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Vacation to the north, part 4

2010-09-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Thursday & Friday, 8/12-8/13
We took a train from Toronto to Stratford to see two plays at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. The train station at Stratford was just like the kind of quaint little small-town station you might see in a 1940's movie. We got in at 1 in the afternoon with just enough time to drop our stuff at the Queen's Inn and hustle off to see Jacques Brel Is Alive and Living in Paris, a revue (which had a long off-Broadway run in the late 60's) of theatrical cabaret songs by Belgian composer Brel. Canadian actor Brent Carver, winner of a Tony Award as Best Actor for Kiss of the Spider Woman, was the star, though the entire cast of four (below) was fine.

The Queen's Inn was as charming and quaint as the train station, as was the entire town. We spent much of Thursday and Friday walking along the lovely Avon river, watching the swans, lovely from afar, a bit scary on land, and shopping along the town's main drag. The grounds of the Festival Theatre were also quite beautiful, with a large and colorful garden out front. We spent a fair amount of time in the Theatre Shop, filled not just with knick-knacks and t-shirts, but also lots of books (Shakespeare- and theatre-related) and DVDs.

Friday morning, we went on a backstage tour of the Festival Theatre, the main theater of the four in town at which the plays were going on. That night, we saw Christopher Plummer in The Tempest. While the play is not one of Shakespeare's best, this was a grand production, and the first time I've seen a Shakespeare play in which every line was articulated clearly by every actor. The acoustics in the lovely theater were surely partly responsible, but so was the professional cast. Plummer, at 81, was grand, showing no loss of energy or abilities, and the effects and lighting were superb.

Saturday was a travel day, with an early train back to Toronto, and a bus from there to Niagara, then a drive home, arriving around 10:00 Saturday night. A memorable trip--I was glad to have seen the Falls, though I'm not sure I'd want to go back, but return trips to both Toronto and the Festival are possibilities.

Vacation to the north, part 3

2010-08-31T18:21:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 8/10:
This being my birthday, I woke up to lots of nice greetings on Facebook (Don bought a brand new shiny laptop just in time for the trip and we had wi-fi practically everywhere, even on the trains). Above, the elegant lobby of the Fairmont Royal York. We started the day at the Art Gallery of Ontario which had a nice exhibit called Drama & Desire, about the influence of stage productions on artists of the 19th century. We couldn't take pictures inside, but the museum was very nice indeed, and I found a David online that was featured in the exhibit:

We walked through Chinatown; we entered and summarily backed out of two restaurants because of my unease with unfamiliar cuisine (one Chinese dim sum, one Jamaican) and hard-to-figure-out dining formats, but finally ate a nice lunch at Rivoli's. Did some book shopping at Chapters, a Canadian Borders, and had a wonderful birthday dinner at an Italian restaurant called Il Fornello; I had a fabulous gin martini (w/3 olives, always a good sign), a very good chicken & pesto cream sauce pasta, and for dessert, some Black Sambuco--which, as the waitress pointed out, was actually a deep purple color when swirled.

Wednesday, 8/11:
To Chez Cora for a breakfast of yummy crepes (a "Sunshine panini-crepe" to be exact); ate at a sidewalk table, a lovely perch for people watching on a delightfully warm and sunny morning. Shopping up at Easton Centre followed--found a couple things at Banana Republic. On to Glad Day, a gay bookstore, and Eliot's Bookstore, full of used book treasures, and purchases were made at both establishments. Had a late liquid lunch at the Library Bar in the Royal York--and an "After the Frost" which was vodka, ice wine, and Grand Marnier. See the atmospheric bar below:

Dinner was at Pizza Rustica (had tuna pizza), at another sidewalk table. I normally don't choose to eat outside, but both times we did here, we had good experiences. The rest of the evening was spent strolling around the Financial District and Old Town, which was on the pleasantly funky side. I'll close this post with a picture of a sculpture outside the Art Gallery, probably a Henry Moore, though I forgot to check the plaque (I'm such a philistine). Last few days coming soon...

Vacation to the north, part 2

2010-08-29T19:08:00.000-07:00

Sunday, 8/8:
Up bright and early to ride the Maid of the Mist, the boat that takes you right up to both falls. You wear these cheap blue ponchos (which Don saved and brought home) so you don't get soaked. They do help, but still, you get wet. It's quite fun, though at its closest and most turbulent, all you can see is a wall of wild white wetness. First, a picture of the Maid of the Mist from land:

Next, land from the Maid of the Mist. Our hotel is the Dixie cup-shaped building in the left clump of buildings (you can click on all the pics to enlarge).

Next, my favorite picture, of people on the boat taking pictures.

The rest of the day was spent walking around the cheesy part of town, which is most of it, with its wax museums (we visited the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum) and carnival-like attractions (we did not visit Dracula's Castle). There are also some lovely park areas along the Niagara Parkway, where we saw a statue of famous engineer Nikola Tesla:

Lunch was at Elements back at Table Rock--so-so food but we were seated at the window overlooking the falls, so it was memorable. Dinner was at a hotel restaurant called Coco's Steakhouse: so-so food, a terrible Singapore Sling, and a hundred dollar tab.

Monday, 8/9:
Breakfast at an IHOP; good but way too expensive. We strolled around the town part of Niagara Falls again, saw an IMAX movie about the falls, and stopped at an Orange Julius--I love Orange Julius, but I don't think there are any left in Columbus, so it was fun. We then took a half-hour drive to Niagara On the Lake, a cute little resort town where the Shaw Festival was in full swing. Quaint shops and little cafes. Had a delicious coconut macaroon at the Irish Tea Room.

That afternoon, we took a two-hour train trip to Toronto. It took a while but it was so civilized--plenty of leg room, no seat belts, a food car, fairly large bathrooms, and no standing in long security lines with your shoes off. Got into town after 8 so we checked in at the Fairmont Royal York, a elegant hotel right across the street from the train station, smack in the middle of downtown, and took a quick nighttime walk around the area. The CN Tower at night was quite a sight, though I didn't feel the need to go up that high. Days 4-7 coming up.

Vacation to the north, part 1

2010-08-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

This being our 20th anniversary year, we decided to splurge on a vacation with a little more scope than just visiting New York City or Chicago or a city with a knitting convention (that would be last year's trip to Portland, Oregon). There's nothing wrong with any of those cities--New York is infinitely visitable, and even though we've been to Chicago four times in the past 10 years, we've pretty much covered the same ground there each time: the Loop, the shopping mile, Millennium Park, etc., so I know we could expand our vistas there.

But twenty years seemed to call at least for something different. Our first plan was a train trip; Don has always wanted to do one of those journeys where you go through the Western National Parks, but those are hugely expensive. Instead, we decided on a Northern trip, at least as far north as I could get excited about going: Canada. We (OK, Don and a travel agent) planned an eight-day trip that involved 1) driving from Columbus to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls; 2) 2 nights at Niagara; 3) leaving the car in Niagara and taking a train to Toronto for 3 nights; 4) taking a train to Stratford for 2 nights for the Shakespeare Festival; 5) train back to Toronto, bus to Niagara, drive home. (BTW, the picture above is of us a few years ago on a plane, but trust me, we still look exactly the same ;-)

I've never been out of the country except for a couple of day trips from Tucson to Nogales, Mexico when I was 10 years old, and this called for my first passport, which made me feel so grown-up. We bought a Toronto travel guide, did some minimal planning for sightseeing and shopping (books for both of us, yarn for Don), and got tickets for two shows at Stratford. And we're off...
Saturday, 8/7:
Six-hour drive to Niagara with a Google Maps printout, a road atlas, and a borrowed GPS that was nothing short of fabulous. Smooth drive, with a bumpy patch at the Peace Bridge at the Canadian border (see above); traffic lanes were poorly marked, resulting in us being in a lane that wasn't really a lane. But we got through it and got to our hotel, the Tower Hotel at Fallsview, around dinnertime. Our room on the 27th floor (the tower is mostly empty, with only four floors of rooms, 27-30) had a kind of sideways view of the American Falls, but the view from the 26th floor observation deck was a knockout.

We took the Vertical Railway down to Table Rock at the falls (pictured above), and spent some time taking in the truly majestic sight of the mighty falls. The constant roaring of the falls and the constant presence of mist in the area were both easy to get used to. Table Rock had lots of gift shops, slightly more upscale than Don was expecting--he's a big fan of the TV show Wonderfalls, which was set at a rather kitschy shop. A friend of mine from the library requested one of those pressed pennies that you can get at arcades, and since I'm always thinking of others, that was the first thing I did.

We strolled along the Canadian side and took some pictures--that's Don to the left, with the permanent Falls rainbow behind him--then had dinner at My Cousin Vinny's, a pleasant Italian restaurant which is apparently a chain, though I'd never heard of it. Had a good Italian beer, Birra Moretti. This was the first of the increasingly expensive and mediocre meals we had in Niagara Falls. Yeah, it's a tourist trap and I should have expected this outcome. Meals that we could have had for 45-60 bucks in Columbus (including cocktails and sometimes a dessert) were 60-80 bucks or more in Niagara Falls, and the food was completely undistinguished--not exactly bad but not worth the price. If we do Niagara again, I would plan to either eat fast food the whole time, or cut to the chase and go to the fancy-fancy places. Days 2-7 coming up...

Bad bio, great music

2010-08-04T15:46:00.000-07:00

OK, I'm vowing (again) to do something constructive with this blog. My original desire was to make this a place for relatively short posts, expanding on things I wrote on Twitter or Facebook. Let's try that one more time.

I finished a biography of Stevie Wonder yesterday, "Signed, Sealed and Delivered: The Soulful Journey of Stevie Wonder" by Mark Ribowsky. It was not a good book. He seems to have spoken to perhaps three people who know or knew Wonder; most of his info about Wonder's life is from magazine articles and interviews. He does an OK job discussing the music, but even there, analysis is given short shrift. The one interesting story he digs up has to do with how Wonder used and discarded Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, synthesizer whiz kids and the producers of most of his greatest albums (including Talking Book and Innervisions).

I wish books like this were honestly marketed, as being not really biography--you come away from this with no real sense of what Wonder the person is like--but music journalism. Had the author focused more narrowly on the music, I might recommend this, but I can't. However, the book has sent me back to the music; I popped Innvervisions in my car CD player today, and I've got Talking Book and Songs in the Key of Life ready for the next few days.

Saturday night at the Ohio Theatre

2010-06-13T09:42:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted here in a while, I guess because I haven't been doing much worth noting. But last night, we went downtown to the Ohio Theatre with our friends Sarah and Joe. The Ohio Theatre is a grand old movie palace (built in 1928) which, after some years of neglect in the 60's, was restored, most fabulously so, and is now Columbus's premiere showplace for plays, concerts, ballets, and in the summertime, classic movies. The Summer Movie series is in its 40th year and, though we used to make a habit of going downtown to see at least 5 or 6 of the movies each season, lately it's been difficult to get our assess off the couch to go see movies we've seen umpteen times, and in most cases, actually own on DVD. This summer, we're making more of an effort; in the season's first week, we've been to three of the four events: Rear Window, a double feature of the 1931 Frankenstein and the 1941 Wolf Man, and, last night, Singin' in the Rain.

The theater has a large ground floor and a huge balcony area, with a front loge, mezzanine, and upper balcony, with a capacity of 2700. The movies generally attract a nice-sized crowd--I estimated the Frankenstein/Wolf Man crowd in the balcony alone to be over 250, with more downstairs. Last night was about the same. If the movie we're seeing is a visual treat, we get there early enough to sit in the front row of the loge, an ideal place to have the movie image fill your view. But because of the acoustics of the building, the dialogue, especially with older movies, can be hard to make out in the loge, so sometimes we sit in the upper balcony--the screen looks much smaller, but the sound is perfect. Below, my three companions in their last row balcony seats:

The Ohio is a beautiful building and getting there early just to gaze at the ornate decorations on the walls and ceiling is great fun. Below, the chandelier:

A view of the stage from the balcony:

A view of the boxes (which were never used for seating, only for looks) along the side of the auditorium:

The architecture includes many interesting features that the casual viewer may not catch the first time. My measly digital camera can't capture the rather rococo features on the walls and above the stage, but below is one of many faces at the top of many columns:

The outside marquee:

And finally, Clark Wilson, the organist who plays one of the few still-functioning theater organs in the country for a half-hour before each movie, rising from the orchestra pit:

When we go again, I'll post more pictures.

An afternoon walk

2010-04-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

As my duties at the library have changed (reference alone, then ref and cataloging, then cataloging alone, then back to both, now back to cataloging), there has been one constant: my two 15-minute breaks are spent talking a quick walk with a colleague or two around the library neighborhood. This gives me exercise, allows a chance for debates about movies or TV shows (or the exchange of choice gossip), and once in a while, takes us past the Donut Kitchen for coffee or sweets. The other afternoon, I thought to take my camera along to document spring in the neighborhood. I am not a person of a horticultural bent so I have no idea what these trees, bushes and plants are called, I just know a lovely scene when I see one, so without further ado, our afternoon walk:

This last one relies on both the natural color of the tree and flowers, but also on the color of the dwelling behind:

Delicate spring morning

2010-04-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

It's been much warmer than usual for early spring here in Central Ohio--a record-setting 83 degrees yesterday, same predicted for today--and as I like warm weather, I'm cherishing every warm morning because I know it will eventually go back to normal (tomorrow, rain and 50 degrees, so they say). On the way into work, I was struck by the lovely delicate blossoms of (what I'm told are) the flowering pear trees that line Cambridge Blvd. Realizing that with the storms coming in tonight, this sight might be gone tomorrow, I snapped a cell phone photo of the street as I was driving. It doesn't do justice to the reality of the trees, viewed at sunrise, but it'll have to do.

