A pretty cool article about applying drop shadows to Web pages using CSS.

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A quotation from Philip Roth's The Human Stain (amazon):

'Everything stoical within me unclenches and the wish not to die, never to die, is almost too great to bear.'

It's spoken by the main character, Coleman, in reference to listening to swing music. I had to jot it down because I've known this feeling several times in my life, sometimes when listening to swing music, even, and have always searched for the right words to explain it.

It's the kind of quote Roth is good at, and it I always like it when these jump out at me from the pages of his fiction, a little jewel in what can sometimes be a rather tedious narrative.

Anyway, I thought I would list the Top 11 times I've felt this way (because why should there be only 10):

1. Lying on the front lawn of the hill on the W&L campus during cool spring days or evenings, either alone, or chatting with friends - if we had had a web cam when I was in school, you could have frequently spotted me there
   
2. Being with friends and family at our wedding reception, May 2000
   
3. Desbiens/Sugarbroad family dinner, New Year's Eve, 1998/99, where I first learned the 'Sambuca Sniff Dance' from Gilles
   
4. Walking with Catherine over Taft Bridge this past January, 2004 in freshly-fallen snow.
   
5. Sitting alone on the rocky beach north of San Francisco and watching the sun set during my solo trip out there in 1997
   
6. Camping in Moab, Utah
   
7. Being at the Grand Canyon's south rim in 1996 and looking out toward the north rim while a hail storm rolls in over the canyon. At that position, the storm appears to be at eye-level.
   
8. New Year's Eve, 2001/02
   
9. Dave Matthews Band show - Shoreline Ampitheater, Mountain View, CA, 1998
   
10. Eating poutine with Catherine on Christmas Eve, 1998 in the only 24 hour diner we could find that was open at 11 pm in the NDG neighborhood of Montreal. We had arrived later than expected in Montreal due to the weather and the rest of the family was already in Chicoutimi.
    
11. Upon the first reading of any of the following: Still Life with Woodpecker, A Prayer for Owen Meany, London Fields.

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Applying ointments and conditioners of various kinds has become an integral part of my day. These ritualistic treatments, which help to allay my many and varied 'conditions,' contribute to my growing sense of my own mortality, as well as the less morbid - yet still very real - sense that life will never quite be the same for me now that I've reached thirty. Oh, come on, you're saying. Get over it. You're only thirty you moron. You're being melodramatic. Maybe so. I have been known to endulge in melodrama time and again. Maybe it's true that I've only reached the smooth, dry outer sand on the beach of middle age, but I can feel the wet stuff calling me closer. Don't we all?

So back to my ointments. Where do I begin? Oh, let's start with my head. That's by far the most complicated spot. First of all, I have a very itchy scalp. 'Psoriasis?' you ask. Probably. 'Flakes?' you inquire. You bet. Basically if I go more than a day and a half without washing my hair, my scalp will itch uncontrollably. And so much in the way of flakes will fall out of my head you'd think it's a wonder that I had any scalp left at all. At times, in certain climates, I have reached near manic levels of itch, have awakened in a sweat, dreaming about the burn. It's a constant part of my being, this itchy head of mine. So most of my ointments have to do with either correcting it or alleviating the symptoms. I have T-Gel Shampoo, Stubburn Itch Formula with a healthy 5-percent Coal Tar Extract. Oh sweet, soothing coal tar. Then there is the T-Gel Conditioner, with . . . my light, my savior . . . Salicyclic Acid . . . 2 percent. As if this were not enough, I also occassionally douse my head with a special Salicylic Acid leave-in formula before going to bed at night. It leaves my hair slightly wet, but feeling clean, and during the night my scalp is rejuvenated, reborn. Not unlike a baptism. I've often wondered if the whole Salicylic Acid drug is actually addictive. Perhaps the whole reason my head itches at all anymore is because it's jonesing for a fix.

So staying with the head, but moving on to a different topic - hair loss. Yes, it runs in my family, on my mom's side. If I take no action, I will probably have a nice bald top in the next 5 to 10 years, much like many of my cousins, and my uncle. I've decided to mount an early defense against this inevitable terror by dropping Minoxidil on my scalp each morning and night. Many of you probably know Minoxidil by it's more common brand name: Rogaine. Ah yes, I have ventured into the unforgiving exercise of desperately trying to preserve my youth. For now, it only amounts to fighting hair loss. In 20 to 30 years I will move on to much tougher campaigns: erectile dysfunction, for instance, maybe even dimentia. (Right now, I'm proud to say, blood flow in my lower extremities is doing alright, though I'm not so sure about up top.) So I will continue with the Minoxidil for a while and see if it helps cut back on the clumps of hair in my bathtub drain that make it look as though I cough up a hairball as a routine part of each shower.

