April 2005 Archives

...Joseph Michael Scala, the newest absolute darling to hit my family. Oh, look at those CHEEKS. I love him already and we've yet to meet.

Well, not new pics, but a little site update: I moved the William DeLong gallery over to the new galleries. ;)

And...it seems life is conspiring to steal time from me... yesterday, looking forward to my first day off in a while, I got a voice mail message that a story I've been covering for a year and a half (ferry crash) was coming to a swift and exciting end of sorts. Two people - the only big ones left - pleaded guilty, essentially making it the last big story we'll write on the subject. This story that has felt like my baptism in journalism ended yesterday. Seth and I worked our butts off, then toasted with some brandy in a geeky and nostalgic fashion, and went out to dinner to celebrate/reminisce. We held up a glass to the poor people who lost their lives and had a moment to remember them, and then put a nice seal on the entire year and a half by enjoying friendly company and reminding ourselves who we were before and are after this entire ordeal. It felt important to do - hugely important, and I'm glad I was working with someone who felt that importance, too.

So, we advertised on TLC today for some new editors.

I'm up late sorting through the MANYMANYMANY applications and am sort of bumfuzzled...people who work at BBC, ESPN, have worked on television and in radio and at newspapers around the country and in other countries...people who are teachers and moms and students and research associates and photo specialists...all of them sending in great and heartfelt messages. I want to make a giant team of all these people and use them for everything.

And then there are the people I know. This is what has astonished me most. Not just the people whose names I recognize, but the ones I really know; someone in my own newsroom, for instance, someone who is one of the first people I met in fandom; someone I work with regularly; I would love nothing more than to work with these people but they pose a tremendous ethical problem (most of them do, anyway). And then I wonder if it's fair that good ethics should get in the way of good editors, and decide that it's not, and that we'll just have to be extra careful that the same judgment bar gets applied to everyone. But the safest way is to just adhere to strict ethics, as always.

I'm just astonished at how many people want to work on the site. I had no idea. I mean, no, I take that back, I did, but this is quantifying it in such real and flattering way that I'm taken aback.

And for all this talent, I have no guarantee I'm going to find anyone like Sue, who was a find from heaven and who I love to death, who works her ass off for the site and does it out of sheer, pure, love and nothing else - who better damn well know how much I love her.

And that's all for this evening. The resume pile is staggering. The editing pile getting even more staggering. I'm doing some of that before bed, Aimee and Justin. (Can anyone tell I owe Aimee and Justin some editing? I do.)

Last night, as I was settling in for a night of catchup editing work (don't worry, Aimee and Justin, I'm on it), Mike bursts through the front door.

"You know what we need? A fire."

"A what now?"

"A fire. In the backyard."

And he starts running around the house as if he's looking for something.

"Are you OK?" I call.

"Yes! I saw the neighbors with one! A fire! We should have one!"

He drags from its hiding place a fire pit. A fire pit. We don't have a working doorbell and we use the dining room as an office - but, fire pit? Check!

It's this huge copper pot, basically, and he sets it up in the backyard. Now I see what he's up to.

"You know, we're going to need marshmallows," I insist. He goes out to get them, while I tell the Leaky helpers who were testing out a new software with us that I have to go, because we have to burn things now.

Mike starts grabbing fistfuls of twigs, and dragging over spare bits of firewood. A box erupts under his lighter, and soon we've got the Olympic flame in the backyard. We spent the night toasting marshmallows on chopsticks - at one point I amused myself by running around the backyard with a lit one in my hand, singing "Chariots of Fire." AJ and Maura came over, we sacrificed Teddy Grahams to the flame, and watched marshmallows glob and expand under extreme heat. It doesn't take much to amuse us.

And there are pics! Except, check out the new format of my pics at my new Gallery. I have wanted to get a good photo management system going, and even played around with the one Milly uses for her galleries, and then I learned how to do this one and I love it. It's ridiculously easy, and it took me about 10 minutes to get all my photos into it - I still have to bring all the captions over but that shouldn't be hard, and uploading all the galleries I have waiting on my computer should be cake, too. You can also comment on all the pictures, which I find kinda fun and funny.

Here are the pics from last night, and here's the link again to the main gallery. "Pics" on the side of my page goes to it as well, now.

