The Story Addict

In my humble opinion, the best conversations last for at least an hour and conclude with a handshake and, “My name is Jen, by the way.” That is, if you are a certified story addict like I am.

Whether talking about Peter the Great, the Great Depression, and the harems of ancient Persia with an elderly Russian man whose concept of personal space was very different from my own; chatting with a hiker about canine insurance and “sharp pencil” judges; or being shamed by a twelve-year-old in all matters motion sickness, stingrays, and beaches in the Midwest, I cannot resist the lure of a lengthy discussion with an interesting stranger.

[Kids, listen to your parents; don’t talk to strangers. This PSA has been brought to you by Adults for Responsible Snark-blogging.]

Because I work from home, and I treat my local coffee shops like a second home, many of my favorite conversations have taken place over a steaming cup of dark roast. Say what you will about the addictive properties of caffeine, [the best] coffee shops, along with airplanes and wineries, are a veritable library of fascinating stories waiting to be shared. Today was no exception.

This morning’s conversation covered the whole gamut of topics, from Apple computers to POW experiences in World War II, modern political parties, Californian sourdough bread, marriage trends, horse shows, and Koine Greek. I’m pretty sure that the only thing we forgot to mention was the weather. [Sorry, Henry Higgins].

When he left, I drained my (now cold) coffee while I attempted to consolidate unemployment policies, the joy of editing, William Shatner, and Diet Coke into a cohesive thought. Eventually, I gave up. Some conversations—often the best ones—are just meant to ramble.

The North in N.C. Eateries

“In 1956, Mike opened the small shop in the sea-side town of Point Pleasant, New Jersey. …Mike was unique in that the product he was offering was a relatively new item in American society – the submarine sandwich.”

Today, Jersey Mike’s boasts more than 600 locations, including three franchises in and around my hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. There, bread, cheese, and meat are deli-sliced fresh in front of your eyes—if you’re lucky, yielding a fine spatter of pulverized turkey at no extra charge—and you can get your cold or hot sub made Mike’s Way™ or your own.

Suffice it to say, I’m a fan.

For years, I have driven past one of the more unusual franchises, located just north of Winston-Salem on University Parkway. It is visually intriguing to say the least. The log cabin style of the building, complete with wraparound porch, looks better suited to Old Salem or Historic Bethabara, or at least to a Cracker Barrel, than to a New Jersey sandwich chain. One day, I promised myself, I would pay this avant-garde Jersey Mike’s a visit. Well, today was the day. I drove confidently north, ready to sink my teeth into a turkey-lettuce-vinegar-and-pickle extravaganza.

When I arrived, I hesitated at the preceding light: should I turn left at the light, hoping to find a cut-through behind the restaurant, or attempt to cross traffic and turn directly into the parking lot a block later? I chose the latter course.

Cue record scratch, eery Jaws music, or other ominous sounds of your choice. There was no turn lane. Instead, I sat less than a hundred yards from a busy intersection, precariously hovering in liminal space between the through lane on my side of the road and the left turn lane for oncoming traffic. Which was oncoming.

…

Readers, I made it in, but I was shaking my head at my own ill-informed decision the entire time, and I vowed to leave via the rear exit to the traffic light. Or so I thought.

dunh dunh duhhhhhhh

There was no rear exit. In fact, the grassy strip separating the parking lot from the Bojangles next door was blocked by solid concrete posts. “No, southern driver,” the New Jersey design now seemed to sneer, “You of the protected left turns and central turn lanes, of the languidly indulgent drivers who wave you out in front of them, you of the horns that signal greeting not frustration, of the laughable ‘rush hour traffic’: right here, right now, you are not in North Carolina anymore. Welcome to the North, fool!”

I was flabbergasted. I should have shaken the tiny shreds of lettuce off my floormat and driven away in a huff. But–But–But–But the sandwich was so good.

In the end, I had only one option: capitulation.

Fine. I will make your right turns. I will pretend I am from Rural Hall (clearly, your preferred clientele). I will bow to your bizarre traffic strictures. However, the next time I have a craving to eat a turkey sub on a wraparound porch (the new low-carb alternative), I will begin every sentence of my order with the word “Y’all.”

It’s only fair.

Welcome to the South.

Conceding with Greats

In the spirit of the yesterday’s events, I entered into a friendly wager about the outcome of the presidential election. Barack Obama would win the electoral college, I asserted, but lose the popular vote. Well, as you probably know by now, by “lose,” I meant “win by 300,000 votes.”

