A photo I took during Hurricane Irma, which shows my Android phone with the FM radio app on.
When Hurricane Irma closed in on the Tampa Bay area Sunday evening, the power went out at around 7:30, and soon afterward, cellular service became spotty and then disappeared entirely. However, we weren’t cut off from information about Irma because we fell back on a 1930s technology, FM radio, which is built into every smartphone, and accessible on many Android phones (including mine).
In the age of the smartphone, you might think your Android or iPhone can replace a radio receiver as a lifeline during a disaster. After all, while a radio receiver is audio-only and one-way, your smartphone can both send and receive text, audio, picture, video, and location information — but only if the cellular towers nearby are up and running. If the nearby tower is damaged, loses power, or gets overloaded, you’ll be cut off and left with the dreaded “No Service” indicator on your phone.
Consult just about any disaster preparation guide for a checklist of “must-haves”, and one of the items on that checklist will be a battery-powered radio. When phone and internet service fails, you can fall back on radio as long as you have batteries. (Better still, if you have a radio with a hand-crank generator, you don’t even need batteries.)
We have a nearly century-long tradition of radio stations providing vital information during disasters of all kinds. In the case of Irma, they did one better and teamed up with TV newsrooms. During the storm, many radio stations in the Tampa area teamed up with TV stations to provide continuous coverage of and information about the storm, such as where it was, how quickly and in which direction it was moving, and what to do. It was a valuable resource for many people, and it may have even saved a few lives.
You may think that you don’t own a portable FM radio, but chances are that you do. It’s just hidden away in your smartphone.
Just about every mobile phone maker — even the big ones who manufacture their own processor and graphics chips, such as Apple and Samsung — gets their cellular modem chipsets from a single manufacturer: Qualcomm. In fact, Qualcomm pretty much has a monopoly on these chipsets, which in addition to sending and receiving cellular signals, have an FM receiver baked in. You wouldn’t know it in the U.S., as fewer than half the smartphones have the FM receiver enabled, and they’re all Androids.
My Android phone is a Moto G4, and in addition to having an enabled FM receiver, it also comes “out of the box” with the FM Radio app, which simply provides a user interface for the FM radio capability. When the power went out in our part of Tampa on Sunday at around 7:30 p.m. and the cell service disappeared shortly after, I fired up the FM Radio app and we had updates on the storm’s progress all night long. In fact, I also used the phone’s FM radio and all day the next day — and there was still battery power to spare and the end. That’s because FM radio uses considerably less power than just about any smartphone function (and it uses no data at all!).
My iPhone doesn’t expose its FM radio capability, and it was useless as a source of updates until the cellular connectivity improved the next day, well after the storm had passed. I can’t say for certain, but I’ll just blame Apple designer Jony Ive, who’s never met a much-loved traditional feature that he didn’t like to remove. I get the feeling that FM radio is too distastefully old school to include as an iPhone capability, even though it’s already there.
While I experienced the usefulness of FM radio in smartphones during an emergency firsthand for the first time during Irma, it’s been clear to broadcasters and public safety officials — FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) included (see the video above) — that there are great benefits to unleashing this capability. The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has been lobbying to require the FM radio capability to be enabled in smartphones, and even Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been advocating for this (but he won’t go beyond advocacy). At an NAB event in February, he said:
“It seems odd that every day we hear about a new smartphone app that lets you do something innovative, yet these modern-day mobile miracles don’t enable a key function offered by a 1982 Sony Walkman.”
The go-to place for the movement to make the FM radio capability that’s already in our phones, waiting to be unleashed, is FreeRadioOnMyPhone.org. It has the latest info on the movement to enable FM radio on smartphones, including:
How to get FM radio working on your Android phone
How to contact Apple to ask them to enable FM radio listening on their phones
How to contact the FCC and ask them to require FM radio be made available on phones
And finally, an article that needs to be pointed out because it’s dead wrong (and unsurprisingly, published by 2010-era Business Insider, from the time they were almost stealing content): Mandatory FM Radio: A Dumb Idea For Smart Phones, in which its clueless author says that it’s just a move to prop up the dying terrestrial radio industry.
As with other articles in this series, I’m including an appropriate music video:
“I bought this ages ago,” she said, “and it was still in the packaging. The battery compartment’s all screwed up!”
