In East Livermore, Maine (where I’m from) this morning, it is -8 degrees (yes, that is minus eight). THAT will get your attention when you go outside. That is cold enough where the boogers in your nose instantly freeze and any exposed flesh hurts just being outside. In short, it’s a little chilly.

Faithful readers of Mu-sings will recall that last week I wanted to get Mer a nice Italian movie to see on her birthday, and that I failed pretty thoroughly.

I took today off from work to have a “get-caught-up-on-life” day. I did errands and chores for almost 11 hours today. Since I was near Borders, I stopped by and picked up Loreena McKennitt’s new album. While I was there, I glanced in the foreign language section. I saw one of the films that was rated highly on the internet – Bread and Tulips. I picked it up.

Mer got home from CVCA around 6:00, and we watched the film. It was pretty good – excellent sound and film quality, the subtitles were easy to read, and I liked the characters. It was a (mostly) sweet film (you have to ignore that some of the characters being sweet are already married). The movie suffered from the lack of butchering of animals on film, but it tried to make up for it with good humor, and by being set in Venice. Venice really is a magical place, and the film shows you a slice of the back alleys and side paths (not many canal shots). It made it feel more Italian and less touristy.

After watching this sweet, fairly romantic film for almost two hours, we got to the end of it. As I expected, Mer turned to me and said those words I knew were coming: “I have to grade.” Oh yeah, baby!

I had my 36th birthday this last week. I had a nice birthday. The folks I work with in CVCA’s Guidance Department game me this piece of cake, which was very good – it had about 1/2 inch of frosting on it. The best part was that the black balloon was inflated when they gave it to me, but it had been taped to the fork, not tied, so it slowly deflated. I found it rather amusing (and tasty). The folks in Guidance sang happy birthday to me, and they sang it a second time with the accompaniment of one of the counselors who plays a mean harmonica. It meant a lot to me.

My birthday fell on the same day that second-quarter grades were due, which is hectic. The two people I most closely work with on grades let me go at 3:30 before the report cards were printed, which was really nice of them. I used the time wisely – I played an hour-and-a-half of the computer game Civilization IV in CVCA’s History Club with Ombudsman. Mer came and got me around 5:00 and we went home.

I wanted a quiet night, so that is what I got (thanks, Mer!). We watched an episode of what is probably my favorite TV show – Quantum Leap. It is the (fairly) new season 5, and I am happy to be seeing these again. I just love Quantum – it starts out tense, gets worse, and then Sam and Al save the day. It should be hokey, but I really enjoy it. What a great show. After the show, we went upstairs to the office and listened to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me online, and it was a great show – they had Weird Al on as a guest, and the news stories were really funny. We finished the evening by Mer giving me a really nice back rub (I have minor back trouble, so it was much appreciated).

So, all in all, it was a pretty darn good birthday. An odd thing about turning 36 is that I still feel like I’m in the 18-22-year-old range in my head. There are times when I find it hard to believe that I’m 36. I suspect that is one of the reasons that people start to forget how old they are – you feel like you are 20, so you have to stop and think about when you were born. Oh – also odd is that for the first time, I am now twice as old as all the students at CVCA.

I’m grateful for the years, and I’m really grateful that I have a fairly easy life. I am blessed indeed.

Mer and I like trivia, and we like food. So, the natural thing to do was to collect Ombudsman and our Latin teacher, Ami, and head to Damon’s for food and interactive, nationwide trivia. We had Mer for literature and foreign languages, Ombudsman for history and civics, Ami for about everything (she is quite good), and me for shouting out the wrong answer (I did get several impressive ones right when we were not officially playing yet).

As an added bonus, it was Monday, so the specials were cheap burgers and wings. This appealed to Ombudsman’s thriftiness. The burgers were all-toppings-free, so Oms was able to try pulled-pork on his burger. He claims the results were quite satisfying. I got a burger, Ami got a burger, so Mer got onion soup. To each his own….

We formed the uber-trivia group Quorum, and we played two complete games after we were done eating the meal (and while I munched happily on chocolate malt cake). We wanted to take on the fearsome “Bood,” who handily won the two games we saw while we were eating, and had the high score at the local restaurant, but he/she/they quit just as we joined. We figured we intimidated Bood.

