Stoner Cellars

Irene

2011-08-30T15:33:00.003-04:00

That's my front yard, after Irene. Maybe a half-dozen good sized branches, up five or six inches in diameter. But better than having the whole tree come down on my house, as it did for a couple of my neighbors.

And now it's the Long Wait for Dominion to do something. Today is Day Four of the hurricane, and they have restored power to exactly one of the ten traffic lights along a four-mile stretch of Parham Road.

Their latest claim is that they'll have restored power to 95% of the Richmond residents who lost power by Friday, and to everyone by Saturday. I'll believe that when I see it, and you shouldn't bet much money on them fulfilling their promises.

Signs and portents.

2009-12-17T16:07:00.001-05:00

There are always signs around you, wherever you go. All you have to do is know where to look and how to interpret them.

Take these signs, for instance, from my trip to California in October.

A trained soothsayer would take one look at these and know immediately that they shout out: Danger! Beware! You were exposed to the flu on your flight across the continent, thanks to the person in the row behind you, and it will make itself known to you in about six more hours!

Sadly, I am not trained in the saying of sooth, and had to learn of their warning the hard way.

Another minute of fame.

2009-09-15T15:30:00.001-04:00

I was in Iowa last month, for a family wedding. My first trip to Iowa since 1964, and while I imagine that it's changed a lot since then, I really wasn't paying all that much attention to the state back then. A fun trip. While in Iowa City, I did a little sight-seeing, taking in the Amana colonies and the Herbert Hoover presidential library/museum.

For me, though, the most entertaining part of the trip was a one-day side trip to Madison, Wisconsin.

Oh, sure. There were fun things to see on the way to and from Madison, like a winery, a well-regarded brewery, and the self-styled "World's Largest M."

But the best part was going to the Great Dane brewpub in Fitchburg, where they were serving the John Stoner's Oatmeal Stout.

No, sadly. Actually named after "the first farmer" in the Fitchburg region.

Still, of the eleven beers they had on tap, I thought this one was the best. So I had a bunch of it the evening I was there. I'll happily report that it was interesting, complex, smooth, full-bodied, and had a fine head, just like its namesake.

They don't bottle or distribute their beer, near as I can tell. You could buy a growler of it at the pub, but there's no way you could get a full growler onto the plane. So any of it that I was going to drink, I had to have that evening.

They were impressed enough that someone would come all the way from Virginia to try their beer that they gave me a t-shirt with the John Stoner's Oatmeal Stout logo on it.

Sami, 1993 - 2009. R.I.P.

2009-08-28T12:25:00.000-04:00

Sami, my senior cat, passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was 16.

His health had been in rapid decline over the previous three or four weeks, getting to the point that he no longer wanted to go up or down stairs. But he seemed not to be in any pain, and still enjoyed getting attention and sleeping where he could sniff the fresh air.

He was a good cat: gentle, and friendly, and agreeable to all - humans and cats, alike. And he always carried himself with a good deal of dignity. He had a lot of feline companions during his life; probably 4 in Florida and 4 or 5 in Virginia (not counting the kittens who came and went). And before moving to Virginia 3 years ago, he was a good companion to my father.

He'll be missed.

... is for Mudflaps.

2009-08-11T16:03:00.005-04:00

I guess the winters are long in the Midwest, and you've got to think of something to do. Which would explain all of the "World's Largest ____s" that you can find. World's Largest Rocking Chair, or Ball of Twine, or Hairball. Or, in this instance, the World's Largest M.

There I was, driving along and mostly minding my own business, when I happened upon The World's Largest M. Naturally, I had to check it out.

A giant M on the hillside. And an explanatory plaque. And a cement bench, engraved with an M. And a staircase beside it, so you could climb up the hill and view the countryside from each of the three platforms. (Each stair had a numbered plaque on it, so you'd know that it took 279 steps to get to the top. 279 steps of inconsistent width. And pretty much in a straight line.) And there was a telescope at the top.

I especially enjoyed the plaque which explained that the M was in honor of the University of Wisconsin's College of Engineering.

2009 Vermont Brewers Festival.

2009-07-31T13:32:00.000-04:00

Back in 2002, I went to the Vermont Brewers Festival - a showcase for Vermont breweries of all sizes, from tiny little brewpubs to regional breweries (such as Magic Hat or Harpoon). I had a wonderful time, as every beer I tasted was worth trying, and I decided that I needed to go back someday.

Someday turns out to have been this year. I decided to do it up right this time: I bought tickets to all three sessions (Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night), and stayed at the hotel across the street.

I can report that this year's festival was wonderful, too.

Oh, sure. The weather was quirky - it rained some during the Friday night and Saturday afternoon sessions, but that just made the beautiful weather of Saturday evening even better by comparison. And unlike seven years ago, this year I discovered a beer that I thought was horrid. (To be precise, a dry Irish stout, flavored with raspberries. An Irish stout is a light-bodied and -flavored style, and anything more than a hint of fruit flavor will overwhelm the roasty flavors of the beer. And this beer had about fifty times too many raspberries to be considered subtle. It's not often at a beer festival that I look around for a spit bucket or even a patch of grass reasonably devoid of people, but I sure needed to with that beer. Other people seemed to like it, though.)

Mostly, though, the beers ranged from good to excellent. If I have to pick a couple of favorites, then I'll mention two: a single-hop, cask-conditioned Chinooker'd IPA, from Lawson's Liquids (which appears to be a tiny, production-only facility that had to go to a larger microbrewery in order to brew large enough quantities to come to this festival), and a cask-conditioned IPA, aged with oak and dry-hopped, from Otter Creek.

A wonderful time was had by all. (Well, by me, and that's the only vote that counts here.) I'm ready to go again.

They don't make 'em like they used to.

2009-07-28T15:33:00.003-04:00

This would seem to be a movie worth watching:

Yes, I know.

2009-07-13T14:19:00.003-04:00

It's quiet. Too quiet.

Sorry. I haven't done all that much of late that has made me want to post about it.

Oh, sure. There have been beer and wine dinners, and an all-Virginia breweries beer festival, heralding the return of Tupper's Hop Pocket Ale. There have been other interesting events that have cause me to wander outside on occasion.

There's been a primary. There's the return of Lance to the Tour. There was the new Star Trek movie. Lots of other things, any of which might have made me post something.

Oh, well. Maybe something a bit more interesting will come along.

And a Happy Tuesday to you, as well.

2009-03-17T17:26:00.002-04:00

Ah, the classics.

Snow big deal.

2009-03-09T15:41:00.003-04:00

It snowed a week ago. Started about 4 p.m. on Sunday and ended around 1 p.m. on Monday, accumulating between 8 and 10 inches. The first snow in the Richmond area that was more than an inch or two in three and a half years.

Once it stopped snowing, it cleared up and was beautiful: trees were outlined in white and the sky was crystal blue and clear. Very pretty, very nice.

And, this being Richmond, very short-lived as well. By Thursday, the temperatures were in the sixties; by Sunday, it was 84.

That's the joy of Richmond snow storms: the results don't hang around long enough to become gray and depressing and yucky.

If it's February, that must be a crocus.

2009-02-22T19:37:00.001-05:00

Time for the annual posting commemorating the first crocus of spring. This year's winner showed up on February 1. Its friends showed up in bunches about a week later.

Justice delayed.

2009-02-11T14:09:00.002-05:00

It may take fifty years, but it's good to see that an organization can come to its senses and apologize for its idiotic behavior.

Sign here. And here. And here. Aaannnnd here.

2009-02-09T16:35:00.005-05:00

Saturday was a surprisingly nice day - the temperature touched 70 degrees - so I decided it was time to get out of the house to do something. After getting a much-needed haircut, I ended up in the middle of the afternoon at the Richmond Convention Center for a "Healthy LifeStyle Expo" or somesuch.

That LifeStyle Expo turned out to be worth about what I paid for it - it was free - and it had a wide range of exhibitors. Everything from hospitals and chiropractic clinics to the local grocery store to companies that will sell you a motorized wheelchair if you can get Medicare to pay for it. A mortgage company that specializes in reverse mortgages for seniors. Weird nutrition and fruit drinks. Mary Kay cosmetics. And the Marine Corps Marathon. And all of it sponsored by the local CBS-TV affiliate.

Not too surprisingly, this wasn't the only event going on at the Convention Center on Saturday. That evening was the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner for the state Democratic party, and all of the prospective candidates for this November's election were there. (Virginia has its state elections in odd years, so that every November has an election of at least state-level importance. It turns out to be good for county and precinct political organizations, as it keeps some continuing level of interest every year. This year's election includes the state-wide races of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, each elected separately.)

Well, that early in the afternoon, only one of the candidates was around. But they all had tables set up for their organizations to hand out literature and, more importantly, to collect signatures to get their candidates onto the ballot for this spring's primary. Eight or nine tables lined up in a row.

I've been on the other side of this exercise - going out and trying to collect signatures for ballot access - and I know how difficult it can be. So I always sign ballot access petitions, regardless of the candidate. (Okay: once I balked. It was for Lyndon LaRouche, and you can't blame me. As a general proposition, though, I believe that anyone who wants to be on the ballot should be allowed onto it, and the public can decide whether or not to vote for the candidate.)

I even made it easy for them. I'd walk up to the table and tell them what county and Congressional district I live in (there are separate petitions for each county, and if a county is split into multiple Congressional districts, each of those is separate, too), and wait for them to fumble through their stack of forms to find the appropriate one. I'd sign, they'd give me a sticker and perhaps some campaign literature, and off I'd go to the next one.

A half-hour later, and I was done. I'd done my civic duty, and was free to enjoy the rest of the day.

And then there are days.

2009-01-29T15:50:00.003-05:00

This year, I did the majority of my Christmas shopping online. No looking for a parking place, no hordes of foul-tempered shoppers, no dealing with sales staff who are too busy talking on their cell phones.

And, for the most part, it went pretty well. As I'm sure you know by the presents you received from me. (You didn't get yours yet? Well, I'm sure it's on its way.)

There were a couple of packages (a book, a DVD) that I was expecting to arrive on the Monday before Christmas, the day before I left for Florida for a week. But when I got back from work that Monday evening -- nothing there. Nothing on the front porch, nothing at the side door, nothing on the back deck. Oh, well. Guess I won't be taking those things to Florida, after all. And I'll alert Larry-the-Cat-Sitter that he should be on the lookout for those missing packages.

So Larry-the-Cat-Sitter conscientiously watched for the missing packages. But by the time I got home from Florida, they still hadn't been seen.

Okay, time to go into "So where are they?" mode. I checked the Amazon.com tracking page to see if I could find out when they might be delivered, although I thought I remembered they should have gotten to me before I left. And to my great surprise, I found out that not only should they have arrived by then, according to Amazon.com, they had been. That Monday afternoon before I left town.

Hmm.

Let me go look again. Nope, not on the front porch. Not in the bushes around the front porch. not under the leaves piled up behind the bushes around the front porch. Not by the side door. Not on the deck out back.

Okay. [sigh] Guess I'll have to get in touch with Amazon to let them know that the packages never arrived, and they'll need to resend them. Kind of annoying that they disappeared - I've never had this problem before in this neighborhood. Don't know whether it was swiped from the porch or was claimed as last-minute Christmas shopping by the carrier's temporary drivers.

Maybe I'll wait until tomorrow to contact Amazon. Maybe they were picked up by a well-meaning neighbor who saw I was away from home and that neighbor hasn't returned them yet.

Maybe I'll wait a couple of days, so I don't have to deal with the Amazon customer service people. "But it says here that they were delivered to your front porch." "Sure does. And yet - I never saw them." "But they were delivered to you." "But they weren't." Really not looking forward to that conversation.

After a couple of days, though, it was finally time. No, wait: let me put it off long enough to go to the grocery store for a big purchase: buying enough cat food to last me through long winter storms, should any appear. ("more cat food is good" the little voices near the floor seem to say.)

When I return home and carry the many bags of groceries up to the front door, I note that there's something a little bit odd about the welcome mat: it felt a bit, I don't know, lumpy when I stepped on it, and it's pushed off to the side about six inches - towards the hinge, so I hadn't been stepping on the mat when I went in the door. Okay, let me get the bags of cat food inside, and then I'll investigate.

Sure enough: both packages were there. And apparently had been there all along, underneath the welcome mat where the UPS driver had hidden them from view. Sure, they both were in packages a lot flatter than I expected - the bigger was no more than an inch high, and that's at least an inch shorter than I had anticipated - and they'd been well-covered by the mat. But I'd looked for the packages at least a half dozen times, and didn't see them where they'd been placed, and exactly where I would have expected them to be. The only saving grace is that Larry-the-Cat-Sitter had stepped over them every day for a week without spotting them, too.

