Letter Never Sent

1. A piece of good advice on clothing that I can attest to. When purchasing jeans, fit is very important. If you cannot find the perfect medium between a tight fit and a loose fit, err on the side of tightness. A better fitting pair of jeans will look better than a pair of sagging or loose-fitting jeans, and a pair of jeans that feel somewhat tight will stretch with wear.
2. An observation: You know you haven’t been home in a while when you find a spider occupying a web in your bathroom sink. I washed my hands around him, although I’m skeptical of his choice of location. How many bugs can you really expect to fly into a sink?
3. My advice: When trying to talk to a customer service rep over the telephone about a problem be sure to ask for the representative’s identification. Most will not give their full name, but often have an identification code or number that can be used as a reference.
4. A simple CMS for in-line editing of web sites, especially useful for computer illiterates or semi-illiterates: contentEditable. Be sure to try the demo.

I had trouble sleeping last night because I had to give another speech this morning at the club meeting. It didn’t help that my left ear has been plugged by some strange phenomenom I attribute to swimming at Barton Springs Pool. Maybe the ghost of that dead Chinese student hexed a curse on me that day. Whatever the reason, I am now in possession of what I like to call “muffle stereo”. I hear fine out of my right ear, but I only hear internal sounds with my left ear, so when I try to talk I hear myself talking really loud inside my head while at the same time I hear the sound of my voice outside. As a result, everything is muffled and it’s hard to gauge my own volume. I’m either too quiet or too loud and I barely hear what anyone else is saying. I am George Bailey from “It’s a Wonderful Life“. Hee haw.

But really, I was worried about waking up late and missing the meeting. I can’t blame it all on the trick ear. I kept waking up in a cold sweat out of the middle of some crazy war or espionage dream, a mental tableau I attribute to a combination of reading Robert Ludlum thrillers (Bourne Identity and The Scarlatti Inheritance) and playing Battlefield 2. Once awake, I’d almost instantly start to obsess over how well I prepared for my speech then I’d fall right back to sleep. I specifically remember a dream where I was trudging through some Vietnam-like swamp with a sidearm. Maybe that was part of the cold sweat thing.

I finally got out of bed at five in the morning and went down to set up for the meeting since that is part of my responsibilities now. When I got there at six our oldest member, Hollis, was nearly done setting everything up, which irritated me in my fragile cocoon of sleep grumpiness.

But mostly I was envious of his high spirits. Hollis is a miracle of age and energy, like the tightly wound spring of an antique pocket watch. Well past eighty years old, he has more life than a busload of all the people I know in their twenties combined. When I asked him why in the hell he was there so early, he said his wife was out of town so he just popped up out of bed around 3:30, fixed himself some breakfast, and headed out the door.

When J.D. showed up, Hollis told us about the traveling medicine shows and tent revivals that would come through town when he was a kid out in Burnet, Texas. At these medicine shows they would peddle their wares (snake oils and cure-alls) while providing sought after entertainment. There would be a stage where comedians, musical acts, and acrobats would perform. After about a week the whole affair would pack up and move on to the next town. He told several more interesting tales, but the most memorable thing he said was that looking back things were much rougher and more uncomfortable in the first half of the last century, and while he did not long for the “good ole days” he sometimes wished he could take the modern conveniences back to what was, a simpler time.