What I do

2010-03-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

I guess I assume that when I say "I'm a library cataloger," everyone knows what that means. Then I remember, "Oh, yeah, six years ago when I was teaching college English, I didn't even know the occupation existed, let alone what a cataloger did." I make sure that every item in the library can be looked up in the catalog, so a patron can see a full bibliographic record that describes that item in detail. Remember the old card catalog cards that us Boomers grew up with? Basically, I make sure the information that used to be on those cards but is now accessed via computer (title, author, publication date, page numbers, subject headings, etc.) is correct and retrievable. [The image below is from OCLC (Online Computer Library Center)]

I catalog all of our library's non-fiction books, juvenile and teen books, and DVD's, so this also means handling every such item, checking for the cataloging info. For books, this is fairly straightforward, though I do have to flip through each book checking to see if things like indexes, bibliographical references, or plates ("primarily illustrative" pages which are not numbered--usually the glossy photo pages in the middle of many non-fiction books) are present. For DVD's, this means I have to sort out the cast members and other important credits, plot summaries, MPAA ratings, aspect ratio, and so on. Most of this is available via the disc container, but I often check IMDb or even pop the disc in a portable DVD player (for example, if there is conflicting information about the language tracks or subtitles on the disc).

Below is the bottom panel of the back of the container for Psycho. What I have to pay attention to: the studio and/or production companies credited, the stars, the producers, the writers, the directors, the spoken languages, the subtitle languages, the aspect ratio (whether it's full-screen or letterboxed widescreen), the sound format (Dolby Digital 5.1, or stereo, or mono, etc.). I also must note the special features, the original release year of the film, and the release year of the disc.

For most of the items I do, I get the basic cataloging info from a number of sources, usually copying and editing records from the Library of Congress or other libraries. Below is a record I worked on for a book called Reality Hunger; I have to make sure that the first few lines, coded with letters and numbers, correspond to various aspects of the book (pub date, format, presence of illustrations or index, etc.). Lines from 100 and below consist of fairly straightforward information.

After the bib record is complete, I have to attach item records to represent each individual copy. Below is the way that record looks to the patron searching our catalog:

Every so often, I have to do an original record for some godforsaken book or DVD that no other library in the world owns. Though we catalogers love to complain about doing this, truth to tell, it actually can be challenging and fun. I recently had to create an original for a DVD that was donated to our collection. It wasn't even a movie, it was a compilation of features about a sculptor named Fredrick Hart. That record, below, was created from scratch by me, based on having the disc in front of me (though it had less information on the container than most DVD's) and on scouring the net to confirm some of the information:

That took a good half-hour of work which was frustrating but kind of fun, for an item that will probably never get checked out of the small suburban library for which I work--it was a donation which was in good shape, so we kept it. Below is one day's worth of DVD cataloging I did recently, mostly oddities and older titles that were re-ordered or donated:

The rating labels and the call numbers on the non-fiction DVD's are also put on by me; I'm not just a cataloger, but a processor as well ;-) More about this endlessly fascinating topic (it really is to me, though I know it's not to you) as the mood hits me--and as I find fun things to pictures of.

Spring has sprung

2010-03-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the vernal equinox occurred yesterday afternoon, probably around the time that Don & I were walking to Starbucks for an after-lunch treat (he, an iced tea which he forgot to ask for unshaken, and me, a cinnamon dolce latte). I was blithely unaware that it was officially spring, but frankly ever since the snow stopped, right around March 1st (Central Ohio had measurable snow every damned day in February), it's felt like spring to me, and we have had a remarkably mild March so far. In the early evening, still not knowing about the equinox, I went outside and everything was so pleasant, I was moved to take a few pictures. As it turned out, I was capturing the arrival of spring. First, the pretty yellow flowers near our front porch--daffodils, I'm told--that survived the foot or so of snow beneath which their sprouts were buried:

For contrast, the ugly lump of ice/snow still left in the parking lot, despite several 60-degree days in a row. Of course, just a few weeks ago, this lump was a pile taller than a person, which went up far past the top of the brick wall behind it. (Kinda looks like The Blob, doesn't it?):

Finally, the gorgeous sunset, to which my little digital Kodak camera couldn't really do justice:

As I was snapping these pix, I was thinking, "If I didn't know better, I'd swear it had been a lovely spring day!" Now I come to find out, it was!

Stephen Colbert and I have coffee

2010-03-03T09:36:00.001-08:00

Not really, but as a Colbert fan, I was excited, first thing this morning, while I still had half-a-cup of coffee left, to be able to catalog the "graphic novel" collection of his comic strip alter ego Tek Jansen:

Snow. My. God.

2010-02-15T12:08:00.000-08:00

Another week, another snowstorm. 4-7 inches predicted in Central Ohio, with many inches still on the ground from the past two snowstorms. I'm snug at home this afternoon, though I'm also trying to make sure the balconies don't ice up anymore than they have so we won't get the water dripping down our front room and back room walls that we've had off and on lately. While I was popping open the balcony windows and sweeping off the snow, I took these pictures of the near-whiteout conditions: above is from the front, facing the street,; below is from the back, facing the parking lot and the rest of the complex.

Icy rainbow

2010-02-14T19:22:00.001-08:00

Our backyard rainbow wind-twirler has been encased in ice for a week now; with another snowstorm on its way and the temperature not forecast to get above freezing until at least Friday, it'll stay in ice for a while. I'm tired of winter.

Another snow day

2010-02-09T07:25:00.000-08:00

Today, February 9th, we got hit by another snowstorm. As I write, it's been going in for a few hours, but snow is supposed to continue to fall through the day into the night, with 5-8 inches forecast. Luckily, I had already scheduled a comp day off today (for Martin Luther King Day) so I can once again enjoy the snow as a spectator. After I came back from a grocery run, I went back out and snapped a few pictures. Above, the mailbox at 2042 with snow piling up. Below, a wall of snow piled up from the parking lot plowing of a few days ago. It's iced up and gotten dirty, but I imagine there will be more snow added to that soon.

Below, a view of snow on low-hanging branches that looked so pretty in "real life," but didn't translate that well from the camera.

Patterns in trees:

A row of townhouse back yards:

Around a corner:

Finally, my steps in the semi-virgin snow as I head back home:

February snow day

2010-02-06T06:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, February 5th, we got a good-sized snowstorm, dumping between 6-10 inches in the Central Ohio area. At 7 a.m. as I headed into work, the streets were dry and the air was clear and it was 35 degrees. The snow started to fall mid-morning and fell big and thick for the rest of the day. Though the library didn't close early, I took a couple of comp hours, skipped lunch, and left around 2:00. The following pix were taken from the snug comfort of my home. First, the view outside our front door:

Those clear tire paths in the snow did not remain that way for too much longer. Next, the view outside our back door:

From our bedroom balcony window, looking down at the base of the tree in the corner of our "yard" (small fenced-in patch of land):

The heavy snow-covered tree branches feet away from the balcony sliding-glass door:

Finally, opening the balcony door and craning out a bit to the east, for a view of the parking lot (which eventually got plowed--kinda):

I'd be nice to think I'll get ambitious and stroll about the neighborhood taking pictures--the bare trees do look nice with snow draped on them--but the reality is that, after a little shoveling, I'll probably spend the rest of the day inside!

Last Airbender trailer

2010-02-05T14:47:00.000-08:00

I'm posting a link to the Last Airbender movie just for my sweetie, who loves the animated TV show (which is actually called Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I guess they think the masses will get this confused with the James Cameron movie, so they've dropped the Avatar name). It's M. Night Shamalama-Ding-Dong, which doesn't bode well.

New desk!

2010-01-21T09:22:00.000-08:00

In preparation for becoming Head of Cataloging (that is, Head of Myself) in April, I now have a new cubicle/desk area, twice as big as my old one. It only took me a couple of hours to trash the place up with all my cluttery stuff, which I'm sure you're dying to see. First, a view of my area as you enter from the Tech Services front door:

A closer view:

One of the things I'm happiest about: room for a DVD movie-rating sticker dispenser, so I don't have to keep the sticker rolls in a messy drawer anymore. Also note the 4-Way nasal spray (at bottom left), to which I am addicted. Luckily, it is my only current substance abuse problem:

Pictures of friends, family, our late kitty Dodger, my new flourescent light, and a window view for a change:

Top shelf: what I cataloged this morning; bottom shelf: what I'll catalog this afternoon:

Finally, my computer screen, with Harpo Bear peeking around at upper left:

Snow day

2010-01-17T11:30:00.000-08:00

Here in Central Ohio, we've had a yucky but not especially bad winter so far. There's been measurable snow every day from Dec 27th to Jan 11th, and the highs didn't break freezing from Jan 1st to the 13th. This past week has been cloudy but more seasonally temperate with temps in the 30's (around 40 the last few days). No "official" snow days (no work due to snow) have been called yet, but I had a personal snow day on Thursday, Jan 7th; I took the day off in order to take the Christmas tree down--yes, I leave the tree up until Epiphany in honor of the Magi--and that happened to be the day when we got over 3 inches of snow, which began falling around noon and snarled afternoon and rush hour traffic. Luckily, my only errand for the day, once the tree was down, was to walk to Kroger's to get supper fixings. Here's the front of the Yarman-Ritchie residence about an hour after the snow started falling:

Next, the road in front of our place, with tire tracks, and the view of the other side of the street:

The huge tree that stands in our back yard (that is, the little fenced-in"cubicle" of nature outside of our sliding-glass doors); it was lovely with snow draped on it, but in the picture, it looks more like it's been toilet-papered. It was really snow, I assure you:

Finally, the Moonshadow Mikemobile (my Toyota Corolloa, factory color: Moonshadow) under a light blanket of snow:

10 days later, most of the snow is gone, and it would be nice to think that winter's had its say for the year, but I suspect that's wishful thinking.

Goodbye, Christmas!

2010-01-07T12:00:00.000-08:00

The official end of the holiday season came today with the dismantling of the Christmas tree. I used to follow my mother's lead and decorate all over the house for Christmas, but in the past several years, I've just gotten lazy; this year, we didn't put up our crazy nativity, with the Baby Jesus being watched over by Spider-Man and Wonder Woman while Queen Amidala accompanies the Wise Men (Hallmark ornaments, all), just the tree.

Early his morning, the tree was still whole...

... with presents still beneath:

After breakfast, the tree was denuded; the lights were taken down and the ornaments came off and were packed back into their boxes:

The last ornament standing, so to speak, was Don's tree-topper family heirloom:

Here's the tree with the top piece gone:

Me with my branch-removing-gloved jazz hands, taking a break:

Finally, by noon, the tree was down... long live the papasan chair!!

Twin sons of different mothers

2009-12-30T12:39:00.000-08:00

When Neil, our new head of maintenance, started working here this fall, everyone immediately thought he and looked alike. I didn't see it, though I do admit to noticing that we are both short of stature, have short hair, glasses, similarly shaped faces, and similar builds, and both seem to have generally cheery dispositions. But today, when we coincidentally wore similar sweaters to work, I did finally think, "Wow! We look like we could be brothers!" (That's me, the older "brother," on the left):

Christmas at the old homestead

2009-12-26T07:25:00.000-08:00

Some cell-phone pics taken December 24-25 while celebrating Christmas at my mom's house in Grove City. First, a "Merry" pillar candle on my mom's mantle, along with some greenery (and a familiar face snapping a picture:

A three-plate Santa Claus in the bathroom--apparently can tell if I'm naughty or nice even in there!:

A Santa's-helpers Radio City Rockettes ornament (which we bought for Mom as a souvenir of her seeing the Rockettes Christmas show here a few years ago) being used as a lamp-switch hanger:

A ceramic sleigh in the front bay window:

The dining-room light decked out in (artificial) greenery--it looks awfully pink, but that's the best I could do in color-correction:

A little tree, a stocking, and a poinsettia on the hearth:

Finally, the fireplace all aglow on Christmas morning, just before the Carnage of the Gifting:

O Christmas Tree

2009-12-13T11:33:00.001-08:00

Just a short post to save for posterity what our tree looked like for Christmas 2009, which is pretty much what it's looked like for the past 6 or 7 years, since we've had this particular tree:

Though I don't think that the number of ornaments we have is excessive (2 storage boxes), we have too many to put them all up on the tree. Here are a few that made it up this year. First, a kitty with a ball of yarn:

Next, a frosted glass wreath, a Santa holding a small tree, and a Harlequin figure who is tucked into the tree a bit:

Though rather blurry (my camera doesn't do too well with close-ups of small things), I hope you can see Dorothy below--her friends The Scarecrow, The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion are near her on the tree.

An skinny green elf (which is a more recent version of a well-loved ornament from my childhood) and a tiger in a Santa hat:

Finally, lined up in front of our (more or less obselete) laserdisc player, the characters from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, including a couple of folks from the Island of Misfit Toys:

Mountain climbing

2009-12-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

This has been (until the last few days) a remarkably mild fall; a few weeks ago, on a warm and breezy Saturday morning, my Hiking Buddies and I went down to Chillicothe to hike in the Great Seal State Park, specifically the Sugarloaf Mountain trail. The trail is short (around 2 miles) but steep, rising 500 feet in less than a quarter mile. It's really more a hill than a mountain, but still, it's a challenge to one's wind and balance. Below is the picnic area at the start of the trail.

Next, some trees and sky:

To the left is our intrepid gang as the hike started going steeply uphill. The tilt kind of sneaks up on you, as one minute you're hiking and chatting and solving the problems of the world, and the next minute, you're almost gasping for breath as it dawns on you that you are really going up a (small) mountain. Below, a tree with some crazy peeling bark (don't know if that's natural or the work of animals, and I'm not enough of a nature boy to research it).

We didn't quite make it to the very top, but close enough to realize that the view from the top would not be much better than from a few yards away, what with all the bare trees in the way:

Here I am, looking first suspicious of nature, then all butch and unafraid:

And here's Don taking a picture of me taking a picture of him. Even in nature, it can just get too meta sometimes.

