As many different topics as possible.

I'm going to violate a cardinal rule of my comp classes and squeeze in as many different topics in this post as I can and under-develop them all.

The birthday dinner went over well. Even though I needed potato-baking tips and, in the case of the steaks, cooking assistance from the young lady, it was still 85% my effort. The roasted red pepper and artichoke relish was superb--that shit'd be good on regular ol' bread. Don't think I'm not thinking ahead. The recipe will be saved if only to replicate that. The potatoes were done nicely, and the asparagus turned out well too. Asparagus is the simplest fresh veg to prep. I roasted them in the oven; a little olive oil, a little salt and pepper, a little toss, and what do you know, I'm Tyler Florence. Top 'er off with a bottle of red, and you got some tasty goodness.

I've been to two Braves games this week--both losses, sadly--and now have enough hastily scribbled notes from which I will fashion the remaining pieces for my little freelance thingie. I need to have them done by the end of the week but probably will have them done before then, knowing how I work. Turner Field is in some ways a hard place to write about. My goal is, through these short one-page pieces, to capture some of the flavor of the place--but it's hard to say what's unique about the place. It's really like a big, loud Disney World; it's a place for the kids and the families, and I don't think I mean that disparagingly.

One of the pieces will be on the in-park food options, and that will be tough. Not that it lacks in food options, but they're overfamiliar and replicated on every level of the park: hot dog, burger, pretzel, popcorn, nachos, etc. I guess one strategy is to mention these and then briefly mention one or two standouts. That seems workable, and I have to remember these are 250-word pieces. I think my favorite semi-off-the-path food experience, nothing mind-blowing, was a bag of cinnamon-glazed roasted almonds that the young lady bought at this unassuming stand called The Nutty Bavarian. And yesterday's Chicago Dog was tasty--I have no idea how authentic it was, but it was piled with the onions, the spicy peppers, the celery salt, the sweet relish. Normally I'm not one for sweet relish but it was delightful.

So I'll get something together, and it won't even be what I intend, probably.

Still no word on whether my two summer classes will go. Enrollment in both hasn't budged in at least two weeks--still eight in one and four in the other. But like a good foot soldier, I'm prepping my syllabi anyway.

And it's hot! It's too early to be this hot, even in metro Atlanta in early June. Yesterday's game was a scorcher. I paid for a cheap upper pavilion seat and only sat there two innings; the rest of the time I wandered around, ate, and took notes. Tried to stay out of the sun. Left at the bottom of the sixth to catch the shuttle. I didn't much care we were tied; the game was plodding along and I had all the notes I wanted.

There--what grade would you give this post?

Kick it up...another notch!

OK, sorry for the Emeril reference. But! I'm making birthday dinner for the young lady tonight, and here's the entree.

I've budgeted out the time, I've figured out what we have on hand, and I've been to two, count 'em *two*, stores to get what we don't have on hand. How do baked potatoes and asparagus sound with this main course? We'll find out.

Preppin' for the inevitable.

...or at least what I think is inevitable: the six-week summer term, which starts 6/16. At the moment, the two courses I'm slated for have alarmingly low enrollments, so I'm trying to prep some but with the possibility of plan B.

Every semester I resolve to scrap my current schedule/layout and revamp, and every time I never budget enough time to re-think my way through it. American Lit. II, which I've done many times before, would benefit from a genre- or theme-based approach, but if it makes, chances are I'll substitute a few readings and keep the chronological format largely the same. If I don't revamp it, I should at least reduce the number of readings and concentrate more fully on certain authors and/or trends/movements. I already do a bit of that with the Harlem Renasissance, and I think it's the best time of the semester. Maybe a unit on realism/naturalism, one on feminist/protest writing...

My dream course forever has been titled "The American Dream," and I could definitely restructure Am. Lit. around that motif. But with only four students enrolled at this writing, I'm not gonna push it.

