Have you ever attended a murder party?  I can access a vague memory of playing a drug dealer with slicked-back hair for one of these with an old girlfriend, but that’s been 20 years ago now.  Further, I’m confident the scope of this one dwarfed the other, both in the game’s design and Beth’s quest for total environmental immersion when decorating for something of this nature.  (Wow, what an effort, too!)

I’m really a pretty smart fellow, but to play this game well requires a degree of mental plate-spinning of which I’m apparently incapable.  It’s necessary to keep up with three or four times the amount of information than I can manage.  This manifests as a) one character asks me about trading information or items; b) I put him off so I can flip through my packet and see what he’s talking about; c) I figure out I need to do what he said; d) I go back to him and say let’s do it; and finally e) he’s already gone a different way.  This happened to me at least twice.  (I had most of what I needed to know well in advance, but the pacing and the amount of simultaneous interaction buried me.)

It concerned me enough that I pulled Beth aside and told her I was worried my ineptitude was messing the game up, but she assured me there was enough flexibility designed in to accommodate such.  (You know, I can also generate some guilt thinking about the fact that she gave me an extroverted character that I never really did enough with because I was having to try too hard to keep up!)  She’ll swat that down too, because she’s gracious and she’s my friend.  Then she’ll say that she just hopes I had a good time, which I certainly did.  It was food, drink, and lots of laughs with folks I enjoy very much.

If we do it again, though, I think I should probably tend bar.

Thanks so much for all of the trouble and the invitation, Beth.  It was a blast!

Related posts:

1. You’ll believe a monkey can fly I met Corry this afternoon at the Flying Monkey Arts...
2. Blue-eyed murder in a size five dress Guess what’s almost certainly going to happen this summer? How...
3. Nathan’s birthday party playlist My son Nathan was 5 on Wednesday, but we just...

So six or seven years ago, we were visiting over a beer, and he was telling me about his Saturday morning.  He had a backyard construction project going, and he told me “so yeah, I thought I’d try it this way, and if it didn’t work out I’d just Undo it and try it another way…”

See what happened there?  He spends his days mostly in software, where a mouse click or two wipes away a mistake.  That mindset momentarily invaded his real world convincingly enough to plant an absurd thought.

I’d remembered that as an interesting anecdote and nothing more until today, when I realized technology had similarly compromised my thinking.  I was listening to talk radio at lunch and wanted to hear something said, but hadn’t been listening closely enough.  My immediate thought was “well, I’ll rewind it and…”

…except I can’t rewind the radio in my F-150, can I?  Oops.

My DVR, and probably to some degree online video, have apparently wrecked my attention span.  My default level of attention is now less than it ever has been, because I’ve been conditioned to believe that I can simply rewind if I want to truly listen to something.

You know, everybody worries about nuclear holocaust or environmental calamity as the cause of humanity’s potential extinction during its ontological adolescence.

What if it’s just that we’re eventually going to be unable to listen for thirty damned seconds in a row?

Related posts:

1. Mammary assault Hey, let’s make it Breast Week on WmWms!  Ha ha! ...
2. The silicon-based assault on English Several years ago I worked with a fellow I’ll call...
3. I’ll do this, even though it’s for old people Said that before?  I have, today.  Know what I was...

So, apart from trying 30 minutes of the first film on HBO and turning it off bored, I just never played.  I got what anyone would get through osmosis.  I knew he was a magical kid with a lightning bolt on his forehead (though I’d have probably called it a birthmark and not a scar).  I knew he went to a school called Hogwarts.  I knew non-magical people were called muggles, though I question whether I’d have even known that had it not been for geocaching.  I could have come up with Dumbledore as a character name.  I doubt I could have come up with Voldemort, though if you said it I could have identified it as part of the Harry Potter universe.  Dig?

Then my friend BamaDan ordered the whole series on Blu-ray, and when he complained to the vendor about a couple of cases being damaged, they sent him a new one and told him not to worry about the old one.  So that’s how I came to own the film series in high-definition for nothing.  (Thanks, man!)