“Screwed up how?” I asked.
She opened up the back of the flashlight to show me what she meant. This is what I saw:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
In the photo above, the leftmost battery receptacle is set up properly. It has a negative terminal (the one with a spring) and a positive terminal.
The other two terminals are a carnival of half-assery:
One of them has two positive terminals, and
the other has two negative terminals.
“Wow,” I said. “That is screwed up. I should submit this to the You Had One Job Twitter account.”
From an electric circuit point of view, this isn’t really a problem. As long as the terminals can make contact with the battery, current will flow, and the bulbs will light up.
The problem is more about fit:
The battery fit in the receptacle with the two positive terminals is too loose, and the battery won’t make contact with the terminals.
The battery won’t fit into the receptacle with the two negative terminals — two springs takes up too much space.
“I can’t even return it!” Anitra said. “I don’t have the invoice anymore.”
“Maybe we won’t have to,” I said, and I took the flashlight to my desk in the home office. I wasn’t going to be beaten by a simple manufacturing defect.
I removed the three screws holding the flashlight together and saw that the fix was easy. It would be a simple matter of swapping two terminals, which would result in each receptacle having one positive and one negative terminal. The terminals slide out of the receptacle easily once you bend the metal tab holding them in place:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
However, in the process of swapping the terminals, you need to disconnect at least one of them from the wire. Once you swap them, you have to reestablish the connection. It was time to break out the Christmas present that my in-laws gave me:
Late last year, they’d asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I suggested that I could use a soldering iron, and they delivered. Then things got crazy, what with suddenly having to search for a job and all the madness that ensued, so this ended up being my first chance to break it out.
I plugged in the iron, let it heat up, and moments later, I unsoldered one of the terminals. I then swapped the terminals, and then reconnected the loose terminal with a proper joint:
With the repair complete, I screwed the unit back together, and the battery receptacles now looked like this:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
I inserted three fresh AAA batteries into the flashlight, closed the battery compartment, flipped it over, and pressed the power button. Here’s what happened:
Success!
I brought the flashlight to Anitra, who was impressed with my work. Red Green was right:
I am mindful of the fact that I’m fixing only one flashlight at my leisure, in the comfort of the ergonomic chair in my air-conditioned home office, and not hundreds or thousands every day on a barely-maintained assembly line in a non-air-conditioned factory in the Third World for a laughably tiny wage.
The repair I made would be considered laughably simple by an electrician or electronics tech, and I’m willing to bet it would’ve been within the abilities of most of the regulars at Tampa Hackerspace. They might even be amused that I found this incident worthy of writing a whole blog article, complete with photos.
But it is worthy of a blog article. I’m willing to bet that this repair would’ve been beyond most people, who — without a way to return or exchange the flashlight — would’ve simply tossed it in the trash or recycled it. That’s a pity, because in spite of the increasing complexity of our devices, a good number of them are still repairable with a modicum of skill, and as the do-it-yourselfers say, “If you can’t fix it, you don’t really own it.”
Click the poster to see it at full size.
I’m not going to claim that I can do every kind of repair, but I’m glad that I’ve been able to do a number of them around the house, from this flashlight to the sensor in our washing machine to patching the chip in our granite kitchen counter to replacing the faucet in our kitchen sink.
It may actually be easier to perform a lot of household repairs yourself these days, thanks to the proliferation of YouTube repair videos. I wish I’d thought of recording one while repairing the flashlight. If you find yourself needing to fix something, search YouTube — the odds are goods that there’s a “how to fix it” video.
Another good source of “repair recipes” is iFixit, which is home to tens of thousands of electric and electronic repair guides, and they’re the people behind the Repair Manifesto featured above. I don’t know if they’ll ever come close to their stretch goal — a repair manual for every device in the world — but I applaud them for it.
And finally, if there’s a hackerspace or makerspace in your area — here in Tampa Bay, we’ve got places like Tampa Hackerspace, The Hive, and others — check it out, join it, support it, learn, and take control of the things you own.
There’s a price to be paid for fixing things yourself: time. What you save in money and from the landfill, you pay in the time invested in the repair, and if need be, learning how to do it.
But there’s a payoff — being able to fix things helps build a “can do” mindset. That’s something that you’ll bring with you wherever you go, and it’ll take you far in work, life, and play.
