Are my eyes really blue?

For some reason, January always makes me think of snow. Or at least very cold. All the way back to 1982, when we had snow for four days and got out of school. (It was clear by Friday…which was a scheduled inclement weather day, so no school for a week. Yay Alabama!) It was cold and dreary and rained as often as not.

Twenty years ago, January meant an interim term class on magazine writing – based around The New Yorker. I would wake up around 7:30 to 10,000 Maniacs on the CD player (Hope Chest, if I remember right), pour some coffee into the 4-cup coffemaker I’d gotten for Christmas, tie on the 3/4-height Nike cross-trainers (also for Christmas), and hike up three flights of stairs in the second-oldest building on campus. As it turns out, working in the style of The New Yorker was remarkable preparation for blogging – I had to do a feature piece, a movie review, a couple of Talk of the Town items, a little bit of everything. I was intrigued by the ads, of all things – I didn’t know what a single-malt scotch was until I saw the Macallan ad. I wound up subscribing to the magazine – a subscription I carried for 20 years before giving it up in favor of…a Kindle-based subscription.

Needless to say, an interim class on campus adds up to a lot of free time. January of ’91 is the first time I bought a bartending book, thinking I should learn to drink properly if I was to imbibe alcohol. (It didn’t take, largely because when you’re an undergrad you don’t have the money or legal purchasing power to drink well. One more reason to change the alcohol policy in America.) It was also when Desert Shield finally turned into Desert Storm, and the draft-nervous males over 18 started pouring everything into a glass (I think the “Air Raid” was Dr Pepper, Bacardi, Canadian Mist, some sort of creme de menthe stuff and berry-tinged mineral water). After all, Iraq was still sporting the fourth largest army in the world, undefined chemical weapons capabilities, short-range ballistic missiles, and we honestly had no idea what a post-Cold War shooting war would look like.

If I’m honest, it’s about that time I should have been working on dumping my first college girlfriend, rather than staying with her another two and a half years. Hell, she didn’t even like basketball, and I wasn’t yet in the pep band, so getting to games was a bit tricky. On the bright side, we were still on the punch system for meal plans, and the soda fountain in the cafeteria was free to just walk up to and fill your glass. I switched to a 32 oz carry model almost instantly.

Later Januarys would be more interesting – 1992 was spent mostly in post-Communist Central Europe, 1995 in a light dusting of snow in Nashville while watching college hockey, 1998 on Appalachian interstates with snow up the hills and a new AT&T phone in one hand, 2001 on a snow-covered lawn with my new crush object, 2007 at the pinnacle of my Apple career hanging out in the company booth at MacWorld, or 2009 kicking off a new job and returning to train commuting. But looking back, 1991 was something of a cusp. The fork in the road appeared, and I didn’t take it.

Lesson learned.

Although it’s something I’ve been eyeing for over a decade, and at some point you just have to pull the trigger – so once I gave in on the peacoat, this was inevitable…

The one I originally looked at was a Stocker and Yale model, but this one is by Traser, a Swiss company specializing in tritium-based illumination for watches. Illumination is based on phosphorescent material stimulated by tritium gas, with a half-life of 12.5 years (the illumination is only warrantied for ten, though) and the watch bits are a quartz movement with a battery life of 4 to 5 years. And it’s waterproof enough for the shower, so I’m hoping this will take care of the whole one-watch-for-everything daily wear. After all, ten years would be longer than any watch in my current rotation, and if I’m changing the tubes out at age 49 or 50 I would say I’ve gotten my money’s worth from it. (I don’t actually have the money, but that should be coming soon if I get my incentive money for getting healthy…)

And it definitely works clearly at 3:30 and 5 AM, and I know this for a fact after last night.

Or, for those who aren’t Catholic, or UK Special Air Service, “Who Dares, Wins.”

I didn’t think anything was going to come of it. Hell, at one point I thought she was coming out to make a move on one of the other guys. I had made my new years’ resolution to stop fooling around online and try to make an effort at real-world communication with people, and besides, I still had months to run on my “I’m going to stay single for a year” pledge. And when we were trying to sort out details on the phone, it was unbelievably awkward – she wasn’t saying much, and I was rushing to fill the silence, and she kept waiting for me to shut up, and sometimes that can take a while…

All I’m saying is that if you looked at the two of us – who we were, how we were, relative alcohol and nicotine intake (especially then), personality generally…you would have bet the house that nothing would ever have come of it. Especially if you heard that my first move on getting back to my place was to open up the photo album.

But there were sparks. Huge ones. The future best man, sitting across the table at dinner, later remarked that the spectacle of the two of us trying to play it cool was transcendent comedy. Our future wedding reader (and roommate for a year) had to pointedly correct the speculation that “I don’t think he’s into me at all.” Each of us knew something was happening, but neither of us knew that we both knew. Or something.

And eventually, she went in for the cuddle, and got it. And I went for the kiss – as well hanged for a sheep as a lamb – and got it.

