Even though it's bitter cold out (6 degrees, wind chill at minus 12) I decided I had to get out of the house for a while -- aside from the temperatures, it's a nice, bright sunny day.  I figured I would go down to a coffee shop I know that's a straight bus ride:  the bus stops right outside my building and stops less than half a block from the ( Read more... )

Yeah, well -- still recovering from my Christmas Day cold that moved directly into my chest, but woke up with a lot more energy this morning.  Still spacy as all get-out, but making progress.

I'm going to refrain from rehashes and predictions.  Let the year fall where it may.

All best.

The story:  I had been hearing strange popping noises coming from my kitchen, but I couldn't find anything that could be making them.  Then I noticed the wall over the sink beginning to bubble.  When I happened to look into a section of the cabinet over the sink that I never look at, lo!  The wall had erupted:  big holes, plaster all over ( Read more... )

What do you feed dust bunnies?  And can they be trained to use a litter box?

was not, for a change lately, Depeche Mode.  It was Nickelback.

What ever happened to the days when I would wake up with Mozart or Vaughan Williams running through my head?  (Actually, I think it was yesterday morning, I woke up with a wisp of Vaughan Williams that wouldn't resolve itself.  I think it wanted to be The Lark Ascending, but it never ( Read more... )

I've been listening to Depeche Mode a lot lately.  Turns out I have all of their studio albums tucked away in my computer.

So this morning, just on a whim, I started Wagners "Ring" -- the stellar peformance under the baton of Clemens Kraus from the 1953 Bayreuth Festival.

Somehow, it's not that great a shift.

I just checked, and it looks as though I have all of Depeche Mode's studio albums -- not counting remixes or "best of" collections.

Precipitated by this.

I've been meaning to comment on this for a while, and reality finally reared its ugly head:  it was 35 when I got up this morning, and there were frost warnings ( Read more... )

Or, one of those things that happens while you're doing something else:

I've been rereading Glen Cook's Black Company series (again), and there's a recurring comment, about "It is immortality, of a sort," and it just occurred to me that that's the thread that holds the whole thing together -- the Company itself is immortal, or as near as makes no ( Read more... )

for the first time in four or five days.  Probably.  No sign of it yet, but one remains hopeful.

Went to the Field Museum Sunday, a free day.  Figured it would be crowded, since it was Sunday, and free.  What I hadn't counted on was a Bears game, right across the way.  Worse than a Cubs game.  Way worse ( Read more... )