The Loathing And The Even More Loathing On The LIRR

The good thing about finally having a laptop to use is that I can drool this dribble "on the go¹".

That includes time spent "commuting" on the bloody Long Island Rail Road, who often demonstrate to the world that they couldn't find their rear ends with both hands and a map.

Take this morning for instance.

The day got off to a crummy start when I woke up to the shrilling of my alarm feeling like I hadn't had any sleep at all. I staggered round the house, stark naked, clutching a towel in my twitching, sleep-deprived hand and bumping into things until a shriek of rage indicated I had bumped into Mrs Stevie, who was taking her early morning nap.

Staunching a number of small wounds with the towel I made my way to the shower, where I realized that the dripping tap now resembled an ornamental wall fountain and Something Would Have To Be Done.

All this staggering, bumping, wounding and showering made me slightly late, but that didn't matter as a profusion of total nitwits on the road made me quite late indeed. Each traffic light took two changes to get through because of SUV drivers too afraid of their own shadow to actually drive when the light turned green until someone else had gone first to prove terrorists hadn't somehow subverted the very tarmac, and since each lane was filled with the ugly gas-sucking things no-one went anywhere until the yellow light showed, spurring a panicked dash for freedom.

The bigger the car, the smaller the brain.

I finally boarded my standby, get-me-there-on-time train and settled in as the announcer announced a twenty minute delay west of Jamaica² into Penn Station, which translated into "trains backed up in the Jamaica station throat because we don't have anywhere to put them". Magic.

That meant that just about the time I should have been boarding my Brooklyn-bound train I was able to watch it cruise into the station while I was still several hundred yards out of Jamaica. And of course, they couldn't hold the Brooklyn train because that would cause congestion.

We pulled in slightly after the following train to Brooklyn, the one that comes ten minutes after mine and stops everywhere so it always carries me 15 minutes into the part of my time card that will, due to the vagaries of the bloody Long Island Rail Road and their idiot schedules, get me home again a full 90 minutes after my usual Azathoth-awful arrival time, typically sometime around 9pm - too late to get anything useful done but eat and get indigestion in time for bedtime.

For our convenience it was brought in not on the adjacent track so all we would have to do was cross the platform, but on the next platform which required us to sprint to a staircase, vaulting over the slower fellow commuters, run up the stairs gasping for breath, dash across the bridge and down the stairs and try and find a door not clogged with standing would-be passengers. For our further convenience this train was a couple of cars short, so it was full to overflowing. But wait! For our absolute convenience the train was held so a few more trains full of people could attempt to transfer onto it from the apparently doomed Penn Station bound trains.

Yes, once again we were being treated to a "tunnel signal problem" fiasco, a staple of the Long Island Rail Road commute.

The problem, they say, is that of the four tunnels under the East River that connect Long Island to Manhattan, only two are signaled in both directions. One of those is permanently in use by Amtrack, who own Penn Station or the tracks into it or something. I lost track of the fine details of this particular needless idiocy years ago.

So, during normal operations the bloody Long Island Rail Road uses two tunnels in the "peak" traffic flow direction and one in the opposite, "off-peak" direction. Should one of these tunnels be rendered unusable due to, say, oooooh a signal problem or something, there is an obvious problem in that using the two remaining tunnels for peak direction traffic is only possible if the problem isn't in the one tunnel that has signals in both directions.

Edit: Which shows how annoyed I was. It of course doesn't matter which tunnel gets knocked out as the bloody Long Island Rail Road dispatchers aka the IQ Brigade will continue to run Off-Peak trains and so any failure will reduce the Peak traffic under the East River by 50%. Were the IQ Brigade to consider not running Off-Peak trains for the duration of the emergency, there would "only" be a 66% chance of a Peak service impact.

That's right, of those three tunnels, traffic can only move safely in both directions through one of them, because in the other two the signals only work in one direction, one into and one out of Manhattan.

Brilliant, eh?

"But Stevie" I hear you ask, "Surely this ancient, steam-era situation has been remedied by now?"

Well, you'd think so wouldn't you? To my certain knowledge the problem has been discussed as a "must get done" item for twenty five, going on twenty six years, because I've been riding the bloody Long Island Rail Road that long. That’s right, the bloody Long Island Rail Road can't get a relatively simple signal installation done in twenty five bleeping years.

"But Stevie" you say, "if the track belongs to Amtrack how can they?"

Well, since the bloody Long Island Rail Road is part of MTA which in turn is part of the city government which in turn is part of the State government, and Amtrack is, via an equally twisty chain of connections, part of the Federal government, both are paid for by Taxpayers and so there should be some way of getting a simple wiring job done. I mean, there are infrastructure Stimulus Dollars to be had that would pay for it.

But in time honored fashion the bloody Long Island Rail Road talks the talk and leaves it up to their passengers to walk the walk (due to cancelled trains).

So I got to work just in time, by hustling. Of course, my colleagues were discomfited by my staggering around the office, throat roaring as I drew in volumes of life-giving air, my face bright red and by my pleas to be euthanized immediately.

So much for the ride in.

The ride back looked to be much better as I sat typing this TOS entry, until the bloke next to me showed me the screen of his Blackberry with an e-mailed alert that "due to a track condition outside Westbury Station, our train was being taken out of service in Jamaica. We discussed the matter for a bit, noting that the crew hadn't alerted us yet and we were very close to Jamaica.

Then we realized that this was the bloody Long Island Rail Road and the crew was probably just trying to avoid unpleasant reactions from the commuters. This turned out to be the case, and as we pulled up to the platform the bleeping useless bastards told use what we had already known for about five minutes.

bleepers.

To understand why the crew were so scared and why everyone was so pissed-off you have to know that there are exactly two trains that leave Brooklyn (which used to be called Flatbush Avenue but since the Granite-Lined new station was opened they re-titled Atlantic Terminal, requiring changes to every automated ticket machine in the system not to mention all the relevant printed schedules and how much did that cost I digress) that do not require the passengers get off at Jamaica and try to get on another at Penn Station are the almost useless 4:34pm and the very useful and popular 6:04pm. We used to have a useful and popular 5:01pm instead of the idiot 4:34pm that is too early for anyone to use, but some bloody Long Island Rail Road wuckfit decided it should run out of Penn. I've actually caught it. It ran almost empty the entire journey that day, but I'm sure that was an atypical day. Riiiiight.

Anyway.

If you take a train that means you have to change at Jamaica, you will almost certainly be catching a rush-hour train out of Penn Station that left already jam-packed full of commuters. When forced into that sort of commute I always ride the subway to Penn and board there because, Mr clueless bloody Long Island Rail Road dispatcher, I can get a bleeping seat that way. I once had to wait almost two hours on a frozen Jamaica platform becuase the system was so thoroughly bleeped to Port Jefferson and back that fewer traiins were running and there wasn't any room on any train that came through.

Well, track problems, congested systems, it's understandable that they'd have to reduce the traffic, but it's rather less obvious why it should be the 6:04pm out of Flatbush Avenue Atlantic Terminal every time this needs to be done, and it isn't at all obvious why, as we stood crammed face to face on the 6:22pm out of Penn why there were so many off-peak trains clogging up the same congested rail system we had to change trains to open up.

My theory is that given that the Ronkonkoma line was the last electrified, and since the computer dispatching system was up and running years before that, the Ronkonkoma schedules haven't been properly integrated into the system and it is just easier to delete trains from that schedule than to try and deal with the problems intelligently. This would also explain, mostly, why numerous times a year the 6:04pm peak train sits at the west end of the Pinelawn-Deer Park single track chicane for ten minutes so an off-peak train can get past us. Call me Phalthobart Malthusian Befubbleblatt but that doesn't sound like anyone with an active brain cell is at the dispatching desk. Can you imagine if the UP ran their line that way? Perishable fruit would sit rotting while a load of coal sauntered the afternoon away with priority routing.

I've often said that the bloody Long Island Rail Road couldn't find the cheeks of their own arse with both hands and a map and that they couldn't get me drunk in a brewery, but today they proved they couldn't get me laid in a cat house.

1. And indeed, on the job↑
2. Not the good one↑

The Great Deer Park Chainsaw Death Fiasco Debacle

I almost killed my chainsaw three weeks ago, though to be fair it tried to kill me back.

Mrs Stevie¹ had expressed a desire to have the enormous Arbor Vitae bushtree growing between the King Crimson Maple we planted in the corner of the property and the struggling-back-to-life stump of the Intolerable Berry Menace - already subjected to chainsaw justice two years running - pruned tootsweet, so I dug out the 20-inch Poulan Pro and went at it.

I'd done most of the cutting, and turned the bushtree into a sort of vertical green poodle, it being several feet taller than me, when the chainsaw let out an almighty bang and tried to leap out of my hands.

Regular reader² of this blog will know that I'm long accustomed to power tools attempting wily bids for freedom, so it didn't manage to free itself from my vise-like manly grip.

Which was a pity really, I realized when I came to think about it later, because a spinning chainsaw blade has a lot of energy that has to go somewhere in the event the engine comes to an abrupt stop, and that was why the blade - which had decided to make an independent bid for freedom and jumped off the guide bar in anticipation of getting a head start while I chased the saw around the garden but had hung up on the drive cog - swished around in impressive, razor sharp circles, threatening now my crotch, now my face.

Mindful of the hazard posed to others in the vicinity I warned them of the danger by emitting a series of loud, falsetto shrieks as I desperately dodged the whirling blade of unpleasant and embarrasing cuts should it score a palpable hit. It was all very trying.

Eventually the blade was done with its anti-handyman jiggery-pokery and I kicked aside the sawn-off bits of bushtree and sat on the lawn to assess the damage.