Part 8 of the I-485 is called General Eligibility and Inadmissibility Grounds, and is made up of 67 questions, one of which asks you if you somehow were involved with the Nazis:
Here’s the text of the question:
During the period from March 23, 1933 to May 8, 1945, did you ever order, incite, assist, or otherwise participate in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion, in association with either the Nazi government of Germany or any organization or government associated or allied with the Nazi government of Germany?
That’s right: In the process that determined whether I was allowed to call this place home, I had to disavow any connection with the Nazis. And I did so easily, gladly and proudly.
So why can’t the President?
He was uncharacteristically silent for the first part of Saturday, when stories about the torch gathering the night before and neo-Nazis on the street that morning were already circulating:
The slow, faint response wasn’t lost on former Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and high-profile white nationalist David Duke, who took it as implicit support…
Here’s the text from that screenshot (because there’s no way in Hell that I’m linking to the Daily Stormer):
3:46 p.m.: Trump comments were good. He didn’t attack us. He just said the nation should come together. Nothing specific against us.
He said that we need to study why people are so angry, and implied that there was hate…on both sides!
So he implied the antifa were haters.
There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all.
He said he loves us all.
Also refused to answer a question about White Nationalists supporting him.
No condemnation at all.
When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room.
Really, really good.
God bless him.
I’ll say it again:
I easily, gladly, and proudly disavowed the Nazis in front of witnesses, including my wife, my lawyer, and a U.S. government official.
Why can’t the President do the same in front of the American people?
Also…
It’s a shame that the I-485’s “Nazi question” is limited to the time period from March 1933 through May 1945. Even a kid who turned the minimum qualifying age — 10 — for the junior division of the Hitler Youth on V-E day would be 82 years old at the time of this writing. I think that it should be phrased more like question 56, the “Communist question”, which asks if you’ve ever, during any point in time, in any country, been part of or tied to the Communist Party or any other totalitarian party:
Celebrating my green card status the American way at Burger 21.
Last Thursday — January 26, 2017 — I acquired permanent resident status in the United States, colloquially known as “getting my green card”. The process took about nine months and a little over US$4,000 in processing and lawyer fees, but it’s done, and from a cursory reading of recent news headlines and from what I heard at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services offices, not a moment too soon.
In case you’ve forgotten or don’t know me that well, there’s a reason why I moved from Toronto to Tampa…
A great day: March 7, 2015, St. Pete Beach.
…and she’s why I started the green card process last April.
With the help of our lawyer, Gerry Seipp, we started the process with me filling out an I-485 form (Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status) and Anitra filling out an I-130 (the interestingly named “Petition for Alien Relative” document). Using a lawyer wasn’t strictly necessary, but I found that it was well worth the $2,500 to have some professional assistance in navigating through the myriad forms, byzantine processes, and potential pitfalls.
Nine months of paperwork, payments, processes (including a medical exam), and a lot of waiting in between culminated in last Thursday’s appointment at the Tampa U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office. The appointment is an in-person interview, and its purpose is to confirm that ours was a genuine marriage and not just one of convenience for the purpose of securing a green card.
Gerry told us that in some of these sessions, they separate the spouses and interview them separately, asking questions intended to reveal whether or not they are truly a couple. “Don’t worry about that part,” our lawyer said, “you’re a real couple, and it’ll be just like being on that old game show, The Newlywed Game.”
The problem with that reassurance is that when I think of The Newlywed Game, I always think of the infamous moment on the show, often referred to (somewhat incorrectly) as the “That would be the butt, Bob” moment:
Great, I thought. Now that’s all I’ll be able to think of during the interview.
I was planning on wearing a blazer, dress shirt, and dress pants, but asked if I should wear a tie. Since this is Florida, and since not all of Gerry’s clients are professionals, he told us that he’s seen people show up for the interview in shorts and flip-flops.
“You know what?” I said. “I’m going to wear a tie.”
The sign outside the USCIS field office in Tampa.
Our appointment at the Tampa U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office was scheduled for 12:15 p.m.. We met up with Gerry a half hour prior in order to have some time to talk and go through the airport-style security line, complete with metal detector and baggage x-ray machine.
