Nag Champa versus the clinging smell of bacon. Bacon wins every time, no contest.

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I found it interesting that there is an ongoing crusade against the caps lock key. The argument is that the key takes up too much prime real estate for something so useless. I agree, the only time I've ever engaged caps lock is by accident. And I'm usually frustrated to have to rekey in lower case what I have already keyed in all caps.

Apple has already taken steps towards phasing it out Their current keyboards require the key in question to be held down rather than merely tapped. It has been speculated that the caps lock will be replaced with something more useful like one of the modifier keys: control, option, or open apple for Mac users; control, alt, or command for PC users.

Honestly, I didn't think caps lock is that big of a deal. It would be a bigger hassle to move one of the modifier keys from its current spot. It took me years to get my fingers to contort for Save For Web (open apple+option+shift+s) by memory. I wouldn't want to start over.

Seriously, if they're going to mess with the current keyboard like that, might as well switch from QWERTY to Dvorak. We're gonna do it eventually anyway.

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"I think you should know that you're the only person in the city of Philadelphia getting this treatment," Hap explained. "Landlords almost never call me."

That was reassuring. Hap is an energy efficiency auditor tasked by our landlord to see why our heating bill runs above $700 and our cooling bill about $500.

The highlight of his visit was the blower door audit. He used a fan, aimed out the front door, to depressurize the apartment to 50 Pascal. I don't quite understand that unit of measure but the effect was like having 20 mph winds hitting the building at all sides. He had a thermal camera that revealed the cold air leakage as ominous, black smoke coming in through all sorts of cracks. Though it you could see pockets of howling, dark wind coming in through the floor boards, the base boards, the molding, and even the outlets and light switches. It was as if the outdoors were ablaze and the smoke was coming in.

By the end of the day he figured out that our boiler wasn't working, our walls were not insulated, and that we had an attic we didn't know about that was also not insulated. It looks like we're going to be seeing a lot of work done to the building, hopefully though, before it gets cold.

·

Today's ride was rather disappointing. It was short and slow when I prefer either short and fast or long and slow. To add to that, I think we stopped a few times more than the route deserved.

However my new kit did get many compliments. I think that made up for it, if only by a hair.

·

Miserable. All I can say is it isn't everyday that I get to drag a heavy, awkward box of cycling kits all over Germantown Avenue.

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"For your comfort and safety; eating, drinking, smoking, and listening to loud devices are prohibited on all SEPTA buses."

I looked around in search of the offender that caught the bus driver's attention. They usually have to be pretty bad to get the drivers to bother flipping through the recordings. Halfway through my scan, I noticed a woman quietly laughing at me. It took a moment for me to put two and two together.

I looked down to discover the open Nalgene bottle on my lap. I've been taking regular sips from it throughout the ride. I closed it, but slowly to exhibit a hint of defiance. It's water and water doesn't count. I'm hydrating.

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"But I called the 800 number and they said that you'd have a notary on staff at all times."

"Yes but our notary public just quit today."

"Oh," I guess you really can't argue with that.

With just a half hour left before the post office closes, I visited three more banks, a Western Union, and a lawyer's office. Despite the neon sign on the door, the Western Union hasn't had an officer in months. One bank didn't provide notary services for non-members, while another bank's notary forgot his stamp. Yeah, right. The last bank pointed me to a lawyer's office around the corner.

The receptionist behind the counter took a five and two minutes to notarize my document. She embossed a seal into the copy of my green card, whereas the last two notaries I've used in Pennsylvania only had ink stamps. Much more official-looking. "That's because they're banks," She explained. I thanked her and rushed out the door, but not before catching her put the five in her purse. It's a little odd, but that's her business. I was more concerned with getting to the post office in seven minutes.

·

Seeing it was a local number, I was anxious to see who was on the other line. "Hello?"

"Hi, is this Maxine's owner?" Thank goodness thank goodness thank goodness thank—Wait. This could mean that either my dog is safe and sound or pancaked into the pavement. I couldn't tell from the caller's tone of voice. I wasn't out of the woods just yet.

"Yes?" Breathless.

"I found her wandering around Mount Airy so I took her in," thank goodness thank goodness thank goodness thank goodness. "I have her in the sun porch right now."

"Great!" After getting directions I said "I'll be right over." I didn't thank him just yet, I wanted to do that in person by kissing his feet.

····

Three hours ago while my dog was out on a potty break, I saw her dart towards the sidewalk from the corner of my eye. I didn't think she would actually leave the yard, and if she actually did, it didn't cross my mind that she would stray far. I picked up clutter behind our front door before even calling out her name. By the time I made it out of the yard she was nowhere in sight.