Some nice pics of the sun and trees and a pond on our way down the trail--which was almost worse than going up, what with having to grab onto trees to stop from slipping and sliding on the dry layers of leaves covering the ground.

After the hike, here's narcisisstic me in the car window, and the Big Boy we did not stop at on the way out of town (lunch was actually at Steak and Shake, but their sign isn't as interesting).

BTW, I've had a hard time making sure I'm spelling "Chillicothe" correctly throughout, but not as hard a time as the drunken sailors who put together the official web site of the Great Seal State Park, where it is spelled with three "i"s.

Lost holiday?

2009-11-25T09:20:00.000-08:00

Every November like clockwork, my mother complains about Thanksgiving having become a "lost holiday." She thinks it's the red-headed stepchild of holidays. In the late hours of October 31st, all the stores take down their Halloween decor and displays and products, and replace them with Christmas decor, etc. There aren't even any traditional Thanksgiving movies--who really watches Spencer Tracy's Plymouth Adventure every year? "What happens to Thanksgiving?" she laments, "It's lost in the shuffle!"

I used to nod my head knowingly and agree. This year, however, I started thinking about her complaint and realizing that, while she has a point, she's not exactly correct. After all, Americans still celebrate Thanksgiving--time off work, big family get-togethers, traditional foods and activities, major movie releases, and the Macy's parade. I'll be heading down to Mom's tomorrow for the usual turkey and dressing and kidney bean salad and green bean casserole and relishes and pumpkin cheesecake, followed by the usual early evening bloat and mild stomach distress from eating too much.

Her complaint actually centers on two things:

1) Thanksgiving seems to be something to get past so we can start splurging on Christmas. For many consumers, Thanksgiving is mostly notable for being the day before Black Friday, the wild, out-of-control day of shopping. Of course, when Mom was younger, she was just as guilty of this as anyone else, what with our traditional trips to Eastland, Northland, or Westland on the Friday after Thanksgiving (before it had the name "Black Friday" attached to it). Now that she rarely takes advantage of this day, it's just the day after Thanksgiving for her.

2) There aren't enough commercial tokens or markers of Thanksgiving on the market. With aisles of Christmas merchandise out on the first of November, it's difficult for a self-respecting American shopper to find any Thanksgiving novelties, doo-dads, knick-knacks, or paddy-whacks to buy. Mom still decorates for each season and holiday, so she puts up fall stuff (leaves, gourds, bittersweet branches) in September. Halloween decor intrudes for a few weeks, but then it's right back to fall since she can't seem to come up with enough stuff to put on the walls and mantle that would specifically indicate Thanksgiving (a turkey, maybe a little Precious Moments pilgrim).

Mom takes this as a slap in the face at Thanksgiving, but really it's only a "lost" holiday at the mall, specifically at Hallmark stores--try as they may, they haven't turned Thanksgiving into a card-buying, gift-giving occasion yet. As a society, we still slow down for a day, gather with loved ones, and think about, if only for a minute or so, the things for which we're thankful (for me, that would be my mom, my partner Don, having a job in this economy, and Turner Classic Movies). You want a lost holiday--try finding Arbor Day decorations.

I'm a wild thing

2009-11-19T15:10:00.001-08:00

Though I should have been the perfect age for Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are to be a meaningful book for me (I was 7 when it was first published in 1963), I didn't read it until I was out of college and working in retail bookselling in the early 80's. I like Sendak's books, though my favorite is In the Night Kitchen, a dream story which reminds me of the old Little Nemo comic strips, and I would definitely have loved that book when I was 7.

My partner Don loves Sendak, and particularly Where the Wild Things Are; one of our favorite touristy side trips occurred in New York City a few years ago when we saw a major Sendak exhibition at the Jewish Museum. However, Don is boycotting the Wild Things movie, afraid that Spike Jonze will have made a mess out of a beloved book. I don't blame him; the current track record of turning short, thinly plotted children's classics into full-length movies is dismal--the recent Suess movies were roundly panned, and The Polar Express is one of the worst Christmas movies I've ever seen--and I sat through the first 20 minutes of the atrocious TV remake of Christmas in Connecticut, directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, I am interested in seeing Wild Things because the reviews have been mostly positive, and even the negative ones make it sound interesting. I may wait for the DVD.

But the other day, I wore my Wild Things t-shirt to work (see above). It was a gift from Don from early in our relationship, or at least I remember it that way: he'd gone off to a conference (I'm gonna say the American Folklore Society, and I'm gonna say it was down south somewhere), and it was one of the first times he was gone for more than a couple of days since we'd moved in together. He came back with this gift, a heavy green t-shirt with Max (the main character of the book) embroidered on it. It was definitely a bootleg item since, at the time, Sendak didn't sanction the selling of any products with his artwork on them. I'm no longer 100% certain of all the above circumstances, but since I remember it that way, it is so. It was an extra-special gift, and one which still fits me to this day.

Dawes Arboretum

2009-11-05T13:21:00.000-08:00

Before this fall becomes a memory (too quickly, certainly), I thought I'd better post my pictures from our visit to Dawes Arboretum, 35 miles east of Columbus, OH, near Newark, on a lovely Sunday afternoon in late September as the leaves had just begun turning. At the entrance, near the reception center, were these lovely purple flowers (I'm not really a nature boy, so I will not be able to identify any of the living things in these pictures except people):

First, we went over to the east side of the arboretum property, which is considered the "adventurous" side, with hiking paths which are of "uneven terrain" and sometimes a bit mudluscious. Hikers who venture over there, through a tunnel that goes under the highway, are supposed to register at the office when they head out and sign in when they leave, I guess for safety's sake, but honestly, the trails there, though not as "polished" as the other walkways, are hardly difficult or even particularly "adventurous." It's a large plain with thickets of trees and fields of natural things (flowers, things that look like wheat--I told you I'm not a nature boy) and the paths are usually much emptier, so you feel like you are, well, out in nature.

The tunnel over:

One of those fields of living plant things that are lovely to look at:

The way in:
I wanted to call this "The road not taken," but we took it:

Injured (to say the least) tree:

The sky above:

When we returned safely to Dawes proper, we noticed a small garden with odd scupltures, seemingly made with natural materials. First, some sort of crazy animal:

Then, some paganish Wicker Man-like figure, bending in the non-existent stiff breeze:

Next, off to the Japanese gardens, with small hills, a reflecting pond, a rock garden, and a mediation shack. Very lovely, except when the impolite families felt it was OK to let their children mosey through the rock garden in a very un-Zen fashion. First, the rock garden:

My friends walking across the pond:

A gentle curve in the pond:

Background to the garden:

Finally, two more pictures on the way out of Dawes:

I imagine the leaves are now mostly gone, but they were lovely while they lasted.

Fall in the front yard

2009-10-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

A couple pictures I snapped this morning of yellow leafy autumnal prettiness in our front yard.

Fate, even in Romanian

2009-10-20T12:24:00.000-07:00

Our library has a donation room where old books (from the library and from patrons) wind up for consideration for our periodic book sales. Once in a while (who am I kidding--every day) I pop in the room to see if anything interesting has turned up. The other day, I saw a dusty old book, which is like catnip to me, and picked it up. It turned out to be a Romanian/English dictionary from the 1980's (not so old, really), but what was funny was the page to which I opened it. Of course, you have to know that my partner is a knitter extraordinaire to see that this seemed like a fated act:

Now if he ever goes to a sheep and wool festival in Romania, he can start a conversation off right.

A midsummer night's play

2009-10-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

Actor's Theatre of Columbus has a lovely Shakespeare in the Park summer series every year, held at Schiller Park near German Village. Back in August, we went to see As You Like It, which now holds the record for the Shakespeare play I've seen performed live the most (three times). This production was a little unusual in that life-sized puppet-type figures (held or carried by the actors who voiced their parts) were used for some supporting roles. The below picture shows one of the actors with two of the puppets:

Folks who sit on the lawn have to watch from their blankets; folks beyond the sidewalk can sit on whatever chairs they bring. We went with some friends and we all brought picnic dinners. Some among us may have broken the open-container law and brought some wine, but I wouldn't know about that.

It was a clear and lovely summer evening with a warm breeze and very few bugs; with the fun play, the good actors, and fine company, we couldn't have asked for a better time, and it was free to boot. As a plus, the handsome male lead, Ryan Hooks, stopped by to visit with our sociable group before the show.

Weren't we lucky?

Sock Knitter goes Green

2009-10-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

Actually, my partner, an evil genius sock knitter extraordinaire (hence his license plate, above), has used "green" locomotion for quite a while, but he just traded in his Honda Civic hybrid for a new Honda Insight, also a hybrid, and one that makes driving into a video game. When he's driving economically, his digital speedometer is green (when he's not, it turns blue) and he gets awarded leaves--enough leaves eventually turn into trees. The first time he gets into a fender bender because he was counting his trees, he'll never hear the end of it.

Summer greenery

2009-10-03T08:06:00.001-07:00

I do not have a green thumb, at all! I like looking at pretty flowers--I sound like a little kid, and that's about how I feel when I look at flowers, like they're pretty but let's move on to the next thing--but I can't really take care of them, inside or out. For a brief period after we first moved in here, what with a nice front porch area and a fenced-in back "yard" (too small to really be called a yard without scare quotes), we took a stab at some rudimentary gardening, and when I say "we," I mean that he would initiate the project, but I had to do the watering or pruning. So after a couple of years, we more or less gave up. But near the front porch, Don planted some black-eyed Susans a couple of years ago, and they keep coming back every summer with no help from us--that causes me no end of amazement. Here are pics of them at their peak in August. Now, they're just one more thing to miss about summer.

"Wash" "hands," eh?

2009-10-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

There is an amusing blog for the grammatically-minded among us (I'm sure there's something wrong with that clause...) called The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotations. If the appeal of the blog has to be explained to someone, that person is just not part of the blog's audience. The ridiculous, asinine, unneeded use of quotation marks is a personal bugaboo of mine, but finding them on signs has always been a great joy to me as well, even before the blog existed. Here's one I found today in the men's room at a nice faux-Irish restaurant.

1) So I wonder what "wash hands" really means in this joint?

2) ...and which employee has to "do it"?

My photo life

2009-09-30T12:53:00.000-07:00

This blog hasn't quite turned out like I thought it would. I guess my thoughts that don't get an outlet on my classic movie or current media blogs aren't as interesting as I hoped. I'm not giving up it or anything, and I'll still keep posting whatever I feel like, but I think I will also use this as an outlet for some of my picture-taking (it's so amateurish and improvised, I can't even call it "photography").

A friend is using her blog to participate in a photo-a-day project on Flickr, which inspired me to use this blog to post photos. I take pictures in fits and spurts, so I could never really take a photo a day, or even post one a day out of my backlog of pictures. But I will start posting one or two as I feel the urge, sometimes arty expression, but more often simply documenting my surroundings. Like with the above picture of my library's newspaper archives (such as they are) up in what we call the "balcony," or the below picture showing an aisle in the balcony . Some of these will undoubtedly duplicate my Flickr photostream and Facebook postings, but if you're upset about that, I'll give you back your admission fee.

Sign of the times

2009-09-27T12:44:00.000-07:00

A Flickr contact posted this picture of a sign along the road that says "SIGN." I chuckled at the postmodern meta-ness of it all, but was downright startled when a day or two later, I came in the front door of our library to see this sign up for all the world to see:

Signs of the time, or just signs of signs? This is truly an example of the much-discussed empty signifier, ain't it?

Bad cataloging decision #158

2009-09-11T09:41:00.001-07:00

So I'm cataloging a DVD of the movie The Informers; it's based on a Bret Easton Ellis book, so of course it's full of decadent young people doing drugs (and each other, as the jacket copy states) and coming to bad ends. The plot summary in the record, apparently pulled off of IMDb, ends by saying that these kids don't realize that "they are dancing on the edge of a volcano,"a phrase which I understand for what it is, a metaphor for acting recklessly, heedless of the coming consequences. Imagine my surprise when I am editing the subject lines and find "Volcanoes--California--Los Angeles--Drama." I screamed out loud in both mirth and horror. What's even worse is that that subject line wasn't added locally, in our consortium, but came in that way from a national cataloging agency. I spent a while doing some research to make sure that a literal volcano does not play a part in the climax. I'm still a little in shock and a little in awe.

Happiness is...

2009-09-10T14:18:00.001-07:00

Generally, I'm a happy guy, certainly on the surface and usually inside as well. I'm not sure I'm an optimist; in a given situation, I usually assume the best thing won't happen and I hope the worst thing won't happen, so I aim for mid-range expectations. I certainly spend a fair amount of time in the doldrums and I can get blackly depressed, but these moods tend to last for hours rather than days or weeks. I've always remembered an incident in high school when I woke up pissed off at the world, and I vowed to let everybody know exactly how I felt, but when I got to school and got around people, my mood evaporated. That morning, a friend, apropos of nothing, said to me, "Ritchie, how can you always be so cheery?" I wanted to yell back, "Goddamn it, I'm not cheery, I'm angry and depressed!!" but I didn't; I just smiled and said, "Dunno."

This comes up in light of an article in the June Atlantic about what makes us happy, based on a series of longitudinal studies (groups of people studied over a wide range of years), in particular one begun in the 30's with a group of Harvard students who are still being followed today. Certainly a group of Ivy Leaguers is not necessarily representative of the general population, but some of the findings about happiness are interesting. First, the happiest people are those who use "mature" defenses when faced with challenges; instead of resorting to paranoia or passive-aggressive behavior or turning inward into fantasy, they use humor, altruism, sublimation, and conscious suppression. I'm not sure about the altruistic response, but I'm a master at other three--though I must admit I have been known to indulge in passive-aggressive behavior and I have a rich fantasy life, though I don't think of it as a response to challenges as much as an outlet for, well, fantasizing.