We did quite well. Out of a possible 15,000 points, we scored over 12,000 in each game and won both times. We got the sixth highest score at the restaurant (in the last few days), and we scored in the top 500 nationwide (it looked like it scored about 10,000 each game). We had a blast – much laughter. We all agreed the trivia game could be addictive (we were convinced we could break 14,000). I hope we get to do it again soon.

Actors’ Summit Theater pulled off another excellent production last night. Mer and I went to see QED, a play about the life of  physicist Richard Feynman. Feynman won the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on quantum electrodynamics (QED). He also worked on the Manhattan Project. He had many interests including biology, music, theater, and more. He was a funny man, and the play brought many of these things out. It was mostly a one-man show (there is one small part of a college student as well) with the theater co-founder, Neil Thackaberry, and he pulls off a long play with many lines quite well. The theater was packed out, which made me happy for the theater, but confused me. Sometime the theater is bursting, and sometime is it half empty. I’m never sure what accounts for it. On this occasion, there was the interesting mix of the Kent State Physics Department and members of a local synagogue that made up much of the audience. I did point out to Mer that this was the second play about physicists in three years, and both sold well. Physics folks are just interesting, witty, and talented people. Did I mention that I was a physics major?

Anyway, if you are in NE Ohio (and who would not like to be?), check out QED.

Meredith likes foreign languages, and she has a special love of Italian. From time to time I try to take this into consideration when planning special evenings. Foreign language films tend to be moderately tough to come by, and ones that would mean something special to Mer are even harder to find. This has led to a spectacular track record for my expeditions into foreign cinema.

Years ago when we were still living in Chicago, I wanted to plan a romantic evening. I planned supper and had candles at the ready, and I wanted to get a romantic Italian film for Mer. I went to Blockbuster, which, being in Chicago, had a pretty good foreign language section. I perused the selections and found a likely candidate. It was modern (I like older films, but I prefer good film quality and good sound with foreign films), and had a sweet-looking cover of a man, a woman, and a child all smiling. Mer had recently been stressing the importance of a pure viewing, so I did not read the back of the movie – I did not want to ruin the surprise. I got the film and went home with my romantic treasure. I put it in the player, and Mer and I snuggled up on the couch, ready to be moved by the glories of love in Italian. We were not disappointed. Until the Nazis showed up. Turns out that “La Vita e Bella” was, in English, “Life is Beautiful,” a movie about a father’s love in a concentration camp. Fantastic movie with a moving story. NOT a date movie. We were both glad to have seen the film, but did not feel the “warm and fuzzies” after seeing it.

Meredith spent a year in Romania teaching English. Although she was in Romania, she was in in Transylvania, which is mostly Hungarian ethnically, and her school was the Hungarian school in town. So, Hungarian is also special to her, so I decided one day to get a Hungarian movie. Back to my trusty Chicago Blockbuster. They actually had a Hungarian movie, and it looked cute. The English title was “A Hungarian Fairy Tale,” and it was about a boy looking for his father after his mother is killed, and of the government worker who helps him. A nice sweet movie, right? I’m still not sure, because it ranks as the oddest movie I have ever seen. There was no logic to the sequence of events that I could determine, and while much of the movie probably referred to Hungarian folk tales, the symbolism was lost on us. The movie (to us) was stunningly weird. The ending still makes me shake my head in a “what the…?” sort of way.

Flash ahead over 5 years. This last week was Meredith’s birthday. I had previously gone looking for a sweet Italian movie to show on a special occasion, and her birthday seemed a perfect time.

A word on trying to buy an Italian film at Borders – if you want a film made after 1970, you are going to have a very hard time. The foreign language section is (in descending order) made up of French, Spanish, Chinese of various kinds, then other languages. So, your choices in Italian are very limited. I looked at every film in the section, and was getting depressed about my choices when I came across “The Tree of Wooden Clogs.” It was copyright 2004 (so should have good sound and film quality), and the back sounded sweet – “…a poignant look at rural peasant life in Northern Italy at the turn of the century. This moving story brings to life the hardships and adversity facing a family struggling to survive under oppressive rule. At a great sacrifice, a family sends their young son to school to learn in lieu of having him work on the farm. Relying on his precious pair of clogs, the little boy must walk the long distance to school every day. When they break, his father sneaks into a prized grove in their village to obtain the wood for a new pair. The callous, wealthy landlord catches him and he is punished severely for his infraction.” The film won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.

