Train in Vain

Hammett is methodically checking each item in the apartment to see if it can be clawed off the wall, if it’s currently attached to the wall, or if it can profitably be trod upon, if not. He keeps walking over my living-room radio and making the CD compartment lid flap open. One snapshot in particular is often to be found on the floor.

His monthly dose of Advantage was due this past Saturday. First he had to be weighed, because his last recorded weight was eight pounds, ten ounces, so I thought he might be as heavy as nine pounds now, which requires a different amount of Advantage.

I took him over to Mission Pet Hospital, where they were busy, but let me weigh him myself. I assumed they had a digital scale in the back, with a basket to plop the animal into, but it turns out they have a massive old-fashioned metal scale with a huge round dial. I set Hammett on the big metal platform and saw that he now weighs nine pounds, twelve ounces. Mom’s big boy!

I was very pleased. I want him to play football, and also to go to Yale.

I have decided I don’t like my new telephone, because my own voice sounds weird to me, and because the earpiece hurts my ear after two or three hours, though my mother says she likes it because when I scream into it, it doesn’t make a horrible buzzing sound in her ear like the old one did.

Then, of course, my answering machine died, assisted by Hammett, so now I am shopping for a phone and an answering machine, or just an answering machine, or a phone with an answering machine. Do you know how many answering machines are listed at Circuit City’s online manifestation? Two!!! Two!!!

Apparently, “nobody” needs an answering machine anymore because “everybody” has a cell phone, or maybe some of them have a phone that comes with an answering machine attached.

My mother has a Uniden cordless phone with answering machine attached that she likes. Do you know how many Uniden cordless phones there are, at least at the site I’ve been looking at? Two hundred and thirteen! I’m completely overwhelmed already by this dreadful project.

My mother says I’m too young to give up on modern technology, so my goal for 2008 is to learn what a BlackBerry is, assuming I survive the current phone crisis.

Plus there’s the hideously expensive bed, which I have decided I don’t like. My back is hurting in the morning more often than not, and it’s really hot to sleep in. I’ve eliminated one layer of covering materials already, and it’s still way too warm.

On Saturday, after weighing Hammett, meditating, doing my back exercises (which are now essential), and going to Rainbow for groceries, I set out with Tom for a birthday dinner in Sacramento, albeit one that was going to be minus the birthday gentleman, who ended up having to work and thus was not able to travel from a distant state.

As always, we walked to BART and then from BART to the Embarcadero. We took the bus from the Amtrak office to the train station in Emeryville, and there we sat reading for quite some time. The train ended up leaving Emeryville 45 minutes or so late. We hoped it might make up the time, but instead it often ground to a halt and didn’t move for several minutes due to track work.

By the time we were supposed to be arriving in Sacramento, we were only in Martinez, which is not even halfway there. We were going to be extremely late, and also, it occurred to Tom, might have the same delay on the way back later that evening.

Usually we stay overnight, but Tom wanted to be back in time for a cycling event Sunday morning. He said maybe we’d better get off the train before it started up again and carried us to Suisun.

I grabbed my backpack and bolted downstairs, waiting to see if Tom, who had stuff in the overhead compartment, was going to make it before I stepped off the train. He did make it.

The nice woman in the train station gave us a partial refund and then we waited for the next train going back the other day, due quite soon, fortunately.

When it stopped, Tom, who had scoffed at the sign saying the train was arriving, was in the bathroom, providing another moment of heightened excitement, but he came sprinting out just in time.

All told, we spent about six hours going pretty much nowhere, but we got plenty of reading done and saw a lovely burnt-orange sunset, and learned many interesting things from our fellow passengers’ cell-phone conversations such as, “I’m on the train,” “I’m on the train,” “I’m on the train,” and “I’m on the train. It’s running really late.”

And then we had dinner at We Be Sushi, which was certainly a happy ending.