Perhaps it's just as well I'm not a private investigator.

Inaugural quotes.

2009-01-20T10:17:00.004-05:00

Today is certainly a day to quote prior inaugural addresses. Let me add this one, which I feel appropriate:

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule.

You know, it's not that often that I get to quote Gerald Ford.

And in a galaxy far, far away.

2008-12-08T17:52:00.000-05:00

Maybe it did happen a long time ago.

Bring out the kitsch!

2008-11-20T15:34:00.005-05:00

Welcome to the new age. There is nothing celebrating Obama's electoral victory that is so tacky that it cannot be made by someone and offered for sale.

Okay, perhaps the only thing new is that these things now are made with Obama's image, instead of someone else's. But the folks who make them still want you to fork over your hard-earned dollars for them.

And yes, those are, respectively, the President-Elect's head made of soap ("Hope on a Rope") and The First Couple-Elect as a Christmas ornament.

Your tax dollars at work.

2008-11-03T16:47:00.003-05:00

One of the fun things about having a counter on this website is that I get some limited information about where my site hits come from - time of day, city where the viewing computer is located, which posting brought them to the site, what search terms were used if the visit comes from a search engine, and the like.

And then there are visitors like this:

Domain Name: house.gov ?
(U.S. Government)

IP Address: 143.231.249.#
(Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives)

ISP: Information Systems, U.S. House of Representatives

Location

Continent: North America
Country: United States
State: District of Columbia
City: Washington
Lat/Long: 38.9097, -77.0231 (Map)

Time of Visit: Nov 3 2008 10:50:03 am

Visit Entry Page: http://stonercellars.blogspot.com/2008/11/ya-gotta-have-hartke.html

Well, if I get audited, I'll know why.

Ya gotta have Hartke.

2008-11-02T19:00:00.006-05:00

I was out driving around yesterday afternoon, minding my own business. I was passed by a campaign trolley, presumably with the candidate standing in the back of it, waving to passersby. Complete with a sign "Honk4Cantor". Gack. The evil Eric Cantor, representative from my district, although I can't imagine he actually represents it so much as he uses it for his base of operations, as a Mordor of his very own.

To my surprise, the trolley stopped for the red light. As I came up beside it, I rolled down my window and shouted "End Corruption! Vote for Hartke!"

Well, it made me feel better.

Why the republicans will lose Virginia

2008-10-31T11:19:00.003-04:00

I got home last night to find my daily robocalls listed on my Caller ID. The usual suspects were there: some combination of "Anonymous" or "Name withheld" or no name at all, just an 800 number. Only one of them - the nameless 800 number, by the time stamp - left me a voicemail.

"Come to the Victory Rally tomorrow at 2 pm! Senator John Warner will be there! And [whatever his name is, the zealot], Virginia's Attorney General! And a Vietnam Prisoner of War! It'll be at the Victory Headquarters! Don't miss it! That's the Victory Rally! Tomorrow, October 30th, at 2 pm! See you there!"

The time-stamp on the phone call was Thursday, October 30th, around 3:45 pm.

Yes, they were inviting me to attend a rally that had already taken place. And the rest of their efforts seem to be equally disorganized.

Why I'm not a farmer.

2008-10-28T11:35:00.001-04:00

Well, there's the hours, of course.

But there's also the results. Here is a photo of my harvest from this year's garden. Not a representative sample of the harvest. Almost the entire harvest. I actually got two bell peppers (the other one was smaller than this one) and four tiny stalks of swiss chard.

Thank goodness for supermarkets.

Obama rally, update.

2008-10-26T10:41:00.002-04:00

Here's a video of the last five-plus minutes of Obama's speech at the rally in Richmond.

Obama rally.

2008-10-25T10:53:00.010-04:00

I went to the Obama rally here in Richmond on Wednesday. Lots of fun. I wish that the sound system in the Richmond Colliseum were better: some of the speakers sounded exactly like the adults in Charlie Brown TV specials. Obama came through clearly about half the time, and when you get down to it, one doesn't go to this kind of rally to hear the specific policy details of the candidates. (People at my workplace watched it live online and had no trouble understanding what he said. Natch.) About 13,000 people got into the Colliseum for the rally, and another 7,000 watched in a nearby park where there were big screens wet up.

My favorite line was something to the effect of: "You don't even have to ask whether you're better off today than you were four years ago. Are you better off today than you were four weeks ago?"

Here's a nice little presentation on the event - photos and about 90 seconds of the Call to Action at the end of Obama's speech. What makes this slideshow and audio clip even more impressive is that it was put together by the local newspaper, which is of the "It's Okay If You're a Republican" variety. I'm guessing that even they can read the handwriting on the wall. (The alternative is that they occasionally act like responsible journalists, and from what I've seen of this paper over the years, we can safely conclude that's just not the case.)

My seat in the Colliseum was reasonably close to Obama, and he entered and exited the arena right below where I was sitting, so I was within maybe 30 or 40 feet of him at that point. It was absolutely amazing to see the level of security around him,

especially when he was shaking hands with the crowd on his way out: he was surrounded shoulder-to-shoulder by the security detail, with two or three rings of additional agents checking out the folks ahead of him.

I think that what impressed me the most was how excited so many of the people at the rally were. There was a black woman, about my age, sitting next to me who was calling all her friends, giddily telling them that she was about to see the next President. (I remember being that excited about candidates before; I remember becoming heartbroken as a result. So now I'm somewhat jaded. Or, at least, more cautious in commiting so wholeheartedly to a candidate.)

Certainly the rally had the desired effect of jazzing up the attendees, getting them to go out and work harder in the days remaining before the election. And that's especially exciting for those of us of a certain age - and you'd have to be - who remember the last time that Virginia voted for a Democratic candidate for president.

Someone I work with was at the rally as well, and was interviewed by The Daily Show. Don't think his interview ever made it on the air, but that's fun, too.

The feeling is mutual.

2008-10-16T16:38:00.002-04:00

Courtesy of Sina English.

From one of my uncles.

2008-09-26T15:44:00.002-04:00

Yeah, those darn "tax and spend" liberals. Ever so much better to borrow and spend.

A visit from Hanna.

2008-09-06T22:49:00.002-04:00

Not much to report, thankfully.

About 4 inches of rain, mostly between midnight and 4 p.m. today; heaviest between about 6 and 11 a.m. Wind probably around 20 mph, gusts up to 35 or 40. No trees down in my neighborhood (that I know of), no giant branches down in my yard.

The biggest effect was to have large standing puddles in my front yard, and doubtless I'll need to mow my yard next week.

All in all, just the way I like my hurricanes.

Lest ye be judged.

2008-08-30T23:10:00.002-04:00

I got to be a beer judge today.

A local homebrewing club had its annual brewing competition this weekend. They were expecting something on the order of 80 or 90 entries. They actually got over 150. The organizers kind of panicked, and sent the word out that they needed more judges for the competition, and it really didn't matter how much experience the new judges had.

So someone thought of me.

It was a lot of fun. Well, not the "show up at 9 a.m." part, because I'm not all that fond of beer as a breakfast beverage. Even when it's the middle of summer, and a weekend.

They break it up so that a table of three judges would deal with, say, eight to 12 beers. You get a two- or three-ounce pour of a beer, judge it against specific style (e.g., Vienna Lager) definitions, and come up with a numerical score. No, you don't have to drink all of the pour you're given, and you really don't want to drink it all, if you're going to get through ten 3-ounce pours in three hours. At 9 a.m.

A single beer from the group of 8 to 12 would advance to the "best of show" round, where it would be re-judged by a different group of judges.

As it turns out, the best beer from my table - a Munich Helles - eventually won the gold medal for Best in Show.

All in all, great fun.

Doom and gloom.

2008-08-28T23:45:00.004-04:00

It's like I brought a little bit of Seattle back with me.

Yesterday, we had a high of 68 degrees, low gray clouds, drizzle and gentle rain off and on all day long. No thunder, no lightning. Really dark, low clouds rolled in around 7 pm, so you'd have needed headlights even if it weren't raining.

These photos really were taken at 7 pm - an hour and a half before sunset - in downtown Richmond, near where I work.

And today? A bit more traditional August rainstorms - rain so hard that you couldn't see beyond the windshield wipers, a lot more lightning and thunder, large ponds of water covering the road. Not quite up to the standard of hot summer afternoon thunderboomers, thankfully. (And, naturally, it stopped as soon as I got to the office.) Still, it was 3 inches of rain in 3 or 4 hours, so there's flash flooding around the area. These are the remnants of tropical storm Fay, so three inches of rain is a whole lot better than some areas around the country got.

West coast trip.

2008-08-24T11:30:00.004-04:00

Okay, I'm back. Back from a one-week trip to the Seattle area. Somewhat rejuvenated (although a two- or three-week trip would have been better in that regard), although it's amazing how tired you become from sitting in a slightly-padded seat all day long on the return flights.

I can report that the Space Needle really does exist, something I could not honestly say after my previous visit to Seattle 12 years ago. Oh, sure, on that trip I was able to see the bottom 50 feet of it. But no more than that.

I ate a lot of salmon, which tastes a lot better when it's served fresh, near where it was caught, than when it's frozen and shipped across the continent. And I played a lot with my new camera, the results of which you're seeing here. (Well, a selective excerpt of the results: I took almost 600 photos on my trip.)

I got to see some spectacular sunsets. This has the Olympic National Park in the background, and the Hood Canal in the foreground.

I even got to see a sunrise, painful as that usually is for me to consider. I was watching a triathlon, and this is a pre-race photo, with the kayak volunteers getting into position to assist any swimmers needing aid. I can assure you: it's better to see a West Coast sunrise when your body is still on East Coast time.

I did a few touristy things in Seattle: I walked by the base of the Space Needle (going up it will have to wait for a later visit), I rode the monorail, I went on the Seattle Underground tour. The most fun thing I did, though, was going to a performance of the pre-Broadway tour of Shrek: The Musical. Great fun, and very well done; the actress cast as Princess Fiona has a wonderful voice. I'm not entirely sure that a musical needed to be done, but if so, this production fills the bill.

All in all, I had a great time. I'm ready to go back.

Between the covers.

2008-08-10T11:20:00.001-04:00

Part of the reason I haven't been posting much lately is that I've been reading. (Well, okay - that's not the only reason. But it's a lot more satisifying to say that I've been doing something productive like reading than to admit I've been doing my impression of a sloth.)

One book I've liked is Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, an examination of motivations that lead us to make the wrong choice when we know better, such as the power of "free" items. The author is a behavioral economist who teaches at Duke and MIT, and I heard him speak earlier this summer at a Richmond Fuqua alumni event. Pretty interesting material, although not entirely new to me.

In the area of wine, I enjoyed To Cork or Not To Cork: Tradition, Romance, Science, and the Battle for the Wine Bottle, a very thorough discussion of the problems with corks and the limited success of various alternatives. I had thought I had a good understanding of the issue, but reading this made me realize that the various solutions aren't quite as good as I had thought.

And I've been reading some fiction lately, too. Joe Haldeman's The Accidental Time Machine is some of the best science fiction I've read lately, not that I've been reading all that much science fiction in the past ten years. Among fiction, I've probably read more mysteries than anything else. But Haldeman's latest doesn't disappoint.

I'm now in the middle of Sunshine - a delightful vampire tale. Pretty good escapist, summertime reading.

I happily recommend all of them.

O Henry, 1996 - 2008.

2008-08-10T10:53:00.003-04:00

O Henry passed away last week. She had cancer, and passed peacefully.

She started out as a stray, and was adopted by my mother by the time she was one year old or so. She made the move from Florida to Virginia about two and a half years ago, when she and Sami came up here.

She was a very sweet cat, always sleeping on my bed at night. She was also the matriarch of the household, keeping all the other cats in line, usually by grabbing them and licking their heads until they submitted. What was great fun was when she'd approach me while I was sleeping and lick my head. Not sure I ever submitted to her authority, exactly, but I'm sure there are those who will tell you that I have been very thoroughly trained to do all of my cats' bidding, including hers.

Tarred, but not feathered.

2008-07-24T23:38:00.000-04:00

Sometimes, you just don't need an alarm clock.

This morning, for instance. This thing was in front of my house at 7 o'clock. Sounding very much like a cross between a jet engine and the propane torch for a hot-air balloon. More than enough to stir me from my slumber.

