January 21, 2000

routine life and odd percussion

The little conventions you set for yourself have far-reaching implications for you, for the advertisers trying to reach into your pocket, for the people living along side you. My current routine is to get up rather too late on weekdays, spread up my side of the bed, pick up my socks off the floor, grab my glasses and watch and go turn on the shower. The shower is enough distance from the hot water that I let it run a minute whilst letting the dog out or going to the toilet. Then the hot and cold are there in the proportions that will remain throughout the shower and I can make a happy mix. I shower and shampoo, staying in rather too long especially if I have a little fuzzy head for some reason. When showered and toweled off, I might throw on a terry bathrobe if it's chilly. I turn on the small B&W TV on the bathroom counter. I comb my hair, rub some gel on my hands, comb it again, wash my hands, brush my teeth, floss my teeth then dry my hair with the blow dryer. I flip off the TV and only turn the one in the bedroom on if I'm especially enthralled with something going when I turn off the bathroom one. This is rare. Then I dress and go to my office for a few minutes or an hour, depending on how much time I have. I may answer personal e-mail, work on my WEB page or start work on my BMC computer.

And this day was no different. After that ritual, I went off to work, listening to Bill Bryson on the tape player. At lunch time, I ran errands. I went to Sam's to stock up on mundane things: toilet paper, paper towels, AA and AAA batteries, light bulbs. I bought a baby gift at an actual store (seemed way too much trouble to order over the WEB for some reason), had them wrap it (OK, it was a small, heavy on the service store where they wrap for free). I also cruised quickly through Container Store, not buying anything. I was checking the boxes and packing materials they had for reference. Moving Mom and Dad on my mind. Also, I thought seeing that I could buy any size box, any kind of packing would make me able to throw away boxes and scraps of foam and bubble paper from my garage! Is it worth it to save this stuff when, on the outside chance that you need it, you can buy it? Wasteful? Sure, but falling over stuff all the time is a time and energy waster, too.

Tonight we went to the symphony. The first part of the program featured Nexus, a five man Canadian percussion group. After intermission the symphony played Gustav Holst's 'Planets.' I was prepared to find the percussionists too cute, the upscale version of 'Stomp' maybe, when I read in the program that one piece used two hundred bird calls. I was pleasantly surprised. I found it quite musical, even the bird calls. The audience tittered nervously after about eighty-three bird calls, but I found it quite serious and wonderful and was visualizing films using the music which to me is a tribute to good music if you start imagining recommending its use for the screenplay in your head. Today's picture, by the way, is an odd percussion instrument for sale on e-bay. I don't think Nexus had one exactly like it. I liked 'Planets' as well.

After symphony we switched through the traffic and went down to the Four Seasons and got ourselves a table for four in the Café. A couple of friends, who sit behind us in the symphony, came along after a bit, as promised. We had a nice meal. A couple of Tylenol Allergy Gel Caps, some hot tea with milk and consummé helped me recover from yet another potential fall into the precipice of Cedar Fever.

"Nothing will sustain you more potently thant the power to recognize in your humdrum routine, as perhaps it may be thought, the true poetry of life--the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs. "

Sir William Osler, The Student Life