Successful aging and happiness are also dependent on a handful of other factors: education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. All of those things pretty much apply to me:

1) I'm overeducated.

2) I've been with Don in a committed relationship for 19 years (because we're both men, I can't use the word "marriage" with any real meaning--do I sound bitter? Maybe I need to use a mature defense).

3) I've never smoked--except for three weeks of clove cigarettes in my 20s when I was trying to be a poseur.

4) My intake of alcohol is small, a couple of beers or glasses of wine a week (I can't remember the last time I was truly drunk, a fact I'm not necessarily proud of, because some of the best stories I tell about myself involve being under the influence of one substance or another)

5) I do get exercise, and "some" is a good word to describe how much.

6) I am technically a smidge overweight for my height, I guess, but overall I'm in better physical shape than I was in my 30's.

The director of the study says, somewhat reductively, that "the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people" and that alcoholism is the biggest obstacle in the path of happiness. Though I have never cultivated lots of friendships, I do have people who make me happy and who I can confide in and who I can act silly around, and of course I have Don. My father was an alcoholic--though since it didn't interfere with his work life, he would never have labeled himself that way--and, since I have an addictive streak anyway, I have more or less consciously avoided that trap.

Though I have my regrets, and I'm not quite where I thought I'd be at this point in my life, I'm still generally happy. Traumatic events have happened to me--the break-up of my first live-in relationship in particular sent me into a brief tailspin--but I guess sublimating and suppressing are healthy responses after all, despite the bad rap they get. Now that the Atlantic Monthly has confirmed that I'm happy, I'm *really* happy!

Portland, Oregon, August 2009: Part 2

2009-08-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

Shopping: Well, the big draw for me was Powell's City of Books, the country's largest independent bookstore, which takes up an entire city block. Bookstores were always a big draw for me wherever I visited, but I have lately felt a bit jaded about them; been there, done that, can't find anything, go to Amazon. But Powell's was pretty fabulous. Lots of big color-coded rooms crammed with books (but not claustrophobic feeling) with content clearly labeled (literature in the Blue Room, science fiction in the Gold Room, etc.), huge shelving units, and best of all, used and out-of-print books shelved together. I also particularly liked their section of recent "first novels" in the Green Room. I snatched up some hard-to-find fantasy novels by A. Merritt (and read one, The Moon Pool, while in Portland) among other things, and after two visits, was afraid to ask if they shipped books, because I could have done some serious credit card damage.

I also found ways to occupy myself at Columbia Sportswear and Fossil, which, to my surprise, had t-shirts (our Fossil only has watches and accessories), lovely soft t-shirts which fit me perfectly. I also bought a few things at Under U 4 Men, a men's underwear store, but I'll leave that to your imagination.

Sights: Chinatown was a disappointment (kinda dissipated and smelly--and not good Chinese food smells), but we enjoyed visiting the Classical Chinese Garden; lots of beautifully arranged small gardens, reflecting pools, stone walkways, and rooms and views for contemplation (though it's really too full of tourists for much silent time). Lots of pics in my Portland Flickr set. We also liked Pioneer Courthouse Square (pictured above), a nice place for sitting, sipping coffee, and people watching. On Friday nights in the summer, they show free movies there, and we happened to stroll by just as the first dinosaur scene in Jurassic Park was playing, and that being a favorite movie moment of Don's, we hung around a few minutes. A couple evenings were spent just walking, in perfect summer weather, through parts of town not too far from our hotel (the leafy South Park blocks, pictured below, and the "cultural" district).

I was most excited about seeing the M.C. Escher exhibit, "Virtual Worlds." I loved Escher's paradoxical architecture and flights of fancy when I was in college, and seeing this exhibit has re-awakened my interest--at least to the point where an Escher calendar will be on my Christmas wish list. Most interesting to me were the early woodcuts from the 30's and 40's which I'd never seen before. I was sorry that there was no published catalog I could have bought. The rest of the museum was OK (no photography allowed, sadly) although we noticed an awful lot of dust on many of the permanent collection items.

Finally, there was the quirky little Voodoo Doughnuts. As a donut connoisseur, I couldn't leave town without at least one visit there, up near Old Town. Every time I walked past it, there was a line of at least 15 people snaking out onto the sidewalk (it's in a very small space). Twice I braved the line, a mix of locals and curious tourists, to snag a donut or two. Their specialties are elaborate and occasionally rather kinky confections (a Dirty Snowball, a Maple & Bacon donut, and the rather obvious Cock & Balls), but I stuck with a good old cake donut with vanilla frosting and sprinkles and it was just fine, if not exactly magical (pictured moments before it disappeared down my belly). Overall, a very nice visit to a moderately interesting city. If Don reminds me of any other details I should share, I will. [The picture of the Powell's room is from their web site; the other photos are mine]

Portland, Oregon, August 2009: Part 1

2009-08-17T09:15:00.000-07:00

Our last several vacations have been to New York City or Chicago, or family visits to Maine. This year, Don signed up for Sock Summit, a convention for sock knitters, in Portland, Oregon, and we decided to make it our '09 vacation--after not really getting in a vacation together in '08. We had been to Eugene, Oregon many years ago for an academic conference and we were both charmed by its slightly funky but crisp, clean atmosphere; it felt like a small big town, or a big small-college town, with lots of boutiques, interesting restaurants, and a huge weekend arts fair. Assuming Portland would be like Eugene, I figured that while Don was at the Summit (2 or 3 hours each day), I could occupy my time with street strolling and bookstore visits.

Portland does have a compact downtown area, easily walkable, though if your legs get tired, there's also a light rail system which is free of charge in the downtown area. But the vibe of the city is a little weirder than Eugene (hence the sign above). The downtown is grungier than I was expecting, with several empty buildings and a fairly large homeless and/or panhandling population. Some areas are artsy and almost collegiate (it's home to Portland State University, just a few blocks south of our hotel), some are crammed with shopping, some are lovely tree-lined neighborhoods, and some are traditional run-down "old town" sections.

We stayed at the Paramount, only a couple blocks away from the heart of downtown, Pioneer Courthouse Square and the multi-level shopping mall Pioneer Place, and had no complaints about the lodgings: lovely lobby, free computers and Internet access, and a friendly staff, and we had a nice view from our 15th floor room of the very green South Park blocks (pictured at top).

Eats: Our first night, being jet-lagged, we wanted dinner at 3:30; we waited until 4:30 but the place we had picked didn’t open until 5, so we wound up at Greek Cuisina (above), a perfectly fine Greek restaurant with a big purple octopus as its logo. Best drink of the trip was here, a Bombay Cooler, which was gin with pomegranate and grapefruit juice. We had a good breakfast at Mother's Bistro, though we weren't crazy about being crammed in next to three other tables when there was no one else in the restaurant [bitchy rant about hosts/hostesses who do this deleted], but had a better breakfast at the smaller, funkier Bijou Café (below) up near Old Town--in fact, we ate there twice!

My realization about food while traveling is that it's not really about the quality of the food, but more about the atmosphere. For example, in Chicago with friends this past spring, we ate at Topolobampo, a ritzy Rick Bayless restaurant. The food was too high-end for me, but the experience of eating there was memorable. I'm not sure we had as memorable a meal in Portland, but the two that stand out were Deschutes Brewery & Public House (a Portland microbrew pub) up in the Pearl District, and Lolo's, a Tapas restaurant where we met 17 of Don's closest on-line knitting buddies whom he'd never met in person before. I unadventurously had burgers at both places, but the ambience of the each restaurant was enjoyable--loud and lively.

Part 2 in a day or so...

Library day in the life

2009-08-03T19:01:00.000-07:00

This is my contribution to the "library day in the life" meme. I think we're supposed to do this for a whole week, but I happen to be going on vacation tomorrow, and when I come back, my job will be a bit different (30 hours in Tech Services, 10 hours on the Reference desk), so I may re-visit this later.

The assignment: "Whether you are a librarian or library worker of any kind, help us share and learn about the joys and challenges of working in a library. Join us by sharing details of your day for a week on your blog. Not only is this a great way for us to see what our colleagues are doing and how they spend their days but it’s a great way for students who are interested in the library profession to see what we really do."

OK:

6:22: Alarm goes off--up to watch the local weathercast, into the shower, smooch the honey (who is already up and sitting at the computer), and leave the house by 7:00.

7:25: Arrive at my suburban library armed with coffee and donut; the only other people around are housekeeping folks. (Pic of darkened computer room at right.) I like to get here early to look at the New York Times online and maybe bang out a quick blog post, movie review, or tweet, or pick a few songs to DJ at blip.fm.

8:00: At my desk in Tech Services, downstairs, a wall-less cubicle. I catalog and process all the non-fiction books (except reference), DVDs, and children's books. Processing is minimal, as the books come in already wrapped; I stamp and put call number labels on books, and put rating and library address labels on DVDs. Fascinating, I know, but I do enjoy my work.

8:15: I buzz through a shelf of new titles, checking to see how many have full bib records in our system already (we are part of a consortium and share records with several other small libraries).

8:25: For those books without full bibs, I go to BookWhere to import records. For the handful I can't find there, I go to WorldCat, try to find a full record, and cut and paste what I can. For what's left, I compose an original bib record. The rest of the morning consists of me editing the records and attaching item records for each individual book.

My TS desk: note movie posters, Silver Surfer, pictures
of Jeremy Piven, Marx Bros. bears, and
year-round Christmas tree.

10:30: My buddy over in Acquisitions and I take our break together, our first 15-minute walk of the day, through the lovely shady streets of the suburb in which our library is located. Gossip and vulgar chat usually, with an occasional foray into philosophy.

12:30: Finished with my non-fiction books, I take my hour-long lunch, today at Qdoba, though I have a choice of many fast-food places (McDonald's, Taco Bell, Panda Express), slow/fast places (Panera), and sit-down restaurants. Any spare time during the hour I use to flip through newspapers and/or visit with my friends up in Reference.

1:30: Back at my desk (TS overview at left) with a load of DVDs, mostly catch-up on films for YS (Youth Services), like Jetsons: The Movie, and Wonder Pets: Ollie's Slumber Party. Boxed sets are a bitch, as they need to be totally re-packaged, with covers photocopied and/or cobbled together. Only one such set today.

2:20: The Secret of Loch Ness is giving me a problem. It's a DVD from one of several cheapie knock-off companies that market films that are kind of like other, more popular movies--a few weeks ago, I cataloged Plan Bee, an animated film marketed to look like Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie. This Loch Ness DVD looks like The Water Horse, but is actually, from what I can tell, a German made-for-TV movie. It's difficult to find out much information about it. I use Amazon, DVD Empire, or IMDb to flesh out bib record info that is not present on the product, but even the IMDb page for this film is fairly skimpy. Still, I got the bare minimum. It's actually "problems" like this that make my job challenging and fun.

3:30: Walk #2, with a Mounds Minature to get my flagging energy up.

4:45: Home stretch: cleaning up the desk, brushing blank labels and unneeded work slips into the trash, dumping empty coffee cups (yes, plural), trying to look busy for the last 15 minutes of the work day ;-)

5:00: On my way home, iPod plugged in so the car will be rockin'! Tonight, it's REM, Rolling Stones, The Go-Gos, Neil Young, Marvin Gaye, and the Decemberists.

The rest of my day is mostly non-library related (cooking dinner for Don and I; watching Jeopardy, Daily Show, Colbert Report; writing a blog entry, net surfing, watching a DVD--from Netflix, the library, or our extensive collection of mostly older movies). For me, this is how library work is different from my years in academics--as a grad student and teacher, "work" was always brought home, one way or another; here, it very rarely is, unless I'm still stewing about a squicky decision I might have made about a bib record. If I weren't going on vacation, it would all start again tomorrow at 6:22. But maybe I'll sleep in until 7:00!

Planning for Portland

2009-08-02T13:56:00.001-07:00

Our summer vacation this year is to Portland, Oregon. Why, you may ask? Well, for one, we had a good time visiting Eugene, Oregon many years ago when we were there for a conference. There's also a lot of stuff to see and do there, as I've been learning all day long by using the Web and a Frommer's guide. My short list so far includes: 1) An M.C. Escher exhibit at the Portland Art Museum; 2) The Portland Classical Chinese Garden (in Old Town Chinatown, which would be my first ever "Chinatown" visit anywhere); 3) the Saturday Market, a huge arts and crafts fair; 4) The 3D Center of Art & Photography, with an exhibit of View-Master human anatomy reels; 5) lots of shopping, including Powell's City of Books, a couple of collector's record stores, and a men's underwear store (!!--see pic at bottom); 6) lots of interesting restaurants.

The real reason we're going there, however, is so Don can attend the Sock Summit, a huge 4-day conference for sock knitters, which he most certainly is! He's planning on taking a few classes (though frankly he should probably be teaching a few as he does here in Columbus on occasion, on his toe-up knitting style) and buying some yarn, and we have a Saturday dinner planned with some of his fellow online knitters. While he's knitting, I'll be roaming the streets of downtown, attending to shopping (of which he is not a big fan) and probably eating too much, and when we're together, we'll be doing arty things and, yes, eating too much.

As I said, I have pages of notes on things to see, and Google Maps by the score ready to print out, but if anyone has any recommendations, comment away. I'll report back here next week.

Our magnificent electric pleasure dome

2009-07-27T04:30:00.000-07:00

Columbus may not be nationally known for its bustling arts scene (though we have a fairly active one), but we do have one of the few operating old-fashioned movie palaces in the country, the Ohio Theatre. Opened in 1928 (an easy year for me to remember because that's also when my mother was born), the theater, on State Street across from the Capitol Building, presented movies and live stage shows for many years until a combination of the popularity of television and suburban sprawl wound up closing most of the downtown movie theaters--I remember 4 downtown theaters in the 60's: besides the Ohio, there was the Palace (where I saw many a B-horror movie and which is still used for concerts and plays), the RKO Grand (a Cinerama theater where I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time), and the Hunt's Cinestage (where I saw Dr. Zhivago).

