november, 2009

Mon, 9 Nov 2009 18:44:22 -0800

Seth last saw me at his & Joanne's wedding at the end of August in Maine, standing in the prow of a canoe on his parents' lake going down with the waterlogged ship. So of course his question to me a few weeks ago over dessert at the Salt House after the Lines ballet was reasonable: What have [I] been up to lately? I racked my brains. Keeping the Internet running, was the best I could come up with. That, and the social externalities that entails: No small quantities of hoppy Pliny The Elder (and vegan buffalo wings!) at windy-day Bender's nights, discussing promotions and outages; champagne and IP addressing and other arcana at Hôtel Biron; whiskey and chocolate to take the edge off the adrenaline. I can't think of much else to show for my time.

It shouldn't be surprising -- the fourth quarter is rapidly snowballing downhill right on schedule, picking up speed and un-battened-down objects like a dust storm on the playa or a stoned katamari. Our oncall rotation is losing warm bodies, one more when Nathan's soon-to-be baby comes; I've had only a week between shifts these last two months. But the social bookkeeping still feels sparse.

My gracious secondary let me trade off a night oncall last Thursday, so I dragged roommate Kyle up through the Lower Haight to see Múm. Gazing between the heads of tall people, up through a green haze, at the adorable Icelanders (aren't they all?), I remembered hearing that language a year ago, standing in clubs in Reykjavík. How intense, and how fleeting, was everything that week! -- like the "spirit-driven" cocktail a well-meaning bartender warned me of at Range last month -- so much so that somehow I just seem to never get around to finish editing the rest of my photos from the trip.

Exciting as it is -- and even so imperfect that that was! -- keeping the Internet running doesn't quite compare, even when there's whiskey involved. Nothing has.

I can run again, at least. Eight months post-surgery, a mile around the hill overlooking Shoreline Amphitheatre after finishing a week of primary-oncall on Friday, or the same distance around the still-green panhandle on Sunday afternoon, bikers zooming by and couples strolling in their elusive coupledom, does not hurt my knee. It's been three years since I could run -- a long dry spell. In many ways.