Collections

We're going all light-hearted (that should be hyphenated, right?) and frothy today.  Sometimes I am asked if I have any hobbies.  My usual response is that I don't have hobbies, I have serial obsessions, i.e., I take a fancy to something and do it to furious excess and then drop it and move onto something else.  (I would ask those of you who will be tempted to make a wise crack at this point to kindly refrain--you know who you are.)  I'll collect a certain type of toy car and try to get all of them in a series, same with die-cast aircraft and so many other things.  Good news is such things are usually small and easily stored (just like my men).  I learned one way of curbing this habit it to collect things the entire set of which amounts to a small number, e.g., replicas of medieval bishop chess pieces, of which there are only three as near as I can tell:

 

or versions of the USS Enterprise (yes, I know there's one ship in the photo of a different class and Enterprise E is not pictured):

Then there are the royal ducks, which I first encountered at service stops on the Autobahn:

l to r: Mozart, Washington, Louis XVI, Ghost of Christmas Past (whom I've renamed The Great & Powerful Duck Goddess), Marie Antoinette, Ben Franklin, Elizabeth II, Emperor Franz Josef.  I also encountered a (Mad) King Ludwig II which I sent to the much-beloved Spo.

Of particular note are a series of figures which I've come to call a set of role models from various times in my life:

l to r: a good, kind, & magical fairy; Daffy Duck; Cardinal Richelieu; St. Michael the Archangel; St. Benedict; Louis XIV.

Make of all this what you will.

Retirement Skills

OK, enough self-revelation for now...

It dawned on me this morning that one thing the quarantine has done is sharpened my retirement skills.  People often ask "So what do you do now that you're retired?" or the equivalent.  And many I know have expressed a certain trepidation at the prospect of having "all that time on their hands".  Living where I do, just outside Washington DC, the answer was easy, what with all the free museums and galleries, the National Symphony, the ambiance of Georgetown and Alexandria, and assorted trains for the rail-fan in me.  And every now and then there was travel, domestic and foreign.  Then all of those were suddenly and unexpectedly cut off.  Hmmm... what to do? 

Being a bit of a domestic diva, there were various household projects.  A previously scheduled bathroom remodel was, as it turns out, not impeded by the quarantine (masks and gloves were employed).  Such things do keep me busy, but not always entertained.  Happily, the out of doors was still open, and the weather was pleasant enough for walks, drives, and driving to someplace new and different and then getting out and walking.  That was surprisingly restorative.  I also started reading for pleasure, something I hardly did when I was working.  So I read some books in my discipline I never got around to reading and then branched out into things I was always curious about but never read-up on; I've now started a hefty history of the Maya.  In that regard, I also finally started using Kindle, which makes reading much easier, especially since it's portable and I don't have to worry about lighting.  Then there's brain games (as opposed to mind games which I was always good at).  I subscribe to Lumosity, but never gave myself much time on it.  I'm getting back into it.  Whether the claims they make to improve your brain have validity or not, the games are enjoyable and since they give you a score, I have the incentive to complete against myself.

Why, you may ask, am I bothering to tell you this.  It's this: if you have not yet retired, and are wondering how you will occupy yourself when the time comes, remember the things you did during quarantine.  Quarantine is a demanding test of retirement skills.  If you found ways to psychically survive quarantine, retirement should be fairly easy, since by then--we most ardently hope--museums, and concerts, and galleries, and travel will all be available, and volunteer and service opportunities now foreclosed to contain the virus will reopen.  Quarantine really hones one's retirement skills.

Disciplined, Determined, or Just Plain Nuts?

Editor's note: I have noticed for some time now and in various blogs the custom of referring to one's significant other by a pseudonym, "Someone" being rather popular.  I've also seen DW = Dear/Darling Wife and such baroque fancies as San Geraldo.  I'm pondering such a usage for my beloved hubby David, to wit AH = Adoring/Adorable Husband.  The only drawback I see is that once WickedHamster attains global popularity, novice readers might not understand who AH is.  I will ponder further...