And it wasn't alone: its twin brother was right behind it, even louder.

I suppose I shouldn't complain too much: they'll only resurface the street once every 15 years or so, and I guess I can give up some sleep for that. If only they hadn't appeared Tuesday morning before 6:45 to resurface the other streets around me....

Not around for long.

2008-07-18T18:41:00.003-04:00

Joss Whedon strikes again. It's free until Sunday, which is when it gets taken off the web and you'll only be able to see it by paying for it - download or DVD or something.

Very funny.

Seeing things you really don't want to.

2008-07-16T16:49:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, you just can't help seeing things that you really would prefer not to have seen.

As an example, although not the one I really had in mind, there was the guy I saw this afternoon, out in the park outside my office. He was wearing running shorts. And black loafers. And carrying a briefcase. And on first glance, it looked like he was wearing mohair pajamas. (On second glance? Not so much.)

No, what I was really thinking of was the sight out on my porch yesterday evening. Awww! Isn't it cute! There's a kitten! Solid black, looked to be about 8 weeks old. When I went to open the door to greet it, it bolted: off the deck to the ground, and on a beeline for the back of the yard. And as it loped across the yard, it was followed by two other kittens, about the same age. And they disappeared into the brush along the back fence.

Man. Does this mean I'm now responsible for yet another litter of kittens? Won't be quite as easy as getting them before they're born, or before their eyes are open.

Luckily, I spotted my neighbor and asked him about them. "Oh, yeah," he said. "Those three have been hanging out at the house across the street, and the woman who lives there feeds them."

Great! I don't have to start a new class at John's Home for Wayward Cats.

2008 Folklife Festival

2008-07-03T22:52:00.007-04:00

I went up to the Folklife Festival yesterday. Beautiful day for it, and relatively small crowds. It occurs to me that it's probably been 20 years since I've been to the Festival, so why not go this year?

The subjects for this year's Folklife Festival are Bhutan, Texas, and NASA. Yes, an eccentric combination. I was most interested in NASA, which this year celebrates its 50th anniversary.

The NASA exhibits were interesting: lots of educational stuff and things for kids to do-and-learn. And they had a lot of exhibits devoted to upcoming projects - the space telescope that will follow Hubble, and the manned space system that will follow the Shuttle had a lot of material.

The Bhutan exhibits were exotic: they had a replica of a temple that you could walk through, an area where a sand mandala was being made, and a large stage with native music and dancers.

The Texas exhibits were eccentric. One of the largest ones dealt with Texas wine ("Fifth largest wine producer in the country!" - Really? I'd have thought that California, New York, Oregon, Washington, and Virginia all produce more. They certainly all produce better, in my experience.) I listened to 20 minutes worth of an interview with a woman who has had a winery in Texas for over 20 years; kind of cool. There was a Texas cooking exhibit - Barbecue, Tex-Mex and whatnot. Two different music stages, with a changing assortment of tunes.

One of the draws to the Festival is always the food, and this year's didn't disappoint. Sure, you could get Texas barbecue (whether or not authentic is a different issue). But the coolest Texas cuisine was the Texas Noodle House, representing the large Vietnamese contingent in Texas.

All in all, a lot of fun. The price was certainly right, too. (Free, that is, except for the food.) And afterwards, you can always go to the Air and Space Museum and touch the moon rock.

Spam, spam, beautiful spam.

2008-06-25T21:41:00.004-04:00

I always enjoy looking at my browser's spam folder before I delete it. On rare occasion, there's something that's actually supposed to have come to me. But there's always the unintentionally hilarious email that's intended to grab my attention.

The one I've been getting lately - about every third day for the past month - has a subject line of "what a stupid face you have here johnstoner."

Well, that surely gets my attention. Not entirely sure what it's selling, unless there's some sort of new profile enhancement scam of which I am unaware. And not sure it's doing a really good job of making me want to open the email to find out.

Fellowship of the Ring, the concert

2008-06-15T22:14:00.002-04:00

I went out to Wolf Trap a couple of weeks ago, to see The Fellowship of the Ring. Yes, an outdoor showing of the movie, digitally projected in HD-quality. But this was a special print – it didn’t have the score. Sure, it had the dialogue and any sound effects. But the score itself was performed by an orchestra. And a 200-person choir, and soloists.

They billed it as the “world premiere” of a live performance of the score done to the movie. (The score has been separately performed as a concert, but never with the movie.)

I’ve been to three or four other orchestral performances of scores at movies, notably the Abel Gance 1927 silent film masterpiece Napoleon, but this was the first time I’ve been to a live performance of a score to a sound movie.

Absolutely amazing. Really shows how much a score adds to a movie, and having it live made it almost 3-D in character. The orchestra had some extra instruments, called for by the score: Japanese and African war drums, anvils, metal plates suspended by wire. And the soloists were superb.

I could not identify any instances where the score was off from where it was supposed to be, or any errors. There were certainly times where the volume was louder or softer compared to the dialog than it had been in the movie, but hey! It’s a live performance!

Really a lot of fun. Only drawbacks were that (a) they had to wait until dark to start the movie (hello! It’s a movie), so it started at 8:30 and, with an intermission, ended after midnight, kind of late for a school night, and (b) it was mighty cold. Probably 50 degrees when the movie started, and certainly less than that when it ended, and it felt chillier when the wind blew through the house. As I hadn’t really thought about the weather when I started out from Richmond, where it had been in the high 70’s in the afternoon, I was really happy that I had not cleaned my car out for the trip, so I still had a sweatshirt in the trunk and a down jacket in the back seat. I put them to good use at the movie. (And, of course, if they had waited until later in the year for the performance, when it would have been warmer, they’d have also had to wait until even later in the evening for it to get dark. Late May and done shortly after midnight is much better than mid-July and ending after 1 a.m.)

Where's Waldo - Virginia State Bird edition.

2008-05-31T22:00:00.001-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, a friend was visiting from the Pacific Northwest, and noted that it was a treat to see cardinals, because there aren’t any out there. So I felt obliged to take a photo of one to memorialize the occasion.

It turns out that it’s a lot more difficult than I thought to center the camera on a really small object when the bright sun is shining directly on the viewing screen you’re using to aim the camera with. I was convinced that this photo was centered on the bird. Apparently not.

Wine festival report.

2008-05-04T10:41:00.003-04:00

Went to the annual James River wine festival last weekend. Located nowhere near the James River, naturally. (A decade ago, it was on an island downtown in the middle of the river. No idea why it’s not there: can’t possibly be the ambiance of this empty field next to parking lots in a nondescript office complex.)

The winery I usually pour for at this festival chose not to attend this year, so I got to go to the festival as a civilian for the first time in three or four years.

An okay festival – 20 wineries, ranging from the very good (e.g., Barboursville) to the … well, let’s be charitable and call them “new and still figuring out what they’re doing” and not name them here. Even though some of them aren’t remotely new. But the real reason I go to this festival (as a civilian) is that it’s only about 6 miles from my home.

Beautiful weather on Saturday: mid 80s, not a cloud in the sky. Somewhat crummy weather on Sunday: low 60s, completely overcast, sometimes windy, and constantly threatening to rain. And sometimes actually raining.

Which day did I attend the festival? Sunday, of course. Far fewer people, which means shorter lines or no lines at all, the opportunity to try more wines during your stay there, and the chance to chat at length with winemakers.

Didn’t really discover anything terribly new and exciting. Fabbioli Cellars had some good reds, of which their Bordeaux blend was the best. And clearly very few of the wineries making a Traminette (hybrid of Gewurztraminer and Riesling) know how to make it well. (One or two wineries had good ones there, so it can be done, but most of the others had an odd metallic finish that ruined any enjoyment of the wine.)

Charlotte airport wine bar.

2008-05-02T19:50:00.000-04:00

On my various trips to Florida over the past few months, I’ve connected a couple of times in the Charlotte airport. While waiting for my connection (or, usually, for its replacement), I’ve had plenty of time to wait.

At some point I looked at the airport diagram, and discovered that Carolina Beer was listed, with a pub “under construction.” Well, no telling how old the listing was, so maybe by now they have finished construction and had opened it. If so, I was going to have an Endo Pale Ale or two before my next flight. Purely for medicinal purposes, you understand.

The pub was located a fair distance away: a long walk up the terminal arm I was in, across the main hub of the airport, and all the way out a different terminal arm. (Nothing wrong with a long walk. I had plenty of time before my connection.) Alas, when I got there, I discovered that the pub was, in fact, still under construction. (Well, as “under construction” as it could be, given that there were no workers to be seen anywhere around it. In any event, it was both unfinished and not open, sufficient to dash my hopes.)

Heading back to the terminal where my flight was getting more and more delayed, I spotted this wine bar. Well, okay: a glass or two of medicinal New Zealand sauvignon blanc or Oregon pinot noir would probably hit the spot.

As I walk into the bar, though, I realize I’m not going to get either one of those: this wine bar has only wines from the Yadkin Valley viticultural region of North Carolina.

Fine. I’m willing to try some North Carolina wines. You could do a tasting – six wines for, I don’t recall, four bucks. And they had around 25 wines to choose from: Ten to twelve each of reds and whites, a couple of dessert wines, and a “port.” I decided to pass on the reds and dessert wines, and just tried some whites. Three each of viognier and riesling, as I recall. The viogniers were forgettable: not bad, but there was also nothing to recommend them. The rieslings were, respectively, horrid, almost passable, and reasonably decent. I was delighted to find the last one, and had a glass of it. Enjoyed it enough that I lost track of time and got back to the boarding area while they were midway through the boarding process.

Interesting enough marketing gimmick: the bar showcases the wines of a viticultural area in North Carolina, to a fairly captive audience (people waiting for their planes) who – if they get to try something they like – will tell people back home about the wines, thereby setting the stage to build future demand.

And interesting enough that it would be a neat idea for someone to do for Virginia wines at a Virginia airport. Probably only Dulles or National airports would have enough traffic to justify such a specific wine bar, and neither one is as much of a regional hub as Charlotte is, which gives people the time to spend in a wine bar. Still, I think Dulles has enough flights connecting through it to give such a wine bar a decent amount of patrons with time on their hands.

Netflix v Blockbuster? I vote Netflix.

2008-04-23T20:36:00.001-04:00

I've been a fan of Netflix for a long time. A year ago, I thought I'd give Blockbuster Online a try. I'm now ready to go back to just one service again, and I pick Netflix.

One reason I tried Blockbuster was that they carry some movies that Netflix does not have, and I wanted to see some of them. Primary among them is the World At War series, which I'm honestly very surprised that Netflix doesn't carry. I had seen the series when it was first broadcast in the 70s, on PBS (as I recall). Twenty-six broadcast hour-long episodes, plus a bunch of extra features they came up with for a later (30th anniversary?) release. Eleven disks in the series, so it's taken me a while to go through them all. Wonderful series; no surprise there.

And Blockbuster has cut deals to make some movies exclusive to Blockbuster. Lower-echelon movies, mostly. The best of those that I saw was Bobby.

But I've now had enough. The biggest "benefit" to going with Blockbuster Online is that you have a choice in returning movies: you can mail them back in a prepaid mailer (like Netflix), or you can take them to a brick-and-mortar Blockbuster store and trade it in for a "free" rental. (The store will then drop your movie in the mail for you.) The free rental is treated like a regular Blockbuster rental - you have to return it within five days, or they hit you with a late fee (which they call something else, but that's what it really is), and if you don't return it in something like two weeks, they bill your credit card for the retail cost of the movie.

The other benefit with Blockbuster Online is a monthly free coupon for a game or movie rental. (Okay, for me, that's a movie rental, as I don't have an XBox or PSP game system.) Same deal: you have to go to the physical store and get a movie, and return it five days later.

And because Blockbuster Online is more expensive than Netflix, you have to take advantage of these benefits to feel like you're getting your money's worth. (Especially when they raise their monthly fees while Netflix leaves theirs unchanged.)

When you come down to it, though, the three-movies-out-at-a-time that you have with Netflix is sufficient for me, and you don't have the hassle of returning movies before their dates to avoid late fees or the inconvenience of driving out of your way to the Blockbuster store, where you have to undergo their attempts to upsell you with candy and popcorn.

I have a new toy.

2008-03-18T11:08:00.006-04:00

Okay, I understand that I'm an Old Guy. My cell phone doesn't have a camera, doesn't have a large keypad for texting, and doesn't have the capacity to be my mp3 player. (I do have a cell phone, though.)

