Caveat Lector

Hi-ho, just checking in from vacation. Having a marvelous time, weather magnificent, seeing plenty of birds I’ve never seen before (I’ll never call a cardinal “redbird” again, having seen a scarlet tanager), wondering why on earth we never did this before?

I had a good field geology course in college, but it skipped over glacial topography because there isn’t a whole lot of that in the Rocky Mountains. Hole now filled, thanks to Kettle Moraine State Forest. I can tell an esker from a kame now, yep yep, and moraines hold no mysteries.

The Eternal Law somewhere says that if something bad can possibly happen to my hands, it will. My yard-saled straw hat has done a nice job preserving my face from sun damage (red nose, that’s about it), but I have managed to sear both my hands along the knuckles and the line from first finger to thumb. Hurts something abominable, but the Solarcaine I picked up yesterday is helping.

We’ve gotten lost a lot (county roads are utterly bewildering), but never completely so, and we’ve done a couple of Stupid Driving Tricks, but haven’t caused ourselves or anyone else any damage.

Oh. And you people Down South who make a big thing of your azaleas and your dogwoods and all that other stuff. Well, I lived down there a lot of years and saw a lot of springs. And I have this to say: you can all bite me. Wisconsin has the Best. Springs. Anywhere.

More when I get back.

Tomorrow: Bend It Like Beckham if we can get our trip-stuff together fast enough to make the first matinee. Then home to spiff up, and dinner for two at Restaurant Magnus.

Saturday: Driving out to Horicon Marsh, then up to Fond du Lac for the night.

Sunday: Kettle Moraine State Park, then ’round Lake Winnebago up to Appleton.

Monday: So-called “scenic drives” (we’ll see if they actually are) between Appleton and Stevens Point.

Tuesday: To LaCrosse and the mighty Mississippi.

Wednesday: Home again, along the Wisconsin River past Spring Green and a state park or two.

We’re still working on arrangements for the Goth-kitties, but everything else (including neighbors watching house and all that fun stuff) is set. I am told that connectivity should be available everywhere, so I am taking the Silver Surfer along, and ought to be in touch now and then.

Wonder if my old hiking boots still fit…?

Have fun, all you WisConners, and somebody please tell Ms. LeGuin that I know the population of Anarres before the famine.

I admit, this is part of the reason I haven’t finished textartisan.com.

He just said it better than I could.

So I’m trying to help David with something the DVD people want from him, when the sound of cat conflict assaulted my ear, a sharp yelp and some growling.

This is not unusual. Dream is a bit of a bully. Sometimes I have to shut him away from his sister just so he’ll leave her alone for five minutes.

“Hey! Cats-cats! Cut it out!” That often suffices. Dream knows he isn’t supposed to. His personal demon makes him do it, he swears.

wowWOWrrrrrrrrrroooooooooowwwwwwwwllllllll… accompanied by frantic scratching on some window or other.

Okay, that counted as unusual. Maybe Dream had finally decided he wasn’t going to share his people any more. But where had Didi managed to hide?

I went out to the living room. Didi was hiding in plain sight in the middle of the floor, looking frazzled. Dream wasn’t anywhere near her. Strange.

Dream, in fact, was still hacking furiously at the window with all the strength in his front paws. Wrong color, but a decent Burt Lahr “lemme at ’em! Lemme at ’em!” moment nonetheless. So I turned on the deck light. “There’s nothing out there, you stupid—oh.”

If somebody in the South Midvale Blvd. area is missing a light-orange striped cat, Dream and I saw him on our deck last night about nine. I didn’t dare go out and try to inspect or retrieve the animal. Dream woulda moiderized ’im, I tell you.

Simon Willison is doing a really terrific series on CSS web design. Pop by his blog and check it out. Simon writes good tutorial—step-by-step, example-driven, and bloody well-written. I am taking notes—and not on CSS.

Are the blog notification services wonky this week or is it just me? I missed three posts in the series because I didn’t realize Simon’s blog had updated.

I haven’t forgotten about the Movable Type series, by the way. I need to do a couple-three more hacks on my recreation of the default Movable Type design, and then I’ll be ready to get going again.

The Happy Tutor is still attracting comment, and one comment got me started on a Robin Hood thing that I can’t let go of. So one moment of whimsy, in all this pain…

I suggested that Mr. (or is it Dr.?) Tutor himself should be the merry band’s fearless leader, but now I’m not sure. If it is Dr. Tutor, then he is welcome, but I really must insist that the band-leader be Dr. Something. Robin, after all, was Earl of Huntington before he went outlaw.

If the Tutor is not willing or able to lead, then I would nominate Invisible Adjunct, of course, with her faithful sidekick Little Rana.

As we all know, I am peasant-born and peasant-bred, and a fool to boot, so perhaps I shall take on the role of one of the less-than-genius quarterstaff experts Robin drubbed into the band. The Tinker should suit me well.

Now. The coffers are empty. Whom shall we invite to dinner today, hmmm?

I just ran into somebody in the 1920 Puerto Rico census named “Fevo Apolo.”

Now, really. I have a not entirely un-hubristic name myself (not that that’s my fault, of course), and I went and named my cats after the Endless, but this is ridiculous.

How do you live with a name like that, if you know what it means? Even if most of the people around you don’t? Yeek, how do you live with it if most of them do?

I have a grey wool cloak that I am fond of and wear often. My mother bought it for me when I went off to college. It’s perfect for spring and fall in Wisconsin, those days that start out too cool to go without some kind of outerwear, but too beautiful for a real coat.

Days like today.

So as I walk through the parking lot to the door of the building I work in, two guys in a red pickup drive by, roll down the window, and yell at me. I would not swear to this in court—pickup-truck yellers make a virtue of unintelligibility—but it sounded to me like “Hey, how gay do you look in your cape, Superman?”

And I just wonder why. How do we create these people? So incredibly intolerant that a mere detail of dress sets them off, so bigoted that they associate it with sexual preference in order to denigrate both, so rude that yelling out a vehicle window is somehow fun, and so arrogant that they feel justified trying to enforce their narrow vision of the world on everyone.

I’m not particularly upset. Just unpleasantly bemused.

Big piece of good news today. Can’t talk about it yet. But it’s big. And it’s good. And I will talk about it as soon as I reasonably can.

Took David for sundaes on the strength of it. Very very very good news. Lots of years of work just found their reward, yup yup.

Some alternately wrenching and hopeful but always brilliant writing on leaving academia by Invisible Adjunct and the Happy Tutor (see also comments to this post—he’s just knockin’ ’em outta the park today). While Rana talks about the ludicrous jobhunting assumptions she’s run into.

If you’ve been there too, drop by IA’s and Rana’s and offer some advice, or a supportive shoulder, will you? All I can say is what I’ve already said ad nauseam: I was there, it was awful, I survived, I prospered.