Archive: October 2002
« September 2002 | Main | November 2002 »
Oct 31 02: Friday
It’s early afternoon, which wouldn’t really be noteworthy but for the fact that my brain finally agrees that it’s early afternoon. I keep waking up at 4:30, but I can always fall back asleep again, so it’s nonfatal. The team met again today at one of the public pools, and I’m starting to feel like myself again in the water as well. Which is nice. If memory serves, here’s my schedule of individual events:
- Sunday: 200 Free, 200 IM
- Monday: 400 IM
- Tuesday: 100 Breast
- Wednesday: 200 Breast
My big focus is on the IM events, especially the 400, which is a ridiculous “overachiever’s race” if ever there was one. A hundred meters each of fly, back, breast, and free, in that order. (The secret is to do whatever it takes to survive the butterfly portion, and not to go blasting out of the gates. You save your strength for the last half.) My goals for these races? For me, these Games are not really about winning medals. It would be nice, of course, and I’ll be swimming my hardest—but given that my age division is wildly competitive and full of guys who were, like, college all-stars back in the day, it’s not all that realistic. All I really wanna do is to beat my seed times. Every time I achieve that, I’ll have set a new personal record. I think I can do it, too, at least once or twice. And frankly, if all I manage is to set a new PR in the 400, I’ll be happy. I’ll be doing some relays as well, but I don’t remember which ones or when they are. I suppose I should write all that stuff down.
Weather today is sunny and breezy and gorgeous. Tonight we go to a cocktail party introducing a new g&l athletic foundation, founded by one of our swimmers and his partner of 45 years (!). It’s at the cricket club, which is apparently a rather swank place. Should be fun. Afterwards the coaches are peeling off for a “hurray, we got everyone here without killing anybody” dinner. There’s talk of going to the beach tomorrow prior to the opening ceremonies. The ceremonies should be fun—inspiring, empowering, exciting, yadda yadda yadda. And k.d. lang is performing, which is frankly reason enough to go. I’ll provide a report when I can.
Yesterday afternoon we climbed to the top of the Sydney Harbor Bridge. 700 or so stairs to the spectacular view at the summit. Taking in the view from the top, Karen James and I decided that everything built after 1930 in this town is ugly as sin. Truly, the old Victorian-era stuff is all lovely, but the newer stuff is hideous. The business district looks like it was all put up in 1973. The million-dollar apartments now being built on the old wharf just west of the bridge look like a Holiday Inn circa 1967. Blergh. Prince Charles must be apoplectic when he visits.
Nobody has posted thus far to the team’s blog, but you know what? I don’t care. My responsibility as TNYA Webmaster was to get the technology working—not to force people to use it. So there. I have better things to get obsessive about at this point.
Hi, Paul. I was thinking about you at lunchtime. Hope you’re well.
More later.
Oct 30 02: touchdown
I’m in Australia. Wow. Hard to believe that after 18-odd months of training (and not training) I have actually come all the way ‘round to the other side of the world for a swim meet. I’m thrilled to be here and a little bit whacked out of my head from sleep deprivation; managed something like 5 hours on the plane from LA to Sydney. What time was that? Hard to say. My blog entries will reflect Sydney time while I’m here, by the way, which is GMT+11.