All right, Hoya people who I just spent a wonderful weekend with, don't think I can't tell you're all Googling me right now. I can see you! Rather, my tracker can, and it has stolen your stealth. More people than Google me in a month, did so in the last five hours. Hah! It actually makes me feel sort of fondled. Ew.

Anyway, I'll be posting Gala pics soon.

The WEEKEND O' FUN continues.

Last night, after I got home (early, because I had work today) from my cousin's bachelorette party, I settled in my (admittedly not the cleanest lately) room to check some mail, read some stuff, and go to bed.

A shadow passed through my vision on my right. Very quickly. Skitteringly, I thought.

Nah. We haven't had any bugs. I'm nuts. I go back to reading.

Something skitters the other way. I jump. My feet curl onto my bed. I convince myself I'm imagining things. Whatever it was doesn't seem to be corporeal, it flits like dark air instead of a real bug. I'm in that defensive, don't-move-a-twitch mode, staring at my bookshelf, where the skittering appears to have come from. It takes five whole minutes, but there's no more noise, and my muscles limber up a bit. I type again.

This time it's DEFINITELY there. Something moved. A paper, a something. It MOVED SOMETHING. The sumbitch MOVED something, it HAS a body - the black shadow goes back into my closet.

I jump onto my bed but I'm silent. I watch the closet, waiting, trying to convince myself out of it again but I can't. Going downstairs means I have to cross in front of the Closet of Doom so I just stay put.

Mike was downstairs. He was watching the very end of the movie, and I think that if I just stay like this for twenty minutes, then I won't feel guilty about being a total wussorific piece of womanly limp spaghetti and calling my roommate, who is the same size as me and afraid of the most microscopic of spiders ("IT'S SATAAAN!" he yells whenever he sees one), to help.

Except, staying like this poses problems. The tiniest of movements in this old, settling house, freaks me the hell out. There are piano concertos coming out of the television downstairs but I can't hold another beat.

"Miii-iiiiike," I called like a whiney, whimpery sheep.

"Yes?" he answers, having heard this tone before.

"There's sooomething uuuuuuuuup heeeeeere!" I bleated.

He's there in footsteps. He sees me standing on the bed and I can see the muscles working in his face as he tries not to laugh, and as he investigates. The pair of us usually upturn the regular sexist myths; he has track lighting in the bathroom while I'm usually the one who remembers to take out the trash. He loves to cook and clean and I love to read my newspaper and do my crossword. I'm work-obsessed and he's usually on the couch watching a movie when I come home, late and dogged. He has two dates and there are all-night talk-and-cocoa sessions - I have two dates and just shrug as I walk out of the room, leaving him shouting questions about the guy in my wake. He bakes, I fry. He has the scented candles, I leave coffee rings on the tables.

Not last night. No. Last night I was on the bed, immobilized, looking for all the world like I was in the middle of a kung fu move, while he got a flashlight and started creeping around in my closet.

"You're afraid of SPIDERS," I reminded him, because his bravado was making me look quite bad. "And you're fine with this creepy crawly cockroach thing?"

"Creepy crawlies don't bother me," he said as he started throwing shoes out of my closet and slithering around on his stomach. "Just spiders."

"They ARE creepy crawlies!"

He didn't answer. He silently got up, and walked out of the room. He returned with a tupperware and quietly put it aside, so I didn't even notice it. Then he started taking all my shoes, and anything not hanging, out of the closet. The debris pile is starting to look like half-off sale at Macy's.

"What are you doing?" I asked as he got into my closet and started peering at the wall.

"Looking for the mouse."

"MOUSE!"

Mike chuckled. I danced on my bed. "Amouseamouseamouse WHY A MOUSE?!"

Mike spoke very evenly, and slowly, and calmly. "He's about an inch long. I saw him on your shoes."

"MY SHOES!"

"So we're just going to take - everything - out - and we'll find him."

"FIND HIM! He's in my CLOSET and you can't FIND HIM!"

Mike takes out one shoe rack. Then another. There's nothing on the floor. He gets on his hand and knees and utters his first frustrated word of the night.

"F--er, where did you go?"

I'm still on the same spot on the bed. I will not move. No, nosirree, it will not happen. That effing mouse is either in my closet or in the shoe sale outside it, and if I move he will ATTACK ME.