The Ohio was in danger of being torn down when, in 1969, money was raised to save the building and renovate it. It was fully restored and has become the prize gem of CAPA (Columbus Association for the Performing Arts), housing stage shows, concerts, ballets, and other personal appearance events. And, during the summers for the past 40 years, movies return to the theater in the form of the Summer Movie Series of classic films.

I just love going to the Summer movies, even though I've seen virtually every film they run, and in many cases, I own them on DVD. The theater is huge, seating 2800 people (and though it never fills up for the classic movies, the crowds always number well into the hundreds), spacious and air-conditioned. The acoustics, especially for the 30's movies, are not ideal, but generally that's not an obstacle to enjoying the movies because, frankly, I go there for the surroundings--ornate decoration (restored faithfully from the old days), a giant balcony area (we try to get there early to snag seats in the front row of the loge, the best seats in the house), gold-gilt stars painted on the ceiling, a big movie-theater organ, and most spectacularly, a huge chandelier with hundreds of lights, suspended above the balcony.

We went on a free guided tour of the theater over the weekend, and though I didn't get to see anything I hadn't seen before, I did learn some interesting trivia (most of which has already gone through my sieve of a brain) and got to take lots of pictures, some of which you'll find below.

The lobby, as seen from the West stairs:

The screen, as seen from the balcony:

The organ, called The Mighty Morton, played before every film by Clark Wilson, who refers to the theater as a "magnificent electric pleasure dome."

Bathrooms for the gentry:

Balcony steps:

One of the wonderfully ornate, though non-functional, box seats:

One small step

2009-07-20T16:02:00.000-07:00

1969, as we're being told by the media, was a big year for the country (Woodstock, Charles Manson, Altamont, and the Moon, for starters) but it was also a big year for me; at 13, I hit puberty, began to think I might be a homosexual, got my braces on, and discovered rock music. Frankly, in the middle of all that personal ebb and flow, the moon landing wasn't all the crucial to me, though of course I understood its historical importance. I did, however, get quite caught up in moon-landing fever for a week or so.

One reason why Apollo 11 may not, at least in the run-up to it, have seemed terribly momentous to me was that I grew up reading science-fiction. Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Amazing Stories, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, and Stanley Kubrick had already taken me to the moon and beyond. I knew all that was fiction, but the 60's was a time of change, when so much seemed possible, and I guess I assumed that, of course we'd get to the moon, we're Americans! My dad was a navigator in the Air Force, and though never close to being an astronaut, he wore zip-up flight suits that didn't seem all that different than what the Apollo guys wore, which maybe gave the Cape Kennedy missions more of an everyday feel to me.

At any rate, I don't remember giving the July mission much thought until a day or so before the launch. In preparation for getting on my braces, I had a couple of wisdom teeth removed just a few days before the launch, and at that point, getting put under by the dentist seemed scary and perhaps more exciting than watching a moon landing. School wasn't in, but my neighborhood friends (and my younger brother) were all caught up in the moon rage, so once I got past the dentist, I got swept up in it as well. We played Astronauts, formed a science club, and put together a little hand-made science magazine, of which 3 or 4 issues were "published" during that July week.

The real kicker was the media. There were books and magazines about the moon, and soon even all the networks (all 3 of them--Public TV barely counted since it came in spottily and often with lots of snow and static) had lots of coverage. What might have finally sent me into real teenage-boy enthusiasm about the moon landing was that my favorite author, Ray Bradbury, was interviewed and served as a commentator for one of the networks. I guess I thought if he was excited about this, I should be, too.

The bulk of the action happened over the weekend, and our little science club went into overdrive spending every moment we could either watching the TV coverage or, when the talking heads got too boring, talking about how cool it would be when we'd go to live on the moon when we were grown-ups. The actual landing ("The Eagle has landed"), which I think took place Sunday afternoon was quite exciting; we all jumped and cheered, and even my normally taciturn father seemed thrilled. But it was Neil Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface, that night around 11:00, when I finally really did feel that this was a remarkable and momentous occasion. Of course, one reason I felt that way was because it was way past my bedtime, and Mom and Dad let my brother and I stay up for this, but by now, I knew that real life was catching up with science fiction. I'm not sure I've ever felt quite so excited about and proud of being an American as I was that night.

In the long run, I have to leave it to the scientists and cultural commentators to determine what the moon landing really meant, because right now, it seems very much like a last gasp of colonial glory that was done, rather like climbing Everest, because the moon was there. But I'm happy to have been the age I was at the time: young enough to get swept up at least briefly in the event without having to worry about a job or a career (or even, since it was summer, homework) and old enough to have vivid memories of it that will last the rest of my life. I do have to say, however, that we watched 2001: A Space Odyssey this weekend to commemorate Apollo 11, and in some ways, that film seemed more real to me than the actual landing.

Pasta primavera

2009-07-12T12:18:00.000-07:00

When I was buying my supplies for last Friday night's pasta primavera, the clerk asked what I was going to cook and I said pasta primavera and he said, "I've never had that," and looked at me with big puppy dog eyes. I assumed he wasn't actually flirting with me, and I replied, "Well, it's just pasta in a light olive oil-based sauce tossed with vegetables," and he said a little sadly, "Oh, I guess I have had that."

One of the first things I learned to cook after I met Don was a pasta primavera dish from a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. It was basically a stir-fry of carrots, broccoli, onion, and pea pods, in butter and white wine. I took to cooking quickly and really enjoyed it, but I've always been someone who has to stick to a recipe; I'm not very adventurous. Even dishes I've been making the same way at least twice a month for 15 years now (like hamburger stroganoff or pork chops in mustard cream sauce or sloppy joes) I still make with the printed recipe in front of me.

But slowly, I've been allowing myself to improvise a bit here and there. I found a pasta primavera recipe in a book called Cook Yourself Thin. That's never going to happen in this house, but I thought I'd give this one a shot. It calls for a pound of asparagus (bottoms snapped off--remind me to tell you sometime about the first time I cooked asparagus and threw away the tips, thinking they looked too feathery to eat) cooked up for a few minutes in chicken stock, then set aside. Then you stir-fry mushrooms and onion in olive oil and garlic, add peas and more chicken stock, throw the asparagus back in, and toss it with pasta (in this case, rotini).

That didn't sound like quite enough food to me, so I added some yellow bell pepper strips, chopped plum tomatoes, and celery slices, and threw some white wine into the stock (some yucky Pacific Rim Riesling that I was trying to get rid of). At the end, the recipe called for baby spinach to be added; I normally would have left that out, but I happened to have half a bag of spinach left over from a salad a few nights ago, so in it went.

I'm happy to report that my semi-improvised recipe was liked by all (that is, Don & I), and was made even better with a glass of Caldoni Pinot Grigo, which I picked because the bottle was cool, and some multigrain Tuscany bread. I forgot to take a picture of the food, but you'll find the cool wine bottle pictured. A very nice, light summer dish, and even better, the leftovers made a great cold pasta salad the next day!

My glorious celebrity dreams

2009-07-08T09:06:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm one of those braying jackasses who will relate his dreams at the drop of a hat, to anyone who is unfortunate enough to be within earshot. So as anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with me will know, I frequently have dreams in which celebrities play a large part. This started way back when I was just 8 years old; in 1964, after seeing A Hard Day's Night for the first time, I had a dream that the Beatles came to Grove City (the central Ohio suburb where I grew up) and stayed with my family to get away from the crowds, so my dad hollowed out our concrete front porch and they stayed in there, and I would bring them food and refreshments and they were super-nice to me.

The next one I remember, in high school during my Ziggy Stardust phase, was that I was in the studio audience watching David Bowie on Jeopardy (back before they actually had Celebrity Jeopardy weeks)--and he kept getting answers wrong and smiling knowingly at me.

Back during the heyday of Friends, I dreamed I was on a date with Matthew Perry (on whom I had a big crush at the time)--he drove a fast little sports car, took me to his high-rise apartment overlooking a glittering big city, and put the moves on me. My response as he was climbing all over me was to wonder out loud if I should call my partner Don to make sure it was OK for me to mess around with Matthew Perry. (Apparently I can't even cheat in my dreams.)

I dreamed I was giving a naked Angelina Jolie a hot oil massage. I dreamed I was singing backup for Madonna but she changed the song list at the last minute and I didn't know the words. I've had vague sex dreams about Jeremy Piven (I think real sex dreams ended back in college when I started having real sex.)

My latest: I dreamed I was backstage at the Michael Jackson memorial, waiting to go on to perform "Man In The Mirror" with Lena Horne and Grace Jones. That's it--I woke up before I went onstage--but shootin' the shit with Lena Horne, I mean, how cool is that? I'm reading a biography of her right now, which is probably why she was in the dream, and of course it's just plain difficult to get away from anything MJ, but how Grace Jones wound up there, I'm at a loss to explain.

Somebody doesn't like Sara Lee

2009-06-26T10:52:00.000-07:00

I originally meant this blog to be a place to post short remarks, observations, etc. of the kind I post to Facebook and Twitter, but longer than those services allow. In practice, this has become another place for me to run off at the mouth at length. I'm going to try and reclaim this place for short posts, or expansions of Facebook posts. So I'll start with this:

I'm on a vacation day today, so I walked down to Starbucks for my morning coffee, and on my way, I saw a Sara Lee truck with their age-old slogan on the side, "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee." I suddenly had an epiphany: I don't particularly like Sara Lee! This only means something if you know that I grew up in a Sara Lee household, having Sara Lee coffeecakes for breakfasts and Sara Lee pies for desserts. I liked them well enough when I was 8, but I don't think I've bought a Sara Lee product for myself in 30 years--maybe a couple of their streusel coffeecakes now and again, when I've had to entertain for breakfast. My 80-year-old mother would probably have a stroke if she read this (and she might, as she does have Internet access and occasionally glances at my Media Playroom blog), since she still loves Sara Lee. For myself, it's just a part of growing away from eating so many things frozen or boxed, and I guess that's good, but the taste of a Sara Lee product will still bring back fond childhood feelings--and when I'm at Mom's on Christmas morning, Sara Lee still provides our pre-present opening food.

Then, at Starbucks, I was entertained by hearing the most ludicrously superfluous conversation starter ever, spoken by a vacuous looking blonde female runner to her barista while waiting for her soy-free, fat-filled, dark/light mocha blobachino: "O My God, did you HEAR that Michael Jackson DIED yesterday?!?" His reply: "Uh, ... yeah." If she was flirting, she failed. Of course, I took a different tack when I said to him, "Nice shoulders--you been workin' out?" His reply: "Uh, ... yeah." [No, I didn't really say that, I just thought it, and even in my fantasy, he rejected me. I guess I'm too much of a monogomist to stray even in my idle fancies.]

Save Ohio libraries (and, BTW, my job)!

2009-06-25T06:37:00.000-07:00

Here in Ohio, the governor, Ted Strickland, is proposing a state budget to go into effect in just a few days that would cut by 30% the amount of money that Ohio libraries would get to operate. This is on top of an average 20% shortfall we've experienced already this year due to the overall tax collection shortfall. I'm not a mathematician, nor am I an economist, but it does seem like we will be running our libraries with nearly 50% less money that we did last year. My library, like many in the state, doesn't depend completely on state funding, but still, this cut will mean we'll have 30% less money at our disposal.

In this economy, library use is way up, not just for "free" entertainment in the form of books, magazines, DVDs, and CDs, but also for free computer and Internet use (something that has been growing exponentially in the past few years), job search materials, and community programs. We have already been trimming back here and there (not filling jobs which have been vacated, charging more for fines), but a loss this big will truly mean major cuts in our staffing, hours, and programs. How does a "business" that is in more demand than ever wind up like this?

There is a rally at the Statehouse today which I won't be able to attend, but I hope that lots of people, and not just librarians, show up. Unfortunately, I think the everyday visitors to our library who take us for granted (whether for services or just to have a place to relax and a friendly person to talk to) are probably not likely to show up, but they are the ones who will feel the pinch first. Here's hoping these folks, who will have to be at the core of any meaningful protest, do show up, and that our legislators listen to them. The flood of e-mails and phone calls being recieved by the governor and lawmaker in support of libraries is heartening, but I'm not sure that alone will send the message.

Seasons, the night sky, and cabana boys

2009-06-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

I am hardly a nature boy but the romantic in me loves nature in small and controlled doses. I've never gone camping (except when I spent the night with pals in a tent pitched in our neighbor's back yard when I was a kid) but I've enjoyed the "cabining" I've done with friends at state parks. I can't identify trees or flowers, but I like to go on the occasional hike through parks and woods and arboretums. And though I've never learned the constellations, I love to look at the night sky (approximated above on my work computer wallpaper). Where we live now, in a suburb attached directly to a big city, we're lucky enough to be just far enough away from the major light concentrations of downtown Columbus to our southeast that on cloudless nights, we can stand in our front yard and see some stars.

When I was young, our family had a cottage on Kelleys Island in Lake Erie, and many of my cherished memories of our island vacations are of our walks back to the cottage after a drunken carouse downtown (that should be "downtown" in quotes, as it was comprised of three bars, a small grocery store, and a Dairy Queen), throwing ourselves on the hoods of cars, and staring up into the deep, sparkling night sky. With virtually no noticeable light pollution to the north or west, the stars were brilliant and numerous. When I was very young, my dad, who had been a navigator in the Air Force, would point out to me and my brother the stars and constellations but I would never remember them from year to year, so each year he would be able to go through the ritual again. (Well, I did remember Cassiopeia which, in his earthy way, he identified as "the big tit in the sky.") As we got older, we would re-enact this event with our visitors (friends, boyfriends, partners, wives)--it was part of the initiation event of belonging to the extended Ritchie clan, and it is the only thing I really miss about not having property on the Island anymore.