Also in the spirit of the day, I have just prepared a brief concession speech for my worthy opponent. By “just prepared,” of course, I mean “prepared on day one of the wager in due humility with respect to my own fallibility.”

Ahem. Proceed. This is, of course, a completely original* document written out of the great fullness of my heart.

—– <TRANSCRIPT> —–

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have just contemplated calling my worthy opponent to congratulate him on his victory. [I have since decided otherwise.]

Loss. There will be a time for such a word after all the precincts have reported. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded recounts. Yet the people have spoken.

I come to bury my unsuccessful career as a pundit, not to praise it. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. The equal of my opponent’s interpretation of statistical probabilities has not been seen in fourscore and seven years.

Now is the winter of our discontent. Join not with grief, fair listeners, do not so, to make my defeat too sudden: learn, good friends, to think our former flood of political ads a happy dream.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers who refuse to believe the numbers, we stand together on election day. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of predictors fails, when we forsake our efforts to foretell the future and break all bonds of statistical analysis: but it is not this day.

Alas, one day is far too short a time to forecast the political decisions of such excellent and whimsical citizens. I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.

Do not lose hope. In the end the pundits will announce that two and two make five, and you will have to believe it. It is inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demands it.

Going forward, I have a dream that you will ask not what your forecasters can do for you; you will ask what you can do for your forecasters.

Thank you, and God bless America.

—– <END TRANSCRIPT> —–

*By that I mean…never mind

A Battle of Wits: NAV 101

“Truman. Truman, that’s our turnoff.”

“I changed my mind. What’s New Orleans like this time of year? Mardi Gras, woooooo! Ha ha ha ha ha! Hoo hoo hoo! Whoooohoo! Look, Meryl! Same road, no cars. It’s magic! Hahaha!”

–The Truman Show

I swear, driving with a GPS brings out the worst in me. When there is a tinny female voice on my dashboard instructing me to turn left and then to remain in the right lane, oddly enough, at that particular moment, I have the intense urge to turn right and then immediately switch to the left lane.

You might call me a bit contrary.

What is even worse, I feel a certain thrill when I see the word “Recalculating” on the screen in front of me. That’s right, Bonnie, dear, I made you recalculate. Again. And again. And again. Mwahahahaha.

I told you; she brings out my ugly side.

I can’t help thinking of the scene in The Truman Show when Truman temporarily escapes from the world Christof has created for him. The show technicians switch from camera to camera but cannot locate their subject. In that moment, Truman is invisible and invincible. That’s how I feel when I cut through parking lots and make a series of rapid turns to navigate out of a shopping center. She can’t keep up. She knows it. I win.

I’m actually a safe driver, I promise.

If this experience has taught me nothing else, it is a greater respect for the wisdom of one Captain Barbossa: “You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here, there be monsters” (…and techno-competitive people, who are just as bad).

The Perks of Falling Back

Last night while I was sleeping, the clocks crossed over to the Dark Side and returned to standard time. Ambitious early birds (are you really going to trust someone who thinks worms are a tasty treat?) may be thrilled by the extra hour of light, and to them I say, “Good for you. Savor that extra annelid. I hope you enjoy the knowledge that you are destroying my soul with every lost minute of afternoon light.”

That will teach them.

But standard time does come with a few perks.

First and foremost, the digital clock in my car is now an hour closer to representing time accurately. The clock-CD player is not the original manufacturer’s version, so having lost the owner’s manual years ago, I have found myself helpless to re-set the time. (No, I’m not that digitally inept. Multiple people have tried; none have succeeded.) Yesterday, the clock was one hour and twenty-two minutes slow; today, it is a mere twenty-two minutes behind!

Second, I have at least a week to utilize the “forgot to reset my clock” excuse for showing up late, leaving early, or otherwise not being on time. It’s not negligence; it is a deliberate protest against the whimsy of New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson. (Trust an entomologist to meddle with worm metaphors. Stick to the arthropods, George.)

Finally, the most important perk of falling back at the end of Daylight Savings Time is that I have a free pass for any clumsy behaviors that I enact today. When mocked for a tumble down the stairs, I will look the offending [probably morning] person squarely in the eyes, shrug my shoulders, and say, “I’m celebrating an international event. Where’s your global spirit?”

And that, my friends, is how I will survive the return of standard time. How will you?

Powering Up

Friends, I have come to an important realization: my internal system requires 43 percent solar power in order to operate at full capacity. Due to eccentricities of design, this percentage cannot be replaced by other forms of energy such as food, caffeine, or sleep. If present in insufficient quantities, I operate at a maximum functionality of 57 percent.

