Matt Logelin, a friend of ours from Chicago, is going through an impossibly difficult time right now. His wife, Liz, gave birth to a baby girl (Madeline) and then died of a pulmonary embolism the next day, before she could even hold her daughter for the first time. Matt became a father, a widower and a single father all in a 27 hour period. He's been blogging about it at mattlogelin.com and there was recently a story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about his story (he and Liz were both originally from MN and moved to Los Angeles).
Liz was a beautiful, vibrant and vivacious young woman and losing her is devastating to Matt and everyone else who knew and loved her. Matt is really rising to the challenge of being a single dad to a tiny preemie baby but, of course, it is hard enough to take care of a newborn, much less alone, and much less while you are grieving the loss of your wife.
Please send happy thoughts, prayers, and whatever good vibes you can spare in his direction.
The Cherneys
Here's a riddle I wrote in college. It was selected for a contest, but i didn't win anything. I haven't written any riddles since.
This word means being educated;
Guess it and you'll feel elated.
Oddly, it is worn on feet,
And even is a lack of heat.
1. Last weekend, I took Aaron to the playground and sunburned the top of my head. Yesterday, I took Aaron to the playground and it started to snow. When I left this morning, each tree was frosted with a quarter inch of snow, making my morning commute look like a gleaming journey through the forests of Hoth, or maybe the fortress of solitude and all I could think was, "Not again." It is clear. Someone has broken the weather.
2. Jenna and Aaron and I were talking about boys and girls as one of the many warmup talks I plan to have with him before I explain the birds and the bees. We kept this particular discussion more toward whether or not a given person is a boy or a girl. Aaron had it down cold. He did relatives, friends, even cartoon characters. Jenna asked him if Diego's friend Baby Jaguar was a boy or a girl. He was quite confident that Baby Jaguar was a boy. Jenna asked, "How can you tell?" Aaron replied, "I tell you with my mouth."
3. Congratulations to Katie, Jake, Emily, on their new arrival! Congratulations to Lucas Richard, who is doing quite well! And congratulations to me, for doubling the number of godsons I have!
4. We had a fantastic weekend. We ate at one of those Japanese restaurants where the chef prepares the food at your table, right in front of you while you sip Sake through a bug shaped like Buddha. For the most part, it's a great experience, because it's both a meal and entertainment, and both are good. Last time I ate there, our chef was something of a comedian, and I remember being particularly tickled by his play on the words "butterfly" and "egg drop soup." This time, however, the chef was something of a novice, so rather than dinner and a comedy, it was a little like dinner and a horror show. He kept dropping things and yet he also kept throwing sharp knives into the air. Toward the end, when eggs were dropping out of the sky and shrimp tails were bouncing all over the table/oven, all we could do was grin and nod and pray that we got through the meal with our lives. Good thing it was delicious and that Jaime and Dave have good senses of humor. Then after dinner, we saw Romeo and Juliet, starring my sister in law as Juliet, which was awesome. It has been years since I have actually seen theater performed by actual actors, so it was kind of a shock when they took the stage and didn't start reading from a book of nursery rhymes. It was a superb date night. I can't wait until we get another one in 2010.
5. Happy Birthday, Mom. I still think you're the best Mom ever, and although I'm coming to realize that I will never be able to match your impressive skills in parenting, I am able to take advantage of your also impressive skills in grandparenting. Hope you enjoyed your day!
Some generations define themselves by heroism in battle, others by breaking cultural barriers, and others by making great strides forward in technology. My generation defines itself with a movie. A movie with laser swords.
I have been collecting Star Wars stuff for as long as I can remember. I had an AT-ST, the chicken walker from Return of the Jedi that would walk when you pushed the little button in the back. My pajamas, lunch box, and toothbrush were all adorned with Luke Skywalker's determined, banged-up face. I remember how excited I was when I got a package of Jawas made by the people who made Micro Machines. I was 23.
Obviously, Lucasfilm Enterprises loves nerds like me. They can slap a wookie on any old merch and they know I'll be drawn to it like a lightsaber is drawn into the force-powered hands of a skilled Sith lord. The books detailing the further adventures of Han, Luke, Leia, and the rest a good forty years after the movie takes place were meant for pitiful Jedheads like me and my ilk.