I thought at first that maybe the chain had broken, but it seemed whole, though hopelessly tangled. It took me several minutes to puzzle out the series of events that it had gone through to achieve the knotted mess it had become, and restore the more usual circular arrangement.

Next I figured I'd check out the cog, but first I should remount the chain on the chainbar. This required me to get covered in oil and gasoline, not sure why, but the saw was feeling mischevious that day as events had so ably demonstrated. I was checking the gas levels as a possible reason for the motor stalling and the saw rolled over in my lap and gave me a refreshing dousing in unleaded gasoline. The oil was from just touching the saw's guide bar, which was about as oily as the Gulf of Texas right now.

Since I was already covered in odiforous flammables I decided to check the oil levels as a possible reason for the failure. The chain needs constant oiling otherwise it overheats and might seize in the guide or break or expand so much it jumps out of the guide. This sort of failure is usually signified with lots of blue smoke from the workpiece³ but the branches I'd been cutting were thin so maybe they didn't get time to overheat. No, there was plenty of oil.

I then decided to remount the chain on the guide bar. The chainsaw blade has sharp, hook-shaped, horizontal teeth on the cutting side, forming a never-ending chain of miniature planes that shave the wood away, and vertical teeth remeniscent of those on the backs of T34 tank tracks⁴, which engage in the drive cog and in a slot in the guide bar, which keeps everything pointing the right way⁵. When the engine is turning, a centrifugal clutch, formed from whirling pivoted weights in a bell-shaped housing which is attached to the cog, allow the drive to slip and the chain is motionless. Rev the engine by pulling on the trigger in the handle and the engine speeds up and the weights fly outward and catch on the bell housing causing it to spin and drive the cog which in turn makes the chain move. Where was I?

Oh yes. Well I checked the guide bar for damage and, finding none I could see, attempted to get all those vertical teeth back in the slot in the guide bar, but they wouldn't go. It turned out that some of them had suffered damage that knocked up spurs of metal on them, widening them quite a bit. Well, that was that then, a new chain would have to be bought . I surmised that he damage occurred at the drive cog.

I didn't have time to find out though because at that point I accidentally let the little finger of my left hand brush up lovingly against the engine's muffler, still very hot after all the sawing, and as a result spent some time explaining how very unpleasant that was to the neighbors, then even more time attempting to stave off the inevitable agony with ice cubes and cold water.

Why I do this I don't know since it never works. As soon as the cold is removed, typically because I've run out of ice, the pain reasserts itself, building to a crescendo that, once passed, dies down to something only moderately intolerable.

Overcome by ennui and agony I refused to work any more that day.

A week later I managed to track down a new chain and reengaged the saw in single combat for mastery in a World Gone Mad.

First I stripped the chain guide off the saw completely and checked that the motor would in fact start. The "clonk" it had emitted had sounded like a piston breaking, and this motor only has the one. It started with only eight to ten minutes of pulling on the starting cord and yelling the Magic Start Words, which not only removed one item off the "possibly busted up good" list but removed the gaggle of jeering neighbors and their children from the vicinity too. Bonus.

I checked out the drive cog for damage while I was at it. There were some marks on the teeth, but the wear seemed even, such as might be suffered during normal wear and tear rather than a ding caused by the chain attempting a break for it.

The new chain came out of its packaging tangled, so once again I was obliged to become a master of improvised topology before I could start the Main Attraction - fitting the chain to the guide.

First I ran a few of the teeth along the guide bar to check that the slot really was undamaged and clean out some of the gunk a year and a bit of sawing had left in it - a lotion made of pulverised tree in chain oil is what it was. Then came the fitting together of all the bits.

The correct proceedure is:

1. Hook the chain over the sprocket, allowing a couple of tangles to form in the chain
2. Untangle chain, cutting exposed skin on teeth of chain
3. Fit bar on bolt-and-peg seating. Tangle chain again.
4. Untangle chain and hold in one hand, while keeping guide bar aligned with other hand.
5. With other other hand fit combination cover/guide lock/guide extender and attempt to locate the extender wheel indexing pin in the matching hole in the guide bar
6. Fail spectacularly
7. Turn saw over in an ultimately futile attempt to see the pin and the hole in order to match them up, spilling the chain in a tangled heap into your lap
8. Untangle Chain
9. Repeat from step 1 until utterly overcome with the desire for death
10. By dismantling the saw and adjusting the bar extender to wind the indexing pin as far back as possible, figure out the position at which the guide bar will properly engage the index pin
11. Untangle the chain again
12. Reassemble the saw, guide bar, chain and cover, finally engaging the hole in the guide bar on the adjustment pin
13. Untangle chain
14. Gradually lengthen the guide bar by turning the thumbscrew downward
15. Or was that upward?
16. Before the guide bar gets too long, hook the chain over the length of it
17. The end, the bit with the cog inside, is tricky so mind you don't...
18. The band-aids are in the bathroom
19. Well, you should have bought some more last week while you were in the pharmacy!
20. Once the bleeding stops, refit the chain and wind out the guide bar using the thumbwheel until about an 8th of an inch gap shows between the chain and the bottom of the bar when you lift the end
21. Tighten the cover and you're good to go

I grabbed the chain and ran it back and forth to confirm that it was moving through the sprocket without binding, and declared it good to go, though I haven't actually tried to cut wood with it yet. By the time I was done reassembling the wretched thing I couldn't bear to have it near me any more.

Two weeks later the burn is healing nicely. The inch-long blister has burst, the old skin has sloughed off and I can finally bend the finger again.

So the time is ripe for a rematch with Mr Bushtree.

1. So many of my life's more exciting moments start with that harridan's "suggestions"↑
2. singular↑
3. One of my old chainsaws had had it's automatic oiler fail. That's how I know this↑
4. Don't know what that looks like? Look it up! I recommend Squadron Publications' T34 in Action. Squadron is based in Texas somewhere I think. Good luck↑
5. Normally↑

An I-Con Of Science Fiction

I-Con was a blast.

I-Con is a convention run at the Stonybrook campus of SUNY¹ for fans of Animé, SF & Fantasy. The VIPs run tha gamut from the movers and shakers in the comic industry to the actors in the most popular SF films and shows of the time such as Battlestar Galactica, Serenity, Star Trek Lord of the Rings and so on, and authors. In past years they had real astronauts and cosmonauts, but these days it is rare to find a real spaceman at this convention. I doubt any of the attendees would recognize them anyway.

At first, Mrs Stevie would attend every other I-Con to coincide with the attendance of Harlan Ellison. After the Stevieling was old enough to attend (11 months) we started going every year. As time went on the con got bigger and started to take over more and more of the Stonybrook campus.

In the early years of our attendance, it all packed into one building, the Javits lecture theater complex, a neat octagonal building with lecture theaters opening off corridors arranged in a cross form, the hub of the cross being a small plenum/atrium for lounging about in. Authors and media guests would be sitting at tables in the plenum or at the ends of the corridors and you were never more than a hundred feet from whatever event you next wanted to attend. It was in the Javits building that I met C.J. Cherryh², Michael Dorn³ and Walter Schirra⁴ to name just three.

A big part of the SF con scene is the so-called "dealer's room" in which people can buy badges, props and clothing of an appropriate theme, which in the Javits era of I-Con was a terrifying thing to visit. You'd be shuffled at about a half a mile per hour past the various dealer tables by the force of everyone else packing shoulder-to-shoulder in the tiny room⁵.

You'd have to make two circuits too: one to select what you wanted to purchase and a second to transact the sale. Azathoth help the person trying to use a credit card. That would mean a third trip and the fervent hope the dealer hadn't given your card to someone else by mistake as you raced from the exit back to the entrance. Good times.

These days the dealer room is housed in a huge sports complex. Media guests also have a speaking stage in there. I have a picture of The Stevieling with George Takei⁶ taken in that place, and another of her with Billy Boyd⁷. In bygone years Mrs Stevie has run into Majel Barret⁸ and John De Lancie⁹ walking around that dealer room.

There are tables set up in that room for media guests to sign autographs. There's also a table in there somewhere (it never seems to make it to the key on the map) which is used by authors for signings. One of my fondest memories is of Ben Bova¹⁰ being dragged across the campus by the very young Stevieling. He had given a reading, then announced he was signing in the ISC¹¹ but had no idea where it was. "I can show you" piped up The Stevieling and promptly did so with extreme prejudice.

Dr Bova is very generous when it comes to tolerating eager youth.

More and more, video games and Animé have taken the prominent role and the old-fashioned type-on-paper SF and Fantasy has been marginalized. I guess it's a sign of the times. Last year, Jack McDevitt¹² had to cancel his guest appearance at short notice on account of the lousy weather (would that I had had as much sense) and such was the paucity of recognizable names ¹³ the con was effectively a waste of time for me that year.

Lest you are an I-Con attendee¹⁴ and think I am subscribing to the view that the con was doomed by having to temporarily relocate to Brentwood as the consensus seems to be amongst I-Conites, Brentwood had many advantages from my perspective over Stonybrook and I cut the organizers a lot of slack for having to work with an unfamiliar infrastructure. I've been there and done that. I was rather hoping for a second year at Brentwood in fact.

I was rather more scathing on certain other factors, chief of which is the ludicrously time-wasting method they choose every year to give people the tickets they bought and paid for months in advance, and which I hold to be extremely poor return for the faith shown by those advance purchasers in the con and their support with much-needed funding ahead of the event itself¹⁵

The I-Con staffers have stopped sneering "Well, if you can suggest a better method..." at me because I can. And I do.

