Game 82

I thought that I didn’t care if the Capitals made the playoffs or not. The season was an uneven one at best, with an 8-game losing streak toward the end; and I thought it was fine to just let this one end quietly, and then hope for better next year. Alex Ovechkin is getting so close to breaking Wayne Gretsky’s all-time scoring record, and that makes every game fun to watch even if you don’t expect many wins. 

But then the season got down to game 82, and a very last-ditch chance for the last wildcard playoff spot. Last night’s game was do or almost-certainly die against the Flyers. Had they lost to the Flyers, there were still a few complicated “if Detroit and Pittsburgh lose” scenarios that might have opened the door to the last playoff spot, but the best thing was for them to win in any way - regulation, overtime, or shootout. And they did, against a team that was also down to the wire and also fighting to get into the playoffs. 

*****

Does anyone else agree that John Tortorella was absolutely born to coach the Philadelphia Flyers? I can’t imagine that guy doing anything other than coaching a Philadelphia sports team. Maybe he can take over the 76ers or the Eagles, too. 

*****

I’m not going to say that the game was fun to watch because it absolutely was not, especially the last period. It was stressful. It was a wracking of nerves that a person my age should not subject herself to. But all’s well that ends well. We get four more games now. The online haters are already predicting that the Rangers will sweep us in four and maybe they will. But maybe they won’t. Anything can happen in the playoffs, as the 2023 Boston Bruins can tell you. Let’s go Caps. 

All She Lost

My life is pretty good. It’s pretty good objectively, and it’s also really good compared to the lives of many many many - most - people in the world. Five seconds’ exposure to news coverage or even social media is enough to confirm this. 

But I don’t take my good fortune for granted. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m very well aware that a natural disaster or a terrorist attack (real or engineered) or a financial collapse (real or engineered) could upend my whole life. We could go from relative security and comfort to abject poverty in the blink of an eye. We could end up refugees. Anyone could. Sometimes when I’m feeling cynical or pessimistic (even more so than usual, that is), I think about how little power most of us have, and how few of the people who do have real power actually care about the rest of us. 

*****

A few weeks ago, I heard an NPR (I forget which program) interview with Dalal Mawad, author of All She Lost, a book about women’s experiences following the 2020 explosion in the port of Beirut. I was ashamed to realize that I barely remembered this explosion, which killed hundreds and caused a ripple effect of political and economic consequences that devastated an already-falling-apart country. 2020 was a hard year for everyone, but this was a pretty major and memorable event that I should have recalled immediately. There's no excuse for that kind of solipsism. I’m the worst sometimes. 

Anyway, I bought the book that day. It’s a series of stories based on the author’s first-person interviews with women who lost children, husbands, parents, siblings, friends, homes - who lost everything in the explosion - and who are now four years later still trying to figure out how to go on. It’s a very simple and beautiful book, but not easy to read. The book is short and the individual women’s chapters are short, but it still took me over a week to get through. 

One of the central themes that Mawad returns to over and over is the consequences of a failed state, which Lebanon essentially is now. What happens, she asks (and answers) when there are no functioning institutions; no real government to enact new laws or to enforce existing ones. One of the main functions of a good government is to protect the weak from the rampages of the strong. What happens when the weak and the strong are left to fight it out among themselves? 

Mawad knows what happens. So do I. Given the opportunity, the strong will always crush the weak - always and everywhere, without exception, without fail, 100 percent of the time. 

*****

Last week, I celebrated the failure of Ted Leonsis, whom I once rather liked but whom I now consider to be nothing more than a greedy billionaire sports owner just like the rest of them, to move my beloved Capitals from Capital One Arena in Washington DC (hence the “Washington” in Washington Capitals, Ted) to a yet-to-be-constructed multi-billion dollar retail and entertainment complex in Alexandria, VA, a place that looks close enough to DC when you’re looking at a map but that is really  kind of a nightmare to get to from Silver Spring, even if you’re taking Metro (Note: I love Metro, but I hate changing trains. If it’s not on the Red Line, it’s dead to me.) There are of course lots of Capitals fans in Virginia but it seems that most of them, except for their stupid Trumpity Trumpster of a governor, also didn’t want the team to move. Northern Virginia is already insanely congested and it certainly isn’t in any need of economic development projects. Leonsis, who had explicitly promised never to move the Capitals or the Wizards out of Washington, just wanted a new arena and like most billionaires in this country, he wanted other people to pay for what he wanted. For weeks, local media shared Leonsis talking points about how public financing of a project that will yield massive private profit is really good for everyone. This is the standard argument every time some greedy billionaire sports owner (that phrase is redundant) wants a local or state government to pay for a new arena from which he and his team will reap all of the profits. I haven’t run across a single convincing variation of this utter nonsense, and there are many variations. 

Anyway, because he’s accustomed to getting what he wants, Leonsis was blithely confident and sure that everything would go according to his plan. But it didn’t, to my great satisfaction. Of course, he ended up getting lots of money from the District of Columbia, which has more than enough other places to spend tax dollars, to stay put, and I think that he was playing both sides against one another. But I also think that the absolute refusal of Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates to allow a vote on the bill to fund the Alexandria boondoggle was real and not a show, and I applaud those Delegates. 

The news about the Capitals’ decision to remain in DC was reported the day after the freighter Dali collided with the Baltimore Francis Scott Key Bridge, which seconds later collapsed into the Patapsco River. The ship had managed to signal mayday soon enough that MDOT was able to close the bridge to traffic, but six people - construction workers - still died. 

What does an explosion in Lebanon have to do with a bridge in Baltimore? What does a warehouse full of ammonium nitrate have to do with the future home of the Washington Capitals? I don’t know, except that the more I think about it, the more these things seem related. In a functioning state controlled by an of-the-people, by-the-people, and (most importantly) for-the-people government, a billionaire shouldn’t get to hold a state and a city hostage to his demands for money and tax breaks so that he can build a new arena or refurbish an existing one, both projects that he can well afford to pay for out of his own coffers. In that same functioning state, bridges shouldn’t tumble into the water. 

*****

My son had a few days off at Easter, which was lovely. I took a few days off as well, and I drove to his school on Thursday to pick him up. His college is in Arlington, VA, not far from home. But again, the map is deceptive when you live in the DMV. If you’re not from here, you’d think that our house to Marymount University would be a 20 minute trip. It’s not remotely like that in real life. The drive there always takes an hour, though it’s usually a pretty easy and pleasant hour. I don’t love the Beltway but I can handle it - I’ve been driving it for years. Then you take the Cabin John Parkway to the Clara Barton Parkway (I can never tell the difference between the two but they’re very picturesque) and then the Chain Bridge to Glebe Road in Arlington. 

The Chain Bridge is really not a scary bridge at all, but it’s old and it spans the Potomac near the rapids at Great Falls, which is not a place where you’d want your car to plunge into the water. I was holding my breath as I drove across that bridge. But it was fine. I got to Arlington in one piece, and then took an alternate route home because the George Washington Parkway is still under construction and it’s a road of terror. 

And that’s enough about the condition of roads and bridges in the DMV. This isn’t a traffic report. IYKYK. 

*****

As I mentioned last week, pretty much everyone in Maryland is still shaken following the Key Bridge collapse. Baltimoreans are especially shaken, particularly the ones who drove back and forth across that bridge (which was kind of a terrifying bridge to begin with) every day and know that but for the grace of God, their cars could have been on that bridge that night. I was definitely thinking about the Key Bridge as I white-knuckled my way across the Potomac last Thursday. But that’s not all I was thinking about. I was thinking about who’s in charge; who do we trust to make sure that bridges remain intact and above rather than in the bodies of water they span? What’s stored in all of those warehouses in nearby ports and industrial parks? Who’s making sure that they’re not filled with toxic chemicals or unexploded grenades or cages full of snakes that Samuel L. Jackson will eventually have to fight, one by one? What happens if a large employer decides that they’re going to pick up stakes and go to another state or another country where labor is cheap and regulations are few and far between? Who’s going to stop them? Who is looking after the proverbial little guy?

We are far from a failed state. I know this. But it’s no longer reasonable to think that we could never be one. 

*****

The sad thing about All She Lost, the thing I keep thinking about now that I’m finished with the book, is that four years later, most of these women seem to have nearly given up hope. The ones who do seem a tiny bit hopeful are the ones who have moved away from Lebanon. The author herself took her daughter and moved to Paris, leaving her husband behind to try to rebuild his family’s business. All of the women, whether they stayed or went abroad, seem to agree that a normal, reasonably happy, reasonably safe life is no longer possible in Lebanon. They’re not talking about rebuilding or transforming their country. They don’t have the energy to fight anymore. They haven’t moved on because how can you move on? 

L'Air du Temps

When is the last time you smelled perfume - not from a bottle in a store, but just out and about in the world? One day at work last week, I walked down a corridor and into some perfume, just hanging there, lingering in the air. It hit me like a physical force. It had been years since I had smelled perfume - real, old-fashioned, lady-with-a-spritzer-at-department-store perfume - and it took me all the way back. I think I understand Proust and his madeleine now. 

The scent was maddeningly familiar; heavy on the Oriental notes, and a little bit floral but not rosy floral.  Something like Opium but not Opium. Maybe I should just Google a list of popular perfumes of the 1970s and 80s and then match a name with a scent. 

*****

Of course you understand that I actually did this, and I promptly ended up in a rabbit hole of mid-20th century beauty culture nostalgia, from which I emerged only days later.