So I was surprised to be a little disoriented by Bloodlines. (By the way, spoilers ahead if you have any interest in reading Star Wars novels.) See the thing is, I kind of stopped reading the novels after the Yuuzahn Vong invaded Corellia. It was all just too painful. And the thing about licensed books is that their goal is to have huge, planet-shattering events sweep through the galaxy leaving all of the major characters entirely untouched. Sure, R. A. Salvatore got his one exception, but I was well versed enough in Star Wars literary canon that I knew about poor, poor, Chewie. I was a good disc and a half into this one, introducing myself to new relatives of old characters like Ben Skywalker and Thracken Sal-Solo and Britney Fett when I suddenly realized, "Hey, where the hell is Anakin Solo?"
I turned to Wikipedia (Wookiepedia, actually) and was shocked to find that Anakin was dead. In fact, not only was he dead, but he was so dead, and had come back to life and died so many times, that no one even mentioned him in this book. His name did not come up. That's really dead.
That bombshell aside, I was more enamored with this book than I thought I would be. I've read some Star Wars stinkers in the past (The Courtship of Princess Leia, anyone?) and figured that now, at a point when the original characters have reached retirement age, there's not a lot left to hold my attention. Boba Fett was 72, for crying out loud. Still, I thought this was pretty good.
Part of the charm of the book was the completely dedicated narrator. You know a narrator like this has to have a few Ewoks in a box in his basement somewhere. I'm still not entirely sure there weren't more than one narrator. Well, the settings were announced by a woman, I'm sure of that. And yet, this dude, Mark Thompson, in spite of having a female reading chapter headings for him, insisted on doing Princess Leia's voice himself. I noticed his credits included the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and I was briefly excied about that until I realized that he's from the gritty new retelling of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles saga, and I have no interest in getting involved with that until the crossover special with Admiral Ackbar. Still, he did a spot on Luke, a pitch-perfect Boba Fett, and a reasonable facsimile of the other male characters.
I was impressed. You could almost hear the turbo thrusters scraping against the transparisteel rear shields when the Millennium Falcon dropped out of hyperspace. Sorry, my mistake. I meant you could literally hear the turbo thrusters scraping against the transparisteel rear shields when the Millennium Falcon dropped out of hyperspace, because this book included sound effects, and the John Williams score throughout. And I had no argument with that. Except when I was listening to the book while waiting in line at the drive-thru, and the cashier would give me a funny look when she heard laser blasters shooting droids somewhere in my car.
The story itself was OK, too. I felt like the whole Boba Fett searching for his family thing was a little bit of a stretch and seemed to be in the book because the author said, "I'm planning to write a whole bunch of books, but I need to make sure that Boba Fett doesn't play any role in them, so I'm writing something for him to do now." However, the family dynamics between the Skywalkers and the Solos was very interesting, and of course you could see a lot of subtle commentary of global politics from the last ten years.
So if you've ever dreamed of spending a weekend in stormtrooper armor, and you haven't listened to any Star Wars audio books, this one might be a good one to listen to. Not a great place to start, because like I said before, no Anakin, but not a bad read at all.
And fortunately for me, the library has a second Star Wars book on CD that I'm sure no other self respecting citizen would check out in public. Yes that's right.
There is another.
I can't figure out what's making that noise in the kitchen I hear every night, but I have a few guesses, and none of them are very pleasant.
And here they are:
- A mouse
- A rat
- A puma
- A hundred mice, waiting to spring out and nest in my beard the second I go to sleep
- Somnambulists
- A persistent but ineffective burglar
- Monsters up visiting from the desert
- Bosnians
- Meat loaf that I should have thrown away before moving last March
- The salamander from the mixing bowl
- The sound effects guy from the Police Academy movie doing a sound effect of strange noises in the kitchen
- Jeff. He's invisible.
- Caramel Chameleons
- Pets I forgot we had
- Overeager Rice Krispies
- The curse of the haunted hippo pepper shaker
- A tiny universe growing in a tub of butter
- Narnians
- A tiny black hole behind the refrigerator
- Bureaucracy
Frankly, I don't think I have enough spray to kill any of that stuff.
