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There’s nothing so corrosive to romance as a cellphone conversation on an Amtrak train. Office cubicles are bad enough, but at least there people know you — and you can always get up and find an open conference room if you suddenly find the need to call someone “shmoopie.” Among strangers, for some reason, I revert to the eighteen-month period during my early teens when I forced my mom to whisper in public. “John, do you like these pants?” “MotherrRRRR! ShhHHH!” Apparently, I was petrified that total strangers would learn Important Secrets about me, like for example whether I liked those pants or not.

On Friday, I traveled from Philly to Boston and back for business, spending a cumulative total of, like, ten hours on the train. During which all my cellphone conversations went like this:

Kate: You want to go to the movies this weekend?

John: [barely audible] sure, that’d be great.

Kate: Okay, I miss you!

John: [even quieter] y.s, m.ss you t.

Kate: I love you, sweetie!

John: [inaudible]

It’s kind of odd, I guess, seeing as how I am willing to be seen eating macaroni and cheese in an unflattering way on my webcam (photo on request), that I’m so shy about getting overheard on the phone. And it’s only for personal calls; I can do business just as loud as any other type-A Acela jerk.

Today was the worst, as train 180 to New York was stalled on a side track with the lights and ventilation out, turning our car into a sepulchural aluminum can. You could hear other commuters breathing two rows away, so when Kate called to tell me that she’s fond of me, etc., my replies were so quiet as to reach the point of telepathy.

Kate: I can’t wait to see you!

John: [glares beetle-browed at phone]

Jeez, how do I get over this? Am I doomed to confine my feelings to Instant Messenger windows? Should I practice a booming Gomez Adams “Cara Mia!” in front of the mirror every morning? Hell, I’d probably be doing the othe Amtrak commuters a favor, right?

Kate: How was work today?

John (Loudly, with Pepe Le Pew accent): Ah, my leetle white pigeon, my leetle plum dumpling, I cannot wait to once again hold you in my arms and wheesper ze sweet nothaings…

Yeah, THAT’d get the commuters’ attention, all right. I like those pants, by golly! You hear me, world? I LIKE THOSE PANTS!!!

Here’s the house!

So this is the house Kate and I are buying. We got word last night that the sellers came down half of the amount we wanted; at this point, they probably feel slightly screwed, and we feel slightly screwed. Which, I’m told, is often a sign that the price is fair. So we’ve faxed in the addendum to the agreement of sale, and it’s all over but the shouting!

We close on April 11th, after which we get a roofing contractor in to replace the subroofing, grade the foundation, paint the kitchen cabinets (unless we decide we like the green color; check out the photos), replace the hollow-core front door, install a UV microbe-killer in the furnace ductwork, and generally eliminate all of our liquid income.

We’ll join all the other late-twenties-early-thirties couples pushing rolly carts through the Downingtown Home Depot on the weekends, picking out tile, frowning at paint chips, and marveling at the colossal fourteen-foot jacuzzis. Anyhow, have a look at the pictures from the real estate agent’s website. “Freshly painted!” Uh, thanks. How many coats of paint do you think it will take to mask the red bedroom? Oh, and mark your calendars for the big barbecue in the back yard!!!

Like Daphne Zuniga in Tim Robbins’ Car

Philly drivers stink. They’re less aggressive than New York drivers, but they’re more passive-aggressive. In New York, if you leave a gap in front of you, a cab will cut you off, but it’s nothing personal, and no one makes a big deal about it. Philly drivers emote a lot, and what they emote is ugly.

Take honking: New York has one honk, pretty much: the admonitory “get out of my way!” honk. To that, Philadelphia adds the punitive honk: “hey, you were in my way!” It’s a whiny and infuriating honk, and deserves only one response.

To wit: Kate and I were at a one-lane intersection, waiting to turn right. A semi tractor was blocking the lane we wanted, so we couldn’t pull out yet. The car behind us, going straight, tapped the horn. Then tapped it again. Then a third time, at which point Kate turned around and made a standard “hey, what can I do?” shrug.

