Happy Birthday, My Love

Today is The Wife's birthday!

Here is my annual repost of memories, thoughts, and observations on how she makes my life so much better than it deserves to be...but first, this past year has had a number of new challenges and opportunities and struggles and victories. She has been in restaurant management going all the way back to when we started dating, when she was a part-time shift manager at Pizza Hut while in college. Although she was good at the job and was successful everywhere she worked, it's become clear over the last few years that restaurants aren't where she needs to be moving forward. The business takes a lot out of you, and unless you're really dedicated to restaurants, you inevitably reach a time when you realize how many opportunities you've seen go by as you work 50-plus hour weeks and nearly every single weekend. Well, she finally escaped and is now in a new job. There was a bit of tension as the time between the restaurant gig and the new gig stretched into the months-long timeframe, but we got through it and now there's nowhere to go but up.

And now, the List!



















1. Her hand fits perfectly into mine, as though our hands were fit for each other.

1a. That said, there's a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.

2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.

2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.

3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we'll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, "K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died." (One of the movie's running gags is Ken's stuttering.)

4. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but I've converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.

5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)

6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she'd ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.

7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter's birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a "Volcano Cake". Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, "Remember the Volcano Cake?"

8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp's been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.

9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn't even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don't think so. A girl's got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?

9a. She's not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.


10. She insisted on breastfeeding both The Daughter and Little Quinn, which in both cases required lots of pumping. Especially in Little Quinn's case, since he was never able to eat by mouth. Every drop of breastmilk that entered his body went in via the G-tube, so for as long as her production held up, she pumped six times a day.

11. I'll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.

12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn't question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn't have happened.)

13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we'd eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey's Anatomy.

14. "Our" first teevee show was LA Law.

15. Subsequent teevee shows of "ours" included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.

16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were "Jarod and Miss Parker". People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren't allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.

17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.

18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn't home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that's what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig's Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.

19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.

20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.

21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! - but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn't start wearing overalls together until we'd been dating for about a year.

22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog's launch.

23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife's idea. I'm still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.

24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.

25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.

25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.














26. She loves to laugh, particularly at my expense. She is convinced I don't think she's funny, but that's just not the case.

27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.

28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight -- I tan, whereas The Wife burns.

29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.

30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.

31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.

32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice's output wasn't interesting her much anymore. Since then she's read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I've plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.

33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.

34. She prefers her KFC "extra crispy", where I'm an "Original Recipe" guy.

35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin' in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.

36. For some reason we didn't take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points...but lately I really wish we'd have addressed that at the time.

37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston's Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don't laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other's shoulders.

38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we'd meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn't there. Well, duh! I said "dinner", not "lunch". Except, remember, she's a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I've converted her since then. Whew!

39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.

40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we've reversed that.

41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I'd look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.

42. Foods I've tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don't recall.

43. She loves George Carlin.

44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.

45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn't complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.

46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn't see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.

47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we'd get there eventually. She just picked the "eventually".

48. She picked The Daughter's first name, so I got to pick her middle name.

48a. And now, this:


49. Since Thanksgiving Break at college was only a four day weekend, I didn't go home for T-giving my junior year; instead, I spent the weekend with her. We went to see her extended family out in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is on the other side of the state. Since she has family over there on both sides of the family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners that day. Some part of me is still full from those two meals.

50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.

51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.

52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.

53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba's life. His kidneys were in failure.

54. Great gifts she's bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.

55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear "Bertrand", after philosopher Bertrand Russell.

56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.

57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she's never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn't bug me much at all. I'm pretty cool to baseball myself now.

58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven't been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.

59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I'm terrified of those things.

60. Why don't we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?

61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had "The Discussion". Any guy who's ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what "The Discussion" is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the "next step". Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney's to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn't have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I'll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!

62. The next day, she proposed to me.

63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn't find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney's spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.

64. I don't remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person's birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.

65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there's one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the "single" way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, "Yeah, you're telling all the women that you're available." I replied, "Yeah, and I'm beating them off with a stick."

66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.

66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.


66b. We returned two years later.


67. It always bugged her mother that she saw Niagara Falls before her mother did. Later we took her mother to Niagara when she was out for a visit.

68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.

69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.

70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt's. It's pronounced "la-BATS", but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it "LAB-uhts", which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a "LAB-uhts".

71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they're sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I'd bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, "Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!")

72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.

73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.

74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.

75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.

76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn't had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to "eating some cheesy goodness". Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, "That wasn't really cheesy goodness."

77. She likes eggs over-easy. I'm not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she's getting over being sick.

78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.

78a. I'm much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.

79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.

80. She only swears when she's really annoyed.

81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.

82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.

83. Before that she experimented with red. I've tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.

84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.

85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.

86. I'm not sure there's a variety of seafood she dislikes.

87. I love the way she looks when she's just come home from work and changed into her PJ's.

88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.

89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don't know why.

90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don't see it, myself, but you can't argue these things.

91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.

92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.

93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I've messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.

94. I'm always game for a pie in the face, but I'm pretty sure nobody pies me like she does. Or better.






95. I know I've found the perfect girl for me when she describes our Thanksgiving in 2006 as being perfect because, after dinner, we went to see Casino Royale. In her words: "We had a big turkey dinner, and then we watched James Bond kill people."

96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.

96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown's delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.

97. One time when we were working out at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn't recognize me at first.

97a. She loves lilacs.


98. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but I can't bear it when she cries. It kills me inside. But I'm trying to get better at this, since as Gandalf said, "Not all tears are an evil."

99. I wish we were living lives that didn't include so many tears.

100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.

101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.

102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.

103. She...oh, I guess that's where I need to stop. I love you, honey!

Wine and Wind: A Weekend

(This is a "What We Did On Our Vacation" post, with lots of linkage to businesses we frequented and liked. Of course, this being WNY, it's followed by a commentary on some suddenly shitty weather.)

So this weekend was our third annual trek to the Finger Lakes for the "Grapehounds Winter Hounds" event. Grapehounds is a greyhound group that organizes a big meet-up every summer that revolves around touring Finger Lakes wineries, and the last few years they've added a late February version called "Winter Hounds". It's a low-key event where you show up with your hound, hang out with other owners, compare notes on how weird greyhounds are, and then go out to visit some wineries.

(For those not up on their NY geography, the Finger Lakes are a series of eleven long and narrow lakes in the middle of the state. They were formed when deep valleys gouged out by retreating glaciers filled with water, and the biggest of the lakes are sufficiently long and deep to create their own microclimate, which--combined with soil quality--is excellent for grape-growing, which makes the region one of the country's best for winemaking. It's also a region of lakes and streams and forests and waterfalls and gorges and Ithaca is there and quite frankly, if there's one place on earth where my soul resides, it might well be the Fingerlakes Region of New York. And even though it's not actually part of that region, I throw in Letchworth State Park, because it's of a similar geological claim and it's just west of Conesus Lake, the westernmost of the lakes.)