Less than 9999 people attend I-Con in any given year. Allocate each ticket sold a five digit number. Mail out the tickets (which are also the badges you must wear to prove you belong in the con when challenged) with a missing component. The tickets are usually a piece of thin printed card with a small, square holographic label stuck in one corner. Have the labels held by the people at the desks, each of whom has a clipboard with the alphabetized list of names of people who have pre-bought tickets along with the matching allocated number assigned to their ticket, which could be hand-stamped on a generic pre-printed badge using the same sort of indexing stamp used when numbering banknotes during the quality control phase of production, or could be printed at the same time the ticket is. It could even be written on by hand, like the name usually is.

So to recap: you pay up front, months before the con. Sometime between then you receive through the mail you ticket bearing your name, your registration number but no little holographic sticker (the actual difficult-to-forge part of the credential). At pick-up time you get on line with about a thousand other people in freezing, wet weather, but the line moves really quickly because (and this is the clever bit) anyone can be checked in at any of the tables, since the people sitting behind each table are each capable of validating your badge against the lo-tek master list, unpeel a sticky hologram label from his or her own reel of same, and sick it on the ticket/badge, thus completing the check-in process.

It would also free up the four-to-six guys they need to marshal people into the small area they usually set aside for this "badging" to do real work.

With this scheme everyone is happy. I am because the line moves at a reasonable speed instead of clogging because there are, once again, against all reasonable expectation, fifty times as many people crowding into the L-S line and blocking anyone from getting to the empty A-E table. I-Con organizers are because fraud is guarded against effectively¹⁶. Even the people manning the tables are because no-one is snarling at them about terminal bleeping stupidity year after year and them not being able to get me laid in a cat house or drunk in a brewery.

Where was I?

Well this year I-Con returned to Stonybrook and not only did Jack McDevitt agree to try again at being an author guest, but Samuel R. Delany¹⁷ was to attend on the Saturday, participate in panels, do a signing session and read one of his stories!

Samuel R. Delany wasn't the first SF author I ever read, but he is the one that is first in the old brain when people ask me who was. I can clearly remember pulling a copy of The Einstein Intersection, a Gollancz publication in their characteristic bright yellow dust covers, from the shelf in the library of St John Backsides. Within about a half hour I was rubbing my eyes and saying to myself "You can do that with SF?"

The Friday badge pick-up was the usual cluster-bleep and took more than two hours. It was made particularly hellish this year by Mrs Stevie deciding that since she has a brand new shuttlecraft¹⁸ she should offer to ferry every one of the Stevieling's peers who wanted to go to Stonybrook, so I was riddled with cooties before I even got there. Then two of the young ladies had to buy tickets at the door, which took even longer to achieve than trying to liberate an already bought one. Then I got into a stand-up, knock-down argument with security on the entrance to the dealer's room, the only thing worth visiting by the time we had cleared immigration, that ended with me being ejected over a bottle of water

A goon attempted to grab my water bottle from my bag so he could toss it. I explained I would rather he didn't and it would have ended there with me returning to the vehicle and stashing the aqueous threat to Democracy but a uniformed campus cop, all of about 25 years old and full of himself in front of the giggling 18 year old girls filling the place by then, decided that I was arguing and didn't understand that the security staff had orders. I eventually got so tired of being lectured by this little sheep-pimp I told him to bleep himself and left. He fired a witty "enjoy your ride home" at me, so it became a matter of honor to bleep with him.

I had to give Raven his revolving jewelry display case of extreme inconvenience, Raven was in the dealer room, I would enter the room and drop off the case despite Officer Wannabe.

I simply dropped off the offending water and grabbed the case, which was packaged in a box that originally contained an air conditioner and was a lightweight luggage trolley, and talked my way in through the vendor-only entrance. I spent so much time chin-wagging with the people I knew from all the years I've been attending that I cooled off and jettisoned my plan to stroll out and greet the Idiot In Uniform as I walked out of the exit. I knew I had won.

Word to the wise to any goons-in-training: I get that I can't bring drink into a place where that same stuff is being sold, and will certainly comply with that policy. All you have to do is say "You can't bring that in" and we are jake. If you grab for anything without so much as a by-your-leave, we are on the outs - and I have an attack paralegal on permanent retainer. We now return to the scheduled program in progress.

Saturday dawned, and I grabbed two boxes, one filled with my entire collection of Samuel R Delany books (around 14 paperbacks) and the other with everything I had by McDevitt except the two books I bought the first time he had been at I-Con, about five years before (he and Ben Bova were the SF author draw that year)¹⁹, about 17 paperbacks (McDevitt was a lucky find for me and I'll buy anything he writes these days). I was in for a treat. But first we had to pick up the gaggle of young women that "we" had agreed to transport.

I once read a story in which the POV character spends the entire thing in a traffic jam with a heroin addict, who is going into noisy, painful withdrawal. It turns out at the end that the POV character is dead and in hell. After I-Con weekend I now envisage hell as being on the road in a Honda Odyssey with Mrs Stevie and five screaming teenaged girls blithering on about Azathoth-knows what. The level of noise would gradually climb to a crescendo, at which point Mrs Stevie would press the reset button by yelling "Keep it down!" and it would start all over again.

I was climbing the walls by the time we reached the Stonybrook campus, a thirty-five minute drive that Mrs Stevie can manage in about eighteen since she has no sense of smell and the stench of burning tire rubber doesn't bother her at all, and she fears nothing under the sun, including the Sheriff's Dept who now police the Long Island Expressway instead of the Suffolk County Police due to budget crunches. I digress.

As we were entering the car park, one of the young darlings in the back of the van cried out "I've forgotten my ticket! We have to go back!"

To understand the effect of this announcement you have to understand the parking realities of I-Con. We like to put our vehicle behind the sports complex so the walk to it during the con isn't an epic trek. Throughout the day the vehicle will get visited by me so I can drop off books & collect other stuff, and Mrs Stevie and The Stevieling (and, this year, the entire cast of "Hell on Wheels" - a Story of Teen Angst²⁰") attend in costume²¹ and sometimes need to swap out attire as the day drags on. Parking space in this car park is at a premium and you have to be there 30 minutes before the con opens just to find a spot.

Mrs Stevie first ascertained that this wasn't amusing improvisational Théatre-de-Van, then the screaming started.

I maintained an amused distance, knowing a) that Mrs Stevie had brought this down on herself by volunteering to transport lackabrain teenaged girls, and 2) I wasn't driving so I wouldn't have to go home at all. I could grab my gear and I was good to go.

Not only that, Mrs Stevie had only herself to blame. At every stop to pick up a teenager, Mrs Stevie had gone through a lengthy "Have you got your ticket? Show me!" routine, but had been so eager to depart by the fifth one that she had forgone her ticket check. I remember thinking at the time it was a bit foolish and she really should check all the girls had their ticket, and that in her place that's what I would do. But I had no desire to get on her bad side by interfering so I kept mum and assumed she knew what she was doing.

What then ensued is best viewed from a distance of about three miles through heavily smoked glass from within a half-buried concrete bunker. Mrs Stevie had a full-blown conniption fit.

It would have been interesting to watch under other circumstances since I've only ever seen these from the viewpoint of the target and have often wondered in the short moments of lucidity that come between cranial impacts what they look like from the outside.

Unfortunately I was too busy screaming about the parked cars we were about to crash into and clawing at my seat belt in a futile attempt to escape the hurtling Pilotless Ballistic Van of Certain Death in which I had been unwittingly trapped to pay attention to anything else.

Fortunately the other occupants of the van managed to draw her attention back to controlling the vehicle, by means of a group pantomime involving madly waving hands, informational facial expressions and in one case improvisational urination. It was all very trying.

We parked the van and Mrs Stevie explained that we would not be returning home, suggesting an alternative plan in which the young woman bought a second ticket, the price of which would be refunded on presentation of both tickets at the ticket booth on Sunday morning. There was a deathly silence, followed by general agreement that this was a good plan, and then I ponied up a sawbuck so the kid wouldn't be broke all day as a result of her incompetence and off we went, Mrs Stevie to breakfast followed by Ren Fayre goings-on, me to change my pee-soaked underwear and then to the first author panel of the day and the kids to get a new ticket and then wherever their little hearts took them, clad as they were in incomprehensible Japanese character drag.

Indeed, a little later in the day The Stevieling begged us to allow her to spend a fortune on a rather daft wet-look overcoat that was supposed to be worn in some Japanese cartoon show. The coat featured an oversize zipper with teeth the size of my little finger's last joint, and since the zipper didn't open fully the coat had to be stepped in and out of like a shiny hula-hoop with sleeves. Ridiculous.

All the kids were wearing them too. I shrugged and said "It's your money" which made the daft-mac lady and The Stevieling very happy and Mrs Stevie very unhappy, but hampered by her Ren Fayre finery she couldn't move fast enough to reinforce her side of the argument so that was that. I escaped to the building where the afternoon panels were to be held, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The first panel was on the subject of whether someone should start their SF/Fantasy writing career by writing short stories for magazine publication or go straight for the novel. The answers to this question see-sawed back and forth as the panelists, all published authors, some with decades of experience in selling their work, gave their take. Most seemed to feel that you should write what you intend to end up writing - if you are a budding novelist, write novels, if you prefer the short form, write in it. The surprise was Carol Emshwiller, an author of longstanding reputation, who felt that it didn't matter, and went on to illustrate how she had broken every one of the "rules" the others had sagely concurred were in effect during the creative process and marketing of the results afterwards.

After the panel was over, I used the time to ask Samuel R. Delany if my 14 books would be too many for him to sign at one go (some authors have policies on what and how many they sign) and he graciously said no, no problem at all, then asked his helper where he was due to be next and was told he was scheduled to do a reading. He looked alarmed and said that he hadn't been made aware of this and that he had nothing to read. I said that I had everything the con attendees would know of his work in the box I was carrying, and that I would be honored if he were to pick something from that and read for us.