This was very unexpected. She's never ran away before. It could be because I just yelled at her for getting muddy paw prints on my shorts. It wasn't even a yell more than an definitive "No!" but our dog is so sensitive a nasty look will send her running. It could be because she hasn't had any exercise lately and thus had sprinting energy to burn. Another theory is that she went off in search of the Tamster, who's currently on the third day of a three-day conference. That one is Tammie's favorite.

I was pissed. I spent the first hour of my search taking delight in the idea of giving the dog a good yelling. Maybe she'll even get a bit of shaking. I knew I should act happy to see her, but what could I do? I was pissed. I prowled our normal route, train station and back, expecting to find her around every corner. No Luck. She was gone.

I retraced my steps to the apartment to trade in my flip-flops for running shoes. I was actually hoping she'd be waiting at the door when I got back, but it wasn't that easy. I spent the second hour trespassing on everyone else's yard. I had a nagging suspicion that the dog was hiding under a bush nearby, shaking and terrified of my angry voice. Twice the mailman saw me kneeling on the sidewalk searching beneath the cars.

Tammie's supposed to be getting home from her conference in about an hour. I dreaded telling her that I lost the dog. Worse, I hated the image of the two of us driving around the neighborhood in the dark looking for Maxine as the Tamster sobbed non-stop.

I came home once more to take a break and pull a couple of shots of espresso. While making my coffee I thought I heard paws pawing at the door downstairs. There was no one there.

The third hour of searching was spent following the first hour's route. Whenever a car slowed down next to me, I thought the driver driver would pop his head out to let me know where I could find a dog to go with my leash. I followed the neighborhood stray cat thinking it was trying to lead me to my dog.

By this time my anger's subsided and has been replaced with dread. I tried to imagine what it would be like to write blog entries without a dog to warm my cold feet. Or what it would be like to roll my task chair around the office without fear of running over a large, floppy ear. Or what it would be like to have a puppy who isn't Maxine. What do you do with flattened pet bodies anyway?

Then, as if just waiting for the ugliest thoughts to go through my head, the phone rang.

·

Anyone else ever create painful eardrum vacuums when sticking a finger into an ear in the shower? That crap can hurt. I need to remind myself that cotton swabs were designed with that purpose in mind.

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Clearance Delay. This is the worst thing to see on a FedEx tracking page when you really, really want your shipment now. Customs can be limbo.

Hell, I really shouldn't complain. The kits are coming in a week early regardless.

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The Tamster was about to leave for a three-day conference in New Jersey, and the music library in the car needed an update, so I bought eight albums from the iTunes Store to fill up an mp3 CD.

I downloaded:
Colour the Small One, Sia
De Stijl, White Stripes
Details, Frou Frou
Memory Man, Aqualung
Neon Bible, Arcade Fire
Places Like This, Architecture in Helsinki
The Reminder, Feist
X & Y, Coldplay

Of course, it wasn't until I tried to burn the CD that I remembered why I stopped getting music through iTunes. I can't convert their m4p files into mp3s. The most practical thing to do would be to get an iPod (quite shrewd on Apple's part) but mp3 CDs sound much better than the car's auxiliary input. And I'm not practical.

····

It's not that I don't like iPods. I had a well-loved 2nd generation iPod for many years until I handed it down. In the end it was like a tank, in size and weight, compared to the Shuffles. My 1st generation Shuffle ran strong until it "disappeared". I guess small things are easy to lose.

iPods are by far the best media players out there. The interface with iTunes is beyond anything else. And c'mon, 160 GB in your pocket for $350? Crazy. I remember saving for weeks for a $200 Walkman with Mega Bass that plays one side of an audio cassette at a time.

I grew out of the personal media player genre of electronics. Maybe I began to feel silly nodding and thumping to a beat only I can hear. Or perhaps it's an appreciation of a complete experience of the world around me. Whatever the reason, every time Tammie and I decide to get an iPod for the car, I always manage to push it off.

·

"Get off the road!"

At first I thought I heard "Go Go Go!" but as soon as the big, red truck buzzed us I figured out what the driver had yelled.

It was an odd thing to yell since his 4x4 had a body-lift and a set of mud-tires. If anyone should get of the road, it isn't my road bike.

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"You're from the Philippines? Do you know Ana?"

A blank expression. I didn't know how to respond.

"From the farmer's market?" she pressed on.

"Uh... Nah. I just moved to the city," I replied. "I haven't had the chance to meet all the Filipinos just yet." Not one hint of sarcasm.

Normally I would feel put off, and maybe I am a little. But this is coming from one of the clerks at my favorite post office. The place is run by a very friendly, chatty sister-sister pair. They help everyone calmly and thoroughly yet there never seems to be too long of a line.

In contrast, post office visits in Chicago were quite stressful. It can take forty-five minutes just to make it to the counter, and more than once I was sent back to the end of the queue for form errors.