The local immigration lawyers seem to know each other. While we waited for our interview, a number of other lawyers came up to Gerry to say hi. He introduced us to all of them, and we had some brief — and very interesting — conversations with them:
One lawyer whose clients had just completed the interview said that the questioning had become more extensive. “My couple got nearly a hundred questions,” he said.
The next lawyer shared his observation that the interviewers were becoming increasingly hard on less articulate candidates. “That shouldn’t be a problem for me,” I said, to which he replied “Radio voice. That’ll help.”
Another lawyer, who was waiting with his clients for their interview, said “Things are different with you-know-who in charge,” saying “you-know-who” using the same tone of voice that Harry Potter characters use to say “Voldemort”.
The most interesting comment came from a lawyer who remarked “If your last name begins with ‘Al’ and ends with ‘i’, let’s just say that you’re not gonna have a good time in that room.”
Kateryna and Arshameh Taidi’s green card interview in Tampa, 2010. Click the photo to read about their interview.
Our turn came, and interviewer was a friendly guy with an easygoing demeanor. In another life, he could’ve easily been in sales or marketing. After the usual introductions and handshakes, he walked us to his office, where Anitra and I took seats in front of his desk, and Gerry took a seat behind us. The seating arrangement wasn’t all that different from the one pictured above.
After a brief swearing-in where we affirmed that everything we would say in the interview was the truth, it began. First came a review of the forms we’d filled out months ago to ensure that all the information they contained was accurate. Then came our turn to provide supporting documentation:
The actual folders I used in the interview. I got to keep the folders, but their contents are now in a file somewhere in the USCIS office.
The guidance on how much supporting documentation to bring to a green card interview is pretty vague — the general rule seems to be “more is better”. I tried to strike a balance between having enough material to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that our relationship was genuine and not spending an inordinate amount of time and printer ink on preparing it. In the end, I believe I printed out about 60 pages’ worth of material, including:
Proof that Anitra and I were both professionals with good prospects and jobs that paid well,
statements that showed that we had joint bank accounts, insurance policies, and other jointly-owned assets,
photos, photos, photos: from our wedding, as well as from life before and after we got married, including our trips to places both near (Disney World, Charleston, Savannah, Bahamas, Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, San Francisco, and most recently, New York) and (Manila and London, both of which we visited in 2016), and
flight itineraries showing that we saw each other monthly before I moved to Tampa in March 2014.
We also provided a sealed envelope containing the results of a medical exam performed specifically for my green card application. The exam took place in August, and a couple of weeks later, I was given in the results in a brown envelope marked “USCIS only — DO NOT OPEN”. Our interviewer opened it, saw that I’d been given a clean bill of health, and then noticed that whoever filled out the paperwork within forgot to specify the clinic where I’d been examined.
“The doctor signed it, which is the important part,” the interviewer said, “but I need to enter a name for the clinic into the system.”
“Mind if I check my phone?” I asked, and a moment later, I had the name and address of the clinic.
The current sample green card.
We must’ve presented well, because the interview wrapped up shortly after that. Aside from being asked if we lived in the same house and if I’ve ever been convicted of a crime or been denied entry into the United States, I don’t recall being asked any of the questionstypicallyasked in a green card interview. We spent most of the interview reviewing the contents of the folders that I brought.
A half-hour after the interview began, it concluded with our interviewer saying “Congratulations. You are now a legal permanent resident of the United States.” He said I should expect the actual green card in the mail in a couple of weeks.
Since my status was gained through marriage and since Anitra and I have been married less than two years, my permanent residence status is conditional and temporary. Two years from now, we’ll have to file an I-751 (Petition to Remove Conditions on Residence) form to seal the deal.
In case you were wondering how I’ve been working in the U.S. since 2014 without a green card: From March 2014 until last summer, I’ve been here under TN-1 (NAFTA Professional) status, and in the process for applying for a green card, acquired I-512 “Advance Parole”.
My plan for these soon-to-be interesting times is simple: carry on, watch my back (this year, two people in red caps have yelled at me to “go back to China” — wrong country, guys), speak truth to power and fight the good fight when needed (and oh wow, will it be needed), play the accordion, and follow the wisdom of Canadian poet Dennis Leigh:
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation”.
Sleep apnea is caused by the upper airway being closed off when the muscles relax during sleep. This cutting off the of the airway leads to a loss of oxygen, which triggers an automatic fight-or-flight response from the cardiovascular system and brain, which causes a waking response. This sort of thing, repeated over and over again, messes with your sleep and puts undue strain on the heart.
