the DronesClub	the smackdown	Fierce Creatures	Little Blenheim	Barmy in Wonderland	the dernier cri

The unpleasant, acrid smell of burnt poetry.
Young Men in Spats, 1936

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May 31, 2010

Civil War soldiers carry the flag during the Prospect Hill Memorial Day ceremony.

4:39 p.m. - Jennifer worked again today, and pushed off at about 10:00 this morning for work. I was out the door by 10:30 myself for the Memorial Day observances at Prospect Hill cemetery, Omaha's oldest cemetery, founded in 1858. The Prospect Hill Preservation Society honored veterans who are interred in the cemetery, having served in the Civil War, Spanish-American War, World War I and World War 2. They also honored fire men who died in the line of duty, and are interred there as well. Afterward, they host a Dixie-land concert and lay a yellow rose on the grave stone of Anna Wilson, a brothel owner in 19th century Omaha who left her million dollar estate to found the Omaha Emergency Hospital and other charitable causes. I ran into a number of friends and acquaintances, and had a great afternoon. The weather was absolutely perfect, and I spent some time afterward taking pictures (which you can see here), and walking around.

Jennifer got home around 3:30ish, and after a late lunch of leftover hotdogs from yesterday, is in bed. I've enjoyed Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and today off, and she's worked. Next weekend, she will take Saturday off while I am working at the Ride, and while I'm resting on Sunday, she'll be working. Not fair.

May 30, 2010

Great video from the La Vista Days parade, including a shot of Motor A in action!

9:25 a.m. - If These Walls Could Talk on PBS. I've seen this architectural history about two dozen times, and I'm a-goin' to watch it again. If it's on later this morning, I'll watch it yet again.

8:13 a.m. - Quiet week, and again the Chronicler is left with little of interest to report. I took a short week from work to use some of my accrued vacation, and I've been kind of puttering around since Thursday last. Jennifer is working - too hard, if you ask me - so I've been on my own. I looked in on Wal-Mart for some sundries and supplies, including a much-needed grocery trip. The next day, I did an even greater amount of damage at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, replacing Jennifer's long-since-broken fan and my newly-broken fan with two new ones, as well as one for my office. I've generally been puttering around the house, vaguely cleaning the basement, tackling laundry, tidied up my rolltop desk, taking the dogs out periodically for fresh air, and so forth. On Friday, I grilled some excellent burgers and made every known artery-blocking topping known to mankind: guacamole, bacon, sauteed onions.

Yesterday, I had a great amount of fun riding the mini-'57 Chevy in the La Vista Days parade, and then came home tanned a golden brown. Or at least, tanned to a lightly sunburnt red. Afterward, I came home and crashed for a very well-earned nap. In the evening, Jennifer and I looked in on a co-workers wedding reception, followed by a quick visit to our neighbor's backyard party. All in all, a very relaxing few days. I can't believe my 5 day weekend is more than 3 days over. Where has the time gone, and why haven't I tackled all the projects I had every good faith of accomplishing? I gravely fear the basement won't be that sparkly clean, efficient, and well-ordered nerve center of the house I had intended it to be. 

Jennifer is, of course, getting ready for work even now, and I'm preparing for a heavy day of relaxing with the dogs. We may go for a walk or we may do absolutely nothing. You never know where the axe may fall. I'm already thinking about what to grill for dinner.

May 24, 2010

7:02 p.m. - Picked up 3 suits, one sports coat, and a pair of slacks from the tailor. Expensive, but well worth it. Time to dress like a grown up from time to time, I think.

3:58 p.m. - This little snippet is from CNN.com. One would think this august periodical would have editors to catch grammatical errors, but apparently this item was so hot and juicy, they ran it to press just as it was written. Presumably they meant to say "Harrison Ford is more than 20 years older than Calista Flockhart, to whom he reportedly proposed last year." Congratulations to the happy couple, and please don't put up the banns until they've been proof read!

9:47 a.m. - Quite the whirlwind weekend, True Believers, and the Chronicler finds himself in the unfortunate position of having to briefly recount the last seven days in a manner fraught with detail, leaving the Reader at the edge of his seat, but not so fraught that he loses interest with detailed descriptions of each hill and dale.

So where to begin?

