Wed 13

Oct

2004

My legs are steel springs

I have started running. When I tell people this—people who know me, or went to high school with me, or have ever seen me run—the color drains from their face and they make little cawing noises in the back of their throat. I’ve never been one for running; in fact, I’ve never been a big supporter of exercise in general. Not as a participation sport, anyway. But when I had Snow I had to walk her, and that didn’t seem to wear her out so I started running with her (if her tongue was hanging out by the time we got home, I got a point; otherwise she did), then Snow went back to her owner but for some reason I am still running.

There’s a nice track along a river near my house, so almost every morning I go out and run along that. Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

Guys who run past me are just showing off
Guys who run past me and say, “Morning mate, how are you going?”, like one bloke did this morning, are really showing off. (In response, I managed to insert, “Hi,” into an explosive exhalation.)
Girls are bouncy
I don’t care how well-ventilated they are, I’m not wearing those tiny running shorts that are slit all the way up your hips.

Now I have done the unthinkable and entered a 10km (6.25mi) fun run. It’s on the 24th of this month (and sponsored by Nike, which is apt), and my goals are:

To complete the course without stopping
Or dying
And before everyone else has packed up and gone home.

My Dad was a mad keen runner (some would say obsessive), so I feel incredibly stupid for only taking this up after he’s gone. I want to ask him a heap of questions. And I would have loved to have gone running with him. But I have his running watch, and I’ll be wearing it on the 24th, and in a way that’s almost the same.

Sun 12

Sep

2004

Max against the e-mail

I started answering my e-mail again today. As regular readers of this site already know, I am a long way behind on this. I have a page that lets you know exactly how long, and this has been standing firm at 12 weeks. Which is heinous enough, right? Except when life got a little crazy a couple of months ago, I stopped replying to e-mail and stopped updating this page, too.

So when I sucked it up and came back to my Inbox today, I knew it would be bad. But when I saw exactly how bad, I was dumbfounded. I am now 23 weeks behind.

This makes me feel very ashamed. What kind of person takes five months to respond to an e-mail?

So to everyone who wrote to me, I’m really sorry. I’m getting back into my e-mail now. And if you’ve been waiting for an answer since early April, you’ll be hearing from me any day now.

Tue 10

Aug

2004

Things I learned from my friend’s dog

The Sniffernator My friend Fleur has gone on a 5-week jaunt through Asia and I’m looking after her two-year-old dog, Snow. I’ve never had a dog before, so the experience is teaching me a lot.

So far I’ve learned that:

There’s a sleepy dog smell.
You don’t have to be very big to snore like a foghorn.
Snow has no setting between OFF and MAXIMUM POWER.
Due to some kind of biological quirk, the phrase “Come here” cannot be detected by Snow’s ears, but she can hear the opening of a door from the other end of the house through solid brick walls.
If you step backwards (at any time), you will stand on Snow.

I’ve also gained some insight into her thought processes. I’m pretty sure that her philosophy goes like this:

The purpose of life is to locate humans and stand as close to them as possible.
Disgusting = interesting.
- Corollary A: The fouler it smells, the more it needs to be sniffed.
- Corollary B: If it drips, if it stinks, if it does both at once, bring it in the house.
It is uncouth to push open a slightly ajar door in order to pass through it; rather, one should sit in front of it and whine.
When you gotta go, you gotta go.
The grass is always greener on the other side of a closed door.
The only thing more exciting than going on a walk is coming home from a walk, unless you’re already home, in which case the most exciting thing is going for a walk.
If you don’t know what it is, lick it.

Fri 30

Jul

2004

Chuck & me

So this is about six months too late and I actually got scooped, by myself, on chuckpalahniuk.net, but: I was on book tour in the US earlier this year, and this meant staying in a lot of fancy hotels. In Seattle it was the Alexis, which is apparently frequented by authors so, uh, frequently, that it has a special room for them: the “Author’s Suite.” This, I assumed, was a dingy sub-basement hole where people could yell down things like, “Max, don’t forget to do the washing,”* but no: it was swish as. The hotel asked (oh, how politely they asked) every visiting author to sign a copy of their novel, and the walls of the Author’s Suite were fairly groaning with these. I had lots of fun hunting down copies of some of my favorite books, and was especially happy to find a Fight Club. Chuck Palahniuk is one of my top two modern authors (the other is Neal Stephenson); I don’t see much resemblance between Chuck’s stuff and mine, but am very happy whenever someone else does. By the time I left, this is what the Author’s Suite copies of Fight Club and Jennifer Government looked like.

* (I actually wrote that and thought, “Crap, I have a load of washing in the machine.” I had to go and get it out before I could finish the blog. Yes, my life is that glamorous.)

Sat 03

Jul

2004

Thanks

I’m grateful and completely humbled by the response to my last post. The overwhelming kindness I’ve received from so many people has made an awful time much more bearable. I’m truly touched and amazed. Thank you.

Dad’s funeral is on Tuesday. It will be a simple, private service, as he wanted. Those who were close to him will help each other deal with the shock of his death, and, more importantly, celebrate his life. I’m thinking of telling a story about Dad’s running. He was a mad keen runner for the last 20 years of his life, even completing a bagful of marathons. But the memory that sticks in my mind is when he competed in a fun run around what I think was a national park. I was about ten, and course the most important thing in the world at that age is that your Dad is better than all the other Dads. So I loitered around the finish line with a certain trepidation. And then, bursting out of the trees—there he was! Pounding toward us, scattered applause breaking out, he crossed first… and kept running. He’d decided the course was too short, and he went around again.

To me, this was the most heroic thing that had happened in the world ever.

I was enormously lucky to have this man as my father, and on Tuesday I will give thanks for that.

Wed 30

Jun

2004

HTB

Hamilton Barry This is my Dad. He died yesterday. I can’t begin to describe what that means to me, so won’t try. But I want people to know about him; to know that he was a good person and good father.

Dad was the most practical person in the world. “When I go,” he said, “just put me in a cardboard box.” Today my brother and I had to choose him a casket. The funeral director handed us a page with a list. They started at twelve thousand dollars (metal, lots of gold) and worked their way down to four thousand (solid wood). “Then if you flip that page over,” she said, “you’ll see our particle board caskets.” They were one thousand dollars. I laughed. I knew what Dad would be saying.

Still, I can’t put him in particle board. He’s getting a solid wooden one.

I love you, Dad.

« Newer posts | Older posts »