The difference between my pre- and post-CPAP life, if you’ll forgive the expression, is like night and day. I feel completely refreshed when I wake up, and I no longer have that mid-afternoon lull where I’m useless and just want a nap. I now use my CPAP every night, and I take it with me when traveling.
I’m wrapping up a week-long business trip to the corporate HQ of my workplace, GSG, in Concord, Massachusetts. When I unpacked my bag on Sunday night, I realized that I’d somehow left behind the straps for my CPAP mask. They’re a key part of the system, as they hold the mask to your face as shown in the picture below:
Luckily for me, I always carry a roll of duct tape in my laptop knapsack. Here’s what my quick-and-dirty test run looked like:
Version 2.0 incorporates a hotel face towel on the back of my head so I’m won’t rip out my hair when I remove the mask in the morning. As for the bacon images, it’s my belief that life’s too short for plain duct tape.
Update: Tom from the story reminded me that there’s an epilogue, so I included it.
It’s been ages since I’ve posted a dating-gone-wrong story on this blog, but I try to keep my disastrous dating experiences down to once a decade.
In the nineties, there was Worst Date Ever, and in the first decade of the 2000s, there’s The Girl Who Cried Webmaster. I do have one from this decade that I alluded to in a 2011 post titled February — Blog Later. I think enough time has passed that I can tell this tale and we can all have a good laugh. It’s about the first date-like opportunity I had after my separation, and yes, hilarity did ensue.
In the interest of shaming no one other than myself, I’ve changed a few details (primarily names and places) to protect the innocent. If there is any blame to be handed out in this story, it’s all on me; I’m the one who messed up.
With that little detail out of the way, grab a drink or snack — this entry’s a little longer — and enjoy!
Consolation Fries
Me in 2011.
Of course they’d hold a week-long geek event starting on Valentine’s Day, I thought.Lucky for me, my schedule’s wide open this year.
This was a couple of years back — a warm Friday night in San Francisco, early February 2011. I was there for a number of reasons:
To attend a big technology conference, where I’d be doing a presentation on the technology I was evangelizing at the time,
To catch up with friends and family in the Bay Area, and
To put some distance between me and home for a little while.
Work wasn’t helping either: while my immediate manager was one of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of reporting to and my teammates were all great people to work with, upper management seemed to be doing their damnedest to turn the environment into one more backstabby than Borgia-era Italy. I’d been made aware that one particularly douchey manager was actively undermining my work, sending poison emails to other people within the organization. It seemed that management’s mantra was “Influence if you can, scare if you must”, which the most dedicated career strivers seemed to interpret as “Scare! Intimidate! Make them crap their pants!”
Of course, once you’ve struggled for breath alone in a darkened emergency room, wondering why no one will answer the emergency call button you’re furiously pressing, asking yourself all the while if this is what it feels like to die, neither the prospect of being single again nor any stuffed-shirt pointless popinjay of a middle manager can ever put The Fear into you.
As the only (newly) single member of my team, it was easy to convince my manager to give me all the travel assignments that the others — for marriage-, family-, and even sanity-preserving reasons — couldn’t take. For the next couple of months, I would spend three weeks out of every month on the road, and on the company’s dime. I’d keep myself busy with work and use whatever downtime I got to sort things out in my head and starting putting together the answer to the questions that had been plaguing me since the breakup:
Should I move to a new place, or stay?
Should I quit and look for a new job?
Should I set up a dating profile?
How do I explain the CPAP to a girl who “sleeps over”?
Or, to summarize: What now?
I normally don’t drink alone, but I decided that if the double-whammy of divorce and near-death wasn’t good a excuse for it, what was?
The sun hadn’t completely sunk behind the skyline on that evening as I pondered the “what now?” question over a slightly spotty tumbler of Maker’s Mark in a bar in that sketchy transitional area that’s not quite Union Square, not quite the notorious Tenderloin. The barkeep had thrown in a large glob of ice, which I scooped out with my hand and chucked into a glass that had been abandoned by a guy in a Threadless T-shirt, skinny jeans, and a pair of cheap sunglasses with saucer-like lenses, which looked ridiculous in the dimly-lit dive.
