Near the end of “Sopranos” season four, there is an episode that could have been based on a relationship I had in my late teens. For a moment I was sure they’d stolen my journal. I’ll describe the experience and if you ever watch the series, you’ll know. I dated this gal, Judy, from a rich family. She had no aspirations of ever getting ahead in the world because she already was [ahead]. As long as I also showed no ambition, things went smoothly.She had a sixth sense that told her whenever I was under pressure from the slightest thing, like a doctor’s appointment, or maybe a job interview, anything. Judy chose such moments to start doing little things whose sole purpose was to aggravate me to see how I would react. If I didn’t get angry, she’d say I didn’t care. If I got angry, she would launch into “amateur psychiatrist” mode, focusing on my reaction rather than on her provocation. “You have got to learn to control your temper,” that type of kindergarten taunting.
I found out later this streak ran in her family. As you can imagine, I was a bonanza and she had a field day. For a few months anyway. Then all communication except what was mutual tapered off. Anything together was talk all you want, but everything else was clamped shut. My mail went to a box, no scrap of paper was ever left lying around, I would never mention when I had upcoming mid-terms. I would never even say which mornings I had to get up early or she’d start an argument all night. Then she had the audacity to say I was doing this to aggravate her. I still miss Judy, but trust me, never again.
Trivia for today is more about the Panama Canal. The minimum fee one-way is $500, and that is for boats less than 50 feet long. They have a complicated calculation for the base amount per ship and then tack on the extras. To date, the most expensive toll was paid by the “Disney Magic”, cruise liner that coughed up $331,200 about ten months ago. Compare this to some jock named Halliburton who swam the canal in 1928 and got zapped for 36 cents. Each ship’s passage discharges 52 million gallons of fresh water into the salt ocean.
Arnel and Teresa were in the shop today. I’m afraid I was not good company. I’m still behind in my network maintenance. I had one customer walk out y’day because I would not let her put a $2 charge on Visa. Teresa took some videos on a fancy Kodak camera and I was more than pleased to see the resulting files were both small and clear. Good job Kodak, even if I couldn’t play MOV files on this computer. Can’t have it all. Today’s photo is from that camera, detuned to fit into this blog.
While researching Panama, I glanced at a schematic map of shipping lanes, and noted an anomaly southwest of the canal. Think about it, ships should only travel in straight lines between any two ports. Here, in the middle of nowhere there exists a major shipping lane out into the Pacific, as if the ships were sailing one-way. The last clue is that this is the only place in the world where ships do this (yes, they must turn around in the ocean and sail back). But why? You have until later this week to figure it out.
That’s when I also notice whale migration routes. The article stated that whales are the widest spread creature in the ocean (as of last month). This didn’t make sense when you consider whales have been slaughtered for hundreds of years and have been 90% wiped out. Yet, the map said they cover huge areas many times larger than any other type of “fish”. So I made a list and totaled the estimates of how many whales are on Earth. Sadly, there are just over 3 million left.
