The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
The Lake of Dreams, by Kim Edwards
Book 51
I have said before that nothing is more boring than listening to people talk about their dreams. I have found one. It is listening to fictional characters talk about their dreams.
This is a chick book. And I had just about given up on it by the third CD, but there was one plot thread that kept me interested. Mostly, I found the main character boring.
Prodigal daughter comes home during a crossroads in her life and confronts family drama centering on her father’s death 10 years before. Insert 100-year old family letters illuminating a mysterious aunt no one had ever heard of before whose life must have something to teach our lost little heroine.
Ooooooohh.
The supporting characters are, thankfully, more interesting. But the thing is, the twists and turns weren’t terribly surprising. The only really shocking moment was when Lucy went “nightswimming” by herself and…..didn’t get caught. I guess I have seen too many soap operas.
Q101.com
A few months ago, Chicago lost its alternative radio station. There aren’t very many rock stations left, and Q101 was a Gen X staple. If I remember correctly, it launched the summer that I left for college. I had two clues that it was fading:
- Each December, they would run the top 100 songs of each year they had been on the air, and listeners could vote on their favorite year. Those 100 songs would be played again on New Years Eve. The same year’s songs won every single time. That would be 1994. The #1 song was “Closer” – Nine Inch Nails. They stopped that particular holiday event.
- Joy and I were talking about Q101 and she commented, “All their songs are old.” I immediately denied it, but then I started noticing.
Genetic Testing – The Results
I had my follow up appointment last Friday with the MD andgenetic counselor. It was not tooterrible a preamble before the verdict: the test came back Normal, meaning thatno genetic mutations were found in my BRCA gene. The doctor said the degree of accuracy isaround 93%.
Lab #1:
Blankets 59 – 61
The lighting here is so messed up that you can’t even tell that the fleece is pink. The yarn was Red Heart’s Monet. Four rows, single crochet.
This was Red Heart’s Lemon. Three rows single crochet.
This actually is a yellow fleece. Four rows single crochet in Red Heart’s Watercolor.
I have also been making loads of scarves – around 20 by now. My mother has made three. When I called her out, she said, “You haven’t done anything else!”
Really? Because it looks like I have made sixty-one blankets for Project Linus! And counting.
The next Blanket Day for the North and Central Chicagoland is next Saturday. Details here.
Homer and Langley, by E.L. Doctorow
Book 50
Doctorow’s latest novel made a big splash last year partly because it is (very loosely) based on the lives of a pair of eccentric, reclusive brothers that lived on 5th Avenue. Basically, Doctorow took a couple of facts – the brothers lived alone in a huge, inherited townhouse, they retreated from the world and hoarded stuff until they were old men. Finally, they were found dead: one was crushed by stuff and the other, who was disabled, starved to death.
Doctorow imagined how they might have lived in their own heads as the world continue to turn around them. Awesome premise.
I mostly bought it. The perspective was a first person narrative of Homer, the physically disabled brother. Langley is the brother that came home from the (frist World) War badly damaged. As Langley’s mental health slowly deteriorates, Homer just kind of goes along with all the weirdness. Buying and reading every city paper – morning and evening – and keeping them, was the very first. There were several times when I found myself saying to Homer, “Dude….stop him now!” But I guess when you are caught up in the madness every single day, it is easy to lose the big picture of the situation.
This book was sad and now that I am thinking about it, the other Doctorow novels I have read are infused with sadness. He must be really good to keep me coming back.
Genetic Testing – Preamble and First Appointment
I am pursuing genetic testing to determine my risk for breast and ovarian cancer. Every person that I have told has had a hundred questions, so I thought it worth writing:
A Very Facebook Halloween
One of the more amusing things on Facebook is the Halloween pics. My friends’ kids in costume. This is a list:
- Big brother was Joker and little brother was Robin.
- Big brother was Buzz Lightyear and little sister was Daphne from Scooby Doo (that one was awesome).
- Big sister was candy corn witch and little sister was a vampire. Their friend was zombie Alice in Wonderland.
