Symphony Saturday

In this installment, we finally reach what is, for me, the most fertile ground for emotionally moving symphonic work ever: late 19th century Russia.

The symphonic tradition, as Leonard Bernstein once pointed out, is a Germanic one, and even in the hands of Russian composers, the formal approach to the symphony is dominated by the fundamental aspects of the form that arose in German and Austria. As Bernstein put it, "Russian symphonies are German ones with vodka substituted for beer." That's not a bad way of putting it. The form is still the same, but the melodic material in the Russian realm tends to be much more lyrical and much more folkish in nature. This is only natural, because Russia was one of the great hotbeds of nationalism in music, which became a potent force in the latter half of the 1800s.

(As an aside, it's interesting to note how nationalism could be such a potent force in driving the creation of some of the most wonderful music ever written, and yet, in politics, the nationalism of the late 1800s eventually led straight to the staggering catastrophe that was World War I.)

Balakirev wanted a Russian "school" of music, as free from Western European influence as possible, and to that effort, he gathered around himself a handful of Russia's most talented young composers, a group which later became known simply as "The Five": Balakirev himself, Cesar Cui, Modest Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Alaexander Borodin. Balakirev mentored the other four composers for a time, although his influence waned as he tried to wield stronger and stronger influence over his charges, who were, perhaps, more talented than he. Balakirev was no second-tier musician himself, though, and if his music has been overshadowed and sometimes neglected, that's more the pity.

In Balakirev's Symphony No. 1, you can certainly hear the ideas of exotic color and singing lyricism that would shine forth so strongly in later Russian composers, with their symphonies of dramatic build, and their long melodies. This symphony is, in many ways, the start of a path that would lead to such works near to my heart as Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 5, and ultimately, Rachmaninov's Symphony No. 2. Here is the Symphony No. 1 by Mily Balakirev.


Next week: A visit to Italy. The Italians are not known for much of a symphonic tradition in the 1800s at all, being the most operatic of countries, but there were still symphonies being written, and we'll hear one!

Answers the Third! (The Instagram edition)

OK, here is another set of answers! All of these were posed by Instagram users over there. One thing that I find really interesting about social media is the way there is some overlap, but it's definitely not 100 percent. There are people who read this blog and with whom I'm Facebook friends, there are those with whom I'm FB friends and whom I follow on Twitter, there are those whom I follow on Twitter and Instagram...and there are those I only know on one particular platform. It's neat to see the interplay and the different "feels" of each particular arena...but generally, people tend to be nice and open-minded and of good cheer everywhere.

And now, the questions:

Thoughts on Abe Lincoln?

One of the greatest Presidents, quite clearly...and I wonder what he might have accomplished had he not been put in a position where the only real thing he was asked to accomplish was to keep things from falling apart completely. On the one hand, it took a man that great to keep things from utter collapse, but what might have happened had he not been tasked with preventing the most negative outcome? And more, what might he have accomplished had John Wilkes Booth not killed him?

I actually don't know a great deal about Lincoln, beyond the standard "American mythology" stuff. I suppose one day I should do some reading on him, because as with all things, the truth is more complicated than the myth. However, there's really no getting around the fact that he was in all likelihood the exact right man on the scene for the job he had to do.

Van Halen: Hagar or Roth?

It's been said many times that you can only be one or the other...but not by me, because I love both. In all honesty, I love both eras of the band, both the harder-rocking DLR era and the more poetic sound of the Sammy period. Now, if I choose to listen to Van Halen, I'm probably going to select something from the Sammy period, because song for song, my favorites tend to come from that time. But that preference is nowhere near strong enough for me to claim an overall preference for Sammy over DLR. They're both different. To me, it's like making PB&J with grape jelly, versus PB&J with strawberry jam. Different experiences with a lot in common...and both favorites of mine!

Heart: Ann or Nancy?

I can't pick one. Seriously, I can't. I see them as an inseparable unit. The two of them together accomplish something like alchemy. I don't think you can really have Heart without either one of them!

When did you start writing?

This is a great question, because I can read it a number of different ways. For instance, "When did I start writing" can mean, "When did I first get the sense that I might be good at telling stories?" For that version of the question, I'd say, very early on...maybe even as early as preschool. I honestly do not recall a time when I didn't like making up tales in my own head.

