed give you that quiet sense of being gently rocked. It’s very comforting musically as well as metaphorically.

I’m giving you Chanticleer’s version of it. I had the great good fortune to attend one of their Christmas concerts this week, held in the perfect venue for their voices (including their kickass countertenors)—Mission Santa Clara. I have many of their CDs, and I love how they put together a Christmas carol. Especially this one.

He come from the Glory

Today’s Christmas song is a blast from the past. Long past? No, my past. I can’t recall how the Chad Mitchell Trio came to my attention, but I remember “The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy” from the start.

It wasn’t on a Christmas album; I don’t even know if they made a Christmas album. But even if it’s not Christmas-specific, it’s about baby Jesus, so I say it’s in. It’s not quite a lullaby; well, maybe a Calypso lullaby. Belafonte has a version and he’s fine. But I prefer the Mitchell arrangement.

The kingdom of this world

You can’t have a Christmas season without a rendition of “Hallelujah Chorus”, can you? And you know what a sucker I am for flash mobs singing it. I’ve done entire Decembers with a different one every week.

For this year I’m going back to one of my favorites, at a Calgary shopping mall food court. There have been plenty of them in the five years since this one surprised unsuspecting mall rats, but I like this one right much. For one thing, the acoustics are better than a lot of the ones in multi-level atria. (There’s one from the Paris Opera Society from a couple of years ago. I wanted to share that, but it just doesn’t sound good enough, even though I’m sure it was a spectacular experience.)

And for another—they were the pioneers in “Hallelujah” flash mobbery. They set the tradition.

Gratitude Monday: On the sidelines

 Having popped in to Trader Joe’s last Friday to pick up enough milk to see me through the next week, let me devote today’s Gratitude Monday to expressing my relief and thanks that I have no call to go grocery shopping before Christmas.

Because the normally idiotic drivers of the Valley They Call Silicon have upped their game by an order of magnitude, and my own bandwidth has narrowed somewhat, so I don’t want to put it to the test.

Not needing to be anywhere that shoppers are likely to congregate frees me up to focus on other things, like observing and commenting, for which I am also grateful.