Sydney. Impressions. Sunny and warm; I’ve been walking around in a t-shirt and sandals all day. Reminds me of San Francisco, albeit with more clement weather. The city’s parks and squares are dotted with jacaranda trees, which are all in bloom. You can see them from half a mile away, their long trumpet-shaped flowers a vibrant cloud of electric lilac. Not so many pigeons as in the States or in Europe, possibly because the natives are giving them a run for their money; the Botanic Garden has flocks of very large white cockatoos with yellow crests, and in a couple of smaller parks I saw these huge black-and-white ibises being fed chunks of bread by the men on the benches. There’s a rather plain brownish-blackish bird, with a short pointy yellow beak and a yellow circle around its eye, that roosts in the rafters at the train station round the corner from our hotel. Sweet little chirping song, and it hops on the grass looking for bugs. Must identify it eventually, too. Public swimming pools all over the place—this is a nation of swimmers. Met my suitemates and a couple other TNYA swimmers at a particularly nice one this afternoon after I checked in with the Games: open-air, filtered saltwater, with a teak deck overlooking some part of…well, it was either the harbor or that huge bay immediately to the south of it. Botany Bay, I think. I’ve seen the arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge peeking over the skyscrapers; I’ll get a much closer encounter with it on Friday. Still no Opera House sightings, but it’s plainly just a matter of time. This being the beginning of spring, all the office workers threw themselves out of doors at lunchtime; it seemed like half the town was jogging or swimming or playing soccer or rugby for a while. Many, many, many handsome men, although some have suggested that the presence of the Games may be affecting the data.
The hotel is in the Haymarket neighborhood, which clearly used to be much seedier than it is. Adult bookstores and gun shops with “we’ve moved” and “going out of business” signs in the windows; new Internet cafés and Starbuckses all over the place. Lots of Asian restaurants and shops. A shop that sells take-it-home-and-cook-it dim-sum two blocks from the hotel; given that we have a suite avec kitchen, I think I must investigate that further. One block has something like five different video game parlors, all crammed into one small zone—I haven’t seen any anywhere else in town. Keep walking north from the hotel and suddenly you’re in the business district. I’ve tried to link to a relevant map here, but thus far Whereis.com.au won’t let me do it. Shocking! So here’s a more general map of Sydney. We’re just west of the University.
I feel like I have ten million other things I should be writing about—the mingled excitement and anxiety about the coming races, how my teammates are faring—but I’m having trouble keeping my mind still long enough to articulate them. The plane trip was okay, all things considered. I saw Men in Black II twice: once on the American Airlines flight from JFK to LA, once on Qantas from LA to Sydney. Had to sit in the middle seat on the long leg of the trip, urrgh. There’s no ‘u’ in Qantas not because it’s some kind of Aboriginal term but because it’s an acronym: Queensland And Northern Territories Aerial Service. Got a few hours of sleep on the plane but when that dried up I watched movies. It’s really criminal how the airlines put the most boldly schlocky stuff (like…say…Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood) on only once you’ve been rendered most vulnerable to it by sleep deprivation. (What is this dreck? Because…it’s so beautiful! The mother…the daughter…the handsome fiancé! Oh! Sniff. etc.) I’ve managed to keep myself more or less together today by walking around, talking to people, swimming 1500 meters (felt good, thanks); but I can hear a strange and hysterical little voice giggling somewhere in the back of my head and it’s getting louder. Sleep will be a good thing tonight.
Best to all and anybody who’s reading this. I’ll try to check in again in a day or two. Oh, and that whole food-poisoning thing was (as you probably surmised) without merit.
Oct 28 02: get set…
So I leave for the airport in an hour. I’m pretty much packed—although I may go and remove some of the t-shirts, I’m sure there are too many in there—so I’m spending the next little while packing more CDs into the iPod. And while I have the time, why not some hypochondria? My brain, lacking sufficient sources of anxiety, has decided that I shouldn’t have eaten those leftovers for lunch. Tiny voices are trying to convince me that I’m about to spend the next 26 hours on the road with an horrific case of food poisoning. How old was that sausage, anyway? Aieeee!
Deep breaths, Andrew.
Anyway, the long-awaited day is at hand. I’ll be trying to check in as often as I can with reports on my races and what things are like Down Under; if you’re curious, you might also see TNYA’s Sydney Journal. I’ve roped a bunch of Roving Reporters into doing much the same for the team in general.
Back in a bit; wish me luck.
Oct 26 02: Konban-wa, Daikon-san
Saw Spirited Away again this evening, this time (as long promised) with the delightful Sarita. Just as fabulous as it was the first time. Miyazaki is a god, and if you don’t know why, it’s worth the investigation…here’s the Spirited Away trailer, for starters, although in my opinion it fails to convey the kind-of-scary awe that you feel as the film explores a vacation spot for the gods of Japan. Alice has to face down Wonderland to rescue her parents, and it’s a visually stunning, hugely inventive trip. It will also make you hungry for dumplings, but that’s something else entirely.