So I can forgive this lady her inquiry. Even if she suggested that Ana and I would make a good Filipino pair. Perhaps it is because I'm wearing a cap that says unattached in big embroidered letters.

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"Blah blah static de blahblah blah de static blah blah!!!"

I was having my afternoon coffee in silence when this shit scared the crap outta me. I'm used to cell phone signals (850 MHz) hi-jacking my speakers in Morse, but I've never seen anything like this. For some reason, the living room speakers picked up a police channel and was loudly broadcasting an angry dispatcher yelling 411s in progress. I was so startled I didn't catch any of it. It lasted all but a few abrupt seconds.

·

I woke up a little perplexed. What I had thought was the dog sleeping next to me turned out to be just a crumpled shirt.

·

Cat Power (De Beers) has taken the title of "catchiest song from a telvision ad" from Feist (iPod Nano), who in turn took it from the "Little bit more" guy (Target).

It is interesting to note that the song How can I tell you is a loose cover, and some people recognized it first as a Cat Stevens song before they recognized Cat Power's unique vocals. It is also interesting that the first time I heard the Feist song on the iPod Nano, I thought it was Cat Power. Hence when I later told the Tamster that the De Beers song was performed by Cat Power, she responded "You think every song is by Cat Power."

····

I remember seeing Chan Marshall (aka Cat Power) in Madison in the late nineties. Even though I sat less than ten feet from her, I couldn't see her eyes—they were covered by her hair. She might've preferred it that way. At the time, she was suffering from her trademark stage fright. I don't think she finished half of her songs in that show, and I recall her stopping in the middle of at least two songs to start over. I had a few of friends who found her shows annoying, but I thought they were endearing.

·

I got a call from Champion Systems. Apparently, my kit for the next racing season will be shipping next week. That's very exciting news—but then I thought "Wait a minute, next week could mean the end of next week, and who knows how long shipping will take from China?"

Is there such a thing as ground shipping from China?

·

"I should change my career. I should be a psychic," said our Vietnamese waiter, handing us a bottle of Sriracha and pointing at his forehead at the same time.

He should. All I had to do was look up for him to know what we were looking for.

·

The Tamster caught me whistling Martika's Toy Soldiers while getting ready for a ride. I wasn't even aware I was doing it.

We tried to figure out how I managed to dig up a song that was on the charts a few years before I moved to the States. Have I just recently heard it again? Did a car pass by blasting Eminem's version? Or perhaps I ran across the movie?

"What movie?"

"You know, that 80's movie."

"Pfft... Sixteen Candles? Better Off Dead?" I guessed out of my butt.

"It was serious."

"St. Elmo's Fire? The Goonies?"

"It's like two brothers who moved to a new school."

"Dead Poet's Society? The Breakfast Club?" I'm bound to nail it sometime.

"Is there a movie called Toy Soldiers? Maybe I'm mixing up the two."

····

Needless to say, the resulting Google investigation delayed our ride a bit. In the end, we couldn't find one movie that featured the song, though it was on an 18th season episode of the Simpsons.

·

The weather got carried away and brought us from record highs to record lows. I went from flip-flops to hoodies overnight. Unseasonal either way.

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"Your last name?" the lady at the cleaners asked, in a heavy Chinese accent. She leaned on one elbow. I imagine where with a toothpick hanging from the corner of her mouth, but that could be from watching too many kung fu flicks growing up.

"Cabalu," my clear response. As usual I tried to pronounce it as phonetically-correct as possible.

She looked up from her pad, over her glasses, without raising her head. I stared blankly, I didn't know if I should repeat myself. In a swift motion, without moving her head or shifting from her elbow, she flicked both the pad and the pen in my direction.

I filled the pad out obediently. I was actually grateful; I dread having to spell out my name, especially over the phone. It's frustrating when grumpy, underpaid people get annoyed that my name is spelled all wrong. That's one reason I'd rather key an order in online. It's also a reason I've been tempted to just say "Smith. Carlos Smith."

·

I could see my eyes pulse, in the dark, with my lids closed. That's what it took to try and force myself back into my normal sleep schedule.

·

It's now past two in the afternoon and the last thing I remember is thinking I should lie on the couch a little before nine this morning. That's five hours lost. You'd never believe it, but the dog might've given me a slight concussion. After all, I don't normally take five hour naps right after getting up.

····

It happened last night as I was about to give the dog a bath. As usual, it took little coaxing to get her to jump into the tub. But as I reached down to turn the water on, she tried to jump out giving me a good, hard blow to the head with her head. I hurt so much I was laughing.

I've never taken a punch to the face and this could very well be the closest I'll ever get. I iced myself for a half hour while the dog ran around peeing where ever she could. When she ran out of fluids, she would lap some more water out of her dish and continue her mission. Okay, maybe she didn't go that far—but she did pee all the way down the stairs in panic.