Okay. So it is not necessarily a romantic film, but it sure sounded like an inspiring triumph-of-the-human-spirit kind of film. So, I bought it. On Mer’s birthday, we got some take-out food, I put the movie in the DVD player and we settled down on the couch to be incensed at the evil landlord and sympathize with heroic poor family (at least that is what I was expecting – Mer was on a “pure viewing”). A few surprises awaited:
1. The film was made in 1978 – the 2004 copyright must be for the English DVD. It had okay film quality, and the sound sounded like it was coming out of a well anytime there was a wagon or horse on screen.
2. The film turned out to be 3 hours long – too long to see on Mer’s birthday since she was bogged down with grading. We had to watch it over two nights.
3. The little-boy part of the story occupied about 10 minutes of the three hours.
4. The movie told the stories of the five families who lived in the same farming complex, with occasional very confusing short shots of the wealthy landlord. The subplots included:
    – A man who finds a gold coin and hides it in a horse’s hoof, and then gets mad when the horse “loses” his coin.
    – A widow who washes laundry to feed her five children who might get sent to an orphanage (but that tension is resolved in about 2 minutes of film time when the oldest son declares he will work more if he has to).
    – A grandfather who has schemes to get his tomatoes to market three weeks before everyone else.
    – A young couple who courts, get married, spends their honeymoon in a convent where they adopt a one-year-old child.
    – A father and son who fight all the time.
    – A festival celebrating the village being saved from the Spanish 400 years before by a miracle. It involves a merry-go-round.
    – Best of all for a birthday celebration, it shows the live butchering of a goose and an enormous hog. Nothing says romance like cutting a pig in half. Really in half. On film. Ugh.

On top of all this, the main characters speak very little, so Mer and I did not even get to hear much Italian. Another foreign language winner that I picked!

I did finally get wise and I have looked up movies on the internet. These seem highly regarded, and I hope to get them someday so Mer can hear a good Italian film:
Bicycle Thief
Ciao Professore!
Bread and Tulips

Mer has had better luck with Italian films, and these are very good:
Cinema Paradiso
Il Postino (The Postman)
Johnny Stecchino (Johnny Toothpick)

Until next time, vedali ai film!

Since we had a three-day weekend, Mer and I decided to go and see family. Sonotmu and Jojo had new (kitty) family members and my sister, her husband, and the World’s Cutest Niece just moved to South Bend from L.A. It would be a busy weekend, but we figured we could go to Chicago and then go to South Bend on the way home. As an added bonus, my sister not only was willing to cook a nice dinner, but she wanted to invite our college friend, Jen, and her husband, Dan, to dinner as well. We would get to see 5 family members and 2 friends in one weekend!

We left for Chicago after work on Friday, so we got to Sonotmu’s place about 10:00 Chicago time. We were introduced to the 2 new family members, Maine Coon cats Aethelred and Boudica. No, you are not misreading the names, and yes, they are strange. They are both names of ancient English royalty. I’m not sure two stoic Mainer cats would approve of such high-flung names, but since they run the household they have to accept their responsibility to rule. Aethelred is still a kitten and Boudica is a gorgeous 3-year-old female cat. Aethelred also has the New England trait of having “double paws” – he has 6 toes on his front paws instead of the normal 4. Just to be different, he has 5 toes on one rear paw and 4 on the other. Sonotmu demonstrated the Maine Coon trait to fetch – he would throw a string and Aethelred would pounce on it and bring it back (with a very real bounce in his step). It was awfully cute.

Boudica is still a little shy, so we did not see too much of her. Here, she shows off cool orange eyes just for Jojo.
Maine Coons are big cats – Boudica is at least 15 pounds, and Aethelred will be even bigger. What pretty cats.

As always, Jojo’s ferrets were very entertaining. They are strange creatures.

Saturday we lounged around and listened to Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on the radio. This was a favorite way for me and Mer to start Saturdays when we were in Chicago. In Ohio, Car Talk is on at 10:00 instead of 9:00 and Wait, Wait is on at 1:00 instead of 10:00, so you can’t lounge through both shows. We then took a nice walk into Andersonville to my favorite breakfast place, Ann Sather’s. I got the world’s best cinnamon rolls and a new addition to the menu, a breakfast wrap. We had a nice walk back (we walk along the back streets and go through a really nice park) and over the next few hours we all took naps. This got us ready for the evening entertainment that often comes out in the Riordan (Chicago branch) household: games.

