While the Bills are 0-7

It's depressing listening or watching your team fail week after week for over a decade. Thought about headed to the sports bar up north for the game, but had a better time looking in the creepy but cool antique store in German Village and trying to find a serviceable liquor cabinet.

It was more fun talking to the people at Spoonful Records about Belle and Sebastian than eventually getting home in time to find a radio feed of the game and hear the Bills lose in overtime.

Before that, I finished the best fiction I've read this year.



Room takes it's story from recent headlines. More specifically the horrors of the Fritzl case, reduces the people involved to the kidnapper, his victim and the son she gave birth to. The story is told from the viewpoint of the child, Jack, who is now five years old. All Jack has seen of the world during his entire life is in a room that is eleven by eleven.

It's a brilliant story of their relationship. Jack's Mother is determined to give Jack an education, to teach him about a world that he may never see, while trying to keep her own wits about her in a brutal situation. It's a very intense story that really stirs up emotions, with quite a few passages that are incredible page turners.

Donaghue manages to sustain the voice of a five year old rather skillfully but confuses the reader as to where the book takes place. She uses a lot of words that could mean the book takes place in the U.K., but the book takes place in the United States. A good editor could have solved that problem. The last third of the book loses some intensity, but we find out a few unpleasant things that resolve themselves in a fair conclusion.

Why she gets the expensive chocolate milk

Disruptions and I do not get along. I'm a bit more tied to routine that I care to admit. So when my Scottish Wife wants to get things done around the house, it's best for me to stay away until she's finished.

This week's project was the bedroom floor. It's been a mess forever covered with ugly carpet (which she tore out) then a hideous dark gray wood floor. I can understand why she hated it.

Last week we ventured out to the big box home repair store and purchased enough floor laminate to cover the ugly. Wednesday night I helped lug some of the heavier stuff out of the room while she killed a warren of dust bunnies.

Yesterday a couple of people came over to put the flooring in. They did an excellent job.



Don't look at any part of the walls, we know they need paint. She's also got an idea of wallpaper in her lovely head. She's painted the kitchen and dining room and is fully capable of getting the house to where she wants it. One room at a time.

My Week of Tweets

Last night I deleted my twitter account. From the people I knew, for the most part, all I saw were people tweeting the same thing as their Facebook status report. What's the point of repetition?

I will say that Roger Ebert's twittering is quite profound, and Steve Martin is a very funny man. As for as following celebrities on twitter, I was underwhelmed.

If I was a small business owner though, I'd be all over this. I'd tweet products that have just been brought into my shop like there's no tomorrow, especially if the product had a short shelf life or were only available in limited quantities.

I've been pretty critical and mean to the tweeters, I may slow that up a little since going through the experience. It's not all bad, and you can fall into rabbit holes, but overall, it's not for me.

Still pretty happy here in the land of Blogger. Hits and page reads are slowly increasing, people are reading this who are not also spammers from Brazil. So thanks for stopping by. Comments are always welcome.

Rest in Peace

I did not know Anna well. Heck I’m not even sure what her real name was. She was real though; there was nothing phony about her. We met through Caitie's Live Journal, and were friends on Facebook. We'd pop up in each other comments from time to time. She told me she read this blog, but hated jumping though hoops to comment. I’m projecting a lot into what little I knew about her. One person said she was magic and that is indisputable.

In my decade plus on the internet I’ve watched people I’ve never met in person die, some a more sudden and tragic death, others a sad decline due to disease. Anna kept fighting the cancer and she was not quite strong enough to beat it.

She told the most fascinating stories of her life past and present. I’d like to think she’d led a full life, cut short as it was. She was a little older than me, with a son, boyfriend and many friends and family who are going to miss her words online and face to face.

Was it the Meds, or am I Going Mad?

I'm not sure if this dream was being watched on television, or actually happening.

John Goodman was a cop who had uncovered some serious conspiracy stuff. There was a major convoy, by rail, that I think the Russians were leading straight down the center of the United States. There were even cruise ships in this convoy, really weird looking on train tracks. The reason was unknown and if you tried to find out, you were eliminated. There was a lot of black ops technology used, a lot of surveillance used against you if you tried to speak out. Wow, who knew Henry Winkler could hide cameras that showed Goodman liked to look at nasty things!

There was a lot of bad reporting done, technology released that turned cities snowbound and Kent State being on fire was major news.

I hope this does not become a nightly event.

The Macbook came back on Saturday, with a new hard drive. I hooked up the backup and hoped. The last backup it seems was in April so all was not lost. I've never been quite sure if any of the transfers worked.

The pictures are in a jumble, which is the worst thing, and six months of photos are gone - but the better ones are most likely on Facebook. Lost a small amount of writing, what's been completed is on paper and/or archived in gmail. Lost some music, but that's the lightest loss. Overall, it could have been a lot worse and I'm thankful it was not.

Sick

Have had a sore throat since Friday. Did not sleep at all last night, the pain was so bad. Went to urgent care this morning and as suspected, was diagnosed with strep throat.

If I've ever had it before, it's never been this severe. The pain while swallowing was too much.

And a plus to urgent care. I was in and out of there in about 45 minutes.

Got my pills and have been in a fever breaking sweat most of today.

Trying to keep away from my son, to keep him from getting infected. Thanks to my Scottish Wife for dealing with me this weekend. When I'm ill, I want no one near me. Need to go into the cave and suffer alone.

I am better than my Live Journal friend Anna, who is now in an ICU with a bleak prognosis. Met her through Caitie, she's led a fascinating life. Hoping for the best for everyone, it's all I can do for someone I've never met.

There is no pain, you are receding.

Friday night I saw the most memorable blending of rock and roll and theater. Roger Waters "The Wall" is the theater Ray Davies could never quite achieve on stage, the technology Pete Townshend could never grasp during his peak writing years.

The whole arena is used as a set. This could never be done on Broadway, the stages are too small.



The amount of time that went into planning this show has to be phenomenal. The costs of the ticket are justified when one sees the amount of people that have to be paid to truck this show from city to city. I saw at least two dozen semis outside of the Schottenstein Center the afternoon before the concert.

Every detail of the stage set is amazing. The surround sound was clean and incredible. The musicians, first rate. The crowd, odd, and I'm not talking about the guy in front of us who smothered us in pot smoke, but the people who yelled out they did not pay to see Waters projected on or behind a screen. Um, you're seeing The Wall, what did you expect? Loved the hotel room bit.




I've never been much of a Pink Floyd fan, but always respected Waters as being the band's main songwriter. At 67 he's not out there running around the stage, and he lacks the stage presence of most of the frontmen of his era. During "Comfortably Numb" while one of the other members of the group sang the David Gilmour parts, Waters mimed the words, reaching for the crowd with his hands. It was one of the most emotional performances I've seen on any stage.



He also has to hit his mark on the wall, every night.

Naturally, the wall came down.



We took our time leaving and while I was in the bathroom line, my friend took some footage of the set being broken down. I wondered what the wall was made of, know I knew.