There are a lot of ways to tell stories, though, so when did I start to gravitate toward this thing called writing? Sometime in grade school, I suppose. The realization that I could take those letters and numbers that I knew and use them to spin tales came quickly, and I remember writing stories as early as first grade. My favorite assignments were "write your own story" assignments, and eventually I got to the point where I enjoyed writing stuff as a hobby.

So when, then, did I start thinking that writing might be a realistic career goal? Probably the late 1990s, when I started trying to write better and when I started earlier novels. None of those works went anywhere, although I did start piling up a stack of rejection slips for my short fiction, occasionally getting a "This is really good but I still can't use it right now" note scrawled by some editor in the margin. I've kept at it pretty much ever since, sometimes on an "off-and-on" basis. There were a couple of years in the mid-2000s when I barely wrote anything at all. Some of those years are a complete fog to me now, and I don't really miss that decade.

The final way to look at this question is, "When did I realize that writing was my calling/mission in life/the thing I'm best at doing and I should really just get about the business of doing it?" That was just a few years ago, actually, when I finally decided that it was time to actually write that story I'd been kicking around in my head for over ten years, the one about two sisters who happen to be Princesses and who happen to go out into space and have some adventures. I don't know if all writerly-types do this, but I certainly have been known to sit on story ideas for a long time, whether out of fear or some notion that maybe one day I'll be good enough to write that idea. I finally realized I was taking the utterly wrong approach, and all the nifty story ideas in the world are no good to anyone if they're still in my head when my own curtain comes down. I started writing Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title) in 2011, I think, so I might have "started writing" right about then. Or fifteen years earlier. Or ten to twenty years before that...or even earlier.

I think I've started writing a whole lot of times, to tell the truth.

More answers to come!

(And you know what? As of October 1, I won't have to refer to Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title) in that way anymore. I can't wait!)

Dispatches from the Fair, 2014 edition

As another August starts to wind down, another iteration of the Erie County Fair recedes into memory. The Fair is one of our favorite things, and a source of a lot of bright and happy memories, all the way back to the first time we attended, way back in, I think, summer 2001. Here are some photographic memories of our time at this year's Fair!

You know how the biggest flags around are at Perkins Restaurants? Not so much!

It's kind of hard to make out, but behind the flag, you can see the long wire that served as the infrastructure for this year's Big Event, when highwire artist Nik Wallenda (who made big news a couple years back traversing Niagara Falls on one of those) walked over the Fair. Sadly, this took place the day after our day at the Fair. Oh well, maybe next time!

As always, we spent some time at the animal barns (which are now less 'barns' than 'big metal buildings', which are frankly a lot nicer than the old buildings). I didn't take too many animal pictures this year, but I couldn't resist bunnies.

There's also a new building devoted to more general agricultural information and education, the chief attraction of which is this big machine. I don't know what this Big Machine does, but those tires are taller than me.

And did you ever wonder how much cut lumber can come out of a single tree trunk? Wonder no more! This display fascinated me.

No, I did not buy this Audrey Hepburn print. I did consider it, but I did not buy it.

I did, though, get one of these NiftyLamps! (That's not the official name. I don't actually know what these are called, but they're cool. You get to pick your shape, size, and colors. I got blue, yellow, and orange.)

We lingered in the horse barns:

And we met the Budweiser Clydesdales!

As well as their tried Dalmatian buddy.

Seeing the Clydesdales in action is always a thrill. They are gorgeous animals.

My favorite part of the Fair each year is the Creative Arts building, which is where all the things made and entered for judging are kept. Painting, sculpture, photography, clothing-making, quilting, the creation of place-settings -- it's all here, and I always spend the most time lingering in this wonderful place. Witness this amazing flower:

And then there was this creation, meant to illustrate the theme of Nik Wallenda's wirewalk over the Fair:

The judges' comments are always provided for the public to peruse as well, and I thought that their tone this year was a bit more, shall we say, douchey than usual.

My stock answer to comments like this is, "Wow, somebody open a window, man!"

The most amazing things at the Fair's Creative Arts building this year were the quilts. Look at some of this work. I am amazed by this stuff!

Those quilts are amazing. This is just a stunning, stunning blend of art and craft.

And so the sun set on the Fair, as it always does, and we left. See you next year, County Fair!

Oh, and my new NiftyLamp? It looks awesome in my library!

It's groovy, man.