Sonotmu and Jojo have a LOT of games, and none of them are normal. They are usually strategy games and usually for two players. Jojo introduced me to Dvonn, another abstract German game. She smoked me in the first game – I was the first player to not have any pieces left on the board at the end. I made a nice comeback by winning it the second time I played. Meanwhile, Sonotmu in a fit of delirium challenged Mer to a word game. In this photo she explains that “abliguration” scores so many points that a new field of mathematics is needed to keep track of her score. We ordered pizza for supper, and it was really good, but Sonotmu explained that this place has a hard time getting the order and/or address right. This night was true to form – the pizza delivery guy called to tell Jojo that he was outside the building, so she went down to meet him. He wasn’t there. She told him as much, and it started a small argument that Jojo finally won by pointing out that she lived at the address and he did not. It turned out he was one block away. After supper, we had a bizarre experience of playing a trivia game from 1984 that Jojo had never even opened. It was like opening a very strange time vault. The colors of the pieces were VERY odd – sort of pastel, but not really. The game was a trivia game, but the premise was that you were colonizing the universe and proving your worth by answering Earth trivia. The trivia ranged from easy (name the author of Cat-in-the-Hat, with a hint of “Doctor _____”) to very difficult (This architect built most of London, no hint – Mer knew it). I won the game on a multiple choice question that I just guessed at – it had something to do with a famous Spanish architect. The great part is that when we went to my sister’s house she had a poster of this architect on the wall which Mer pointed out and I still did not recognize it. I clearly deserved to rule the universe.

The next morning we left Chicago (after Sonotmu introduced me to one more marble game, which he beat me at 5 games to 4) and headed to South Bend. We passed the very full parking lots near Soldier Field (the Bears were playing in a couple of hours), and you could smell the tailgaters’ food from the highway. We got lucky with the weather – there was a light ice storm during the night, but the roads did not freeze. So, the trees were pretty, but we got to South Bend just fine.

We were welcomed to Sister’s house by her, her husband, and World’s Cutest Niece. WCN is a very happy baby, who is almost one year old. We will miss her birthday party because of a CVCA function, so it was really good to see her now. Sister’s husband is a visiting professor at Notre Dame, so they are staying in the house of a professor who is in London for the spring semester. It is a nice neighborhood, and a pretty house. We spent much of the evening in the family room, where the “fun land” was set up for WCN. Fun land was still new, so it is not clear if WCN is buying the marketing yet. Fun land looks an awful lot like a playpen that allows Sister a chance to get other things done. Still, marketing has never lied or exaggerated yet, so I’m sure it is much fun.

WCN and Dad had a nap soon after we got there (it was nap time, after all). Mer and I chatted with Sister and watched football on TV. WCN soon returned and was naturally the center of attention. Dad woke up about an hour later, and soon our friends showed up. Sister had made a very good meal of lasagna rolls, salad, and garlic bread. We ate (WCN had applesauce) and then went back into the family room where we talked and laughed and half-watched football. I was by far the least educated person in the room (except for WCN) – two doctors, two lawyers, and Mer with her Masters degree. Sister had also made a very good chocolate raspberry cake, which we had with ice cream. I think my January diet suffered a setback. WCN went to bed, but we continued to chat and laugh until almost 10:00 – fairly late for me! 🙂

We had to leave early the next day (about 9:00) since we had to put in a couple of hours at school (an English teacher’s work is never done). We had the same lucky break – the trees were covered in ice, but the roads were okay. We got home (via school) just fine. We hope to get to South Bend every 4 to 6 weeks or so while Sister and company are close.

This is a little late, since our second Christmas (Rockland) was eight days ago, but this pesky work thing gets in my way sometimes.

The Boxing Day snow we had early in the week was all gone, so we had another brown Christmas, but it was still nice weather to wander around Rockland. I went downtown at least once every day – I just love walking in Rockland and browsing in store windows (and occasionally buying things).

The “tree” on the left was near the public boat landing and is great. If you look closely, the entire tree is made of lobster traps, the decorations are lobster buoys, and the star is clearly an ironic statement.

On our Christmas II Friday, we waited until the afternoon to open gifts, so I was able to wander downtown in the morning. The sun was warm, but there was about a 15 m.p.h. wind that caught your attention when you came around corners. We all had lunch at the Brown Bag bakery (which I recommend), and then went home and opened gifts. It was a nice time. Mer got me an awesome gift – a Spiderman shrink figure that grows in water! Actually, she did get me one of those, but the really cool gift is to go see a one-man show where the actor does all three of the good Star Wars movies in 1 hour all by himself. That should be grand fun. The other one-man show that I have seen, MacHomer, was a tremendous show, so I have high hopes for fun in February.