And that's what happened.

Unfortunately, when he opened the volume he picked, I don't think he realized how old the paperback was and he broke the spine of my early 80s vintage "Driftglass"²². Now I look after my paperbacks, and most of mine do not have broken spines as a result. It would be fair to say that if you break the spine of one of my books, I'm not your friend any more until the heat-death of the universe. But somehow, although I heard the "Crack!" and knew immediately what had happened, I didn't mind at all. It was worth it to hear the Grand Master read Aye, and Gomorrah, my favourite Delany short story. Afterwards, during the signing session, he was gracious enough to add "I-Con 29" to each signature so in years to come they would act as reminders of the day.

Authors are often surprised that I ask them to add this, and wonder why I don't want t he date. My answer is that since I have no plans to sell the books (said books are usually from my collection and may be upwards of twenty five years old) that knowing where they were signed is more important and anyway, if anyone wants the date, all it takes is a bit of research.

That said, I used my time on the Delany signing line to buy the new reprint of The Jewel Hinged Jaw, Delany's critique of SF, possibly one of the most sought-after analytical books on the subject and long, long out of print²³. It was a good day for Science Fiction.

I followed Delany and McDevitt around to their various panels (both are very interesting speakers) but missed the Delany-biopic "Polymath" because McDevit was signing at the same time and I was eager to get the autographs over and done with so I could return the books to the car. I bought a copy of McDevitt's Time Travelers Never Die while on line, so it turned out to be eighteen books I was handing to him. He was surprised to learn that I had acquired (and read) all the books since his last visit to I-Con, and we chatted about his upcoming fiction while he wrote a book's worth of signatures for me. I reckon I gave everyone writer's cramp that day.

Incidentally, I recommended the McDevitt book Polaris so often that Mrs Stevie demanded to be shown said book when we got home (as this was my first McDevitt book, bought at the other I-Con and signed then, it wasn't in the box) and has since devoured half a dozen McDevitt works and wants to read the others. You really should give Polaris a look.

Seeing as I was already in the dealer's room (the author signing table being in the back of it) I did some T-shirt shopping before returning to the Van of Death to drop everything off. I picked up a couple of T-shirts and a rather neat golf shirt with a really subtle Cthulhu logo on the pocket. S'my fave shirt now.

Saturday evening rolled around and the guests all made off to attend the traditional con banquet, which I'm told now features decent food in sufficient quantities for all. Past fiasco has made it a non-starter for Mrs Stevie and me though. We gathered the girls and departed for a diner, then returned them all home, getting back to Chateau Stevie around 9:30 pm or so, and falling into bed exhausted.

The next day was a much lighter program. I attended more panels, readings and whatnot, Mrs Stevie hobnobbed with Celtic bards, the kids went and got their refund on the ticket and then disappeared into the con for whatever they were going to do. For the first time in years I reached the end of the con before I was really aware it was all over. I swung by one of the filk singing events, but before I could get settled in it was over. I would have bought one of the singer's CDs, but the fire alarm went off and we had to evacuate the building. I spent the last half hour reading The Jewel Hinged Jaw in which Delany was developing the idea that form and content cannot be seperated, and then Mrs Stevie arrived in theater and I was told we were leaving.

It was much more fun than last year.

1. State University of New York↑
2. Author of Downbelow Station, Cyteen and the Foreigner series. Buy them. Read them.↑
3. Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation↑
4. Real Spaceman, not an actor↑
5. Actually, there were two of them↑
6. Mr Sulu↑
7. Peregrine Took↑
8. Mrs Gene Roddenberry aka Lwaxana Troi↑
9. "Q" of Star Trek:The Next Generation↑
10. "Hard" SF author of Mars, Venus and other books with slightly predictable names. Buy Mars and read it↑
11. something-beginning-with-I Sports Center aka dealer room during I-Con↑
12. Author of Polaris, an SF "locked-room" mystery that takes the Marie Celeste story and runs it into places it was meant to go. I can't recommend this book highly enough. If you haven't encountered McDevitt's work and plan to do so, start with this one. You won't be sorry↑
13. A condition I readily cede is as much to do with my lamentable lack of familiarity with the newer authors as the I-Con executive's innability to stock the con with top-shelf talent↑
14. A vanishingly small possibility↑
15. This nonsense is worth a posting to itself, but I'll summarize: One buys a ticket in advance and gets a receipt. On the opening of the Con, typically late afternoon on the Friday, everyone is forced to stand for as much as three hours in March weather while once again the I-Con executive fail to get a clue. They arrange for people to sit behind desks with the tickets in a file box, alphabetized for ease of use. They break the alphabet into ranges of letters and allocate one file box to each range along with one of two people to verify you are who you say you are and give you your already-bought ticket. This wouldn't be so onerous and time-consuming if the idiots would realize just for once that the ticket-buyers do not spread across the alphabet evenly with respect to last names, but clump around certain letters. Like "S". As in Smith. You'd think that somewhere in the executive there'd be a halfway competent statistician, or someone who could remember last year's fiasco, but no.↑
16. The real reason no-one gets their bought-and-paid-for badge when they pay for it: fear the purchaser will scan the badge and run off a few more With my scheme the secure credential that must be guarded with life and limb until the con starts is the box of stickers↑
17. Author of such seminal SF works as The Einstein Intersection Babel-17, Dhalgren and a baker's dozen more titles available on request or by using you own Google nodes↑
18. A Honda Odyssey seven-seater. Long story to come in another post if I remember↑
19. Polaris and Hello Out There if you're interested↑
20. As in: Angst brought on by teens↑
21. Mrs Stevie in "Medieval Drag" and everyone else channeling some Japanese cartoon character or other↑
22. A collection of Samuel R Delany's SF short stories↑
23. I had been looking seriously at a copy printed in 1977 just weeks before↑

Lappy Happy

So to celebrate the fact that this year, by dint of figuring out what our taxes should be and doubling the amount, I overcame the inability of my HR department to calculate my withholding correctly¹ and we are due a sizable refund².

We decided that we had enough with certain other funds put by to forgo the new desktop computer we had planned on buying and instead purchase three laptops, one for each of us.

This plan had many advantages.

First, The Stevieling has been silently jonesing for a laptop of her very own for years, but after one oblique inquiry a few Christmases ago, when the realities of the "vast" Stevie fortunes were revealed to her disbelieving ears, she abandoned hope. When she answered "nothing" to the inquiry as to what she would like for her birthday present, the perfect opportunity to surprise her occurred.

Second, Mrs Stevie, The Stevieling and I contend like heck for time on the desktop we have. Action was Called For on that front alone. The Stevieling had to be able to spend hours watching vapid Yootoob videos and Mrs Stevie's interminable web-forum dallying was of paramount importance. I was having trouble getting time on the thing just to get the taxes done, and my e-mail piles up unread in a big, electronic unread pile.

Third, every time I tried to start the computer after one of those bally women had been using it it would take forever to boot as it went crazy trying to clean up resources left by their web-consumption.

Fourth, one time in ten there would be a problem with something, and I was getting well-tired of asking "What did you do last night?" and getting back "Nothing". All I can say is that the Women of Chateau Stevie can take a bloody long time to do "nothing".

So I struck a deal with the devil and bought three Dell Inspiron laptops, each in a distinctive colour³, one for each person in The Steviemanse. The Stevieling was gobsmacked once she cottoned on to the fact that the blue laptop on the kitchen table was hers to have and use with no sharing at all. Naturally it's three days later and already there is a problem with one of the pre-loaded packages. Par for the course. It's entirely possible I broke it during the irritating set-up. Well you try registering McAffee from the applet. You'd think that if a company made a product they absolutely wanted registering over the web, the biggest thing on the unregistered version would be a screen-filling "Register Me Now" button. You'd be wrong. I gave up looking after almost an hour of poking the application. I probably tweaked a control that said "never allow this to launch again". It would match the design ethic of the rest of the application.

I've also spent hours just trying to connect to he wireless public networks all over NYC. I suspect the same software that won't tell you how to register it is forbidding the network DNS servers to supply me with a valid internet address. I did manage to access the sign-in page of Optimum WiFi, the semi-secured public WiFi my cable (and internet) company provides, but the servers were so sow responding my train had limped out of range before the sign-on was completed. One day my dream of uploading TOS entries on he iniquities being visited on me by the LIRR as they are happening will come to pass. One day.

Not only that, the perl thing I wrote to manage the stream-of-drivelness run-on sentences and let me convert them to less onerous footnotes will not run properly, and I've wasted huge volumes of time trying to make it do so. I eventually simply rewrote the script to turn the stupid bug into a feature, in the best traditions of IT workers everywhere.

So there you have it. The Stevieling's computer hasn't got the flash authoring environment installed on it, so she can't do what she most likes to do - make incomprehensible web videos. Mrs Stevie only uses hers as a web-access tool, so all those megawatts of RAM and SATAs of disk are wasted on her. And mine is only used to write stupid stuff for this blog - a job I formerly did on an antique and oft-malfunctioning Handspring Visor. All in all a waste of all the power the latest technology⁴ presents to me in the attractive red package currently sitting on my desk.

Which is why I feel obliged to play the latest and greatest 64-bit version of Minesweeper at all times.

1. They got it so wrong one year I was dunned by the IRS for quarterly estimated payments, something usually reserved for rich-git Bankers, owners of corporations and others who play fast and loose with the tax system. I tried to get this fixed the proper way, but ran up against "we don't make mistakes. Ever." within the first three minutes and once you get there with this crowd you might as well give the bleep up. Another way to combat this brand of dimwittedness is to submit a W4 document that names a specific amount to be withheld over the year rather than use a calculation based on circumstances. My lot have replaced the "inefficient" paper W4 with a web version that - guess what - won't allow me to implement this simple anti-idiocy scheme↑
2. It remains to be seen in these cash-strapped times whether we actually ever see the money we loaned the various government bodies interest-free of course, but hope springs eternal↑
3. Mine's red. Red ones go faster↑
4. Minus six months as I can't afford the money or the time to configure and overcome the teething troubles with the bleeding edge machines the kids are toting to college, which is to say what I bought is already obsolete by three months↑

Another Great Start To The Week

So Monday started with a bang.