So it's no surprise that I am only now discovering something that's been around for a few years: Pandora.com. It's, I don't know, an Internet radio station that you program yourself. Sort of. You create a "station" with the name of an artist (or album or song), and the site's artificial intelligence algorithms will pick similar songs and artists to play for you, and you can give feedback to your station with thumbs up/down buttons and it will use that information to refine its choice of music for you.

Plug in your headphones and you can listen to music, more or less of your own choice, without having to listen to commercials or hauling CDs around with you. And it's free.

At the moment, I've got three "stations" - you can have lots - one initially seeded with the group Cream (okay, I'm an Old Guy), which also plays the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, the Who, the Beatles, and Eric Clapton (among many others), one initially seeded with The Beach Boys, which plays a lot of 50's and 60's doo-wop, and one seeded with Pete Seeger, which also plays the Weavers, Woody Guthrie, Arlo Guthrie, and Bob Dylan (again, among others).

I happily recommend it.

Here is my profile page, if you want to check out my stations.

Update (March 24): I guess it's not a surprise - Pandora.com is not the only self-programming internet radio station out there. I've come across another one - Jango.com - which I think I like even better. (I found out about it through a Washington Post article on social network internet radio stations, and you just know that if there's a term to describe them and a Post article on them, they've been around for a while.)

Jango has a different algorithm for picking songs: It keeps track of what songs you like, and then goes to its database of other users to find what people who like those songs like to listen to, and chooses one of those songs next. Kind of Google-like. It also seems to give you a bit more freedom to pick what you want to hear and how often.

Drop by my profile page here, too, if you'd like. My username is JediKt, and you can search fairly easily for me. I'm listening mostly to my Cream station.

My computer keyboard ran out of ink.

2008-02-21T16:05:00.000-05:00

Okay, it's been a while. I blame the disappearance of my writing muse, which has happened before, and will doubtless happen again.

During my absence, I have had the opportunity to write about many things, and yet could never find the time or energy to take 45 minutes - or, for some items, 5 minutes or less - to mention them here. Among those things:

In November, I got my flu shot in a city Health Department-sponsored drive-through flu shot clinic, designed to test out procedures for a mass inoculation. The shot was free, and I (knock on wood) haven't gotten the flu this winter.

Also in November, I led a wine tasting. My first paying wine tasting. Seven Virginia wines; a good time was had by all.

And, of course, I voted in November. Not entirely sure why: in all the races I voted on, there were ten candidates for eight seats. Only two contested races out of eight. And I didn't especially care about the two contested races. I wrote my name in for the House of Delegates and State Senate races. Didn't win, though.

Early in December, Tommy (cat number five) finally overcame his fear of my bedroom and started sleeping at my feet. He still gets into daily fights with Mosby and Rebel, but is also willing to stand his ground when he wants to. Or, you know, when he's eating.

I went to Florida over Christmas. Had a nice, relaxing time. Except for the endless hours I was in airports, or shoehorned into airplanes.

While waiting for a connection in the Charlotte airport, I discovered a wine bar, which was a nice enough place to wait. More on this wine bar later, I'm sure.

My contract attorney job came to an abrupt end one Monday early in January. We got a phone call from the associate in charge of the project: "It's about 1:20. Why don't you sign out for the day at 1:30? And then not come back until a week from Wednesday. Because this project is done." It's not as though we could say "No." Still, it was a project that started last February and was intended to last only a week and a half, so having it last ten and a half months was a pretty good deal for us.

I went to an Ansel Adams exhibit up in D.C. Amazing stuff - and it made me feel that I am all thumbs when I take photographs. The presence of genius will do that, I suppose. Also went to an accompanying exhibit of Annie Liebowitz's photos - and I came away with the feeling that she is excellent at her craft - but he's still four levels above.

My father passed away in mid-January. Very sudden, very surprising. He was in good mental and physical shape, so it was unexpected. I spent more time in Florida for this, and returned to Richmond driving a 16-foot truck loaded with furniture, most of which is now stacked in my living room, waiting for me to get rid of my 25-year-old graduate-student-esque furniture to make room for it. The cats love the new places to walk and sleep.

The new contract attorney project started up - and I spent the first two weeks working on material from the project that "ended" three weeks earlier.

This year's crocuses first appeared around Jan. 28. No photo of them this year; sorry.

I voted in this year's primary. Kind of funny to vote in a primary when it actually means something.

And last weekend, I went to a "wine expo" - an indoor wine festival, of sorts. The excitement for me was that I was able to get in for free, as part of "the trade." That hobby business of doing wine tastings in people's homes is paying off. More about this later, too, I imagine.

I'll try to post more often, but I make no promises. (I suppose I can hardly post less often.)

Thank you for shopping at Kroger.

2007-11-01T21:17:00.000-04:00

Unaccustomed as I am to random unsolicited compliments from strangers, I was rather taken aback the night before last at the grocery store when the guy overseeing the cluster of self-check-out stations told me that I was very efficient. “I’ve been watching you,” he said, “and you really know what you’re doing. No wasted motion. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” “Um, yes,” I admitted, but did not add: “You do something for seven years, you figure out how to do it.” I quickly left.

And a creepy Halloween to you.

Powerless to change.

2007-10-29T23:10:00.000-04:00

Or perhaps, just powerless.

I had just gotten home from work, watched enough of the Redskins game to see they were hopelessly behind, and started watching something I had recorded.

Boom! The lights went out. More importantly, the TV went off.

Didn't hear any thunder, so a nearby tree probably wasn't hit by lightning. Doubted it was a tornado, unless it was one of those extremely rare blue-sky tornadoes. Just one of those things, I guess, those things that Dominion Power is fond of: random outages for no apparent reason.

I called the emergency line, and the automated voice told me (a) that a "widespread outage" had been noted in my area, and (b) that the power should be restored by 8:15. Hmm. Interesting that an outage could be described as "widespread" after only 5 minutes, and that they could predict a successful conclusion to the quarter-hour.

Rather than sit in the dark, I drove to a local watering hole for dinner. On my way out of the neighborhood, I couldn't help but notice that the widespread outage did not include, for instance, the house immediately in back of mine - on the other side of the power line from me. But it did include the vast majority of the houses in my neighborhood, and the nearest set of traffic lights on the major road near me, so I was satisfied.

And by 8:30, the lights were back on.

You can tell it's the middle of October.

2007-10-28T23:41:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday, I saw that my neighborhood grocery store has a display of boxed Christmas cards for sale - and already marked 50% off.

Party like it’s 1999!

2007-10-18T23:19:00.000-04:00

Or, at least, work that way.

The folks “in charge of” the project I’m working on at BigLawFirm discovered early in September that they had a large production due by the end of October, and that the current number of contract attorneys (there were five of us) was insufficient to do all the work necessary for that production. Naturally, that meant that they’d wait until the end of the first week of October to actually do anything about it, at which point they hired on ten more contract attorneys, eight of whom had never done document review before and five of whom had never had a law-related job before, having just graduated from their respective law schools in the spring. I’m guessing they’ll be a big help in meeting the October 31 deadline.

Well, anyway. They needed to bring in a bunch of rental computers for these new folks, and in keeping with the firm's tradition of providing us with crummy-but-insufficient resources, the computer of the fellow at the table behind me has that sticker on it.

Holy cow! A Y2K sticker? Even the decrepit, steam-powered computer I use at home is new enough that it didn’t need to be tested for Y2K compliance. (And I’m ready to send my home computer out to the farm.) Nothing but the best for us, I suppose.

Introducing ... Tommy.

2007-09-20T23:59:00.001-04:00

Here's Tommy, short for Thomas Jifferson. (See here for the explanation of the odd part of his name.)

He's still a big cutie, and he's getting more comfortable in his new house, but his interactions with Rebel have gotten no better. Well, except for the fact that he completely ignore's Rebel's screeching and howling and waving of her little paws if she approaches him while he's eating. Otherwise, though, she still has him completely terrorized.

I'm still looking for a new home for him - or for Mosby and Rebel, who will have to go together - so that he can have a place to live where he feels safe in every room of the house.

Click a Vick.

2007-08-27T23:49:00.000-04:00

Today's celebrity football criminal drama was somewhat tamer than the one a few weeks ago (pictured to the right). For Vick's arraignment, there was a huge crowd, about 90-10 in favor of those opposed to dog killing for entertainment. And since the arraignment was taking place a block away from where I work, naturally I went to see the circus: People dressed in dog costumes, people opposed to dogfighting, people supporting their favorite quarterback (who surely was innocent of those horrid charges), people out to gawk at all the cameras.

Today? Much smaller crowd, and 80% of it was made up of religious fanatics, who were certain that Vick could be saved, if only he believed. (In, I don't know, something.) Vick's grand press conference, where he sincerely apologized for whatever his press folks wrote for him to apologize for, took place 50 yards down the hall from my office. We took a quick stroll out to see the sedate crowd, decided he wasn't going to walk down our hallway, and went back to work.

Name that cat! Round two.

2007-08-21T00:54:00.000-04:00

Here's Cat Number Five. The previous owner named him Jif. (She evidently named her cats after brands of peanut butter, as the cat who lived with her before this one was named Skippy. I predict that her next one will be named Peter Pan.)

As you might guess, I'm not a huge fan of the name Jif. So there's now a new name-the-cat contest. Grand Prize yet to be determined, but it might involve your receiving a new cat. (Might not, I guess.)

At the moment, I'm leaning towards a British name for him, like Winston or Hudson.

He has mostly incorporated himself into the little feline colony at my house. He's made friends with Sami and O Henry (whose attitude seems to be "Oh, fine. Another cat. yawn. Feed me." He's reached an accommodation with Mosby, so there's a minimum of screeching when they get close to one another. But Rebel? Little Rebel hates him, and shrieks and howls and scratches whenever he's around. And she terrorizes him to a degree that he tends to stay in one or another of his Safe Places.

Which, I suppose, is one of the signs that he's a friendly, peaceful cat. Because he's about four times Rebel's size, and all he'd have to do to win would be to lie down on top of her.

Old riddle, revisited.

2007-06-22T23:39:00.000-04:00

If Two’s company, and Three’s a crowd, what are Four and Five?

The classic answer, of course, is “Nine.” I have an alternate answer, though.

“Four” is the number of cats I currently have. “Five” is the number of cats I’m about to have.

When kittens went to their new homes last year and the year before that, I always offered the owner a “money-back guarantee”: that if, for any reason, they had to give up the kitten (or the cat it grew into), they could (and should) bring it back to me instead of taking the kitty to the pound.

And oops, one of those kitties is coming back to me. One from the Class of 2005, so he’s now two years old. The owner changed jobs about six months ago, and the new job requires a lot more travel. As a result, the kitty is left at home alone for days or a week at a time, and he’s not happy about that. The owner feels bad about the situation, and has offered the kitty back to me – “at least, until my situation changes.” (And with the understanding that I’ll be looking for a new home for the cat, not that I’m expecting to have much luck finding one: how many folks want a two-year old cat, when they can go to the SPCA and get a cute little kitten instead?)

So, starting sometime this weekend, I’ll have five cats.

Anybody want a two-year-old neutered male kitty?

Alumni photo from the Class of 2005.

2007-06-21T23:44:00.001-04:00

Here are Ladybug and Flower, mother and child from the previous year’s visitors. Flower has clearly been well fed, as he’s much, much bigger than Ladybug. And yet, Ladybug gets away with maternal behavior – putting him into a headlock so she can lick his head.

Feline roommate update.

2007-06-21T23:27:00.000-04:00

Most of the kittens from the Class of 2006 have gone to their new homes. And it would appear that I’ve run out of kittenless friends. Just as well, then, that John’s Home for Wayward Cats is closing its doors to new wards. Again.

One kitten – current temporary name “Rebel” – doesn’t have a new home yet. She’s certainly made herself at home here, but four cats is at least one too many.

The mother – Mosby – doesn’t have a new home yet, either. Well, she probably thinks she does. But I’m still looking to place her with someone else, so I can get back down to two cats. Of course, since I’m looking to place Mosby and Rebel together, it seems that they’re going to stay here for a while.

Here is the Class of 2006:

Jill
The first to go to her new home. The smartest of the kittens: she’d figure out how to do something (climb out of the box, get onto the furniture, escape from the kittens’ room) first, and two days later, the other kittens would learn it from her. While she was still here, I called her “Harriet” after Harry Potter, as the white streak up her nose and forehead reminded me of Harry’s scar. And because she was always the one getting herself and the others into trouble.

