Subject: Small Comforts
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 93 13:56:36 -0800
From: li@inigo.Data-IO.COM

Walking into the Espresso, Pastry and Dessert place that the JF and I go
into once or twice a week.  The big Greek man behind the counter owns the
place and works the early morning shift as he normally can't find many
people who will work it.  He likes us and is fun to talk with about the
weather, about how life is going.  This morning he asks if I'd like
whipped cream on my mocha.  I think about it, "Yes." and pull out the
quarter it is supposed to cost.  He shakes his head at my money and hands
me my rather tall and slender, 12 oz double walled cup.  "No need to pay.
It's too small a cup!" he says.  I smile and pocket my change.  I walk out
the door drinking the hot chocolate with a kiss of coffee through a dense,
sweet cream cloud.

Zooming over to the comicbook store for lunch.  Buying the first issue of
_The High Cost of Living_.  The proprietors were nice enough to set aside
both that and the first Vertigo edition.  I think I'll add _Doom Patrol_
back on to my lists of stuff.  _Grendel_ too, as Matt Wagner seems to be
doing most of it, again.  Then sitting in the parking lot, in the warmth
of the sun and my familiar car, and reading the issue on Death's visit to
the world.  A smile, a stretch, and a memory of high school days when I'd
go into the school library with three Hershey's chocolate bars in my
pocket for lunch and all the worlds my mind could visit; and it's back to
work and a code review.

A review.  A roomful of people trying to tell me what's wrong with what
I've written, and it's... of all things, Fun.  :) Discussing more
common practices, what the good and bad parts are for certain design
impacts, and the sweet, crumbling, rich peanut butter cookies that I'd
made over the weekend.  Yum.  It goes really well in that I learn a lot
more about C++ and about what is or isn't confusing to other people and
what to do to fix some structural problems I'd been running into lately
because of an earlier design decision.  Nice to know that there really
*is* a fix for what I'd been having problems with.

A drive home immersed in the music from the local, good rock station that
plays old and new, metal and soft, whatever's *good*.  Pearl Jam's
"Jeremy", Queen's Rhapsody, Rush's 'Trees', Alice in Chain's "Bones", and
"Bad Company" bring me home to a bounding black dog almost as big as me.

Fezzik *bounces* when we get home.  If you've never seen a 130 pound teddy
bear *bounce*, it's pretty incredible.  Especially when said beast is
running circles around me from sheer excitement and tripping over it's own
feet and bouncing off of me.  :) This time he gets a full-tilt run going
and when he wants to turn he *slides* along concrete, all his nails
digging into the stone, turning as he goes and he starts running before
he's fully turned and by the time he's going he's going in the right
direction. Sometimes I am surprised by exactly how well he knows his own
mass...

Scrunched in a chair over a bit of paper.  A square bit of pink paper.  A
once-square bit of very wrinkled and crinkled pink paper that's *supposed*
to turn into an elephant.  Right... a Pink Elephant.  The book shows an
arrow going into a certain lump and the instruction says "Sink".  That's
all.  "Sink".  I push, pull, trying to get all the lines right, trying to
use the previously formed guides.  I tug and lift and try to make sure
that everything else isn't affected by the move. Finally, frustrated, I
just push at the lump.  It pops into place, and suddenly the wrinkled mass
of paper actually *looks* like the wrinkled face of an elephant, but all
in pink.  Yow. 

An overstuffed couch covered in slightly scratchy but warm and soft
upholstery; a lap blanket that is richly and deeply colored and seems
furred; a TV showing Michal Palin in the middle of the Sahara eating
Chicken Stew with Bones, dried bread and hot water from a canteen (it is
120 F out on the desert); and a lap full of fuzzy brown knitting that is
progressing nicely.

An American Express commercial, "My dad used to say 'A man who says that
life never gave him a chance is a man who's never *taken* a chance.'"

The sudden shock-pleasure of stepping into the hot tub from 28 degree air.
I never seem to be able to *not* yell at the transisition because it is
such a shock and such a huge difference.  But a mere three minutes later,
I've just closed my eyes, floating in the heat, thinking nothing, doing
nothing and not giving a damn for the first time all day.  Muscle, tendon,
joints all calm down and relax.  My knee stops yelling at me for the first
time since I got out of bed in the morning.  In the deep corner, I'm up to
my neck in heat and it's marvelous.  The jets are off and the tub is as
quiet as my mind...

I take the quiet to bed with me, curled amoung flannel sheets under a down
comforter and sleep is as quick and easy as turning off a light.

----
Phyllis Rostykus     | "... and how you feel can make it real
aka Liralen Li       |      Real as anything you've seen... " 
li@inigo.Data-IO.com | Peter Gabriel _US_