To begin with it was raining just hard enough to force me to wear my London Fog duster, which is nice for rain but awkward to get out of and back into on a moving train, and will pretty much guarantee that the day will turn out to be scorching hot, forcing me to either carry over one arm (requiring a third arm be grown before 5 pm but we don't sweat the small stuff) or to wear it and risk death by heat stroke.

Then, the rain increased in volume just before I left my car in Wyandanch LIRR car park and stayed at drench factor 11 until just after I took shelter in the station, when it reduced to drizzle. This was just long enough to flood the sidewalks and completely soak my coat so the weight of the thing climbed north of a hundredweight and the lining became damp.

I was just congratulating myself in having picked the one pair of shoes I possess that don't leak when some jerk deliberately drove through the flooded water in the curbside gutter and soakeed me from knee to the soles of my feet. Of course, this was the one time when the usual collection of broken bottles, barbed wire and razor-sharp metal fragments had been washed away so I didn't have the pleasure of seeing the bleep-hole shred his steel-belted radials. bleeper.

I hate this commute.

Overwhelming Cricket Noise

I've been to busy, sick and despondent to post of late.

That's not an excuse, just a reason for the sounds of silence of late. After this weekend I shall be in a position to rectify this veritable famine of fiascos, debacles, screw-ups and annoyance at the hands of those iniquitous swine, that cabal of insidious workers to the detriment and defeat of the working man, The Long Island Rail Road.

Posts in the works include the I-Con report (last years I-Con was such a disappointment I think I actually forgot to deliver the promised post on it) including how a Very Famous Writer savagely cracked the spine of one of my treasured ancient paperbacks, and why I don't care about it as much as I should, a serious plea for people to stop using the trains as a means of ending their now-pointless existence on the planet or at the very least to start using the South Shore Lines so I can get home on time for once and the acquisition of new technology and my struggle with it in a World Gone Mad.

Oh, and Mrs Stevie's Shuttlecraft will be there somewhere.

The Rain In Wyandanch Stays Mainly On The Carpark

I have spoken before about the cunning and innovative civil engineering used in constructing the drains of Long Island in general and Wyandanch (Pearl of the East) in particular

So I shall use the relatively new Blogger feature that allows me to upload pictures to this blog without an account with a third party web-host and a degree in computer science to demonstrate that I do not "make this stuff up" as certain people have recently been hinting.

The picture appearing above (hopefully) is of the place the rain should have gone over the last week, during which the Western Hemisphere's entire supply of rain for spring was erroneously delivered to my address all in one go over the course of three soggy days and nights.

Luckily, the Wyandanch civil engineers realized that a gentle flow of water sluicing over the various cracked curbstones, potholes and ill-laid tarmac that make up the North-East carpark complex would be just the thing to raise commuter spirits dampened during the previous week, and arranged for the carpark to become a massive shallow reservoir that should take another three to four days to drain dry by the stunning expedient of placing half the drains halfway up the various hills and slopes that make up the local topology.

The pool depicted wraps around a small complex of shops and restaurants, none of which can use their rear entrances owing to between 3 and six inches of water pooling round the entire mall. As you can see, their is a very nice, large, clean drain within a couple of feet of this lake, but as it lies a good foot above inland sea level it is of no use in reducing the amount of wet lying in square yards all over the place. In a stroke of genius, the elevation of the drain exceeds that of each and every doorstep by at least six inches, so maximum fun was extracted from the inclement weather and many of the establishments are still trying to dry out.

And they say there's no more greatness in the world.

The Saga Of The Jewelry Case Comes To An End

I have finally completed the repairs on the Jewelry Display Case of Extreme Time-Wasting and Expense.

I said I'd have a go at making this thing after a friend who sells pewter statues, chess sets and jewelry, broke his rotating triangular case o' jewelry displayage by bashing and smashing it for a few years. Since it was made of Perspex, it just about disintegrated. He asked me as I passed his booth at I-Con one year if I could fix it, and I said no¹, but that I might be able to make him a new one.

I dithered for about two years and came up with a hexagonal design (the issue was not the shape², that was 5 minutes worth of overheating brains, smoking hair and so on) but how to realize that shape in the footprint required to house a reasonable number of the little display cards the jewelry comes fastened to.

These cards hang from a metal hook-shaped clip fashioned into the top of each card, which engaged in a slot in the original display case. I thought that six columns of two cards, six high would work. I had one of the cards (I had though far enough into the process while I spoke with my friend to realize the need for one) and so it was a matter of simple arithmetic to figure out the dimensions of the hexagonal prism required to do the job. The problem was that no-one makes hardwood in such dimensions that the hexagonal base and top could be simply made from two planks, and if they did I could never afford to buy it given the rarity of hardwood in general - I had decided to go with maple for the construction as I could work it easier than I could oak and it would be hard enough when finished to withstand a fair degree of bashing and smashing without getting dinged-up.

I finally had the required brainwave and figured out that if I made the core prism out of MDF (a sort of hardboard) and used small lengths of aluminum channel bolted to these panels as hooks for the cards to hang on, I didn't need the base to be solid. It could be annular (ring-shaped). The top could also be made annular, and the hole could be covered up by a second, smaller hexagon of wood. So that's what I did. The whole thing was held together by a threaded truss rod joining the top to the base.

The finished object was, if I say so myself, a thing of beauty and I presented it to him at I-Con four years ago.

The next year he gave it back. He had stored it for a year in an unheated garage lockup and the top had cracked through due to thermal creep and, I suspected, an over-tightened truss rod. I told him I'd repair it and return it, but the top ended up needing to be completely re-fabricated and during that process my drill press died and my router self-destructed, so it wasn't ready. The next year Mrs Stevie was ill and I had no thought for woodworking. So this year, four years after I originally made the thing, I finally am able to re-present it with the proviso that if he stores it in a garage and it cracks I want nothing more to do with the wretched thing.

It was quite a struggle to get the damned thing built too.

The original was clearly not properly assembled, so I resolved to make the joints more accurately this time. The best accuracy I could get in tests on the Miter Saw was about 1/3 a degree per cut, which translated into an accumulated error of about three degrees over the entire ring, meaning it was a spiral with either an overlap at the final joint or a gap. Experiments with my new table sanding machine could not improve on the error in the time I had, so I went cheap 'n' cheerful and decided to make two half-hexagon rings, then machine each half-hex to match the other. This would result in a slightly irregular hexagon, but I was getting fed up with the whole thing by then and didn't care.

The crowning hexagon was machined as six triangles, and was glued down to the hexagonal ring, centering it as best I could.

I took some precautions to avoid Splitting Top Syndrome while I was at it. The lack of biscuit joints, dovetails, tenons or whatever meant that the joints could easily fail as they had before (I had used biscuits³ in the previous design, but they let go). I considered using metal plates screwed over each joint, but that would only hold one side of the joint and allow expansion stresses to build up and twist the top apart again.

Then I had what I hope was a better idea. I machined an extra slot in the ring and the crown, sank some screws in the slot, leaving the heads proud, and poured quick-setting Alumilite liquid plastic resin⁵ into the slot. Now each hexagonal piece has an integral O-ring holding the joints together.

The goodies on display are kept safe from the light-fingered by six Lucite windows that engage in a slot in the base and have a top piece made of wood that has a pin which engages in a hole in the top of the case. The original design was a bit too fiddly when it came to hooking up the windows after a sale, so I added knobs to the bottom of each window fabricated out of the flat-top screw bolts used to hold Swedish furniture together.

It all looks quite good now after a minor paint touch up to the core (which is matte black to emphasize the goods on display)

but there are two minor gotchas that have me grinding my teeth.

First, I forgot that in transit the windows need securing and managed to construct the top with no regard for the clip-on hardboard "transit disc" that held everything together on the original. Fixing that requires dismantling the whole thing, a non-trivial operation at this stage in the game, so that has to be worked around with rubber bands.

Second, sometime between me giving my friend the case and my finishing it yesterday, the windows gat marked up. I was very careful to store them in wrappings, but I can't say for sure they got scratched in a damp garage as opposed to my basement. Most of the marks could be polished out with a polishing compound and some elbow grease, but I haven't the time or the inclination. I can replace the windows for about 20 bux and a weekend's work (and about two weeks recovery from the wrist strain cutting Lucite with a special scoring knife will cause) but I'm unwilling to invest more cash in this project. It has already cost north of 100 bux and enough is enough.

I am almost as glad to be rid of this albatross as I was to get shot of Bil the Elder's G4.

1. After I'd done laughing↑
2. The original case was triangular but my friend had asked for a square one to increase capacity. The problem with a square prism that revolves is that you have to allow a footprint that accommodates the sweep of the corners but hat is otherwise empty. I knew from observation that space tended to disappear on his table as the day went on, so a hexagon seemed a good compromise. Smaller sides meant smaller storage space per side, but the difference in diameter measured from point-to-point as opposed to that measured from flat-to-flat would be small making for no illusory free table space to be swallowed by tidal crap↑
3. Biscuits are small, oval pieces of wood that sit an a slot machined⁴ each face of a joint so that the joint is bridged by the biscuit which is secured by a water-based glue. The water in the glue causes the biscuit to expand and lock the joint firmly together. Unless some gimp stores the joined pieces of wood in a cold-then-damp-then-hot-and-damp garage for a year of course, in which case all bets are off↑
4. Using a biscuit-joiner↑
5. A truly marvelous product that can be used to make all sorts of things very, very quickly↑

Who Knows Where The Time Goes?

