Conniving Seating System

Yesterday was quite a splendid day, except for someone calling me at 7:30 in the morning to play me a recording of a man saying “sotay, sotay,” over and over again. I believe this someone had found this on the Internet and was trying to convince me that this was the correct pronunciation for “sauté,” even though the dictionary lists my preferred pronunciation of “saw-tay” first; it does also list “sotay.” It was quite a desperate act, in any event, and necessitated an extra hour in bed.

After that, I went to Rainbow, and spent the afternoon making dal with fresh chopped tomatoes, and a pot of buckwheat with millet. I drank my sole weekly cup of strong, sweet black tea—there’s no rule against having ten of these a day, but it always seems to end up being one a week—and had scrambled eggs with a bit of pesto—yum—and a bowlful of fresh strawberries.

In the early evening, I watched Delirious, in which Steve Buscemi is screamingly funny and ultimately touching as a highly irascible paparazzo and Michael Pitt makes a lovely open-hearted (and highly pulchritudinous) almost homeless person. Several of the smaller roles were note perfect, as well, particularly the actor who played Steve Buscemi’s father and the woman who plays Gabi, the manager or assistant of a winsome young celebrity. Steve Buscemi rescues Michael Pitt from the streets only to watch, dumbfounded and none too pleased, as he swiftly ascends into more rarified company. I absolutely loved this movie.

The question of what to remove heavy sunscreen with is possibly answered. I came upon mention of jojoba oil as a makeup remover, and when I was at Rainbow on Sunday, I asked the guy in the appropriate department his thoughts on Vitamin E oil versus jojoba oil for the purpose of removing sunscreen, and he said he thought jojoba oil would be less likely to gunk up one’s pores. They have organic jojoba oil, packaged and I imagine also in bulk. It’s inexpensive.

In the later evening, I practiced the guitar. I am really enjoying this new way of making music. I can (sort of) play “Amazing Grace” and “Eleanor Rigby”! The first week or so, I often had only 15 minutes to practice, but progress was unsatisfactory, so lately I’m finding hours here and there for this. I wish I could play the guitar for an hour a day, ditto the trumpet, ditto the piano. Maybe someday I can stop working and then I’ll do that.

Email sent to my mother:

I've noticed that now and then, my iMac purports to go to sleep, but while the monitor goes dark, the CPU doesn't stop whirring, and when I wake it up, it doesn't roar back to life because it never went to sleep; the only thing that happens is that the monitor lights back up.

I've had the iMac about seven months now, and this behavior has lately come to be the rule; four times out of five, it doesn't properly go to sleep, and this is the case whether I tell it to go to sleep or whether it tries to go to sleep on its own.

I called Apple and they said that if it were to whir for three days without my knowing it (because I would shut it down if it were going to be longer than three days before I used it again), all that would happen would be that the performance would be (is that too many woulds?) slow until I reset it, so I can't decide if I should take it in for service, or just not worry about it.

What do you think?

The answer, slightly edited for a general audience:

I have experimented with this (on your father’s iMac; my laptop ALWAYS goes to sleep when it should) and what works is a hard punch to the center of the screen. No charge.

(End of note.)

It’s great when you can get such good computer advice free. What a wonderful world we live in, with the pesto scrambled eggs and all. And, yes, I am insanely grateful. I know that much of the world gets the opposite of fresh strawberries and all the Todd Rundgren their ears can hold.

I decided not to worry about my insomniac iMac. I need to save up so I can worry about myself not being able to sleep, such as last night, when I woke up at three a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. I feel completely horrible right now. This hardly ever happens, but probably will happen more and more often as I ease gracefully into middle age.

Actually, beyond grilling, there is little to worry about these days. By the way, if I looked worried in that picture of myself on the chair in 1965, it’s because I knew that chair, or one in cahoots with it, was going to break 43 years later.