So who’s ever watched these movies without having turned a page of J.K. Rowling?  Well, I have, now.  Thanks to yucky weather and a three-day weekend, the boys and I have consumed the first four films.  They’re really having fun with them.  Aaron, in particular, is enthralled, which I’ve loved because he’s rarely an especially enthusiastic “fan.”

I am enjoying them well enough.  They’re classic good-and-evil fantasy stories.  I would have expected the production design to be pretty lights-out, and it is.  The special effects mostly deliver.  The writing isn’t particularly sharp, but it does a reasonable job remaining accessible to children without alienating adults (and that’s not the only way I’ve been reminded of Star Wars).

I just don’t have any emotional connection to these characters.  I think “soulless” is too strong, but “cold” is in the ballpark.  Now part of me says “if I’d read the books…” and I’m sure some of you said that too when you started this paragraph.  But really, should that be necessary?  Is it advisable to make a movie assuming someone has read the book on which it’s based?  Shouldn’t it be its own thing?  I think that both the recent Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings movies do a good job with that, though I can’t be certain because I’ve read those books.

So we’re through Goblet of Fire, which means we’re as far as Nathan has read (and wow, I’m grateful for that, because he has stayed just about to pop wanting to tell you what’s going to happen next).  We’ll finish them in another week or so.

Related posts:

1. Weekend notes I’ve felt less like blogging this weekend than I ever...
2. Weekend notes We’re waiting for what looks to be at least another...
3. Just letting you know… …all the cool kids are reading The Blind Assassin by...

We’ve had our Ruth’s Chris in Huntsville for five years or so, and I’d heard about it probably that much longer again on talk radio, but neither of us had ever been.  I accidentally selected the same night Ron “Tater Salad” White was in town, but our reservation and valet parking effectively mitigated any pain there.  We checked our coats and were seated promptly.  There are no continuous walls separating you from the hotel lobby at large, but the space is designed thoughtfully enough to provide suitable intimacy.

So the signature touch at Ruth’s Chris is that its USDA prime steaks are served to you at a temperature of 14,000,000,000,000,000 degrees.  (OK, it’s really “only” 500 degrees Fahrenheit, after having been seared at 1800 degrees, but still, when she says “hot plate,” she means it.)  They sizzle at the table because they’re bathed in a tablespoon of butter.

The other thing to know is that Ruth’s Chris side dishes each serve two to three people.  I’m sure this works well in a group of four or more, but for two, it essentially means you have to be on the same page for your potato and any vegetable accompaniment.  This seems needlessly constraining, but we dealt with the limitation mostly satisfactorily.

Lea and I are not big wine drinkers, so we didn’t spend any time with the impressive-looking list.  I was a little surprised that not only was there not anything comparable for available beers, there didn’t seem to be a listing of any kind anywhere.  Our server Jay assured me that they had “pretty much anything domestic,” so I settled on a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which arrived promptly with a chilled glass.  Unfortunately, it was the last one in the restaurant, so I wasn’t able to continue with it.  Failure to inform me of this in time to change my selection was the only (minor) service offense of the evening.

(And a switch to Sweetwater 420 Pale Ale isn’t a bad jump.)

Our appetizer of crab-stuffed mushrooms arrived perfectly halfway through the Sierra Nevada.  The four golf-ball sized portobellos were tasty enough to hold our attention without being distracting.  I also appreciate interesting flavors that don’t rely on salt overload, which has (sadly) become the norm for appetizers.  These delivered nicely.

For dinner, Lea selected a New York strip, well done, while I had the filet, medium-rare (and that’s a stock Ruth’s Chris photo and not one of my particular steak, but it could be).

These came out sizzling as advertised, accompanied by the garlic mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus we had selected.  After making a joke about being careful not to touch our tongues or ear lobes to the plates, we began.