I've been listening to books on CD right before work, and reading Terry Pratchett right before bed, and sometimes, every once in a while, I expect some kind of literary outcome when I really probably shouldn't. There are very few times that literary devices really show up in real life. I mean, onomatopoeia, sure. And certainly you'll see some alliteration around, although I'm not convinced that most of it is on purpose. And yes, if a dude is born with two left feet, you can be certain that there will be a media circus at his first junior high dance, senior prom, wedding reception, and contestantship on So You Think You Can Dance, waiting for him to either dance well or not dance well, all for the fulfillment of a timeworn cliche. But those are exceptions, and not the rule.
In real life, instances of foreshadowing and story arcs and poetic justice are few and far between. And in a way, that's too bad. Life would be easier if I knew I could get endless rewards simply by whining, "I'll never have a lucky day again."
Today, however, I started to have a sense of foreboding. Foreshadowing foreboding. I bent over to tie my shoe before going into work and my shoelace snapped. I left my wallet in my other pants. And I knew that my morning would be largely concerned with using an extremely sharp knife to cut posters that take a lot of time and effort to print.
I spent my entire morning in fear that I would trip over my broken shoelace onto my extremely sharp knife and that I'd have no way to pay the copay so the hospital would turn me away and I would have to wrap my wounds in posters and reprint them all over again.
I got through the day without any shoelace/knife/walletless circumstances, though, which just goes to show that there was no reason to worry about it after all.
And now, I know that nothing could possibly go wrong.
Take yesterday morning. We went to a piano sale. As we tried to speak seriously with the salesperson in a concentrated effort to convince him that we would ever in a hundred years be able to afford one of his pianos, Aaron pounded merrily on whatever Steinway he could get his hands on. The salespeople gave him a big smile. Then they scowled at us. We pulled him off of his piano and he threw a fit. He got sympathetic looks. We got mutters. We hightailed it out of there. In the time we were there, I'd barely gotten to play a couple of scales on the pianos we were interested in. He played an entire unfinished symphony.
Second example: We went to a puppet show with my parents yesterday. It was a cool use of mixed media, combining blacklight, puppetry, and dancing, but it was all done in platypus gibberish, which is like regular gibberish, except everyone just says, "Rrroooo-aaauuuughh!" over and over and over again for a drawn-out, all-platypus gibberish production of Richard the Third. Aaron fell asleep fifteen minutes of the way into it. The rest of the adults sat through an hour of Rrrroooo-aaauuugghh while Aaron drifted off into peaceful slumber.
Third example: We went for a walk in the park today. Aaron was very excited to go the long way around the trail to get to the playground. After five minutes, he was up on my shoulders, ready to ride the rest of the way. Then he fell asleep.
I think my son is playing us for suckers.
Don't get me wrong: we had a great weekend. It was really nice to see my parents, and we had all kinds of family fun that went beyond pipe-cleaner projects and included seeing the loons on the lake and watching an Earth day parade. But make no doubt about it, Aaron made us work for it, and he got off scott-free. I worry that he may be training to be an organized criminal mastermind, or worse, a middle-manager.
Of course, what really drove it home was church this morning. Aaron and the other kids marched up to the front of the congregation to sing a special song. As the rest of the kids sang, Aaron stood silently, occasionally glancing at his compatriots with a look that said, "What's with the singing, dude." And because these were kids, there were hand motions, which Aaron regarded with little more than amusement. In the meantime, Jenna and I are sitting in the fifth row, hands over our heads, crossing our chests, pointing and waving, and mouthing along the words, all in a vain effor to get him to participate. Finally, as the song neared the end, where the chorus repeated faster and faster, and the hand motions got fast and furious. Aaron got this look of realization on his face, and slowly moved his hands over his head. Everyone there noticed. There was a small smattering of applause before the song ended. He stood there, still not singing, but having mastered this one hand motion and really driving it home, with his biggest, widest smile lighting up the room. The song ended, and he held his pose for a moment longer before deciding he was done with his hand stretching duty and he made his way back to his parents.
Of course, there he had us again. He sat down, ready to listen to the rest of the service, sitting as still and well-behaved as an angel who is attending a church service for some reason. The people around us told him he did a great job, and he smiled politely back at them.
On either side of him, Jenna and I were in tears.
