I just came home in high dudgeon, misquoting a piece of poetry as I did so.<\/p>\n
The poem in question is Robert Graves\u2019 \u201cA Traveller\u2019s Curse After Misdirection.\u201d\u00a0 I just looked it up, and it turns out I\u2019ve been misquoting it for years, so why stop now?\u00a0 Here\u2019s my somewhat shortened version:<\/p>\n
\u00a0“With every step he takes<\/p>\n
A bone should break<\/p>\n
And be it not for variation\u2019s sake<\/p>\n
Now an arm and now a leg<\/p>\n
But each and every time his neck.\u201d<\/p>\n
And what\u2019s got my goat?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the back story:\u00a0 Last year some time a woman here in Seattle sent me a note asking if I\u2019d sign a book for her mother in Sacramento who\u2019s a big fan of mine.\u00a0 I suggested she order a copy of After the Fire from Brick and Mortar Books in Redmond.<\/p>\n
She did so.\u00a0 Then, when I leaned her mother was coming to visit, I suggested that we meet up at the bookstore and have a cup of coffee while I was doing the signing. So we did.\u00a0 It was fun.<\/p>\n
Later on, I heard from the activities director at an assisted living facility in West Seattle saying that the mother, my fan, had moved into their facility and would I come do an event for them.\u00a0 We set 1 PM on April 30 as the time and day in question, and I arranged for Paper Boat Books in West Seattle to provide books for sale.<\/p>\n
West Seattle is probably less than twenty miles away from where I live in Bellevue, but going there means crossing Lake Washington and negotiating three separate freeways.\u00a0 But I turned on my phone, asked Siri to provide directions, and off I went.<\/p>\n
When I arrived at the address, I was dismayed to find it was all on-street parking.\u00a0 In Bellevue we have parking garages and parking lots.\u00a0 Parallel parking is a trick I haven\u2019t done in years, but I finally made it work\u2014three blocks away from where I was supposedly supposed to be.<\/p>\n
After picking up some quick steps along the way, I arrived at the facility only to be greeted by someone who had no idea who I was or why I would be there.\u00a0 \u201cOh,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cYou\u2019re supposed to be at our other facility.”<\/p>\n
It was ten to one by then.\u00a0 It took two people forever to figure out the address of the other facility.\u00a0 And off I went again, walking three blocks and then driving.\u00a0 In the process of putting the address into my phone, they somehow had managed to turn off Siri\u2019s voice.\u00a0 The best I could do was turn whenever my Apple Watch said turn.<\/p>\n
Eventually, and after another ordeal by parallel parking, I arrived at the second location only to be told by the receptionist that\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t scheduled for that one either.\u00a0 \u201cWho\u2019s your contact person?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
So I looked up the applicable correspondence.\u00a0 It turns there were two separate activities directors who had sent emails about the event, both of whom no longer work there.<\/p>\n
The bad news is that if my fan still lives there, I missed her.\u00a0\u00a0 The good news is I got a lot of steps and practiced my parallel parking in the process of not seeing her.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m back home, frustrated, and more than a little annoyed, but I\u2019ll get over it.\u00a0 Eventually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I just came home in high dudgeon, misquoting a piece of poetry as I did so. The poem in question is Robert Graves\u2019 \u201cA Traveller\u2019s Curse After Misdirection.\u201d\u00a0 I just looked it up, and it turns out I\u2019ve been misquoting it for years, so why stop now?\u00a0 Here\u2019s my somewhat shortened version: \u00a0“With every step […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants-and-raves"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t