books and assorted distractions

1) Caramba!: a tale told in turns of the card by Nina Marie Martínez
2) First Indian on the Moon by Sherman Alexie
3) The Virgin of Flames by Chris Abani
4) GraceLand by Chris Abani
5) Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcón
6) Nick's Trip by George Pelecanos
7) Sins of the Seventh Sister by Curtiss Huston
8) The Informant: a true story by Kurt Eichenwald
9) There are Jews in my House by Laura Vapnyar


peter pan peanut butter salmonella scare in Atlanta.

keep it short, keep it clean. and no mention of sex, either. in canberra there's a new 5 minute rule concerning eulogies.

can you guess what the president was doing while a white house diaster drill was going on? if you said riding his bike, you'd be right. perfect.

so it looks as though june is when i'll move to florida. i've started going through my books - god, there's SO damn many of them! i'm being relentless about the ones i'll keep and the ones i'll donate. i've looked at houses online - the sarasota paper is really good - and there's no shortage of places. or jobs for that matter. i found a few with fenced yards, 2 bedrooms, 2 baths all for $850 or so a month. THAT doesn't suck at least. and i can donate a lot of winter clothes as well.

the last mri that my father had found not just the one lesion in his brain, but 2, so they're going to suspend his chemo and try radiation on the larger of the two. he's not in any pain, still has a sense of humor and a positive attitude. i try and keep that going on the phone, but i'm always a little relieved when we hang up. and yeah, i feel pretty guilty about that.

gonna hop in the shower.

a collection or mixture of unrelated things

lack of sleep makes you stupid. literally. no wonder i sometimes feel like my brain has atrophied.

don't miss the total lunar eclipse on march 3rd.

4 giant lakes found under Antarctic ice.

F1 countdown. i LOVE this page!


next time i'll post a book list. i've been feeling off my game as of late - that's why the (few) posts have been kinda lame... that's a funny picture, though, right?

a little vent

first of all, did you know that there's a mexico, new york?
it's on the eastern edge of lake ontario. just fyi is all...

ok. 2 things that have been driving me a little crazy.
and they're both TV commercials.
the first one is that visa check card one in the cafeteria. everything is flowing along quite smoothly with everyone paying with their visa card. that is until this joker comes along and tries to pay with - you guessed it - CASH! that bastard!
all of a sudden there's this huge cluster-fuck because the line stops moving. i can't tell you how much this annoys the crap out of me. i guess it's because i'm the one always paying in cash.
the second one is the KFC one where a boy calls home to ask for permission to eat dinner at his friends house. he tells his mom that yes, the parents are home, they're all sitting down to a meal together, but the mom doesn't believe him. so he puts his friend's mom on the phone and she confirms what the boy said. what the mom can't believe is that they're all sitting down to a home cooked meal on a week night. since when is KFC home cooked? this one really pisses me off.

jon spencer blues explosion!

'Bellbottoms'



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catching up

for real or is it satire? music that'll make ya gay. yes, gay. be careful.

our fearless leader on a tractor, running down the press. literally.

more on (hey, moron, get it!!?) our fearless leader.

this is the saddest story about a soldier's cry that went unheard.


here are some books i've read:

1) Chasing the Dime by Michael Connelly
2) Crumbtown by Joe Connelly
3) Three Men in a Room: The Inside Story of Power and Betrayal in an American Statehouse by Seymour P. Lachman and Robert Polner
4) Means Of Escape: A War Correspondent's Memoir of Life and Death in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and Vietnam by Philip Caputo
5)Dragon Sea: A True Tale of Treasure, Archeology, and Greed off the Coast of Vietnam by Frank Pope
6) The House of Forgetting by Benjamin Alire Saenz
7) We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch
8) General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier by Jeffry D. Wert

the visit to florida to see my dad went ok. he's pretty frail and ill. the chemo is taking its toll on him. if he weighs 120 pounds, i'd be surprised. he's always cold, so he keeps the heat on - it was at least a thousand degrees in the living room. i drove him around - his camaro is still the coolest car...
he is a sports freak, so he got me watching basketball AND football. i enjoyed the college ball a lot - i'd forgotten how pretty the game can be to watch. i also got to see king james lose to the suns. i like shawn marion and steve nash. my dad's the only one who ever got me to watch anything other than auto racing. and yes, dammit, i still believe it's a sport. anyhow, it sure looks as if i'll be moving down there around june so i can take care of him.
florida, jesus. at least it's not full of old folks where he is. and the driver (doug) who picked me up from the airport told me to move down so he could take me hiking. and he wasn't old OR hard to look at.

yesterday was melissa's 29th birthday. i cooked dinner for her - all her favorites - kielbasa marinated in beer, honey-dripped potatoes, broccoli, gnocchi, and a chocolate mousse tort for dessert. it was a pleasant evening. tomorrow is mike's 30th birthday and he's freaking out about it. poor guy. AND he's moving all this weekend. i hate moving. man, i have a lot to do before june.

well, that's about it for now