It's one of those great libraries where there's odd staircases that lead to odd book filled places and it's kind of a little maze lined with shelves after shelves of books. It reminds me of the library at college, which always inspired me to imagine secret collegiate espionage agents on chases up and down the stairs, grabbing at collars through open spots on the shelves, and the heroes only catch up with the evil library infiltrators by throwing a book through the security gate just as the infiltrators are leaving, locking it and causing them to fall helplessly to the ground.
The final blow against Chicago's library is that it's also good looking on the outside, making the "award-winning facade" of Rogers Park seem a little flimsy.
The one area where it's lacking, however is books on CD. There's a sizable audio book section, but they're all books on tape. I was so disappointed with last week's offering that I gave up and sought out the children's audio book sections.
I picked Artemis Fowl because I've often heard it mentioned in the same breath as Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket. And I can see that. All three prominently feature bespectacled adolescent boys. And all three have a chapter about trolls (except Lemony Snicket). But although I enjoyed the book, Artemis is clearly a distant third after Harry and
Klaus. He is easily the least likable and the least funny of the three, and his supporting cast of characters is not nearly as rich as either the world of the muggles or the world of the VFD.
I suppose it's unfair for me to compare this series against those two heavyweights, though. It's good on its own merits. I was pleasantly surprised to learn the Artemis, the eponymous adolescent kids are supposed to relate to, is the antagonist. He's the one doing all the mean things in the book, but he's still very interesting, and you find yourself torn between wanting him to win and wanting justice to prevail. He transcends the evil rich genius persona to be more of a tragic figure and less of a bond villain with a thing for leprechauns.
The heroes are also more ambiguous than most adult fiction likes to venture into. Me, I like that. Makes them more believable, easier to understand their motivations. Gives them someplace to go in the upcoming books. And oh yes, this book makes no qualms about setting up years upon years of sequels, several of which have apparently already come out. By the end of this book, you get mentions of various plot points of a few of them, and everyone is left in a position that could best be summed up as "ready to cross paths again for another rollicking adventure."
So I liked Artemis, I liked the pacing, and I really liked the narrator. Irish accents, Scottish accents, German accents, and even one of those adorable American accents by a British speaker who tries really hard but sounds kind of like if John Wayne was in the movie Fargo. I was a little let down by the supporting cast, the war cliches, and the big reveal at the end that explains why Artemis was so confident about his theft/kidnapping/boat-blowing-up plan all along. You know, the one about Santa Claus. Kind of lame.
Does it all balance out? Yes. It was a good "read". I'd try another Artemis Fowl book. Especially if the library's CD collection continues to favor kid's books over grownup books.
If you're getting one, how are you planning on spending your tax refund?
Jenna and I sat down last night and discussed what we needed to spend our tax refund on. We came up with the following essentials:
Paying off my student loans
Paying off a small fraction of her student loans
Paying off the car
Paying off the furniture
Buying a newer, working car
Buying furniture for the first floor of the house
Buying an actual bed and dresser like actual adults have
Taking a long overdue vacation
Replenishing our savings account, which is a little worse for wear after the last six months
Starting a college fund for Aaron
Frozen custard at Culvers
I am so glad we've got some money coming back our way. I just hope we'll be getting a refund in the neighborhood of $423,000, or we may have to rethink our list.
Some mornings I leave extra early to get to work. Sometimes I get stuck behind a slow moving vehicle for a long time. Sometimes I stop to get coffee (and of course my beloved Toffee Almond Bar) at Starbucks. When I get into work, I sometimes put a lunch in the fridge before sitting down. Other times, I go to the back and buy a soda. But whatever I do in the morning, every time I sit down at my desk, the clock on my computer says 7:24.
This morning, for example, I was a little late leaving the house, I didn't get stuck behind any tractors, I stopped at the McDonald's drive-through, but I didn't get any food because they were out of yogurt. I put my lunch in the fridge and sat down at my desk. It was 7:24.
I started to wonder if people have an internal clock that regulates out all those different variables in order to put us where we need to be at one given time. I know I've been able to wake up in time for work even when my alarm clock doesn't go off. Maybe this internal clock actually shapes some of my decisions without me even knowing it. To go one step further, maybe meeting other people who each have their own internal clock resynchronizes our own, so that there's an entire schedule of events that works itself out in any given group of people, entirely within our subconscious.
Then I realized that my clock was just stuck.