Something for Thursday

A couple of selection from Jan AP Kaczmarek's score to Finding Neverland. I've loved this score since the film came out, and one thing that I really find cool about it is that it won the Academy Award for Best Score the very year after Howard Shore won it for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. So one year you have one of the biggest and greatest epic filmscores ever written get the Oscar, and the very next year, this quiet and contemplative chamber-music score got the honor.

The film came out in 2004, which is a year that has some associations for me, as does this music.

Answers the Second! (Politics edition)

As usual, I got some political questions this time out, and also as usual, I'm putting them below the fold, so if you don't want to go down my own personal liberal rabbit-hole, you don't have to! And remember, if you want to ask something, please do!

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

The other day would have been Roberto Clemente's 80th birthday, and in his honor, the Pittsburgh Pirates groundskeepers mowed his number into right field at PNC Park:

Clemente is the one sports figure whom I would most like to travel back in time and see in action, just once. Who is yours? (Assume you'd get to see yours do something representative of his or her greatness. You wouldn't be stuck going back to see Babe Ruth go 0-4 with two strikeouts and two week grounders to short.)

Help Fund a Farm

Let your children grow up to become farmers. There is a surplus of mediocrity in this nation and a deficit of bravery. Let your children grow up to be farmers. Let them be brave.

Jenna Woginrich is one of my favorite bloggers. She's a woman who was in the urban corporate rat-race until she apparently decided that she would much rather own her own farm, instead -- and that's been the focus of her life ever since. She does own her own farm now -- or at least she's paying a mortgage on her own farm, and she's been documenting all the various joys, discoveries, heartbreaks, thrills, and fears of such a life.

One of the more difficult things she writes about is her constantly troubled financial state, as she tries to make her relentlessly monthly payments while doing a job (as well as freelance writing) that is notorious for not paying much. Woginrich is very creative and crafty in this regard, inventing revenue streams out of whole cloth, and her latest one is a Kickstarter campaign whose main focus is a fiction book she has decided to write.

Cold Antler Farm is a small, livestock farm set into the side of a mountain in upstate New York. It is the home of author, blogger, and homesteader, Jenna Woginrich. There she runs the farm by herself, following her dream of a creative and feral life. Every day Jenna takes care of sheep, horses, dairy goats, pigs, poultry, gardens and bees while writing about it on her blog - Cold Antler Farm. Thousands of readers and hundreds of visitors have been a part of her story, reading along as she went from a corporate graphic designer with farm dreams to a full-time writer on her own piece of land.

Woginrich will write about her rural county in the early 1900's and the strange occurrences happening in the farmland around it. Birchthorn is a mystery and paranormal thriller. A widow and her small farm in the winter, her community of eccentrics and farmers alike, and the strange resurgance of an old legend coming back to life in a small town. And the best part about this story? YOU can be a part of it. Part of its creation process through an interactive blog where you get each chapter as it is written to comment and suggest storyline with, or you can pledge your way INTO the novel itself as a character!

The project has already received full funding, but it's still open for donations for a few more days (and I plan to donate myself before it ends). Woginrich isn't just doing the "Give me money and when the book's done you get a copy or a really nice copy or a really REALLY nice copy with an autograph" thing; she's actually inviting her benefactors into her creative process, which is something that intrigues me greatly. Her book won't just be crowd-funded, but in a sense, crowd-created. I'm highly intrigued to see how this works and what kind of book emerges on the other end. If any of this interests you, do check out her blog! (She has also written a number of books about her experiences with farming and the do-it-yourself life, which are well worth checking out.)

Answers the First!

OK, time to get started! As always, Roger is in the leadoff spot:

What do you think is your worst vice? Do you just live with it, or do you want to change?

Either my tendency to swear a lot, or my sweet tooth. Definitely one of those two things. I tend to have pretty good control over my swearing, although sometimes I'm reminded of this exchange from The Simpsons:

HOMER: Think you can cut out the casual swearing?
BART: Hell, no!

I do try to limit swearing in front of people to folks I know who won't be offended, because people are. But that's only for the biggies -- which mainly consists of, well, the F-bomb. Everything else -- damn, hell, shit -- those are all on the table. (Oh, there's one that I simply don't use at all, because it offends nearly every woman on the planet, and frankly, it's a pretty mean-spirited word.) Generally, though, swearing is probably my worst habit, outside of my tendency to eat ALL THE SWEET THINGS. I try to limit that as well, but it's all so good!

