The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Bookshelf of Shame
http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=leartojugg-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004CRTC1A&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifrTribune columnist Mary Schmich was inspired by Oprah (don’t roll your eyes) to talk about a concept she called the “bookshelf of shame”:
“All of us, at least all of us who like to read, have a bookshelf of shame: that psychic space, or bedside table, crammed with Important Books and Important Authors that we think we should have read, but haven’t.
The works of Samuel Beckett, Norman Mailer, Ayn Rand. “Exodus.” “Animal Farm.” “Middlemarch.”
Oh, hell.
Just looking at my actual TBR bookcase, there are Ayn Rand and an awful lot of Mailer. There is Middlesex, the last book I bought not from the Clearance Section only to not read it. Truckload of Phillip Roth. I don’t think I have read a single Roth all year. And soooo many history books. The point of Mary’s article was to shut up and read, already. Good advice, except I have scarves to make now!
I have, at least, read Oprah’s two picks – Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities.
And Middlemarch.
About Cars
Weekend Assignment # 347: Car Crazy
Some people are car connoisseurs, able to discuss the finer points of 1960 Corvette engines, find or build replacement Model T parts, or argue the merits of the latest high-end Italian sports car. (Okay, maybe it’s not the same person in each of these scenarios, but you get the idea.) Other people know a lot about their own beloved car and its automotive brethren, but not much about other cars. Still others are mostly just concerned whether their car still gets them to work and back safely. How about you? Do you pay attention to automotive trends, or quickly identify the unusual car sitting next to you at the light? What is the extent of your knowledge and interest in cars?
Extra Credit: If a long lost rich uncle insisted on buying you any car you wanted, as long as you promised to keep it and drive it around, what kind would you get?
I love driving. I have always loved driving. Before I could drive, I dreamed about driving. In fact, the last couple of years, as my commute has been really aggravating, I have worried that I might actually lose my love for driving.
That would make me mad.
I am not, however, a connoisseur. I fancied that I could be. I once had posters of Italian sports cars in my bedroom. (Next to Walter Payton and James Dean.) But in reality, my love is more of an open-road, wind-in-my-hair, independent Americana kind of love. In fact, all of my cars have been SUVs – Ford or GM.
I love a good road trip. But I don’t even do that like a normal person. I keep saying that I am going to stop to see the World’s Largest Ball of Twine or whatever, but I never do. Because driving for twelve hours straight is fun. I remember a couple of years ago when I drove by myself to South Dakota. I said I was going to see Mt. Rushmore and not talk to anyone for five days except to say, “Yes, I would like fries with that.”
It. Was. Awesome.
I went to Hawaii earlier this year. The volcano was on the other side of the island from my hotel and it was a good 2.5 hour drive to get there. I got to drive for two and a half hours in Hawaii. And at the end, there was a volcano! It was great!
And I am doing it again next year.
The truth is that if I had a rich uncle that wanted to buy me a car, it wouldn’t be the biggest deal. My fantasy doesn’t involve zero to sixty in .04 seconds. It is to have more than one car – one for summer and one for winter. Of course, that would require a bigger garage…
The Swan Thieves, by Elizabeth Kostova
The Swan Thieves is the second novel by Elizabeth Kostova, author of The Historian. The Historian, which was often called “The Da Vinci Code for Dracula people”, was a lot of fun, so when The Swan Thieves popped up at the Library’s Used Book Store, I snatched it right up.
I wasn’t expecting Dickens here, but I was still disappointed.
The premise was great. A psychiatrist takes on the case of a mad artist that tried to slash a painting in the National Gallery. Art and crazy people. Awesome.
The artist won’t talk, so the doctor starts to play detective. Interviews the ex-wife. And the ex-lover. And some colleagues. Reads some letters views some paintings. Kostova is very careful to dance around the fact that the doctor doesn’t do anything illegal in his research. The artist authorized him to talk with his family. And the ex-lover. And read the letters. I started to feel icky. And that was before he started sleeping with the ex-lover.
I seem to be reading a lot of these novels that go back and forth in time and solve the mystery. This, like many, is much less interesting in “the present” than in the flashbacks. And the story really dragged in the middle. The ending was satisfying, but not surprising.
Moving on now.
Regarding the First Snowfall of the Season
Dear Cook County:
Thank you for making this first “storm” of the season a non-event.
I was out the door at 8:30 Saturday morning. The streets were passable, the drivers reasonable and even the shoppers made an effort to not double park all day long. Obviously, it helped that the snow fell over a Friday night and Saturday morning.
The kids had a great time, I didn’t see any car accidents and there were only a few traffic lights out. Well done.
