wendy house

boys with fancy toys captured my childish attention. 
during my teens fast, animated, talkers arrested this heart. 
moody, anachronistic, lads provoked passion through my 20’s.  
the 30’s found unassuming social facilitators gifting eternal love.
what qualities will seduce this heart through its 40’s? 

Hope desires wisdom

written at 2am on a quiet, sleepless, balmy, summer Seattle night. (Wendy age 42)

on the wendy house since May 30th.  Excluding information from RSS feed-readers.

Top 5 navigated to posts

1. Device drivers to distration
2. Commenting on US commentators
3. Cargo pants parade
4. Charlotte chat
5. Portugal vs England World Cup Quarter Final

Top 5 navigated to categories

1. in the WILD
2. Kitchen drawer
3. Everyday Teccy
4. Eat it!
5. Being Wendy

Received more than 3 comments:

1. Commenting on US commentators
2. England vs Sweden.  Its personal
3. return of ‘in a state’
4. a walk on the wrong side
5. naughty word:  TOILET
6. Excel told me to do it
7. High spirits

This information will be used to blast-out-of-existence unpopular Wendyhome blog categories and focus my ramblings on things readers like to comment on (alcohol, toilets, excel, traffic directions,  soccer etc) or read (geeky teccy and footbally stuff) …    

(categories updates,  this post updated to remove broken links 28 Oct 2006)

On a warm weekday evening Chris Issak played a wonderful outdoors concert at Chateau St Michelle.  The shere volume of people attending the concert marred an otherwise exceptional evening. 

My companions arrived over an hour later than anticipated merely because of traffic congestion.  The Chateau provided sufficient parking and a shuttle bus service to carry customers to and from their cars.  

I have difficulty controlling my panic in crowds. Fear of Crowds. FOC  an appropriate acronym.  ”FOC! lots of people,  let me out of here!”

It was difficult to relax during the concert because of the powerful urge to skedaddle.  Normally I can ignore crowds by focussing on a conversation nearby, the main event, or some specific activity (e.g. watching a film). When this fails the Cinderalla Effect comes into play.  I leave.  Quickly.  Despite the excellent music,  good companions and cheerful nature of the crowd I left at 9.15pm before Chris Isaak had finished his main set. 

Mid-escape a girl stopped me “I love your outfit!” she beamed,   “I love your…. (pause while Wendy finds something to compliment) …facial piercings” I choked over my shoulder while dashing directly to the shuttle bus service.

Wendy FOC’d-off

overheard phrase:

’so I was manually trying to delete 3 binaries from the drive’

wendy-ist deconstruction:

• so = popular US phrase opener that appears be shorthand for ‘this is what happened next’ 
• manually = an unoffensive gender biased word that appears to mean not using any fancy tools.  rather than ‘men not using fancy tools’.
• delete = software technical jargon for ‘remove’
• binaries = things that can only have two states, like ‘true’ or ‘false’ rather then having a continuum of existence or any form or ambiguity. 
• drive = some computer part,  not something that you do in your car

phrase recast to wendy world:

‘this is what happened next i was not using any fancy tools to remove 3 things that can only have two states from some computer part.

born to waffle,  that’s me!

In the Wendy House,  road-trip excitements builds.  The first stage Greyhound ticket has arrived.  I have one outrageously oversized suitcase that can carry my tent, roll matt, sleeping bag, clothes for the week, wash kit and possibly even Flat Eric! All this is only half the check-in luggage for either bus or plane! 

The ‘C’ belongings will be hand luggage: computer, casio camera, cell-phone, chargers, connection cables, cash and cards….

(this picture was taken with the retiring fuzzy Canon)

(lengthy fawning entry warning)

Morrissey’s lyric writing skill invariably captures my imagination.  ‘you are the quarry’ is a personal favourite.  It has powerful lyrcis touching on religion, identity (homosexuality), class, celebrity, nationality and more…. 