Oh, one more thing about swearing: I like to deploy fictional expletives as well, such as "Frakking", and I may try to add more elaborate ones in the future, like Ron Burgundy's "By the Hammer of Thor!" and "Great Odin's raven!" That's kind of fun. Or "Excrementum!" Generally I think that we give words too much power to offend or otherwise affect our emotional state. To me, just being in the presence of someone who is foul-mouthed isn't offensive in itself, but it can put on display a certain level of unsensitivity that can be boorish.

I do recall one day in high school when I swore without realizing a teacher was behind me. The teacher yelled at me, right there in the hallway, for the sin of swearing "in mixed company". Funny thing? The girls who were there were every bit as foul-mouthed as I was at that time.

And looking down Roger's list of questions this time 'round, I see that answer knocks off two! He also asked: How do you feel about swearing? Is it that they're "just words" or do words have the power to offend, hurt, et al? Do you have any euphemisms for curse words, such as Zounds or jeepers creepers?

Huzzah, a two-fer!

Josh asks: If you could be the captain of any starship in the Star Trek universe, which ship would it be and why?

I don't think I'd want to be Captain! Helmsman, though -- oh yeah, that would be cool. Or whoever it is that gets to fire the phasers and photon torpedoes. (Why is it in Star Trek II that Sulu, the helmsman, fires the phasers, but there's a whole separate "weapons console" where the photon torpedoes are launched? What's that about? Any why, on the Enterprise D, are the weapons fired by the one member of the bridge crew who is standing, and who is thus most likely to be thrown from their post when the shit starts gettin' real?!)

Anyway, yeah: Helmsman's where the action is. Now, which ship? Well, I'm generally of the view that the ships of the first six Trek movies are the niftiest. I just think they look great; the Star Trek The Motion Picture Enterprise, followed by the Enterprise A up to Star Trek VI, is my favorite Enterprise at all. The Enterprise D, from The Next Generation, is strange in that it looks fantastic from some angles but awful from others, and the Enterprise E is just too warshippy for me. It looks like the Enterprise A made love to a Star Destroyer from Star Wars, and their union produced the Enterprise E.

For this question, though, the Enterprise is a pretty obvious answer. I'd pick either the Reliant, or that tough little underrated ship from Deep Space Nine, the Defiant.

"Warp Nine, Mr. Sedinger!"
"Aye, Captain!"

Yeah, that would be pretty fun.

More to come, and feel free to ask questions still!

Sentential Links

Linkage.

:: But now I understand why people are nostalgic. It’s your brain trying to express a moment, and recognizing that the only people who would ever truly get what you’re trying to express were the ones who were there, and they already know.

:: I got in trouble at Graceland, basically, because I wanted to read Elvis’ marginalia. (Wow...why have it on display if you're going to discourage people reading something Elvis scrawled in a book?)

:: Police militarization was a mistake. You can argue that perhaps we didn't know that at the time. No one knew in 1990 that crime was about to begin a dramatic long-term decline, and no one knew in 2001 that domestic terrorism would never become a serious threat. But we know now. There's no longer even a thin excuse for arming our police forces this way.

:: You might think that Dolly is being a dolt about how day, night, and the various bodies in our solar system relate to each other, but she’s actually 100% right: it’s two in the afternoon and the “dark” is the construction paper Mommy and Daddy have used to block all the windows in the Keane Kompound, punishing the children for some minor act of disobedience with simulated eternal night. Sorry, PJ, but you won’t get to see the sun again until your older siblings show some halfway convincing repentance.

:: Chad Scott. What did you do to the world? Was this a joke? Some plot to punish people? Were you sitting at home in your rat cage and your roommate said, “Gee, what do you want to do tonight, Chad?” and you respond with, “The same thing we do every night, Pinky, try to kill the entire population of the world with stench and bad ideas.” (I wasn’t a fan.) First of all, I’m very open-minded when it comes to flavor combinations and food and trying new things … I sort of have to be in my line of work. But all of my senses were assaulted, here. For this, I will never forgive Mr. Chad Scott. - See more at: http://www.hobotrashcan.com/2014/08/14/bacon-and-legs-cappuccino-chips-and-the-seven-depths-of-hell/#sthash.MUj5z9G0.dpuf (Yeah. Under no circumstances will I subject myself to this.)

:: So I'm going to help Marvel find it's "next Guardians," the C and D characters who will rack of a few hundred million at the box office.