Okay. Enough with the head. Time to move on to my back. (Oh, did I mention that the less hair I grow on my head, the more grows on my back. I know, I know. This is damn sexy stuff, right? Are you turned on yet?) The thing about my back is . . . well, I have the back of a 60-year-old. And it's been this way since I was sixteen. Lately, it's been bugging me quite a bit more than it has over the last 4 years since my surgery. It's hard to remember the last time I had a good night's sleep. I pop various pain and anti-inflammatory pills each night - stuff for arthritis and joint pain. It gets me through, but just barely. Basically, I get about 6 hours sleep before the tightness in my back becomes so unbearable that it forces me out of bed. All this at age 30 - I've got so much to look forward to! Anyway, my newest ointment is made by Bayor, the people who make the aspirin, only it's an analgesic rub. Smells divine, this stuff, and makes our whole apartment reek like some kind of sick menthol orgy.

Now I admit, I'm painting a pretty bleak picture here, and it really isn't that bad. I mean, things could be worse. Moreover, I haven't actually delved into anything weird. For instance, I noticed a guy at the gym the other night rubbing vaseline all over his body before dressing. What use this could possibly have, aside from making him feel like a greased pig (and maybe that's the point, after all) is beyond me. But it made me feel better about my comparatively conservative use of ointments. (Actually, I do admit to once smearing vaseline on my scalp to see if it had an effect on the itch. It only served to make my hair very greasy.)

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Some new self portraits taken on a freezing Saturday afternoon in Washington, DC.

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It started icing on my way home from the gym this evening. A little earlier than expected, this icing business. I put my hood over my double-touked head. I wear two hats after I work out, mainly because my head is still a little damp with sweat. The underneath hat serves the dual purpose of keeping my head warmer at the same time that it protects the top-most hat from getting smelly. By the way, they aren't really touks, these hats I wear. They're just your normal everyday winter hats that fit snugly over your head and ears, but I like to call them touks. It's a thorw-back to my Bob and Doug McKenzie, Great White North days . . . eh?

So there I am, walking in this slushy, slippery stuff and I'm thinking, should I take the 42 bus tonight? I'm thinking, should I take the 42, 'cuz it would position me closer to my apartment at the other end and less walking would be good on a night like tonight. I'm thinking, if I take the Metro, which I've been doing lately, then I'll have to walk further. And my shoes are slipping, slipping. A taxi honks its horn. I keep walking. Some people are walking closer to the buildings to avoid this crunchy ice. Sure the bus might drop me closer, but I might be waiting for it longer. Last week I waited 35 minutes for it. So I get to the Metro entrance and I'm thinking that the train just seems more appealing than the bus. I can smell the DC underground, and it's pleasant and comforting. And that's strange, isn't it, that the smell of the Metro tunnels triggers these feelings in me? So I'm riding the escalator down and taking out my wallet to pull out my Metro card, and it's quiet, for the Metro, and there's a woman in a black overcoat in front of me reading a newspaper as we descend.

Keep in mind, I could have taken a different route. I could have gone a different direction. I could have taken the bus. These aren't just choices. These are life directions. Sounds extreme, doesn't it?

I sit on the cold, stone bench and wait for the train. Blinking lights in the floor signify an arrival. The air becomes static with wind and noise and anticipation, and there's a deep whirling rush that gets louder. The train stops far short of where I'm standing and I have to walk a ways to board the first car. I push my way into the car, grab the rail in the ceiling and wait. This was definitely a better decision. Two stops and I'll be in Adams Morgan. I might still be waiting on the 42 if I had gone the other way, the way of the bus. I might be up there waiting in the cold and realizing that I just probably missed the train and . . . damnit. But thats another direction and that's not what happened.

I notice this guy out of the corner of my eye. This guy, he's next to me, and he kind of looks like Dave Matthews. I look twice. I do a double-take. No it's not Dave Matthews, but I'm thinking you know it also looks like Istvan, who I went to school with. I turn away. I want to look back, but I wait. If I say something to him, and I'm wrong, there could be an uncomfortable period where I apologize and stand next to this guy who isn't Istvan for at least another Metro stop. The train leaves Farragut North. My curiosity overrides everything else. As the train slows down at Dupont Circle I turn back to this guy and am able to get a better look. Yep. That's Istavan. Definitely. I look him in the eye.

"Istvan?"

"David." He says it like Istvan would say it. A half-smirk sort of expression. His tone is confident, almost princely. He's much taller than I remember. Istvan always had this noble quality about him. He wore it well, actually. It's hard not to have that air about you when you're a genius, which he is, certainly. He was quite serious in school. Usually spent most weekend nights studying. I know this because I often did the same thing. Not that I'm a genius or anything. I guess we just had a common work ethic.

