On the road again

SO as if one train trip in a week wasn't enough, Miz Becky and I are enjoying the formidable luxury of a second train trip this weekend, south instead of north this time. We're at her sister's house in beautiful Portland (or at least it's beautiful this morning, which bodes well for our planned walk in the Japanese Garden this afternoon with their parents)

I've just remembered that everyone in the house is asleep, which means I should probably moderate my usual fiery attack on the keyboard -- usually a series of small explosions as a thought strikes me, followed by some selecting and deleting as I realize that what had seemed insousciantly witty moments ago was, in fact, just a fart joke. The few times I've had an office mate, they've always been distracted by my typing rhythms. "Geez Dave, are you actually typing words there?" Eventually the teasing turns to mockery, then to open scorn, we break out the bastinadoes, and they leave in shame.

Anyway, for the rest of this post, you're welcome to imagine me tip-toeing around the keyboard. (pffffft) (hah hah, ze leetle self-referential joke)

My keyboard trauma, as if you care about how the content is delivered, is furthered because Aaron likes to use a Dvorak keyboard (which is his own business, really, it's perfectly normal for a boy his age to do some experimenting). This keyboard, from a company amusingly named "DvortyBoards" (go ahead, say it out loud) is primarily labled for the Dvorak typist, with little "you're driving in Canada, now you need to know kilometers per hour" labels in the upper left of every key.

Now, I'm largely a touch typist, using a weird sort of homegrown combination of touch typing and proper keyboarding technique -- Father Halter would be so disappointed. Ordinarily I don't need to look at the keyboard, but I do glance down now and then to orient myself. And like a high wire artist realizing that Times Square really is twenty stories down, it's a bad idea. I stumble. I get confused. It takes me a few minutes to get re-oriented. Trust the fingers, David... Or the force... whichever...

Yesterday's train ride down (there I went again, looked down at the keyboard and lost my flow) was as chock full of beautiful moments as last week's ride, but since I had only gotten four hours of sleep the night before (I'm the most popular girl at the dance at work right now) I only really remember a few.

There was the girl both Miz Becky and I noticed as we were walking back from the Bistro car, about 10, very serious expression on her face, reading a book called "worlds best jokes".

There was the older couple sitting across the aisle from me, probably both research doctors. The husband was trying to play some music on his laptop, and they had this exchange:

"Arghh! I hate this goddamned Windows Media Player. It won't do what I want it to do, just what it thinks I should be doing."

"It thinks it knows better than you!"

"That's exactly it. It thinks it knows what I want to do instead of letting me decide."

"That's just like Microsoft, isn't it. They always think they know better than us and they want to push us into doing something stupid."

"Right, instead of just letting us get our work done."

I was awfully tempted to come out of the closet and do a little field research right there... but I just wasn't prepared for a couple of hours of cross-aisle vitriol, which is what they seemed to be in the mood for.

In other news this morning, I was amused to read a confessional piece over at Nobody's Doll talking about how she Freaks Out and watches too much television whenever she's on vacation: "We don't have a teevee in Vermont, so our Rhode Island vacation was like TeeVee Fiesta! Week. We went on vacation for a week to watch teevee. And also, you know, to look at the ocean and stuff."

Miz Becky and I do have a TV in Seattle, a rather large one we received as a gift from a friend who had One Huge TV Too Many, but we barely ever actually receive broadcasts on it -- partly because it's in the basement, and even with the super duper ($19.95) amplifying antenna, we don't really get any channels well (Except PBS... it's the perfect liberal TV). And who has time to watch TV, anyway, what with all of the photo projects and design projects and now this incessant blogging that I'm doing here even as we speak.

But when we're in a hotel room, hoo boy. We always bring lots of books and whatnot, both trash and Good Intellectual Stuff, but what do we end up doing? Arguing about which underfed teen should win the Modeling Contract Talent Search on MTV. Delaying dinner so we can tune in Iron Chef. Watching bad standup. WALLOWING IN IT. Because, you know, sometimes ya gotta.