Anyway, I think of this today not because of any night sky experience, but because of how gorgeous it is out this morning. It rained through much of the night, and the skies right now are cloudy but not ominously so. When I got out of my car at Panera (to get my coffee and cinnamon roll, bright and early at 7 a.m.), the breeze hit me in a way that it hadn't since sometime last summer. I call it a "tingly breeze": it's noticeable but not exactly forceful, and with an air temperature of 70 degrees, it's right on that rare and perfect edge between cool and warm. As I stood in the parking lot for just a moment to enjoy the wind, I got a tingly sensation along my arms (hence the "tingly breeze") and could imagine for a moment that I was on a beach in some paradisaical location, about to throw myself into the crashing surf (after the taut-bellied cabana boy brings me a margarita; why do carnal desires intrude into even my most beautiful wholesome fantasies?)

...Leading me finally to the title of this post. I realized recently that the seasons, sadly, have become less important to my everyday life. In school, in college, in grad school, and while teaching, seasonal changes were a big part of my life because my routine depended on the season. For most of my life, summer has meant either time off, time for vacations, or when teaching, just a different pace when teaching one summer class. Even when I was working in retail, summer felt different, partly because I was at the peak of my "swingin' singles" era, and summer nights were clubbing nights--we clubbed all year round, but somehow in my memories of those times, it was always a hot summer night.

In the past few years, with the library work cycle not particularly dependent on seasonal changes, and with tranquil domestic routines well established (not to mention central air conditioning), summer has largely become just like any other time of year. The past few years, I've felt bad about that, panicking that the summer was going to pass me by without registering on me at all. This year, for the first time, I don't seem to care. Part of it is that I've accepted that, like at Christmastime, I can't force myself to live up to these unrealistic expectations (I MUST be jolly in December, I MUST find time to lie in the sun in July). But the other part is that the weather the past month or so has been delightful--warm enough to sleep with windows open and the ceiling fan on, but not so hot that the AC is running all the time, though a little AC to accentuate the fan at night is nice. So I might get to swim in a pool or at a beach, I might not. I might get a little tan, I might not. I might sit on the porch and look at the stars in a warm night breeze, I might not. I guess I'm finally OK with that. But I did get at least one tingly summer breeze!

Our Egyptian Saturday

2009-05-31T15:24:00.000-07:00

This was the next-to-last weekend for the To Live Forever exhibit at the Columbus Museum of Art, so we broke our "do-nothing-on-weekends" rule and, well, did something. The exhibit of ancient Egyptian funeral artifacts included mummies, coffins, amulets, and jewelry. As Don noted, this wasn't really an art exhibit but a culture exhibit. There were lots of signs with information on Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife; they were interesting but not always clear. For example, what we know as the human soul seemed to be split in two for the Egyptians; the "ba-soul" was the part that could come back to earth; I never found a card which explained in detail the "ka-soul" (though, as always Wikipedia came to the rescue: simplistically, "ba" is personality, "ka" is the life force).

Seeing bits of parchment with symbols written by people who lived thousands of years ago gave me a odd little frisson of awe--it's one thing to see a picture of symbols, or even symbols painted, but it seems more intimate to see actual inked writing. It was interesting to hear about the spells that Egyptians would memorize to get them into the afterlife, and even more interesting when I realized that today, those spells are called "prayers." Pictured is a canopic jar, into which internal organs of the dead person were put--though we learned that sometimes, the jars went into the tombs empty, or were reused years later.

I couldn't take pictures in the exhibit, but I did take a couple of pictures in other parts of the museum. Below is a work by George Tooker called Landscape with Figures. Despite its rather depressing, almost sinister tone, a company actually wanted to buy it to use in a job recruitment ad:

Next is the Dale Chihuly glass sculpture in the museum atrium:

Finally, a big Roy Lichtenstein in the staircase entranceway:

That night, we watched the 1955 semi-camp epic Land of the Pharoahs, about the years-long building of an Egyptian king's tomb, which becomes the Great Pyramid. I reviewed the movie here, but this is an excuse for me to run a picture of Joan Collins' incredibly hot servant, Mabuna. I have never been able to find the actor's name:

We closed the evening with the original 1931 The Mummy with Boris Karloff, which had several tidbits of information that related to things we learned at the museum. I reviewed the movie here, but this is an excuse to run a picture of the very handsome David Manners, the romantic lead:

Donuts, the staff of life

2009-05-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

I love donuts and that's all there is to it. I also have high cholesterol but I'm on medication for it, and even if I weren't, I'd probably still eat donuts because, well, why bother living? Having said that, I'm actually a fairly picky donut eater. I like cake donuts with icing and sprinkles, and occasionally a jelly-filled donut, and that's about it. If I walk into Kroger's and go back to the bakery section and they don't have iced cake donuts, I don't buy any. (That's a little white lie; I might stop by the Hostess display to look for powered Donette Gems, and perhaps, a cou0le of times a year, I'll settle for some Entenmann's crumb donuts.)

My donuts of preference, in reverse order:

5) Hostess Donette Gems (I ate a package of 6 of those every single morning of my 5-year-plus graduate school stay)

4) Kroger or Giant Eagle cake donuts.

3) Tim Horton's Strawberry Vanilla (a jelly donut)

2) Donut Kitchen's stick donuts, which look nothing like sticks of anything, but instead like crescents of sugary lusciousness.

1) Dutch crumb donuts from Honey Dip Donuts: huge cake donuts with big crumbs on the outside; any more attempt at description would just be blasphemy against what I call God's Own Donut.

I am slightly overweight for my height (155 lbs, 5'7") but given my donut consumption, I feel lucky that I'm not a lumbering "overfed, leaping gnome" (in the words of Eric Burdon's "Spill the Wine"). My mornings MUST begin with coffee, and since coffee without some kind of solid food gives me a stomach ache, I MUST have a donut or two (yes, honestly, usually 2). I've been trying to alternate donuts with high-fiber oatmeal, and have actually been doing a fairly good job of that, but some mornings, only donuts will suffice.

So it was with some small amount of joy that I started reading Glazed America: A History of the Doughnut by Paul R. Mullins. It's a study of the donut (I will not spell it "doughnut") written by an anthropologist and published by a university press, so it's rather academic in nature, therefore not the book to read if you want the author to go off on whimsical flights of dreamy prose about the donut. Instead, he uses words like "consumption" and "foodways" and writes sentences like this one: "When we talk about doughnuts, that discussion reveals our politics, class, and culture and illuminates complicated underlying sentiments toward consumer culture, global capitalism, and body discipline." When I discuss donuts, my discussion, much like that of Homer Simpson's, reveals how much I'm wanting to have another donut right now.

Speaking of Homer Simpson, I must give the author credit for devoting a fair amount of space to Homer and his legendary love of donuts. Mullins also does a nice job exploring the issues of class embedded in donut lore (the stereotypes of the chummy working-class gatherings at donut shops and the policemen who supposedly gather there in droves). I was a little disappointed in the "history" part, however; he spends a great deal of time talking about the big donut store chains, such as Krispy Kreme, but the actual history of the confection itself seems to be lost in the mists of time. He also talks quite a bit the cultural load the donut carries, symbolizing everything about bad food habits in general, but notes more than once that there are lots worse things for you than donuts in moderation. The book is OK, but frankly, I'd like one with more pictures (I'm serious) and more about the actual piece of heaven that is the donut.

Karaoke night

2009-05-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

The other night when Don was working late, I sat up in the study, opened up iTunes, and had my own little Karaoke night, all by myself. In my considerably younger days, from junior high all the way into my 30's, I enjoyed putting on my records and singing, dancing, and air-guitaring along, kinda like Tom Cruise made famous in Risky Business (though honestly, I almost never did it in just my underwear). I haven't done that in ages; now, I pretty much stick to singing-along in the car. But it was a warmish spring night, I was alone in the house, and I felt young again! So with thousands of songs available to me in my iTunes library at the click of a mouse, I sat there, played songs, and sang along.

Most of the songs were ones I knew well, but sometimes I went to the Net to find lyrics. About 90% of the lyrics I looked for, I found (they weren't always completely accurate, but close enough for my purposes). In fact, it was a shock to have two of my lyric searches come up empty. Well, one wasn't too surprising: a 1988 song by indie folksinger Hugh Blumenfeld called "Let Me Fall in Love Before the Spring Comes." Even his own website no longer seems to have working links to lyrics. It's a beautiful aching song (with literary references) about desperately wanting to be in love. Sadly, not even a video of the song seems to exist. So I decided to post the lyrics, straight from the original lyric sheet, so the next person to fall for this song can find the lyrics via Google:

LET ME FALL IN LOVE BEFORE THE SPRING COMES
Hugh Blumenfeld

There's a warm wind blowing from the South
and though it's dead of winter
something crazy's blooming
And the smell of it reminds me
of the smell on my body
of a woman that I knew
when I was too young to know
Let me fall in love before the spring comes.

Well, they used to say that April was a sweet month
but now we know that she is cruel
In the city she gives nothing
but a memory
of promises she made us
in wilder times and wilder places
where the city streets don't go
Let me fall in love before the spring comes

It's a fool's pearl that has no sorrow at its center
and it's fool's gold that breaks and does not bend
and the jeweled snows of winter
melt in the gutter
and the long lit nights of lazy sleeping
threaten to be over
and I have not abandoned hope
Abandon's what I fear, and abandon
seems to be just what I need

Let me fall in love before the spring comes
Let me fall in love before the spring comes
Let me fall in love before the warm comes
Let me fall in love before the spring comes

In the same spirit, here are the lyrics to another song that didn't show up on the Net, "Shine On Me" by the Wondermints. Plenty of hits for other Wondermints songs, including one called "Shine," but not for this wonderful chunk of 21st century bubblegum from their wonderful album Mind If We Make Love to You. So for my next Karaoke night, I can go to Google and know these lyrics will show up!:

SHINE ON ME -- Wondermints
(D. Sahanaja)

You are the one
You shine down from the stars
Outta this world
And I've just begun
To step inside your radiating light.

I can't believe that things that once dim
Now look bright
But I believe that you're for real

[Chorus:]
Shine the light, shine on me forever
Show me the colors that I never knew
Show me that it's true
I'll leave it up to you

Luminous child
You set my mind at ease
And blow it away
One little smile
Will give us all the good news from the sun

I love the way you do what's never been done
I love the way that you're for real

Shine the light, shine on me forever
Show me the summers that I never knew
Show me that it's true
I'll leave it up to you

I can't believe that things that once dim
Now look bright
But I can feel it, yes I feel it

Shine the light, shine on me forever
Show me the colors that I never knew
I believe in you

Shine the light, shine on me forever
Take me to places that I've never seen

Child of light, shine on me forever
Show me the summers that I never knew

ER

2009-05-06T08:36:00.001-07:00

Spent three hours in the middle of the night last night at a nearby emergency room. Don, who is healthy but who has a history of iffy heart conditions via the male members of his family, experienced almost an hour of on-again, off-again heart racing which kept him awake, so at 1 in the morning, I took him to the ER. It turned out to be a condition called supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT (thank you, Wikipedia) which the doctor said is a nuisance but not dangerous. His heartbeat, which was over 180 when the triage nurse saw him, went down to 105 by the time the doc came by, but they still kept him for a couple of hours for observation.

This was only my second time in an ER, and once I quit worrying about Don, I started noticing how much like and unlike this real ER was compared to TV ERs. At 1 a.m. on a weeknight in a suburban neighborhood, it was very quiet; we were the only people in the clean, spacious waiting room. It took us a little longer than I thought it should to get the triage nurse to attend to Don (who, despite his racing heart, was not having chest pains or shortness of breath), but once we got a room, things happened quickly--two efficient nurses scurried around, hooking him up to an EKG machine and installing an IV in his hand (which they never had to use), and the doc who saw him was pleasant and re-assuring (not to mention the Taye Diggs lookalike who took us to the room in the first place).

There was a TV set with Anderson Cooper talking about some woman who had a face transplant, the latest threats from the Taliban, and his own appearance on Jay Leno, talking about American Idol. I like Anderson well enough, but I realized there are reasons I don't much much TV news anymore (except for Jon Stewart) and when the show started up all over again, we switched to TCM which was showing an early talkie Western from 1929. They discharged Don about 3:30 a.m., and the drive home in the quiet night with the windows open, a fullish moon in the sky, and a little fog beginning to form, was relaxing.

So we didn't see Noah Wyle and didn't see much blood (though I did hear a woman moaning loudly and a "Code Red" announcement), and as visits to ERs go, I guess this one was a good one. Modern medical care is something I take for granted, or even don't think about at all, until it's needed, and I'm surely glad to have it nearby and civilized (Turner Classic in the hospital room? That's civilization!). Now if we can just do something about health care costs (and get more Taye Diggses in scrubs)...

The best TV ad ever?

2009-04-26T11:32:00.001-07:00

Though women supposedly make most of the product choices in the household, and therefore advertising would seem to be aimed at them, the majority of objectified bodies in TV ads are still women. I used to assign an advertising analysis paper in my college writing classes, so I know there are lots of interesting ways, not just through the physical beauty or sexiness of the models, advertisers try to make us want their products by playing on our fears and desires. And I know that the average woman is supposedly less likely to be "excited" by the objectification the male body then vice versa (men excited by female objectification). Still, as a gay man, I'm a little mystified and disappointed that sexy men are still outnumbered by sexy women in advertising.