So we arrived at the hotel in Geneva, NY on Friday night, a little later than we'd wanted but hey, The Wife couldn't take off the entire day from her new job* yet, so there we were. A quick dinner stop at Livingston County Pizza Company in Avon, NY (a little miracle of a place randomly located in this really little town 20 miles south of Rochester) left us happy, and we got to the hotel and settled in nicely. A minor room-booking snafu resulted in us being on the fifth floor. We were initially worried as to how The Dee-oh-gee would handle the elevator, but even though it confused him a little, he was fine with it.


Our room was a little odd with some mismatched furniture--the hotel is gearing up for renovation, and I wonder sometimes if hotels don't keep a little-less-than-perfect room or two open just on the off chance it turns out they screwed up, which they did in our case. The room was perfectly fine, and it had this view, which helps.


After breakfast at Water Street Cafe (gluten-free breakfast sandwiches, huzzah!), we spent Saturday driving down the eastern shore of Seneca Lake (the largest of the Finger Lakes), where we stopped at two wineries we had discovered on previous trips and liked very much: Seneca Shore Wine Cellars and Fruit Yard Winery. We strongly recommend these. In addition to many wonderful (and non-pretentious) wines, Seneca Shore is a "medieval themed" place. You go inside (it's a steel-sided barn from the outside, but don't let that fool you) and everything is castles and tapestries and dragons, in addition to the wine. Fruit Yard Winery, by contrast, is a red-sided farm-house looking place, low-ceilinged and cozy inside. They have a lot of good grape wines, but they also specialize in non-grape wines, so if cranberry or peach or cherry wine sound good to you (they do to us!), check it out.

After a lunch stop in Watkins Glen at the Glen Mountain Market (a good halfway point, and they make gluten-free sandwiches with sufficiently competent handling that The Wife has not had any cross-contamination issues in the two times we've been there), we started back up the eastern shore for stops at two more wineries. First was Atwater Vineyards, where we personally erred in choosing the "dry and semi-dry" flights to taste from. (A flight is a group of tastings; Atwater has several flights available of pre-selected wines, and you choose base on your taste). I don't know why we did this, as both The Wife and I tend to prefer sweeter wines. So we probably owe the Atwater folks another stop next year for their other products. We did, though, like their sparkling "Bubble Riesling" a good deal! We bought two bottles and already drank one.

By the way, here's the view of Seneca Lake from Atwater Vineyards's parking lot. They have a great location.




Our next stop was a really far-out kind of place. It's called the Rasta Ranch, and this is what it looks like:


It's a weathered old barn. Driving up the driveway, you pass a tree hung with birdfeeders carved from old gourds. With a name like Rasta Ranch, you expect a place with a vibe of "What if a couple of old Woodstock vets decided to settle in the Finger Lakes and make wine," and sure enough, that's what this is. There's wine inside and lots of it, along with a whole lot of 1960s-era merchandise and decor. Tie-dye clothes, bohemian-style clothing, incense, hand-made mugs, a crate with old LPs of 60s music, and so on. The whole place is incredibly trippy. Naturally, we loved it.

And The Dee-oh-gee checked himself out in the mirror!


I think he approved of himself.

After the Rasta Ranch, we hung a right and left the Seneca Lake valley for the Cayuga Lake valley. (This is not a long drive, just a few miles. It's never that long of a drive from one Finger Lake to the next.) Here we made a stop to walk The Dee-oh-gee at Taughannock Falls State Park, one of our favorite locations, which is always amazing to see, whether it's speckled by the colors of autumn or shrouded in the ice of winter:






And then we made two final stops: the Finger Lakes Cider House, which obviously specializes in hard cider and is another newly-discovered favorite that we've frequented several times in recent years), and in a new stop, the Muranda Cheese Company, which obviously makes wonderful cheese. We had a great time there (five bucks gets you tastings of a dozen cheeses!), and from there it was back to Geneva, for one more new discovery. There used to be a gluten-free restaurant in Geneva that we liked a great deal, but it has since closed, sadly enough. But there's a new place called FLX Fry Bird, whose entire menu is gluten free (excepting a couple of bread options). We got fried chicken and poutine and, well, wow.




So that was Saturday. The next morning we decided to try and get back home to Buffalo as early as possible, because the weather was supposed to take a nasty turn. Something about record-setting low-pressure above the Great Lakes was to bring about some of the worst winds the entire region has seen in years, winds that would gather speed as they ripped up the length of Lake Erie to pound our region. And that's pretty much exactly what happened. As I write this on Monday morning (I'm taking one last day off from work), we still have power at Casa Jaquandor, but over 40,000 people in the Buffalo region are currently powerless due to fallen limbs and toppled trees and the like. There are many videos online of traffic signals dangling or in one case literally falling to the ground and shattering. At times the wind outside yesterday sounded like a freight train barreling by at high speed, and while the winds have slackened somewhat this morning, it's still very breezy out with gusts in the upper-40mph range. Peak gusts yesterday topped out at 74mph, which is not unheard-of around here, but it's very abnormal. We would have liked to have made a more leisurely trek home yesterday, but the weather forecast seemed to make haste a wiser approach, and I've no regrets on that score. The weather forecasters seem to have nailed this one.

In other local news, the most dramatic thing to happen is perhaps the breaking of the Lake Erie ice boom. This is a contraption of logs and chains that is deployed each fall across the place where Lake Erie outflows into the Niagara River. This barrier keeps large chunks of ice from flowing downstream, where it can cause flooding issues and also damage the intakes at the power plants that use the Niagara's flow to turn the turbines that run the generators. Some old-timers even speculate that the ice boom, by virtue of damming up ice and artificially keeping the Buffalo end of Lake Erie colder longer, is the culprit behind this region's notably crappy spring seasons. I don't know the truth of that, but yesterday the winds were sufficient to break the boom, sending ice downstream very rapidly. The winds also blew the ice-filled water so hard that the ice actually jumped the seawalls, resulting in scenes captured most dramatically by this fellow from Fort Erie, Ontario (which is just across the river from Buffalo). Warning: this guy talks a lot through his video and he swears constantly, so you might want to dial down the volume. The visual is the important thing, anyway.


Today in Buffalo and Erie County, most of the schools are closed as they assess buildings for damage or await power restoration. As of this morning there appear to have been no deaths from this storm, but everything is a mess and I imagine there are a lot of jangled nerves around the area as well. We'll get through, of course. We always do. The troubling thought is that winter isn't over yet....