Comp. I has eight enrolled at this writing, which is a bit surprising--but maybe we overestimated how many summer students we'd have. I theorize that one reason is our fucked-up summer term structure, different yet again from the summer before. We have one eight-week term and one six-week term, and that's it. There's no longer a "first half" and "second half," and I believe students can't take as many classes now.

Anyway, I'm cautiously optimistic Comp will make, and not at all that Am. Lit. will. The word from on high is not to worry comma yet.

Quotation time.

A meme-challenge borrowed from seabird78. My five quotes:

1. But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
Lois McMaster Bujold, "Barrayar", 1991

2. The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we have of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.
Quentin Crisp

3. The road to hell is paved with adverbs.
Stephen King

4. It's never too late to be who you might have been.
George Eliot

5. The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape...
Pablo Picasso

The puzzling '08 Braves.

Sigh...another road loss today. At least it was more than a one-run margin! Who can explain such a disparity? As of today, 22-7 at home and 7-21 on the road. I would wager such a trend can't continue if they want to be in the thick of things.

A quick check of the standings shows the Braves aren't the only team with this strange Jekyll/Hyde trait. The Red Sox and Cubs also have been stellar at home but underwhelming on the road--almost night and day. One theory I've read is that a team uses its relief corps differently on the road; does that have to do with playing for a tie versus playing for a win?

Anyway, I'm stumped. At what point does it become a psychological obstacle for them? Has it become one already? My guess it's a combination of ill hitting, poor pitching, and uncharacteristically shoddy defense (witness the single through Chipper's legs the other night).

Hey, that's at least as good as John Kruk. Put me in a suit and get me to Bristol, CT.

Pigs and gators and rhinos, oh my (and a saber-toothed cat).

A quick shout-out (props? notes?) to this site, where Dad and I visited today. This is a big-time big deal and practically in our backyard--major archeological dig going on. They've dated the bones and fossils back to the Myocene,between 4 million and 7.5 million years ago, and there's enough here to dig for at least this century. Likely it was once the site of a lake or pond, and quite possibly a comfortable place for most species to have their babies. If I heard correctly, at least one new species has been discovered here, and several other quite rare species too.

This is one of those mind-blowers. To think that short-faced bears, tapirs (pig-like species), rhinos once traversed here--well, in the abstract, of course they did, but to have such evidence this close hammers it home.

So if you're in the east TN area, check it out. The dig site and permanent exhibit about the fossils and digging methods are the most interesting. There's also an exhibit on poop (I, um, shit you not) until September.

Indiana Jones and the curse of the overlong movie title.

At home in east TN this weekend, very little on the plate today except to see abovesaid movie this afternoon at 3:15 and then, as Mom and Dad are feeling the ill effects of colds, to probably order a pizza, pick 'er up, and take 'er home. (Did I just split an infinitive?)

I don't hold out a lot of hope for the new Indy, but it still might be enjoyable. I will go in with no expectations. I enjoyed the first three just fine. If this one holds true to form, it'll move so briskly I won't have time to think. What I remember about Lost Ark and Last Crusade in particular was how much fun the filmmakers were having with the Saturday-morning serial form, so if this new one can do that, I'll be fine.

Which leads me for no reason into the shameful admission that I laughed out loud while watching Anger Management. More than once. The movie's total bullshit, as are most Sandler joints, but he has the knack of eking out a genuine laugh or two. OK...and I laughed more than is healthy during Happy Gilmore, back in the day.

Sandler's movies strike me as very conservative and Republican--I mean the ones he produces and stars in. There's always a healthy level of hoo-ah male bonding, lots of sports, and always these groan-inducing "patriotic" moments like the Giuliani cameo in Anger Management, and Sandler's "You did the right thing!" Overall, the movies are also really shoddy in their character development and scene management. I remember being offended by that clumsy courtroom scene in Big Daddy, as well as the whole idea that a man who teaches a kid to urinate in public could conceivably make a good father.