So maybe that's why the current Old Spice ad with the centaur in the shower makes me stop fast-forwarding through our DVR'd shows every time I see it. Damn, that is one sexy ad. A centaur (half-man, half-horse) is in the shower telling us about the new Old Spice body wash, Live Wire, which is two things, a body wash and a moisturizer, just like he's two things (a man and a horse). Actually, I'm not sure what he's saying because he's standing there naked in the shower, slowly rubbing his torso with soapy lather, so excuse me for not paying much attention to what he's saying.

The guy is handsome and manly and nicely built, but I think the catch for me is the soaping. You just don't see naked guys touching themselves on TV. I know that Old Spice always has wholesomely sexy guys in their ads, but this guy is a little less wholesome than average, which is A-OK in my book. It's also amusing (the guy plunks the Old Spice bottle down on his [horse's] ass at the end), and he has a butch voice, and there's the general wetness, and did I mention the torso-touching? Anyway, I watch the ad whenever I can, and damned if I didn't go out and buy a bottle of the stuff.

P.S.: I don't like it. A little too runny, and the scent is too cucumber-y. But I still love the ad. And if they ever put it out in a bottle shaped like that centaur, I might it again.

Why I use Facebook

2009-04-17T11:00:00.000-07:00

New York magazine ran an interesting cover story recently on Facebook, but it was the letter column response to it that made me want to make some kind of public statement about my experience with Facebook. The response ran 50/50 pro/con, with the con side, espressed thusly: "Facebook pimps friendship to lonely populations of captive screen-heads ... How are we supposed to form meaningful relationships with people when we only connect online?" The pro folks called that "such an old-person take on Facebook ... Facebook is whatever you make of it."

First, I must admit to being one of the much-discussed over-40 users (hell, who am I kidding, I'm an over-50 user) who have been adopting Facebook in exponentially increasing numbers lately. I have no doubt that if I was 18, my take on all this might be different. But I got sucked into Facebook for two reasons: 1) my current job, library cataloger, is one that has taken me away from contact with the public. It's my first office cubicle job, and after many years of working in retail and teaching, I thought I'd like the relative isolation, but oddly, I've discovered I miss some of the hustle and bustle of humanity; 2) my partner and I don't have a lot of "real-life" friends whom we see regularly. We have a "Games Night" group that we get together with once a month, and a couple who, for no particular reason that I know of, we see much less of than we used to, lives diverging and all, I guess.

So one might think I'm one of those lonely screen-heads using online social networking to pretend I have a life. I don't think that's quite accurate. First of all, just because Facebook contacts are called "friends" doesn't mean that I really think of most of them as friends. Some are friends, people I know and like. Some are folks I've met online in one way or another, in e-mail groups or Usenet groups of the past. The most interesting potential here is getting back in touch with people from my past, and I have done some of that. But after the initial flurry of catching-up communication, contact dies down. Out of a dozen such people who are current Facebook friends, only 3 or 4 are still actively in contact with me; most of them seem not to be posting much of anything on Facebook at all.

The other way I've used Facebook (and Twitter, which is a whole other blog post) is to attempt to make contact with people who have similar interests (libraries, cataloging, old movies, pop music). I've realized this is an attempt to make my Facebook page something very much like one of the old Usenet groups I got so wrapped up in back in the '90s. The problem is that, unless all my contacts actually "friend" each other, they don't see each other's posts, so it's not like an online social group at all. And, of course, few of these people have taken my bait and begun any kind of active exchange. This has been a disappointment to me, but I have to face the fact that, just as gay people have little in common with each other except being gay, librarians have little in common with each other except our occupation. I do have fun during the work day (during the very few moments when I actually allow myself to be distracted by Facebook--insert knowing emoticon here) reading others' posts and chatting occaisonally, mostly with people in the very building in which I work, some of whom I consider "real-life" friends, which I guess brings me back to the beginning...

While I'm sure there are people who have Facebook "friends" rather than real-life friends, I suspect most people in my age range use it for networking, or for having fun, or for instant messaging, or for sharing photos, or just expressing themselves. The one thing I do every workday on Facebook is post a list of the songs I hear on the way into work in the morning (and when I think of it, I do the same thing when I get home in the evening). I love pop music and I love my iPod, packed with thousands of songs, and I love having it set on "alphabetical" play by title, which is in essence like having it on random shuffle. I never know what I'm going to hear next, and I am usually surprised and delighted by the outcome. Most of my Facebook friends probably think my iPod lists are crazy or stupid or annoying, but at least a few have told me they enjoy seeing them, and at any rate, I'm gonna keep doing it because expressing myself even if no one is listening is my third reason for using Facebook (and blogging).

The New York article is interesting, and I may have a part 2 to this post coming soon.

Pre-Code movies

2009-04-10T12:00:00.000-07:00

Since my other 2 blogs are devoted to mass media, I don't usually use this space to talk about that stuff, much less to advertise a product. But since apparently nothing's been going on in my life that's worth announcing, I thought I'd mention how excited I am about two new DVD sets of movies that belong to what is commonly called the "Pre-Code" days, from the late 20's to the summer of 1934 when Hollywood films were made and released without any real oversight by national censors. In 1934, the Production Code, which mandated what could and couldn't be said or done or shown in a movie, was officially enforced; before that, the Code existed as suggestions rather than a hard and fast set of laws, but local censorship boards across the country were cutting movies to ribbons, and when faced with the threat of federal censorship, the film industry decided to censor itself.

The pre-Code movies will disappoint viewers expecting cursing and nudity--though there are occasional bawdy references and scantily-clad ladies. What's really interesting about them is the morality; promiscuity, adultery, and single motherhood were not always punished by death or loneliness like they would be in Code movies. Even murderers weren't always brought to justice. Gay people, who were only presented as marginal characters and were treated with scornful humor in the early 30's, vanished from movies altogether under the Code. Female characters were much more interesting in pre-Code films, not always having to save themselves for marriage, not always having to wind up giving up all for their men.

Warners has recently released its third "Forbidden Hollywood" set, this one with the films of William Wellman, including the memorable juvenile delinquent film Wild Boys of the Road, and a gritty but breezy romantic melodrama called Other Men's Women about a romantic triangle between Mary Astor and two railroad workers. Most of the films in the Warners sets have been shown with some frequency on Turner Classic Movies, but the more interesting set is from Universal, the Pre-Code Hollywood Collection, mostly movies from the Paramount Pictures vaults most of which have not been presented anywhere outside of New York revival houses, in many years. Earlier in the week, I watched the notorious Murder at the Vanities, which has lots of nearly-naked chorus girls and one remarkable musical number in which a woman sings of the benefits of "Sweet Marijuana." I'm looking forward to seeing the rest of the films in the set soon.

Chicago '09

2009-03-28T07:54:00.000-07:00

We took our 5th Chicago trip last weekend, this time with our friends Rose & Tom. Unlike our other trips which usually had an agenda involving seeing a play, this was a more free-form vacation; the only planned excursion was attending a taping of the public radio show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, a news/current affairs quiz show hosted by Peter Sagal. Otherwise, it was a mellow time with each day full of lots of walking around, a little bit of hotel resting-up, and lots of eating (and at least one horse-and-buggy sighting, at right).

Thursday afternoon (3/19): We dropped our stuff at the Holiday Inn Express on the Magnificent Mile and had a late lunch at Portillo's Hot Dogs: nice atmosphere; I had the Maxwell Street Polish sausage with grilled onions. After Wait Wait, which was great fun as always, we had a late dinner at The Gage, an upscale tavern diner. I just had a burger, but it had "onion marmalade" and Camembert which was perhaps not the best combo; however, the drunken waiter made the experience interesting.

On Friday, sunny but chilly, we went on a wild goose chase hoping to have brunch at Orange, a place that a colleague at the library recommended highly, but soon discovered it was closed and empty, so we ate at the Corner Bakery. We spent the afternoon at the Art Institute (wonderful place with lots of Van Gogh, Hopper, and Frank Lloyd Wright--we didn't even get around to much before the 18th century). Pictured below is me in a Carlo Bugatti mirror at the Institute. Dinner was at Topolobampo, Rick Bayless's fancy Mexican restaurant (right next to the more hoi-polloish Frontera Grill). Honestly, it was one of those menus on which I could find very little I thought I'd like (I'm not a very adventurous eater), but I did have a nice taco-like dish with beef and onion straws, and, though I'm not a seafood eater, I enjoyed an appetizer of ceviche (sunfish marinated in citrus juice). A post-dinner walk to the nearest Borders store capped the evening.

Saturday morning (lovely sunshine and mild breezes in the 50's) was spent strolling up the shopping mile, though I didn't actually do much acquiring of possessions. The Crate and Barrel store was quite cool, and I was tempted to buy a couple of cutting boards, but they seemed too heavy to take back on the plane. I had a pre-lunch sundae at Ghirardelli's Ice Cream and Chocolate Shop: espresso chip ice cream w/hot fudge. I would have gone into a pleasure coma except I had to walk back to the hotel. Lunch was at Wow Bao at Water Tower Place (very doughy steamed potsticker-like buns filled with meat--not so much). Afterward, we headed a little south of the Loop and walked down Printer's Row, stopping at Sandmeyer's Bookstore and a Dunkin' Donuts, and sunned ourselves in Grant Park. Dinner was at Gino's East on Wells St. (pictured below). I'm not a big fan of deep dish pizza, and there was a 45-minute wait to even get into the building, but the place was wonderful inside: large and dark, with white Christmas lights strewn about and graffiti on every available wall space. Tried some Fat Tire beer, brewed in Colorado, on the recommendation of our friend Tom who lived there for a while, and enjoyed it.

Overall, a nice relatively impromptu trip--as impromptu as a predictable, in-the-rutter like me is likely to have. There was a Trader Joe's right across from the hotel, so wine and crackers were just moments away at any given time (same with Starbucks). All I could have asked for were slightly warmer temperatures.

Gettin' ready for Chicago

2009-03-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

For one reason or another, I haven't taken a "leave-the-city-limits" vacation since November of 2006. That will change on Thursday when Don & I join our friends Rose & Tom on a three-night trip to Chicago. It's an Expedia-deal kind of trip; we're staying at a Holiday Inn Express on the "Magnificent Mile" and have no concrete plans except to attend a taping of the NPR show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, something we did last time we were in Chicago (yes, Nov. 2006) and at which we had great fun (that sentence sound a tad tortured, but I guess it's correct).

We've always had a good time in Chicago (that's me pictured in the Giant Reflecting Egg in Millennium Park a few years ago), usually staying near the theater district and seeing plays: the most fun were the pre-Broadway tryouts of The Producers and Monty Python's Spamalot (with the original casts, he boasted pretentiously), but we also enjoyed seeing Wicked and Putnam County Spelling Bee. This time, nothing theaterical sounds particularly compelling: there's Xanadu which could be campy fun, and there's a "drawing-room" comedy called something like Don't Dress for Dinner which features Jeffrey Donovan, the sexy star of Burn Notice. We'll hit the Art Institute, and other musuems are a possiblity, though I don't think I need to go to the Field Museum again, with its slighly seedy and creepy taxidermied tableaux. Of course, being so close to the Mile, shopping will certainly be on the agenda, though I wonder if some of the Magnificence of the Mile will be tarnished with the economy the way it is.

We've never really left the "comfort zone" of the Mile/Loop area, and I don't know if I'm up for that this time either, but I am doing some restaurant research, hoping to have a grand eating experience or two. My favorite Chicago dinner so far was at Berghoff's, before it closed and re-opened as something that is not quite Berghoff's anymore. I imagine my better half will want some genuine Chicago pizza, and I bet Tom will want something trailblazingly exotic (yes, I jest). A trip to the library will most likely be on the agenda, and of course no trip to any city in the country would be complete without some bookstore visits, and some toruisty trinket to bring home and put on the fridge. I'll try to take some pics.

Chicken paprikash pot pie

2009-03-10T04:36:00.000-07:00

I like to cook, but I'm not a gourmet cook, nor am I an adventurous cook. I mostly stick with one-dish skillet meals, and one of the best is this recipe from the Pillsbury One-Dish Meals Cookbook, which is full of great-tasting and easy recipes. This is the recipe I've given out most often. It is easy and yummy.

2 refrigerated pie crusts
4 slices of bacon, crumbled
3/4 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts,
cut up in 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup chopped onions
1 cup chopped bell pepper
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup frozen sweet peas
1/2 cup sour cream
12 oz jar chicken gravy
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 teaspoons paprika

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare pie crust as directed on package for two-crust pie using 9-inch pie pan.

2. In large skillet over medium heat, cook bacon until crisp. Reserve 1 tablespoon drippings with bacon on skillet. [I cook the bacon whole, drain it, then crumble it back into the skillet]

3. Add chicken to skillet; cook and stir until no longer pink. Add onions, bell pepper and carrots; cook and stir until vegetables are tender. Stir in peas. [I don't usually use peppers, but I do sprinkle in a little crushed pepper mix]

4. In small bowl, combine all remaining ingredients; mix well. Stir into chicken mixture in skillet. Spoon into crust-lined pan. Top with second crust and flute edges; cut slits or small designs in several places on top of crust.

5. Bake at 425 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Cover edge of crust with strips of foil after 10 to 15 minutes of baking to prevent excessive browning. [I have an aluminum ring I use for this] Let stand 10 minutes before serving.

Commies! Fires! Librarian in trouble!!