So the truck moves, we pull out, and the car pulls around us and gives us the Philadelphia Passive-Aggressive Punishment Honk: “Hey, you slowed me down! Honkitty honk HONK!” What happened next, Kate describes as “losing her ladylike composure”, but I think is the only appropriate response in the situation: she turned around and administered the Five-Star Punishment Honk Antidote with both fingers. It was well-timed and well-administered: frankly, I think Miss Manners would have advocated it.

Unfortunately, however, the truck hadn’t pulled up that far, and we drifted gently into the bumper guard, cracking the turn signal and the headlight. Which means, if the other car saw it, they win: but if they didn’t see it, we win. The truck, on its part, didn’t even notice.

What happened next was more astonishing to me: Kate drove three block’s to Jimmy’s garage, where Carol — the woman behind the desk — cheered her up with funny stories and Jimmy himself came out to take a look. Five hours later, Carol called Kate to tell her the parts were in. It’s getting fixed right now.

So, on balance, I think that Jimmy’s garage makes up for the Philadelphia Punishment Honk. And the stylish, direct, and forceful manner in which the Five-Star Antidote was administered was a joy to behold. Key takeaway: I’m marrying the right woman.

Like the ranch house in “Litte Shop of Horrors”

(because of the picket fence, not the Black Mildew)

Another piece of big news: Kate and I are buying a house! Or in the process of negotiation, rather. It’s a small white ranch house, single-family, in West Chester (that’s West Chester, PA, not Westchester, NY.) If you were to draw a cartoon of a starter house — white brick, with metal awnings over the front door and the kitchen door — you’d be right on. It’s small, clean, and cute, with a fairly big back yard that even has a stream in it!

At first, buying a house seemed a lot easier than renting an apartment in Manhattan. The people are friendly, the competition doesn’t seem as cutthroat. However, the welter of details involved is adding up. We made a first offer, heard the counter-offer, made a third offer of our own. We signed the agreement of sale, which gives everyone a certain amount of time to get their ducks in a row. I coughed up a first deposit and a second deposit, and then we called in a brigade of insurance representatives, housing inspectors, termite inspectors, roofing companies, et cetera: I half expect to see a parade of young boys marching down the street after our troop of inspectors, towing their little red wagons and making a Norman Rockwell parade.

Anyhow, things are getting more complicated: the house turns out to have black mildew in the subroofing, which is a Bad Thing. The nightly news, apparently, runs Special Reports on the Scourge of Black Mildew, and how it’s gnawing at the very core of our civilization and family values. So we’d need to replace the roof, as well as some other things — fixing the vapor barrier in the crawlspace, grading the yard to keep water from ponding at the foundation, et cetera: all of which would involve enough money to buy a small Korean sedan. So we announced that we’d like to lower the selling price of the house by the amount it would take to by a small Yugoslavian car, and we hope they agree.

It’s hard to know what to do: on the one hand, we could take the house as is, but we’d kinda feel like we’re getting hosed, then. But if we walk away from the house, hey! We liked that house! So we’ll keep our fingers crossed.

Hey, I got engaged!

As you probably know, I’ve been dating the inimitable Kate Smith for a year and a half now. I actually bought an engagement ring last October, and it’s been hiding in a safe-deposit box since then, waiting for the right moment. Which turned out to be this weekend!

We happened to have just bought a digital camera, and we visited Longwood Gardens to check it out. I had actually been planning to propose later that day — I had a speech prepared, and everything, based on George Santayana’s Ode on Reaching Fifty, and we had hotel and dinner reservations in the city, but the combination of the day and the incredible beauty of everything at Longwood and my love for Kate overcame me, and I proposed halfway beween “Roll 1-42” and “Roll-1-45” in these pictures. I actually proposed in the gazebo you can’t see because it’s behind the branch in “Roll 1-41”, the photo where Kate is making Formal Topiary Face.