I'd never been to Carnegie Hall before.

Last Thursday The Stevieling was part of her school choir, which was joining five others in an evening of music in the Isaac Stern auditorium, Carnegie Hall, and the family decamped there-wards for some culture.

Seated all around were other proud parents, some of whom I knew, some from many years of meeting at similar, if less upscale, events. Behind me, with her family, was an enchanting five-year old girl who - like most of her kind - reminded me of the days when The Stevieling was that age.

Since our choir was on next-to-last I got to see a cross section of Long Island school choirs sing. There isn't much to say. The youngest kids had material that was too repetitive and went on too long for non-parents to appreciate, while one of the older kids' choir presented a "World Premier" of a piece that could have had a subjective month lopped off it without ruining the experience in my opinion.

But everyone had practiced until they'd turned blue and was giving it their all in Carnegie Hall for crying out loud! I gave each kid in each choir a heartfelt round of applause when each choir's program ended, and I meant every handclap as a salute to their hard work and professionalism under stress.

Then I watched my all-but seventeen year-old daughter mount the rostrum with her peers, and a peculiar double image formed in which a choir of five year old children mingled with the evening dress-clad young women and dress suited young men on the stage. I couldn't figure out who these young women and young men were. It wasn't that long ago that I was building her tree house, surely

The music swelled and folded us in simply wonderful for about twenty minutes, and all too soon it was over and I was on the sidewalk wearing a stupid expression while trying to find everyone in the crowds.

I still can't figure out when my little girl grew up.

Out Of The Furnace, Into The Fridge

When we moved in to Chateau Stevie it had a boiler made as one of a batch, the rest of which were installed on RMS Titanic.

It had, I think, been converted from oil to gas in the far distant past, and had probably run flawlessly for thirty plus years before we saw it. The outside was rusty, and the coil¹ would give only about one minute of hot shower water even with a lo-flo shower head, but it worked, sorta.

Admittedly we had to heat the top floor with electric heaters on account of the bloody plumber doing the plumbing "Genaro Fashion²" and relying on some sort of goodwill to move water out of the furnace-pipes-downstairs baseboard radiator-pipes-furnace circuit via a T-fitting and into the upstairs pipework.

What actually happened was that the vertical pipe would get hot, but no water would flow because there was no reason for it to do so.

One day the furnace gas valve required a tap with a Brummy Screwdriver³ to get it to open and provide us with life-sustaining heat and I finally had to admit we were in trouble. A quick check showed that we had hit the usual watershed: four grand in the savings account. Whenever we manage to scrape that amount up (which takes years BTW: no power earner me) something will come along to wipe out some part of the domestic infrastructure worth exactly that amount. It's sort of the universe's way of telling me exactly what my worth in the scheme of things is. One time it was a driveway that broke up and a hundred feet of fencing that fell over for example. This time it was a decent hot water system to replace the hope-anna-prayer job that was then sitting in the basement.

We had the Stevieling in the house by then, so I knew that keeping a furnace that might one day malfunction catastrophically was Not On. Accordingly we had fitted a "state of the art" Slant Fin furnace and a fifty gallon separate water heater, and had the installers create two pump-driven zones with proper valving for the upstairs and downstairs heating circuits. I still remember walking upstairs into warm air for the first time since we closed on the house, and the first post-water-heater-installation shower I took, five minutes after the last plumber left the house, which featured the luxury of being able to dawdle for more than one minute in the stream of hot damp.

The next day, which happened to be Thanksgiving Day, the brand new, state of the art furnace wouldn't fire up and the house was ice-cold.

I poked and pried and discovered that I could, by tapping hard on the flue vent, persuade the thing to open and the furnace to start. I spoke to the installer and said that since I could get the thing started manually, and since we were going out for Thanksgiving Day dinner that day, I could spare him sending out a team on Thanksgiving Day if he would set us up for a fix at start of business on the day after, Friday. He was very happy and promised that would be done.

Naturally, Friday rolled on and at 10 o' clock I called the installation company to find out what the hell was going on. The woman who answered the phone began her side of the conversation by asking "Do you have a service contract?" to which I answered "No". She then told me she couldn't send anyone out unless I had a contract with them. I then explained in increasingly harsh tones that I had a warranty, that the unit was less than 48 hours old and that if someone didn't come round and fix it at once I was calling the better business bureau and my lawyer, in that order. Someone came around noon and replaced the automated flue vent required by NY state law, the servo motor of which had malfunctioned, closing off the flue and thus triggering the fail-safe on the igniter.

The bloody thing malfunctioned every single year with the same fault for the first three years (the warranty period) and the same process of arguing with Ms. Service Contract or Nothing followed by threats followed by a late night visit by a "specialist" who would replace the same motorised flue vent was gone through each time. After the third replacement, the "specialist" said that legally the unit had to be fitted, but it didn't have to be used. The flue could be left open. The reason it is closed is to prevent backdrafts filling the basement with carbon monoxide, but the furnace also has a sensor to shut it down if it detects that happening (and it has on a couple of occasions when I've had a high-velocity fan blowing out of a basement window). So I had the unit deactivated.

The next failure, a couple of months later, was a carbon monoxide sensor shut-down caused by a freak windstorm, and the "specialist" showed me the secret restart button not included in the instruction sheet the installers left for me.

Then the warranty went out and the price quoted for a service contract by the installers would have put a man on the moon so we parted company. The furnace got clever and started chewing through thermocouples every year.

The thermocouple is a little copper tube that pokes into the pilot flame and tells the electronic gas valve that the pilot is lit so it can turn on the main gas jets when it wants to. When the thermocouple breaks, it breaks in "do not start" mode and the furnace does what it's told. The first I know of it is usually when I get home and enter a freezing house. "Why is it so cold in here?" I will ask, and get blank looks from the shivering women lying in wait.

This time I got up on Sunday morning, wandered about the house crashing into things and generally trying to get the old body started properly, and was ambushed by The Stevieling who said "The thermostat is set for 70 degrees but it is only like 60 in here. Is this normal?"

Now, in all the years she has lived there, she has been through several "cold house" moments and she knows darn well it is never "normal". This was just her trying out her mother's circumlocutory powers.

I went down into the basement, covered in sawdust and bits of wood from a frenzied attempt to dominate wood with power tools in a World Gone Mad the day before. I reasoned that it was possible that all the activity, including a high-throughput shop-vac doing duty as a dust collector, could have tricked the sensor into sniffing the dreaded carbon monoxide so I pressed the secret button in full expectation of hearing the boiler fire into life.

It didn't.

I wasted a few minutes taking the cover off the furnace and poking things in the hope Magic Poke Cooties would fix things, then stood up and did the Rage Dance while improvising a rap composed of my very best third order Words of Power.

Mrs Stevie said "Call the guy who always fixes it for us", so I did. This was a self-employed heating engineer who did a bang up job of restarting the damned furnace two or three times in the past and didn't charge a limb of any kind for the privilege.

He denied ever visiting us.

Since he wouldn't actually discuss things until we had resolved that, Mrs Stevie was forced to join the conversation (she was the only person who'd ever met him). He finally allowed as how he might have worked on our furnace, but said he was in semi-retirement now and couldn't help until Monday at the earliest.

Mrs Stevie then went and found another firm who agreed to come over⁴ and left for organised religion with The Stevieling in tow. I had to go and dismantle my production line so the furnace guy could actually get into the basement (which is filled floor to ceiling with crap everywhere there are no tools, workmates supporting tools, router tables on workmates or floor-standing tools). Since I was frantically trying to build a replacement top for the Jewelry Display Case of Annoyance, it was all very tiresome and I explained how tiresome it was at length, to the air in a monologue consisting largely of my very best fourth order Words of Power, as I moved, folded and dismantled various tool set-ups.

John the Furnace Guy came in, took the furnace apart, installed a new thermocouple, reassembled the parts⁵ and lit the thing, then presented his bill, all in a trice⁶.

I apologised as I paid him, but he said his bank had no problem cashing tear-stained checks, and since he always took the precaution of putting in ear plugs before presenting his invoice his hearing hadn't been damaged by my shrieks of dismay.

1. American domestic furnaces often feature an internal coil that is used to heat a separate water circuit, typically used to provide the domestic hot water supply↑
2. There're four ways of doing things: The right way, the wrong way, the hideously dangerously and/or uselessly wrong way and The Genaro Way. This is an ordered list↑
3. A pipe wrench↑
4. Mrs Stevie has a knack for finding reliable people on the strength of the briefest conversations, though I'm not certain threats are involved in every case↑
5. And had none left over afterwards↑
6. Defined in this case as just under an hour↑

Oh, What A Lovely Bore!

So much for the blizzard that had everyone running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

I went in early, so early I won't get paid for about an hour and three-quarters unless I request overtime which will be denied, and left at mid-day to avoid the chance of being marooned by the Long Island Rail Road, who now have a policy that once the snow is 10 inches deep, they don't run any trains.

This is because in the last snow storm they left a train full of people with no power, light or heat for six hours, and to their surprise were roundly vilified in the press and by anyone with breath in their bodies as a result. Rather than fix the systemic problem (no procedures to cover evacuating trains stuck in super-inclement weather or to attempt to restore "hotel power" - as heat and light are called in railroad parlance - so people don't freeze) they used the Clawhammer o' Never Again. So when a train stalls out due to a colossal rain storm, it'll be the same story because THEY HAVEN'T FIXED THE UNDERLYING PROBLEM.

