Karla noted that freeway engineers had their own techie code words, just us dull and impenetrable as geek talk. "Examples: subgrades, partial clover-leaf interchanges, cutslopes, and TBMs (Tunnel Boring Machines). . ."
"They even abused three-letter acronyms," said Karla, who also decreed that Rhoda Morgenstern would have dated a freeway engineer back in the 1970s. "His name would have been Rex and he would have looked like Jackson Browne and would have known the compressive strength range of Shale, Dolomite, and Quartzite to the nearest p.s.i. x 103."
I am really terrible at remembering three-letter acronyms. It's a real dead zone in my brain. I still barely can tell you what RAM is. Wherever this part of I he brain is located, it's the same place where I misfile the names and faces of people I meet at parties. I'm so bad at names. I'm realizing that three-letter acronyms are actually words now, and no longer simply acronyms: ram, rom, scuzzy, gooey, see-pee-you. . . . Words have to start somewhere.
Karla told me about when she was young. About how she remembered trying to make-no, not make, engineer-Campbell's Vegetable Soup from scratch-chopping up the carrots and potatoes to resemble machine-cut cubes-getting the exact number of lima beans per can (4).
"I grew up with assembly lines, remember. My favorite cartoon was always the one with the little chipmunks stuck inside the vegetable canning factory. I used to guess at the spices, too. But in the end it never worked because I didn't use beef stock or MSG."
Random day. Fed on magazines for a while. Radio. Phone call from Mom, and she talked about traffic.
Industrial Light & Magic
jump
hit
We're just friends
run
multi-user dungeon
Ziggy Stardust Sky Tel paging FORTRAN IKE A
Wells Fargo Safeway hummingbird I am an empath
4x4 Kung Fu Death Star platform
oligarchy Highway 92 Deuteronomy Staples Pearls Express
Kraft singles
cordless
brain ded
Silo
an executive lifestyle
Maybelline implicator
Insert Font
Format Tools
SATURDAY
Oh God.
I knew I'd do something. Karla's on the warpath because I forgot our one-month anniversary. Doh! She gave me until bedtime tonight to remember, but I still forgot, so now she's not speaking to me. I tried to tell her that time isn't necessarily linear, that it flows in odd clumps and bundles and clots. "Well, err, um-what exactly is a month, Karla? Ha Ha ha."
"I don't know about you, Dan," she interrupted, "but I programmed my desktop calendar to remind me. Good night." [Insert one frosty glare here. A bored yawn; a bedroom door nudged closed with little baby toes.]
It's nice to see this romantic side to Karla's personality-an unexpected bonus-but still, nobody likes THE COUCH. And so now after weeks of blissful insomnia-free sleep, I'm yet again PowerBooking my daily diaries here on the acid green couch in a big big way.
Comely superstar Cher hawks cosmetics on late-nite TV. Mishka is also spending tonight in the living room and she is making foul smells indeed. At least it's raining out-buckets-and the weird too-hot summer is over.
Tomorrow I will program my desktop computer to remind me of every one of our anniversaries, monthly or otherwise, until the year 2050.
Actually, we all have so much free time now. Karla, Todd, Bug, and I sit around awaiting our next product group assignment, feeling deflated and just plain exhausted. We forget about clock- and calendar-type time completely.
Today, while raking the front lawn, Todd said, "Wouldn't it be scary if our internal clocks weren't set to the rhythms of waves and sunrise-or even the industrial whistle toot-but to product cycles, instead?"
We got nostalgic about the old days, back when September meant the unveiling of new car models and TV shows. Now, carmakers and TV people put them out whenever. Not the same.
Yes, Karla moved in a month ago. We're an item.
Todd, Abe, and I lugged her "ownables" from her geek house down the street up to our own geek house at the top of the cul-de-sac: futon and frame . . . cluster o' computers . . . U-Frame-It Ansel Adams print. . . and dumped it all into Michael's empty room. And then, once she installed herself in our house ("Think of me as a software application ") she announced that she was an expert in (thank you, Lord . . .) shiatsu massage!
Mom phoned this afternoon. Out of the proverbial blue she said to me, "The house! The soil up in the hills is settling and the roof's rotting. The door and windows need replacing. I just stand here and feel the money being sucked out of my body. At least we had the foresight to buy it when we did. But all my librarian's salary goes into the house. The rest goes to Price-Costco."
Money.
I changed the subject. "What did you have for dinner?"
"Those pre-formed pork by-product patties. And ramen noodles. Like the food you kids eat when you do your coding all-nighters."
It was a "Listening-Only" call.
"I know, Mom. How's Dad doing?"
"Prozac. Well . . . something like Prozac. At least he doesn't obsess on the garage anymore. He goes out in the morning I-don't-know-where looking for work. Let's not get into it. God, I wish I drank."
Life is stressful in Palo Alto. I send Dad $500 every month. It's all I can spare on the 26K I make here ([$26,000 / 12] - taxes = $1,500).
It was a really bad phone call, but Mom just needed to vent-she has so few ears in her life who will listen. Who really ever does, I guess?
Michael never did return from Cupertino.
Rumor had it Bill had Michael secretly working on a project called Pink, but nothing ever came of the rumor.
A delivery firm specializing in high-tech moves carted Michael's things to Silicon Valley. His pyramid of empty diet Coke cans-his suitcase-worth of Habitrail gerbil mazes-his collection of C. S. Lewis novels. Gone.
Fun fact: We found about 40 empty cough syrup bottles in the cupboard- Michael is a Robitussin addict! (Actually, he bulk-buys knockoff house brands-he's a "PayLess Tussin" addict.) The world never ceases to amaze.
It’s late at night. Basketball on TV; computer and fitness mags everywhere. Let me talk about love.
Do you remember that old TV series, Get Smart! You remember at the beginning where Maxwell Smart is walking down the secret corridor and there are all of those doors that open sideways, and upside down and gateways and stuff? I think that everybody keeps a whole bunch of doors just like this between themselves and the world. But when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.
Let me try again. I'm not good at this.
Karla and I fell in love somewhere out there-I think that's the way it happens-out there. The two of you start talking about your feelings and your feelings float outside of you like vapors, and they mix together like a fog. Before you realize it, the two of you have become the same mist and you realize you can never return to being just a lone cloud again, because the isolation would be intolerable.
Karla and I would talk about computing and coding. Our minds met out in the crystal lattice galaxy of ideas and codes and when we came out of our reverie, we realized we were in a special place-out there.
And when you meet someone and fall in love, and they fall in love with you, you ask them, "Will you take my heart-stains and all?" and they say, "I will," and they ask you the same question, and you say, "I will," too.
There are other reasons Karla's lovable, too, reasons not so poetic, but just as real. She's like a friend to me, and we have all of these common interests-"mind meld"-whatever. I can discuss computers and Microsoft and that part of our lives-but we also have esoteric conversations that have nothing to do with tech life. I've never really had a friend this close before. And there's the nonlinear stuff: Karla's intuitive and I'm not, yet she's still on my frequency. She understands why yaki soba noodles in a plastic UFO-shaped container from Japan are intrinsically glorious. She scrunches up her forehead when she knows she's not explaining an idea as clearly as she knows she can, and she gets frustrated.