We had some mice in my mom's house once, and I made fun of my mother to no end. She acted just like this - screaming, whining, shuddering itchy crawlies and psychological crackheadedness, praying for divine intervention - all over a mouse. A tiny baby mouse, I jeered. What will he do to you, ma, I asked her. It's a MOUSE! Come on, you're a strong woman and he lives on cheese, come ooon. She shook her head. "I don't want him crawling on me in my sleep!" And she shuddered again, like something had just run up her spine.

And now Topo Gigio - the automatic name of any unwelcome house mouse - is skitting around in my room and I'm on my bed shouting "I AM MY MOTHER I AM MY MOTHER I AM MY MOTHERRRRR!"

Mike is dying of laughter about now. He has taken everything out of the bottom of my closet and he still can't find Topo. What he DOES find is a moth larva.

Yes. Moth larva. Make the night even better, why don't you?

So now I must find everything I own that is made of nonsynthetic fiber - which thankfully is only about three things but try and FIND those three things - and check for tiny little stupid non-whole moths who are eating through my clothing.

It's a fantastic night in Melissaland.

First things first, and the first thing is to smoke out this little cheeseeater like some mozzarella. It's been a half hour. I'm still on my bed. Mike is still staring listelessly at the wall, looking at the lack of holes in my closet and wondering where the hell Topo went. I'm now doing the foot-to-foot dance while simultaneously trying to scratch every part of my back, where surely little spiders and cockroaches and things are crawling, because there must be SOME reason I'm so itchy all of a sudden.

Mike throws his hands out, then puts one finger to his lips very suddenly. "Shh," he says.

I stop mid-hop. I look like Ralph Macchio in the Karate Kid, one foot in the air and the other halfway into a scratch.

Something makes noise. Imperceptible, tiny, little-claw noise. I whimper.

Mike, on the other hand, goes back to his calm, methodical, move-slowly-so-Melissa-isn't-alerted-that-something-is-very-wrong-here stance.

He starts taking the things hanging in my closet out of my closet. One by one. Shaking them. Laying them on my bed.

"IT'S ON MY CLOTHES?!?!?!?"

"...it was."

"It WAS?! Where is it NOW?"

"...I don't know."

"OH YOU DON'T KNOW, GREAT!"

He sees movement. He stops what he's doing and reaches for the tupperware, but now this tupperware is long forgotten in the all-you-can-fit shoe department store that is now next to my bed, and by the time he finds it, Topo has absconded again, no doubt with some lovely piece of clothing to make a house with. Damn smart mouse.

When half the clothes are out on the bed, Mike starts looking from the bed to the closet. I can tell what he's thinking by now. He's thinking that maybe Topo is in the half of the clothes that is ON my bed, near my feet. And he doesn't want to tell me this because he knows exactly what will happen: I will do a half-flip over my wrought-iron footboard, crash into the new wooden floors, and kill myself, therefore scaring off Topo, which would be the real tragedy, because now Mike's on the hunt. He will get the little rodent. HE WILL.

So I decide it's time for me to not say I know all this. I stay in wax-on-wax-off mode.

All of a sudden Mike springs into action, doing the little "Where's the tupperware, where's the tupperware!" dance where he gets a wild look in his eye and runs in a frantic circle only to find the tupperware is exactly where he left it, grabs it and FLINGS himself to the floor.

"GOT IT! GOT YOU SUCKER!"

He gets up. The upside down tupperware skids across my closet floor. I see the shadow of Topo. I squeal like a little girl while at the same time DANCING on my bed.

"Now what?"

Oh. Good point. We're going to need to get this sucker out of the house.

"I need you to do something for me," says Mike.

"Something that involves getting off this bed?" I ask.

"You can do it."

"*whine*"

I follow instructions downstairs...de-bedding and skirting around the closet like it had an infection...and got a piece of cardboard. Mike carefully inserted it under Topo, clamped his hand underneath and the two of us were happily running out the door.

When he took the cover off Topo, outside, Topo BOUNCED away, like he was a little jumping bean. I stood on the porch doing the kind of dance where your head goes back and forth, side to side, while your hips do the same, and you keep shifting feet - like a schizophrenic twist - singing "Mike's my HEEERO he's my HEEERO he's a HEEEERO!"

The neighbors really like us here. Really.