*****

When I was growing up, lots of women - maybe even most women - wore perfume. The women in my working-class Philadelphia neighborhood wore Tabu or Charlie or popular Avon scents (if you’re young, then you might not know that Avon used to be known mostly for perfume - the cosmetics came later). When I was in high school and college and then a young person in the working world, I learned about expensive perfumes, classics like Chanel No. 5 and Joy and Arpege. Perfume was very popular among young women in the 80s - we favored overwhelming heavy scents like Opium and Lauren and Chloe, suitable for the aspirational luxury ethos of that decade. Every city still had fancy downtown department stores, marble floors and high vaulted ceilings and full-service restaurants and dressed-up salespeople and elaborate Christmas displays that families made special trips to visit. You couldn’t walk into one of those stores without being chased by a young woman wielding a spritzer of perfume. Just thinking about those department stores makes me miss my grandmother. 

*****

I read Chuck Klosterman’s The Nineties early in 2022, and I started writing about it, but I never finished. Here’s a preview - if you were a young person in the 80s and 90s then you might remember that right around 1991, there was a very abrupt popular fashion 180, from glamor and high heels and big hair to hippie revival and grunge. In 1987, young women dressed up to go out - full hair and makeup, high-heeled shoes with designer jeans and dressy tops, and of course, perfume. In 1992, the aesthetic abruptly changed. This is not to say that young women no longer cared how they looked - they very much did care. But it was no longer acceptable to act or look as if you cared. It really took just as much time and effort trying to appear as if you didn’t make any effort at all as it did to look flawlessly put together. Perfume did not survive this fashion transition, perhaps because it was an obvious olfactory clue that a woman cared about being conventionally attractive. 

*****

When I was very young, age 5 or so, we lived with my grandparents for a time. I think we were there for about a year, more or less. My grandparents went out most Saturday nights and my grandmother would usually let us sit on her bed and watch her get dressed and fix her hair and put the finishing touches on her hair and makeup. Perfume was always the last step. 

Eventually, I realized that my grandparents’ nights out were not particularly glamorous - they went to movies sometimes, or to VFW or American Legion events, or mostly to friends’ houses to play cards. Perhaps it was that perfume, lingering in the air long after my grandmother left the room, that made grown-up life seem very exciting and romantic.

I never did figure out what last week’s perfume was, even after my internet rabbit hole research. It reminded me of Opium or Chloe, not because of how it smelled but because of how it felt. It was like John Wanamaker or Strawbridge and Clothier, circa 1980. It was like midnight Mass at St. John the Baptist, circa 1975.  It was like my Nana’s bedroom on a Saturday night in 1971. It was like my childhood in the middle of the American century. 

Clearwater

I never thought of myself as a Florida vacation in winter type of person if that is in fact a type but it might be time to rethink because I'm up to my eyeballs in Florida warmth and sunshine on December 30 and it is all that and a bag of chips. The good chips, too. The crispy kettle chips. 

This is a relatively short vacation - we came in on Wednesday and we’re out on Sunday. But it's enough. A few days of nothing planned and no deadlines and sand and water and palm trees is pulling me right out of a pretty bad episode of depression. Maybe the effects won't last but I will take it for now. 

*****

I've been to Florida several times but this is my first time on the Gulf Coast. Normally I take a little time to study the geography of a new place before I arrive, get the lay of the land. But I didn't have time. I've been zombie-walking my way through my days and when my husband told me that we were coming to Clearwater Beach, I said "OK," requested the vacation time, and packed a bag the night before we left, perfectly willing to go wherever he wanted to take me. I'm looking at the view from my hotel room balcony and I don't know if the causeways spanning what I think is Tampa Bay connect to the mainland or another island. Maybe one of each because I can see two different causeways. But who cares. I'll look at an atlas later. 

*****

Avalon, New Jersey has been my beach town for many years. We usually go there for a week in August, staying in a little rental house or condo; and we spend that week sitting on the beach, swimming in the ocean (and pool when we're lucky enough to have one), walking and bike riding and looking at boats and seabirds, and collecting shells. Well, my younger son and I collect shells. We have bowls and jars of shells collected over many years. I like looking at them. From a distance they're all white and beige but up close you can see delicate stripes of faint pink and blue and yellow and gray. It's always amazing to me that something so beautiful just washes up on the shore, free for the taking. I never tire of walking slowly along the water's edge and spotting a perfect tiny shell to scoop up into my collection. 

No offense to my beloved Jersey shore, but shell collecting in Gulf Coast Florida is next level, as they say on the Internet. You don’t have to hunt for them. You can stand still just as a little wave breaks on the beach, then bend over and scoop up a hundred perfect little clam and scallop shells in colors both pale and bright, varying shades and hues of pink and blue and coral and gold. I picked up in one short walk what it normally would take a week to collect in New Jersey. 

I collected these shells in 15 minutes. Really!

*****

I expected Clearwater, on the Gulf Coast as it is, to be a lot more Trumpy. Of course, we saw our share of Trumped-up Trumpity Trumpsters, including plenty of people sporting Let's Go Brandon gear. Perhaps they don’t realize that even Joe Biden makes fun of that one now. But other than those few silly people, I didn’t get an overt Trumpy vibe from anyone else in Florida. The people on the streets and in the hotel and on the beaches seemed very cool and nice, regardless of what their politics might or might not be. And there were quite a few international visitors from various races and nations of origin. All of them seemed comfortable. All of them seemed to feel welcome in Florida. 

*****

It's New Year's Day now. We're in an Uber on our way to Tampa International Airport, where we will catch an 11:30 AM flight back to DCA. 

Our driver, in his cargo shorts and turquoise bar t-shirt, with long and unruly gray hair flowing from underneath his ball cap, looks like central casting’s idea of Florida Man. But he is actually from the Czech Republic. He and my husband are chatting about NHL hockey while the rest of us sit quietly in the back seat, gradually preparing for the transition back to reality. 

Mr. Czech Republic is our 4th Uber driver this week and they have all been lovely. A nice Black lady picked us up at the airport on Wednesday, and she gave us an overview of the area with cheerful and funny commentary about the good and bad of life on the Gulf Coast of Florida. A native of Michigan, she moved south to escape the cold. Our second driver, who carried us from Clearwater Beach to Amelie Arena for the Tampa Bay Lightning game, was an Air Force veteran who now works for the Navy in Newport News. He drives for Uber during his winter vacations at his little house in Clearwater. On our way home we rode with a full-time Uber and Lyft driver, who is also from somewhere in Eastern Europe if the accent was any indication. His SUV was brand-new and he proudly pointed out the panoramic sunroof, multi-zone climate control and Bose sound system. He is putting two children through college on what he earns as a full-time rideshare driver. He offered snacks and hand sanitizer and bottled water with an air of magnanimous hospitality. A delightful person and a very pleasant ride. 

I have issues with tech-driven service platforms that exploit workers with the promise of spurious "flexibility" and "independence." But all four of these drivers seemed happy and prosperous, likely in spite of and not because of their gig work lifestyle. In any case, we are good tippers. And we were happy to meet all of them. 

*****

In our one evening in Tampa, we learned that Florida is home to some serious hockey fans. The Lightning’s fan slogan is “Be the Thunder,” and these people absolutely were the thunder for their beloved Lightning. Amelie Arena is loud, I tell you what. We were happy to root along with them, since the Lightning were playing the New York Rangers. I still think it’s crazy that Florida has hockey teams (two of them!) but there’s no way that I’m going to root for the stupid Rangers. 

*****

We made the vacation last until the last minute. We flew to Florida direct from Washington National to Tampa International but there were no affordable direct flights home so we had to connect through Charlotte. Our flight from Tampa to Charlotte was quick and easy - in fact, both flights were shorter than our 2.5 hour layover in Charlotte. But it was a nice day in the airport. Charlotte has a decent airport, and we ate lunch in one of its restaurants. After a stroll through the terminal, we sat at our gate, reading and relaxing, watching planes land and take off in the clear post-fog sunshine. 

A young couple near us was wrangling twin baby boys, chubby and lively, about 8 months old. Baby number one was smiling and cooing, while baby number two had had it with the airport and was making his displeasure known. Their mother pulled a coffee shop muffin from a white paper bag, and both babies suddenly sat at attention in their twin stroller. Baby number one insisted on feeding himself, grabbing the little muffin pieces as his mother offered them and stuffing them flat-handed into his mouth, squealing with delight the entire time. Baby number two, placated by the snack, was no longer complaining. He was perfectly content to allow his mother to feed the muffin bits directly to him. He opened wide like a little bird as each morsel approached. I could have watched those silly babies all day long, but the boarding call put an end to the show. 

*****

It’s January 4 now and the party is well and truly over. I teleworked on my first day back to work and went into the office today. It was nice to be back. Work is not a problem at all. I like work in general, and I like my job in particular very much. 

But the funk was back. I could tell as soon as I woke up this morning. See, last week, I thought I had turned a corner. I felt as though someone had pushed a reset button somewhere on my person. But it was just the warmth and sunshine. It was all illusory. 

The day got better, though. I left work at 4:30 and even though I took a slight detour to drop a friend off at the Medical Center Metro, and even though Connecticut Avenue was its usual jerkface self, I still made it home just before darkness fell. For the last few minutes of the drive, the sky, still blue, was streaked with pink and gold. The whole palette was very Florida, very Gulf Coast retirement community. I pulled onto my street just as the very last daylight faded. 

And tomorrow I’ll have another minute or so of daylight. And the days will just keep getting a little longer each day. The sun will return. It won’t be cold and dark forever. 

Re-entry

Just like that, Beach Week is over and with it, summer or so it seems. It’s Monday, my first day back at work (which was just fine after an hour sorting through last week’s emails in conversation view) and it was unseasonably cool; cloudy and gray and slightly breezy with a few drops of rain here and there. I don’t think it got any warmer than 72 degrees today, and that is cool for August in Maryland. 

