Saturday in the Gold Country

[mdlbear]

Yesterday's wedding was wonderful -- outdoors on the top of a hill, with a stunning view and perfect weather. The site, the couple's new home, will be opening as a winery in 2010. For now the "winery" is a huge metal barn, which is where they held the dinner. They rolled up the door on the west side for a perfect view of the sunset.

The bride's parents are old friends. Dave Uggla, who graduated from Carleton College the year before me, is probably the only person in California whe remembers me without a beard. I met Joyce folkdancing at Stanford, and we shared an apartment for a couple of years before Dave moved in (and I moved in with Colleen). Joyce and their son Jordan are members of Tres Gique. Their daughter, Linea, is less than a year younger than our daughter chaoswolf.

 

We got lost getting there. Twice. Turns out that the big sign welcoming you to Fairplay, California is not on Fairplay Road but on Grizzly Flat. There's a house at the same address as the winery. Oops. I remarked at one point, after tempers had cooled a little, that the whole thing would probably have been highly enjoyable as someone else's LJ post.

In the morning after breakfast we decided to explore in that direction; I got thrown off by the fact that the directions we had from Google Maps, while accurate and suitable for coming from the motel (West on US50), were highly misleading when coming East from Placerville. We tried to go back from Fairplay by unwinding the directions, when I discovered that both Kat and Colleen had totally misunderstood my unwinding request, but in totally different ways. We ended up far off course and in bad temper; I'll get into that under the cut in case you want to skip it.

 

We were coming from Placerville because we went there for breakfast (or brunch). We were looking for someplace to have Hangtown Fry, and wound up at the Buttercup Pantry, which advertizes itself as the "Home of the Hangtown Fry". Never mind that they also advertize themselves as having opened about a century after that dish was invented, for a miner who ordered the most expensive items on the menu after striking it rich. He got oysters, eggs, and bacon. Yum. I don't think that smoked oysters are strictly authentic, but the total effect was definitely made of yum.

We'll be back at Buttercup this morning, though I'll probably try something else.

 

As seen from the River, the little dance we do when I get lost driving has some interest. You see, when I'm trying unsuccessfully to iron out a discrepancy between the directions I'm being given and my memory of the map, while driving, I get something in my voice that Colleen interprets as panic. I think it's more like barely-controlled annoyance at my inability to make myself clear while unable to concentrate on doing so, and at my navigator's inability to reason logically about directions when we're not exactly on the script. It's made worse by the fact that everybody is getting more and more upset; I can think clearly when upset, but Colleen and Kat apparently can't.

Colleen also didn't understand my need to get back to a familiar location and reconcile the map with the directions, either. I generally interpret a discrepancy between two inputs -- my memory of the map and someone else's reading of the directions, in this case -- as a danger sign. I don't know which to trust.

We never did get to do any wine-tasting (though the wine at the wedding was excellent, as one might expect, and made up for the lack). This occasioned an argument, too: I could hear the disappointment in Colleen's voice, but she said "no" when I first asked her whether she was disappointed. A lifetime of social conditioning will do that. But it's disastrous for someone like me who can't read people very well, and has to get accurate feedback when I try to confirm my guesses. I think the normal expectation is that somebody will understand the tone of voice and interpret the polite denial as a subtle request to leave the subject alone. I don't do subtle, and don't trust my ability to "read" people.

It's exactly the flip side of what happens when we get lost and Colleen interprets my reaction as panic: it's what her experience with other people has led her to expect in that situation, and she doesn't believe me when I explain that it's just frustration and an inability to multitask. No matter what I sound like, I do not have any of the physical or emotional symptoms of a panic attack when I am trying to frame questions simple enough that an inexperienced and increasingly emotional navigator can give me the answers I actually need rather than the answers they think I need. While driiving in unfamiliar territory.

What I do have is a total inability to control my tone of voice: I can't keep the frustration out, and I get loud in an attempt to ask long, detailed questions wilet being interrupted by guesses at what the navigator thinks I want to know. Sometimes they're right, but I need to ask the question in a way that will ensure that I can correctly interpret the answer.

I'm probably never going to get this "being human" thing right, am I?

Well, it was a good wedding, and we ended the day contented and safe. I'll take that any time.

Comments

You might be onto something ...

[idea-fairy.livejournal.com]

It seems to me that this meta-analysis of what's going on in parallel with what most of us see as the nominal "communication" channel could be quite valuable to aspiring screenwriters and novelists and such if you could somehow codify it and teach it. It could also be handy for anyone running (or even just participating in) business meetings.

Of course you'd need to be able to "read" a wider range of styles than just yours and Colleen's, but if you (with or without additional input from others) can do it you might have something worth pursuing commercially.

How is the market for "Self-Help for Geeks" books (or videos or whatever) nowadays?

Re: You might be onto something ...

[mdlbear]

Unfortunately, "reading" people is one of the things I'm very bad at, though these writing exercises are helping a little.

No idea what the self-help-for-geeks market is like; I don't think geeks tend to read self-help books. But I intend to find out...