It was 2:30 a.m., and going back inside only entailed continuing the slow comb through my clothing, the reorganization of my closet, the vaccumming and Lysol-ing of my room and the slow, tired crawl into bed at 4am. Not a bad night.

The weekend of fun. Weekend-of-fun.

Thank god it's over. I can't stand this many good times.

(PS, it's been brought to my attention it's really hard to comment here, because my spamblocker has to be intense and a lot of natural conversation strings get lost - you can comment here if you're really itching. ITCHING! ACK! No more of that!)

I hit somebody with my car tonight.

Actually, no. He hit me, and that's the part of it I can't seem to remember or get straight.

I was on my way home from a perfectly normal date, completely sober, going slower than the bus in my right lane, on the block near my house that is a complete danger trail, when out between the bus and the car behind it FLIES this kid. Right into my right side mirror. Like he had an appointment with my mirror that he didn't want to miss. Like my mirror owed him money and had been dodging him, and he was tackling it before it could get away.

I screamed. I tried to swerve. I heard the sickening crunch of kid-meets-mirror, followed by kid-meets-pavement-and-ohmygod-did-he-also-meet-wheel?

I jammed on the brake and ran out of the car, visions of deadkid swimming in front of my eyes. I felt sick. I thought I'd vomit. People were running. The kid was writhing. I was screaming and crying and had to put my head between my legs before I could even breathe. People were ushering me to the sidewalk, suddenly - people I expected to brush me off as some crazy, horrible driver, instead comforting me, assuaging me, assuring me.

I took a few breaths. I realized where I was and that this was really happening and ran back into the street, back to the kid. There was no blood. I noticed a slant in his eyes, a disorientation to all of him - I thought I did that.

I was ushered away again. People tried to explain - witnesses came forward, to comfort me - one of them the driver of the bus - that the kid was slow, that he had a condition, that he had been drinking a lot on top of the condition which was incredibly dangerous, that it wasn't my fault, that everyone saw it and knew it wasn't my but his fault, and on and on and on.

And the rational part of me knew this. The rational part knew I'd done nothing wrong and that I'd done everything I could to avoid it. But there was the kid, squirming, and I did it, my car did it, how the hell can I breathe or move and what if he dies, I can't dealwiththisIcan'tdealwiththisIcan'tdealwithTHIS!

He had only hit my mirror, I was reminded. He didn't do any significant damage to himself, the kind he would have done had he jumped in front.

The flashing lights came. I wondered if a reporter from my newspaper would show up - we usually respond to the scanner's flattoned "pedestrian struck" - and wondered how surprised he would be to see me sitting there, on a low brick wall next to a gas station, being offered water and reminders to breathe.

"You're going to need an ambulance, you have to calm down," they told me. I remembered my hard-earned post-traumatic stress training. I breathed. And breathed and breathed until I could figure out what to do.

I called Mike, who was there in a trice, doing everything I as a reporter with a functioning head should have done. He got names and numbers of witnesses, asked the right questions, made sure the right people knew.

I talked to the police. Yes, I was within the speed limit - he ran out between a bus and a car, there was no time - I had a glass of wine at dinner more than two hours ago but nothing else, Officer - I don't remember what speed I was going at, I didn't look, but I was going slower than the bus - Is he all right, please tell me he's all right -

It seemed to take forever. I heard the woman holding the kid saying he flipped through the air and I got angry - no he hadn't! What was she trying to do?

But when he police came back, they said everyone had told them the same story that I had, and that I was in no trouble. A witness said he had been drinking; the kid told the EMT he had been drinking, and when he asked how much the kid said, "too much."

"It's like hitting a deer," the officer said, "there's no way you can avoid this kind of thing. What happened to your other mirror?"

My other mirror, the driver side one, I explained, had gotten hit by a fire truck, and I'm getting the mirror replaced tomorrow. I laughed weakly at the irony, and so did the officer. "Now the other one's gone," he said feebly.

"We've got to demagnetize your car," said Mike.

The lights went away. Everyone dispersed. Mike stood next to me while the visions of deadkid crested in my head, and I sobbed. I collected myself. I remembered to breathe. I got in my car. I shook. I pulled out slowly, Mike carefully trailing behind in his. I watched shadows on the sidewalks as we went home, trembling, waiting for them to jump out at me.

None did.