My original plan was to hang out in my hotel room until Tom, a local friend who’d invited me to an evening outing with his pals, called with the details. However, I’d decided that I’d spent more than enough time cooped up in various rooms, so I threw my accordion on my back and set out to wander the streets of San Francisco for a while. I ended up at the bar after about an hour of being a flâneur.
When I walked into Butter, Tom saw me immediately and waved me over to join his group. They were about ten people in total, and an even mix of guys and girls. After some introductions and a starting round of drinks, I ended up spending most of my time chatting with Lindsey, a very San Francisco-looking girl in a summer dress, scarf and short blonde locks. Over bourbon and tater tots (Butter specializes in the finest microwave cuisine), we talked about what seemed to be every topic under the sun. I distinctly remember the topic of pets, Burning Man, the Toronto scene, and — of course — the accordion. I was enjoying myself, only once or twice feeling a bit strange about chatting up a woman who wasn’t my wife. Or ex-wife. Or eventual-ex-wife. Whatever the term was.
I am single, I told myself. I am flush with cash. I am reasonably good-looking, well-dressed and can chat up strangers. And I have an accordion.
A couple of hours later, we made our way to the DNA Lounge, which was filling up with people to see Bootie:
“PBRs all ’round!” commanded Tom, and moments later, we were on the dance floor with ice-cold cans in hand. I shook my tailfeathers like a tipsy, newly-freed Nelson Mandela with an accordion on his back.
When the DJs started playing a tune that used the Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams as its bed track, I started playing along on the squeezebox. The DJs took notice and pulled me on stage, planting a microphone on the accordion’s sound holes. I know a rock star opportunity when it presents itself, so I squeezed hard and started jamming along, which brought great applause from the crowd.
Best mid-life crisis ever, I thought.
My next few days were taken up by the conference. I did a presentation, attended a lot of sessions, did some hands-on labs, went to usual mixers — all the sort of stuff you’re supposed to do at a geek get-together.
The conference ran from Monday to Friday, with the big conference party taking place Thursday night. It wasn’t going to be all that exciting, so I’d arranged to meet Tom later that night in Soma. I hung out at the conference party for an hour or so, joined the band in the jam room to do a couple of classic rock numbers, and grabbed a couple of canapes. I was thinking about getting something more substantial to eat when I got a text message from Tom. He was in his car at the conference hotel’s front entrance.
When I stepped out of the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised to see Lindsey in the passenger seat.
“I hope I’m not interfering in your male bonding,” she said with a smile.
“And here I was, planning to get all Brokeback Mountain with Joey,” Tom said.
“I call outside spoon,” I replied.
The plan was to drop Tom’s car off at home, give him a few minutes to walk his dog, and then make our way to a nearby night spot for drinks. Lindsey and I sat around and chatted while Tom walked the dog. That’s when we noticed the orange sports car. We decided to give it a closer look.
“Lotus,” I said, trying to get a look at the dashboard. “Niiiiice.”
“Look at it!” said Lindsey, who seemed greatly amused by the arrangement of its headlights and grille. “It looks like it’s smiling.”
“You really should pose with it,” I said. “It’s the sort of car that demands poses.”
Lindsey obliged and struck some Maxim-esque poses by the car’s front grill while I took pictures.
“Oh yeah, this is HOT!” I said, snapping away.
A portion of the actual photo I took.
Tom walked in on our photo shoot, shook his head and said “I don’t even want to know.”
We made our way to a nearby tavern — I forget its name — took three stools by the bar and ordered a round of drinks. We conversed for a while, but it soon became clear that Tom was fading.
“Look, guys,” Tom said as he took the last swig of his Old Fashioned, “I’m dead tired. It’s been a long week, and as much as I’d love to stay, I really need to get some sack time. You guys okay if I bail and leave you two alone?”
“We’re having a great time. We’ll be all right,” replied Lindsey.
“Not a problem,” I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible. “Get some sleep, and I’ll ping you tomorrow.”
Tom fist-bumped me, hugged Lindsey and made his way towards the door. I moved over to the stool beside Lindsey, and waved the bartender over.
“Two sazeracs, please,” I said, rather pleased with the way things had turned out.