Tux
The only male of the group. Of all the kittens, he was the one that O Henry seemed to take the most pleasure in bopping on the head (possibly because he looked the most like her). His owner reports that Tux has grown huge.

Frick and Frack. Thing 1 and Thing 2.
The solid gray kitten. And the other solid gray kitten. If they were together, you could discern just the slightest difference in the shades of their fur – but such a small difference that I could no longer tell which was which when they were apart. They went to the same house, where the new owner hadn’t yet given them new names the last time I heard from him, about two months after he had taken them home.

Rebel.
Still waiting to go to her new home. Her first temporary name was “Scooter” for no reason other than it seemed to fit. Her current temporary name is “Rebel” – she likes being somewhat contrary to my wishes, and the name is a good thematic match with “Mosby.” The most mischievous of the litter, she enjoys climbing the curtains and screens, pouncing on the adult cats’ tails, and chewing on my big toe. She has made friends with Sami and O Henry – quite an accomplishment with the latter. I had hoped that she would go to the same home that took Jill, as they were thinking of taking her in the hope that the sisters would play together and allow the owners uninterrupted sleep. Well, that was the theory, and I didn’t disabuse them of it, but they seemed to have wised up anyway.

Mosby.
The mother. She still has the Call of the Wild in her, and she wants to get outside whenever she can. She has snuck out twice this spring - once for 24 hours - and always returns when she realizes that the bowls of food are inside the house, not outside.

Out of sound, out of mind.

2007-06-18T23:19:00.000-04:00

For no apparent reason, my land-line phone isn't working. (Yes, I've paid my phone bill. Through the wonders of on-line banking.) And since none of the outlets inside the house works, I'm blaming the line outside. Somewhere, there's a tree limb on the line. Or possibly it's an ice storm, although that seems unlikely as it got up to 95 degrees today.

Still, if you've tried to call me and I didn't answer, it's because of the equipment. It's not that I'm ignoring you.

Unemployed layabout, again.

2007-06-17T15:16:00.000-04:00

The two-week project that I’ve been working on – for seventeen weeks – came to an end on Friday. A somewhat inglorious end, as it just stopped. The underlying case didn’t settle, and we certainly didn’t finish all of our work that needed to be done. They just pulled the plug. For the best of reasons, though: the client wasn’t paying the law firm’s invoices.

And yet – somehow – the client still seems to think that the law firm will do a bang-up job of representing them at trial later this year. So perhaps we’re not completely done with this case, after all.

In any case, they’re going to be transferring us to another ongoing project starting Monday. So I’m going to be an unemployed layabout only for the weekend.

Long time, no write.

2007-06-07T23:14:00.000-04:00

Wish I could say there was a good reason for my absence from these pages. There hasn't been, though, so I'll just claim that it's that I've been abandoned by my muse.

So what has been going on with me? Let's see:

There's work. I'm in the fifteenth week of my two-week contract attorney gig, although the Death Knell clock has been ticking loudly of late. I'm expecting this project to end fairly soon: possibly this week, possibly next. But those of us working on this project have been assured by the law firm that we'll be moved over onto another project when this one ends, so I won't have an unexpected and unpaid vacation.

There's springtime. Well, there was springtime. They're calling for tomorrow to hit 100 degrees, so I guess it isn't springtime anymore.

There's yardwork. I now find myself hoping for droughts, as when there's no rain, the grass doesn't grow and I thus don't have to go out and mow it. Sadly, the remains of Tropical Storm Barry passed through here last Sunday, dropping a couple of inches of rain, so there's mowing in my future.

There have been wine festivals. Spring wine festival season arrived a month ago. I poured wine at a festival here in Richmond, for Cardinal Point Winery. And I arranged for other contract attorneys to help me, so that our tent was the only winery tent staffed entirely by lawyers. (For all the excitement that particular claim generates ....)

There's baseball. Well, there's watching baseball. Rice is back in NCAA post-season play, hosting the hated Aggies this weekend in a Super-Regional. And then the College World Series next week.

There are movies. Well, movies on DVD, which is much the same thing. The last movie I saw in a theater was V for Vendetta, about 16 months ago. I don't really miss the theater all that much. Of late, I've enjoyed watching The Stranger, Hollywoodland, and Duel.

There are cats. Still four of them. Thankfully, only four of them. More on them later, I'm sure. Rebel celebrated her first birthday last month, by climbing the curtains in my bedroom and then jumping from the curtain rod onto my bed. (Strictly speaking, that's how she celebrates every morning.)

So I guess there's been plenty going on; just nothing especially worth sitting down to write about.

Ah, springtime.

2007-04-07T10:20:00.000-04:00

Easter weekend: Time for flying kites, going on picnics, admiring the daffodils and azaleas in bloom, and gernerally frolicking in the warm spring weather.

Or perhaps not.

At least now I have a reasonably good excuse for not planting azaleas this weekend.

There are times.

2007-04-04T22:34:00.000-04:00

When I'm just as happy I'm not in college any more.

As I recall.

2007-03-18T20:25:00.000-04:00

Ben & Jerry's ice cream has announced a voluntary recall of a quarter-million pints of its new flavor, Willie Nelson's Country Peach Cobbler (Peach Ice Cream with Cinnamon-Sugar Shortbread Pieces and a Peach Swirl). Was the recall for a good reason, like they'd accidently blended in 100 gallons of lubricating fluid or tossed in chunks of tasty broken glass? Um, no. It's because they didn't print a "wheat alergy" warning on the label or mention "wheat" as an ingredient.

Yes, yes; avoiding inadvertent anaphylaxis is doubtless a good thing. But wouldn't you think a little common sense could be applied here?

First of all, wouldn't the flavor's name ("peach cobbler") or its description ("with ... shortbread pieces") be a pretty good indication that there's flour in it, even if "flour" is absent from the list of ingredients? And thus, a good way to avoid an allergic reaction might be to refrain from eating the ice cream?

And second, pulling the ice cream out of the stream of commerce seems like classic overkill. And if consumers have bought any ice cream and not eaten it yet, "they should discard the ice cream and send the base of the empty container back to Ben & Jerry’s for a full refund." Sounds to me like a waste of perfectly good ice cream. Here's a better solution: "they should make sure the ice cream is eaten by someone who isn't allergic to wheat, even if that means giving it to the neighbors."

I bought my first pint of this ice cream about a week ago, and I can report that it's pretty good. Sufficiently good that I bought another pint of it yesterday - a day or two after the recall. The flavor was still on the shelves.

Also in recall news possibly involving wheat, the manufacturer of store-branded cat and dog foods is recalling boatloads of wet food for dogs and cats, as it might be causing kidney failure. They suspect it's related to wheat gluten purchased from a new supplier (a supplier they won't be using in the future, as you might imagine).

This recall doesn't affect my household. No one here deigns to eat store-brand catfood if there's something more expensive at the store that I can get for them.

Not much to say, of late.

2007-03-16T23:17:00.000-04:00

Working like a maniac at the job. I'm about to complete Week Four of this "two week" project, not that I'm complaining. And it'll last at least another month. So my mortgage holder and checking account are both happy.

The cats were happy on Wednesday and Thursday: the weather was warm enough (over 80, and high 70s, respectively) that I left the bedroom windows open for them, the better to sniff the outdoors. Didn't do that today though: as I was driving home, it was snowing.

Snow!! You'd think it was the middle of March, for crying out loud.

An unfortunate spectacles incident.

2007-03-05T20:16:00.000-05:00

I got to leave work early today. Or, perhaps, I had to leave work early today.

My glasses fell apart.

A screw holding the frame around one lens decided it was tired, and fell out of the frame, causing my right lens to follow it. No amount of coaxing could get the screw back into the frame properly, especially since I lacking sufficient hands to hold the lens in place, squeeze the frame together, accurately insert the screw, and tighten the screw.

You know, it's tough to read a document and type the appropriate information into the database when everything is in focus through one eye and very, very badly out of focus through the other.

I've learned from enough past experiences to keep spare sets of glasses in the car, so I had the choice of driving to the glasses place wearing (a) the glasses with one lens (guaranteed to cause an accident, (b) glasses with a seven-year-old prescription (guaranteed to ruin my depth perception and give me a headache) or (c) my current prescription sunglasses (guaranteed to look stupid - or possibly stylish, but not on me). I chose (c), sunglasses after dark.

Luckily, the woman at the glasses place has far more coordination than I have (okay, not an especially high standard), and they're repaired. And ready for another exciting day at the office tomorrow.

Waiting for news.

2007-03-02T20:02:00.001-05:00

One of the things about working on short-term projects is that you're never sure when it's going to be over. Typically, you get no notice - "what you're now working on will be it, and when you're done, you're done" - and sometimes it's worse than no notice at all (a phone call from the agency when you get home in the evening, telling you that the project is finished and don't go back to the office).

So you get to be good at speculating from the slightest of clues: the amount of work left to be done, compared to the speed the group has been working at, or the approach of a deadline which may or may not be extended, or the frequency of visits from the people in charge, or the level of distress on their faces when a contract attorney leaves the project, for instance.

And then there's speculation based on no clue at all, just wishful thinking. ("Wouldn't it be nice if the project lasted until the next lottery drawing, which I would win and then quit this job...." which tends to lead us into other lines of speculation.)

My current project was described as being "two weeks" long. On our first day, we were informed that we were to have everything finished by the end of the month, nine days hence. On Monday of the second week, we estimated that we had about one more day's worth of work, and on Tuesday, we overheard one of the paralegals on the phone: "You mean today's not going to be their last day???"

Through the next couple of days, they kept finding small things for us to do - mostly reviewing and re-doing work that had previously been done (and done badly) by BigLawFirm's associates who had picked up pieces they could work on and thereby pad their billable hours. But the last of the documents kept looming in front of us, signalling the end of the project.

Until today: they swept through the room and announced that they'd next like for us to go back through all the documents, and determine which documents should be used in upcoming depositions. And that this document preparation work ought to last "at least a month."

Well, good. I'll be able to keep making mortgage payments and purchasing cat food, after all.

Slight interruption, clarified.

2007-02-19T21:35:00.000-05:00

The new job just referred to is slightly different than originally explained. It's not the same client we'd worked for before, and the job will be complete by Feb 28, as that's the once- (but not twice-) extended deadline for production of the documents we're reviewing. And since we're not even using the same software that we had used for that earlier client, it's not especially clear why the firm was specifically looking for alumni of that client's project.

But it will still keep me out of trouble. Alas.

A slight interruption to my movie-watching schedule.

2007-02-19T08:59:00.000-05:00

Yes, alas: a job has shown up.

Not exactly a new job: the project that ended in December (the three-month project that I worked on for two and a half years) is coming back to life. Probably not for too long: the client has authorized a two-week extension, and it sounds like the client means it. But it will certainly cut into my attempts to reduce the number of movies in my Netflix queue.

The Departed has been the best of the movies I've seen lately. Little Miss Sunshine was okay - I'd put it on a list of nominations for "Best Comedy of the year" but not "Best Film of the year."

I am officially old.

2007-02-08T10:49:00.000-05:00

What was the clue? Checking out a book from the local library. Okay, perhaps that's not the giveaway. This is: I voluntarily checked out a book printed in large type.

I was looking over the the "new books" section, and discovered something from one of my favorite authors. (Web of Evil, by J.A. Jance.) Looked interesting enough - and then I realized that it was the second book in a series. As I hadn't read the first book in that series, I figured I shouldn't read the second one yet.

I looked in the library's on-line catalog, and found that they had the first book (Edge of Evil) in a number of formats: paperback, audio (CD), and large type. I'd prefer to read a hardbound book instead of paperback, and all the paperbacks were already checked out. So I had to take the one in large type.

I enjoyed Edge of Evil enough that I returned for Web of Evil, which I started last night, intending to read a couple of chapters before going to sleep. Didn't exactly follow that plan - I ended up reading the entire book.

This new series is okay. They're a lighter read than her other on-going series (with Joanna Brady and J.P. Beaumont): a bit breezier style and the plotline is not as finely crafted. But they were a good read. Even in large print.

Winter after all.

2007-01-18T14:13:00.000-05:00

I spotted snowflakes today. Not many, and not big ones, but some.

Not enough to stick to the grass, but there was a dusting on highway overpasses. Until it warmed up to above freezing, and the precipitation stopped anyway.

But actual snowflakes.

Fairly impressive, if you figure that less than 70 hours earlier, it was 75 degrees.

Because they can't read calendars.