Anyway

All that rushing around and for what? About nine inches of slush.

Good one, weathermen. A credit to your skills with the cutting edge technology you have at your fingertips.

Update - 0600 Hours am o'clock, Thursday

I spoke too soon.

Approximately 12 inches of snow fell all over the place overnight, then most of it blew into 2- and 3-foot drifts in my driveway, trapping the Steviemobile and the MrsSteviemobile behind impenetrable walls of weatherfluff. After that, it was a simple matter to have the town's snowplows throw whatever snow had not blown into my driveway into my driveway.

You have won this round, Mr Weatherman!

A Royal Pain In The Rear End

Warning! The following blither is totally disgusting, involving what can only be described without negating all purpose in this alert as "The Toilet Regions", and I'm not referring to the bathroom when I say that. Those with a weak stomach and those who find the subject of certain parts of the body repugnant should surf over to something else for a while. You have been duly warned. It's trousers down from here on in.

I had cause over the Xmas period to visit with a colorectal specialist.

I will pause now while those who unwisely ignored the big red warning at the top of the post finish throwing up into their keyboards. All done?

The reason was that I had somehow done an injury to that opening in my body not capable of coherent speech. I figured it would heal itself in time, almost every minor tear in the skin eventually does¹, but Mrs Stevie was adamant I seek proper medical attention. I argued that there was no real need, but she countered this clever line of reasoning by citing towel racks ripped out of the wall, torn linoleum and bite marks in the toilet seat, so I gave in.

The doctor was clearly an expert in wringing the maximum amount of humiliation from the situation, and had a highly trained staff. No sooner was I in the office than he had me drop my pants and underwear. The nurse held up a paper napkin around the same size as those in an average fast food restaurant, claiming it was to save me embarrassment, but she blew it by sniggering as she said it.

Once my trousers and underwear were around my ankles, I was instructed to kneel on a sort of leather and stainless steel chaise-longue of the kind often seen on exclusive members-only German bondage web sites and in the main parlour of Mistress Alexa's House of Executive Correction. It was, of course, some eight feet away, and so I was obliged to hop vigorously over to the device to the delight of the nurse, who had dropped all pretense of trying to preserve my dignity. I comforted myself with the thought that under normal circumstances, this procedure would have set me back a good $500, assuming Mistress Alexa could fit me in (she has a very crowded schedule).

I first began to appreciate how much real trouble I was in when I heard the doctor say: "Nurse, pass me the Hobbs retractor. It's that thing that looks like a bicycle pump with ridges around the end. No, the big one. And be careful. Those ridges are razor sharp. Now Mr Stevie, relax. You'll feel a small pinch."

Naturally, as soon as I heard that old "small pinch" line, the very same one Doc Rubberglove uses when he jabs me with his signature blunt hypodermics and leaves me with a dinner-plate sized bruise that fades in only 10-12 days, I tensed up tighter than Mrs Stevie's best choke hold, and the doctor was obliged to use brute force to insert whatever it was that he was holding into me.

"Just be careful doc", I whined. "I'm very tender back thereYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGH!"

The doctor, wise in the ways of colorectal examinations, had his nurse pinion me while he used his sheer muscle-power to insert fourteen inches of cold steel into places I had no idea I even had, while I thrashed around, screamed, begged for mercy and/or death and so forth. Before I knew it (actually, a good deal after I knew it to be honest), it was over.

"The original tear is healing. I'll give you some ointment for the four or five new ones you just got. Oh, and you should have a colonoscopy, being as how you're over fifty."

"I was thirty eight when I bent over your ruddy couch" I told him, attempting to sit on only one buttock.

And so the colonoscopy was scheduled, and was undergone last Monday.

Others in my office claimed to have had to drink gallons² of some sort of white liquid to clean them out (the hosepipe up the jacksy is, thankfully, no longer a recommended way of cleaning out the pipes of human beings prior to sticking something the size of a drainpipe up their rear ends). I'd seen the dentist on the movie "Ghost Town" drink some sort of disgusting white glop for the same purpose, and a co-commuter told me her husband had been made to drink something akin to clotted milk in sliminess to do the job.

I, however, was told to just take four laxative tablets on Saturday, drink one 10 oz bottle of cherry-flavoured Magnesium Citrate (another laxative) around six pm Sunday, and another at six am Monday. For once I was on the winning side of things it seemed.

Not for long though

The tablet-form laxative was supposed to begin laxavating my innards in three hours, but took nine. However, after a mere 30 minutes I was as dehydrated as a vulture's crotch. Every molecule of moisture was torn from my tissues, and I couldn't drink enough water and Gatorade to offset the dehydration. Result: a vicious hangover headache, which I still have days later.

The cherry soda had much the same effect, to the point that I was moaning and clutching my head for most of Superbowl Weekend, which was a curiously apposite title from a personal perspective given that my diet for three days consisted primarily of laxatives and water. I didn't watch the game on account of I couldn't get out of the bathroom for more than about two minutes at a time. At least I had no more need to rip out and/or bite down on the fixtures, the good doctor's ointment having done its job.

On Monday I was required to drink nothing in the final four hours, and I nearly went mad from thirst and the pounding headache.

Once in the doctor’s office I was made to remove everything except my socks. For reasons I cannot elucidate, being naked is nowhere near as humiliating as being naked except for socks. Like I say, the man is a master of the art.When I folded my trousers, my cell phone fell out of the pocket and onto the floor, where it disassembled itself into it's various removable parts.

I found most of the parts quite quickly, but not the battery. I searched high and low but couldn't find the bloody thing, then spotted it lying in the space under a door marked "Staff Only", so I had to get dressed again in order that I could contravene office policy and open the door to retrieve the damn thing. It was all very tiresome and par for the course.

Once on the operating table³ I was asked when I last ate ("Three years ago" I snarled) and drank ("Four hours, twenty-seven minutes and eleven seconds" I whined) then the anesthetist stuck me with a hypo full of Valium and something with three syllables, and the headache immediately went away. I was so relieved I thanked the man and began regaling him with one of my wittiest anecdotes. After about ten seconds he let out a strangled cry and stuck another hypo in me and that was the last thing I remembered until it was all over, at which time Mrs Stevie hove into view⁴ and the headache came back again.

The doctor said he'd removed a couple of polyps but couldn't see anything esle wrong, then left shoo-ing the crowd of Russian webcam operators and total strangers invited in from the street before him, and I was allowed to get dressed and go home.

Apart from the headache, the only thing I've been able to take away from the whole miserable business is that the threat to "tear me a new one" now holds no force, since I am intimately familiar with what it feels like and can sneer "been there, done that" at the manager attempting to motivate me with those words.

1. Albeit in age-related increasing timescales that can induce worry in your scribe at times↑
2. Well, gallon. The container is hucking fuge↑
3. Face-up; presumably some ultra humiliating pose was forcéd upon me once I was unconscious, possibly involving stirrups. Or they may have simply turned me over, but the photographic humour possibilities in that are minimal↑
4. You can't have a general anesthetic without someone waiting for you so they can drive you home. State Law, I think. Same thing was true when the cracked tooth was pulled.↑

The Great (Coal) Train Robbery

Ken was not a happy camper.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. We were 15 years old and had only a hazy idea of the legalities involved, and anyway, if no-one caught us we had got away with it and therefore were, by definition, innocent. Anyway, it was all Ken's idea.

I don't mean to suggest I was unwilling, far from it. I pretty much leaped at the suggestion we mosey on over to the smokeless fuel processing plant marshalling yards and take a close look at the coal wagons. It was winter and I found the reflection of the moon off the pools of solidified lime that dotted the landscape thereabouts quite evocative in the way only a 15 year old does. The Gothic Gloom of the place was a Lorelei Song to a moody teen and I went there often to think about life and stuff.

I was dead philosophical at that age.

Anyway, Ken and I had been kicking around the railway yards a couple of nights before and he had opined that the very acme of desirable memorabilia in his humble opinion was the heavy, oval cast-iron makers plates fastened to the right rear and front left corner timbers of each coal wagon. I took a look and was dubious.

"There's a hundred years of black tar and two ginormous carriage-bolts holding the thing in place" I noted. "Why on earth would you want something like that on your wall?"

"Idiot!" said Ken in that playful manner he had after we had been in each other's company for a couple of hours. "I'll use the gas torch in the school metalwork shop to burn all that crap off and repaint it first! If we can get the bolts out I reckon it'll prise off with a big screwdriver"

"The bolts are square, though", I said. "We'd need a big Stillson's pipe wrench to get those buggers out. Like the one me dad has hanging in the shed. He won't miss it for a couple of hours or so, and then there's the big World War I - era screwdriver in the toolbox. I'll use my duffel-bag and we can carry the plate to your house in it when we're done."

And so we had. At dead of night the next, er, night we stole into the yards, keeping well away from the highly illuminated part, and relieved one of the ten-foot long coal wagons of one of the two makers plates it bore. Ken was ecstatic at the haul and I was pumped with adrenalin as all criminals must be after their first "big job", and we gleefully made plans to repeat the process the next night.

During the day, news of The Big Job had somehow gotten to the ears of our mutual friend, Dave, who had insisted on being "in". We both shrugged and said "okay", but we had unwittingly made a mistake.

You see, Dave was An Adventurer in the making. He later went on to climb mountains, dive reefs and all sorts of other moderately daring stuff, but he was already taking himself Very Seriously when it came to capers. Well, we all did at that age, but Dave was...epic in his approach.

We were lulled into a false sense of security when he rendezvoused with us wearing black trainers, pants, pullover and woolen hat. He looked every bit the part. Indeed, he looked like he was going out to blow up railway lines and thus put yet another spanner into the well-oiled works of the filthy Bosche war machine that had run rampant over his beloved France in 1939 and abruptly ended his innocent adolescent life as a simple grape picker plunging him into a life of deadly intrigue, guns and high-explosives. Mon Dieu!