Lindsey and I started talking about music. We both came of age in the eighties, so the conversation naturally drifted to that era’s music. She told me that she liked going to local clubs with eighties nights or catching Bootie shows, since their mash-up source material was often eighties hits.
“Do you know any eighties stuff on the accordion?” she asked.
“That’s how I got started,” I replied.
“Could you pleeeease play some? I’ll sing along.”
Lindsey looked so cute and asked so sweetly, and let’s face it, this sort of thing is precisely why I started carrying the accordion around in the first place. I played, and we sang Duran Duran’s Rio, The Cult’s She Sells Sanctuary, Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough and The Violent Femmes’ Kiss Off, all in the far corner of the bar, which we had all to ourselves.
An actual part of a photo from this story.
“You’re a really cool guy,” Lindsey said. “Remember last Friday night, when we were out at DNA with my friends? They absolutely loved you! You’re awesome. You should hang out with us when you’re in town.”
“I’d love that,” I said.
At one point in the evening, the bartender saw fit to walk up to us and say “You two are by far the cutest people in the room tinight” with a big grin. “Come back any time.”
Most of the credit would have to go to Lindsey. She was wonderful company: adorable, funny and just so easy to talk to.
This, I thought, is exactly what the doctor ordered.
“Do you want to go get something to eat?” Lindsey asked. “I’ve had mostly nothing but drinks tonight.”
“Yeah, I could eat,” I said. “I mostly grazed at the conference and could use a late dinner. Is there anything around here? I’ll buy.”
“I know a place close by,” she said.
She took my hand in hers, putting her fingers between mine and led me downstairs and to the street outside. We walked at a slow-ish pace, hand in hand down the street, with her leaning up close against me. I took in a deep breath and caught the scent from her hair. Ever since I was a teenager, I have believed that “girly shampoo on actual girl” is one of the best smells in the world, surpassing even freshly-cooked bacon or a new just-out-of-the-box Macbook.
The evening had just been elevated to…a date? Okay, maybe a non-date.
The place she picked out was only a couple of blocks away, and perfect. It was a little cafe-bistro with alt-rock playing on the sound system (when we arrived, The Clash were on), not too dark, not too bright, and cozy-looking. We took a table for two, with her sitting on the banquette and me sitting opposite her on a chair. She insisted that I put the accordion on the banquette beside her. She started to pet and stroke it. I was looking forward to my turn.
“It’s so pretty!” she said, running her fingers over the keys and buttons.
We ordered a bottle of wine, a croque madame, onion soup and frites. The wine arrived first, and she downed her first two glasses pretty quickly. Lindsey asked if I could play another number on the accordion, and after checking with the waitress, I played Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole. The kids a couple of tables over from us shot video of the whole thing on their phones, and gave me some generous applause when I was done. The loudest cheering came from Lindsey.
I put my accordion back beside her and when I sat down, I placed my hand on the table. She placed her hand on mine.
This was going well.
We continued talking as a guy pulled a laptop out of a bag, ordered a coffee and started tapping away. Under slightly different circumstances, that might’ve been my evening, I thought.
“This evening has been so. Much. Fun,” Lindsey said, leaning up close. I’m having a great time.”
“So am I,” I said. For a first date — er, non-date — after getting separated, this was a pretty good start. There’s also something special about doing this while travelling.
If I had any worries, it wasn’t about how things were progressing, but about how much wine Lindsey was putting away. She was getting a little wobbly.
“So much fun, that we should spread it around!” she declared.
She turned to her right and looked at the guy at the table beside us, who was working away on his laptop.
“You…” she said, “should join us!” She pulled his table right up to ours, nearly knocking his laptop off in the process. “Come! Have some fun!”
He closed his laptop and slid himself on the banquette to Lindsey’s side. “I’m Dave,” he said, shaking both our hands.
Things had been going so well so far, so I figured that I could handle this little interruption. After all, this hadn’t started out as a date, and simply saying “No, Lindsey, you are not turning this into a party of three” would probably just making things worse. Besides, she and I had been connecting all night. This was just some random guy who I could hustle away after a couple of minutes.
Dave joined in our conversation easily, and Lindsey had more wine. The last two glasses brought her past the tipping point, and her wobbliness increased. She was also getting more boozy touchy-feely, and since she and Dave were sitting side by side on the banquette, Dave was getting all that action. I started formulating ways to get rid of Dave. I did not survive getting dumped and near-death in a hospital to get outplayed by some random chump.