I write about the weather a lot, don’t I? 

Anyway, school starts in two weeks. That is the end of summer as far as I’m concerned, but the cool temperatures and the October gloom are encroaching on my last weeks of sunshine and warmth, trying to fool me into believing that summer is already gone and that I should just get started with the pumpkin spicing (no) and the Christmas shopping. And I’m not having it. It’s 6:30 and the pool is still open for two hours and the water can’t have gotten that cold overnight (it was just right yesterday) so I’m going to put on a suit and swim laps before I cook dinner. No one here is in any danger of starvation, so dinner can wait. The remains of summer cannot. 

*****

Ha ha ha, that was ridiculous. “The water can’t have gotten that cold overnight,” she says, blithely skipping out the door with her bag and her towel. I should have also brought a space heater and a parka because it was actually freezing. 

Well, let me clarify a bit. The water itself was in fact not that bad. It had gotten a bit colder but it was still quite a nice temperature or would have been had the air temperature not been in the high 60s. Plus, it was rather gray and a bit breezy, and without the sun sparkling on its surface, the pool water appeared dank, which made it feel that much colder. 

My son and his friends were working when I arrived at the pool at 6:45. I was the only swimmer in the place, and my son shook his head when I signed in. “It’s cold, Mom,” he said. “I mean, it’s been colder, but just warning you. It’s pretty cold, especially when you get out.” 

And he was not wrong. Getting into the pool was quite a bit easier than getting out, as a stiff breeze made the already cool air feel downright chilly. It was Baltic, I tell you. Baltic. 

*****

What is it with Wednesdays around here? I am once again writing at work as I await resolution of a technical issue. This time it's everyone, not just me. There's a partial power failure right now where I work, the result of a fix gone wrong. The library is one of the few places where there is both light and WiFi so that's where I am. But it's taking some time for the shared public workstation to set up Windows and sync all of my files and whatever else it has to do. 

30 minutes later and I'm sitting in the courtyard waiting for a call from the help desk. They need to reset my SSO password and they cannot connect to the PW reset application, leading me to the question: What do you do when the help desk cannot help you? And an even bigger question: Who helps the help desk? Who are they supposed to call?

It's 9:30 now; still quite early. I could just go home and work and if this continues for much longer, then that is what I'll do. But we're all in this together and I kind of want to see how it all turns out. Meanwhile I brought a tuna sandwich and some fruit for lunch, so I could just have brunch now rather than waiting for lunch. Tuna salad is good any time of the day. 

Yes it is. 

*****

I’m home now. I worked at five different desks today. I’d connect for a bit and then the connection would drop, and then someone would message me that I could come to room x in building y, and I would be there for a bit and then the whole thing would start over again. I accomplished about three hours’ worth of actual work today, but I  got to hang out with some new people, and I also came up with a really good idea when I was sitting around waiting for my password reset, so it was a pretty productive day altogether. 

*****

It’s Thursday afternoon now, 5:30 PM, and I’m just home from work. I left my phone at home today, not on purpose, of course. But once I was sure that the phone was actually safely on my kitchen counter and not in a ditch somewhere (why would it be in a ditch I wouldn’t go near a ditch to save my soul from Hell) I realized that it’s quite nice to spend a day semi-disconnected. Now I’m catching up on correspondence, and responding to what seems like 50 text messages. It’s not 50. It’s maybe 15. But it’s a lot. Why are these people texting me all day? Am I the only person who works on weekdays? 

*****

My son attends the University of Maryland, which (of course) is now reporting its first case of monkeypox. And there has to be a better name for it, doesn’t there? Monkeypox. Gross. 

I’m not even particularly worried about this; not yet, anyway. It’s Friday, and my mind is blank, and my hands are just moving across this keyboard in an almost-reflexive way. Everything about today, the sunshine and the light and the coming transition from summer to fall, reminds me of 2020. A school year was about to begin and no one knew if or when that would involve entering a school building. The pandemic raged on with no end in sight. The election was around the corner and although I couldn’t wait to see the end of the Trump presidency, I also knew that chaos was going to ensue no matter who won that Godforsaken election. I went to work every morning in my little home office, watching the birds and suburban wildlife outside my window, and wondering if normal life would ever resume. I wondered if anyone even knew what constituted normal life anymore. I still wonder about this. 

*****

But it’s Saturday now, not quite 10 AM, and I’m sitting in my backyard letting my hair dry and listening to the birds, just like I did every morning at the beach, but with different birds. The birds here are quieter. You’d think that inveterate pests and thieves like seagulls would go about their business a little more quietly, draw less attention to themselves, but Avalon’s seagulls are out there and they want you to know it. Hold on to your kids’ sandwiches, they cackle, taunting. Don’t leave those corn chips unattended. Silver Spring birds are politer. You can eat your lunch in my backyard, and your sandwich will remain unmolested. 

But even if a rogue oriole absconds with your lunch, that seems like the worst that could happen right now. Monkeypox and COVID and war and inflation and the constitutional crisis of the day are all out there, but they’re keeping quiet for the moment. With the warm sunshine, birdsong, and clear blue skies, it’s shaping up to be a perfect tail-end-of-summer day. Everything is almost still, except for the trees, barely rustling in the breeze.  

Weather and birds - that is the content that you came here for. 

Distraction

Oh technology. You confuse and confound and (sometimes) amaze me. 

As threatened, I waded back into the Twittersphere, thanks to the recent vacancy. And I tweeted, or I posted a few tweets. I’m not quite sure on the verb choice, but it doesn’t matter, because I don’t think I’ll be around for long. 

A reasonably well-known actress and high-profile Twitter personality posted a comment that I objected to, though I agreed with 90 percent of the rest of her (many) tweets this weekend. So I commented, noting my objection. And surprisingly, she responded, almost immediately. She kindly acknowledged my concern, clarified her position, and added a few additional details, for context. We chatted back and forth for a minute or so, and then I put down the phone and walked away for a short while. When I returned, I found that at least ten other people had added their comments. And I wondered “who are all of these internet randos inserting themselves into this conversation?” And just as quickly, I realized that I myself was an internet rando who had inserted myself into the conversation. 

Ask not who is the Twitter troll; she is me. 

*****

Twitter was fun for a few minutes, but I’m not going to make a habit of it. After a few more minutes of acknowledging and responding to the other tweeters’ comments (all of whom agreed with the actress with whom I had disagreed), I was all tweeted out, but I felt that it was necessary to tell my vast internet audience that I wasn’t ignoring them; I was just exiting the thread so that I could go for a walk. I don’t think I’m cut out for an endeavor that makes me think I have to explain myself to total strangers. 

*****

In other technology news, I’m writing this on my brand-new Chromebook, delivered into my hands this very day. It took me all of three minutes to set this thing up, and now here I am, telling you all about it. 

You might remember that I bought a Chromebook three years ago, but I gave it to my 10th grader when schools closed and classes moved online. When my old PC died, I decided to replace it with another Chromebook. It’s a beautiful little device; nice to look at and hold and wonderful to use. Now I just have to get accustomed to Chrome OS again. I have a lot of keyboard shortcuts to memorize. And Google Drive is its own thing altogether. But I like a challenge. I like to learn new things; at least, I like to think of myself as a person who likes to learn new things. 

*****

I finished wiping the old computer and now it’s ready for recycling. Setting up the new laptop took a hot minute, but shutting down the old one took forever. Apparently it’s harder to destroy than to create. That sounds like a metaphor for something, doesn’t it? 

As a rule, I avoid New Year’s resolutions. I have plenty of character flaws, and plenty of things I can try to do better, but it’s a process, not a once-yearly to-do list (though I do very much love to-do lists). But it’s the beginning of a new year and I think that one thing I should resolve is to try not to be the kind of person who is made so easily happy by new things. This new Chromebook makes me pretty happy. It’s clean and pretty and the backlit keyboard responds so well to my tapping fingers. It’s nice to look at and it’s fun to watch the words appear on the screen as I type. 

There’s nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But I wish I was less attached to the things of the world. I’m watching impeachment coverage and that’s only one of the ten million things that are more important than my new Chromebook.  

*****

So I’m too materialistic. But it’s not only material things that make me happy. I’m watching the fading winter light right now at 5:15 PM. Not only is it pretty, but it’s still light at 5:15. And the days will keep getting longer; at least until June, and that’s ages away. So that’s a happy thing. 

And here’s another thing. Capitals hockey begins tonight! No, I can’t go in person, but I do get to wear my new reverse retro screaming eagle jersey while I watch on TV. OK, so the jersey is a thing, but that’s not what I’m most happy about. And then there’s Donald Trump. He’s desperate to tweet, and he can’t, and that makes me happy. Vindictively happy, yes; but happy is happy and I’ll take it. 

*****

How did I end up here, anyway? Didn’t I start with technology? I did. At least I maintained some thematic consistency with the Twitter references. Adult ADD is a constant struggle for me, especially now when I can’t look away from the news for more than five minutes. I guess we’re all in that together now. Everyone in the United States has adult ADD this week. New stuff can’t change the current state of affairs. Neither can hockey. Not even a winter sunset can quiet the noise and chaos. But I welcome the break. I welcome the distraction from the distraction. 

All quiet on the Portrait Gallery steps

It’s cold but sunny, and getting warmer as afternoon approaches on this late Sunday morning; and I'm on my way to Chinatown to watch my beloved Capitals play the Pittsburgh Penguins, the most evil franchise in the history of organized sports.

Is that an exaggeration? A slight overstatement? Maybe. Maybe.

*****

The Capitals are in a slump. This is almost routine in February so I'm not worried. Not much. All the same, though, I'm taking some steps to turn this situation around.