Now given the shtick and the price, the steaks were going to have to be memorable, and they delivered.  They were very high-quality cuts, cooked perfectly to order and with only the subtlest seasoning of salt, pepper, parsley, and the aforementioned butter in order to better showcase the corn-fed flavor.

I haven’t kept a list of the best steaks I’ve ever had, but there was absolutely nothing to complain about with this one.  I hadn’t even a minor gripe with its quality.  I’m certain it was a 90th-percentile steak for me; I think it might have been 95th-percentile.  I cut it with my fork.  The flavor was marvelous and long-lived.  I started taking slightly smaller bites as the steak diminished on the plate, just so I’d have one or two more.

The asparagus was fresh, flavorful, and accompanied with hollandaise.  It was cooked just a bit more than I prefer, with only a slight crispness, but still well within reasonable expectations.  The garlic mashed potatoes were tasty, with only an occasional lump to assure authenticity, and (again) no salt overload.

For the close, Jay set a mountain of chocolate mousse pie between us, which was creamy, delicious, and artfully presented.  We managed about two-thirds of it, I think, and I enjoyed an excellent French press black coffee with it.

The service experience, start to finish, was excellent.  The meal was paced perfectly.  Jay was polite and genuinely conversational (and I really dislike that rehearsed, straight-from-corporate-training quality there is to far too much server communication anymore).  He, the hostess, and the valet all greeted me by name.  It was all warm and attentive, with a good understanding and avoidance of what grates.

If you know anything else about Ruth’s Chris, you know that we’re not talking about the Golden Corral budget-wise.  Now I think I paid a little bit more one time in Destin, but this visit definitely joined my American Express hall of fame for a single meal for two.  With a shared appetizer, three alcoholic beverages, and dessert and coffee accompanying our steak dinners, and adding a 20.1% tip for our server and a fiver for the valet, the start-to-finish experience checked in at $184.

Now eating out is a luxury in the first place, so I’m not going to say that’s too much.  It’s a pleasant evening at a premium restaurant, and that’s what that one cost.  Our previous closest analog is probably Pauli’s, and I’m now interested in returning there soon for a head-to-head.  (I’m reasonably sure I remember that a comparable visit is 20-25% less there.)

Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves very much, and I suspect we’ll return occasionally.

8/10

Related posts:

1. Review: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Lea, the boys, and I are just back from seeing...
2. Review: TRON: Legacy We made it a two-movie week with TRON: Legacy today. ...
3. Bates House of Turkey Seems an appropriate time of year to mention one of...

The weather wasn’t entirely cooperative for our walk through our old neighborhood, but it was nothing umbrellas couldn’t mitigate.  We examined our old territory lovingly and carefully, enjoying details of the sort that little kids remember and no one else notices.  It still says “’77 Rob” on one of the gutter drains, just where Rob Atkinson scratched it with a stick in the wet concrete most of 35 years ago.  We found the part of a Grand Prix emblem fused to the asphalt where a car burned in the street between our houses about 1980, though it’s now worn almost completely smooth.  Our creek still flows, though all of the wooded trail approaches to it are gone, thanks (it appears) to someone who has massively overbuilt the neighborhood on the east side of Sandrock.

I had determined with a casual examination on an earlier trip that our big red clay pit we called “Devil’s Hill” or “Devil’s Pit” probably had houses and yards on it now, and later confirmed it on Google Maps.  But I wanted us to stand where it was on this junket.  This ends up being a bit of a challenge for two adults.  See, no one much cared that little boys were passing through their backyards a few times a day headed to and from trails, forts, and such.

But grown men don’t pass through.  Grown men trespass.  Grown men must be up to something.

It didn’t seem advisable to walk up Walt Adams’ old driveway and disappear out the back to get there, like we did 30 years ago.  So we walked down Cherry Circle and kept going, because that was how you got to it from the west.  (Still a bit of trespassing, but it was between two yards, more or less, and our exposure was shorter.)  Clearly, no one had passed through in some time.  I think I recognized one familiar spot, but it was thoroughly reclaimed by stickers and vines.  Nevertheless, we bush-hogged our way to where Devil’s Hill was, and yup, it’s homes, on streets hanging off Coleman that didn’t exist when we were growing up.