Lyrics loose something without the broader context, nonetheless,  here are a few favourite phrases from songs on ‘you are the quarry’: 

• “Lock-jawed pop stars thicker than pig-shit nothing to convey,  so scared to show intelligence it might smear their lovely career”  
• “the woman of my dreams,  she never came along,  the woman of my dreams,  well there never was one”   
• “why do I let you get away with the things that you say to me? Could it be I like you?  It’s so shameful of me I like you because you’re not right in the head and nor am I and this is why,  I like you”    
• “I have forgiven Jesus for all the love he placed in me when there’s no-one I can turn to with this love”   
• “You have never been in love until you’ve seen sunlight thrown over smashed human bone”   
• “I’ve been dreaming of a time when to be English is not to be baneful,  to be standing by the flag not feeling shameful, racist or partial”  
• “The teenagers who love you,  they will wake-up,  yawn, and kill you”  
• “Educated criminals work within the law”  
• “she told me she loved me which means she must be insane”  
• “I’ve had my faced dragged in 15 miles of shit and I do not, I do not, I do not like it“
• “drinking Tea with the taste of the Thames sullenly on a chair on the pavement here you’ll find,  despair and I“
• “He stole from the rich and the poor,  and the not very rich and the very poor“
• “this world is full/ so full of crashing bores and I must be one/ cos noone ever turns to me to say take me in your arms and love me“

This whole track ”America is not the world” , despite not mentioning khaki cargo pants,  is resonantly haunting me: 

America/your head’s too big/because
America/your belly’s too big
and I love you/I just wish you’d stay where
you is/in
America/the land of the Free, they said
and of opportunity/in a Just and a Truthful way
but where the President
is never black, female or gay
and until that day
you’ve got nothing to say to me to help me believe/in
America/it bought you the hamburger/well
America/ you know where you can shove your hamburger
and don’t you wonder
why in Estonia they say
“hey you, you big fat pig”/”you fat pig”
“you fat pig”-?
Steely-blue eyes/ with no love in them
scan the world
and a humourless smile with no warmth
within/greets the world
and I/I have got nothing/to offer you
just this heart deep and true
which you say you don’t need
See with your eyes
touch with your hands – please
know in your soul
hear through your ears – please
for haven’t you me with you now?
and I love you
I love you
I love you
 

I anticipate this will be the first post in a rather lengthy Wednesday series of “why wendy’s single”

Reason # 1:  Hat fetishist

Evidence:

Date:  getting used to the hats will take some time (provides a solemn looking frown)

Wendy: life’s tough, I have every confidence in your being able to cope with the hats (is he serious or is that dry wit?)

later

Date: I think my son will like you but it will take time for him to get used to the hats and the nose stud

Wendy: family trait?

Later?  There wasn’t any later.  People who spend time angsting about my wearing hats have an unhealthily distroportionate sense of what is worth angsting over….

The UK doesn’t have Liquor stores like the US.  Liquor stores are a novel US cultural experience for me.  In Britain you buy alcohol including liquor in many (licenced) corner shops and supermarkets. There are shops called “off licences’ that specialise in selling Alcohol.  Off-licences normally stock wine and beer as well as liquor. 

While exploring a State run liquor store in Charlotte I stumbled across ‘EverClear‘ amongst the bourbons.  Bourbon is ‘America’s native spirit’.  Evidently you can’t purchase Everclear in Washington State.  I purchased this bottle out of curiosity. It is 95% alcohol,  190 proof.  That exploded a few brain cells and I hadn’t even taken the cap off the bottle. 

It looks like Meths.  It’s packaged like meths.  Meths is a strong spirit that can be drunk but is meant for other purposes.  In the UK you occassionally see bedraggled people on the streets drinking it.  I associated it with alcoholism and homelessness. 

Wendy:  what do you do with this stuff?  Drink it or use it for cleaning things?

companion #1:  Drink it.  Carefully

Wendy:  have you ever had any?

companion #2: No

companion #1: Yes.  Once.  At college.  Students drink it.

Other than take the lid of and sniff it I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my bottle.  Suggestions welcomed

A disturbing and bleak look at sexual, emotional, relationships within modern American college life 

 :-)

ratings explained

I don’t know any Americans that would enjoy this movie.  I could be wrong.