Who dares, wins.

The worst hack romantic comedy writer in Hollywood wouldn’t dare pitch the nonsense that followed over the next 48 hours, right down to the scene with snow all over the ground and all the Christmas lights still up after almost a month and the mad dash to not one but two airports, and the spectacle of one man doing his best Darrell Green impersonation the whole way (slainte, mate). But shortly thereafter, she worked up the nerve, shoved all the chips to the middle of the table, and asked “how long before I can say I love you?”

And I took a deep breath, kicked my original plans over the side, and answered “Now’s good.”

Who dares, wins.

It takes a certain amount of foolishness to pledge yourself to a long-distance relationship 2500 miles away, but we did it. Valentines’ Day in DC, to eat dinner at West 24 (James Carville’s old Cajun-fusion place) two tables from Mike Wilbon. My birthday in DC, to pass muster with the denizens of the Four Provinces. A whirlwind 48-hour trip to meet in Atlanta, given the excuse of somebody else’s party. My trip to Silicon Valley, to face the guns of a seemingly endless stream of family, college friends, co-workers, you name it, all giving me the same look I would have gotten if I’d walked up to the table and said “Do you mind if we dance with yo’ dates?”

And ultimately, in a Cosi in Alexandria one day in May, a decision: a future that inevitably led toward California if things went well, but which would begin in DC. And a month after a plane crashed into the Pentagon, she loaded up the Jetta and headed East.

Who dares, wins.

I see looking over this now that I’ve left out all the important stuff. The whirlwind year in 2003 that led to the move in 2004. How we almost bought a house, then didn’t, and wound up with the perfect house as a result. How we almost lost our minds trying to get out of toxic jobs and took turns falling ass-backward into something good enough to let the other person go nuts for a while – and wound up with the perfect spot for each of us. How after an entire life of being willing to live with the devil I knew, I stopped being afraid to step out on the ledge. How the lights of San Francisco twinkled across the bay as Nat “King” Cole’s music led us onto the floor

I think there was originally meant to be a song here. But I’m not sure what would really sum up properly. Maybe “Brown-Eyed Girl” or “A Pair of Brown Eyes” or we could fall back on “Stray” by Aztec Camera, which she played for me that first weekend, or…never mind, I got it. From a song I first heard during another snowy January in Washington DC, back in 2003, I turn it over to Mssr. Suggs and his band of Nutty Boys:

I never thought I’d miss you half as much as I do

And I never thought I’d feel this way, the way I feel about you

Soon as I wake up, every night, every day

I know that it’s you I need to take the blues away

It must be love, love, love

Nothing more, nothing less, love is the best…

Happy anniversary, sweetie. The first ten were only a good start…

So fate, through no fault of my own, has arranged for me to play with an 11″ MacBook Air for an hour or two, in the guise of setting it up. Early impressions:

1) It’s wider and thinner than my old netbook was, which makes it slightly easier to use in the lap but kind of wobbly too. It can be done, I’m just not sure I’d want to do it all day.

2) The keyboard seems damn near full sized, or as close as makes no difference, and is a damn sight better than the netbook’s keyboard. I’m typing largely without error. No question, this would kick the shit out of the iPad for text entry on the road, and with a smaller profile than carrying iPad + Bluetooth keyboard.

3) I was able to VNC back to my own computer largely without a fight. It’s obviously as limited as you would expect from an 11″ display cramming 720p-type resolution into a confined space, and I probably wouldn’t want to ARD with it full time, but the option is there. And text is largely readable on the remote machine with a normal web browser up.

4) No kidding, when closed this thing is about an inch and a half longer than an iPad with the same width and thickness. Don’t know how the battery life would be – Apple claims 5 hours, and those claims have largely been borne out with newer hardware.

So I guess that’s it. Even with just 128GB of SSD space, I would (and could!) live with this as my main axe, especially for travel support purposes. As bootable thumb drives start to trump DVDs (a 16 GB thumb drive is FAR easier to work with than burning a DVD!) the lack of an optical drive ceases to be an issue. As quick and flickable as an iPad? Probably not, but certainly the SSD makes the speed much more reliable, and having 12 Mbps Internet at home takes that problem away…This could work.

“Who’d Have Known” never charted in the US for Lily Allen, and probably only got noticed in the UK for lifting the entire chorus riff from a Take That song. But it may be the best account I’ve ever heard of the earliest days of first falling in love with somebody. Not just in the lyrics, but in the delivery – you can practically hear the involuntary smile behind “and today you accidentally called me ‘baby’ ” – and in the overall tone, reflecting those first days when you’re supremely conscious that your world has twisted ninety degrees and things are not as they were.

The thing you keep falling back to is that this is the new reality – that this person next to you is not a figment of your imagination, or a name in a chatroom, or a strange voice down the phone, but an actual tangible presence that can just as easily turn into a high-wire act, as you try to get to know them while simultaneously thinking “DON’T BOTCH THIS” and figuring out – who’s going to call? When? Morning and night or just email? How far ahead to schedule things? Couple that to the whole long-distance thing as mentioned yesterday and pretty soon you’re trying to land a 747 with three flaming engines on the deck of an aircraft carrier. In a blizzard.

