Today would have been my friend Greg’s 38th birthday. As you might remember, Greg passed away from complications with his lung transplant on June 5th, 2006. In rememberance of my friend, I’ve made a donation to the research fund for IPF, the disease that killed him. If anyone wants to follow suit, you can donate online here.
Cheers, Greg. Hope you’re enjoying your birthday, wherever you are.
This is an example of why my 8 1/2 year old is so special. While reading stories tonight (we’re reading “The Amber Spyglass”, part 3 in the “His Dark Materials Trilogy” by Philip Pullman), we get to a part where one of the characters meets up with an alien species of things like deer. Ellen thinks they’re larger than they are and says they’re like Wooley Mammals, but I say they’re smaller, “Sort of like Mamlets”. Then I say, “Isn’t that a Shakespeare play?” and she says about 2 seconds later, “No, that’s Hamlet…Maybe it’s Hackbeth!” I don’t know where she got the “hack” part, but how she knows Shakespeare plays, I have no idea. So I tell her it’s “Macbeth” and then joke, “Actually, there’s another play called PC Beth”, making a Mac/PC pun. She gets it immediately and laughs, asking if it’s “Virusbeth”.
She just gets things. It’s amazing sometimes how quick she is.
This report comes from Kim, via Katie’s teacher. Apparently, there’s a new girl in Katie’s class–Dinaye (or something like it), who speaks very little English. So the other day, Katie’s music teacher notices that every time that she says something to the class, Katie turns to Dinaye and says something. She listens more closely and Katie is saying “bla blee blu bla blal blal bla” to Dinaye–e.g., complete gibberish. When questioned, Katie reports that she is “translating” for the girl, as she doesn’t speak English well. All of Katie’s teachers think this is so cute that they refuse to tell her to stop her translating, even though poor Dinaye probably is so confused that she must think English is the most bizarre language ever.
Katie writes it off as “no big deal–it’s just Gibberish.”
Growing up, I had a number of friends in the neighborhood, most of which were just friends of convenience. I had very little in common with many of them, most of them tended to be pains in the ass, and some of them drooled. However, they were nearby and I was young, stuck where I was, and unable to reach the pedals of my parent’s car.
On weekends, though, with some regularity, my folks would schlep me back and forth to see my friend Karl, who lived variously in Whitestone and then in Cold Spring Harbor, and eventually in San Diego, Bethesda and Ann Arbor (the schlepping did not include these latter three locations, sadly). Through a very strange quirk of planning and fate, we ended up refinding each other and spending two occasionally frustating, but mostly fun years of college together as roommates in a cell-block sized dorm room before giving each other a bit more space, but still remaining friends and finishing our schooling. Then life happened, and I haven’t heard from him since probably my own wedding (although we did get a Christmas card sometime in 1996 or 1997 with no return address).
About a month ago, my dad decided to google him and found a website for him, which has led to a few odd emails, but, ultimately, and hopefully for the foreseeable future, a renewal of our friendship.
Welcome back to the fold, buddy. Let’s not go another 10 years.
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On a separate note, a small Ellen blurb from yesterday. I was being my typical smart ass self and making her a bit crazy as she tried to get the answer to a simple question, when, fed up, she told me:
Dad, sometimes you really exasperate me!
And, I’m sure I do.
Greg used to send me and Emily and lots of other people the weirdest shit ever. If it was Japanese, bizarre, sudo-cutsey, or just overall insane, it would have come via greg. Now, with greg gone to the great anime in the sky, Emily has found a few very surreal things and I look forward to them coming my way in the future. Keeping the tradition alive.
So, in that spirit, here is a very important English lesson for Japanese tourists abroad, as well as a very stylish bit of headgear for the kitten who has everything:
Last night at dinner, Ellen had all sorts of questions about alternative fuels, asking if we could use oil from corn, or olives, or meat fat, or all sorts of other types of oils to power cars and house heating, etc. After dinner, she heads upstairs, and on her own wrote the following letter to George W. Bush. We did not do anything re: correcting, editing, or suggesting ideas. She handed this to us as is, and we’ll be sending it on to Dubya:
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Dear President George Bush,
After many disscusions with my family, I have come to the conclusion that rather than spend so much money on gas, we could make gas out of other sources! And instead of paying so much for electricity, we could pay a large fee once to get a windmill to power our lamps! Why don’t we do that?
From,
Ellen Meyerson
Age 8
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This conversation was reported by my mother a few months ago when Mom and Dad were looking for a house in the area:
Nana. Gee look at those beautiful houses I would love to live in one of them (the ones on Wyoming Avenue)
Ellen: Nana those are nice but you should live in a smaller house like mine, and one that’s on a quiet street and not on the main street like these are.
Nana. Why?
Ellen Because you have peace and quiet just like ours, our house is just the right size, its on a very quiet street, no cars come through and YOU COULD RIDE YOUR BIKE.
Nana : Oh you have a point there if I ride my bike. Maybe Papa and I could build an extension to your house and live there if your house is so perfect
Ellen: we don’t have enough room between the houses for an extension
Nana: Well maybe we could rebuild the attic and Papa and I would live there
Ellen: I think Daddy would flip out.
————
Probably so.
Overheard this morning:
Katie: Mom, remember when we were born, Ellen was hanging upside down and I was tangled up in the invisible cords?
We’re on vacation on Long Beach Island today for a week, and Ellen is sitting at the table earlier, playing an online game called “Runescape.” To say she gets involved to the exclusion of all around her is an understatement. She’s sitting there and apparently Dad tells her some dumb joke and she doesn’t even look up. No acknowledgement of anything. So he tells her the joke again. Again, she pulls a Buster Keaton–great stone face. No reaction. Dad finally says “Ellen, can you hear me? I’m talking to you.”
Ellen doesn’t look up in saying, “yes, but i’m ignoring you.”
Oh, boy.
Kim and I were having a conversation in the kitchen. I’m standing there, with my cel phone and bluetooth headset on, we’re talking about something, and my cel phone rings. I look at the caller ID and see that it’s not just a telemarketer calling my cel phone, but it’s a known religious zealot calling to preach to me. On my cel phone, no less!
So, I ask kim to hang on a sec and answer the phone with the friendly words “DIE DIEE DIEEEEE!” in my scariest Bela Lugosi voice. Maybe a little severe, but they deserve it…
Well, they might have deserved it if it were real. The problem was that although all of this happened just like I said, I was dreaming all of it, and the only part that came out out loud, of course, was the “DIE DIEE DIEEEEE!” part in the middle of the night in an otherwise quiet, sleep filled room. Lucky kim got to wake me up from me telling whomever to die horribly, asking me if i knew what I was saying, probably ready to call the police. Or a priest. Or a vet. Fortunately for me, I did remember exactly what prompted my pleasantness and was able to put it together clearly so that I could be at least somewhat understood, instead of being thought of as somewhat homocidal.
The moral of the story? Never call anyone in the middle of the night if you’re a religious telemarketer.