2009-03-04T10:47:00.000-08:00

Not me, as I'm just a faux-librarian (I'm like Anias Nin's Spy in the house of love, which makes things sound way sexier than they are), but Bette Davis! A few weeks ago, I saw a movie I'd wanted to see for some time, Storm Center (1956), one of the few Hollywood movies with a librarian at the center of the plot. I've posted a full summary and review here, but thought I'd post a briefer version below:

Maiden lady librarian Bette Davis (not nearly as kicky as Marion in The Music Man) is attacked by her small town's city council for not removing a book on communism from the shelves. She sticks to her guns, loses the friendship of the town children she loves so much, and is eventually forcibly removed as head librarian. One of the disillusioned kids starts a fire in the library, bringing things to a head. The idea of a movie about libraries and the First Amendment is an interesting one, but it's not really an inherently exciting topic, and this movie's script is muddled, the performances are all over the map (Davis underacts, the firebug kid is good, and his father overacts like he's practicing to play Stanley in a community theater production of Streetcar Named Desire), and the film looks like a TV-movie. Maybe I'll work on a screenplay that will tear off the lid on today's seething libraries: patrons who urinate where they please, naked pictures of Zac Efron or Lindsay Lohan that pop up uncalled-for on computer screens, dejected job seekers who want us to make their resume "pretty." Can we handle the truth?

Being a hero is so complicated

2009-03-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

At Hero Factory, you can make your own superhero by choosing a variety of faces, bodies, costume parts, etc., and you get a finished comic book cover with your hero in full heroic stance. I was a huge comic book fan in my youth, but fell away from the fold in late high school. I am most emphatically not a fan of the recent rash of superhero movies (though I don't the mind the X-Men films, and I'm a fan of the Fantastic Four films thanks mostly to the yummy Chris Evans playing the Human Torch). Still, I have fond memories of my Silver-Age superhero fandom, so when a friend pointed out this site, I went there to become my own Silver Surfer or Aquaman or Dr. Strange.

The site is fun, though sadly there are some things you can't control. When you go to choose your power, you can only pick from physical manifestations, like weapons or animal sidekicks, you can't actually pick a power. You can control the color for some things but not others. Worst of all, you can't pick your own name. I generally like my hero, and love the wings but not the green color of the wings. I also hate my name, the Fancy Fluttering Butterfly. My first choice had a lightsaber, but it called me a "Jedi," and I didn't really want to be that. So I'm a freakin' butterfly. Hey, The Freakin' Butterfly would be better than the Fancy Fluttering one.

Japanese steakhouse shenanigans

2009-02-23T08:35:00.000-08:00

Had my first meal at a Japanese steakhouse this weekend, Taste of Japan, with family and friends, and I'm glad there were a lot of us there because I had no idea that it was intended as a "group" experience. The seven of us were seated around a rectangular table with a huge grill in the middle. One young handsomish waiter took our orders, but a different man was our chef. He made a show out of flipping utensils in the air and tossing eggs into his pockets, but he seemed to miss as often as he made it. He cooked our meals in front of us, grilling meat, poultry, fish, and veggies all on the large table grill. My favorite "trick" of his was the onion volcano (pictured), in which he placed onion slices in a pile, poured some oil down the middle, and lit it so it gave off flame and smoke like, yes, a volcano!

I had a "blue" martini; I have no idea what was in it, but it was advertised as blue and it was blue, so I was happy. The salad had a very good sweetish dressing, and the veggies were yummy. I had the Kobe Special, which was chicken and filet mignon (medium well), and it was quite good. I liked the way the chef delivered the food: he'd get the chunk of food on his spatula, say, "Filet medium well!," see who reacted, and toss the food at me (well, at the plate in my hands). One of our party shared a bottle of plum wine with us; good but thickly sweet. The place is so loud, it's difficult to engage in casual conversation, but I quite enjoyed my food and would go back again, with a group. (Don & I aren't the kind of couple that does well with enforced small talk with strangers, especially when you're stuck with them at a restaurant table.)

A good cat

2009-02-20T04:34:00.001-08:00

I'm sure I've stolen this blog post title from one of my friends and fellow bloggers who went through the death of a pet in the past year or two, but it seems fitting. We had to have Dodger, our cat of almost 14 years, euthanized last night. He, like his daddies, was very much a creature of routine, so the hardest thing about the next few days will be breaking those routines: not having to step gingerly when I get up in the middle of the night for fear of stepping on the cat who would always be curled up right outside the bedroom door; not coming home every afternoon to a cat who would greet me with a quick rub against the leg, then direct me firmly over to the kitchen to get his daily treats; not worrying about whether the unthinking twitching of my feet while watching TV would signal "game time" to him and have him pounce on me, claws out, to draw blood right through my socks.

I think cat people and dog people generally want different things from their pets. Everyone knows a good dog does things like play catch and fetch slippers and slobber their affection all over you, though I've never had a dog so I don't know for sure. But a good cat is different from a good dog, and probably different from person to person. Dodger did not show affection promiscuously, but that made it all the more special when he did. He was not typically a lap cat, but if the conditions were right (a chilly fall evening, Don had his jeans on, the moon was in the seventh house), he loved curling up on Don's lap or leg for a long snooze.

He liked being around us, so most evenings, he was in the living room watching TV with us, and upon retiring, he would start the night curled up in bed at my feet, but he was also independent--he never stayed in bed much past midnight, as though he had more fun things to do downstairs, and he'd go through spells when he spent more time upstairs in a closet or in the basement on a pile of towels than with us.

When I was teaching and would be home in the afternoon, he would frequenly curl up at my feet on the couch while I was napping. I will always treasure the handful of times when I'd be lying on my back reading and he would jump up on the couch, and stretch out full length on my chest and stomach, facing me with his "purring face" on, the closest thing to a real cat smile I've ever seen (except for two weeks when he was a kitten, Dodger never purred, but he frequently had a contented "purring" face). I'd have to put the book down, of course, to accomodate my little visitor, but then we'd both have a nice long nap together.

He became a pest at dinnertime, begging at the table for anything creamy or saucy (of course, that was our fault for letting that habit develop), and he was a regular visitor up at the computer desk in the study. During his last 3 years when his health was in decline (diabetes and asthma), I could tell how good he was feeling if he could make the leap up to the desk to visit. With the onset of his diabetes, he quit making the jump for a couple of months, but he soon felt well enough to once again be a pest at the computer, right up until just this last weekend. I can't imagine not having a cat in my life, and I'm sure we'll adopt another one eventually, but not right away. Dodger was indeed a good cat and will be missed.

Me and Chuck D.

2009-02-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

This weekend, in honor of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, I read "On Natural Selection," a small book excerpted from The Origin of Species. "Read" is too strong a word, as, the further I got into the book, the less I understood. I got the basics, I guess, but 2 things struck me as interesting:

1) Darwin often talks about "Nature" as a personalized, almost godlike entity, as a "she" who seems to have a consciousness and intention. I realize this is probably just a literary convention, but in light of the idea that Darwin somehow was instrumental in killing off God, I found it interesting. Maybe God's not a man with a beard but a woman with a billion children. Or a carny hiding behind a curtain.

2) As a gay man, I feel practically invisible in Darwin's world, since everything comes down to propagating the species. I realize that even people who don't reproduce can help in building our society, which is a way of keeping the species going, but still, I wonder, since homosexuality hasn't died out as most of Darwin's "injurious" features have, maybe Mother Nature thinks we're helpful in some way. Maybe she harbors a love of musical theater?

And a shout-out to the other Chuck D. from Public Enemy, whom I will always remember fondly for his deathless lines, "Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me/Ya see, straight up racist that sucker was, simple and plain/Motherf**k him and John Wayne."

Curse you, Pet Shop Boys!

2009-02-11T06:36:00.001-08:00

I have about 15 Pet Shop Boys songs among the 2700 songs on my iPod. But because a disproportionate chunk of those songs begin with "I," I've been hearing a lot of them lately on alphabetical play: "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing," "I'm With Stupid," "Indefinite Leave to Remain," "Integral," and "It's a Sin." Last night, I had a bout of insomnia and only got about 4 hours of sleep. The biggest factor was probably the grande Starbucks I was still sipping at 8:30 (usually, my evening coffee is done by 7:30), but because every time I started to nod off, a thumping Pet Shop Boys song would start rushing by in my head, I blame them. Picture me as Stephen Colbert, profile to the camera, fist shaking in the air, yelling, "Petttt Shoppppp Boyyyysssss!!!"

A great sensory experience

2009-02-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

An article in New York magazine surveys a handful of chefs and restaurant workers about their opinion on Gov. Paterson's proposed 18% sales tax on non-diet soft drinks. Yes, this would probably be the first "sin tax" that would directly affect me (if I lived in New York), so of course I'm against it, but mostly I loved this quote from restaurant owner Gabrielle Hamilton:

"A well-timed ice-cold Coca-Cola is one of life’s greatest taste and sensory experiences: the way it makes your eyes sting and tear up, and the back of your throat gets that chalky moment as good or better even than some of the highest tannins in a big red wine, and then the full sugar and caffeine rush that completely cures what ails you. I’m not saying every day and I’m not saying three a day. I mean one perfectly placed Coke in your week."

But one a week?? Jesus, I'm no Superman (or depending on your religion, "Superman, I'm no Jesus!); there's no way I could limit myself to one a week. I have cut back from my glory days of 3 or 4 a day, to maybe 1 a day (and I sometimes try to leave some of the can to pour down the drain), but 1 a week? I might as well just wear sackcloth and go barefoot. (Let me also recommend a nice 3 or 4 shots of vanilla syrup with the fizzy elixir!)

My Indian dish

2009-02-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

I'm not a gourmet cook by any means, but I do like to cook, mostly single-skillet or casserole meals. Tonight I made one of my favorites (and one of Don's as well), chicken tikka masala with cardamom basmati rice. It's the only Indian dish I make, and the recipe I use is pretty easy (as long as I remember to marinate the chicken for at least an hour before I start to cook). It's from a cookbook by the hunky Dave Lieberman--can you think of any better reason to buy a cookbook than that the author is hot? I took a picture of the dish but it looked like chunky mud on a plate; that makes me appreciate how hard it is for food photographers to get dishes to look appetizing--no wonder they use food that's been sprayed down with plastic. So I guess I'll put a pic of Dave with my post instead.

You marinate cut-up chicken in a yogurt/honey/mixture with spices and garlic, then you put onions in the skillet, cook with curry powder and tomato paste, throw the chicken in, and let cook for 15 minutes. I cook the basmati rice in an electric steamer with caradmom & butter. My only complaint is that the smell of curry powder stays in the house for days. But there are never leftovers. Of course, Don & I rarely leave leftovers of anything. We had a mediocre Gewürztraminer with dinner; it's hard to find a really good one these days.

Mexican food in Central Ohio

2009-02-06T07:47:00.000-08:00

There are 2 kinds of Mexican food restaurants here in Central Ohio:

1. "Authentic" like El Vaquero, with a huge menu filled with endless combinations of a handful of foods (2 tacos and 1 tamale; or 1 chalupa and 2 flautas, etc.), a mostly Hispanic staff of men in their 30s and 40s, and TVs playing Univision telenovelas.

2. "Americanized," usually part of a chain, with a smaller, more expensive menu, a mostly Anglo staff of young pretty people, and a cluttered, decrepit "cantina" look. (Actually, some of the "authentic" ones are also chains, like the aformentioned El Vaquero.)

Sometimes I'm in the mood for one, sometimes the other--when it comes to margaritas, the Americanized ones win hands down. My favorite Americanized Mexican restaurant was Don Pablo's, but that chain seems to have bitten the dust, so we went to the new chain that's replaced the old Pablo buildings, Baja Sol Cantina. It looks the part, though I have to say it's a bit junkier than the old Don Pablo's, and the staff isn't as pretty (so important for a good dining experience). I started with a Blue Margarita which was pretty darn good (I don't know why I'm always so happy drinking something blue...); the salsa bar, with at least 7 different salsas and sides (like a nice cilantro/onion mix) was good; the main course was this:

Inside Out Chicken Tinga Tamale
Grilled corn cake served over Salsa Verde and topped with chicken tinga, sour cream, pico de gallo and green onions. Served with Baja rice and your choice of black or pinto beans.

It was OK, though because I had ordered the corn cake for an appetizer, I was a bit corned out. I'd go back and try the fajitas, but for now I'm still in mourning for Don Pablo's,

First brunch of the New Depression

2009-02-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

We went to brunch today at a Nice Restaurant which seems to have fallen on hard-ish times. Though the food was good (I especially liked my Mimosa and my veggies, a mix of wax beans, other beans, and corn), the waitress was somewhat less attentive than usual. The place was less crowded than I remember it being in the past. And a strange man was sitting (or swaying with his ass bumping back and forth across the seat of a stool) at the head of the brunch line. His face was indistinct, like in one of those stupid movies that used rotoscope animation over live action (A Scanner Darkly), but I think his hair was dirty and his eyes were crazy. Someone in our party thought he was a "hobo of the New Depression," but he kept asking people if they were getting enough to eat, telling unfinished jokes, and suggesting that customers get omlettes from the Omlette Man. I think he worked there.

What it's all about

2009-01-31T12:07:00.000-08:00

I have grown to love Twitter and Facebook, but I don't like the texting-length restrictions on what can be written in an individual post, so here, I'm gonna post like I do on Twitter and Facebook, except at length. My other blogs are sort of journals of my movie-watching and other media-consuming, with a potential audience in mind of people who might be interested in the same stuff, but here, I'm just gonna be expressing myself, trivially and sometimes stupidly. I doubt I'll have much of an audience, and I may not keep this up very long, but it's been in my head for a few weeks now, and I imagine it will actually be more like an average non-political blog (here's what I'm doing or thinking today) than my other blogs.

Right now, I hate winter. It was 2 degrees above zero this morning, with lots of snow and ice all over the place--the view out our bedroom window is pictured. We've had a shitty week or two of weather here in central Ohio, and the thought of driving to and from work in ice and snow and slush ties my stomach in knots, so it's been a gut-wrenching time lately. Right now, it's up to 22 and sunny, with temps predicted to be in the 30s, even near 40, over the next day or so, but I know this rollercoaster won't end for at least another two months. Blechh. Or, as I have adapted Charles Schulz's phrase of queasy disgust, blick.