I have an old red cordura nylon handbag that's not very stylish, and I don't like it very much. But I carried this ugly bag for the entire duration of the 2018 playoff run, and look how that turned out. So I'm carrying the bag today. And I'm wearing my least favorite of my two jerseys, because they always win when I wear it. This is all I can do.

I've never actually never seen a Penguins game live. I've never seen the fan showdown on the Portland Gallery steps. I've never gotten to yell "Mur-ray!! at Brian Murray. I'm looking forward to it.

*****
So that turned out exactly as I’d hoped; meaning the Capitals won and the Penguins lost and it was very very quiet on the Portrait Gallery steps. It was almost 60 degrees, sunny, and still broad daylight as we (meaning 40,000 or so happy Capitals fans and a handful of gloomy Pens fans) streamed out onto F Street and into the sunshine. Cars passed, honking three quick “Let’s go Caps!” blasts, and the crowd responded with cheers. A win against the Penguins at home is a big deal.

It was a nice day. I wish I didn’t feel so bad today, and I wish I knew why I do, but there it is. Sometimes even watching Sidney Crosby break his hockey stick in frustration on a beautiful Sunday afternoon isn’t enough to keep the demons at bay. But this will pass, like everything else. Good triumphed over evil at Capital One Arena yesterday, and this too will pass.

Fog

It's game night, Capitals vs. Hurricanes, and we're on our way to Capital One Center. The puck drops in a little more than an hour.

I love game night. Even on a Monday night, even after ignominious losses in two straight games, Capital One Center is a happy place. We celebrate when our team wins and we share the pain when they lose. It's all good, either way.

But winning is better. They need to beat these bitches.

*****
We're here now, waiting for this Metropolitan Division match-up between the Carolina Hurricanes and YOUR Washington Capitals. Thanks, Wes Johnson. I like being here early and I love having an end seat. I don't mind having people climb over me, but I hate climbing over other people. It's a thing.

Slapshot is skating out with his giant flag. It's his 25th anniversary, and it's Tom Wilson's 500th game. A night of milestones.

*****
You know who I feel sorry for? Well, a lot of people; but today, I’m feeling sorry for Londoners during the Blitz.

It’s Tuesday now. I worked from home today and although it’s not really that cold outside (mid 40s), it’s foggy and misty and damp. All day long, I couldn’t get the chill out of my bones. I have heat and hot water and plenty of tea, and no one is dropping bombs on me, but I’m still miserable. January. Who needs it?

The Capitals did win last night, snapping their two-game losing streak. Doesn’t that sound ridiculous? A two-game losing streak? Almost as ridiculous as me comparing myself to bombing victims living out World War II under near-famine conditions. I like to think of myself as not a complainer, not prone to drama, but that’s clearly ridiculous. It’s a dreary day and I feel dreary.

*****
You know, if I’d had to live through the Blitz, I’d be so dirty. I can’t stand taking my clothes off in the winter, even in a central heat-equipped house with a reasonable supply of hot running water. What if I was living in a cold-water bed-sit with a tiny coal stove for heat? I don’t even want to think about it.

*****
It’s Wednesday morning now, 7:15, with fog so dense and heavy that I can barely see my neighbor’s house across the street. The gas lamp is glowing softly, leaving a hazy golden halo hovering in mid-air. Postwar London.

Normally, I write in the evenings but my husband drove my son to school today, leaving me a few extra minutes. I made eggs; two fried eggs, to be exact. Postwar Londoners had to make do with one egg a week and I can have two in a day if I want to. I read somewhere that it’s not safe to put your broken eggshells back in the egg carton, but I do it anyway. If London could withstand the Blitz, then I can probably resist a few wandering salmonella germs. My immune system is pretty tough. Bulletproof is not too strong a word. Come at me, salmonella. Come at me, bro.

The fog has begun to lift and thin a bit. I can see the grass in my backyard now, and I can see across the fence into the neighbor’s yard. It’s 7:30 now, and I want to get to work before 8, so it’s time to stop and not a moment too soon. I mean really.

*****
I’ve never been to Atlanta. I’ve been over it and through it but never in it. But that will change next month because apparently, I’m going to Atlanta. I woke up this morning with absolutely no plans to visit Atlanta (no offense, of course, because I’m sure it’s a wonderful city) and now I’m making a packing list. It’s all good. I’m always happy to see a new place, though I’m not always so happy to get on the plane that will take me there.

In any event, it’ll probably be warmer there than it is here. It feels like winter again today; appropriate because it is winter, but I don’t have to like it.

*****
It’s Friday, WFH day. That’s work from home, of course. I finished a little before 4 and went out to walk and run in the sunshine, which didn’t warm the even a little bit. And I didn’t even hate it. There was almost no wind; the bare trees barely rustled, and the stillness made the cold feel not quite so cold.

In recent days, my thinking has been muddled and foggy. I thought I’d mention that just in case this ridiculous post doesn’t adequately demonstrate the cobwebby state of the inside of my brain. It’s a mess in there. Like an episode of Hoarders, Extreme Cases, if that exists. But just one pretty fast walk in the sunshine and the sharp, clear air, and some of the cobwebs are gone. The pistons are firing again, if that’s what pistons do. I’m not a mechanic.

A week of fog outside and a week of fog inside. But the fog has lifted for now. Just for now.

Thanksgiving

I'm at a Capitals game right now. It's first intermission. Normally I get up and walk the concourse during the intermission, but I don't feel like it. I'm going to sit right here instead

It's the night before Thanksgiving, and Slapshot is dressed like a pilgrim. It's not a good look. The Capitals are winning 1-0, and the crowd is happy because it’s a long weekend. And because we're at a hockey game, so what's not to be happy about?

I'm not cooking tomorrow, except for potatoes, which I will make tomorrow; and macaroni salad, which I made before we left for the game. Macaroni salad has nothing to do with Thanksgiving but people asked me to make it, and I bow to the will of the people. I have mixed feelings about not cooking. Normally, I'm all for any arrangement that gets me out of the kitchen, but me hosting Thanksgiving is kind of a tradition and you don't monkey with tradition. Plus what about leftovers? Did no one consider the leftovers? Did no one think this through?

*****
Now it’s Thanksgiving, one of my very favorite days of the year. I woke up early, peeled potatoes, and walked the neighborhood with my friends. It’s something of a tradition. We call it the Turkey Trot, because we’re like that. The potatoes are ready now, and I’m soaking in the November light at 2:30 PM. In another week, we’ll have a different kind of beautiful pale golden gray sky, but not exactly this kind.

My mother-in-law is making dinner. She made Thanksgiving dinner one other time, when I had a new baby at home, and I think it was fine. She’s a very good cook in any cuisine. I don’t know if she’ll remember to make stuffing, but I suppose I can do without the stuffing. I can’t, however, do without the jellied cranberry sauce from a can, so I’m bringing my own, just in case.

*****

11:30 PM. Dinner was delicious, and she always makes too much of everything, so we have more than enough leftovers. And the Capitals won, too. Thankfulness abounds.

Spectator

It's Friday night and I'm in Section 108 at Nationals Park, watching the Nats facing the Atlanta Braves. The Braves are running away with the National League East, but the Nats are playing really well, too. It should be a good game.

We're in almost the same section where we sat last time but it's 20 degrees cooler. In fact it's 20 degrees cooler than it was yesterday, too. I'm wearing long sleeves and I'm still a little cold. September. Go figure.

*****
It's the top of the third inning now, with no score. The Braves are a patient team. They know how to work a count. They're in no rush.

Baseball games are much more bright and colorful than they were when I was young. The Jumbotrons and scoreboards and advertisements are a visual riot, and the sensory overload doesn’t end there. Counting walk-up songs (Juan Soto’s are the best) and between-inning music and the national anthem, I've heard at least 30 different songs tonight. That doesn't include the organ music, which used to be the only music a person would hear at a baseball game. I like it. It's louder and more fun than it used to be.

There are ten different design elements on that scoreboard,
and that doesn't count the actual box score display, which is tracking more data than a NASA mission control center. 

It’s Saturday morning now, and the Braves beat the Nats 5-0. But the music was good, and after a cloudy day, the sky turned clear and inky dark blue with just a few clouds floating past the yellow-white harvest moon. And Teddy won the Presidents’ Race. He cheated, of course. Teddy only wins when he cheats. It was Friday the 13th, so Jason Voorhees joined the race, hockey mask and all, and dispatched George, Tom, and Abe, leaving Teddy the only contender. Teddy is my favorite. After the game, we walked along the Anacostia Riverwalk to our car, about ¾ of a mile from the ballpark. It was a good evening.

*****
I don’t spend many Saturday nights at the opera, but that’s what I did last night. With free tickets from a musician friend, I got to see the Maryland Lyric Opera perform Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusticana, two very different one-act Italian operas with a common ending--the husbands kill the men who slept with their wives.

The operas were performed concert-style, with the singers in recital dress rather than costumes, and no stage sets or props other than music stands (and very amusingly, a jacket used as a shroud--you had to be there).

Both of the operas are tragedies, but Il Tabarro has comedic elements and characters, including Tinca and Talpa the stevedores and Talpa’s wife, Frugola. Cavalleria Rusticana is more dramatic and intense; but Il Tabarro is ultimately sadder, because we know that Giorgetta’s infidelity is driven by grief at the loss of her baby. When her husband kills her lover, poor Giorgetta is left with nothing. A mother also loses her child in Cavelleria; in this case, he’s an adult child, murdered by his lover’s husband.