However. Please note that “passable” streets are not the same as “clean” streets. What works over a weekend will not work over a Monday morning commute. There is still plenty of slush and ice covering the roads and I have not seen any trucks out today. (Although admittedly, I haven’t left the house since kickoff at noon.)
I appreciate that the drivers needed a rest and it is their weekend, too. (And you are trying not to spend my tax dollars on overtime pay.) But it has been a full 24 hours since the snow stopped. Please get this done before morning.
Thanks for your attention.
Thoughts on Airport Security
I was asked recently for my thoughts regarding the new security scanners and pat downs at the airport, so here goes:
First, I believe I mentioned a few months ago that I wore a new bra to the airport that set off the metal detector. The pat down that I received that day was serious. I remember thinking it was pretty embarrassing, not just because I was being molested, but because I was being molested in full view of a few hundred other people in broad daylight. Obviously, I don’t wear that to the airport anymore.
Nothing remotely that dramatic happened during the two pat downs I went through this past month. But I have to say I understand the people saying they felt violated by the process.
I have only been through the new scanners once or twice. I didn’t have much of a problem with them. However, they were not monitored in a private room, as we were told they would. I could see the man looking at the scanner shots when I picked up my bag. To be fair, it has been a few months since I was sent through the scanner, so this may have been corrected for the holiday travel season.
One new thing popped up when I came home from Washington. I walked through the metal detector and some sort of light flashed at the TSA agent. He asked me to step aside and another agent swabbed my hands and sent the sample through another machine. I remember the swab thingy being used on one of my bags on an earlier trip. After a few seconds, I was waived through. I don’t know what they were looking for, or what may have triggered the extra analysis. Although I had just put on some hand cream before getting into the line.
An article was going around Facebook that the reason for the new scanners was that someone that had a lot to gain pushed it through Congress. That would tick me off. But I can’t say that the new procedures, on average, take much longer than they did six months ago. And I am sorry to tell you that I am more worried about my time than my privacy in this case. If I am going to get cranky about something in the security line, it is more likely to be the family of six that doesn’t know the rules and tries to push through a stroller with apple juice strapped to the back.
Someone should deal with them.
I don’t see a bunch of outraged people at the airport. Mostly, we all just shut up and go through the motions. We seem to understand that in the line on the day we plan to travel is not the time to make a statement. Does that mean the terrorists have won?
Mobile Boarding Passes
United Airlines has been using mobile phone boarding passes for several months now. Passengers can check in to a flight online and have an electronic boarding pass e-mailed to their phones. The e-mail has a code – sort of like a UPC code – that is scanned at both the security line and at the boarding gate. This is a totally paperless process.
I used it once over the summer. I didn’t trust the process yet, so I printed a boarding pass at home just in case. It worked just fine but I didn’t like having to have my phone out, on, lit up and open to that document, so I didn’t use it again. However, I can be bribed. So when United sent me an e-mail offering me a thousand miles for each time I used a mobile boarding pass for the rest of the year, I tried it again. After six flights in four different airports, here is my analysis:
- It works. Once you have the box code on the phone, it scans very nicely at both security and at the gate. I didn’t have any trouble with that. However:
- It is not available for all flights because not all airports have the scanner equipment. For two of my six flights, I didn’t have the option.
- Even at O’Hare, not all security lines are equipped with the scanners. Do you know how annoying it is to wait in a security line only to find that you can’t use that line and have to go stand in another queue? Totally unacceptable.
- For one flight, I checked in on the phone and received the email boarding pass, but the code box did not appear. You know that little symbol when there is supposed to be a picture but you can’t see it? I got that. It only happened once, so I don’t think it was my phone.
- My trips were either one night or two nights, so I didn’t bring the charger to my phone. All three times, I worried about burning out my battery from keeping my phone screen continually active and lit in the queues. And when my phone goes dark, it locks up and I have to punch in a password to open it again, so you don’t want to lose that while you are in line.
- You can’t carry your boarding pass through the metal detector. So if the TSA agent wants to see your information again, you have to wait for it to come out of the x-ray machine. I didn’t have that happen, but I worried about it.
- I couldn’t do anything else with my phone while the boarding pass was open and available. Like check my email.
Bottom line:
In the Pro Column: Being green and paperless, and not having to worry about how and where one might print off a boarding pass before heading to the airport.
In the Con Column: Paper is a lot more handy than managing the process with a cell phone.
Checking In
So this is my schedule this week:
Monday morning: Fly to Washington
Monday afternoon: Work in Washington
Tuesday: Meetings in Washington
Wednesday morning: Work in Washington
Wednesday afternoon: Fly home
Thursday morning: Meetings at the office
Thursday afternoon: Fly to Ohio
Friday morning: Meetings in Ohio
Friday morning: Fly home
I will be eating at Auntie Anne’s Pretzels at least three times this week. And right now, I am looking at my computer and thinking, “I don’t feel like lugging you through O’Hare again.”