Then we drove a bit, taking in essentially all of Golden Springs.  Stopped at what is now called the Norwood Hodges Community Center and got a few steps, including a hoof around the circuit I rode in the Cystic Fibrosis Bike-a-Thon.  (Poetically, it was 31 miles, 31 years ago.)  Checked on Edwin’s old house.  There it is.  Checked on Chris and Terri’s old house.  There it is.  Checked on Golden Springs Elementary.  There it is.

Off to Mata’s for a leisurely lunch.  Well, it would have been, but it seems they’re closed on Sunday.  Absurd.  Over to Classic on Noble, which is the place to be in Anniston (and for which we were badly underdressed, particularly for Sunday lunch, but hey, we didn’t know we were going there).  What is advertised as “brunch” is actually a massive high-quality smorgasbord in every direction, and we had a grand time.  I recognized the hostess as Betty, the woman who taught me racquetball and the face of the YMCA in the late ’70s and early ’80s.  (I’d have described her as “old” then.  She really is now.)  We had dessert and coffee with David’s parents, who go every Sunday after church, and it was marvelous to see them.  David’s mom told me they still call our old house “Bo and Jenny’s house.”

After a promise of getting our wives and children together at the lake this summer, we parted.  I expected we’d have fun, and it was so much more than I even thought it would be.  You know, I didn’t take a single photo, but I’m not sure that matters.  The things that made the day special were really things that only David and I can appreciate, and we were there.

God bless old connections rekindled.

Related posts:

1. Strange happenings at my childhood home on Google Street View As creepy as Google Street View is, it’s a blast...
2. The 225-mile drive around the block I drove to Helena, Alabama today after the boys’ games. ...
3. Passing Obamacare without another House vote? It could happen Hey, you want to know what happens next?  How about...

(Nice misplaced modifier.  Hey Bo, you mean that you’ll only open the door to people selling neighborhood children?  Heh.)

That closed-door policy is a result of a final-straw encounter with the magazine gypsies I wrote about before.  If you ring my doorbell unexpectedly and I don’t recognize you, I ask your business through the closed door, and if it’s not an emergency then I tell you to leave.  Besides delivery people, utility workers, and the like, there are friends, family members, neighbors, and people in dire need.  If you’re none of the above, then get the hell out of here.  Rude?  Overreactive?  Perhaps.  Perhaps.  (Even so, perception of this habit of mine is somewhere below strontium poisoning on the list of things I worry about day to day.)

So I say “mostly” in the first sentence because I was circumstantially fooled this afternoon.  There have been workmen across the way all day, and I thought this guy might be one of them with some issue of mutual concern.  Nope.  He’s coming around to get my neighbors to vote for him!  When I asked what that meant, he handed me the stereotypical laminated card and started in about a public speaking contest.  Mildly irritated that I had taken the card at all, I gave it back to him and said “I’m not going to be able to help you with this.”  He left immediately with barely another word, because he knew I’d made him.

Folks, if someone you’ve never seen before knocks on your door selling magazines, there is almost no chance it’s legitimate.  (Have a look here and see if you recognize any tactics or keywords.)  If you want a magazine subscription, then fill out and mail a blow-in card, or buy from a fund-raising schoolchild.

Related posts:

1. The magazine gypsies I just don’t think I’m going to answer the door...
2. Obviously, I have my work to do Fascinating to gamers and beer drinkers, I’m sure. Everyone else: ...
3. Name the mystery people! While walking to lunch in downtown Huntsville today, a colleague...

Or maybe I am.  Depends on your perspective, I guess.  The mood I am not in is one in which I self-flagellate for three or four paragraphs on all of the heinous mistakes I made in 2011, then make grandiose pronouncements of wholesale changes in the way I live my life.

