RIP, Part Two

The falling maple obliterated our blueberry bushes. They were just coming into their own, a couple of years after having been moved from the (much too hot & sunny) front of the house.

Now they're kindling.

Damn.

RIP, Beautiful Maple

 

Our maple is dead. Oh, it still clings to life by a thread, but it's only a matter of time. Last night Barb and I were awakened by a mysterious crash. Turned out to be the maple, which had lost one trunk this summer, losing another. It narrowly missed the house, and now I'm paranoid as all get out (well, as paranoid as I get: mildly concerned) that the remaining 1.5 trunks with their attendant limbs will fall on the house. Specifically, on our bedroom, while we are asleep, running us through in multiple places with greenwood spearpoints, leaving Elizabeth Rose an orphan, bereft.

So I guess we're sleeping in the living room tonight!

The maple was our one big tree. I fear that the backyard is going to feel like a parking lot, baking in the sun all summer. But a part of me, small though it be, is excited by the change -- any change. Something good almost always pokes its head up through the piles of bad.

Bloody Disgusting!

 

Sunday March 14, 2010: Pat and Andrew Gaughan and I all ran the 15K Shamrock Run. Around mile three (of 9.2, for those non-Canadian readers of mine) my nipples were feeling a bit raw from all the bouncing up and down and rubbing against the shirt I wore under my fleece. They hurt the whole while, but not terribly so. Not more than my knees, for instance. But after the race when I stripped off the fleece, the bloody shirt, pictured, was revealed, causing shock, dismay, disgust, and laughter from those assembled (the aforementioned Gaughans, and Barb -- Elizabeth, thank goodness, was oblivious). Apparently the chafing went farther than I had realized. Guess I'm lucky to have any nipples left at all. If it had been a half-marathon they might have been sanded down to nothing.

Dad Was Right

When I was applying to colleges, my first choice was Syracuse University's Newhouse School. It's a communication school, specializing in writing, television, and the like. Bob Costas went there.

My father always said to me, "You want to be a writer, make sure you learn how to be on TV." This was 1988. I was like, "Dad, you're crazy. I don't want to be on TV. I want to be a writer." I'm thinking: I sit in a room in a Victorian mansion click-clacking on a manual typewriter. As with Johh LeCarre, no one sees my face.

Boy, was I wrong. Boy was Dad, Hovey Larrison (born in 1933), right.

He thought, he expected, he believed that everyone who produced media would be a video personality. He, who was barely aware of the internet when he died in 2001, was spot-on-the-nose right.

Take, for example, Penny Arcade. I love Penny Arcade. It's an online three-panel comic strip created by two guys, Jerry and Mike, one writer, one illustrator. They started off asking for donations to keep the strip going. Over the years they became wildly successful (as they should have, seeing as how awesome they are). Now they've got a fucking TV show.

Dad, if you can hear me, let me say the words you've probably heard a hundred thousand times: sorry, you were right after all.