And that'll do for the Weekend Wrap-up! One final pictorial testimonial from our trip: the Dee-oh-gee rarely falls asleep in the car, but after a full day-and-a-half of adventure, here's how he spent yesterday's couple hour drive back home:


Ayup. I'm feelin' you, buddy.

* Yes, The Wife has finally left the restaurant management world, and after years of having to creatively cram things we wanted to do into that schedule and picking-and-choosing which few things we could do of all the things we wanted  to do, and years of her being increasingly tired because the restaurant business will go on insisting on 50+ hour work weeks until a literal Act of Congress makes them knock that shit off, we finally feel like we have a degree of our lives back.

Bad Joke Friday

(If you don't get the joke, there's a song....)

Something for Thursday

Returning to our ongoing song challenge, it's time for A Song I Never Tire Of. Here's one that I heard off and on for years on various oldies and classic rock radio stations, but never all that much...until two years ago when the song showed up prominently in the opening scene of Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 2. The song's main story is kind of quaint and old fashioned and maybe even a bit problematic--why would she spend her life pining for a man who can never love her back because "his life, his lover, his lady" is the sea? Heavens, girl, drop his ass and find someone whose head isn't full of Horatio Hornblower bullshit--but still, the song is incredibly catchy, and its bridge section is one of the best ever. Here is Looking Glass with "Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)".

Recent Dispatches from Dogland

Presented without comment, here are some of the recent canine-related goings-on at Casa Jaquandor....

Tone Poem Tuesday

Jacques Offenbach might well have been the French equivalent of Franz von Suppe and, later on, Vienna's Strauss family in that he wrote a great deal of very pleasing music of high energy which was often infused with the rhythms and vibrancy of the dance. His most famous work is likely his operetta Orpheus in the Underworld, a scintillating operetta indeed whose tuneful and wonderfully sparkling overture is full of singing melodies that culminate in one of the most famous melodies of all time, the brassy Can-can. Here is that very overture, performed quite wonderfully by a youth orchestra I had never heard of before, the Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra. They have a lot of neat performances available on YouTube, quite a few of which I recommend seeking out.

And now, Jacques Offenbach.

Something for Thursday

Seeing as how Valentine's Day is falling on a Thursday, I'll set aside the song challenge for one week in favor of some love songs, because who doesn't want to hear a few love songs, right?

Today in Good Dogs

Meet Rudy.

Note Rudy's happy grin after he makes it to the end of the obstacle course.

Rudy is a good dog.

Tone Poem Tuesday

When in doubt, there are always Mozart and Beethoven.

In 1822 Karl Friedrich Hensler, a Vienna dramatist and theater manager, was opening a rebuilt venue called the Theater in der Josefstadt, which still stands and is apparently now the oldest operating theater in Vienna. For the theater's reopening, Hensler commissioned a work by Ludwig van Beethoven. The great composer had recently been studying the music of Bach and Handel, and with those sorts of Baroque fugues and sounds in his heart, he displayed their influence in this wonderful concert overture. It's hard not to listen to the fanfare passage a few minutes in, with its accompanying runs in the bassoons, and not think of things like Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks. But shortly after we're right back in the 19th century, with Beethoven's characteristic sense of forward motion. It's a fine, fine piece, and how fitting that a theater which had this work performed at its opening almost two hundred years ago is still operating today.

Here is Beethoven's Consecration of the House.

Bad Advice Friday

Not a joke, but it's still kind of funny (and I do not recommend doing this):

Something for Thursday

Next up on our ongoing Song Challenge (details here) is a song that makes me sad. Well, I can't really think of too many of those, but this song from the Broadway show Camelot is terribly, terribly sad. It comes near the end, when Lancelot and Guinevere, having pursued their love affair after trying not to, have only seen their entire worlds collapse into ruin and a war that will destroy Camelot and everything King Arthur tried to build. It's an achingly beautiful song that seems hopeful at first, only to conclude that their love brought about disaster.

Here, for comparison, are two renditions. First Julie Andrews from the Original Cast recording:


And here are Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero from the soundtrack to the film version of the show:

Tone Poem Tuesday

Jean Sibelius is a composer with whom I am in constant need of discovery. His work is sometimes warm and melodic and fully Romantic, but other times there is an austerity to his music, a certain emotional coolness and introspection that is sometimes difficult to get a handle on. Sibelius seems to be fond of repetition of sounds and musical figures, which can create a dreamy quality in his music. This is an example of the latter voice of Sibelius: no Finlandia-esque fireworks are on display here, just a sense of meditative motion as Sibelius musically describes (or so he says) a carriage ride in the darkness, followed by the arrival of sunrise.

Here is Jean Sibelius's Night Ride and Sunrise.

And now, a morning sky

Taken yesterday at Knox Farm State Park, where I was finally able to take the Dee-oh-gee for his nature walk after missing out for a few Sundays because of very cold weather.


Minutes later the sun came out.

Something for Thursday

This week for the ongoing Song Challenge we have A song that makes me happy. Here's one of my all-time go-to songs for getting out of a bad mood, "Dreams" by Van Halen!

Something for Thursday

If my records are correct, this week our Song Challenge is for A song about drugs or alcohol. Well, this one isn't directly about those things, but it does reference them in describing the various denizens of a particular bar.

Yes, here is "Piano Man" by Billy Joel.

Tone Poem Tuesday

Want to listen to one of the great orchestral showpieces of all time? Sure you do! Here's Rimsky-Korsakov's Cariccio Espagnol. And you can't go wrong with the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

A toast to Edgar A

Today is Edgar Allan Poe's birthday.

It's pure coincidence, of course, but a happy one nonetheless, that today I also managed to get the ebook of The Chilling Killing Wind finally available. Poe's poem Annabel Lee is central to this book's story, after all. Poe has been one of my favorite poets ever since high school. There's just no getting over him.

Something for Thursday

So this week in our ongoing Music Challenge brings us to Entry Seven: A song to drive to. There's a lot of great driving music out there, but I always find that the James Bond movies provide a virtual encyclopedia of music that you can play while driving. Even moreso if you're someplace where you're able to drive fast.

Here's one of the series's two purely instrumental themes, and one of my absolute favorite movie themes of all time. And, I might add, incredibly fun to blast while driving. It's the theme from On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Tone Poem Tuesday

Here's something interesting, not for how good it is but rather how good it isn't. This concert overture, creatively titled by its composer "Concert Overture #1," is a student work that makes for a nice and pleasant listen, but that's about it. There's no hint at all here of greatness to come from the composer, none of deeper musical thought at work. If this piece represented the height of its composer's powers, that composer would be a forgotten name today.