Hmmm. Paul has been gone for about 36 hours and already I’m precessing into nocturnalism again. Not a good sign.
Oct 25 02: H.H. 1912-2002
One final thing, because it deserves note: Harry Hay died today. I never met him. But the world I was born into—the world I live in now—are the way they are because (at least partially) of the things he thought and said and did. Thanks, Harry.
afterthoughts
Rereading the above, I suppose I’m going to have to explain what a ‘pink flamingo’ is, at least in the context of a swim meet. And I will, I promise. Just not tonight. Bedtime for Bonzo, it is…
let’s review
Man, what a week. Paul’s wallet was stolen on Saturday just as he and cousin Erika and I were about to go out to my sister’s on LI. I spent Sunday at Becky’s coming down with a cold. Everybody else went out to get pumpkins to carve; I stayed home and drank water on the couch. They returned and carved many pumpkins; I continued to process fluids. When we got home on Sunday night, a neighbor brought us Paul’s wallet, which had apparently been dumped sans cash on our stoop. My faith in humanity was somewhat restored but my immune system continued to collapse, and I spent the next two days quietly turning orange juice into phlegm.
Tuesday morning Dad had his right knee replaced. The only thing he got to keep was his patella. By ‘keep’ I mean that his patella remains in situ, not that he is now wearing it on a chain ‘round his neck. Far too chunky for his taste anyway. I think he comes home from the hospital tomorrow, to begin a few months of painstaking rehabilitation—and then he gets to do it all over on the left side in January! But if anybody can bulldozer through the process of learning to use plastic leg bones, it’s my father.
More week: more phlegm, plus pink flamingo practices. TNYA’s pink flamingo performance will be stunning, mark my words. Dizzying, perhaps; semicoherent, okay maybe; but stunning. I haven’t swum a lap since Saturday afternoon, but I’m reisisting the urge to begin my pre-Games “oh my god I’m going to suck why am I doing this I can’t swim who do I think I’m kidding yammer yammer yammer” session until I at least reach the Southern Hemisphere. The cold is now largely gone. All that remains for me to do is to clean up the mess and get my body back into fighting form. I leave for Australia in three days and have ten thousand things to do, including (with luck) the completion of the never-ending e-commerce project.
Paul left for Asia this morning, shiny new laptop in tow. If you’re reading this, sweetie, I’m very proud of you. I’ll see you in SF.
Finally, congratulations to Bobbó and the future Mrs. Bobbó. I wish you a lifetime of boundless joy.
Oct 18 02: l’hermitage
I’m still in my bathrobe and it’s nearly 3 in the afternoon. I have got to get out of the house, if only to go to the gym so I can take a shower. (There’s no hot water here today, not until after dinner time; the new landlords are finally replacing the wonky boiler.)
I haven’t been to the gym in almost two weeks—the swim team has been told to lay off the weights until after Sydney. But I think this will be acceptable. And besides, the walk will give me a chance to keep breaking in my new boots, which I bought in a tragic window-shopping accident yesterday.
And if you feel like I’m spending too much time alone in the apartment working at the computer, unshaven and in my bathrobe…well, I’m starting to agree with you, but at least I’m not like those guys in Japan. Eeesh.
Oct 13 02: harvest
There’s no denying it anymore: summer is over. Today we brought in the air conditioners. We scrubbed off four months’ worth of soot and pigeon grease (don’t laugh. they are nasty, dirty creatures) and dried them gently and put them away to sleep until June. Then we harvested most of the basil crop we’d raised on the fire escape and turned it into pesto, which we served on home-made pasta and served to friends. You know fall has arrived when family dinners start back up on Sundays.
Mmmmmm. Pesto. As usual, we used the Moosewood Cookbook recipe and doubled the garlic. Fab.