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David (aka TravelPenguin, aka AH) posted a comment on my sweat post, to wit: "Yet, once you start working, you won't stop even if you are visibly uncomfortable. Go on, tell us more."  I take that as a challenge.  What AH refers to is the habit I inherited from both parents of finishing any task, once it is undertaken, no matter if it goes into the wee hours of the morning, induces heat stroke or other physical collapse, or generates an uncontrollable twitching of the extremities.  We are folk who don't give up.  The undertaking of weeding the garden, mowing the lawn, dusting the house, polishing the floor, cleaning the attic, etc., etc. invokes a solemn, well-neigh religious commitment.  To stop before the work is done results in personal disgrace and self-loathing.  (For you ethnopsychologists in the audience, yes, being pure-bred Slovak does have something to do with this.)

What we have here is a paradox (that is something that also goes with the Slovak heritage).  I hate sweating, but will work out in the yard in the hot sun for like 8 hours in order to get the tasks I assigned myself completed.  What's worse is that I didn't start out that way.

In my younger years, I loathed working out in the yard/garden, which is something I was compelled to do on weekends and during the summer.  I was one of very few children of my age that actually dreaded the coming of Saturday.  I would timidly suggest upon occasion that a given task could be completed perhaps tomorrow, only to be told--in a manner and tone that evoked divine revelation and unalterable cosmic law--that "it had to be done."  Alas, no one bothered to tell me that there was a genetic time-bomb in me just waiting to go off.

Ah!  I remember it well.  It was sometime in the early '90s; I was soon to turn 40.  I developed a sudden need to tidy up the yard of the house David and I were living in in Florida (a place not known for it's cool, refreshing breezes).  So I started.  Over a period of time, weeds were uprooted, soil emended and fertilized, borders made crisp, and I got the azaleas to bloom heartily for the first time in years.  What had come over me?

Now, having cut a colorful path through grad school clear up to the PhD, I was indeed proficient at steady, concentrated effort, just not out-of-doors and especially not involving touching dirt.  (I was an inveterate hand-washer long before the plague made it fashionable; I still can't stand dirt, stickiness, or odors on my hands--I even have to wash my hands after eating chocolate or ice-cream).  Nor did it stop there.  In Kentucky, AH often had to rescue me on a given weekend, dragging me in before I'd finished (the disgrace!) as a wet, convulsing mess.  These are the occasions he refers to.  And it doesn't even have to involve being outside.  The same physical effects could be produced by giving the place a good dusting, deciding to shampoo all the carpeting on the first floor, and making various household "improvements"--a word that strikes fear and terror into AH's heart to the very day.  If it's worth doing, then it's worth doing to the point of insanity.

Happily, we now live in a much smaller place with no yard.  I still go into my "on a mission" mode from time to time, but that only only involves household projects in a place that is small enough so that I don't do damage to myself.

So the revelations of yesterday's post and today's are indeed contradictory.  I have never endeavored to reconcile them, and simply attribute this to natural human perversity.  I am also retired now, and that has apparently served to automatically whittle my ambitions down to reasonable size.  Or maybe it's the wisdom of age?  I doubt it.

de Perspiratione

For as long as I can remember, I've despised sun, heat, manual labor, and exercise.  (Those with extended experience of me will know this well.)  This has been variously attributed, at various times in the past, to laziness, self-indulgence, fatness, vampirism, or that I was born and raised in Cleveland, which has the most overcast days a year of any major American city (yes, we beat Portland).  The simple truth is I hate to sweat.  I mean, it really really annoys me, and it always has.  What the list of things in the first sentence have in common is that they all cause me to sweat.  Sweat is a dirty, sticky, ugly thing.  If I've perspired sometime in the course of the day, I have to take a shower before I go to bed.  The thought of dried sweat in my bed sends me into apoplexy.  (Sleep is a very clean experience for me; I can't fall asleep if I feel dirty.)  Granted, not too astounding for my first personal revelation on this blog, but hey we gotta start somewhere.  Toodles!