However, this particular composer turned out to be a bit of a late-bloomer, and by the time his true abilities actually did manifest themselves, this composer ended up not only being one of the immortal greats of music, but the dominant force of Western artistic life in the second half of the 19th century. Not bad for a late-blooming Richard Wagner, eh?

Here's Wagner's Concert Overture No. 1. It's a pleasant-enough work with some Beethovenian influence, and not a hint of Rheingold or Tristan und Isolde to be found.

Meanwhile...

...here's what happens when your doggo is convinced that you have something yummy that he would enjoy.

The Watch

So on Christmas Eve we were all gathered in my parents' living room, opening gifts. I went to open one particular box and I heard my sister say to my mother, "Oh look, he's opening it." So I knew that there was something of note therein.

What it was, was a pocket watch.


I took it out and admired it. It's clearly an antique, and I was already fascinated by it. I own one other antique pocket watch, and two that aren't antiques that I got from a "steampunk" dealer at a local con. This one is bigger than the antique watch I already own, and it's a hefty one too. I could tell that at some point it was lovingly restored. I figured that my sister, who has an eye for such things and does a lot of antiquing, had spotted it in some emporium or curio shoppe someplace...or that maybe my mother spotted it somewhere.

Little did I know that it belonged to my grandfather.

My father's father was a bricklayer by trade, and he fought in World War I. Apparently he joined the war effort as a way of getting out of his tiny town in the hills of Southwestern Pennsylvania, where his only option for the future would have been to work in the coal mines. I know very little about him save those things, and that he dealt with a broken window in their house by not replacing the window but by building a fireplace. I never knew him. He died in 1949, when my father was only ten, twenty-two years before I was to come along. (I never knew my maternal grandfather, either, and both of my grandmothers died the winter of 1986-87, so I am to this day bewildered by people who live into their adulthood and beyond with multiple grandparents alive.)

I have no idea how Grandpa Sedinger (what would I have called him?) met Grammy (that's what we called my father's mother; my mother's mother was Gramma) or how they courted or when they married. I have no idea how they came to live in a brick house in Pittsburgh, or much of anything else. Nor did I know, until the moment I took it out of the box, that he had owned a pocket watch by the Hamilton Watch Company. But as soon as I learned of the watch's heritage, I couldn't help staring at it just a few moments longer. An old thing, that watch, and it spent however many years in the pocket of a man I never knew but whose influence I must have felt daily.

I don't carry that watch with me--it's too much of a treasure, really. (A bit of an irony, that, given that a common feature of many of the pairs of overalls I own is a pocket just for pocket watches and a slot for the chain and fob.) It hangs on my desk, ticking away the hours, a comforting presence as I write. My mother picked up a neat stand for it on one of her trips to Europe (Florence, Italy, this time), and there it rests. Funny thing, time--a device used to measure it marks it in more ways than just its comforting ticking.

Nice to meet you, Grandpa.

Something for Thursday

Another week, another song in the challenge! This week it's A Song That Makes You Want To Dance, and while I almost went with Donna Summer and "Last Dance", I'll go instead with the always-wonderful Sam Cooke. We're "Twistin' the Night Away"!

Tone Poem Tuesday

Last night we finally watched this year's New Years From Vienna concert, a new year tradition of mine that dates back to high school when I discovered this wonderful annual program on PBS. We used to watch it on New Years Night, but now we wait a day or two until it becomes available for streaming on the PBS website and then watch it in the comfort of our own bed, usually with an open bottle of something sparkling. (This year it was hard cider, but sparkling is a must.)

Vienna's New Years concert always features the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra performing works by the Strauss family, with occasional pieces by other contemporary composers of light music. The telecast always features brief looks at Viennese history and art and architecture, and each year at least two or three of the performed works accompany a performance by dancers from the Vienna Ballet. If you've never seen it, I can't recommend it highly enough: it's always a bit of music effervescence to bring in the New Year.

This piece, the overture to Johann Strauss's operetta The Gypsy Baron, opened this year's program. Now, this performance is actually from the 1992 concert, hence the more dated appearance. Today's VPO is noticeably younger and also less male than the VPO of yore, but this music still runs through the blood of Vienna. Here, from 1992, is The Gypsy Baron overture. (Note, also, conductor Carlos Kleiber's somewhat wild range of movement!)

On books, and joy, and hoarding, and having too many books, and what to do with the too many books you have, and....

I recently decided to re-read a book that I first read back in 1995 when it first came out, a wonderful volume by journalist Nicholas Basbanes called A Gentle Madness. Subtitled Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for Books, Basbanes traces the long and often delightfully anecdotal history of book collecting and book collectors themselves, from early collectors to those of today (well, those of twenty-some years ago). Such collectors are often odd people driven by specific desires, some are shady characters indeed (witness the case of one Haven O'More), and some are outright criminals (witness the case of Stephen Blumberg, one of history's greatest book thieves, and whose 1990 arrest in Ottumwa, Iowa, had a bit of local interest to me given that I was in college in that same state at the time).

My Goodreads review of Basbanes's book is here, but a bit of coincidental happenstance led to my finishing my re-read of A Gentle Madness during a weekend during which there was quite a bit of online controversy regarding the advice of a "decluttering" guru named Marie Kondo, who apparently counseled people to get rid of books that didn't "bring them joy". (I'm not sure if this came out via a Netflix series Kondo is hosting, or an article, or what. I didn't pay that much attention to the particulars.) Here's an article that argues the counterpoint to Kondo's advice:

The metric of objects only “sparking joy” is deeply problematic when applied to books. The definition of joy (for the many people yelling at me on Twitter, who appear to have Konmari’d their dictionaries) is: “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness, a thing that causes joy, success or satisfaction.” This is a ludicrous suggestion for books. Literature does not exist only to provoke feelings of happiness or to placate us with its pleasure; art should also challenge and perturb us.

We live in a frantic, goal-obsessed, myopic time. Everything undertaken has to have a purpose, outcome or a destination, or it’s invalid. But art doesn’t care a noodle about your Apple watch, your fitness goals, active lifestyle, right swipes, career and surrender on black pudding. Art will be around far longer than Kondo’s books remain in print. Art exists on its own terms and untidy timeline.

Now, I don't particularly have a dog in this fight one way or the other. If you love books and want to own a bunch of them? Go for it! If you want to be a collector, focusing on some particular subset of literary production? Go for it! And the whole thing about books "bringing you joy" is...well, it's pretty amorphous advice, so far as I can tell. There are a lot of things that bring me joy, and there are a lot of ways that books bring it to me. Some by their content alone; some by the style of the content.

