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I went to an oscar party! and got to dress up all glam! and met friendly people! and danced more than probably anyone else there, because sometimes nearly everyone else was packing the hallway to see the famous people who came to the party - the celebs had to hide from their adoring shutterbug fans in the VIP room for some of the time. Four separate limo arrivals produced Ian McKellen, Peter Jackson/Fran Walsh/Philippa Boyens, Howard Shore (oscar in hand), and Richard Taylor (oscar in each hand). I would go and snap pictures with everyone else when each group first arrived, but would rather dance than cluster in the hallway once i'd seen them. After they had all been there a little while, they came out and addressed the cheering multitudes in the TV room, and hung round in the public spaces a bit. The very fact they showed up, knowing we would be swarming like the orcs of Moria - except friendlier - is remarkable. and rather symbolic of the wonderful culture and attitude of everyone involved with these movies.

a great time was had by all. i am still tired. today = a coffee day.

today was cuteness day. seen in the supermarket: bag of pre-cut vegetables entitled "Broccoli Wokly". even better was this morning on the way to work: saw a blue New Beetle on the road with the license "SMRF BUG". I wanted to honk and wave and congratulate the driver like someone did to me once, but sadly i am not that kind of driver. plus my exit was coming up.

Nine-eleven to continue, but too tired right now. not too tired to websurf (unfortunately). in the chain of things stumbled across a quiz. my result: a tie. apparently I am a spiritual descendant of Carl Sandburg and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Peter wants us to speak our rememberings, in some form. I approve, and reading back over my own September notes I notice I never gave a full account of myself on the day of. So here goes. (conversations approximate. i was not taking notes.)

I don't watch TV much, nor listen to the radio at home; that's a car and work thing. So my own morning peacefulness lasted about as long as anyone's could have, that day. I was already awake when my mother called, but I was still in bed; I'm normally a morning person but I must have stayed up playing on the computer the night before. I don't remember.

My mother called me around 8 am (Pacific). She wasn't crying, but she was agitated. "Turn on the TV," she said. "The World Trade Center collapsed. Two planes crashed into it."

My mind did not quite wrap itself around this. " ... Collapsed? What do you mean collapsed?"

"A plane crashed into one of the towers, and then another plane crashed into the other one, and then they both collapsed. and a plane crashed into the Pentagon."

" ... Pentagon?" I was looking around for my TV remote. "What part of them collapsed? Where did the planes hit?" I understood what she was saying, that she was saying that both the skyscrapers had fallen all the way down, but part of my brain was pretending it did not understand this, because that would be too awful. I found the remote and turned on the TV. All three major networks and maybe a couple others were showing a huge cloud of smoke over Lower Manhattan. I hope I did not say "whoa," but I can't swear that I didn't.

"Have you heard from Stewart, is he in Boston?"

My brother had just flown back to Boston from a monthlong business trip to San Francisco. At least he was supposed to have flown back, that last weekend.

"He's supposed to be, I haven't talked to him though."

"You don't think he went down to that apartment yet?" He was scheduled to share a Manhattan apartment with a couple of friends from September through December.

"Well, I don't think so, but I don't know."

Mama had been watching TV since 6 am, shortly after the first plane hit. She saw everything happen live, staring, thinking along with the anchorpeople, "wait... what was that? was that another plane?" and then "the... what, something's happening ... a lot of smoke, another explosion? so much smoke we can't see the tower ..." and then the other one followed it down, and then when the reports started to come in about the planes, and she heard "Boston", "LA", "San Francisco", she started to wonder where exactly Stewart was for sure, and called me. Through email and/or telephone we later established that Stewart was indeed safe in Boston (or as safe as anyone could feel), and had not run down to New York for a quick visit. It also occurred to me that I knew a few people in NYC too. None of them worked at the WTC, as far as I knew, but then I started seeing the pictures of crowds on the streets, staring, crying, and then running.

While I sat at my computer, sending out emails to various people and waiting for replies, I watched replays of the towers collapsing, and people staring from sidewalks and crying, and the second plane hitting, and my brain was having trouble absorbing this. all of it.

-

I have to get ready for work now. more later.

Potential Darwin Award nominees, circa 1922:

Lately, when I was staying there [in Matruh, a town on the North African coast about 200 miles west of Alexandria], there arrived one evening an enormous new American car containing two English officers on leave, and a very smartly dressed lady, wife of one of them. By amazing good luck they had managed to get through from Alexandria without a mishap, stopping a night en route. ...

This car was not the kind used by the Administration on the desert; the party had brought no spare parts for it, no servant, no provisions except some biscuits and a tin or two of peaches, only a few glass bottles of water, which were naturally almost boiling after some hours in the heat of an August day, and none of them could speak any Arabic. At dinner that night they all appeared in full evening dress which they had brought with them, and, to everybody's horror, they announced their intention of "running down to Siwa" on the next day. We explained carefully that to reach Siwa they would have to cross 200 miles of waterless desert, and no car ever attempted the trip alone. But nothing seemed to daunt them. Finally, however, the Governor heard of their plan and forbade it forthwith; they started off to Alexandria on the following day, with an escort of two cars, and as they went they murmured indignantly about "red tape and absurd restrictions." It is amazing what a strange idea of the desert some people seem to have.

-- C. Dalrymple Belgrave, Siwa: The Oasis of Jupiter Ammon (first published 1923), pp. 11-12

(after reading further) oh. and. file under the "good" old days:

There were a certain number of gazelle on the desert quite close to the top of the Scarp and it was occasionally possible to get a shot at them, but they were very shy, and needed careful stalking over country that was almost without cover. When anybody went out specially to shoot gazelle none would appear, but when riding along on a camel one saw numbers of them; however, by the time one had dismounted and loaded the gazelle would be out of range, probably standing a long distance away "at gaze." Gazelle do not mind camels if they have no people on them, and the Arabs sometimes get quite close to a gazelle by stalking it from among a number of grazing camels. At one time, after the war, the men of the Light Car Patrols took to hunting gazelle in Ford cars with a machine-gun; fortunately this practice was forbidden, but it scared the gazelle from the neighbourhood for a considerable time.

-- Ibid., pp. 30-31

though it is supposed to rain tomorrow.

things i need to stop being addicted to: ebay lord of the rings trading card game related auctions

thing i am no longer addicted to: starcraft (it's not as fun for me when i get stuck on a hard level and get tired of being nuked by the computer opponents)

thing i seem to have finally broken through my block on: script for the contest (long ways yet to go, but first steps finally taken, and happily that's a slippery slope)

ok, when snatches of cliche start to sneek out it's time for beddy bye.

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