The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Bullitt
Would you believe I saw another movie this weekend? It was a fluke – Bullitt was just starting on AMC or something when I went downstairs to the let birds out to play.
I hesitate to say there isn’t much to the plot, because when a film is 40+ years old, it might very well be the original that started the trend that led to the cliche. But I am thinking that “cop assigned to protect a witness and it all goes wrong” wasn’t particularly groundbreaking in 1968.
Steve McQueen plays his part well and Robert Vaughn is appropriately smarmy as the ambitious politico that drags Bullitt into it. The subplot with the girlfriend added less than nothing, but the car chase was pretty impressive. I also had a “so that’s where they got it” moment near the end as the cop is chasing the bad guy through an airfield at night (i.e. Pacino and De Niro and Heat). Which reminds me of how pleasantly quaint it was to see airport “security” in that year.
Overall, I am glad I saw it but do not need to add it to any collections.
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender
Book 13
I saw this for the first time at the Library’s Used Book Store shortly after its release. The story is about a girl that picks up on other people’s feeling by eating the food they cook. Cool premise, but it was worth $10 on Amazon, so I listed it. It sold. I saw it later in the audio book section of the library. Dare I borrow an audio that I don’t have at home? What if I love it?
It was decent. Which is funny because the reviews on Goodreads are very Love it or Hate it. Bender does a good job with the Down Side of a Superpower bit, but there isn’t a single incident of the kid eating something in a calcuated way to ascertain some piece of private information for her own purposes.
SPOILERS
The family dynamic is weird. Desperately unhappy mother, a character that I never found as sympathetic as I expect was intended. Desperately unhappy older brother. Seemingly normal, if clueless father. There are hints that the brother might also have some kind of “gift”, and I didn’t really like how his story played out. But one of the later revelations – that the supernatural stuff came down from the dad’s side – rather tied it together to make some sense.
I was engaged with the narrative nearly the entire time, but it was in spite of the audio. I am sorry to say this was my first bad experience with the author doing the reading. The characters in Bender’s voice sounded whiny. I am certain they would have been less so in the privacy of my own head. On the plus side, though, I understand from the reviews that Bender neglects punctuation in her dialog and I didn’t have to deal with that in the audio.
Overall, I am glad I went for it.
Strange New Product Review – Puppy Edition
So Gibbs is back on antibiotics (don’t ask) and I wanted to find a new way to give him the pills. Yeah, yeah – Pill Pockets. I worry about them because it seems to me that:
- Dogs figure out all of the hidden pill tricks eventually
- Gibbs is smarter than the average dog
- He is on antibiotics more often than I consider normal
- He is 10 months old!
So I am saving the pill pockets for an emergency. Do you want the story or not?
I went into Wags on Willow, the awesome new pet store in Northbrook. On a shelf with some canned food I found this:
All cage-free, hormone-free, gluten-free, blahblah organic. You add warm water and it makes a wet food. So I looked at it and thought that I could add less water and make a meatball out of it for the pills.
So I took the box over to Mary, the proprietor, and asked about it. She said she hadn’t had much customer feedback yet, but thought my idea wasn’t dumb. So we gave it a try. I chose the turkey with vegetables.
While Gibbs was eating his dinner, I opened the box. The herbal smell was pretty strong. It actually smelled like Thanksgiving stuffing, but with an undertone of..sour? acidic? Something I found unpleasant. I scooped out a spoonful and dumped it in a cup with a bit of hot water and stirred. It was kind of like instant oatmeal in that you have to wait a minute for it to thicken. Then I stuffed the pill inside. By that time, Gibbs had finished his dinner, so I gave it to him.
He dropped it on the floor and eyed it suspiciously. Then he took a couple of licks. Then a couple of tiny, tentative, bites. He took such small bites that he bit the pill in half and I was afraid we’d have a real problem, But eventually he finished it.
Day Two: same drill. It was clear that he wanted it, but he still took his time.
Day Three: ate it in three bites.
Day Four: he left his dinner to get his meatball. I made him go back and finish it. Then he ate his meatball in two bites.
Awesome.
This is rather high maintenance for me to do for full meals, and I avoid wet food if I can. Also, I didn’t do any math on the cost of the daily diet, but I imagine it would be expensive. And seriously, I do not like the way it smells. But for making pill-hiding meatballs, I am calling it a success. Here is a link to the manufacturer’s website. From the reviews, it appears to be a hit with the people that want to feed their dogs a raw diet. I am not that hard-core.