I have copies of Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in at least three compilations that I know of, so why did I buy the copy that comes in a single slim hardcover? Because it's pretty. It's a nicely-produced volume with copies of engravings by Gustav Dore accompanying the poem's text. I have four copies of The Lord of the Rings for similar reasons, and five or six complete Shakespeare's. (I could swap all those for a First Folio, of course--any takers?)

My own approach to the gathering of books (I wouldn't say "collecting") is that I want my books to comprise a working library. There's not a book in my Scriptorium (yes, I'm trying that word on for size, deal with it) that I don't want to read someday, even if I may or may not have a reasonable shot at actually getting there. Some I have because they're prettier than other books, but I can see myself sitting down to read each and every one of them. Do I weed it out? Yes, occasionally. Maybe not as often as I ought to. But the books all bring me joy in one way or another. There are different kinds of joy, after all, and different ways things can make us happy.

One rule I have--and this I share with one of my favorite bibliophiles, Sheila O'Malley--is that aside from what I'm currently reading and have set aside on the bedstand when my eyes can no longer remain open, there are no books in my bedroom. None. (Well, none of mine--The Wife has a bookcase in there, and that's on her.) As Sheila wrote, “I don’t want any books in my bedroom. My bedroom is for sleep and moisturizing and loving. I’m sick of sleeping surrounded by 5,000 books.” Hear, hear.

I'm reminded of Roger Ebert's words about his own personal library:

Chaz [Ebert's wife] and I have lived for twenty years in a commodious Chicago town house. This house is not empty. Chaz and I have added, I dunno, maybe three or four thousand books, untold numbers of movies and albums, lots of art, rows of photographs, rooms full of comfortable furniture, a Buddha from Thailand, exercise equipment, carved elephants from India, African chairs and statues, and who knows what else. Of course I cannot do without a single one of these possessions, including more or less every book I have owned since I was seven, starting with Huckleberry Finn. I still have all the Penrod books, and every time I look at them, I'm reminded of Tarkington's inventory of Penrod's pants pockets. After reading it a third time, as a boy, I jammed my pockets with a pocketknife, a Yo-Yo, marbles, a compass, a stapler, an oddly-shaped rock, a hardball, a ball of rubber bands, and three jawbreakers. These, in an ostensible search for a nickel, I emptied out on the counter of Henry Rusk's grocery, so that Harry Rusk could see that I was a Real Boy.

My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs, and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may need to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, forty-seven novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed. That 1957 bestseller by James Gould Cozzens was eviscerated in a famous essay by Dwight Macdonald, who read through that year's list of fiction bestsellers and surface with a scowl. I remember reading the novel late into the night when I was fourteen, stirring restlessly with the desire to be possessed by love.

I cannot throw out these books. Some are enchanted because I have personally turned all their pages and read every word. They're shrines to my past hours. Perhaps half were new when they came to my life, but most were used, and I remember where I found every one. The set of Kipling at the Book Nook on Green Street in Champaign. The scandalous The English Governess in a shady bookstore on the Left Bank in 1965 (two dollars, today ninety-one). The Shaw plays from Cranford's on Long Street in Cape Twon, where Irving Freeman claimed he had half a million books. Like an alcoholic trying to walk past a bar, you should see me trying to walk past a used bookstore. Other books I can't throw away because, well, they're books, and you can't throw away a book. Not even a cookbook from which we have prepared only a single recipe, for it is a meal preserved, in printed form. The very sight of Quick and Easy Chinese Cooking by Kenneth H.C. Lo quickens my pulse. Its pages are stained by broth, sherry, soy sauce, and chicken fat, and so thoroughly did I master it that I once sought out Ken Lo's Memories of China on Ebury Street in London and laid eyes on the great man himself, dining alone in a little room near the entrance. A book like that, you're not gonna throw away.

Returning to Basbanes's book, I was struck reading it this time by the fact that many of the people he interviewed twenty-five years ago are now dead, and their collections are either long-dispersed or long-bequeathed. The question comes up over and over again: What happens to your books when you die? And the answers change all the time. Some collectors make arrangements for donating specific parts, or the wholes, of their collections. Some are trying, with varying degrees of success. One mentioned was Forrest J. Ackerman, he of the greatest science fiction, fantasy, and horror collection ever assembled; Ackerman wanted his entire collection to be kept whole, but as no major institutions could accommodate the books and the memorabilia, his collection was eventually auctioned off.

That might seem a bit of a tragedy, but many of Basbanes's interviewees specifically intend to auction their collections, either because families have no interest or, as a few note, only by auctioning their collections can they guarantee in some small way that the next generation of collectors will have their chances at anything worthy at all. Collectors paying it forward to collectors: the wheel turns on.

Perhaps the greatest single instance of a collection being bequeathed in its entirety is that of Samuel Pepys, who made detailed arrangements and instructions for the handling of his personal library after his death. Pepys gave the entire collection to Magdalene College in London, with instructions that no books could be sold from or added to the library--and he even included the bookcases that he had had made for his own home. To this day, more than three hundred years after Pepys's death, that library remains intact on the very shelves that once graced Pepys's own home.

So, what should you do with your books? Do as you will. It's really the only way to go.

Bad Joke Friday

Although given the fact that everyone I've already shown this to has laughed, it might actually be a good joke.

Something for Thursday

It is Thursday, isn't it? Once the Holidays start, I always find it takes until the first full week in January that doesn't have a holiday in it before I start to know what day it is again with any real sense of confidence. So I'm taking it on faith that it is Thursday today, and that I can get back to the song challenge I started a while back as a series of prompts for this feature. This week we're up to Day Five (we took a breather in December for the Daily Dose), where we're tasked with finding a song that needs to be played LOUD.

Here's one of my favorites. I love blasting this, especially when I'm in the car. Ever since this album came out in 1994, I thought that there was quite frankly something special about its live setting, and I know that I'm not alone. There's a particular energy to the performances from this concert as recorded, and the album has been a favorite of mine for every bit of its twenty-five years in release. So here is Yanni and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, from the album Live at the Acropolis, with "Santorini".

And if you have good speakers or headphones, you turn that shit up, man!

2018: Things I Wrote

The year 2018 was kind off odd for me in terms of my online essay and blog-post production. It was the sparsest year yet in terms of posts on this site (don't worry, I've no intention of shutting down, but I do need to be more selective in what I write here and more proactive in getting it done), but I also wrote stuff for the Official Site and I joined The Geekiverse and wrote there, so now I'm just getting more spread-out. I don't see this trend going any farther than it already has in 2019. I'm happy with my existing slate of outlets, and while I have considered a newsletter or a Patreon, I have at this point ruled both of those out.

(I know, I know: digital marketing types will cringe in horror when I saw that I'm not doing a newsletter, because for some reason apparently newsletters are really, really effective. Things is...I just don't want to. Sorry!)