It gets three smiles on the uncalibrated, unstable, Wendy scale because I found it starkley, morbidly, fascinating with some realistic themes.  A brave piece of work by the director because arguably it didn’t include a character sthat you, as the audience, were meant to build an affection or affinity with.  A risky strategy that was one of many reasons the Movie gets a panning on Rotten Tomatoes. The themes that I noticed were:

• unrequited attraction.  The film’s title is appropriate because it would be difficult to describe the story lines as being either love,  lust or obsessions,  but they were ‘attractions’.
• emotional and physical abuse directed at self (suicide, degrading behaviors) and others (rape, physical violence).  It seemed so ‘accepted’ by characters within the film as the way things are.  I suspect this may be realistic.
• fantasy. several characters in the film appear to build attractions to others based on a constructed, fantasy, understanding of what those people are like not based on what we as the audience see and hear they are like.   
• loneliness.  This was intertwined with the fantasy thread.  Lonely people using their imaginations to develop relationships into something ‘more’ than they are.  Some of the characters in the film were being drawn into, or seeking, a fulfilling intimate relationship.  Two characters towards the end of the film expressed this with the simple phrase “you don’t know me“. 

The film completely lacked humour, it did include character development.  Unusually,  the direction of the development was not aligned with an ideal or telling a moral story.  This was powerful.  We see the impact of ‘bad’ experiences tainting people,  we see unrequited ‘attraction’.  We never get really close to any of the characters.  Some characters I didn’t like at the beginning of the film and I still didn’t like them at the end of the film.  That’s realistic. 

The rape scene was profoundly disturbing,  not least because the victim appeared to accept it as if this was to be expected.  For that one message the film is worth watching.  I know too many girl’s (and boys) who have that attitude.  They blame themselves for not being ’sensible’ (e.g. I should not have got drunk) and remove any blame from the perpertrator because ‘he thought it was alright’.  Somehow they justify thier role as victims of sexual abuse, rape.  That makes me extremely angry.  This film has value for portraying what I see as a moral and legal crime without having any cumeuppance for the offender or any real recognition of the crime by the victim. 

Unfortunately that’s real.

When? After

1. any insensitivity crime.
2. sending an email containing a rude word (examples:  Toilet,  Communion) to a large distribution list.
3. rear-ending the car in front (I haven’t done this… yet)
4. purchasing a new Sony Vaio laptop called Darling.

We’re going to focus on #4.  Darling didn’t come with any CD’s,  no recovery CD’s,  no copy of Windows XP CD.  Darling travelled light.  This lack of CD’s was a little distrubing at first,  then,  in all the excitement of a new pink laptop I soon forgot the lack of recovery CDs….   

can you guess what’s coming?

Tonight I made a back-up DVD using the Vaio software.  All should be well in the Wendy House when Darling decides she isn’t playing ball.  Do I know what I’ve backed up?  Um,  ‘the system’ of course!  What’s the system?  I haven’t a clue.  Will recovery give me all my programs,  anti-spyware and antivirus subscriptions,  favourite lists,  digital photographs,  and email?  Darned if I know.  Why don’t these programs tell me.  All it said was “recommended“,  not what that back-up covers.  System????  How VAGUE is that! 

Obviously,  I’ll find out what ’system’ is when I have to ‘recover’ it.

Summary

1. It’s firkin HOT
2. I spent a bundle on a replacement digital camera
3. Installed IE7.0 Beta 3 on my home laptop and regretted it,  then it worked and I got ditsy happy again.

3 blog entries for the price of one!  (free)

HOT details

As anyone in the US who’s ventured outside today knows, its worse than muggy.  It’s jennifer agitating, dangerously oppressive.  Niether my home nor my old car have those wonderful systems that produce cooled air.  I’ve already had 3 cold showers today and I haven’t even seen or sniffed a cute lad in or out of his khaki cargo pants.  A three shower day without sexing is way too hot for a northerner like me. 

In search of air conditioning I made a trip to a Mall. 

BUNDLE details

On flick-r I’d placed a couple of the photograph’s that I’m most proud of in a group that rate’s photo quality.  I was really pleased to find that some people would consider framing my pictures on the wall.  Thanks!  One person commented that if the picutre was more crisp it would be a lot better.  My Canon Powershot S330 digital camera is at least 4 years old.  It doesn’t have the resolution and quality of newer cameras.  It has had an exciting life;  its been swimming in moutain rivers in the early hours of the morning;  its bounced off numerus floors around the world;  it’s casing is cracked.  It’s a real trooper because it still works fine.  

The air conditioned Mall had a camera shop.   