And now, you may have a gratuitous Gibbs pic:
He brings all of his toys to my bed now. I count six in this shot.
The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
Book 12
Man Booker Prize winner that has been on my shelf for years. I would call this a family epic that illustrates the incredibly complicated relationship India has with the Western world.
There’s a retired judge who lives in the boonies with his orphaned teenage granddaughter, a cook and his dog. There are also some tutors that come and go, and the cook hasa son trying to scrape out a living in New York. The book opens with the robbery of the home – focal point of tension that the rest of the novel explains and puts into context.
One scene that hit me was at the U.S. embassy with all of the Indians trying to get visas and the State Department employees trying to determine whether they are trying to use a travel visa to emigrate. These were some desperate, desperate people. By the end of the novel, the question is whether the people that “made it” are any better off than if they had stayed home.
The novel brushes the surface of the class system in India, which I have never really understood. Also, the backdrop of revolution was very present, but I don’t know the history well enough for it to have meant anything to me. I would like to have seen more detail, but that really wasn’t the point of this story.
Thematically, I really liked this book and the writing was engaging. But there wasn’t a whole lot to like in the characters and the plot fizzled out at the end. Very American of me.
Day 5
I mentioned that I had five volunteer gigs over five days. Here is how it went:
Day 1 – The Refuge
I arrived after work for my regular night feeding, cleaning and medicating (if necessary) the resident parrots. I found that the daily work was already finished, and our directors were introducing a previous adopter to another bird. It was an African Grey parrot named Sasha. She is relatively new (it looks like her profile isn’t even on the website yet), but pretty well socialized. However, she plucks her feathers to the point of mutilation and needs to wear a collar.
It looked like it was going well The bonus: this is the family that had adopted Vito, brother of my recently addition, Sigmund. They brought him for a visit. It is funny with birds coming from the same home – sometimes they sound exactly alike and sometimes they really do their own thing.
After chatting awhile about the birds, I headed home to give some “out time” to my own before heading over to Starbucks.
Day 1 – Project Linus
I was running early, but wasn’t even the first one there. I brought my current project, some new fleece (to exchange for prepared fleece) and seven completed blankets. These nights at Starbucks started as a “stitch and bitch” but with the growth of the group, and the fleece exchange, and the tagging and bagging we have made these nights really productive.
I was sitting with Judi, one of the chapter coordinators and the topic was fleece blankets. She said that about 75% of the blankets donated these days are fleece. The other 25% are knitted, fully-crocheted or quilted. “Of course they are,” I said. “I can complete one crocheted fleece blanket during one average basketball game.” Then Karen said, “And it takes an entire season to complete a fully crocheted blanket.” So we determined that we are feeling more accomplished and reaching more children this way.
Note: I have completed two fleece blankets since Wednesday.
Day 2 – Library
Thursday was my regular night at the Library. Turns out there was a board meeting that night, so I had several visitors on top of being rather busy with regular patrons.
One lady was looking around for an hour and a half. Very unusual. She was in several different aisles and sat down at the back table to peruse them more than once. When she came to purchase a few, she explained that she had seen one of the 9/11 conspiracy documentaries the week before and it made her crazy. She was reading everything she could get her hands on to determine the truth for herself, and she seemed incredibly agitated.
I remember seeing a piece where the scientists were saying there is no physical way the towers could have fallen the way they had purely from the planes hitting at those particular times and places. The suggestion was that the buildings were rigged with some other explosive or accelerant. I remember thinking that I should read more about it, too. Then decided that if I did, I would make myself crazy.
I am not proud of this.
Day 3 – Nothing Scheduled
But I started and finished a Project Linus fleece blanket.
Day 4 – Library
We had a meeting of the Used Book Store’s steering committee. We meet two or three times a year to review numbers, recall incidents and plan for the next few months. Yesterday, we reviewed numbers like: we earned something like $10,000 each year in the old building. In the new building, with our new room, we earned something like $30,000 in 2011.
Then we started some good debating over use of time and space and resources (financial and volunteer). I played my “I feel strongly about this” card on getting rid of all the VHS tapes. They are taking up too much space that we need for actual books. I think we agreed to pare it way down.
