A Thousand Times No

After a hiatus of several months brought on by a sprained ankle and prolonged by sheer inertia, I began commuting to work by bike again back in March. I remember feeling a little distressed when I hopped on my bike and felt as though I were riding through molasses. At the time, I chalked it up to being away from the bike for too long, and within a short time, I seemed to be doing well enough back in the saddle.

Yesterday during my bike repair class, I replaced the cable for my rear derailleur and adjusted all my brake cables. As I spun the back wheel of my bike while it hung in midair from a trusty bike stand, one of my classmates furrowed his brow and frowned. "It's not spinning freely," he said. Sure enough, my back wheel would only rotate a few times before coming to a halt. One Torx wrench plus a few twists and turns later, I had adjusted a brake pad that had been rubbing the rear brake disc for the last few months. The ride home felt like one long cruise downhill.

There are other areas of my life that feel a great deal like that rear wheel these days. A few subtle, virtually invisible refinements will probably set everything right, but they require patience, a steady hand and a specialized toolkit. Getting everything together is going to be a bit of a hassle, but I'm already all over it, because the alternative is just a big drag.

I've been seeing them for years now. At first it was a bit jarring, but after a while I grew accustomed to it. With the advent of warm weather, the season is upon us: bring on the brown bridesmaid dresses!

That's right, somewhere along the way the marital-industrial complex decided that decking young women in hideously unflattering, dowdy shades of brown satin was the height of sophistication. Brown (or "chocolate" or "deep cocoa" or "mahogany" or whatever other euphemism was handy) became the new black, the anti-pastel that telegraphed a bride's chic and worldly tastes. I knew the trend had exploded when I saw two different wedding parties jockeying for turf while being photographed in Rittenhouse Square in their dirt-colored gear.

"That's very clever," the man sitting next to me commented. "The brides definitely look better than everyone else." Truly, one could say the brides at these affairs left everyone else in the dust.

However, these invidious impulses fail to explain the new design for Philly.com, the portal for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News.  Can someone please enlighten me on how the choice of leftover bridesmaids colors is supposed to support and enhance the "Web 2.0″ aspects of the site?  How the shameless jumping of the About.com logo is a step towards brand equity, and not just a regrettable move fueled by excess spirits and inadequate self-control?  Do I really need to stick around for the garter toss?

Yesterday afternoon, I accompanied a friend to see the traveling exhibit "Baseball as America" at the National Constitution Center. Despite passing the Constitution Center countless times since it opened here in town nearly five years ago, I had never actually set foot inside. We spent our entire visit absorbed in the baseball exhibit. Among the tethered bats they put out for display, one model fit effortlessly and felt perfectly balanced in my hands: the Louisville Slugger emblazoned with Rod Carew's signature. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that, at least as far as getting a grip, I was someone's Minnesota twin.

We stayed until the building was closed to the public. As we made our way out towards the front entrance, we saw that the central atrium had been set up for a wedding. Programs were already placed upon on the seats, laid out on rich, colorful papers, each embossed with a glittering "om" symbol. When we stepped outside, we saw a small crowd of men in suits and women in dazzling, elegant saris gathered on the broad, open lawn in front of the building. A drummer began to play, and dozens of pairs of hands went up in the air, swaying and pulsing with the drummer's call.

That's when we spotted the groom. He literally rode in, sitting atop large white draft horse that was decked in a glittering, embroidered and mirrored costume. A young boy sat with him under an elaborately decorated umbrella, their faces lit with happiness. We were awestruck.

We took heart in the fusion of families and cultures before us, there at the site where we pay witness to this nation's civic covenant. People shared their joy by upholding traditions rooted in a completely different continent. Some might call doing that a knock; I call it a grand slam. It was, is, and will continue to be, the American way.

The problem has been looming in the background for months, but it finally came to a head this week. I've been in denial for so long that I scarcely knew where to begin. When I read a blog entry this past Monday that outlined the concrete steps I would need to take, I finally took the plunge. I declared bankruptcy — laundry bankruptcy.

This morning, I opened up the doors to a row of high-efficiency washing machines and started up load after load of wash. Cold-water items with cold-water items, like colors with like, socks waltzing in, two-by-two. Several hours later, after much tumbling, a little bleeding, and copious amounts of folding, I'm mostly caught up with my machine washing.

There's still some dry cleaning and hand washing that casts a gimlet-eyed glance my way, but that's another chapter (13?), for another day.

God save the BBC:  Putting the 'Great' in 'Great Britain'.

You know it's been a long campaign when you see this:

…and your first thought is this:

Click either chart to enlarge.
To read more about the second graphic, visit here or here.

My apologies for falling behind on announcing the results of the IRS-UFO contest. No alien abductions this week, just thrown for a bit of a loop by recent life events.

So, way back in 1995, on the day that United Nations peacekeeping mission in Somalia concluded, and two days after Yahoo! was founded, I somehow managed to finish my taxes early — on March 3rd. Looking back, I have no idea what possessed me to file so early, but the impulse seems to have passed out of my system like a brief bout of food poisoning.  I'm feeling better now.

Arthur gets carded for guessing closest with the Ides of March. Et tu, latte?

A few months ago, I began to notice that I was experiencing some facial numbness on and around my temples, particularly on my right side.  I never gave it much thought, other than, "Hmmph, that's odd."  Recently, as the level of numbness increased, I began to grow more concerned.  I mentioned it to a friend of mine who works a great deal with patients recovering from strokes.  Did it strike him as something unusual?

"I don't mean to mention the obvious, but perhaps…" he said with a small laugh, shifting into television pitchmeister voice, "you should check with your doctor."

Oh. Right.  I suppose that would be better than Googling myself sick.

Luckily, my doctor's office is a five-minute walk from my own, which allowed me to catch a last-minute walk-in appointment with her on short notice.  After a quick checkup, she ruled out any damage to the deeper cranial nerves, and we zeroed in on a possible culprit: my eyeglasses.  "They may happen to sit in a way that presses on a superficial nerve," she said.  She recommended that I switch to a different pair for several days to see if the numbness diminished.

It seems that she was right: my face was going numb from spending too much time pressed up against the ol' temple bar.  Kiss me, I'm a Dubliner!

While I was at the supermarket this evening, I heard a woman cursing a blue streak at a security guard for several minutes on end. Apparently the guard had confronted the woman in the aisles, thinking she might be shoplifting. The woman was vocal in her outrage, repeatedly declaring "I'm from New York and I don't $%*&ing play that! I've never been arrested in my entire life! I'm going to $@#&ing take you OUT!" What made the scene surreal was the fact that the woman was wearing a floor-length skirt, a flowing robe, and a hijab.

Meanwhile, in Indiana, a dozen retired nuns were denied the opportunity to vote in today's primary election due to the state's stringent voter identification law, which was recently upheld by the United States Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision supported by Chief Justice John Roberts — the same Justice Roberts who is a product of the Indiana parochial school system. Veni, vidi, wimple…

Wow — Susan Nelson just got a ten-gallon hat tip from none other than Lance Armstrong.

You'll often hear a person say, "I try to use my powers for good." Lance did it. Whether you love him or hate him, whether you think he rode as clean as a whistle or more juiced than a smoothie bar, there's little question that Lance Armstrong used his prominence and fame to help and inspire others in an amazingly effective way. I don't disagree with people who say he's capable of being difficult and ornery — he is, after all, a Texan.

But I doubt anyone can name me a single other professional cyclist (or, for that matter, any other professional athlete) in the last decade who would have, or even could have, used their international celebrity to such great effect.