A Sunday Walk

It was a lovely day yesterday, so we decided to head over to Old Town and walk along the Potomac.  Improvements and nicely done development continues, with a nice mix of woodsy and urban.  With things still in phased reopening, a drive and a walk remain the best way to dissipate cabin fever.  So this will simply be a photo montage of our little diversion.  Enjoy.

Launch!

Well, now that I've relaunched the blog, I find I now have to write things.  Uh....  Yesterday afternoon David (adoring and adorable husband, in case the gentle reader is unfamiliar) asked me what I was going to write about in my first post.  I answered "I dunno; we'll see."  So maybe I'll write about writing my first post.

I've been out of practice since 2015 and I imagine what I'll write about will be different than what I wrote about years ago.  Previously, I mainly went for laughs--as is typical for me.  There will be more than enough mirth this time, but there certainly will be more seriousness.  The times demand it.  And I do a lot of reflecting on the nature and causes of things, so they'll be a fair amount of why I think things are the way they are.  There will also very likely be--and this would be new--some insights into my psyche.  In this I have been inspired by one of my favorite philosophers, Urspo of Grosse Point (sporeflections.wordpress.com) who manages to be self-revelatory without being maudlin, morose, psychically exhibitionistic, or narcissistic.  (You can thank me for the plug later, Spo.)  

That still leaves me wondering what I'll write about, since writing about what to write about leaves me strangely unsatisfied.  Maybe we'll start with a nice, vanilla-flavored account of a walk we took yesterday.  (Please advance to the next post for same.)  

Hamster Rides Again

I’ve decided to return to my blog.  Aside from a couple of false starts in the interim, which barely lasted one entry, my last active blog engagement was in 2015.  My blog friends moved to Facebook at that time, and I went with them.  I never really liked FB, but it was an all-too-handy way of keeping up with friends.  It was always annoying: changes made in how things operate without any info from the Facemasters, unresponsiveness of management, intrusive ads and posts, even more intrusive “helpful features,” and finally the ever-annoying Zuckerberg deciding that Trump can lie as much as he wants because of free speech rights.  (Oh, don't get me started on that…)  So, in order to retain the benefits of social media and limit its liabilities, I’m going to go back to blogging.

There are many benefits to be gained.  First of all, it keeps me writing in retirement.  I do like to write and I enjoy the English language.  I have things I want to say, and I am not fully comfortable saying them on FB, since they may involve persons and institutions of whom and of which I have less than a cordial opinion.  I do plan to make the blog available to the general public (that might change as I go along) but only “members” of the blog will be able to comment (that should keep out the riff-raff).  I have already endeavored to add all my active FB friends as members; in case I missed anyone, I will post on FB how an existing friend can be added to the blog.  I will decrease my activity on FB, but will not abandon it altogether.  I may post notification on FB of a new blog entry.

The blog will retain some familiar features from my FB page.  There will be photos.  I’ll try to keep memes to a minimum, since they are more FB rather than blog items.  There will be a good amount of my characteristic wit.  It dawned on me that on FB I was becoming too dependent on sharing memes from other FB pages, etc. instead of writing my own material.  I’ve always been much more of a stand-up comic and so I really don’t like using other people’s stuff.  As for things I’ve been wanting to say, I think I’ll make those separate entries, flagged with the title “Hamster Rants,” so that those of squeamish sensibilities and delicate constitutions might be warned.

For those new to my once and future blog, a word on the hamster persona.  Back in deepest antiquity in 2006, when I first started the blog, the pirated Hamsterdance meme was all the rage.  I’d always had a soft spot in my heart for the furry little critters anyway, and I realized that this would be a fitting metaphor for how I saw myself.  If you go back through the older parts of the blog, you’ll see that The Hamster is no ordinary little rodent.  He has a bad case of megalomania and grandiosity; he is, in short, bent on world domination—hence the “Wicked” part.  The problem, of course, is that he’s just a hamster, physically incapable of fulfilling his Napoleonic ambitions.  But that never stops him from dreaming.  (This is the source of various imperial adjectives you might see and the use of “we” when Hamster refers to his most august self.)  The Hamster is a sort of personal avatar cum totem cum personification of my rather rich and lifelong fantasy life (or at least part of my long and rich fantasy life).