2007-01-16T23:52:00.000-05:00

From the front yard:

This crocus is one of a half-dozen or so that have already bloomed. Clearly, they are putting their tiny little heads together to figure out what to do about tonight's projected low temperature of 25. And tomorrow's of 19.

It can take a certain amount of pride in beating last year's first blossom, and by almost a month.

Flat flip flies straight.

2007-01-15T23:41:00.000-05:00

It's Sunday afternoon. NFL division playoff games are on the tube. And yet - it's seventy-three degrees outside, in the middle of January. Most years, "the middle of January" means temperatures around freezing and some variety of frozen stuff on the ground. This year, we haven't had any freezing weather yet, and only a couple of evenings in the 20's back in December. And my poor bulbs are confused: I've already seen one crocus in bloom.

Still, 73 degrees in the middle of January shouldn't be celebrated by sitting inside watching football. That calls for shorts and flip-flops and being outside somewhere, doing something.

And on Sunday, "something" meant that I would find one of the Frisbee golf courses that are located in my county's park system. Well, "disc golf courses" to be precise. Although playing Frisbee golf with something other than an authentic Frisbee seems just plain wrong to me. So I found the closest course on Mapquest, got some general idea of how to get there, and took off. I was about halfway there when I realized I had left my Frisbee on the table by the door. Hmm. Setback. But I wasn't going to turn around and go home to get the Frisbee; not when I had the viable alternative of going to the course and playing a round of zen Frisbee. A round where I was guaranteed not to hook the disc into someone's back yard.

I had an interesting scenic tour of part of the county I hadn't been in before, while searching for the park, thankful that I started out with a full tank of gas. When I got to the park, it was so big that I couldn't find the course right away, so I wandered around. Perfectly reasonable course of action, given that it was 73 degrees. In the middle of January. There's the kiddie playground, with swings and slides. There's the picnic shelter. There's the path through the woods, with carved signs identifying the types of trees; someone's Eagle Scout project. There's the football field; there's the tennis court.

Ah. Way over there is the sign welcoming you to the disc golf course, and informing you of the rules: no alcohol, and you have to be gone by dark. Beside the sign was the path leading into the woods, as they have laid out this course through a small forest, the better to have trees and streams as obstacles. And ten feet down the path is a bench, where someone is clearly waiting for his disc golfing buddy to show up so they can start a round. How could I tell? He was carrying a shoulder bag full of flying discs. There must have been at least 10 of them. I couldn't help thinking to myself, "Holy cow. What a geek." But I kept my thoughts to myself, realizing that I was wandering through the woods that constituted this disc golf course, wearing an aloha shirt, shorts, and Corona flip-flops, and I didn't even have the excuse of carrying even a single Frisbee. Or some other, alien flying disc.

Fine. Well, I could still walk around and look at the layout of the course, so that if I do return with a Frisbee one day, I'll have some idea of where I'm going. The white posts indicating the tee box for the first hole were closeby. It took three or four minutes of searching before I spotted a disc golf "hole" - a pole with a basket underneath it for the disc to fall into. I walked up to it, and sure enough, it was marked hole number 1. Wouldn't you think that the tee box for the next whole would be in close sight? I would have, but I couldn't find it. Fine. Way off yonder, I could barely make out another "hole", so I set off through the underbrush to see what number it was. As far as it was, it was probably number 4, or maybe 8 on the way back. Nope. It was hole number 2. And here was a group playing up to it, from the other side of the hole (and thus not from anywhere near the first hole). I was considering asking them if they had a map of the course I could look at, or if they could generally point out where the holes ran - but then I realized that each of them had a shoulder bag full of flying discs. And hmm, for that matter, so did those guys walking along a "fairway" for what must be another hole.

Wow. I had discovered a flock of geeks, each one intent on selecting the right disc for the shot he wanted to make. Basing that decision on some variation on this table, listing flight characteristics of some 250 different flying discs (only four of which are actually Frisbees).

Each one of them would examine the next shot they were going to take, rummage through his bag for the "correct" disc, line up the throw, and send the disc on its flight. Invariably, it would bounce off a tree about 30 feet from the start or hook into the stream. So much for selecting a disc based on distance and flight characteristics.

I decided I'd done what I set out to do: I found the disc golf course, I had some idea of what the holes were like, and I hadn't been indoctrinated into the odd cult of bag-carrying disc golfers. Time to go find out how the football games turned out.

The new job.

2007-01-15T23:13:00.000-05:00

I suppose it's time to report on the new job. Many things about it are a whole lot better than the former job, although there are a couple of drawbacks.

Good things first: They treat us like human beings. The firm has given us honest-to-goodness legal work to do, and are willing to let us make our own "legal" decisions on what we're looking at. (The firm has just taken over as General Counsel for a Fortune 100 company, and the former General Counsel boxed up all the case files and sent them on with a bare minimum of description of what's going on and what needs to be done right away. So we are going through the boxes of case files and writing case summary memoranda: we are to figure out what the case is about, who the parties are, where the lawsuit is located, what motions are pending, what discovery deadlines and trial dates are coming up, and even make suggestions as to what strategy to follow. Possibly four or five hundred cases involved.) The firm even treats us (mostly) as though we were permanent employees - we went through a day of orientation (HR paperwork and videos telling us that sexual harrassment was bad and computer security was good), we get subsidized parking in their parking deck in the firm building, we get our own email address with the firm's address, and they even put us onto their internal website.

And of all that, the best is that they give us actual legal work to do; stuff that would probably be done by the firm's associates if they had the luxury of a bit more time to do it in. But since we were discovering rapidly approaching deadlines (the last date for filing an answer in one case is sometime next week, or a trial in another case the last week of the month, for instance), they really didn't have that luxury.

Just a couple of drawbacks. First, they stuck us into a computer training room. You know, an interior room (i.e., no windows) with three rows of tables with a bunch of computers crammed onto them. The sort of room that you can barely tolerate for a two-hour class on How To Use Outlook. Fifteen of us were shoehorned in there, taking up all the computers. And with no room for the 4 or 5 boxes of case files that we each needed to peruse. (We would ask for mustard sauce, but I'm not sure the paralegals would understand the reference.) Just barely tolerable for a short-term project (and this one is scheduled to last 2 to 3 weeks).

And the other drawback? The project is already over. It lasted about six days. Plus-or-minus a half day, depending on how much work you had left to do when they announced, "This box we're handing out now is the last of the cases. Whenever you're done with what you've got, you're finished with the project." It turns out that at some point they decided that they needed us to look at only the product liability and personal injury cases, about 60 of the 400+ cases they were taking over, but didn't either reduce the number of people needed on the project or tell us that it would be even more limited than originally planned.

So it's back to being an unemployed layabout.

Looking for a new job?

2007-01-05T19:38:00.000-05:00

Oh, wait. That's me.

Anyway, here's a job posting to consider, if "Find a new job" was your New Year's Resolution: Chief Beer Officer for the Four Points hotel chain. Part-time and compensation as yet announced. But they'd send you as their ambassador to brewery tours, beer festivals, and random nights out at your local watering hole, and they'd expect you to write a monthly (!) blog entry reviewing beer.

They even have an on-line application form for you.

When one door closes, another one opens.

2006-12-30T19:57:00.000-05:00

As expected, Friday was the last day on my document production project. It was a good project: when I signed on, it was expected to last 3 months. It actually lasted 30.

I don’t think anyone was especially sad to see this project end. Sure, it’s been a good, steady paycheck. But the past few months have been so boring and unchallenging that I’ve been afraid my head might implode.

The saddest part of the end of the project was the way BigLawFirm acted. They never directly told us that the project was over: the oblique reference two weeks ago was it. They didn’t tell some of the staffing agencies, either, who had to hear it from us. They didn’t even tell their own employees, such as the Staff Attorney who asked on Tuesday whether his last day working for the firm would also be on Friday – and they didn’t respond to him until Friday around noon. And none of the folks who worked on the project – senior partners, junior partners, associates – ever came by to thank us for all our work or to wish us good luck in future endeavors or anything. Oh well: further evidence that I would never want to work for BigLawFirm or spend any unpaid time with any of its employees.

And the open door? We all found new document production projects, with most of us going to the same project that starts on Tuesday.

Recent reading.

2006-12-21T00:25:00.000-05:00

I’ve been listening to Microthrills by Wendy Spero. I happily recommend it. I’d like to write as entertainingly as she does, but she has a head start, as she does standup comedy. And I like the fact that the author was the one to read the book. That seems to make books more interesting to me, as you know that the tone and timing is exactly what was meant. Similarly, I liked the CD version of In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson's book about his trip to Australia, quite a bit more because he read it.

As a timely example of contrary, I’m now listening to Loop Group, by Larry McMurtry. The person reading it is mighty distracting: she sometimes mispronounces words or “reads” the wrong word, and often puts emphasis. In a clearly wrong place. When the reader causes you shake your head and go “Whaaa?”, I’m guessing that’s not what the author really had in mind.

I’ve also recently been reading Awake In the Dark, Roger Ebert’s latest collection of reviews and essays. As always, very entertaining, and well written.

Ho, ho, ho.

2006-12-18T20:32:00.000-05:00

Looks like my contract attorney job will be over at the end of the year. I suppose I can’t really complain, having worked 30 months on a 3-month project.

And, of course, I don’t know for certain that the job will in fact be over. The bubble-headed associate who is sort of in charge – although on a project of this size, she really isn’t – came over today for the first time in three weeks, to have us change the procedure we’ve been following for the past two months. “You’re doing too much. There’s no way you can be finished by the end of the year if you do all that. So instead, do this other thing which will accomplish only 1% of what you’ve been doing but at least you can get through all of the material. That way, you can be finished by the end of the year.”

This was, naturally, the first that anyone in the room – including our handlers – had heard the phrase “the end of the year” spoken with respect to this project, and it wasn’t entirely clear that she realized she’d said it. And there’s an outside chance that she didn’t really mean to suggest that the project won’t continue into next year – but no one has come forth to officially make that clarification.

Oh, well. We all knew the project would end sometime, and the end of the year is as good a time as any. And my understanding is that there are plenty of other similar projects out there to jump onto.

Reindeer games.

2006-12-12T23:47:00.000-05:00

My neighbors are crazy. Oh, sure: not the “I’m Napoleon” kind of crazy. Or chainsaw murderers, that I know of. But crazy just the same.

Those are their illuminated reindeer above. Nothing wrong with illuminated reindeer, of course. The building I work in is surrounded by 75 or 100 of them. So what’s odd about these particular reindeer? They’re in my neighbors’ back yard. Visible only from their neighbors’ back yards, including mine, although my guess is that the least-obstructed view is coming down my driveway, looking through the gap in the trees that line the back of their property.

Okay, I can hear you saying, “Oh, isn’t that cute. It’s the overflow from their flock of painted wicker reindeer with white Christmas tree lights that they have in their front yard.” Sadly, no. That’s what makes it so odd. They have no decorations at all in their front yard. No lights, no inflatable carolers, no giant sleighs, no fake packages. Nothing.

It’s not because garish holiday decorations in the front yards are prohibited by restrictive covenant. (I could only wish. A neighbor two houses down from me proudly exhibits a 7-foot-tall Santa that looks more like a nightmare version of a South Park Underpants Gnome.) And it’s not because the backyard is their Testing Grounds – they’ve been there for over a week, more than long enough to decide, “Yep, it works, let’s move ‘em to the front.”

Someone at the office came up with a semi-plausible explanation: it’s for the grand-kids. Perhaps the Extended Family is coming for Christmas, and the grandchildren are concerned that Santa won’t be able to find them. So the solution was to put the illuminated reindeer in the back yard and then contact Santa, so he’d know what to look for in order to deliver presents to the missing grandchildren.

Nah, I don’t buy it either.

Time to go bowling.

2006-12-07T10:03:00.000-05:00

No, no; not that kind.

The New Orleans Bowl. Rice is playing in a post-season bowl game for the first time since 1961 (in the late Bluebonnet Bowl, conveniently played at the Rice Stadium). A very minor bowl in the pantheon of minor bowl games. Played two weeks before that other bowl game played in New Orleans, the Sugar Bowl. But at least it will be on ESPN2, so I’ll be able to watch it.

And that will be the fourth Rice football game that I’ve watched on TV this year, doubtless a record for their national exposure. They’ve been on national TV sufficiently rarely in the past few decades – perhaps once every five years, most notably with their upset of Texas in 1994 – that starting off this season getting to watch their games against Cougar High, UCLA and Texas was fairly amazing. Of course, this may not be the best of omens: Rice lost all three games. Oh, well. “The fourth time’s the charm.”