And to make it a challenge, I'm only going to use characters who've starred in Marvel Premiere and Marvel Spotlight, because that's a key breeding ground for losers.

Let's start with this guy... (Hmmmm. Maybe...just maybe....)

:: I hate writing tributes. And this year it seems I’ve had to write more than ever. Some are more personal, some are bigger stars than others, but they all chip away at the soul.

:: I like to think that before Robin Williams passed from this world altogether, bound for whatever lies ahead for all of us in that undiscovered country, he was granted a brief moment to pause and look back and see how many of us have been standing on our desks this week in solidarity and affection for our fallen captain. I hope the sight made him smile. (Like Jason, I have problems with Dead Poets Society, but in terms of sheer imagery, the standing-on-the-desks is so iconic that it really seems the best way to say farewell to a deeply talented, and apparently deeply troubled, man.)

More next week!

Sunday Burst!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: 25 GIFs that illustrate mathematics concepts. Some of these are indeed a bit clarifying, but there are a few others that still make no sense to me. But then, I haven't grappled with a lot of these concepts since I was in school many moons ago.

(On that last one, those kids better be using a wipeable marker.)

:: If you want proof that a wonderful blog post can be written about anything, here's a wonderful blog post about The Simpsons's Ralph Wiggum.

One of the most endearing parts of Ralph’s backstory is how supportive and warm his home life is. Anyone who fits in that badly at school deserves a loving set of parents. They don’t always get it.

His father, Chief Wiggum, is usually depicted as Ralph with a nightstick and a gun (which is part of what makes Chief Wiggum ridiculous while Ralph remains lovable; Ralph has no actual power to abuse), and regularly takes his son out on patrol with him. He’s happy to tolerate Ralph’s quirks (Wiggle Puppy — the character Ralph inhabits when he drops to all fours, runs around in a circle, and barks — comes foremost to mind) and quick to dispense fatherly advice when Ralph comes to him with girl problems. “A woman’s a lot like a nut, son,” Chief Wiggum says, before pulling out his gun and shooting a walnut open in frustration.

But Ralph is more than Chief Wiggum minus power. Ralph’s goodness is not the absence of malice. Ralph’s goodness is pure and unself-conscious. “Was President Lincoln okay?” he asks Ms. Hoover worriedly after learning of the Ford Theater assassination. It’s the last day of school, and everyone else has already left for the summer. Ralph’s not leaving until he makes sure that President Lincoln is doing all right.

Ms. Hoover does the only thing. “He was fine.”

Ralph can go home after that. No one will suffer alone as long as Ralph is around.

:: I freely admit to having a high tolerance for weird stuff, and even with weird stuff I don't like, I at least respect the impulse to just be weird, because the world usually needs more weirdness. But once in a while I encounter something that's just too out there, something that makes me say, "Whoa there, folks. Let's rein it in a bit. You've gone too far around the bend, beyond the borders of Weirdville, and into the middle of Crazytown."

Case in point: Asian Nazi cosplay.

Yeah. That's just...not right.

More next week!

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!!

This was my celebratory treat last evening: a wee bit o'single malt Scotch! Why, you ask? Because I completed the edits on Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title). There will still be one more round of proofreading, but no more major editing. The body of the book is now in what will be its final form, minus typographical screwups that I haven't yet rooted out.

I enjoyed this part of the process immensely, and I found that a big help was actually having already written two drafts of the second book in this series. I know my characters better now, so I was able to fine-tune the characterizations in Book I to bring them more in line with the way I've come to know them through Book II. That's big, and I'd generally advise anyone writing a series to get at least through their second book before they make a book push to get the first one out in the world.

I was also able to add in some material here and there, mostly little details, that anticipate the second book (as well as future books). This is stuff that someone reading Book I for the first time won't notice, but maybe when they re-read Book I after reading subsequent volumes, they'll see it. It's not unlike the opening scene of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, in which Hagrid shows up on a motorcycle that he borrowed from "young Sirius Black". I'll wager nobody reading that book the first time even so much as filed that name away for future reference, but it's a nice little Easter egg for people who go back and look, and it's those kinds of details that add up to a well-considered world.