- Twin sister Hobbits
- Lamb
- Cow
- Big brother G.I. Joe, little sister Super Girl
- Big brother firefighter, little sister princess
- Michael Jackson
Seven Months
What? All the mommy bloggers do monthly updates!
I took this picture yesterday, Sunday, around 1:30 in the afternoon. He looks sad because I would not take him to the dog park. I would not take him to the dog park because his doctor gave explicit instructions: he is to digest his food before we go to the dog park. I had gotten home around 1pm and fed him. We left for the dog park at 2:02. Roughly.
I have said that he likes to run with the big dogs. Really, he just likes to run. Sometimes he is at the front of the pack and sometimes he gets body-slammed by the front of the pack. I actually saw him come up limping twice yesterday, although the other time he wiped out all by himself.
I am happy to say that the only person he barked at was me. First, because I was too slow in taking off his leash. He was all, “Look! All the running! Hurry! I’m going to miss it!” The other time was when I refused to throw his ball.
I am starting to get a sense of when he isn’t going to bring it back.
I am also happy to say that when there is a scuffle among the dogs, and I call him back, he responds. I have a dissertation brewing in my head regarding the dynamics of the dog park, but I will spare you. For now.
Suffice it to say that this is a dog that needs exercise. For the next few months, he will continue going to Doggie Do Rite three days a week. And I will take him for weekend trips to the dog park until I can’t stand the weather any more. (It was a mass exodus around 3pm yesterday.)
We took him to fancy pet store on Saturday, after a trip to the vet. He behaved nicely, even when the Boston Terrier snapped at him. He is doing better with the coming when he is called. Now we are working on “lie down”. He generally sleeps in my bed, but did fine with my mother and the cat when I was in Washington.
Hopefully, by next month, we will see the trainer again to help us out with “leash manners” and we will have settled on a permanent diet. We will also be testing how long he can stay home by himself (Thanksgiving).
Ugh. And it seems I have to make him a Christmas stocking.
Lunchtime at Noodles
I went for an early lunch at Noodle’s & Company in Arlington Heights before hitting the book sale at the Arlington Heights Library. This particular Noodles is always filled with unsupervised children due to the movie theater around the corner. Thus it is also the place that I learned (the hard way) to make sure the top of the salt shaker is secure before using it on my food.
So I ordered the penne rosa with parm chicken and, as is my habit, I ate the chicken first. It was perfectly good. Then I checked the salt shaker, salted the pasta and took a bite. It didn’t taste right. Too much cream? I took a second bite. Beh. Then I figured it out:
Someone had replaced the salt with sugar.
I took the bowl back with the salt shaker, explained the problem and asked for a new one, which I was given. The staff was checking every salt shaker before I left.
Dear Arlington Heights, Illinois:
Your library is awesome. Your kids suck.
The Tortilla Curtain, by T.C. Boyle
Book 49
We generally have multiple copies of The Tortilla Curtain at the Used Book Store. I figured that GBS must be teaching it in English class. I figured that it was kinda like a One Book, One Chicago pick, where we all come to a greater cultural understanding at the end. So I picked it up when I saw the audio book, read by the author.
Then I looked it up on LibraryThing, where the reviews suggested that it was more like The Grapes of Wrath. Not possible, I thought. The Grapes of Wrath was a million pages and this was a little trade paperback.
Southern California. Two families: one prosperous white family in a gated community that is getting even more gated and one undocumented Mexican couple camping in the canyon with a baby on the way.
Yeah. It was rather Steinbeck-of-the-modern-era. Where stuff is bad at the beginning and it keeps finding a way to get worse until you can’t think of how it could get worse and then someone is cooking a Siamese cat in a stew to feed his family. And it gets worse.
There was a rather profound moral to the story with that motif of the fences both literal and figurative. We love nature until it hunts our little dogs. We love our fellow man until there are just so many of them and they are threatening our property values.
As the story built to the climax, I found it very cinematic. However, the ending was very abrupt and with little resolution. I wonder how Hollywood is going to deal with that.
The Next Dark Age 