So anyway: it’s time to get out the flannel shirts. I never did manage to even out my suntan this summer, but there’s nothing to do for it now. I guess I’ll curl up with a good book and listen to the rain on the roof.
Oct 12 02: bounty
A few joyful events came to pass this week. First, the Happy Skull Hat reappeared. It was sitting in a chair at John Jay College, next to the entrance to the swimming pool. Apparently it had been there for days, given that I hadn’t been in the building since the previous week. Much to my astonishment, neither students nor custodial staff had picked it up. I like to think that it was because it gave them the creeps and they were worried about the consequences of such an action. If you, gentle reader, posted any sort of return-the-lost-object spell on my behalf, I am deeply grateful.
The following day, an even better thing happened. Yes! Even better than finding my lost hat! It’s true!
Specifically, Pablo got a promotion. He is now a Senior Editor at Oxford University Press. I am deeply proud of him. Congratulations, sweetie. For his part, although he is sometimes reluctant to accept good news at face value, he is struggling valiantly to see it as the recognition of his time invested, effort, and talent that it is. Every time he considers doing otherwise, I smack him upside the head. That seems to help.
My trip to Australia is now less than three weeks away. Can’t wait!
Oct 5 02: hipsters poetical
So today John and César and Sari and Paul and I spent the afternoon at the Met (seeing the Avedon show, plus other stuff), then had sushi, and then drinks. Along the way we composed the first part of the following diptych; shortly thereafter Sari and I banged out the second.
Romeo & Juliet: two double-dactyls
I.
Higgledy-Piggledy
Romeo Montague,
Angry young man with a
Stabbed-to-death friend:
Wooing a teenager,
Ultrahormonally
Swings from a balcony;
Dies at the end.
II.
Higgledy-Piggledy
Juliet Capulet—
Renaissance ingenue,
Girl with a nurse—
Marries a Montague
Melodramatically;
It’ll end badly, so
Go start the hearse.
If you aren’t familiar with the form, read this, a full explanation (including the famous meta-DD), plus a number of examples which will be particularly hilarious to classicists.
Oct 4 02: well, shut my mouth
What do you know. Erika says that I have now officially Made It.
For my part, I’m going to do one more lap around the apartment, then go back to bill-paying.
Oct 3 02: condimentia
Oh, and I bought mustard today. Maille’s Old-Fashioned. Because Erika and Lynne were coming over for dinner, and I wanted to make a vinaigrette for the salad. So you can all breathe easier now: crisis averted.
have you seen me?
Whoever you are, cut it out already.
Today sees the second of my Major Talismanic Objects gone missing. Recently it was the leather bookmark that I’ve been toting around for twenty years, a souvenir of Anne Hathaway’s Cottage, perfect for fingering absent-mindedly while reading. Today it was the macabre and enigmatic and weirdly cute Skull Hat, purchased from Jill Thompson at the San Diego Con five or six years ago. I loved these things deeply. I usually had one or the other within arm’s reach. And now they’re gone.
Perhaps it’s just a postcard from the Buddha: the material world is impermanent; that which can be loved, can be lost. Or maybe somebody is getting ready to put a curse on me.
Well, or maybe I’m just a dope.
Regardless, anybody who knows any good return-lost-object spells is cordially invited to either perform them on my behalf or tell me how to carry them out.
Oct 1 02: well-rested
Ithaca was lovely, thanks. The concert was good, and pretty much exactly what I expected. The Professor doesn’t seem to have aged a day; perhaps he’s been kept in a Lucite block since I saw him last. Much misbehavior during the free hours with the usual crowd of Carls. The house still stands, although it was largely vacant when I went over because everyone was at the football game. Which, apparently, we lost.
And now I’m back in the City and trying to make something of my days. Trying to get the never-ending e-commerce project done by the time I leave for Sydney. Have to drop off the laundry. Things like that. I slept through practice this morning: I told myself that it was to give my knee another 12 hours’ rest, but mostly it was because the quasi-conscious snuggling with Paul was too good to pass up. I’ll swim tonight instead.