It’s a serious conundrum.

Hence, it is of the utmost importance for me to allot daily sessions spent in direct sunlight, to ensure sufficient recharging of this crucial energy component. (In my head, the process is accompanied by a distinctive Mario power-up sound.)

Today, I’m at about 82 percent. It’s a good day.

So do not be alarmed if you find me curled up on a coffee table, squeezed on a kitchen counter, or immobilized in the center of a parking lot. I am not a vampire—I neither sparkle nor dissolve; I am not an Animagus—no cat fur; I am not an Ent—no latent environmental rage. Think of me instead as a self-sustaining human solar panel, another photosynthetic creature just trying to survive another winter.

I’m totally harmless: I swear. Unless, of course, you happen to block my sunlight. In that case, I’m not making any promises…

Locavino: Cellar 4201

It’s a gorgeous Friday afternoon in October. After a week of rain, the sky is a clear blue with a white tint on the edges of the horizon. I’m sitting on the patio of Cellar 4201, a small boutique winery in the Yadkin Valley AVA of North Carolina, surrounded by crape myrtles, ferns, and bright yellow hibiscus flowers; the whole area pock-marked with two-seater cast iron tables sporting sun umbrellas in vibrant shades of yellow and orange.

I’ve just finished a tasting with one of the owners, Greg, and have settled down to work while sipping a glass of their Cherokee Red, an oak-aged blend of Merlot, Cabernet, and Sangiovese. The nose is soft and full, with hints of cedar, chocolate, and coffee that mimic the espresso bean chocolate I tasted with the wine. The mouthfeel is pleasantly round, demonstrating rich plum and blackcurrant, with notes of raspberry and chocolate on the back end. The finish is smooth; the tannins, gentle but present.

I meet the winery mascot, a thirteen-year-old beagle named Buttercup, and spend a few minutes talking to the other owner, Donna. The patio is still wet from a hosing-down before tomorrow’s fundraising event for the horse rescue operations at Hidden K Stables, so we chat about upcoming wine events in the Yadkin Valley.

Meanwhile, the poplar trees at the edge of the property are going through their own form of veraison, shading from green to yellow at the tops. It’s been an odd year for weather, Greg confirms: late freeze; spotty hot summer; rainy fall; and early, slim harvest. By now, his five-and-a-quarter acres are all safely bestowed in steel and oak inside the rustic brick winery to my right. The 2012 barrel-aged Chardonnay looks particularly promising, he says.

Cellar 4201 sells two Chardonnays (oaked and steel), a reserve Merlot, a Cabernet, the Cherokee Red, and a semi-sweet red blend called Sweet Native. All of the wines are reasonably priced at under $20 a bottle. Most are sold right here at the winery, and for good reason. I can think of few better ways to spend a Friday afternoon than with friendly people, lovely scenery, and a glass of red wine to make the hours speed by.

Thanks, Cellar 4201!

On Lying in Bed

G.K. Chesterton, sometimes you just get it right.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. […]

Misers get up early in the morning; and burglars, I am informed, get up the night before. A man’s minor actions and arrangements ought to be free, flexible, creative; the things that should be unchangeable are his principles, his ideals. But with us the reverse is true; our views change constantly; but our lunch does not change. Now, I should like men to have strong and rooted conceptions, but as for their lunch, let them have it sometimes in the garden, sometimes in bed, sometimes on the roof, sometimes in the top of a tree. Let them argue from the same first principles, but let them do it in a bed, or a boat, or a balloon. […]

For those who study the great art of lying in bed there is one emphatic caution to be added. Even for those who can do their work in bed (like journalists), still more for those whose work cannot be done in bed (as, for example, the professional harpooners of whales), it is obvious that the indulgence must be very occasional. But that is not the caution I mean. The caution is this: if you do lie in bed, be sure you do it without any reason or justification at all. I do not speak, of course, of the seriously sick. But if a healthy man lies in bed, let him do it without a rag of excuse; then he will get up a healthy man. If he does it for some secondary hygienic reason, if he has some scientific explanation, he may get up a hypochondriac.

–“On Lying in Bed”

Dream a Little Dream of Me

The mental health experts would have a field day with this one… 

Scenario: The dear cat of the house encounters the crazy about 5:30 a.m. and begins running suicides across the house, ending each one by slamming against my bedroom door.

Subsequently, I have a vivid, memorable dream that I am attempting to recoup, among other things, a dozen or more loaves of sliced white bread, and I am being attacked by a gang of middle school boys brandishing sticks.

I win.

Look out, ALN.  🙂