Anyhow, here are some links to things I wrote in various places online, starting with this very space!

BYZANTIUM'S SHORES:

From the Books: Ursula K. Le Guin on JRR Tolkien
A Weekend in the Finger Lakes
Pi Day: A collection of annual shenanigans (including, surprisingly, a pie in my face)
Memories of Dr. Janice Wade

Thoughts on The Last Jedi:
"Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong."
"It's time for the Jedi to end."
"We fought to the end."
A flyboy, a mechanic, and a janitor walk into a bar....
A Rose is what Moses supposes his toeses!
People will come, Rey!
Snokin' in the Boys Room
"Are you the fellow who designed St. Paul's?" "No, that's CHRISTOPHER WREN. I'm...."
Attack of the Screw-ups
"Happy beeps, buddy. Happy beeps."

ForgottenStars.net:

THE WEST WING and storytelling in miniature
Of jokes and their proper placement
Why writers should read poetry

THE GEEKIVERSE:

My main work at The Geekiverse is a column series called "Curios from the Outer Rim," wherein each installment focuses on some media property of geeky interest--book, movie, comic, album, whatever--that isn't brand new. In fact, I have imposed a rule of not writing about anything less than fifteen years old for the column. Here's the ones so far (other "current commentary" articles of mine over there can be found on my list of all articles):

Introduction and Five Summer Movies
Saluting Sir Sean Connery
Time After Time
The House with a Clock in its Walls
The Serpent and the Rainbow
Die Hard
Die Hard 2 and Die Hard: With a Vengeance
Superman: The Movie at 40 (part one)
Superman: The Movie at 40 (part two)
2001: A Space Odyssey at 50

So there's my productivity in 2018. More to come in 2019, I hope! Excelsior!

2018: My Year In Books

While I've been on Goodreads for a number of years, it's only in the last two that I've started using it more aggressively as a device to track my reading. Here's the complete list of what I read in 2018, broken down into fiction and nonfiction. Also, if you want to see the individual books with the links to my reviews on Goodreads, you'll find that here.

(A word about how I use Goodreads: for me it's basically a low-key reading diary, so I can keep track of what I've read and when. I don't use it much as a bookish social media thing, although if you engage me there I won't shun you, either! Also, I only record and rate what I finish reading over there, and if I'm finding that I'm not liking a given book, I simply set it aside and move on to something else. This is why very few of my reviews or ratings over there are negative.)

This list is in alphabetical order by author (first-billed, if applicable). A few notes on specific books (not all) are interspersed throughout.

NONFICTION

Baxter, Sarah: A History of the World in 500 Walks

Bleyer, Kevin: Me the People: One Man's Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America

A terrific book that somewhat humorously (but still seriously) examines the genesis of the Constitution and looks at whether or not specific ideas enshrined in its pages deserve to be kept alive today. This is an important thought process, it seems to me. Constitutional idolatry seems quite dangerous to me, especially considering the ever-increasing gulf between the time of the Founding Fathers and our own. And besides, many of the Fathers didn't even like the Constitution.

Brown, Nancy Marie: The Abacus and the Cross: The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages

Bryson, Bill: Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Excellent brief look at the life and times of the Bard, as well as discussions on how maddeningly unknowable he really is and what a miracle it is we have as much of his work as we do.

Cazentre, Donald: Spirits and Cocktails of Upstate New York: A History

Cook, Kevin: Electric October: Seven World Series Games, Six Lives, Five Minutes of Fame That Lasted Forever

I loved this book! Great sports writing is an absolute joy. I thought it was going to be about seven individual games from different World Series, but it's about a single Series: the 1947 Series (Yankess over Dodgers in seven). A terrific look at how often the big sports moments are actually not shaped by the immortal Hall-of-Fame types, but the daily-grind guys who are barely remembered today. If you love baseball, this is a great book.

Dennis, Jerry: The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas

Brilliant. Utterly brilliant. If I had to choose one 2018 book to randomly thrust into strangers' hands, this would be the one. It's both a captivating history of the Great Lakes, a travelogue recounting the author's journey across most of the Lakes as a crewman on a yacht, and a warning about the environmental state of affairs in our Inland Seas. I can NOT recommend this book highly enough.

Ehrman, Bart: The Triumph of Christianity: How a Small Band of Outcasts Conquered an Empire

Bart Ehrman is always brilliant. Here he concentrates on the history of early Christianity, looking deeply at how it overcame its surrounding pagan climate.

Ettinger, Amy: Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America

Ferriss, Timothy: Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best of the World

Fitzharris, Lindsey: The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

If you like your history with a little blood, stay away from this book. If you like your history with a whole shit-ton of blood, go get this one NOW.

Garfield, Simon: On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks

Were you the kid in school who would drive your History teacher crazy because when they called on you, you were too busy gazing at the maps on the wall? Do your re-reads of Lord of the Rings take longer than most other books because you study the maps and note all the places Tolkien never takes you? Then check THIS book out!

Hughley, D.L.: How Not to Get Shot: And Other Advice From White People

Very funny, and deeply depressing that this book could or should be written.

Igort: Japanese Notebooks

Excellent graphical cultural history here.

Kaku, Michio: Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of Humanity
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth

I don't pretend to understand long stretches of these, but if you want some Cosmic Sensawunda with your science reading, Kaku's your huckleberry.

Kells, Stuart: The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders

King, David: Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris

I don't read a lot about creepy serial killers. This one was good.

Kohan, Rafi: The Arena: Inside the Tailgating, Ticket-scalping, Mascot-racing, Dubiously Funded, and Possibly Haunted Monuments of American Sport

Outstanding. Sports venues themselves are inherently interesting, and it takes a LOT of work to keep those places going. 

Lerner, Alan Jay: The Street Where I Live: A Memoir

Indispensable. I check this out of the library once every couple of years to keep it from getting weeded. This time I even re-read it! If you've any love of 20th Century Broadway at all, you need to read this.

Manguel, Alberto: Packing My Library: An Elegy and Ten Digressions

Morrison, Toni: The Origin of Others

Required.

Noroc, Mihaela: The Atlas of Beauty: Women of the World in 500 Portraits

Photography book, but what photography it is.

Nye, Bill: Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation
Everything All at Once: How to Unleash Your Inner Nerd, Tap Into Radical Curiosity and Solve Any Problem

Quite good, especially if you're looking for signs that rationality and science aren't dead yet.

Puchner, Martin: The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization

A fantastic exploration of the evolution of writing and storytelling from around the world, and how they influenced one another. Excellent for storytellers!

Roach, Mary: Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

Mary Roach is a treasure. And so is this book, her look at the various problems that face space travelers past and future.

