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put the kraut in sauerkraut or vice versa
Thursday, July 25 2002
This morning the plumber came bright and early at 8:15am. Somehow Gretchen had managed to arrange a visit during the tiny window provided by our upstairs neighbor, Crazy Jane. It didn't take long before the plumber started cutting holes in our bathroom ceiling and tearing up Crazy Jane's bathroom floor. It turns out that the problem lies in a leaking horizontal pipe beneath Crazy Jane's floor, and this is probably Crazy Jane's responsibility, all 800 estimated dollars of it.
Gretchen is good friends with Anna and David the Rabbi's mother, who has been working for years writing a magnum opus on the subject of dwarves (also unhelpfully referred to as "little people" by some in the people of political correctness community). Recently her computer went on the fritz and she had to take it to Gateway, where it will, she says, languish for two weeks awaiting a possible videocard replacement. She desperately needed a printout of her manuscript, so today she came over and used our laser printer for about two hours. While that was going on, she was giving me some pointers on starting up my new computer consultancy business. For starters, she thought the name "Geek Mystique" was inappropriate, especially if I intended to work for people of her generation. Such people are unaware that the term "geek" (like "queer") has been completely rehabilitated. They still think that geeks are the people who bite the heads off of chickens at carnivals and talent shows. She recommended "Trusty Gus" - a suggestion I immediately rejected as too hokey. Somehow I have to find a name that cuts across generation lines and suggests reliability, competence, and (above all) social skills.
Back when I lived with my housemate John in Los Angeles, we both shared a single Ralph's grocery barcode that gave us special discounts whenever we went shopping. John had been careful to give completely erroneous data when filling out the forms to obtain our member swipe cards. He didn't like the idea of a grocery store tracking his purchases so as to better market him as a "club member," even if all they did with the information was figure out a way to avoid ordering too much cabbage. This was back in the age of dotcom delusion, when executives of even brick & mortar businesses theorized that "members" were valuable thousand-dollar assets in the database.
(I'm absolutely serious; I'll never forget the day I heard Michæl Pousti, the now-disgraced CEO of Collegeclub.com, claim our "members" were valued at $2000/each - making our company's worth reach into the billions of dollars. Collegeclub.com is now a small part of another company whose market capitalization stands at around six million dollars.)
Now we're learning that even humble grocery databases are one of the many things being unquestioningly handed over to authorities. Back when John was giving Ralph's erroneous data, I thought he was being paranoid, but that was before the FBI knocked on my door and the PATRIOT Act flew through the Congress without debate. These days I have a better understanding of his instinctive desire to remain anonymous in such databases. Who knows what a room full of unsmiling G-men think about a diet of corn chips, sardines, saltine crackers, and black beans? Why would I allow it to be their business, even if I had nothing to hide? Who doesn't have something to hide?
On a somewhat related note, now that more people are becoming aware of the government's increased interest in all data, I have a feeling that the quality of that data will deteriorate, as it has already for online databases. I don't even know why Yahoo bothers to collect data from people signing up for free email; it can't be worth the hard drives used to store it, let alone the electricity to keep those drives spinning.
Gretchen and I went shopping at the Park Slope Food Co-op today and on the way back, she realized she'd forgotten something, so I ended up carrying all the groceries home by myself. I don't know how much they weighed, but I do know this - for some hours after putting them away, my biceps were so overtaxed that I found it difficult to lift even small objects. I've had fingers (particularly my thumbs) go useless from cold, but this was the first time I'd ever had a large muscle go weak in this way.
One of the items we got at the store was sauerkraut, something I wouldn't normally think to buy. I put a little in a toasted bagel this afternoon and I was amazed how good it was. I used to hate sauerkraut, especially the smell of the stuff, back when I was a kid and my Dad fermented his own big crocks of it. He really knew how to put the kraut in sauerkraut. Or vice versa.
Gretchen returned this evening from a museum tour of Manhattan with a coffee table book of New York photographs. She was hoping it contained a picture of someone called "the Jewish Giant." The picture wasn't in there, so I looked for it on the internet and found the picture, a bunch of information about the giant himself, Eddie Carmel, and an unexpectedly moving sound portrait. Gretchen was particularly struck by the story, which seemed to fire all the same empathy neurons as Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
A couple days ago it had been so hot that Gretchen was back to taking cold showers, but that all changed yesterday morning, and somehow it's managed to stay cool for two days now. Tonight it was so cold that I had to shut the door and windows and let Sally and the cats in and out as they requested, just like winter time.
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