The last time I saw a Rice football game in person, they lost to Duke. That was in September, 2003. Since then, Duke has won only five games.

It seems to me that I heard about 10 or 15 years ago that Rice held the NCAA record for bowl game futility – they then were the Division I-A school that had been absent from bowl games for the longest time. I think we're happy to pass that record on to someone else.

Peter Jackson to direct The Hobbit, after all.

2006-11-29T20:03:00.000-05:00

Good news for those who like the Lord of the Rings trilogy: it sounds as though Peter Jackson will direct The Hobbit and the oddly-conceived "prequel" movie set between The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring (you know, where J.R.R. Tolkien didn't think to write a book). It just won't be done by New Line, the company that produced the trilogy of movies. Their rights to do movies from the books expire sometime next year, and when the rights revert to producer Saul Zaentz, he'll bring back Peter Jackson and all his crew, and do it up right.

Peter Jackson NOT directing The Hobbit.

2006-11-20T09:25:00.000-05:00

Nor, for that matter, is he going to direct a prequel to the Lord of the Rings. Yes, two separate movies, only one of which would be based on an actual book by J.R.R. Tolkien. Unless they're planning a movie version of The Silmarillion, which I would pay good money to watch.

Update: See above.

Guess which yard is mine.

2006-11-19T22:39:00.000-05:00

Hint: My neighbor is retired, and raked his lawn on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of this past week.

Not to be confused with the Heinz 57 Route 66.

2006-11-16T21:45:00.000-05:00

So here’s an idea for financially-strapped municipalities: Sell “naming opportunities” for roads.

Not that it’s a completely new idea with Hazleton. On the Washington Beltway, they changed the name of one of the bridges crossing the Potomac River to the “American Legion” bridge, even though generations of drivers knew the bridge as the Cabin John bridge. But the commercial possibilities are staggering.

I look forward to driving on the Sherwin-Williams Blue Ridge Parkway.

(And the best part of the Greater Hazleton Chamber of Commerce Beltway? It doesn’t go all the way around Hazleton. It doesn’t go halfway around Hazleton. Not even a quarter of the way.)

A long time ago.

2006-11-16T00:35:00.000-05:00

Went to my high school reunion last month. The Mumblety-Mumbleth. As I was walking from the parking lot to the main entrance of the country club where it was being held, I looked in the window and thought, “Gee, there are a lot of old folks in there. Wonder where my reunion is? Must be on the other side of the main entrance.” It only took another five seconds for me to realize that the group of old people was my reunion. Gack.

It was otherwise okay. Eventually those classmates of mine who have dyed their hair and done other things to make themselves look young showed up, so it didn’t feel quite so much like a meeting of the AARP. Oh, wait: My classmates and I are now all eligible for membership in AARP, aren’t we? Gack.

This year, for the first time, they invited teachers to the reunion, and a couple showed up. My favorite teacher from my senior year and her husband (who introduced me to Othello) were there. My classmates? In most instances, seeing them for 2 hours every five or ten years seems about right.

Every reunion, though, I find myself having a conversation with someone I haven’t talked to since graduation, and discover that they’ve turned into relatively normal people in the interim. This year’s conversation turned ominous when he said, a propos of nothing, that he already knows he won’t be able to make it to our next reunion. In this age group, that often means some sort of terminal condition. I had to ask though, preparing to cringe: “Okay. Why not?” Because he’s going to retire from his government job in about two years, and then he’s moving to Rio, where his government pension will allow him to "live like a millionaire.” And with no family in the area, he really doesn’t expect that this reunion will justify a plane trip from Brazil.

Yeah. Every five or ten years sounds just fine.

If you're going to wake us up, the least you can do is to bring us breakfast in bed.

2006-11-11T23:34:00.000-05:00

That’s Mosby on the right, and her kitten Rebel on the left. Rebel is now six months old, and I’m guessing that Mosby is about a year and a half.

And they’re both available for adoption. Sami and O Henry will even kick in a bag of cat food to entice you to adopt them.

1-800-PHONE ME.

2006-11-10T00:05:00.000-05:00

Or not.

Always intriguing to find out what I’ll do for amusement when I’m stuck in a traffic jam. In this case, stuck on an Interstate in the wilds of northeastern Pennsylvania, three miles away from where the two lanes of travel merge into one, while they’re fixing a bridge.

Well, okay. Nothing else to do but wait, so I’ll cast around for something to read. How about the truck immediately in front of me? (And yes, you’re really hurting for entertainment if you’re reduced to reading the back of a truck.)

Hmm, yes. There’s the “Wide Turn” sign. And the obligatory “How’s My Driving?” sign. Except – just where do you suppose you’re supposed to call to comment on his driving?

Not that his driving was bad, you understand. For about a half-hour, his driving was impeccable. No one could have been motionless in the left lane better than he was.

Oh, and the most delightful part of the traffic jam? The Pennsylvania highway department very helpfully put up a sign – one of those movable message signs – that said something to the effect of “BRIDGE WORK AHEAD. ONE LANE TRAVEL. CONSIDER ALTERNATE ROUTE.” They placed the sign after the last exit prior to the bridge being worked on.

The Library at Boston.

2006-11-09T09:38:00.000-05:00

Other than visiting with friends and eating good meals, one of the most fun things I did was to visit the JFK Presidential Library and Museum. Lots of good information – you could watch JFK’s acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic convention and his Inaugural Address in their entirety, and pieces of the presidential debate or quite a few other speeches – with a lot of lighter information to keep the visit enjoyable, such as rotating exhibits on gifts to the President and an in-depth examination of JFK’s trip to Ireland. And it was all presented in a way that seemed academic and nonpartisan, as befits a Presidential Library (unlike, say, the Nixon Presidential Library, which misrepresents objective historical fact and is overly defensive).

Leaving the JFK Library, it really struck me that, since JFK’s death, this country has not had a President who was an active, effective leader. What a shame that breed has disappeared from the national landscape.

A bridge too far.

2006-11-08T10:57:00.000-05:00

On the other hand, there are a number of the nice things about going on vacation off-season: No crowds, for one. No hordes of leaf-peepers jamming the highways; no waits at good restaurants. (Well, provided they're open.)

And those who make their living in the tourism industry are more willing to go out of their way to ensure that tourists have a good time. Here, for instance, someone understands that one of the things tourists enjoy doing in New England is seeing and crossing covered bridges. And if you aren’t willing to go way out of your way to see a covered bridge? They’ll bring one to you.

Weather forecast: crummy.

2006-11-07T00:04:00.000-05:00

It turns out that there are some good reasons to avoid going somewhere on vacation off-season. Crummy weather, for one. During the nine days of the trip that I was north of the Mason-Dixon line, I saw a total of four hours of sunlight. The rest of the time looked no better than this photo: overcast. Or drizzling. Or light rain. Or the occasional snow. Never quite so crummy that you couldn’t drive somewhere to do something indoors, but almost always too raw to want to do something outside. And during that same nine days, it never got over 45 degrees.

No, I wasn’t expecting shorts-and-t-shirt weather in New England in late October. But clear-and-chilly would have been a nice change. (And I understand that it cleared up quite nicely, once I got back home.)

I've been polled!

2006-11-06T10:34:00.000-05:00

Well, almost. While I was on vacation, I was called by WUSA (Channel 9 in Washington), and the Caller ID says "WUSA9 NEWS POLL". I was, alas, unable to take part in that poll, and presumably they didn't leave a message asking me to call back because it would have been a week too late to be included.

I've been getting the usual barrage of phone calls; this year, from both sides. And I'm really tired of it. Thank heavens for Caller ID.

I got an absolutely repugnant voicemail message over the weekend, from some "nonpolitical" right-wing nutjob group, ironically called "Progress For America." Their message was that the best way to fight terrorism was to vote on Tuesday, because if you don't vote, the terrorists win. Or something. About every fifth word was some variant of "terrorist." If you look at their website, it's absolutely clear that it's a front for the Republicans, about as nonpolitical as George Allen's noose. And about as subtle. The saddest part was that they conned the parent of someone who died on 9/11 to be their spokesman - what an incredibly twisted way to gain his fifteen minutes of fame, besmirching his son's memory to flack for the invaders of Iraq.

Mower or less.

2006-11-05T09:51:00.000-05:00

I celebrated the return from my trip by raking the front yard. Well, okay, “celebrated” probably isn’t the right term. But, strictly speaking, neither is “raking.”

On Sunday, I was guilted into removing the leaves from my front yard by my neighbors, both of whom had raked their front yards earlier in the day. And I didn’t want to be The Guy Who Doesn’t Rake His Leaves, so they blow into other people’s yards.

Not that it really mattered all that much: the fallen leaves I collected probably account for less than 20% of all the leaves produced by the neighborhood trees that will end up on my yard this year, and within two days, enough new leaves had fallen to make it impossible to discern who had already raked once this year, and who had not. Still, both of my immediate neighbors saw me out raking, and that’s enough to gain me the appropriate Neighborhood Brownie Point.

And I don’t actually rake my leaves any more. I tried that once, four years ago. It took me three and a half hours to do my front yard, and I sprained my wrist so badly that I couldn’t write for two weeks. So now I do like everyone else in the neighborhood, and “rake” leaves with my lawnmower. Much easier on the wrists – but a much sillier feeling when you’re running the lawnmower in December, when the grass has not grown at all since the last time you mowed/raked.

The Library at Tuckahoe.

2006-11-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

It’s in my genes: my mother was a librarian. So it’s probably no surprise how much I enjoy hanging out in libraries and bookstores.

And it’s probably no further surprise to learn that the closing of my local library three months ago threw my book-reading routines out of whack. Sure, Henrico County has plenty of other libraries around that I could go to instead, and the closest is only two or three miles farther than “my” library. But it’s a smaller library with a smaller selection of books and some strange ways of shelving their collection – they shelve the books on cassette tape with the books on CD, all mixed together, for instance, so you have to pull the plastic box down off the shelf and open it to see whether it’s a tape or a CD, only one of which I can play on my computer.

But all is well with the world again: my local library has reopened. In a new building, and all the modern library accoutrements: They’ve put RFID chips in all the books, so you can do a check-out or check-in on your own, without bothering the librarians. There are lots of computers. Lots. They’ve weeded out a lot of old books, and replacing them are many, many new books and books on disk, and two rows of shelves full of DVDs. There are small meeting rooms, and a computer training lab. To me, the biggest surprise was the addition of a café in the library, where you can get coffee, muffins, sandwiches, and the like. Food in the library? Sacrilege!

The most fun, though, was going to the library on the day it opened: Because this library had not been checking out books for two months (as it was closed) while everything that was previously checked out had come due and was returned, all the items in their collection were present in the building: all the bookshelves were full, including all the books on disk and DVDs. You could make sure that the library had all the volumes in a series before starting in on it, you could see what books they have on disk, to make it easier to decide whether you wanted to read a book or listen to it. Getting to wander around in the library before anything had been checked out of it was like having the entire library be mine.

Workday antics.

2006-09-23T16:31:00.000-04:00

Exciting doings at the full-time job as contract attorney. On Wednesday a week ago, the local partner in charge of the project paid a visit to our lowly digs, and told us that the project was going to end on Friday. (Not much notice, sure. But the usual notice on this kind of project is a phone call from your staffing agency when you get home in the evening, telling you that today was your last day and you don’t need to go back. So 2 and a half days notice was actually a lot.)

He thanked us for his hard work and flattered us with outrageous statistics (e.g., the normal “error” rate for this kind of project is about 5 to 8 percent, and our error rate was 0.125 percent), and told us that we could continue to come in and be paid through Friday. He didn’t quite wink, but the point was clear that we really weren’t expected to work all that hard between Wednesday and Friday.

And oh, by the way, two little caveats: 1) they were going to have a small group of 10 or 12 people continue on, doing clean-up and record-keeping work on the project and taking care of any small productions that might come through, and that group would continue on for some 4 to 6 weeks; and 2) if bigger productions came through or if expected (or perhaps "hoped-for") new clients came through, they’d call folks back in, as needed.

Given that there were 65 or so people on the project, having 10 or 12 people stay on wasn’t all that reassuring to most people. And for those who thought they might be among those continuing, neither did subsequent remarks from the associates that the continuing portion might last 2 to 3 weeks, or maybe 6 to 8 weeks.

By Thursday afternoon, though, I’d been asked if I would be willing to be one of those who stayed on. Hmm: Did I want to be employed? Or unemployed? This struck me as one of those questions that answer themselves. Yes, please. (I have to be able to purchase catfood.) Okay, but keep it under your hat that you’re staying on, at least until we’ve got our 10 to 12 lined up.