Szostak, Phil and Johnson, Rian: The Art of STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI

I shy away from fandom litmus tests, but I do have trouble counting anyone as a STAR WARS fan who doesn't own at least a few ART OF books. They've made one for every movie in the franchise, after all. (Note to self: Get off your butt and get the one for PHANTOM MENACE.)

Tapalansky, Nick and Espinosa, Anissa: Cast No Shadow

Walton, Jo: What Makes This Book So Great

Collection of posts by Jo Walton to TOR.com. Great stuff on books often counted as Fantasy or SF classics, and a model for my own recent work on the Geekiverse website.

Weigel, Dave: The Show That Never Ends: The Rise and Fall of Prog Rock

Weinersmith, Kelly: Soonish: Ten Technologies That'll Improve And/Or Ruin Everything

Wendig, Chuck: Damn Fine Story: Mastering the Tools of a Powerful Narrative

I don't read many books about writing these days, but this one's good. (It's more about storytelling than actual writing, but still.)

FICTION

Abrams, JJ and Dorst, Doug: S.

This astonishing book shouldn't be as good as it is. It's as much a gimmick as a book: its story is told not just through the straight narrative, but also through the margin notes left by two readers and the ephemera they stuff into its pages, many of which come together in puzzling ways. Aspects of Abrams's storytelling that I usually hold up as weaknesses are actually strengths in this style of tale. This one is a bit of a rabbit hole to disappear down, and its payoff isn't apparent in any usual kind of way, but it is very rewarding. I loved the experience of reading this and I look forward to revisiting it in a couple years.

Ahdied, Renee: The Wrath and the Dawn

Ahmed, Samira: Love, Hate, and Other Filters

Superb examination of a Muslim-American family in the heartland when terrorism strikes.

Alsberg, Sasha and Cummings, Lindsay: Zenith

YA space opera that I enjoyed enormously.

Allen, Rachael: A Taxonomy of Love

Another good YA story, this one about a kid with Tourette's Syndrome and his various struggles through adolescence.

Bantock, Nick: Griffin and Sabine
Sabine's Notebook
The Golden Mean
The Gryphon
Alexandria
The Morning Star

I tore through these again this year, for the first time in several years, and I still adore them. It's a set of epistolary novels that goes even farther: the letters that tell the story are physical objects in the book, meaning you actually have to remove them from their envelopes to read them. Magic and mysticism and literary arts and love and time and space, all wrapped together. Amazing stuff. (Apparently there's a seventh volume that I haven't tracked down yet.)

Belleza, Rhoda: Empress of a Thousand Skies

Another good YA space opera. YA is the scene of a LOT of amazing work these days.

Canales, Juan Diaz and Guarnido, Juanjo: Blacksad: Amarillo
Blacksad: A Silent Hell

Carey, Jacqueline: Kushiel's Dart

One of the finest fantasy novels of the last thirty years. Why it's not as well-known as GAME OF THRONES is quite beyond me.

Chambers, Becky: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

Miss FIREFLY? This is right up your alley. An episodic novel (called "a cozy space opera" by the hosts of SWORD AND LASER, a podcast I like) about the various life concerns of the crew of a space freighter. Wonderful.

Clarke, Arthur C.: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Classic. I re-read this for an article on the 50th anniversary of 2001, book and film, for The Geekiverse.

Clarke, Susanna: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

Oh my. I took forever to read this. For almost two-thirds of its 1000-page length I dolled it out at the rate of no more than a chapter a day, sometimes less. It reads wonderfully that way, this odd Dickensian historical fantasy set in an England-that-wasn't. For the last third I abandoned the serialized reading and plowed straight through. A book to lose oneself in. Take special care to enjoy the language as you go; this is not a blast-through-it page-turner. This is a page-lingerer.

Doctorow, Cory and Wang, Jen: In Real Life

Fan, Mary: Starswept

Fellow indie writer does good! I loved this classical music inspired space opera, and I look forward to its sequel.

Ford, John M.: How Much for Just the Planet?

I almost never read media tie-in novels these days, but this is almost a classic of the form from the 1980s. The gonzo tale in which the crew of the Enterprise are pitted against Klingons by a civilization inspired by classic movies is reminiscent of Original Series episodes like "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "A Piece of the Action". I had no idea until I read it that it includes a pie fight between Kirk and crew and all the rest.

Gailey, Sarah: The Fisher of Bones

Gailey is relatively new to the scene and quite a talent. I believe she has a novel coming out in 2019. This novella is haunting.

Lovelace, Amanda: The Princess Saves Herself In This One

Poetry in the new style. Free verse about various personal life traumas. I found it quite moving.

Okorafor, Nnedi: Binti

Okorafor is really good, and I look forward to the rest of this series.

Pond, Mimi: The Customer Is Always Wrong

Powell, Gareth R.: Embers of War

Fascinating first volume of a space opera series that asks the question, "What about AFTER the big interstellar war?"

Rundell, Katherine: The Wolf Rider

Historical YA set in pre-revolutionary Russia. Excellent book that I received as part of a holiday book exchange on a Facebook group last year.

Scalzi, John: The Collapsing Empire

Scalzi's stock-in-trade is the fast-moving tale of adventure, and this is certainly that. Book Two, THE CONSUMING FIRE, is already out. I can't wait to read it!

Starlin, Jim: Dreadstar, Vol. 1: The Metamorphosis Odyssey

Old-school cosmic space opera from the early 80s in comics. Remember vans with giant murals of fantasy art painted on the sides? This is the stuff those van owners were reading. Maybe not your cup of tea, but if it is, there's a lot of appeal here.

Stokoe, James: Wonton Soup (Big Bowl Edition)

Valente, Catherynne M.: Space Opera

This is one of two books I strongly expect to win the next Best Novel Hugo award. (Mary Robinette Kowal's THE CALCULATING STARS, which I've yet to read, is the other.) Imagine a galactic version of Eurovision, with the added incentive that if you lose, your species is annihilated and life on your planet turned back to pre-intelligence.

Vaughn, Brian K. and Staples, Fiona: Saga, vol. 8
Saga, vol. 9

Sigh. I hate to end on a down note, but alphabetically that's where we are. SAGA was one of my favorite things in its early going, but its last several volumes have descended into directionless stories that rely more and more heavily on shocking deaths for their emotional heft (one especially irritating case is when Vaughn introduces a couple of characters for literally NO other reason than to kill a major character, and once that's done, he kills off his newly-introduced murderers). I find that when stories go in the direction of pure grimdark, what is clearly intended to be emotional manipulation ends up being emotional eviction as I simply stop caring about what happens to the characters at all.