But the thing is, you do it, because somehow, you know you can. New love is a stronger drug than crack, X, crystal meth, 18-year Bushmills and a national championship all rolled into one – it makes you think you’re twenty feet tall and can dodge bullets and walk through walls. And I think part of that is just from the alteration in your reality – well, as long as the world is topsy turvy, I’m going to lift this Buick over my head too…

So Himself is taking another medical leave of absence. Obviously I hope he makes it back healthy. He’s earned a nice quiet retirement, but I can’t see him ever taking it.

This is the part when I mention again that Apple may have the deepest bench of any tech company out there. COO Tim Cook, VPs Phil Schiller and Ron Johnson, Chief Design Wizard Jony Ive – there’s a lot of talent there and I strongly suspect AAPL will recover from the inevitable stock hit within a month or so. (Of course, I think $350 is running a little hot anyway. Of course, I was an idiot to sell at $210.) And Tim Cook is probably still over the moon from Auburn and their temporary national championship* so I’m sure things will hum right along for the foreseeable future.

Good time for it, if there can be such a thing – all the new stuff is out and right now we’re just in rev mode for the iPad and the like. I don’t know that the computers will take a big change now that the MBA has shipped except to get a little thinner and a little more SSD oriented. OS X 10.7 is underway, the iPhone is now on Verizon, it should be possible to switch to glide for a while without getting hurt. Now, if they can NOT switch to glide, then you have to feel really good about the future. If Himself has crafted a company that can run to the same levels of success without him, that would be his greatest feat at Apple.

Not many people heard Snow Patrol’s “Set the Fire to the Third Bar” (featuring Martha Wainwright) when it came out in lats 2006. It came out too late for my purposes, but was evocative nonetheless, because it is – to my mind – the best song ever written about long distance relationships.

You spend a lot of time looking at maps. Or globes. Or airline websites. In a way, it’s almost better once you have to get on a plane, because then it’s merely five or six or seven hours, instead of driving for days on end. It’s easy to get fooled when you can get up in the morning and have dinner with your sweetie, then leave one sad morning later and be in your own bed that night. Only once you get in the car and drive it out – for a week or two – do you gain an appreciation for just how far you had to go to be together. Especially when making the relationship work involved her getting in a car and driving to Washington DC within two months of the September 11 attacks. I never got a satisfactory answer for what is the female version of “balls the size of church bells” but I know where you can find ’em…

It’s not what you think. The image of San Francisco as America’s Gomorrah doesn’t really make sense once you get in there and walk around. This was once essentially the capital of Western America. Bank of America was here, the Pacific Stock Exchange, and heroes from Paladin to Dirty Harry to Lt. Frank Bullitt plied their trade here. It’s as East Coast a city as you can find in the West: Italian in North Beach, Irish through the pubs of the Richmond, actual subways, and a National League WORLD CHAMPION baseball team that was straight ganked from Upper Manhattan in 1958.

So when the Giants go to the final out, win or lose, you hear the immortal Tony Bennett and his hit of 1962 (the year of the Giants’ first pennant in the City), “I Left My Heart In San Francisco” – which is not an easy song to do for karaoke. Especially with the proprietors trying to run you out so they can seat a bunch of minors. (Dupont Circle is a dodgy place for karaoke anyway.) But whether you sing or hum along or just lean back with a grin as the cheers go up, it’s the anthem – because from here, the only way up is New York, London, Tokyo or Mars.

She loves it. I love it. Mostly, we love it.

Seal’s “Love’s Divine” came out in 2003, but I didn’t pick up on it until the end of 2004. At which point I was faced with a terrible football situation, a terrible political situation, a job that was teetering on the edge of viability, and all the whiplash that goes along with packing up your life and moving 3000 miles away to make a fresh start. And yet, despite everything, I wasn’t falling apart. Largely because I knew I still had a whole lot of future in front of me, and a wedding on the way, and somebody who would prop me up the whole time…

don’t bend (don’t bend)

don’t break (don’t break)

show me how to live and promise me you won’t forsake

’cause love can help me know my name…

(NB: if you haven’t seen the pattern yet, just wait…)

Nat “King” Cole’s “L-O-V-E” is really an appropriate song for a first dance at a wedding, when you think about it. It’s not some slow-drag number, where you can just do the junior-high full-body squeeze and just Frankenstein around the dance floor for three and a half minutes while the photographer shoots and everybody goes awwwwwwwwwwwww. No, it’s peppy, it’s upbeat, and it requires you to make an effort to work together to actually, you know, dance. Everybody’s looking, there’s pressure, you have to practice and get it right – and you have to be willing to take on the challenge in the first place.

As a metaphor for marriage, you could do worse. =)