So… with that WickedHamster once again takes to the aether.  I have no idea how this will turn out, but if I score a laugh or two along the way, I’ll be satisfied.

Another Questionnaire from the Penguin

(see  http://travelpenguin.blogspot.com/)

Five Questions about where you have been:

1) If a private jet was waiting at the nearest airport to whisk you away for a week in the finest hotel suite at someone else's expense, what state would you leave for in the morning and why?

              California, San Francisco specifically, wonderful climate, scenery, culture.  It's just a great place.

2) What state have you been to, are glad you have been there, and don't really care if you ever return to and why?

            Missouri.  St. Louis was quite interesting, and it's adjacent to my Poopsie's ancestral homeland.  I wouldn't object to going back to St. Louis, but it's no priority.  The southern part of the state is depressing.

3) What state have you been to, would prefer not to go back to, and why?
             
            Kentucky... 'nuff said.

4) What state that you have not lived in, have you visited the most times, and why?
             
           Either West Virginia or Indiana.  WV because I crossed it back and forth since I went to grad school in N. Carolina, and now going back and forth to DC.  Indiana also because it's on the way to a lot of things, especially Chicago, and because my friends he Tookers live there.

5) State you have not been to, that you would most like to visit?
             
            Probably Montana, for the scenery and nature.  

a questionnaire from Travel Penguin

see: http://travelpenguin.blogspot.com/

1. What season of the year where you born?
     late Fall, i.e., early November

2. What is your favorite thing about
    Winter?  the quiet of the snow and staying warm inside
    Spring?  flowering trees
    Summer?  I don't like summer very much
    Fall?  The colors of the leaves and the way the air smells after a rain

3. What climate would you live in year around, if you could?
    San Francisco

4. What is your sure fire way of knowing spring has arrived?
    crocus blossoms

5. What is your least favorite season and why?
    Summer - too hot, humid, and sunny

Rain & Art

Today was warm (70ºF.) and rainy in NoVa.  I needed to get out and stretch my legs, but it was too wet outside, and shopping malls were simply out of the question.  Didn't feel like museums and hauling into DC, so that left the Torpedo Factory Art Center in Alexandria.  Art studios and shops, that would be nice.  Lots of pretty colors and shiny things... I was entranced for hours.

One studio had a rather fearsome watchpenguin.

  

 

 

 

 

Winter in DC

The mid-Atlantic is experiencing unusually unseasonable weather.  I mean like it was in the 70's today and absolutely beautiful.  So we went out to enjoy it.

We went to Fort Hunt Park so David could play with his drone out in the wide open spaces:

 In the city, the street musicians were out:

 Alexandria was bustling:

Goin' to the Local Hockey Bar

Though we asked for no gifts at the wedding, some very sweet and thoughtful people ignored our directions and we ended up with, among other things, two gift certificates for José Andrés restaurants.  He is a noted DC chef and restauranteur, who recently made headlines by announcing he was breaking his contract with the new Trump Hotel in DC after Donny boy's comments about Mexican immigrants.  (Trump said he'd sue; Andrés said "Go ahead; I've got the money."

We started with a lovely walk though the Christmas Market in front of the National Portrait Gallery, off of the evening hustle and bustle of 7th St. NW, with its restaurants, night spots, and the Verizon Center Arena.  

For dinner we went to Zaytinya, a mezze restaurant (Mediterranean small plates, mostly Greek and Turkish - www.zaytinya.com/).  The hostess asked if we were going to the hockey game; the Caps were playing at Verizon Center that evening.  I said no, but that explained all the Caps jerseys I was seeing.  In scant minutes, the place - which has a lovely bar the length of the restaurant - was filled with people in jerseys going to the game.  Where else but DC would a world class chef's mezze restaurant serve as the local hockey bar?

Wonderful food, and tastes that we never tasted before.  There was a tomato-based soup with assorted scallops, shrimp, and clams and Persian jeweled rice that was to die for.  Another nice stroll past the museum and then down to the Metro and home.