I have taken big steps in the holiday shopping and am right now working overtime on the handmade gifts. Which means I am not getting any reading done. I am sure I will still make the 50 Book Challenge, but I might be marathon reading that last week. Again. This is particularly bad because I went into Half Price Books in Palatine and found four things in the Clearance Section that I just had to have.
And speaking of that Half Price Books, the Wings Program relocated its Palatine store to that shopping center – between the book store and the TJ Maxx. That would be the shopping center with the nearest Sonic Drive In to my house. As if I needed one more reason to go there.
And now I need to finish packing.
A Final Word on Black Friday
Weekend Assignment # 346: Holiday Shopper
Ack! The holiday shopping season is upon us! What is your shopping strategy for this time of year? Do you spread out your shopping over weeks and months, or try to get it all done at once? Do you mostly shop online or in person? How heavily, if at all, do you rely on gift cards, gift certificates or plain old fashioned cash and checks?
Extra Credit: Do you enjoy shopping the Black Friday and after-Christmas sales?
I wouldn’t say that I have a “strategy” for holiday shopping. For most of the people I exchange gifts with, I wait for inspiration to hit. It generally does. Example:
My grandfather has been directing us more toward charitable gifting the last few years. A couple of years ago, when he was a a docent at the Lincoln Park Zoo, I read about The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. Their gift shop had prints of paintings that one of the elephants did. Funny little gift to open under the tree and contributing to the rescue of elephants. He loved it.
Besides rocking the gifts, I have another goal: to avoid setting foot in a shopping mall from Thanksgiving until New Years. I do quite a bit online:
Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Toys R Us, Drs. Foster and Smith, FTD, these websites have all worked out nicely for me. The deals can be found and I am not buying too many gift cards.
While I have never gone to Best Buy at 4am, I do believe I have lived the Black Friday experience enough times to know better. This year, I didn’t even leave the house until 4pm and that was only a one-stop. Yesterday, when I hit Day 2 of the sales, I swear I spent more money on myself than on gifts.
I am never at the sales on December 26, because that is when my family is at my house, opening the remaining gifts and eating pizza. So I start those sales late, which is fine with me.
Sometimes, it isn’t about the deal. It’s about the thrill of the hunt.
Over the Limit
It seems that the town Deerfield, Illinois is considering some new rules for pet owners. One involves required muzzling of “aggressive” dogs. The other is limiting the number of pets in a home to five:
“The board decided a limit of five would be a reasonable expectation, although trustees had considered three, which was regarded as too restrictive for some animal lovers.
“I have a problem with three,” said Trustee Thomas Jester. “If someone has a couple of dogs, a cat and a bird, they are over the limit.””
I find this utterly ridiculous. This rule lumps all pets into the same category when clearly, all pets are not the same. The daily needs of two average dogs are by far more difficult to manage than two average cats or two average birds. Even within a species – two cockatiels are by so far easier to manage than two macaws. And that doesn’t even address the fact that different animals have different personalities and different needs.
I have three pets – a dog, a cat and an African Grey parrot. At various times, we have had two dogs in the house. I am also licensed by the state of Illinois to foster animals in my home. I am extremely conscious of how much is “too much” for my home to handle. I base my judgement on whether the two humans living in my house have the time, attention and resources to keep the animals fed, clean, emotionally cared for and in some way, disciplined. Also, is there enough room in my house for each of the animals to find a quiet corner? The answer is always Yes.
Right now, I am fostering a second African Grey parrot and am seriously considering fostering a lovebird for the holidays. (The rescue also offers boarding services and is always very full over the holidays.) I know that my home can handle that for a few weeks. I don’t need a village board to make that decision for me.
You know what? I don’t think that any family should be allowed to have more than three children. Let’s legislate that. There is no way on Earth that my parrot is a greater burden to the neighborhood than the average child.
Or we could legislate something important: the breeding of domesticated animals, such that there aren’t so many homeless in the first place.
If Deerfield feels the need to establish some arbitrary limit on the number of pets in one house, then so be it. But for a Trustee like Mr. Jester to pass judgement on what is “over the limit” for any given family makes me glad that I don’t live in Deerfield.
8am and I’m Not Sure Whether I Will Be Leaving the House Today
But I am doing a bit of shopping online. On the website for Half Price Books, I found a list of 25 Tips for Reusable Gift Wrapping. The introduction said:
“According to The ULS Report, Americans throw away 25 percent more trash from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.
That additional trash adds up to an additional 5 million tons of garbage for our country’s already full landfills! One way to cut back on your waste during the holidays is reusable wrapping.”
I am not sure that many of these are practical for me, but I figured it was worth passing on. Happy shopping.
The Next Dark Age 