Took me a little while to fully wake up. Been dreaming about an octopus in a glass tank that we might use for our Halloween party if we did an undersea theme this year. Kind of hard to shake off from that. It was a really cool idea, though likely not humane to sea creatures.
Tentacles aside, I started working on my column for next week which was about the Great Oscar Mystery. I’d been rummaging around in a box of old photos and had come across a shot, circa 1980, with my mom holding an honest-to-Mr.-DeMille Academy Award, beaming her 100-watt smile as though the proud recipient. But it wasn’t hers. And the backdrop in the photo was that of a rather dull office. And I couldn’t remember for the life of me where that was taken and why she was holding it. Through a long process of calling someone who told me to call someone else and so forth and so on, I finally discovered the answer – it was an honorary Oscar that had been awarded to an inventor named Lee deForest in the 1950s for some crazy vacuum-tube thing he had invented earlier in the 20th century that enabled the use of sound in the movies. The Oscar had been on display in, oddly enough, the former computer history museum on the Foothill College campus in Los Altos. Still didn’t explain why the award was just sitting around in a back office on campus and not in a glass case, and why someone said to my mom, “Here, hold this!” But some things are just meant to float around in the cosmos, out of my reach.
Couldn’t concentrate on writing, though. Maybe still thinking of tanked-up octopi. Walked down to the Alameda Journal offices to work there a while where it’s usually very quiet, but on this day a man came in and yelled at Kathy at the front desk that he’d been in FOUR TIMES over the past year and we were STILL delivering the paper to him and he DIDN’T want it. He freaked Kathy out, then our mom-like editor calmed him down. Told him she understood his frustration, but he could at least speak civilly. I really wanted her to slap him on the wrist, but she refrained.
Also working on a story on the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic – tons of local events like various costume balls with menu items from the original first-class offerings on the ship. Kinda creepy, but whatever. Also doing a story on hooping, as in hula hooping. I had no idea it was so popular. And oddly hip. Instead of hipsters, they’re hoopsters.
Went home and baked a sweet potato for lunch. Just a tad of butter. Heavenly sweet and saltiness. Don’t know why people put marshmallows on them at the holidays. Overkill. Still nursing a sore tooth, which my dentist can’t explain. I might be grinding my teeth at night. Probably over the hooping story.
Later, mat came home from work. Hates the customers at his store. Most are just plain dumb. Neither of us felt like cooking, so we went to Taco Bell, which we do exactly once a year or maybe a couple times if on a road trip. I got a Mexi-Melt because it was only 270 calories and they list that now on the menu board. He got the 12-pack of tacos. We watched a re-run of The Simpsons and Family Guy. Visual comfort food.