So the engagement is central to my life, but incidental to these pictures, I guess — kind of like Breughel’s Death of Icarus, or catching the birth of a baby on an ATM camera. The proposal is something that occurs tangential to the “hey, let’s try out the macro lens!” photo (1-16) and the “Remember the Irish rapper posing on the steps in Okay magazine?” photo (1-42).

I’m very happy! Hurrah!

Superlative February continues…

…with another lifetime best for me. Wow, I’ve gotta go buy a lottery ticket or something!

Friday, February 15th, 12:58PM:

[My employer] phone rings on the outside line.

John: Hello, this is John.

Caller: Hello, Super Tito, please.

John: Sorry, I think you have the wrong…

Caller: Oh, sorry, bye.

John: Hang on a minute, did you just say “Super Tito“?

Caller: Uh, yeah.

John: That’s what I thought you said. Hey, that’s the best wrong number I’ve ever gotten!

Caller: Um, okay, bye.

One quick Google search later, and I’m wondering: what permutation of digits in my office phone number connects you to this star of underground wrestling?

Canine Fleet Week

My diagonal officemate Genevieve Futrelle played hooky on Tuesday to visit the Westminster Dog Show with her friend Francesco Vitelli. (If you’ve seen my new year’s pictures, Francesco is in the white tie.) Genevieve came back reporting a large number of large, middle-aged dog women and slender, middle aged dog men (dog queens?) Her pictures, to me, show an oceanic contrast. Fleets of identical dogs and their identical handlers sail in formation over unruffled acres of flat green Astroturf, then crash on blocky jetties of travel crates and grooming tables piled head-high in the back room.

That metaphor needs work, but the pictures are cool. Here they are! (You may have to sign in to Ofoto to see them.)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre, my ass!

Who says that entropy is the strongest force in the universe? Who says that there isn’t some meaning to the universe, that there isn’t some Leibnizian clockwork behind the matter we see every day, ordering the world in a master chain of being that is sometimes revealed to us humans?

Who could say that, after seeing this picture?

I’ve been at jury duty yesterday and today, serving on a civil case. The judge is crusty but fair; the bailiff has a big mustache, and is crusty but fair with a big sidearm on his hip, and the courthouse building is a freaking colossal rotunda. Actually, the building is a central rotunda attached to an outer hexagon with eight-story spokes, and it is one imposing pile of masonry. Made back in the day when public architecture’s form followed function, I guess, it seems like a cross between the Panopticon and a giant gear; like something that Mario would spend nine levels getting to the top of, only to see it collapse in rubble when he jumps on the dragon’s head.

Seriously, though, being in such an imposing structure lends an impressive amount of oomph to the proceeding. In The Man in the Iron Mask, Alexandre Dumas describes Aramis’ feelings on touring the Bastille: he is opressed by the mighty masonry walls, depressed by the sheer size of the fortress. I poo-poohed that at the time, dismissing it as romantic-era vapors. You know what, though? It’s true! The colossal building seems like a huge, heavy machine for churning out justice. With steam heat.

You know, it almost hurts being this cool.

Dude, I am the coolest. Before you vow to pants me for the preceding statement, check out this evidence right here:

TO: john@tikaro.com

FROM: Sea World San Antonio

=======================

Good morning, I work for Sea World San Antonio. My
supervisor for Creative Services, Al Torres, had a
meeting with the entertainment dept. and they heard
about your watergun effect. we would like to
incorporate it to our ski lake show. it’s a remake of
a show that we had here when the park first opened,
but now we are doing a more contemporary version of
it. Our lead actor plays a nerdy type and we’d like
him to have the best gun in the show. […]

Is that cool, or what? I’m just envisioning the “nerd” character, some tanned 16-year old on waterskis with sixpack abs and black birth-control glasses with white tape wrapped around the bridge. It’s like all the 80s movies where Paulina Poriskova starts out working in a pizza parlor with her hair around her face and mismatched Converse All-Stars on her feet. This is gonna rock,