I’m really looking forward to my ‘once in a lifetime’ vacation driving the I90 across America.  I will be documenting it with stories and pictures.  My Canon could do the job.  I do like taking pictures and I don’t like taking ‘fuzzy’ pictures which happens too often.  The result is that I want a new camera.  I spent hours playing with all the camera’s in the camera-shop.  Oooooh  fun.  Then I walked away with this:

can you see the ‘fuzziness’ added by my dear old Canon?  Enjoy it now because it wont be happening again…. future photographs will have HARD LINES.  Wendy gets hard on fuzziness.

How much is a bundle?  Approximately the same price as one of these list items:

• half a classy sofa
• two pairs of undiscounted italian designer shoes
• six mani & pedi cures
• ten full tanks of gas

I need another cold shower to calm down after parting with all that cash.

IE7.0 details

I want tabbed browsing and any other fancy features IE7.0 might give me.  I installed it.  Loved the tabbed browsing.  I now have 3 home pages,  Hooray!…. …..But…..

When I navigated to my ftp site to drop the above picture onto my webserver I discovered that I could log-in but I could no longer use drag and drop to move a picture to the server.  30 minutes of trying all sorts and I didn’t manage to use IE7.0 as an ftp client.  CRAP.  My workaround was to use the FTP client provided by the hosting service.  700 clicks and you’re done.  YUCK.  I tried to uninstall IE7.0.  I couldn’t find a way to do this. BOLLOCKS.  I’m angry-MAD.  Grrrrrrr….  …blame the heat….

late update:  IE7.0 works as FTP client now – must just take some ‘time’ before the controls work in liaison with the server.  I’m a happy bunny now 

wendy: I did this then that then this to the computer and it just farted at me.support:  pinch your not insubstantial nose between your thumb and forefinger then try then this and that..

Loop the conversation theme above for over an hour through 8 loops and different computer produced offences, then

 computer error message:   “go away,  I’m full of cow-pats and will explode to sprinkle them all over you and your not insubstantial nose”

support:  I can’t solve this over the phone. I’ll send someone round to spank your computer tomorrow“

Hah!  I normally have to spank my own computers around here.  Though whipping them with power-cables only fixes my mood.

Another support fellow glanced at the quagmire of equipment surrounding me ‘do you work in hardware production?’ prompting a complete break-down in Wendy-composure.   I fell over;  lay laughing in a matted muddle of cables ‘yes,  I think I do‘ this handsome lad helped me off the floor and began to teach me a thing or two.  Gosh!  My profuse gratitude almost exclaimed a proposal.  

’so as to’ is a three-sets-of-two-letters-cute phrase carrying two redundant words.  “in order to” is less letter-construction-cute while containing two redundant words. 

examples:

• kate went barefoot in order to hide the possibility that her socks have escaped.
• Microsoft is committed to…. (blah-de-blah) …so as to make it easy to install non-Microsoft products (Microsoft press release).

In both examples only the word ‘to’ does any real work.   Or am I missing some subtle spin these words add to a message?  Maybe it makes the person who uses them sound clever.  What do you think?

So as to sound clever I will be using more words than usual and throwing in some new words for good measure.  In order to avoid getting poked in the eye today I will not be walking within forking distance of Turdface.

to the Wendy House:  7.15am thru 9.10am

In the UK called a ‘power cut’ or a ‘power failure’

Everything went off accept my cell-phone,  my laptop and one of the 25 local wireless networks.  At 7.15am I turned on my laptop,  found the the local power providers number and called.  They were really on top of it.  They knew my address and told me the outage was caused by an ‘animal getting caught in the lines” they didnt tell me if the animal survived,  they did predict power would be restored by 9am.  Good prediction.

Meanwhile:

• how do I open my garage door without the remote control working?  I got to stand outside and chat to the neighbors,  none of them knew.  We found a torch and worked it out (not intuitive).
• No TEA!  disaster!
• No internet (the modem needs electricity),  wait,  there’s one unsecure wireless network available… …internet!  I got to discover how long Darling’s battery would last,  it lasted for the duration of the outage,  HOORAY!
• A chorus of smoke alarms persistently peeped,  the fluffballs were not impressed.

After everything came back on,  I checked the appliances that use gas and they’ve all got pilot lights and working,  impressive.  I had anticipated having to manually restart these using complex button pressing combinations.  Aren’t modern homes wonderful!