We stealthily made our way into the railway yards once again, Ken and I with the sure tread and wary eye of the seasoned coal-wagon burglar, Dave with...wait! Where was Dave?

Sometime between our reaching the ultra secret weak point in the smokeless fuel plant's security, known to those prosaic, stiff-necked Denizens of the Daylight Hours as "the level crossing on Blackberry Way" and our insertion into the high-risk area about two hundred yards from the day-bright Klieg lights illuminating the live part of the yards, Dave had slipped fully into character.

Once we spotted him it was easy to deduce that he had elected himself "Look-Out". He was running back and forth, diving periodically between wagons and then sticking his head out to check for observers, his shoes making the canyons of steel up ahead ring with the sound of scrunching gravel.

Ken did a little dance of annoyance, as did I, but we resolved to work further back down the trains of parked wagons so that we'd have a head start should Dave's "precautions" bring disaster.

We pulled off one maker's plate after about five minutes of unscrewing and levering, and moved on to a second. I should point out that the plates in question were, once the tar was burned off, beautiful items¹, dating from well before World War II in some cases and that there were several different ones available. Ken knew the ones he wanted - no mere opportunistic thieves were we, but refined aesthetes with a discerning eye. Well, Ken was. I was just easily led².

We did, however limit ourselves to only taking one of each pair when we selected the ones we wanted, partly because we didn't want to overly inconvenience the poor buggers in the maintenance shops, but mostly because being more than a foot over the long axis these things weighed a ton. What with the Stillson's pipe-wrench and the screwdriver, which appeared to have been machined out of depleted uranium despite being over 50 years old (no screws made after 1935 had slots wide enough for the blade I might add), I was in serious danger of having the bottom fall out of my duffel bag. Two was our limit that night if we were to avoid Explanations to parents³.

We were removing the second plate when Ken became aware that Dave was now leaping from wagon to wagon, clearly outlined against the sky. I also became aware of this around the same time, because Dave was good enough to stop right next to us and comment loudly that we should bring power tools the next time. Then he bounded off again into the night. I could see his gymnastic form as he occluded the light from the smokeless fuel processing plant itself. I think probably anyone could against that light, just by looking out of their kitchen window, and the nearest house was about a mile away.

"He's gonna get us caught!" snarled Ken.

"Where will we plug in the extension cords?" I asked, dubiously

"What?"

"For the power tools. It's a great idea, but I can't think where we'd get the juice from", I said

"Idiot! yelled Ken, quite forgetting in his indignation where we were and the perilous situation Dave had put us in vis-a-vis being rumbled with a bag full of cast iron swag. "Not only is there nowhere to plug in these power tools you pair want to bring in, the sodding things will make enough noise to raise the dead!"

"I hadn't thought of that" I admitted ruefully.

"Stealth!" howled Ken. "Stealth is the key to not getting caught!"

"Will you keep it down?" hissed a voice, unexpectedly coming from just overhead.

"Argh!" Yelled Ken.

"Argh!" I agreed.

We sat and caught our breath while Dave returned to his lonely, leaping vigil, then Ken said "I want one of those!"

"One of what?" I asked. I'd been looking into the lights again and couldn't see what he was pointing at.

"That. The destination board. I wannit."

I looked for a bit, and checked I wasn't going mad. "This?"

"Yes, that."

"But all it is is a block of wood with what looks like a mousetrap mounted on it. Why would you want that?"

"They put routing information slips under that spring clip. I want the thing."

I could see we were going to get nowhere unless I did what Ken wanted, so I took a look. The block of wood was held onto the wagon frame by two nuts. The bolts were either captive stud-type things, or were inserted from behind the frame and had domed heads, 'cos I couldn't find anything to grip that side of the frame. In order to remove the device, Ken would have to hold back the "mousetrap" waybill retainer, which swung down against a very strong spring, while I used Mr Stillsons on the nuts. Ken concurred and we got to work.

Now my part of the job was tedious but involved constant work, but Ken's was really just standing and holding back this mousetrap thing and he had time to get bored and start obsessing about Dave again.

"Look at that idiot! He's gonna get us caught. I mean it! We are gonna get caught because that twit thinks this is some sort of game."

The litany went on and on for the entire duration of the job. Indeed it went on a bit further. Ken was so caught up in his monologue that he was quite oblivious to my having removed both the nuts holding the device to the wagon frame. All that was holding it now was whatever environmental gunk had stuck the wood of the base to the wood of the frame.

"Ken, the nuts are off" I hissed. "Ken! I'm done! Ken!"

Which was, of course, the point at which the wood came away from the frame and snapped closed on his fingers with a mighty THWACK! that I was sure could be heard for miles.

It is at times such as this that the true mettle of a man is shown to the world. Ken was magnificent.

Well aware of the need for silence after the night of lax stealth protocols, yet having been dealt an injury of heroic, nay, super-heroic proportions, he was faced with a difficult decision. Not since Wiley Coyote had almost the very same thing happen to his paw during a particularly trying bout with the Road-Runner had one being been dealt such a hefty whack with such a thin piece of metal to such a delicate set of bones and tendons.

Doubling over yet somehow managing to show his face to the world at the same time, Ken puffed out his cheeks (both sets), drew back his lips in a terrifyingly wide grin and went for a hop around the shunting yards, all the while making a sound like a distant steam whistle with his nose while gnashing his teeth hard enough to flake enamel off them. I stood and watched admiringly from the shadows, while Dave, sheltering from possible detection in one of the wagons, offered the shouted opinion that Ken should be more circumspect in his fooling around.

Eventually Ken was able to regain control of his voluntary muscles and we made our way home to the sound of his fingers throbbing. Dave thought the evening had gone very well. I was less sanguine, but then I had been volunteered to carry the cast-iron swag. Fortunately, about half a mile from home, the bottom tore out of my duffel bag, which lightened the load drastically at the cost of waking up the entire neighbourhood. It was, we decided later,⁶ a good night, but not good enough to do again.

Not even on a bet.

1. If you like that sort of thing↑
2. M'lud↑
3. To be avoided at all costs. We had taken great care not to worry them by telling them anything about our nocturnal quests, and there was no need to get them all excited over what was, when all was said and done, nothing really to speak of⁴↑
4. Which is why neither Ken nor I have ever spoken of it⁵↑
5. Until now↑
6. Months later↑

Ho! Ho! Ho! And Pass The Batteries!

Nice One Santa!

Good haul this year.

Mrs Stevie gave me a watch I'd been lusting after ever since my old one fell apart. The old one, which still works on account of the bit that disintegrated was the fancy case that turns out is totally ornamental and the works are all in a waterproof cylinder to which the strap is attached, showed the time as small digits in a crowded display, and had an alarm function, a stopwatch and a countdown timer. It ran for years before I had to change the battery.

The new one shows the time in letters large enough to be seen from the International Space Station, and has a stopwatch, five alarms but no countdown timer. Instead it has compass, barometer & temperature and altimiter functions and is the bestest watch since the chronometer I was given for my 15th birthday.

She also gave me Super Mario Cart for our Wii console, and I've been buried in it ever since. I've been addicted to this game for years in one or other of its many incarnations, but this one, with its wireless steering wheel gadget, is the best yet. Everyone knows now if they wander away from the TV during their favourite show, they may not get it back until the Mushroom Cup Challenge is over. Hence, the other members of the family have been hogging the TV set for days.

No matter, I can always play with my Hess truck, which this year is actually two racing cars, one hidden inside the other. Most of the Hess truck collectors I've spoken with confess to a slight disappointment with this year's model, and I'm one of them. The big car is the usual high-quality affair with lights and sound, and a lifting front section that opens to reveal a scalextric-sized second vehicle, a pull-back-and-go version of the larger car. The thing is, it's not a truck. I was still playing with studying last year's offering (a dump truck with front-end bucket loader) in late November, but I expect I'll pack this year's away soon. Hmm.

I also got a copy of the new four-player Super Mario Brothers game, which is spiffy but everything looks so small on our old-fashioned 27" TV I suppose I'll now have to buy a hucking fuge flatscreen in order to play it. Azathoth alone knows where I'll put such a thing though.

I also scored a magnetic poetry kit on the off-chance I suddenly develop an ear for the stuff, some tasty chox (scoffed), a desk calendar and the daftest multitool I've ever seen.

It features a hammer on one end and is so idiotic in concept it deserves its own post, so it'll get one. Mrs Stevie only bought it because I laughed so hard when I saw it hanging on a hardware store wall.

Mrs Stevie got a digital picture frame from me, as demanded with menaces two weeks before Xmas, a book set in Henry VIII's time that she also was most definite about and some fancy Roger & Gallet soap I scored from the only shop in NY that stocks it. I was careful to select one of their many fragrances that would most likely bring her out in an amusing rash, but either she hasn't used any yet or I need to pick another scent.

The Stevieling made out like a bandit. Mrs Stevie gave her a game for her DS handheld that she's been using every free moment to play, a speaker system for her iPod and cosmetics. I gave her some supplies for creative card and letter crafts (stamps, sealing wax and seals and so forth).

Mrs Stevie's big present to the Stevieling surprise was undermined by Bil the Elder giving the Stevieling The Beatles Rock Band game at our traditional Xmas Eve gathering. Mrs Stevie had bought the thing the day it came out, stood on line at 6 a.m. etc etc etc, and had crowed daily for the last three months about how clever she was, only to have the wind taken from her sails with less than 12 hours to go. I laughed and laughed until Mrs Stevie hit me in the head with a Christmas-themed china platter.

Good times.