Fine. We were all pretty good at not revealing whether we were staying on – at least in part, not to rub it in to those who were leaving. Not that that kept us from speculating who the fortunate dozen were. Or from asking, "What are you planning to do next week?" (There was a lot of yard work to be done, the responses indicated, and a lot of applying for unemployment.)

So Monday morning, those of us still on the project showed up with a bit of suspense as to who the lucky twelve would turn out to be. To our surprise, there were twenty of us. Only a couple of surprises in who was kept on, and only a couple of surprises in who wasn’t there. (The non-returnees included folks who had been asked to stay on, but turned the offer down.)

Still, the project is as well-run as always. There’s work to be done, but the folks in charge can’t seem to get it to us in a steady flow, and there are often sizable chunks of time when we’re forced to look like we’re working instead of actually working. Well, that’s okay: we’re getting paid by the hour, not by the piece.

That instruction to look busy came in handy Friday afternoon, when BigLawFirm bigwigs escorted a couple of strangers into our work area, pointing out the space and storage areas – "more than enough to hold all your documents" – and answering the strangers' questions about the software we use to view document images and the like. It seemed less like a sales pitch and more like an implementation visit.

From what we could overhear, it sounds like this is a new project that will come our way, and probably before the current one is completely over. So it's likely that there will be continued employment, probably a good thing.

How geeky am I? Very, it would appear.

2006-09-23T10:06:00.000-04:00

BRILLIANT!!!
You scored 90%!

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My test tracked 1 variable How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 99% on knowledge

Link: The Firefly / Serenity Test written by kozza on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

The harder they fall.

2006-09-08T09:39:00.000-04:00

It's not all that often that I get to see something interesting on my walk from the parking garage to the office. I did yesterday, though: I spotted Ralph Sampson.

Admittedly, he sticks out in a crowd. And there he was, on the other side of the street, surrounded by 20 reporters, most with TV cameras that were pointed up at a sharp angle. "Well, that's kind of cool," I thought. "Wonder why he's in town?" And then I realized where he was standing: just outside the Federal courthouse. Not the best way to get your name back in the papers again.

The old man is snoring.

2006-09-02T11:03:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Ernesto - well, Tropical Storm Ernesto - well, the unnamed tropical depression formerly known as Ernesto - has come and gone. Leaving 325,000 customers without electricity. Guess who's one of them?

Dominion Electric - that bastion of efficiency - has promised that sometime over the weekend they'll be able to tell people when they might get around to restoring their power.

So much for my planned weekend of watching movies on DVD.

Update: The power came back on by Saturday evening, more than 24 hours after it went off. Still, better then than "by Monday," which is what a number of folks were promised. And the good news about scattered power outages, instead of widespread ones, is that when you go to the grocery store for a bag of ice to keep the food in the refrigerator from going bad - there's still ice available.

Pilots.

2006-08-16T23:15:00.000-04:00

I’m always entranced by marketing gimmicks, and NBC certainly needs one. Their poor ratings this summer, mirroring their poor ratings over the last year, have made it difficult for them to build much buzz for their new shows starting this fall. (If no one is watching their programs this summer, then no one will see all their promos for the new fall shows.)

So they came up with what I think is a neat idea: making pilot episodes for a couple of those new shows available through Netflix. A single DVD disk has the pilot episodes – and precious few extras – for Kidnapped (with Dana Delaney, Timothy Hutton, and Jeremy Sisto) and for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (with Bradley Whitford, Matthew Perry, and Steven Weber, among others).

Okay: it’s no surprise that I was planning to watch Studio 60, it being Aaron Sorkin’s new series. This pilot episode seems to be a good combination of his previous shows, Sports Night and The West Wing, and unlike a lot of new shows, appears to have the characters’ relationships fairly well developed and nailed down. Good writing, good potential for story lines, and I’m guessing it will be the better of the two series this year based on Saturday Night Live. I’m definitely looking forward to it, and to getting hooked on it.

Kidnapped looks like it could be pretty interesting, too: a season-long investigation into, and the (attempted) private recovery of, the child of a very wealthy family. A few concerns: how do they attract viewers who miss the first few episodes? How do they keep the interest and suspense up in the mid-season episodes, and not have them turn into Red-Herrings-of-the-Week? And what do they do at the end of the season? If they don’t get the child back, the series will jump the shark as fast as Lost or Twin Peaks did, and if they do, what happens next season? Kidnapping another member of the family? Or follow an entirely different kidnapping, thereby losing Delaney and Hutton from the series roster? My prediction is that this series will struggle to find its audience, and probably won’t be a great success. I could see it being cancelled mid-season; if it’s more successful, it could be renewed for a second season – but not a third.

If this was amusement, then I'm glad we stayed away from the Torture Park.

2006-08-14T00:15:00.000-04:00

I had the day off on Friday. (Well, not so much "off" as "locked out." An unpaid day of vacation, so to speak. At my horrid job as contract attorney, Friday was Moving Day, as they're moving us from one warehouse where the air conditioner doesn't work especially well to another of about the same size - and cramming 50 percent more people in with us. But that's a tale for another time.)

One of the guys I work with has a part time job at the local amusement park (King's Dominion), doing training. (Funny how so many of us have part time jobs elsewhere. And yet - a tale for another time.) The good news is that, as an employee there, he gets a stack of complimentary tickets. So he invited a bunch of us to spend our mandatory day off riding roller coasters and whatnot.

Well, why not? Certainly, the cost was right. And it turns out that only one of our group had not yet been born the last time I went there, back in 1979.

A lot of things had changed since the last time I was there. Many, many new rides. A Water Park. Lots of movie-related things (not surprising, as the present owner is Paramount).

Probably the most important thing that has changed since my last visit? I discovered I'm not as fond of roller coasters as I once was.

Getting to the park, I realized that I wasn't interested in rides that turn me upside down, or in being suspended from something instead of riding in a car. If I look down between my feet and see ground way down there instead of floorboards, I'm not getting on it. And I really wasn't interested in 270 feet of free fall. (See photo above, taken with a telephoto lens - because you don't get that much detail with the naked eye.)

Fine. I could still ride traditional roller coasters, and did. Including the Rebel Yell, one which I recall riding the last time I was there and enjoying it. And I discovered to my horror that I no longer found being loosely strapped into a vehicle hurtling over a 100-foot high precipice down a 75- or 80-degree slope to be "fun."

Further experimentation revealed that other rides having the common thematic element of simulating dashing yourself against the ground from a great height and at a high rate of speed were also ones that I found to be somewhat less than entirely enjoyable.

Some rides were fun, to be sure, and the morning overcast kept the crowds down, so all in all, it was a pleasant way to spend the day. But I'm glad I had a complimentary ticket, instead of one I'd had to pay $40 or more for. (And the free ticket made it easier to put up with the other price gouging - $10 to park and $3.25 for a half-liter bottle of water, for instance.)

It might well be another 27 years before I go back.

Mow, mow, mow the yard.

2006-08-08T23:36:00.000-04:00

I mowed my front yard this past weekend, much to my neighbors’ delight. Not especially exciting, to be sure, other than for the fact that it hadn’t been mowed since before Memorial Day.

And not that it had grown all that much in two months. We’ve had lots of heat and very little rain, and the grass responded wisely by not growing. So other than the three weeds that thrived in the drought, there wasn’t much need for a session with the lawnmower. (Well, other than to give the neighbors one thing fewer to glare at me about.)

Forty-five minutes, two-thirds the volume of grass clippings of the previous mowing, and a bucket of perspiration later, I was done. With luck and a continued drought, I won’t have to do that again until Columbus Day.

Like popcorn with margarine and no salt.

2006-08-07T23:31:00.000-04:00

It was a disappointing weekend of movies at the Cellar: Disappointing in that good books did not successfully make the transition to the big screen.

Perhaps it’s that we’ve been spoiled of late: The Harry Potter series and the Lord of the Rings trilogy were translated to cinema extremely well, with the story intact and the spirit alive. Movies where it was easy to believe in the new worlds created on the screen, and that the inhabitants truly lived and loved and died within them. Not so with the movies I watched this weekend.

One disappointment was The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The special effects were excellent, the story seemed complete, and the characters’ speeches seemed to match what I recall from the book (although it’s probably been since junior high school – many, many years ago – that I last read the book). And Tilda Swinton as the White Witch brought a depth to her character that was utterly missing with all other characters in the movie. Other than her and Mr. and Mrs. Beaver, all the characters – alive and animated – had the short range of emotion you would expect to see at a table reading on the first day of rehearsal. Everyone walked through their scenes by rote, bringing no sense of wonder to the land of Narnia and ultimately no soul to the film. A fine example of the observation that a movie needs more than special effects to be good.

A bigger disappointment was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The special effects were pretty good, although not great, and again, the story seemed to match my memory of the book. This time, though, putting the dialogue into the characters’ mouths worked poorly. The words matched what I recall of the characters’ speech in the book, but it just didn’t work at all well. The visuals, the poor acting, and the cumbersome dialog combined to put me to sleep three or four times during the movie, and at no time was any part of the movie compelling enough to make me want to go back and re-watch what I had slept through.

Perhaps it’s that Douglas Adams’ writing isn’t well-suited to a direct translation to the movies; that the scenes and images he creates play better in the reader’s imagination than they do when realized in a movie. A better adaptation of this book could be found in the computer game for the Commodore-64, and I’d happily recommend playing that to watching this movie.

Another book adaptation I’ve watched recently that wasn’t as good as I’d hoped was The Twelve Chairs, by Mel Brooks. One of his first movies, it had tantalizing glimpses of the humor that blossomed in his next few movies – Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, High Anxiety – but not enough of them to make it qualify as a good, funny movie. Maybe it’s that the underlying book from which the movie was adapted was intended as a biting satire of the Soviet system, and the movie takes its tone from that. Or maybe it’s just that Brooks was still feeling his way as a director. The movie often seems disjointed and without a coherent structure: it has too many plot twists and new scenes for no reason other than Brooks needed five more scenes before he could get to the movie’s end. It really felt as though I was watching a 90-minute version of the hoary old “Tiz Bottle” joke, albeit one without a Tiz Bottle. And yet, a Tiz Bottle joke told by the Mel Brooks who made The Producers would have been a good movie. This one didn’t quite reach that standard.

(Yes, I have liked some movies I've seen recently. Match Point, for one, although three quarters of the way through it, I wasn't sure. But by the end, I was.)

Chad Vader - Day Shift Manager

2006-07-22T11:47:00.000-04:00

The good news is that some people who have too much time on their hands also seem to have a little talent.

Lost in the desert.

2006-07-09T11:03:00.000-04:00

Very bizarre: I open my email program, and there's no new email for me. There's been only a couple of new emails somce yesterday morning. And none of them are the ones I'd expect to receive even if my correspondents were all on vacation: daily news summary emails, wine lists, spam.

Hmm: the only email I've gotten since 3 a.m. Saturday has been addressed directly to my ISP account, and everything that's missing would have been addressed to my alumni forwarding service at Duke. Hmm.

So I've left the Duke IT people an on-line "problem sheet" and they've sent me an automated email that they'll get to it when they get to it.

If you've sent me something recently and I haven't responded --> I'm using this as my excuse.

Update:
Yes, the email link above works fine.

The Duke IT people got around to it. Well, what they actually got around to was telling me that they aren't responsible for the alumni forwarding service - the alumni association is. And to be helpful, they give me the snail mail address for the alumni association. Thanks. A lot.

I've been busy.

2006-07-03T09:25:00.000-04:00

Yes, yes, I know. I haven't been writing much here of late. I plead overwork and silly deadlines at my horrid job, and many hours of watching World Cup matches and referreeing domestic feline disputes. I'll try to be better, but I make no promises.

Customer "service", AOL-style.

2006-07-03T09:24:00.000-04:00

You know, not unlike the way that a bull services a cow.

Very funny article in the NY Times yesterday about someone's attempts to cancel his AOL account. Funny, that is, so long as it doesn't happen to you. It took a 21-minute phone call, 15 of which was waiting to talk to a live person. The best part was the conversation with the customer service person, also known as a "retention specialist", who wouldn't let the customer cancel even though the customer used the phrase "Cancel my account" (and close variations) thirty times in that five-minute conversation.

How do we know about this conversation? The customer recorded it. At the moment, the customer's website is down because of all the hits it's received, but YouTube has an NBC news story about the conversation, including a lot of the call.