Super fun, right? But it really was. The English supertitles played on a screen high above the stage, so we could follow the story while listening to the glorious music; and the performances were amazing, both musically and dramatically. All of the singers were wonderful. Susan Bullock as Cavalleria’s Santuzza was heartbroken and desperate and when the beautiful Joowon Chae sang Lola’s first notes, it was all I could do not to shout “Whore! This is all your fault!” And when Il Tabarro’s Frugola, played by the amazing Allegra De Vita, sings that it’s better to be the boss in  a hovel than a servant in a castle, it sounds like a happily defiant rallying cry.

*****

It’s Monday now, 8:30 PM. I worked a longer-than-usual day, then attended a meeting at Rockville High School, and then came home, five minutes ago. I wish sometimes that I was the kind of person who could walk in after a long day and just stop working, but I’m not that kind of person. So here I am.

And hockey starts tonight! Yes, it’s 90 degrees outside again after Friday’s short preview of fall, and I wish I was still swimming; and yes, it’s only pre-season, but it’s HOCKEY! And I’m not watching it. My husband and younger son are toggling between Nats baseball, about which I care to some extent; and NFL football, about which I care not one tiny little bit. Fortunately, I’m here to help them re-adjust their priorities. In five minutes or so, we’ll be swinging to the sweet sounds of Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin.

*****
Tuesday, 9:05 PM. I’m watching “To Sir With Love,” a movie that I first saw when I was 14 or so. I read the book, too. It’s astonishingly old-fashioned now, but I still love it. I love the scene when the class shows up at their classmate’s mother’s funeral, as the camera pans back on the coal-stained East End brick rowhouses and the pale gray sky. Now I’m going to watch to the end so I can watch Sidney Poitier dance with Judy Geeson, and hear Lulu sing the title song. And that is a wrap on a few days of fandom. I think it’s time to read a book.

Round 1

It's Easter Sunday, 8:15 PM. I'm glad that Easter is over. Spring is the worst.

*****

It doesn't make any sense that spring would provoke such anxiety and dread for someone who loves summer as much as I do. But it does, and I don't know why. Actually I do know why, but I don't want to talk about it. Or write about it. 

*****

I just finished Sandra Tsing Loh's The Madwoman in the Volvo. Years ago, I read Depth Takes a Holiday and A Year in Van Nuys, which were very funny. And then I forgot about Sandra Tsing Loh, until I found this memoir, which she wrote in 2014. A memoir of near-breakdown depression and anxiety was probably not the best reading choice for me right now. And that's probably all I have to say about this book. Except that it's possible for a writer to be too honest. 

So now I'm reading Amy Tan's The Opposite of Fate. Personal writing by Asian-American women writers who had difficult childhoods was not necessarily a literary theme that I chose, but here I am. A long time ago, I read The Joy-Luck Club and The Kitchen God's Wife, both of which (especially the former) I liked a lot. And then I just kind of forgot about Amy Tan. I'm glad I found this one.

The Opposite of Fate was published in 2001. It's a series of short essays, many of them about her work or the aspects of her life that fed her work. In one very funny piece, Tan breaks down the fallacies and errors that have crept into analysis of her work and her life, all the result of careless Internet research. This piece reads as very contemporary (not that 2001 was ancient history), and serves as a reminder that even after the 2016 election, we still tend to rely heavily on the Internet and to believe much of what we read online.  By "we," of course, I mean people other than me, because I am automatically and reflexively skeptical of every word I see online. But lots of people I know, even the smart ones, still share political memes and tweets that scream "Russian Troll Factory" to anyone with ears to hear, so to speak.

*****
In the foreword of The Opposite of Fate, Amy Tan describes the pieces as "vignettes" or sketches or something less structured, less serious and purposeful than an essay. Sketch isn't right because these are very well-crafted little pieces of writing, but I get why she doesn't consider them essays. They're less outward-facing than an essay normally is, a little more personal, but not directly personal--she approaches her own life from a slight angle. It's very meta. Anyway, she's much better company than Sandra Tsing-Loh. I finished that book a few days ago and I'm still trying to recover my will to live.

*****
Well, that was harsh. It's Wednesday morning now, 6:45, and I'm writing when I should be waking people up and making lunches and generally preparing for the day. And I'll do all of that, in a minute.

It's do-or-die day for the Washington Capitals, game 7 of the first round of the playoffs against the Carolina Hurricanes. My son and I can't stop quoting the David Pastrnak Dunkin' Donuts commercial: "Hey ref--check your voicemail. I think you missed some calls." As an official myself, I am usually loath to criticize referees and linesmen, but I'll make an exception for Monday night's egregious failure to see what was plainly a good goal.

And that was a lie anyway. I'm not at all loath to criticize NHL officials. I'm the opposite of loath.

*****
It's Thursday now. I'm ready to start my own personal summer right now, but I was hoping that the Washington Capitals wouldn't be starting their summer until mid-June. I don't have enough to do, and now I have to figure out which of the remaining teams to root for.

On January 22, 2017, the words "Tonight's attendance: 1.5 million" scrolled across the Jumbotron at American Airlines Center, home arena of the Dallas Stars. Dallas happened to be playing Washington that night, and so I happened to see it; and for trolling Donald Trump, the Stars earned a special place in my heart forever. They are still standing, so they're my team until next October. I still get to watch hockey, but it won't be the same. At least I have a good book to read. 

KP

Today was my first day back to work after a week away. I don't usually mind returning to work, and I didn't mind it today. I like my job and my colleagues (that's such a fancy word, isn't it? Like I'm a university professor or a corporate attorney), so it's not a hardship to be in the office. Only I couldn't concentrate. I didn't have any good ideas, so I just did detail work. I made plans and checklists. I would have organized my inbox, but I didn't think of it--that's how uninspired I was .

In project management, there's a concept called lessons learned. At stages throughout a project, and at the project's conclusion, and really any time that something occurs to you, you should document lessons learned--good or bad--so that the next project team will benefit from your acquired wisdom. It's a good practice. I could apply it to my recent trip, because as much thought and effort as I put into packing, I could have done far better.

Lesson Learned #1: Pack pajamas that you don't care about. You can ditch them to make room for the stuff you'll acquire along the way. I suppose that Lesson Learned #2 could (or should) be not to acquire stuff along the way. But that's crazy talk.

*****

It's Wednesday, and I just finished grappling with a daily struggle. I dislike cooking, so much so that I will do almost anything to avoid it; and so every day, I have to force myself to start dinner before I involve myself in 25 other projects that will only delay the inevitable, which is that dinner must be cooked, and I must cook it.

Every day, I tell myself that I'll start dinner THE MINUTE I walk in, instead of checking email and folding laundry and washing lunch dishes and starting a blog post and preparing tomorrow's coffee and perusing the mail. But something almost always distracts me, and then it's an hour later, and everyone's hungry, and dinner is nowhere near the table. It's not even on the stove.

Today wasn't much different, though dinner is cooking now as I write this, so that's a step in the right direction. I should try to learn to like cooking. I certainly like eating.

*****
Thursday night, and the Capitals are playing the Hurricanes for the second time in a week. And I cooked again tonight, a meal that I make pretty often. My family might be sick of it, but they ate it happily enough.

I've been waking up at 4:30 every morning, and I haven't been able to go back to sleep. I don't think it's jet lag-related, because I've been back for almost a week now, and this happens all the time. It's probably more to do with spring, season of PTSD and panic attacks, predictable and vivid as cherry blossoms. This too shall pass. I do need to sleep eventually.

*****
It's Friday now. Do you know what I did today, other than wake up at 4:30 AM? I painted my nails, a cranberry red color. This is worthy of mention because I never do this. I don't think I've ever painted my nails a bright color, ever in my whole life. And all of a sudden, I decided that I wanted to have red nails. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It's a little jarring--it looks like I'm bleeding out from my fingertips. Maybe I'll get used to it.

My older son is leaving tomorrow for his high school band trip to NYC. 60 students, 2 teachers, and eight heroic parent volunteers are going to descend on Manhattan, colonize a hotel, visit the Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller Center and the 9/11 Memorial, see a musical, sit for a master class, and perform at  Hofstra University. And if the itinerary is any indication, they're also going to eat like passengers on a Carnival Cruise ship.

*****
It's Saturday morning and I slept in all the way to 5:30. Progress. According to this morning's news, cherry blossoms are at "puffy white" bloom stage, with peak bloom expected on Monday. I care more about the forsythia, which are at peak right now. I love forsythia, so unassuming and cheerful and so fleeting. Three weeks, and the blooms are all gone, turning the forsythia into plain green shrubs until the next early spring.

I drove my son to school this morning, where he and his fellow band members gathered with their suitcases and duffel bags and backpacks and instruments, waiting to board their bus to New York City. Excited and happy, they rolled their suitcases and shouldered their backpacks and waved to their parents with a glance over the shoulder. It's 9:30 now so according to the itinerary, the buses left 30 minutes ago. I'll miss that boy, but he'll be back on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, it's a stuff-to-do weekend. I have shopping to do and an already pretty clean house to clean and swim team business to conduct and some work to finish. It's Lent, so I'll probably go to Confession. My nails, painted just yesterday, are a mess, because I forgot for a moment that I don't live the kind of life that allows a person to keep her hands nice, so I'll probably take the nail polish off. But it's also still the weekend. So I'm not going to cook.

Ruby Tuesday

I'm happy to be back in America and especially happy to be in Section 416, Row L, Seat 10 at Capital One Center. It's game time minus 14 minutes and I'm waiting for the puck to drop at one of the last regular season games of the year. Capitals vs. Hurricanes. Don't get me started on the ridiculousness of a hockey team from North Carolina.