I like gift giving (and gift getting, too), so it was an enjoyable two hours of good company (we don’t rush these things). The tree on the right is a bit of anticipation – it snowed on Boxing Day II as it did on the real Boxing Day. Since I find the real snow on the tree to be charming, I used a temporal anomaly to bring it into my blog about our second Christmas.

As hinted at (or directly stated) above, it did snow the next day – about 3 inches or so. It was very pretty. Mer took the opportunity of a relaxed Saturday to go get her hair done in downtown while I ate at the Rockland Cafe. The Cafe was a little greasy for my tastes, so I liked the Brown Bag better. Both locations carry whoopie pies, so feel free to check them out for comparison’s sake.

We left Sunday morning and had breakfast at Moody’s Diner, which was excellent, but we were too early to get our favorite whoopie pies. Who knew whoopie pies would not be ready by 9:00? We then swung by to see one of Mer’s friends from college who lives in Brunswick near Bowdoin College. If you are in Brunswick, check out the Little Dog Cafe in downtown – it is run by Mer’s freind’s husband. We then got on the road for home about 12:30.

So, a great time. I do love Rockland, and I do love Carleton and Leona’s house. I look forward to going back and winning more Skipbo!

I tend to let small things go over vacation, like shaving. I think I last shaved 5 days ago, but it may have been more. I suppose I’ll clean up for work tomorrow.

Since we had a total of 30+ hours in the car, we had a lot of time to listen to our Teaching Company CDs, Classics of American Literature. We usually alternate the CDs with a music CD so that our brains do not go numb; Mer also has the problem that she “spaces” because she starts thinking about how to teach the work we are learning about. So, over the course of the vacation, we managed to get through eighteen 30-minute lectures (there are 84 lectures in all). These lectures covered:

– 2 lectures finishing 4 lectures on Moby Dick (Melville)
– 2 lectures on Benito Cereno (Melville)
– 5 lectures on Walt Whitman
– 3 lectures on Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe)
– 5 lectures on Emily Dickinson
– 1 lecture starting 5 lectures on Twain, this one covering Tom Sawyer

The lectures are great – I recommend the Teaching Company highly. This lecturer (Dr. Arnold Weinstein) is unpretentious, and he takes the authors on their own terms – he presents the works largely from how the author and the author’s contemporaries would have seen the work, while still working in modern views without undermining or attacking the work. He has done a really good job. My personal take on the works we heard about:
– Moby Dick – an important work (it may be THE important American work) that sounds ponderous (long book, difficult vocabulary, and long, complex syntax). I enjoyed the lectures, but would probably not try to tackle the book.
– Benito Cereno – These lectures were fascinating. I cannot say much about the book without giving the ending away, but I am intrigued by this work. I recommend it, although I have one warning – there are some race issues that are not handled in modern ways.
– Whitman – I alluded to this in another post. I liked Whitman’s city poetry, but not much else he did. I probably will not bother to read any Whitman (I am not a big poetry fan, in general).
– Uncle Tom’s Cabin – These lectures were great. Weinstein went to some lengths to put the book in its historical setting. He also defended it against accusations that is an unsophisticated book. I may try to read the work. Fun fact of the day – according to Weinstein, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the second-best-selling book in the English language, after the Bible.
– Dickinson – I was not familiar with Dickinson’s work. I really liked it. She is very odd, and writes a lot about death, but I really liked her stuff. It is packed with many meanings, and seems simple at first listen. Nice stuff. I would like to learn more about her poetry. I may try to read some of the best-known works, but what I would really enjoy would be to hear more lectures on her work.
– Twain – Twain is one of my heroes, so I enjoyed the introduction to Tom Sawyer. I am really looking forward to the three lectures on Huck Finn, which is one of my favorite books.

In addition to the Teaching Company lectures, I did manage to go through about 10 lessons of my Rosetta Stone Italian program. I like the teaching style – it seems to be working well. I just am impatient, and I want to speak Italian NOW. Level 1 Italian has about 90 lessons, so if I can stick to a good schedule, I should be done with Level 1 in the late spring.