····

I didn't quite get a black-eye. It's more like a bump above the forehead, obscured by my brow but obvious if you knew what to look for. It was enough to keep my lids from fully opening so that my field of vision on the right is slightly smaller.

It was also enough to numb the sensation on the top-right half of my head. I'm assuming the nerves up there have to go through the right eye-socket to get to the brain, a route temporarily obstructed by a bruise. After all, nerves don't go through the skull, do they? Weird, I've never had a reason to think of synaptic routing before.

·

Depending on how long you've been pushing it off and the time of night, toilet paper can be the most valuable of commodities.

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"Do you know which way Fairmount is?"

"No," the man on the corner replied with an eastern European accent, then whips out a piece of paper with the finesse of a magician, "But I do have a map."

He was the third person we asked, and by far the most helpful. The first two took too much time pretending to think about it before admitting that they had no idea. That's what we get for approaching pedestrian tourists on their way to the Art Museum.

We gave ourselves exactly five minutes to find the bulldog statue before the ride began. It's supposed to be located on the corner of Fairmount and Pennsylvania. Up to now we've never had to look for it because our rides were either at the front or at the rear of the museum. Today we're going with Quaker City Wheelmen's inaugural base ride, which meets at the bulldog.

The Tamster and I found it at the same time; but while she saw the gathering of riders, what caught my eye was the glimmer of the tiny, golden bulldog statue.

·

Uh-oh. As I started the car we noticed a note held down by the left wiper blade. I had a good idea what it would say. On the way to the car it looked like a big, white Tahoe was backed into our Outback. It wasn't until I had a perpendicular view of the vehicles that I could tell that they were actually apart.

The yellow post-it offered to pay for a new license-plate holder if we sent in a receipt. While we were not really fond of the Lujack's plate holder to begin with, the bumper had a scuff from the truck's hitch mount. We have touch-up paint on order for similar minor cosmetic blemishes on the rear for which the offender did not leave a note.

"Maybe we can send him the receipt for the touch-up paint," I mused out loud.

"You can't do that. We were already getting that anyway," the Tamster, standing in for my conscience, was quick to point out.

·

Marty came over to make a big hole in the ceiling. I wish it was for a skylight, but it's not. He's our AC guy. He needs the hole to access the central air ducts.

I was complaining about the heat in the office, which is prone to burning late-morning exposure to begin with, but also has a non-working central air vent. I thought our AC unit was just too overloaded to reach the farthest room in the vent system. But Marty figured it out. Somehow, the people who originally installed the system forgot to connect the room to the rest of the air flow system.

·

We missed our two chances at seeing the Grey's Anatomy premiere because of our trip to Boston. With the second installment airing in a little over an hour, I decided I wanted to get my hands on the episode online.

"It's not like 24. We can miss an episode," Tammie attempted to reason.

"No we can't," was my reasoning in response.

After turning it over in my head, the obvious solution popped up—iTunes. I had previously disabled the video functions of the program because I never thought I would be using it for anything but music. But you know what desperate times call for?

It took a few minutes to download the 521 MB file. By the time is was done it was 8:20 pm. We had 40 minutes to watch the 43 minute premiere.

·

Thank heavens for the CVS across the street. Late in the evening I was able to pick up ten ounces of coffee beans (Starbucks), two pints of ice cream (Häagen-Dazs), a quart of milk (Rosenberger's) and thirty-five dollars (debit card cash back).

·

I had headphones on so I didn't hear the dog barking on the stairs. She was trying to warn me of intruders. It wasn't until the voices in the next room were loud enough to hear that I began to discern the barking from the drumbeat a little too late. I turned and took off the headphones to catch an "Anyone here?!?"

Ben, our new contact for the property management company, was in our living room with a girl. He had this "What the hell are you doing here?" look on his face. I gave him the "I live here" look in response.

"I thought you were on vacation." He explained, nervously.

"That was last week," I was quick to respond. And because he's straight out of school with a degree in history, I gave him the benefit of a doubt and explained "Regardless of whether I'm in the apartment or not, you're supposed to give me 24 hours notice before coming into my apartment." I gave him a pause so he can respond, then took the queue myself anyway, "This is trespassing."

"But I'm here to take the screens," to which he added "I must've thought you were on vacation."

He was getting smaller by the second. I've never seen a person shrink. With my silence I spelled out that I was waiting for further explanation, because his last two statements were irrelevant.

"Do you want me to come back?" he twitched out.

"No, just get what you came for," I said, and took the barking dog with me to the office. I should have commanded her to attack, just to see what she would do. No matter what, I'd be in the right anyway.

It wasn't until I put my headphones back on that my heart started racing.

·

Double Feature: Next and The Flying Scotsman. We wouldn't have watched a second movie if the first didn't leave us feeling short-changed.

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