I like getting here early, seeing the stands fill up, watching the zambonis, listening to pre-game commentary from John Walton and Mike Vogel. We have different seats this time. My son, who is much more observant than I, noticed that the Capitals logo is right side up from this side of the ice. It's a hopeful sign.

First intermission : Capitals 1, Hurricanes 0.  I usually walk the concourse during the intermission but I don't feel like it right now.

The seats filled up very quickly tonight. The 400 level at Capital One Center makes coach class on any airline seem wide open and downright roomy, but 400 level fans are a hardy lot. We look askance at the one percenters in the suites and the 100 level. But if we're being honest (and we're always being honest because we're the gosh darn salt of the fucking earth) then we have to admit that we'd ditch the 400 level in a New York minute, if we only had a chance.

Tonight's Twitter song poll choices:

“LA Woman,” The Doors. Why? What do The Doors or LA women have to do with the price of tea in China at a hockey game between Washington and North Carolina?

“Cool Jerk,” The Capitols. This makes much more sense. It's the Capitols, and tonight is bobblehead night for Evgeny Kuznetsov, famously labeled a “jerk” by noted hockey curmudgeon Don Cherry. Whatever, Don. Kuzy is the coolest of the cool jerks. He is, in fact, the king of the cool jerks. 

“Ruby Tuesday,” The Rolling Stones. So it's Tuesday, obvs, and ruby=red, so this is a clearly relevant selection, and the best song of the three. I'm an Instagram girl, so I won't actually cast a Twitter vote, but l’d vote for “Ruby Tuesday.” “Cool Jerk” will win, though.

For some odd reason, Coldplay’s “Sky Full of Stars” was playing during the song campaign, adding to the confusion. I'm going to go full suburban white lady and declare my love for Coldplay, especially “Sky Full of Stars.” I like Coldplay and I cannot lie. As Kuzy would say, “Let's fuck this shit.”

“Cool Jerk” was the winning song and the Washington Capitals were the winning team, with a 4-1 final score that clinched a playoff spot. With three assists, our second favorite Russian was the player of the game. I'm in the car (not driving) and it's much more fun to listen to the post-game radio show after a win than after a loss. We're in first place now. Let's go Caps.

An early spring

My son swam in his last high school swim meet today and joined his fellow seniors for the traditional senior recognition. During the break between the 50 Freestyle and the 100 Butterfly, the seniors walked through a human tunnel of underclassmen as a parent volunteer read each senior's name and a short biography. As the seniors emerged from the tunnel, they shook hands with their coach, who has been with them for all four years; then another parent handed them balloons. Holding their balloons, the seniors lined up one by one on the bulkhead that separates the aquatic center's two pools; and then they stood for a few moments, smiling, posing for pictures, and waving to acknowledge the cheers of their fans.

The group, 12 seniors in all, is not particularly close. They swim for four or five different summer and club teams, and most of them don't share interests outside the pool. But they're still friends, connected by the shared experience of pre-dawn practices in the chilly water of the county aquatic center pool. They shoulder-hugged and exchanged fist bumps as they lined up on the bulkhead, laughing as their bios and favorite swim team memories were read aloud.  The whole thing took no more than 10 minutes, and then it was time to get back to work. I blew the whistle to start the 100 Fly races, and the meet continued.

And that's what the rest of this year will be like. A last band concert, a last track meet, a senior cut day, prom, and then graduation. Time marches resolutely on.

*****
It's Monday now, a regular work day for me, and the first day of work since before Christmas for thousands of federal employees. I'm not the first person to comment on the timing--a ground stop at LaGuardia, followed less than two hours later by the President's decision to reopen the government in exchange for zero dollars for the wall. There's no national emergency more pressing than rich people missing their flights. Anyway, I'm glad it's over, for now.

*****

So now it's Tuesday. I worked in the office until about 12:30 PM, and then I followed all of the rest of the lemmings home to beat the blizzard. I've been in the DMV for 20 years, and I'm exactly like everyone else here. Two inches of snow is an emergency, and the only reason why I didn't stop on my way home to buy every roll of toilet paper and every ounce of milk in the store is that I'm me. I was born bracing for a siege, and I don't run out of anything, ever.

The snow hadn't started this morning, so my sons went to school on time, much to their dismay and chagrin. They often complain when there aren't enough snow days. "This is a rip-off," they'll say. My answer is always the same: "Who did you pay?" They're getting their money's worth now--early dismissal today, and an already-announced two-hour delay tomorrow morning.

*****

Wednesday: The two-hour delay turned into a full day off, so my sons won't have to demand a refund. It's icy icy freezing horrid cold, so the county has already called a two-hour delay for tomorrow. I'm home now, and after the short walk from my car to the parking lot across the street, I abandoned the idea of going to the gym. I'm in for the night.

My house is old, and in the coldest weather, it's drafty. The family room and kitchen are fine, but the bedrooms are cold.  The hot water takes a long time to reach the bathrooms, and it runs out quickly, so cold-morning showers have to be quick. On days like today, I'm tempted to just go to sleep in my clothes, so I don't have to undress in the cold. But sometimes, I'm glad for a little discomfort. I drive a nice clean car from my nice clean house to a desk job in a nice clean office. A cold bedroom or a lukewarm shower save me from being spoiled.

*****
It's Thursday now and I think I wrote some nonsense yesterday about gratitude for the character-building cold. Who knows where I come up with this crap. It's freezing. Whatever.

But it will get warm again. Eventually. Meanwhile, let's talk about my hair, shall we? I got what appears to be a non-terrible haircut. This, as I have mentioned before, is rare enough that it's worth writing about. I say "appears to be" a non-terrible haircut because I legitimately can't tell for sure. The stylist blow-dried my hair to within an inch of its life and it's so straight and shiny right now that I don't even really recognize it. This will last exactly one day. Ain't nobody got time for that kind of hair effort. Tomorrow morning, I will perform my usual five-minute styling routine, and we'll see what my hair really looks like. I do love a surprise.

*****
So it's Friday now, and my hair is fine. It looks like my normal hair, only about 3/4 of an inch shorter. I worked from home today, and left the house only to pick up my son at the bus stop, so that he wouldn't have to walk home through the Antarctic cold. I picked him up 2 1/2 hours early--unexpectedly heavy snow prompted yet another early dismissal, so they went 5 for 5 this week: one scheduled day off, one snow day, one late start, and two early dismissals. A full week of school is going to kill these kids.

It was a productive day, and now I'm waiting out the last few minutes of the Capitals' All-Star break, which followed a horrendous 7-game losing streak that included a 7-2 loss to Nashville, a hideous overtime loss to San Jose after the Sharks scored to tie the game with ONE SECOND remaining, and a brutal beatdown at the hands of the Toronto Maple Leafs. The puck drops in ten minutes.

*****
OMG, that was the longest 57 seconds. The streak has ended; and a rodent meteorologist is apparently promising an early spring. It's already above freezing, so things are looking up. Until next week...

January

It's Saturday afternoon, and my house is full of teenage boys, gathered for what has become an annual playoff-watching chicken wing fest. I don't like football or chicken wings but my sons' friends are lovely and it's quite nice to sit by a fire and watch football players run around in the snow. Better them than me. But it's really really loud in here, and I think I'll retreat to a quieter room.

*****
Well. That's better. I can hear myself think. Better still, I can't hear Cris Collinsworth or the other guy. Al Michaels. I just looked him up. They're fine, I guess, but they're not Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin. And football is definitely not hockey.

It's Day 22 of the now longest-in-U.S.-history government shutdown. I know that at least 30 percent of my fellow Americans agree with Trump's characterization of the Russia-collusion investigation as a "witch hunt" (or "Witch Hunt," I guess), but I think that investigation, when it concludes, will reveal that the President is is a paid agent of the Russian government. And whatever Putin is paying, it's money well spent.

*****
Enough about him. At least for today, I'm not going to write any more about Trump and his crazy tweets and his wall that he could have built any time in 2017 or 2018, except why would he when it was obviously a better political destabilization strategy to wait until the Democrats won an election to force the longest government shutdown in history? Putin is probably paying a by-the-day bonus.

No, I think I'll write a little more about this particular Saturday in January. I returned to my place of authority on the pool deck this morning, with my clipboard and my whistle and my favorite lanyard. Someone has to be in charge and it might as well be me.

I used to hate January, and I still hate winter, because it's cold and dark. But even though I don't like football, I like the festive mood that surrounds the NFL playoffs. I couldn't care less who wins any of these silly games, but I'm happy to have company and eat snacks and drink beer. On sunny days, I like the light in the afternoon. And we also have a three-day weekend in January, so it's not a month that's altogether without redeeming qualities.

Afternoon light in January. 

But I still can't wait for summer.

*****

Sunday morning, Day 23. It started to snow yesterday and we have about six inches on the ground now, with more still falling. It's the first real snowfall of the year. I'm not sure if we'll make it to Mass this morning or not. On one hand, I feel that we should at least try to get there; on the other, I don't want to get stuck in the snow, and our street has not been plowed. So we'll see.

I finished Graham Greene's 21 Stories. 10 of the 21 were quite good. The other 11 were the kind of stories that I read all the way through because the writing is beautiful but then I wonder what the heck it was that I just read. And that's not a bad thing at all. I might re-read one or two of them. But probably not. I have a lot of stuff to read, and I'm not getting any younger.

Now I'm reading The Abolition of Woman: How Radical Feminism is Betraying Women, by Fiorella Nash. So good. Of course, me reading this falls under the heading of choir members listening attentively to the proverbial preacher. I already believe that abortion is terribly anti-woman.  But in case I needed convincing, Ms. Nash makes the most compelling case I've ever read for the pro-life position as the only reasonable one for feminists.

