I see that Sherman Alexie has won a National Book Award this year.  Good on him; it’s absurd but I feel a personal pride when a writer whose work I really like wins a major award.  I suppose it’s the same feeling that comes from backing a winning horse, minus the payout and the years of embezzlement and theft required to cover prior gambling losses.  Or it’s as if you live in the U.K., where the “punters” place “wagers” on “everything”.

The other evening I led the dogs along a tricky part of a dark sidewalk along Burnside.  A young lady in a car shouted, “Your dog is possessed!” as she passed.  Well, thanks, but which one?  Some people don’t know how to  give advice.

Or perhaps she is some obscure breed of troublemaker given to shouting weirdness at
random passersby, then searching the intertubes for evidence that someone has posted
about their provocations.  In which case I have fallen into a trap and human free will
must be re-examined.

In which I receive $5 for writing an “abstract” of a Washington Post column.  In my high school days we might have called that a précis.  Either way, you too could earn a half-sawbuck or several, and I will introduce you to the opportunity by way of my work:

http://www.brijit.com/abstract/6352/The-Globe,-Politically-Corrected.

 That it was a Geoffrey Wheatcroft column was just gravy.

My mother-in-law is visiting.  It is actually always pleasant to have her stay with us.  Yesterday she and Mrs The Fyd spent some time baking and cleaning.  The clean kitchen apparently meant that cooking dinner was unthinkable, so take-out from Fujin’s was the order of the day.  I requested Mongolian Beef and so made out like hell of yurt.  And just like Ice Cube, “I got my grub on/but didn’t pig out” and so there are leftovers awaiting me when I get home tonight.  Or rather, they should await; we shall wait and see.

Speaking of baking, Mrs The Fyd seems to be trying to kill me.  One of the items she and her mother produced yesterday is an almond-toffee confection.  I sampled this late last night and almost fell to gruffling the entire batch.  My wife has hardened her heart against me and wishes to harden my arteries against me.

In other news, the Ducks have picked up a second first-place vote from another coach.  My guess is it’s Dennis Erickson’s.  Will Mike Stoops vote likewise in two weeks, should the Ducks win in the desert?  Will Karl Dorrell still be eligible to vote in three weeks’ time?

Speaking of voting, today is that day for our civic duty.  Or rather the day the votes are counted, considering that with Oregon’s vote-by-mail system the first Tuesday in November no longer signifies the search and march to one’s local polling station.  Since Mrs The Fyd and I only got around to filling out our ballots on Sunday, I’ll be walking a few blocks from the office to drop them off at the place established for the tardy, so it’ll almost feel traditional. 

Even when we voted in person, we still had to fill in the ballots with a pen.  I’ve never used an election machine, so the “pulling the lever” for a party meme eludes me.  I am ever more cut off from the shared experiences of the polity.

Thankfully this election’s ballot measures are principally house-keeping measures and so I won’t feel much further alienated from the attitudes of a significant swath of the electorate.  There’s no vile proposition this year to whisk away rights from an entire class of citizens.   Looking ahead, I wonder if I will be able to stomach one of the presidential candidates next year; three years ago I could not abide either party’s man and voted for a friend instead.  At least I know this time for sure who I won’t be voting for: the fellow whose initials are RP and whose devotees scan the intertubes for any mention of whom and then proceed to fill the most humble blogs with the good news of their Savior.

So I took a closer look at my valuable Canadian Quarter and discovered that the creature depicted thereon appears to be a moose, not an elk.  Now I have never seen a moose but people I know who have experience with them invariably describe them as rather rude.  Why a national mint would thus choose such a surly species for their specie raises disturbing questions.

Claudius, who is one of our less intelligent cats, did not observe the adage about not disturbing sleeping dogs.  Being myself less intelligent than Claudius, I attempted to rescue him from the ensuing fray.  For my efforts I received this reward:

The lesson learned: Do not get between a moose and its quarter.

Accomplishment: I have finished The Sopranos.  Not wishing to spoil the ending for others, all I will say is that I found it, after some thought, to be a perfect way to cause the viewer to reflect on their own about what might follow.

Non-accomplishment: I cannot find out which coach gave the Ducks their first-place vote in the most recent AP poll.  Was it Pete Carroll, and if so is this some backhanded compliment?

Recently someone slipped a Canadian quarter (an “Elkie”) in my change.  My first thought was to arrange for the coin’s repatriation, perhaps in exchange for one ounce of beer.  Then I realized, what with the current impaired value of the US dollar in international conversion, that this was an investment-grade trove.  I had best hang on to it.

 So have I become le spéculateur de monnaie malgré lui.

Earlier today one of my online email sites showed an advertisement promising, to those who opened a trading account, a copy of Currency Trading for Dummies.  I don’t know much about this, but I do know that the daily volume is well over a trillion dollars.  That should give the average day trader an idea of what a vast scale is needed to make a profit on tiny margins.  As a hedge it may be smart investing, but I suspect many people dipping their toes into forex are speculating.

That’s up to them.  Be a dumbass if that’s what you want.  Me, I have better things to do. I have heard from a trusted source that the final DVD box set of The Sopranos has arrived at Casa Dempsey.  I can now finally discover how the series ends, having spent the last several months dodging the entire popular culture’s attempts to spoil the last episode for me.  Enough peripheral noise has leaked in to taint my enjoyment, I suspect.  However, I am in the midst of the second season of Oz, and will finish that first.  As a writer I can pick plenty of holes in the framework of that show, but the relationships between characters are beautifully rendered.  They are currently working up to what I assume is a sickening act of betrayal.

Speaking of sickening, this is doubly so.  I nearly had this happen once, when a city bus turned right in front of me.  I was lucky in that I was leery of this happening and was hanging back and managed to hop up onto the curb in time.  Two people in the last two weeks have not been so lucky.

The Pacific Northwest faces its own share of natural disasters, so this post is not written in smug safety.  We get warnings enough of devastating earthquakes and tsunamis that the historical record promises us.  When we look on the horizon we can see the sleeping volcanoes.  The wet and windy winter storms we’ve been experiencing recently are the norm and occasionally reach the point of downing many trees, causing mudslides, but only really reaching the point of mass inconvenience and occasional danger.  Not like the fires raging in SoCal, which seem to be almost as regular a feature.  My sister, who professionally maps this kind of stuff, has the resources for those who want to track events.

I got an email this morning alerting me to a paypal transfer of $0.13.  This is a royalty for a short story of mine that is on fictionwise.com.  Images of Scrooge McDuck swimming in money naturally come to mind.