So that's my reading in 2018. Plans for 2019 include more about Shakespeare and by Shakespeare. I also have a whole bunch of fantasy novels that I plan to read--2018 was heavy on science fiction, so I want to spend some time in the lands of epic fantasy for a while. As ever, reading continues to be the center of my creative and artistic life, so onward and upward!

2018: It's dead, Jim

Time for the yearly look back at a year that was...well...let's just look back.

Did you keep your New Years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

"Read a lot, write a lot" aren't terribly hard goals for me to meet, but meet them I did. The Savior Worlds (The Song of Forgotten Stars, book 4) was much harder to draft than I had planned, and I only finished it two weeks before NaNoWriMo started--and that book had been my NaNo project the year before.

But I got a lot read, and I started writing articles for The Geekiverse, and I have a plan for writing in 2019. Yay!

Did anyone close to you give birth?

I...don't think so? Several people I know casually did, so that's cool.

Did anyone close to you die?

With each passing year I dread this question more and more.

What countries did you visit?

Real ones? I never left the US. False ones? Plenty!

What would you like to have in 2019 that you lacked in 2018?

Half a Democratic Congress...and I'm gonna get one! Yay!

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Publishing The Chilling Killing Wind, finishing The Savior Worlds, and having a book signing were all happy accomplishments.

What was your biggest failure?

Aside from my highly inconsistent blogging (the correcting of which is another 2019 goal) in this space, I didn't really fail at much in 2018. That's good, albeit a bit cognitively dissonant in a time when much of the world had a horrible year.

What was the best thing you bought?

For myself? I got a new phone, after four years on my old (and, at the time, still serviceable) Sumsung Galaxy S4. Now I'm on the Galaxy S8 plus, and I like it a great deal. Hopefully I get four years out of this one, too!

Whose behavior merited celebration?

The American voters who started pushing back against the tide of racist, homophobic, transphobic, antirational, and antiscience thought in this country.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Republicans. See above.

Where did most of your money go?

Books, booze, going to movies, food, gifts, and vintage overalls.

What did you get really excited about?

My book release, my book signing, seeing Die Hard on the big screen, and other things!

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

About the same right now, but hopefully we're laying foundations for even better things to come. The Wife is in the midst of changing careers, which is full of its own fears and challenges, but if it all works out as we hope, life should be better.

Thinner or fatter?

I'm probably a bit heavier. I need to reverse that in 2019.

Richer or poorer?

Jury's out on that.

What do you wish you'd done more of?

As always, reading, writing, and walking.

What do you wish you'd done less of?

Reading crap online. (As opposed to reading good stuff online.)

How did you spend Christmas?

As last year: With family, unpacking wonderful gifts, and eating and drinking way too much. In short, it was exactly what Christmas should be.

Did you fall in love in 2018?

I fall in love on a daily basis.

How many one-night stands?

Ha! I'm not telling you that!

What was your favorite TV program?

Probably Brooklyn Nine Nine, whose return on NBC we are now awaiting. We also discovered Blindspot, which is somewhat filling the hole left in our hearts by the conclusion a couple years back of Person of Interest.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?

Nah, I think that the Republican Party has pretty much maxed out my ability to indulge this ugliest of emotions.

What was the best book you read?

See my 2018 Year In Books post, to come shortly after this one.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

No real "discovery", but I listened quite a few times to Mahler's Symphony No. 1, a piece which I already knew decently but which really captivated me this year for some reason. I may have to revisit this more in 2019.

What did you want and get?

Books! More Toby jugs! I put a couple of knick-knack shelves up on the wall in my Book Room! More vintage overalls, as well as a lovely pair of hand-made overalls by a guy I know in Ohio who does artisanal denim work!

What did you want and not get?

Tickets to Hamilton when it came to Buffalo. For various reasons I just couldn't make it happen this time around, I'm sad to say.

What were your favorite films of this year?

I enjoyed Solo a lot, perhaps even more than I expected to (I could have done without its apparent need to fill in all the blanks in Han Solo's early life, but that's OK). Black Panther was amazing, and The Avengers: Infinity War was really good until its ending (I have no problem with cliffhangers, but this one was executed in very bleak fashion and then the film pretty much cut instantly to credits). And as I write this I am still basking in the afterglow of Spider Man: Into the Spiderverse, which is astonishing and everybody should see it.

What did you do on your birthday?

I likely worked, and then a few days later went on vacation for our yearly trip to Ithaca.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?

As always: workwear chic, although I may be straying toward low-level "hipster" fashion on occasion. Mainly though my approach is usually "Can I pair THIS shirt with THOSE overalls?"

What kept you sane?

The increasing number of Americans who are slowly rising up to say, "We don't want this."

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

If for no other reason than her ability to get under the skin of dimwitted Republicans, I've taken quite a liking to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

What political issue stirred you the most?

Probably climate change, although this country's ongoing inability to grow up when it comes to its fetish for firearms continues to annoy. And don't get me started on The Wall, which may well be the single dumbest public policy proposal of my lifetime.

Who did you miss?

Barack Obama.

Who was the best new person you met?

The various people at The Geekiverse! I've had a great time over there.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2018:

Read a lot, write a lot. Listen to music. Go for walks and look at sunsets. Take all the pictures you want. Learn new things and try new stuff. If you have a dog, take him for walks. Buy books for your daughter, even when she complains that she likes to pick her own books (let her do that, too). Nothing fits your hand so well as your lover’s hand. Eating out is fine, but learn to cook things, too. Have a place to go where they know you and what you order. Don’t be afraid to revisit your childhood passions now and again; you weren’t always wrong back then. Overalls are awesome, it’s OK to wear double denim, and a pie in the face is a wonderful thing!

If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Well, why not quote the lyrics from a teevee show theme song? Even though the show actually started on Netflix two years ago (I think), we discovered the newly updated version of One Day At A Time this year, and we've found it wonderful: funny, heart-felt, emotional, involving, and loaded with wonderful quirky characters. The new show takes the original set-up (single mom in the wake of break-up raising her two teenagers alone with her her own mother kinda-sorta helping, along with the attentions of the building's repairman Schneider) and transfers it from Indianapolis to Los Angeles, and focuses on a Cuban-American family. And it's great.

So, here's my 2018 song!

This is it. This is it!
This is life, the one you get so go and have a ball.
This is it. This is it!
Straight ahead and rest assured you can't be sure at all.

So while you're here enjoy the view.
Keep on doing what you do
So hold on tight we'll muddle through
One day at a time, One day at a time!

So up on your feet. Up on your feet!
Somewhere there's music playing.
Don't you worry none we'll just take it like it comes.
One day at a time, One day at a time!

So, what's next in 2019? Who knows. We'll meet it head on, though.