One thing that makes me a bit wary is the fact that once this book is out there, it's out there. The details in the book are set, which is slightly daunting. My approach to world-building is to toss stuff in as needed. I don't do a whole lot of mapmaking and world-building work before I start actual writing; my approach is "Huh, I need a mountain there, so plop! There's now a mountain there." And then I go back when editing and justify the mountain's presence. In a lot of ways, though, once the first book is out, I effectively rule out the possibility of adding mountains to certain places. Mostly this won't be a problem, although there are a couple of names in the book that I've changed literally every time I've made a round of edits, because I just haven't hit on the exact right name for that person or thing just yet. Once the book is out, though, that's it: the name is the name. I wonder if Tolkien struggled with that: "God, I hate the name 'Baggins', but the book's out, so it's Baggins all the way out now."

But anyway! The work goes on. What's left to do? Lots!

-Formatting
-Setting up my Official Author Site
-Completing the Book Trailer (this, by the way, will be the vehicle by which the Actual Title is unveiled)
-Creating the cover
-Uploading files to CreateSpace
-Ordering proof copies
-Proofing (I think I'll literally read the book backwards for this)
-Finalizing copy
-Creating and ordering author business cards
-Formatting for Kindle release
-Ordering my copies
-Releasing the book into the wild
-Sitting nervously while people read the bloody thing I've been kvetching about for years

Wow...I'm starting to feel like Prince Humperdinck!


Or like Willy Wonka:


Of course, the true rulers of the world still keep me in my place:

Sigh.

(Cat-who-doesn't-give-a-shit via Cal.)

Stay on target...stay on target....

I'm almost there, folks. Almost there. Maybe today, and certainly this weekend.

Another step in my Plan For World Domination, almost off the checklist!

(Answers to Ask Me Anything queries will start either tomorrow or Monday.)

Something for Thursday

Another uber-depressing news week, huh? Well, sometimes you have to stare into the void and laugh. Here's a favorite old comedy bit that I found myself thinking about the other day (likely because this guy came on my radar at the same time that Robin Williams did, when I was in second grade). Here's Steve Martin with "King Tut".

A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter

Not so random, really, given this week's news. What are your favorite Robin Williams and/or Lauren Bacall performances? (Mine: Good Will Hunting and To Have and Have Not, respectively.)

(A corollary)

As regards the next post down below this one, I'll be posting sporadically for the rest of this week...but Ask Me Anything! is still coming, so get some questions in, folks! I'll start doing those next week.

Holding Pattern Delta

OK, you know that thing I do when I get really deep into a writing project and new content here slows to a trickle?

Yeah....

I'll have new stuff here and there, but for the most part, I've got edits to finish on this book. I'm within 100 pages of the end, and then it's formatting time. Man, this book-stuff is almost like a job!

Carpe diem

Then you may take me to the Fair...(as long as you Ask Me Anything!)

Today the Family and I are going to the County Fair, so that's that. Meantime, don't forget to Ask Me Anything!

Instaweeks!

Time to photographically document some of the recent doings (when I haven't been all-editing, all-the-time)!

A while back I happened to drive by this odd-looking cookie-cutter housing development near the University At Buffalo. Places like this always look odd to me.

Here in Buffalo, one of our major landmarks for navigating people around our system of expressways is a big blue water tower near the junction of I-90 and I-290. Yes, it really is a big blue water tower. That's how we describe it: "Get off the 90 at the big blue water tower."

The local "Business Park" ain't doin' too much business....

A couple weeks ago the Sunday newspaper was relentlessly depressing. I thought it was just me, maybe, but then on his teevee show, John Oliver commented that the entire preceding week's news had been, in his words, "f***ing depressing". So it wasn't just me.

Chicken on skewers!

Lettuce wraps, a la PF Chang's!

Barbecue chicken! (This stuff turned out awesome. I've struggled at times with chicken on the grill, but I think I'm finally figuring it out.)

Coffee!

I continue to be sad that I can't get my beloved Planters Cheez Ballz. However, there are avenues to at least partially scratch that itch....

The Wife made meatballs, and they were awesome (and gluten-free)!

This instructional graphic on a hand dryer in a restaurant does not make sense to me. It's like it's telling you to operate it with your brain, or something.

Sometimes we get visitors, like my parents' cat.

Lester visits me in my library.

How's that song go? "I talk to the trees, but they don't listen to me...."

Summer of Spiders?

And editing. Lots of editing. Editing at home....

Editing at work....

Always, always editing.

In the end, I've been generally feeling smug....

...because it was really a pretty great July.