What I am going to do is try to fully appreciate the power of the small correct decision.  What does that mean?  Dig:

I’m six months into successfully quitting smoking.  By successful, I mean 100% compliance, without a single slip.  It feels like I’m going to make it, but I’m not so foolish as to announce I have made it, because I’ve been this far down this road before.

The secret, I believe, is the avoidance of the past tense.  I think that for most nicotine addicts, the addiction is out there forever.  It doesn’t necessarily stay ready to pounce continuously, but it keeps an eye on you.  I know from experience it can be sitting on your chest very quickly, and you don’t see it coming until you can’t breathe from the weight.

So what do you do about it?  Well, whether you’re hitting a moment of unexpected weakness six months in, or you’re dealing with one of the eight or ten acute daily cravings right after you’ve stopped, you don’t say you’re never going to smoke again.  Rather, you say you’re not going to smoke for the next five minutes, because hey, you can abstain for five minutes, right?  Thing is, that five minutes tends to get strung together with other five minuteses.  So they build into hours, and hours build into days, and days build into you’ve accomplished your goal.  (Or, rather, you’re accomplishing your goal.)

I started considering what that kind of thinking might do for other areas of my life.  After all, I think most of what I’d like to change about my life also involve errors of consumption.  Shouldn’t have eaten that.  Why did I buy that last week?  So maybe you don’t announce that you’re changing your diet forever, or you’re going to be more careful with your money.  Maybe instead you make a good decision right now.  Then, you make another one.  Then, you make another one.  Drop the ball?  Don’t worry; you’ve got another opportunity to decide well coming up.

How about loving your spouse?  Do you just carry forward a baseline level of love for him/her, and today’s another day, so there it is?  Or do you reinvigorate it with regular injections of positive attention?  Guess which approach I’ve consistently observed in long, successful marriages?

I think meaningful forevers accumulate.

Happy New Year.

Related posts:

1. Need to pee on the plane? Hope you have change Well, budget carrier Ryanair is considering charging passengers to use...
2. Barack Obama, spendthrift From 1789 to 2008, the United States government borrowed a...
3. What’s that rumble, Mr. President? Tomorrow, the Republicans will handily wrest control of the U.S....

Sometime before Christmas, Lea said something to me about a traveling exhibit there.  Now she probably explained the whole thing to me, but what I carried forward from it was “stained glass.”  So she said something about wanting to go this week, and I thought “oh yeah, the stained glass.”  Sure.  Let’s go.  Thursday got the nod.

Oh, what a marvelous trip!  The exhibit is In Company with Angels:  Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows.

The Cincinnati church of which these windows were part was demolished in 1964, and though some of the parishioners had the foresight to save the windows, they’ve been kind of sitting around here and there in barns and sheds and such until their rediscovery 10 years ago and subsequent restoration.  The angels are based on seven letters written to the seven Christian churches of Asia Minor identified in the Book of Revelation: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

I won’t go into too much detail here, partially because I want to leave discoveries for folks who go, but mostly because nothing I could say approaches the experience of seeing them.

Speaking of:  locals, you have two weeks left.  These windows are magnificent and absolutely worth the trip to the museum.

Related posts:

1. Of twisted Christmas villages and stained glass windows Maybe 20 years ago, my stepmother started putting together a...
2. Here’s what happens around the house when you’re married to a talented artsy type The entertainment center grows extremely cool stained glass panes: The...
3. Little annoyance cluster Lea didn’t go to stained glass class Wednesday night, which...

Related posts:

1. Accidentally delighted at my Christmas 2011 soundtrack I am on the cusp of accomplishing something unprecedented. As...
2. The Christmas home stretch The boys helped me start and finish the cards yesterday...
3. Our Christmas fairy I am not freaking out this year.  I had one...

For to us a child is born; to us a son is given.  And the government shall be on his shoulders.  And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. – Isaiah 9:6

Merry Christmas to you and your family.

No related posts found.