(By the way, speaking of Day 23? In addition to having two years of Republican control to build his stupid wall, the President also had two years of a so-called pro-life majority, but Planned Parenthood remains fully funded. Weird, right? You'd almost think that they were cynically deceiving and exploiting pro-life voters during election years, and then just forgetting about them once they gain power.)

Among the most clear and logical of the author's arguments concerns the problem of maternal mortality in developing countries, which the abortion-industrial complex would solve by means of "reproductive healthcare," meaning abortion. Their real agenda, of course, is to cull the herd of poor people and non-white people. Nash asserts, correctly, that all of the causes of maternal mortality could be easily addressed as they have been in the West, in countries such as Great Britain where maternal mortality improved dramatically from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, long before legalized abortion. It's a question of will, not capacity. If women and children were truly valued, we as a society would find a way to save poor women from preventable pregnancy- and childbirth-related deaths.

I would suggest that this argument could be applied to any number of issues that we treat as intractable and unsolvable. We are (for now, at least) the richest country in the world and we could easily make room for migrants and refugees. We have the most advanced technology and science in the world, and could solve the opioid crisis (how is that going, Kellyanne?) if we cared enough about the people who are suffering because of it. Our approach to most issues that affect poor people can be summed up in one sentence: There's just enough of us, but way too many of you.

*****

Tuesday night, Day 25. I'm watching the Capitals take a beating at the hands of the Nashville Predators in what is likely to be their third straight loss. You can't win them all, and I'm not going to worry about it. At least I'm getting a paycheck, unlike a million or more federal employees and contractors almost a month into this ridiculous fight to keep Central Americans on the other side of the Rio Grande. Maybe it's part of a grander Russian-financed strategy to make the U.S. such a terrible country that no immigrants will want to enter. I'll leave with a few words from Fiorella Nash:

"It is the fatally disastrous blind spot in current human rights campaigning, the failure to acknowledge the rights of every member of the human family, but prolife feminism represents a human rights movement which excludes no human life under any circumstances."

The Capitals are losing 6-1 now. Until next week.

Dawn patrol

It's Monday morning, quite early (5:20 AM). I watched almost the entire Golden Globes broadcast last night. It was kind of boring, but I was still on the edge of my seat, hoping that no one would mention Trump. I applauded every Trump-free acceptance speech. It was like talking about a perfect game during a perfect game; I didn't want to jinx it, but I was too excited not to say anything.

Christian Bale had me worried for a minute, but he stopped with Senator McConnell (of whom I share Mr. Bale's opinion). Alfonso Cuaron expressed love for his native Mexico, and someone else (maybe the "Assassination of Gianni Versace" people?) said something about creating connections between people, rather than building walls around them or blah blah blah; and I'm sure that Trump and his little media minions will find a way to interpret those speeches as attacks on Trump. But for the entire time that I watched, I didn't hear a single direct reference to the President or his tweets or his 16-days-and-counting shutdown. I hope he's really disappointed. I hope that a whole bunch of Fox producers are scrambling to fill airtime that would have been filled with complaints about Hollywood bias against conservatives (by the way, Trump is not a conservative). I'm vindictive when I'm sleep-deprived.

Other than the Trump embargo, the show was pretty boring, but there were a few highlights:

• I love Carol Burnett SO MUCH and was so happy to see her receive this well-deserved honor. My children know who she is now, and they know how much people my age love her. I never watched "The Office" when it first aired, but I'm a fan now thanks to my children (it's on Netflix now and extremely popular among teenagers) and Steve Carell was a great choice as presenter. I choked up a little when he said that presenting the award was the greatest honor of his life. And my beloved Bill Murray was first on his feet for the standing ovation. This five minutes made the entire show worthwhile.
• Lady Gaga was the style star of the night. Of course, lots of women looked beautiful, but they're so scared of the fashion police snark-pundits that they don't take any risks at all. Lady Gaga doesn't care, and I love her for it. 
• Mahershala Ali was lovely and gracious, and he was great in "The Green Book," which I saw with my sons. I wish that Viggo Mortenson had won, too, but I guess you can't compete with crazy Christian Bale. Satan? Really? Come on, man. 
• I haven't seen "Beale Street" yet, but Regina King has been so underrated for so long, and I was delighted to see her get the recognition that she deserves. And her speech was great, too. 

I fell asleep toward the end and missed the surprise wins for "Bohemian Rhapsody" (which I haven't seen yet, but will) and Rami Malek. And no recognition for "Can You Ever Forgive Me," which was a huge disappointment. Had it not been for Carol Burnett and Lady Gaga, I'd probably be mad that I missed a hockey game to watch this.

*****

Now it's Tuesday night (Day 18--I think my count was off last week) and I can't wait to not watch the President make his case about the "national emergency" on the southern border. I'm in the car on my way to Chinatown, where the Washington Capitals will face the Philadelphia Flyers at Capital One Center. Alex Ovechkin and Evgeny Kuznetsov are the only Russians I care about right now.

This is the first time I'll actually attend a Capitals game against my hometown team. I liked baseball when I was young, and I followed the Phillies very closely. My grandfather was a huge fan, and I was the only grandchild who was interested enough to sit and watch games with him (or listen, more often--we sat outside and listened on the radio). He taught me how to score games, a skill that I have lost altogether; and he taught me how to watch a baseball broadcast, a skill that I have retained. I still like baseball. I love the sound of it in the summer. I still miss Harry Kalas and Richie Ashburn. 

But even though Philadelphia was (still is) a hockey town and even though my grandfather also loved the Flyers, I didn't pay much attention to hockey. I remember the Broad Street Bullies, and I remember all of my neighbors pouring out onto the street to celebrate their 1974 Stanley Cup win (I don't remember 1975 for some reason). But for some reason, the game and the team didn't really speak to me. After the excitement of the Flyers' back-to-back championships, I don't think I gave hockey another thought in my life, until about 2010. 

My husband has been a Capitals fan since 1980 or so. So for as long as we have been married (since 2000), I have been hearing and seeing games. But for years, the Capitals faded into the sports background, along with the Maryland Terrapins and the Washington Redskins and the Baltimore Orioles (pre-2006) and Washington Nationals (2006 and after) and all of the other sports teams that my husband follows. 

Then in 2010 or so, I sat down with him to watch a Capitals game, and I found myself drawn in. Joe Beninati and Craig Laughlin were a big part of the appeal. They reminded me of Harry and Rich. The broadcast team is a huge part of the culture of hometown sports fandom, and Joe and Craig are a delight to watch and listen to. I started to watch more games here and there, and by 2014, I was watching games even when my husband wasn't home. So even though Philadelphia is and always will be my  hometown, the Washington Capitals are my hockey team. And they beat Philadelphia on Tuesday night, after making the game more interesting than it needed to be, as they tend to do. 

*****

It's really early in the morning on Thursday (Day 20). My son, who is 17, has high school swim practice on Mondays and Thursdays. For his first three years on the team, my husband drove him to 5 AM practices, and although I would wake up when they turned the lights on, I'd usually go back to sleep. Now, however, he is driving himself to practice, and I can't go back to sleep knowing that my son is out driving in the pre-dawn darkness. I have gotten used to having a child driving, and it's fine when he drives at night, but 4:45 AM is completely different.

So for the past two months, I've been up at 4:30 on Mondays and Thursdays, and I actually like being up this early. I don't like GETTING up this early, but I like BEING up this early. Given the choice, I'd still be asleep, of course, but since I don't have a choice, I can at least use the time to write a bunch of stuff that ten people will read. Time well spent.

*****
Friday morning (Day 21), 6 AM. I have no idea why I'm up so early this morning. No one is out on the mean early-morning streets; they're all asleep. But here I am.

It's not only Day 21 of the shutdown; it's also the first federal payday for about 800,000 feds who won't receive their paychecks. At least that many contractors will also go without pay, and there won't be any congressional appropriation to restore back pay for them. If anyone can explain to me how it's reasonable to shut down the actual government of the United States for any political reason at all, I'd be interested in hearing it.

Meanwhile, one of my retirement accounts lost $2,000 in one quarter. So thanks, Trump! Yes, I know it's not fair to blame him for the stock market downturn because I didn't credit him for the gains of 2017 and 2018, but it's 6 AM and life isn't fair.

I still think that they should just give him his stupid stupid wall. A wall is just a thing. It's not a policy, and it's not an immorality in and of itself. Forcing low-wage TSA officers to work without pay is an immorality. Ruining business for contractors and subcontractors and every food truck that sits outside a shuttered federal building for no reason other than political showmanship is an immorality. I could list 20 things worse than a wall without even thinking hard. Taking a job (President, for example, or Member of Congress) and accepting pay for it and then blithely refusing to do the work that the taxpayers are paying you to do would be one example.

Speaking of jobs, it's time for me to go do mine. Until next week. 

Highlights

I just finished Wallflower at the Orgy, and it turns out that Nora Ephron is just as honest about herself as Joan Didion. Maybe even more so. In an essay titled "Makeover," she writes about the women's magazine makeover craze of the 70s and 80s, and her personal experience with plastic surgery and high-fashion hair and makeup, and her disappointment with the results on herself. As a woman who learned early how to be funny because I wasn't going to get attention any other way, I completely understand her reaction to a makeup artist's claim that he can make any woman interesting if not beautiful:

"But I am interesting. It's beautiful I want to be."

Yeah, Nora. I know.

*****

Nora Ephron knew about interesting at the macro and micro levels. She writes about the famous and influential people of the time--Helen Gurley Brown, Bill Blass, James Beard and Craig Claiborne, Jacqueline Susann--and in a sentence or two you understand something essential to their personalities; and then in just another sentence or two, you see how they turned their particular preoccupations into hugely influential cultural trends. For better or for worse (it's hard for me to think of Helen Gurley Brown's influence as anything but disastrous, though I believe that she sincerely thought that she was helping young women), Ephron's subjects shaped the popular culture in which I came of age.