Day 5 – Library
Today I am heading back over to staff the store for the afternoon. The lady that had been working Sundays is in declining health and wanting to retire, but didn’t want to leave anyone in the lurch. I said that I would take one every once in awhile, as long as it wasn’t football season. Back in the old building, Sundays were generally quiet and today, I would really like to read! Our director noted that if every volunteer took one, we would each work one Sunday every year and a half.
Somehow, I doubt that is going to happen.
I have had several discussions recently over the different reasons why people volunteer and what they (hope to) get out of it. Some actively want to make a difference. Some have social reasons. Some are passionate about a particular cause. Some just want to get out of the house. The moral of the story is there are opportunities out there for everyone to be involved. Please go out and find one.
The Slacking Before the Storm
I have been a total slacker this evening. I meant to write about Librarything vs GoodReads, but kept getting distracted.
I have five volunteer gigs in the next five days. That’s my excuse. But since I doubt I’ll be here over the next couple of days, I figured I’d better do something for those that are paying attention.
Puppy pic. Oldie but goodie of baby Gibbs asleep in his toy basket:
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Prepping Fleece
Annette from Catnip and Coffee asked how we prep the fleece for the crochet-edged blankets. Karen and Penny, from my chapter of Project Linus, created a video demonstration:
The first half shows how to prepare it and the second half shows how to go about crocheting. I bought my skip-stitch rotary blade at a chapter meeting, but our website says they can be ordered from: http://www.skipstitch.com/
Also, I seem to recall that Project Linus actually made some money off of the clicks on this, so have at it.
Blankets 7 – 10
Project Linus night at Starbucks is this week, so I figured I’d better log these in and wash them:
My problem here (besides the lighting) is that when I wait until I have several blankets completed, I forget the details of the work. The one on the left was, I think, a Caron Simply Soft variegated yarn. I couldn’t begin to remember the name.
On the right is the famous Ikea fleece with Red Heart Monet yarn.
In the center – with the princesses – is one that makes me particularly proud because I found it (along with a few other panels) on clearance and prepped them myself. Which led to slicing my finger with a rotary blade. Not so proud of that part. Caron white yarn.
Which leads us to number 10:
Doesn’t look like much next to the princesses, but I may have mentioned before: I don’t see many blankets out there appropriate for an older boy if he doesn’t like sports. This is my solution.
Caron Simply Soft yarn in Black.
Feeding a Hungry Teenaged Dog
In the continuing mission to feed and nurture a healthy dog, we arrive at the next challenge:
Gibbs inhales his food.
We haven’t had a lot of choking, but there have been a non-zero number of vomiting-after-meals incidents. Our solution was to give him his meals in three courses. Then I started looking at “slow feeders”, bowls that require a small amount of foraging so that the dog eats more slowly.
The one I really liked was from Martha Stewart and PetsMart said it was only available in-store: 
Except the store didn’t have it. I wandered around awhile and found the Omega Paw Steel Portion Pacer. It is a small stainless steel ball that you place in the bowl. The dog has to work around the ball to eat his dinner.
No way, was my thought. First of all, what is to stop my little smarty from picking it up and removing it from the bowl. And even if he doesn’t do that, what is to stop him from knocking over the bowl to spill his dinner?
Actually, if he knocked his bowl over, he’d still be forced to eat more slowly. But that doesn’t sound like a better strategy than feeding a dog three courses.
For ten bucks, it was worth a try. Last weekend. I put the ball into his regular stainless steel bowl and poured his dinner over it.
Gibbs was agitated when I put it down. He wanted his dinner and didn’t like this. He stretched his neck out, keeping his body as far from the ball as possible. And inhaled as much food as he could get in two gulps before running away. When he came back, he barked at it.
So he didn’t pick it up and didn’t knock the bowl over. But I’m sorry, if my dog is all upset while eating his dinner, we will not be helping his digestion. We will be doing the opposite of that. Back to the drawing board. Which we know as Google.
As it turned out, the Evil Empire (also known as Amazon.com) has something very similar to the Martha Stewart bowl. For five bucks. Two bowls plus shipping and I still paid less than if PetsMart had stocked it in the first place. It shipped all speedy and arrived yesterday:
Totally worked. Gibbs was not upset by it and he did take more time to eat.
Gibbs is fed one cup of food at each meal, which comes very close to the top, so he can still inhale his first couple of bites. I might go back and see if there is a larger size to be had. But after two meals, I am very pleased with this purchase.
The Next Dark Age 