The man has some acting chops, I think--or at least he can be convincing playing a certain kind of soft-spoken, warm-hearted guy who is seething inside (see Punch-Drunk Love, even parts of Spanglish). But the fatal flaw of Sandler productions is how, time and again, they hold up the Sandler type as misunderstood and thus admirable. At least in Anger Management he has Nicholson's even more raging character to eclipse him.

So to sum up: 1) at home this weekend; 2) going to see Indy; 3) going to eat pizza; 4) I've seen more Sandler movies than I care to admit.

Home ownership ain't so bad, part 2: the air in here.

Nearly 400 bucks later, our a/c appears to be running much more efficiently.  I'm sitting in the study/computer room, normally one of the stuffier rooms, and I feel it on my legs way more than usual.  The temp isn't decreasing as fast as I thought it would, but it definitely feels cooler now.

We've been in this house 10 months and it took us that long to realize the a/c wasn't working efficiently.  It was running for long periods--5-6 hours at a stretch--and the house wasn't cooling very fast.  "Oh well," we instinctively thought, "it's just how it is."  Why did we think this for so long?

It's not a long-term fix, but the unit should be more functional for a while.  Unfortunately, the best long-term fix is to get a new system; this one isn't up to current SEER specifications and is also teetering on the edge of its lifespan.  But we aren't made of money.  

Again, donations accepted.

Recent and future reading, and reading that will never be.

Started today: Grace, Fallen from, by Marianne Boruch.

Just completed: Lincoln's Melancholy, by Joshua Wolf Shenk.  As someone who has suffered from melancholy, the title alone drew me in.  Shenk makes his case a little too cheerfully and often, but it's a good portrait of the man.  The links between mental imbalance and genius are massaged but not strained.

Recently completed: The March, by E.L. Doctorow, and The Sea, by John Banville.  Doctorow pulls off the trick of making General Sherman a sympathetic character and does his usual great job of juggling characters, philosophies, points of view.  An engaging mosaic.  The Sea was my introduction to Banville and I wondered how I missed him before.  He's prolific, some 10-12 novels.  I loved this book--it teems with sensuality, energy, and obsessiveness.

Upcoming: Banville's The Book of Evidence, and (yes) To the Lighthouse.  I don't know why, but reading Banville's fluid excursions into and out of memory and back again made me think of Virginia Woolf, and then I remembered trying to read Jacob's Room as an undergraduate and being baffled.  But years later I read A Room of One's Own and found it engaging, and then a few more years later I read Cunningham's The Hours, and I began to understand a little more of where she was coming from.  Then I taught "The Mark on the Wall" in American Lit. and thought "Aha!"  So now, soon, finally, To the Lighthouse.  If that goes well, perhaps Mrs. Dalloway.

The best thing I've read this year, I believe, is The Road by Cormac McCarthy--relentless and grim and beautiful, and soon to be a major motion picture starring Viggo Mortensen.  Not far behind is An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England by Brock Clarke--morbidly funny or funnily morbid.

No rhyme, no reason to my reading habits.  In the last two years, much more history and fiction, and that's intentional.  Less poetry, and that's probably one reason my own writing has--well, I was going to say stalled, but it hasn't really.  Writing blurbs about baseball games (for pay) is a different, um, ballgame, but it still counts, doesn't it?  Even though it's no Banville.

Reading that will never be, at least for a while, despite my wishes for it to be so: Ulysses, Moby Dick (started twice, never finished), The Scarlet Letter, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  I could go on.

Blurbing for dollars.

I'm now involved in a little side project: contributing blurbs (anywhere from 2-3 sentences to a page, depending on the topic) about the baseball experience at Turner Field.  Two brothers in Chicago have a small business writing fan guides to ballparks; the guides are meant for true fans and are a little cheeky and irreverent.  So I'm doing my best to maintain cheekiness. :)  

It's writing for pay, which I haven't done too much of.  It's fun, so far, and I hope to do justice to TF.  So far, I've concocted a bit on the huge Jumbotron and a few restaurant blurbs.

How did I find out about this?  Craigslist.