Wootopia.net

A bundle of appetites

Stitched together by memories

Fed by sensation

Unspooling through time

Life’s been fairly quiet recently. Started a new web development consulting project, have been bowling regularly, and watching the 2008 Presidential campaign with interest. I’ll probably throw some cat pics into the photo section soon. I’m actually running low on photos to post, since I’m not much of a shutterbug.

I’m in Baltimore, attending a conference on Academic Computing. I was out for dinner, and as I came back, I had an experience that mystified me for a good thirty seconds. I’m walking in the door, just as another gentleman is walking in, and the doorman greets the other guy with a “Welcome to our hotel, sir” and me with a “Welcome back, sir.” I saw the doorman on the way out, and for a good twenty seconds I was surprised he remembered me. I didn’t think I was that memorable.

And then it occurred to me that the other guy had luggage, and I didn’t, so that I was already checked in was probably the obvious assumption for the doorman to make. Damn, for a moment I felt special…

Yesterday, I received some very unusual mail. The label indicated it was from my alma mater’s finance office, so I opened it up expecting it to be a bill of some kind. Inside were two sheets, labeled “Federal Perkins Loan Promissory Note” at the top, my signature at the bottom, and “PAID” stamped in red across the body of the sheet.

Back in November, I received the quarterly statement for one of my loans, expecting the usual quarterly payment, but the “balance remaining” also caught my eye. “Hmmm, I think I could pay that off right now, over a year early…” I muttered, and then ambled into the living room to commune with my bank’s website. A few minutes later, “Yup!”

I don’t like to be in debt. I acknowledge it as a necessity of modern life, but I never enjoy the state of financial obligation to others. “I’ll consider this my Christmas gift to myself,” I thought, as I filled out a check for the remaining sum.

I hadn’t thought too much about it since then, until the two notes arrived yesterday. The first one had been signed in 1998, and the second one a year later. These forms have been sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere for the past decade, just waiting to be set free. I thought about the much-younger Woot who filled that form out in ’98, who had no idea of the adventure on which he was about to embark. I sat and remembered for a bit, and then smiled that something, small in the greater scheme of things, I had started ten years ago was now complete. Payback. And then I got to thinking…

As the sun goes down behind it, a door falls off it’s hinge, and a figure strides out in slow, confident steps away from the warehouse. Dark pants, dark shirt, framed by black books, dark hair, and a long ebony coat. Even the figure’s pale face is broken up by large, wraparound shades. He pauses for a moment, 30 yards away from the building, to pull out a pack of cigarettes, draw one out, and slide the pack back into one of the coat’s many internal pockets. As the hand withdraws, the gleam of a shiny silver lighter can be seen. He lifts the lighter to the tip of the cigarette, and strikes.

The warehouse behind him erupts into a fireball, shattering windows for half a block around. The concussion sends burning wood, jagged metal, and razor-sharp glass sailing around the man, slightly tousling his hair. He takes a deep drag, unconcerned about the raging blaze behind him, indifferent to distant sounds of sirens. Standing and smoking, he is an unmoving shadow before the brightly burning blaze.

Finishing the cigarette, he drops it to the ground, then steps on it while turning partway around to look at the building.

“It’s like they say, Federal Perkins Loan…”

The fire roars it’s fury at him.

“Payback’s a bitch.”

He then turns his back on the conflagration and hops onto the waiting motorcycle, and rides the growling beast into the waiting arms of the city and it’s newborn night.

Yeah, I like action movies too much...