Almost Finished

This is very, very good.

Matty, You Gotta See This

Hoo-Hoo does the penguin dance.

Finished...

...The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Give it three stars. Now on to this. It's gonna be good.

Just Because It's Funny

Multi-tasking

I was outside at work a couple days ago condensing the vegetables, (which I enjoy more than you'd think,) and generally minding my own business when a customer stopped me and asked for some sort of flower. I know nothing about flowers and there wasn't anyone from that department on hand so I went to the hut where we station the outside garden cashier to use the in-store phone to call for help. That phone's a cheap cordless setup and it only works sometimes, so I asked the cashier on duty, whose name isn't important here, if it had been working.

"I don't know," she told me from the shade of her hut, "but I'm dehydrated."

We've had some trouble with heat exhaustion among employees in recent years, so we're all vocal about being smart and drinking enough water, so I wanted to be sympathetic and responsible, except that this particular cashier has a long and famous history of whining and begging for more breaks than what she's allotted, so I was skeptical.

"Have you been drinking your water?" I asked her.

"No, but I need a break."

Poor predicatble girl.

I didn't have the time for the circular non-conversation that was coming so I told her to call a head cashier and I went back to my veggies. Not five minutes later I glanced back toward the hut and saw her seated on a lawn chair in front of the hut in the sun rolling up the sleeves of her tee-shirt up above her deltoids and sprawling out to expose as much of herself to the sun as she could.

"You're not going to convince anyone like that," I said. "We're all of us pretty smart. Are you dehydrating or working on your tan?"

She didn't miss a beat and neither, apparently, did she see the problem with the answer she offered. The poor little airhead grinned and squinted against the sun and proudly announced, "I'm doing both."

Hate All You Want

But that's a lot of taters.

Liked this One

"If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow."
--Chinese proverb

Hey!

Check 'em out.

Bookses

Finished Pay Attention... It's good (despite the dreadful title). Now on to this.

Five More

**peeking in on Mr. Hoo-Hoo after he's gone to sleep for the night
**zuppa tuscana
**ribaldry -- that's a fun word
**Skyline
**Ellery

Mr. Shittybritches

This won't make one of my little Five Things lists anytime soon.

Gehrig just dropped as deuce in his pants, which is a daily occurance and with which I'm okay. This one, however, got all up in his junk and that's not fun for any of us.

Except, apparenlty, for him. Seemed downright proud of himself.

That's my boy.

Five More

**the prospect of bunk beds
**a thunderstorm at night
**a clean shave
**the fact that there are people in my Life who get me
**toast

Tired of This Yet?

**rain
**hot tea
**my flannel shirt
**maple trees
**tater tots

Five Things That Make Me Happy

**Gehrig took a four hour nap today
**then he spent the afternoon trying to figure out what a magnet will stick to (the front door, but not the glass storm door and not my leg) and whether or not a baseball card is a magnet (it's not)
**but before that I tried repeatedly and unsuccessfully to get him to eat a mushroom -- you should see the face
**continued progress on the basement -- there are walls and rumors of walls now
**"The World Can Wait" by Over the Rhine

Stumped

Finished Ironweed this morning and can't figure out why I didn't like it -- looked like a winner going in. 225 pages and it felt longer than the John Adams thing I read last month. Can't put my finger on it.

Watched Gangs of New York a couple nights ago. It's fine. Daniel Day-Lewis was great.

Five More

**Mr. Hoo-Hoo knows two words, shoes and hat. He's been jabbering for months, but actually uses these two correctly and intentionally.
**White Castle sells breakfast at 4 AM, so I didn't go to work hungry this morning.
**The basement is cooking along nicely -- almost completely framed in. Soon Holly, soon...
**Even when I read a book I don't dig so much, there's always the hope that the next one will be mo' better.
**My boss carries a finger shaped pen that farts when you pull it.

Five for Friday

**turkey and bacon on wheat, provolone, spinach, tomatoes, southwest sauce, green olives
**"One of These Things First," by Nick Drake
**stuff like this
**that delightful Ashley Peacock
**"In the Waiting Line," by Zero 7

Five More

**big Red's comeback tonight (Jr.'s back)
**started framing the basement
**visiting with Chris in from Portland
**having Ben Folds for my ringtone
**the prospect of fresh tomatoes

Five More

**a fresh haircut
**my deck
**fresh basil
**goetta
**"...and this one belongs to the Reds."

Bookses

Finished American Sphinx. Ellis is good.

Currently reading Ironweed, by William Kennedy. I'm about half-way through it and not particulary digging it. It's not bad, just...mleh. Every once in a while, though, there's something like this:

"Whatayou been up to?" Rudy asked. "You know somebody buried up there?"

"A little kid I used to know."

"A kid? What'd he do, die young?"

"Pretty young."

"What happened to him?"

"He fell."

"He fell where?"

"He fell on the floor."

"Hell, I fall on the floor about twice a day and I ain't dead."

"That's what you think," Francis said.

--page 20

Five More

**Holly's stuff is mostly moved in -- this is really gonna happen.
**hookah (mmm...strawberry...)
**Stan Kenton's West Side Story
**Chipotle
**double espresso and a book on the patio

Five on a Monday

**actual progress on the basement (at last!)
**Friends
**irony
**that green aloe gel sunburn stuff
**redbirds outside the window

Hey Ma,

Check this out.

Five for Tara

**sake
**unagi
**spicy tuna roll
**saba
**spider roll

Five More

**Les Miserables
**watching Gehrig show my mom which flowers to smell
**hanging out with Randy
**days like the day I had at work today
**Claritin

Five More

**good books
**coffee with Tom Powell
**Pardon The Interruption
**sleeping in 'til 8:00
**fountain pens

Five Things that Make Me Happy

**patchouli soap
**red wine
**watching Gehrig trying to figure out how socks work
**Ruthie's cooking
**baseball on the radio

Ultrasound Today

Anybody Notice...

...Who has the best record in the Bigs?

The Last Five Books I've Read

The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides -- We'd watched the movie (and liked it lots) and were into the extras on the DVD before we realized why the title was so familiar. The book was written by the guy who wrote one of our all-time favorites, Middlesex. So then I read it, but maybe too soon after having seen the movie, which follows the book so closely that it's barely worth doing both. (One of them is worth doing though -- it's good stuff.) Eugenides can turn a phrase like few others, but The Virgin Suicides was his first novel and his talent is more obvious in Middlesex. Still, TVS is written in a first person plural voice, and that's unusual.

The Parent's Tao Te Ching, by Michael Martin -- Okay, this is the best freaking thing I've read about the parental experience by such a wide margin that I'm not even going to talk about it.

Siddhartha, by Hermann Hesse -- Been intending to get to this one since college and it wasn't what I expected. Didn't do much for me.

John Adams, by David McCullough -- Oh, this one's good. Adams was one of the most brilliant, honest, and hard-working pains in the ass ever and this is the second best biography I've ever read. Seven-hundred-something pages, but it doesn't feel like it.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson -- Wow. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but Drew, Ted, TG, Christophersly...wow.

I've Never Been Able to Like Roger Clemens, But...

...(as usual) Gammons is right.

(Plus the article features a Top Ten list.)

This is What I'm Talking About

Who wants the Boomer?