US people ‘rest in a room’.  It sounds meditative, contemplative, possibly even spiritual.  

When tour de france cyclists take a forced break they “commune with nature“.  This sounds even more spiritual than ‘resting’.

I tend to use the loo to have a pee or take a dump.  It is probably a strikingly similar experience without the spiritually inspiring label.   Maybe I need to put some religous symbols in my loo rest rooms to help local visitors feel rested.

Suitcases?
Pink wool bows, garrish straps, or inbuilt GPS can help
claim your case from a revolving line-up of indistinct baggage.
Luggage can even be tracked to nests in the Appalachian foothills.

Socks?
There is no stopping sneaky socks
siezing sovereignty somewhere secluded.
Socks cannot be tracked to any known foothills.

we blog = a pronouciation of web log that emphasizes the community (we) nature of blogging over the technology infrastructure (web)

Recommended reading for people who want to familiairise themselves with an influential Virgina Woolf book. 

2 smiles.  ratings explained

I am not planning to read another Virginia Woolf book. Probably because I am turning into a Philistine.

Mrs. Dalloway is the Virgina Woolf book that inspired the beautiful yet disturbing film ‘The hours“.  At first I found the book a tad boring.  Then I realised that Virgina was carrying me between scenes as if in one uninterupted camera-shot.  Visualising the scenes helped the dialog gain life and vibrancy.  My familiairity with the London landmarks cited helped make the visualisation rich.  I pictured an Ivory and Merchant production with a re-casting of the cast from the Hours.  Meryl Streep as Mrs. Dalloway.   This helped but I never bulit any strong connection with the book.  I found it difficult to empathise with the characters’ interests,  obsessions,  ways of being.  Here’s a sentence that illustrates how I found the book:

“going and coming, beckoning, signalling, so the light and shadow which now made the wall grey the banana’s bright yellow, now made the Strand grey, now made the omnibuses bright yellow“  p139

strength: comparing the buses on london’s strand to banana’s is visually clever and humerous.

weakness:  ‘going and coming, beckoning, signalling’ the words that failed to show me anything of value about either this character or the storyline.  I don’t see why this charater rather than any other compared buses to bananas and used these descriptive terms.  I failed to recognise the significance of this and many of the sentences.

Wendy warning: there is a Wendy on the loose in Charlotte.  Previous offenses may include but are not limited to: 

• erratic driving in a built-up place. 
• recklessly downing two 20 ounce glasses of ’star spangled ale’ in a brewery called ‘Hops’. 
• crossing a road while not completely sober. 
• 700 spelling and typing mistakes per 7000 words written.
• disorderly walking on July 4th

I have not yet been arrested. I am almost a potential criminal.   A potential criminal is someone who has been arrested (not necessarily guilty) for a crime.  Excel told me that the ethnic group of potential offenders in Charlotte predicts the type of crime they will be guilty of:  

• White people = underage drinking and driving,  robbing banks. 
• People of colour = ‘Disorderly“. 

The blog uses previous offences as a predictor of subsequent offences.  This constrains opportunities for offender rehabilitation.  If you persisitently treat someone as a criminal you reduce their opportunities for growth.  This is a ‘defensive’ rather than solution focussed approach to criminality.

the top 20 search queries registered by my web-service provider for the last month are:

Can you see the themes?  With the exceptions of searches # 16 and #17 I suspect these searchers actually found something relevant to their search,  even if that relevancy was just another link!  I wonder what answer #17 found.

A little creative navigation lead to an unexpected whirlwind tour of Charlottte with no injuries,  tears or smudged make-up.  RESULT!

Wendy:      which way?

navigator:  turn left,       NO!      the other left,     the one that isn’t right

navigator:  you’re right we should have used the left on your right…   ….errm…  …actually we should have used the left straight ahead

navigator: the other way,  the way we’ve just come,  the left that is 180 degrees the other direction

wendy:  WEEEeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

A descriptive term for something that looks or behaves like a mug?

In Charlotte the weather forcaster predicts hot, humid, thunderstorms and an ozone ‘code orange’ alert. 

Muggy

We should not drive anywhere,  paint anything and only re-fuel cars in the evening.  We can drink two dozen mugs of Arnold Palmer then ask the server ‘who is Arnold Palmer’?  The server’s amazement at my not knowing this golfing basic is evident.  Think jaw hitting floor.  Ooops.   