We shake hands. He proceeds to tell me that he's just in town for business and staying in Woodley Park. This makes it all the more amazing to me that I actually ran into him in the Metro in Washington DC. That he's exiting the same exit as me. Tomorrow morning he's heading to Atlanta, and from there it's back to Hungary, where he lives. Our paths intersected at this one moment. Strange.

We chat for several minutes on the train. We get off at the same stop and ascend the grand escalator at Woodley Park station. We talk about friends from school, jobs, wives . . . things that have happened since 1998, when we last saw one another at an alumni weekend. We walk to the corner. The ice is really coming down now and it crunches loudly beneath our feet. He pauses and tells me he's going to stop in Chipotle to grab some dinner before heading back to his hotel room. I say farewell. We shake hands.

"Always a pleasure," he says.

"Good to see you. I'll see you at the ten-year reunion?" I ask.

"Yes. Definitely," and he hands me his card.

I cross the street and head toward Taft Bridge and I'm thinking if I had taken the bus I would have missed seeing Istvan, this guy I know from college. If I had gotten on the 42, Istvan would have stood next to some other guy on the Metro and it would not have been me. And I would have sat next to somebody else on the 42. And maybe I would have known that person, too. Maybe it would have been another person I know from college, but it's likely that it would not have. So I would not have had this blast of memories. No, I would just have gone home alone in the ice and snow on the 42.

But here's another weird thing. If I had not know Istvan, if I had not gone to college with Istvan, and I had gotten on the Metro, which there's no reason to think I wouldn't have, then I would have just been standing next to a stranger on the Metro, not this guy I know as Istvan. We might have nodded at one another as a polite social courtesy, but most likely we would have just been two random people on the Metro standing next to one another.

But for some reasons our paths were supposed to cross in life. Me this guy from Houston, Texas and he, this guy from Hungary. Our paths were supposed to cross not once (during our 4 years of college), but a second time, on a Metro from Farragut North to Woodley Park in Washington DC, almost 8 years later.

I guess the same can be said for all the 'perfect strangers' we run into each day. For some reason our paths are meant to cross. And it's easy to call it chance, but I like to think of it as something else.

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Well it's a strange day in the mainstream TV news. I mean, yesterday was one of the best Super Bowl games I've seen in a while, but nobody talked about the game, the talented quarterbacks on both teams, and the high-scoring volley that made up the fourth quarter. Instead, the bulk of the news was about Janet Jackson's right boob. I have to admit, it was a pretty interesting part of the evening. Believe me, I'm never one to make light of a boob, especially when it's Janet's. When it happened, I looked at the guy next to me at the Childe Harold, my eyebrows raised. "Did you see that?" I said, just to confirm that my over-active imagination hadn't fabricated Janet's boob (which it's fully capable of doing.) "Yeah." Okay so I wasn't crazy. There had been a little 'pasty' on her tit so as not to be too vulgar - a nice touch. But other than that, it was pretty much Janet Jackson's boob. Cool. After the initial wow factor, I put it behind me. I had actually forgotten all about it until I found this morning that it was overshadowing all discussions of the actual game and was raising all kinds of controversies . . . . it's just a boob, America. Get over it. We see these every time we turn on the news, though they usually go by names like 'George' and 'Donald.' What's funny (and a little heartbreaking) is that on all the replays of the dreaded incident, Janet's boob is blotted out by the censors. I knew there was a reason I should have got Tivo.

One thing you probably didn't hear about today was that a student was shot and killed at Ballou Senior High in Southeast Washington DC. Now if this had been a suburban, predominately white school somewhere in Colorado, or maybe if Janet Jackson had NOT bared her right boob yesterday. You may have actually heard about this one on CNN, or your local news. But this one happened in Southeast Washington DC. I guess that don't make for good TV . . .

There was also a lot about Dean and Kerry, and Bush's budget proposals . . . and man, did anybody see Dean on Meet the Press yesterday? Dean did a nice job of holding his own, despite a few low blows slung at him by Tim Russert, who normally does a pretty good job of keeping things fair. Doesn't Tim know that the whole 'I have a scream' thing has been overdone, that Dean only seemed to be screaming because he was speaking loudly into a microphone that was filtering out background noise? These things happen and the press did a poor job covering this one, overall. Anyway, back to Meet the Press, Dean's no-nonsense in-your-face remarks - do I dare say his honesty (gasp, and am I really that innocent to believe that honesty is a word that has any place whatsoever in a political race?) - may not win him votes, but I like it. Count me in for Dean. I'm proud to say DC nominated him by 43% majority vote. Kerry and Edwards weren't even a part of the top three here. Take that Iowa!

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