After Lisa and David left for Seattle, driving off in their rented truck, I figured I’d get a good night’s sleep and feel much cheerier the next morning, but in fact woke up to kind of an alarming sight.
It was about 7:30 and the sky was uniformly a dull slate grey, except for a perfectly round brilliant orange disk, as if the moon were on fire.
Indeed, Tom said later that one of his coworkers had remarked on how strange the moon had looked. He’d had to remind her that she’d been looking east, hence it was the sun.
I called Tom to look at it with me, but he had already left for work, so I called Sir Dave, who answered with his customary wan “How may I help you?” He sounds exactly the same in the middle of the work day and awakened from a sound sleep.
“Can you see the sun?” I asked.
“I can try.” Pause. “Oh, my. That was worth getting up for.”
He added, “Don’t look at it,” which was a good reminder, because I had been staring at it. It was mesmerizing.
It turned out it was caused by various fires burning here and there, some as far as 200 miles away. The newspaper’s lead story was about the fire and the “eerie pall” it cast. Just what I needed, an eerie pall.
I checked my email later in the morning and was relieved to see there had been no response at all from the building manager to my note about her grilling on Labor Day.
I gave the Fire Department a call to see how far from a wooden building you have to be before you light a fire or grill, and the person there said twenty-five feet, which was great, since our back yard is nowhere near that big.
I sent another very mildly worded note apprising the building manager of this and suggesting she look into an electric grill, which would not have the same restrictions and to which no one could possibly object.
She wrote back that she was understanding me to say it would be fine if she used a gas grill. I wrote back and said, in my friendliest manner, that the item under discussion was an electric grill and that I would help her pay for it, as a contribution to the environment. (Though of course the energy for an electric grill must come from somewhere, so there is an environmental impact.) I have heard no more, but I have concluded that if she gets a gas grill, it will be OK with me, since that’s pretty much like a gas stove.
What’s not OK is having a roaring wood fire right outside my window, or lighter fluid burning.
However, no sooner had a huge fight been avoided over the grilling than problems cropped up again at the garage where I park my bike while at work. There has been an ongoing issue about access to the bike racks. This garage has never been in compliance with the city’s Bicycle Parking Ordinance in this regard, but things have been particularly bad lately.
I arrived one afternoon to find that, while I could make my way to my bicycle, I couldn’t leave with it, without picking it up, hoisting it way up and squeezing back past all the other bicycles.
I have had several very low-key conversations about this with the various building managers over the past three and a half years, and have tried to be patient, but this did it.
I called the city the next day to confirm the access requirement, and was advised to go ahead and send the building manager a letter, and copy the city’s enforcement person. I called the building manager to tell her I was going to do this, and to ask for her boss’s name and address so I could copy her boss on my letter, and voila! A cone appeared in the offending car space and has been there ever since.
The question is why such a simple thing took three and a half years, ten phone conversations, two in-person meetings, and finally having to escalate to the city. I went ahead and sent the letter, just in case.
The weekend after David and Lisa left, Tom and I saw Once, which was good. He bought the soundtrack, but made the mistake of leaving it at my house, so it has now become my CD, but I’ll pay him for it.
The next day, I went to see Hairspray (Tom was indisposed) and absolutely loved it. In the evening, Tom and I saw Casino Royale (again) on DVD, and talked to Lisa and David on the phone, which was great.
On Sunday, I made Black Bean Ful from Sundays at Moosewood, which is really, really good, and Tamale Pie from 366 Delicious Ways to Cook Rice, Beans, and Grains. My mother said she has not had good luck with tamale pie, but I was pleased with the results.
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