The BBC reports that 128 pre-teen children in England are going to dance around a May pole while holding ribbons and weaving around each other.  Ideally without any falling over, kicking,  or tying unanticipated knots.  A traditional pre-christian celebration.  

Maybe the “Derby days’ celebrations here this weekend were also a ’silliness safety valve’.

This summer I’ll be travelling the I90.  The longest (3,113 miles) interstate in the USA.  Riding in a red 1974 Chevrolet truck with AAA coverage.  The major cities we’ll pass through include:

Seattle, Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Missoula, Butte, Bozeman, Billings, Sheridan, Buffalo, Gillette, Deadwood, Rapid City, Wall, Mitchell, Sioux Falls, Austin, Rochester, Madison, Rockford, Chicago, Gary, South Bend, Toledo, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady, Albany

Apparantly it has a dangerous 90 degree bend in downtown Cleveland called ‘Dead mans curve’,  exciting!  

Other than the tent,  sleeping bag sun block and cell-phone charger,  I have no idea what to pack for a road trip across America.  Suggestions?   This probably calls for a road-trip hat-purchase.  To help me think.

A sticker on the underside of my shoe says:

Synthetic upper. Man made sole.

Woman made upper? Machine-made upper? Synthetic sole?  The sole looks like machine moulded plastic rather than ‘hand’ made by people.  It all smells like plastic to me. I wonder why the sticker doesn’t say something like

plastic

or, to be more specific:

made by people and machines from plastic

 ABC World Cup Soccer commentator says

“nerves of steel to do it in a final like what he just did“

Commentators reflect and model the language of their target audience.  Is there anything actually wrong with this phrase?  I don’t know why it made me wince,  but it did.

A local celebration of specialness involved walking around in khaki cargo pants demonstrating evidence of fertility (children) herded on bicycles.  At least,  that’s what it looked like to me.  Me = Furriner.

I was baffled by the city parade today.  “What are we celebrating?” No-one seemed to know.  “It’s Derby Days“,  “What’s that?”.  The sheer abundance of khaki cargo pants was overwhelming.  Is there a conspiracy to reduce visual diversity?  Even women appear to wear variations on the theme.  In this city the dress trends appear to conspire to dampen evidence of diversity.

Dad’s insight is on target: 

Wendy:  when did mum go through the menopause?

Dad: when she was 57 and we’re still suffering!

Wendy:  that’s 15 years before I join her in making us suffer.

Dad:  You wont wait for the menopause to do that.  You’re too impatient.

Swedish lady: “are women treated as equal in England?”

Wendy: “um,  it varies…”

Swede:  “…I think women in America are treated equally at work,  but not at home.   They have the ‘princess phenomena’ here… …I don’t understand it…   ….you know what I mean?”

Wendy: “I KNOOOOOW.  I don’t understand it either”

Swede: (rearranges her face to look like she’s eaten a sour grape and is about to puke)

Wendy: ‘OH YES!!!!!‘  (immitates swede’s pre-puke face)

(mutual raucus, Ikea-furniture-destroying, laughter)

Unfortunately the princess phenomena is not fatal and is contagious.  The USA is exporting it through mass media.  I suspect the current existence of a Swedish and British monarchy has partial innoculatory power against this contagion.  Or it could be our viking genes making us too tough to tolerate princess-y-ness without puking on them.   Thankfully, some USA females appear immune including all my female friends.  Phew.  Maybe they’re part Viking too?

Wendy princess-y-ness-produces-puking

I saw a Leyland doubledecker bus in Seattle. Whooopie!!!

Instant over-excitement. 

I shouldn’t read the branding on bus-grills while driving.  It’s one of my naughty habits.  I think it was a Leyland “Olympian“.  An Olympian bus with views of the Olympic mountains imported from Britain built by the British National motor industry with engineering specialism from Bristol. 

I’m getting all soppy again.   Time for more Tea.

This passport is a replacement for a passport ‘Declared LOST’, urgh.  I anticipate delays and humiliation at US immigration.   My new 10yr UK passport ID page has this special warning printed on the back:

Pretty illustrations of different birds on each page and dual language (English and French) almost make up for the likely extra detailed questioning when trying to get back into the US.  Sigh.