This has always been an interesting topic to me. With unusual prescience that allows them to see a shift in tastes or beliefs just before it materializes, some people just know what will be in or out a few minutes before the rest of us catch on. Or by sheer force of personality, they make a trend happen, instead of just predicting it. I'm a quiet person most of the time (what Helen Gurley Brown would have called a "mouseburger") and I also tend not to notice things until they're utterly impossible to miss. A stylish person can explain to me why a particular look is good or bad, and I'll understand; but even if I had the ability to envision and create a new fashion or a new literary trend or a new direction in American cuisine, I don't think that people would follow my lead. And that's OK. Cultural icon status is too much responsibility for one person to bear.

*****

Now it's Veterans' Day; another unearned gift of a day off . At 4:38 PM, it's almost dark. It's cold and heavily overcast, so I can't see the sun setting; just the light gray solidly cloudy sky with an etching of dark gray almost-bare trees. The weekend is pretty much over, but that's OK, too. I squeezed as much out of the three days as I could, and now it's time to work again.

*****
Wednesday night. I'm watching hockey; the Washington Capitals (of course) vs. fucking Winnipeg. An uneventful game thus far. Not so the weather. It's November 14 and we're already bracing for the dreaded, God-forsaken, bane-of-the-Northeast's-existence "wintry mix," my least-favorite two-word combination other than "password reset." It's going to be a long winter. Snow in November is neither interesting nor beautiful.

*****
The Capitals lost. They're very inconsistent this year. It's Thursday now. Icy pavements and sleet tapping on the windows and temperatures hovering just below freezing. I'm not ready for this dead-of-winter nonsense in the middle of November. The January inertia is descending and it's not even Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, the weather forced cancellation of an evening meeting that I hadn't been looking forward to, and now I'm finished everything I needed to do today at the delightfully early hour of 8:30 PM. Even winter has its consolations. I'm awash in free time, so I'll find something new to read. If I don't have anything coherent to say next week (because why should next week be different from any other), then at least I'll have book reviews, weather reports, and sports highlights. You've been warned

Picture yourself in a boat on a river

It's Thursday, our next-to-last day in Montreal. We haven't decided what to do tomorrow. My vote is for one more climb up Mont Royal, but we'll see.

We visited VIeux Montreal again today, after a stop at the Bell Center, because hockey. I watched another family as we waited to board the Bateau Mouche for a cruise on the St. Lawrence River. A father, a mother, and three children--a boy of 12 or so, and two girls, maybe 10 and 14. The older girl leaned on her father, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. The younger boy talked and joked with his mother, while the younger girl hopped around, singing, making faces, and generally competing for attention as best she could. Later, I saw that the older girl had fallen asleep on the boat, as the younger girl leaned on her father, basking in a few minutes of attention focused only on her. 

Back on the lower deck, a young mother worked to calm and comfort a fussy baby girl, eight months old or so. The baby flailed and howled, but the mother remained completely calm, bouncing and rocking the baby, and doing her best to soothe her. First, she tried to nurse the baby, who refused to participate. Then she offered toys, sang songs, and made silly faces. The mother seemed to be enjoying the challenge of finding and solving the baby's problem. Finally, she pulled a teething biscuit out of her bag, and the baby grabbed it eagerly, shaking it and munching on it happily. A snack and something to do with her hands--problem solved. The baby was also asleep as the boat returned to the dock. 

*****

Later, my husband and sons went ziplining. My older son was hesitant, and I urged him to try it, thinking that he'd later regret not having gone. I didn't zipline, because I was wearing a dress; and even though the ticket seller assured me that the harness would "close that right up," (what?) I knew that I'd feel ridiculous on a zipline in a dress. 

My husband told me that my son had a panic attack at the take-off point, and then he took a deep breath and jumped. He was happy to have done it, but I shouldn't have pushed him. And who am I to tell anyone to try to conquer their fears when I can't even conquer my fear of looking silly? 

On the boat, before the zipline incident.
My arm wasn't long enough to get a good selfie of both of us.
Plus I'm inept with a camera. 

*****

I'm in the midst of a crisis, and am not sure how to solve it, other than to suffer through it and wait it out. That approach usually works. It's harder this time; I'm not sure why. And now I'm rereading this and realizing that it's even worse than I thought, because I just wrote a sentence that includes the word "midst." "Amongst" can't be far behind; that's when I'll know that it's serious. Bonne nuit pour l'instant. 

Equinox

Monday: Last week, a coworker and friend was suffering some eye discomfort, and I suggested that she look at her eye makeup and eye cream ingredients. She did, and found that a simple product change made all the difference. Maybe I should do the same thing, because it's almost 9 PM and my eyes are burned out like an old string of Christmas lights. So maybe it's just eye cream. It probably has nothing to do with age-related macular degeneration or cataracts or glaucoma or any other of the many blindness-causing ailments that I imagine that I have every time my eyes are tired.

I mean, I don't see any reason why it would.

*****
Tuesday: The Washington Capitals' Stanley Cup win is fast becoming the greatest financial catastrophe ever to befall my family. Do you know how many Capitals Stanley Cup shirts we own? No, I don't either. I lost count. And here's what arrived in the mail today:

Yes, that's a bottle of wine that I can't drink. 

That's exactly what it looks like: A custom-engraved, limited edition, Washington Capitals 2018 Stanley Cup Champions wine bottle; filled with wine of some sort, I presume. It showed up in a box the size of a dumpster, and I'm sure that shipping alone cost $50. We kept the box. We might end up living in it.

*****
Friday: Every summer, there's a turning point. Darkness falls a tiny bit earlier, and the air, even though it's warm, starts to develop a barely perceptible but real edge of coolness. The haze lifts and the sky becomes azure-clear blue in mid-afternoon, warmed with a red-pink glow at sunset, which comes just a tiny bit earlier each day. Of course, the hazy warmth will return and linger throughout August, but by the third week of July, it's impossible to ignore the signs of the coming end of summer and the beginning of fall. The pool was noticeably cooler tonight, and even though I know that summer isn't over, I can feel it slipping away. It's always later than you think. I should make that a tag.

Artificial intelligence

In terms of my particular work, there's nothing worse than those days when you're chained to the laptop all day long, as the minutes tick by and the deadline fast approaches. But there's nothing better than when you finally get to the last page, and you do your final spell check, and update your table of contents, and ship the thing off, knowing that it's as good as it can possibly be. Even when that happens at 10:10 on Sunday night, it's still a happy moment of euphoria that will carry you through to the next mad deadline crunch, which you can only hope will happen on a weekday.

*****

So that was Sunday; and now it's Monday, and I'm now the proud owner of this:

Yes, I'm listening to everything you say,
but you have nothing to hide, right? 

I had to replace my phone recently, and I got a Google Pixel 2. Unbeknownst to me at the time (any excuse to say or write "unbeknownst"), Verizon was offering a free Google Home Mini with any Pixel purchase, and it arrived in today's mail.

I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, it's a fun new thing in a pretty box! It was free! And we'll have so much fun talking to it and telling it to play music and look up random facts and tell us when the puck drops. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that it will become (if it isn't already) a surveillance device that will report on my every thought and conversation. I've read 1984, and this is how it starts.

I actually thought about just leaving it in the box. I could donate it somewhere, I thought; or we could just sell it on eBay. But curiosity got the better of me, so I opened it, just to see what it looked like when I plugged it in.

It's a very cute little device, and when you plug it in, four tiny lights flash the now-familiar Google colors (red, blue, yellow, green). It's cheerful and fun to look at; it's like Christmas in June. But after I set it up, I didn't know what to do with it. My son started testing it on state capitals, and then I threw it some multiplication questions. When I was 9 or 10, I dreamed of something very similar to this--a machine or a robot that knew everything and that could offer the sum total of human knowledge, just for the asking. State capitals, multiplication tables, and the weather, all in a a little round package.

*****
Last year, I had to write a white paper about data lakes. I don't know very much about databases, relational or non-relational, but that didn't stop me from writing all about them. One of the things that I learned while researching this topic is that when you build a data lake, you don't need a use case for the data you're collecting. You can just gather any and all data, throw it in your data lake, and then figure out later how to use it, and why. That's kind of terrifying, isn't it? With the right kind of data repository as the backend, your Google Home device, or your Alexa, or your Apple Home, could just collect data on every question you ask it, now and forever, store that data indefinitely, and then eventually figure out how to use it, presumably against you.

*****
I don't know very much about algorithms, but I do know that algorithms control how search results are compiled and returned. The day after I received the Google Home device was primary day in Maryland, and I wasn't sure where my polling place was (it changed recently), so  I asked Google, and it suggested that I should visit the Board of Elections, in Virginia. Based on the weather forecasts, it knows that I live in Maryland, so there was reassuring proof that it doesn't know everything. It does, however, know that the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup, because everyone in my house has asked it "Who won the Stanley Cup?" at least ten times.

*****
It's Friday now, day 5 of sharing my household with an AI-enabled speaker that actually speaks. I like asking it to tell me jokes; and of course, the daily reminder that "the Stanley Cup was won by the Washington Capitals" (passive voice; another algorithm quirk, I'm sure) will never get old. But I'm keeping it at an arm's length for now. As helpful as it might be to get a quick Spanish-to-English translation (or the reverse) or to get the weather forecast without looking for my phone, I'm still not convinced that it's not spying on us and reporting my every idea to our Google overlords. By the time I finally unplug it, it might be too late.