I was starting on some suggestions to leave and go somewhere else when the topic of birthdays came up. “Mine’s June 6th,” said Lindsey.
“So is mine!” said Dave, with an amazed look that I was sure was fake.
“Bullshit,” I retorted.
He produced a driver’s licence. The date of birth read June 6. The discovery of this coincidence only endeared Dave to Lindsey even more, at which point she gave him a big hug and he slid right up beside her.
This is not happening, I thought. This. Is. Not. Happening.
It might have been the booze, or the surprising turn of events, or perhaps the fact that it had been seven or eight years since I’d last gone on a date, but I had lost control of the situation.
What followed was a bit of a blur; I remember still being part of the conversation, but I’d been turned into the fifth wheel. They were holding hands, Lindsey was wobbling more and more, and getting louder by the minute. Having lost my appetite, I left my croque madame half-eaten.
I began to contemplate just making an exit and leave with at least a little pride intact when the waitress came up to our table.
“We’re closing soon,” she said to all of us. Then she turned to Lindsey and said, “ma’am, we’re going to have to take away your wine. You’ve had more than enough.”
She took the bottle and said “Sorry…state law.” She took Lindsey’s glass and offered to package the remaining wine for me.
“No,” I said, still wondering if there was a way to get rid of Dave, even though I knew that this non-date was beyond salvageable. “That’s all right”. I made a mental note to never let this happen again.
“Oh…and sir?” continued the waitress. “We’re having a little trouble with your credit card. Could you come over to the cash register with me?”
“Um, okay,” I replied. This couldn’t be, I thought. I was nowhere near the limit — in fact, my balance should’ve been close to zero.
The perfect end to the perfect evening, I thought.
When we arrived at the register, the waitress took a quick look at our table, checking to see that the other two were occupied and out of earshot.
“Sorry,” she said in a low, nearly stage-whisper voice. “I just wanted to get you away for a moment. I’ve been waiting tables for seven years since junior high, and in all that time, I’ve never seen a date do a complete one-eighty like that.”
Taken by surprise, it took me moment to respond. “Well, it didn’t start as a date, so if it doesn’t end like one, no loss, right?”
“Well, you seem like a decent guy, you play a mean accordion, and you’ll make a nice catch for some lucky girl. You know what? I’m going to comp you on the frites.“
Stunned by this kind gesture — consolation fries — all I could say was “Uh, that’s really sweet. Wow. Thank you.”
Although I paid with my credit card, I left her a twenty-dollar bill in addition to a generous tip. This was the nicest, sweetest and most memorable thing that I can recall a server at a restaurant doing for me. If there was only going to be just one thing remaining to go right this evening, let it be this, I thought.
We all stepped outside.
“Need a lift, bro?” Dave offered as we approached his jeep. Before I could refuse, Lindsey took my hand and motioned for me to take “shotgun”. She hopped into the back and popped her head between the driver and front passenger seat, anchoring herself by putting her left arm around Dave. Dave turned on his stereo, which started playing some terrible Jack Johnson tune, heaping insult upon injury.
It was a mercifully short ride back to my hotel. With Jack Johnson providing an appropriately saccharine ironic soundtrack to the proceedings, Lindsey squeezed herself into the spot between the two front seats to give me a hug and peck on both cheeks. As I stepped out of the Jeep, she clambered into the front passenger seat and closed the door.
“Hey, Joey,” said Lindsey, sticking her head out the window. “I had a great time! Let’s do this again!”
I watched as Dave’s rear lights — along with Lindsey — vanished downhill into the San Francisco night.
Epilogue
I stayed in San Francisco for a couple more days and flew home Sunday morning.
Just after noon, on Monday, a little red indicator appeared above the “Friends” icon on Facebook. It was Lindsey, requesting to be my friend.
Ah, what the hell, it’ll be amusing, I thought and clicked “Accept”.
Moments later, a message from Lindsey in my Facebook inbox:
It’s always fun when you join us out on the town! Let me know when you come to SFO again!
By the way: the guy who drove us home, what was his name?
I wasn’t in front of a mirror at the time, by I suspect my response looked something like this:
That’s me on the right, on Thursday, January 26, 2017, celebrating 