Last week was fairly quiet, but busy. Jennifer and I met my mother on Wednesday for sushi at Matsu Sushi, and gorged on a king's ransom's worth of tasty, tasty sushi. I could nom on that 7 days a week, really. I had my second round with the financial planner on Thursday, and we continue to flesh out my financial plans, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. On Friday, we stayed in and relaxed at home after a long week. I had to put together 350 packages for the Friends of RiteCare dinner, and spent some time Friday evening working on that. I have to admit I was a bit irritated that they didn't put any additional thought into printing the material. There was an error in the sponsorship brochure which I had asked to be fixed, but wasn't. And the sponsorship commitment form should have been on one page, but was wastefully printed on two pages. And the mailing labels should have been done a bit more artuflly, so they didn't look entirely like junk mail. Sigh. .  The important part is that they get in the mail now, rather than wait another week to be reprinted. They'll be fine. . .

Letters to Juliet

On Saturday, I did more package-putting-together throughout the day. At 1:00, we went to see Letters to Juliet, a movie one reviewer described as having been underwritten by Travelocity or the Verona Bureau of Tourism. A fluff piece of a movie, though the Italian scenes are beautiful. In short, Sophie, our doe-eyed American girl, with a mindless twit of fiance (he's a chef, focused on his own restaurant rather than her). Together, in Verona, he bumbles off on various quests to see some mushroom or lust after various cheeses or wines, and she meets a group of biddies who answer womens' letters posted to Juliet (of Romeo and Juliet fame). Our plucky young heroine finds a letter from fifty years ago from a young English woman named Claire who stands up her Italian beau and runs back to Blighty. So Sophie writes her and a week later, Claire shows up in Verona with dashing grandson Charlie. Charlie's rude and cold and Sophie and Charlie immediately hate each other, but he's dashing, so you know where this is going to lead. And of course, he's the Hollywood ideal of dashing: an attorney who advocates for immigrants and the poor or somesuch. That means he has a heart of gold, so he's okay. (He couldn't be a corporate attorney or an accountant or sell cars, because to Hollywood, anything that isn't a social worker is a priori bad.) And off Claire, Sophie, and Charlie go in search of Claire's long-lost beau Lorenzo. Of course, just as they are about to give up, having met every single Italian named Lorenzo, they find him at some amazing Italian villa, worth no doubt 20 million Euros, utterly charming and dashingly handsome. He and Claire immediately hit it off, and after a bit of give and take and a requisite balcony scene, so do Sophie and Charlie. All's well that ends well, as a wise feller once said. Having told you the plot, you can spare yourself the indignity of paying $15 to see it. The true star is Verona, and it is every bit as beautiful as you'd think. Jennifer opined that owning some Travelocity stock right now might be a good thing as thousands of plucky young American gals will be beetling off to Italy to find their own Lorenzos. The problem with Letters to Juliet is the fact that the script is as weak as water-flavored soup. It relies on that age-old combination of a beautiful backdrop and Amanda Seyfried (Hollywood's newest "It" girl) and her ginormous eyes and avalanche of blond hair. No doubt that she's very pretty, but note to Hollywood: prettiness does not equate to talent. She offers little emotion. I suppose that is the fault of the script which keeps her in wide-eyed-American-girl-in-Italy mode the whole time. The real star of the movie is Italy, which apparently always has bright, full moons all the time. Save Letters to Juliet for a date night rental.

Russell Crowe as Robin Hood

At any rate. . . we enjoyed a quiet evening on Saturday. I put together more packages and Jennifer and I sat out on the porch for a while with Gryffindor. On Sunday, we spent the morning cleaning up around the house, and Jennifer took two boxes of stuff to Goodwill. We rather surprised ourselves by going to lunch at The Attic (mediocre fare) and then going to see Robin Hood. Dollar for dollar, I'd rather see Letters to Juliet. Russell Crowe is woefully miscast in this retelling of the Robin Hood story. In this case, he's a lowly archer in King Richard's army whom circumstances lead to impersonate Robin of Loxley. Long story short, King John is being a jerk and throwing his weight about, and Robin teams up with the "Barons of the north" to oppose John. But John, shrewd manipulator that he is, promises them a charter of rights if they join him against the French, which they do. So with brave Robin, they fight and defeat a French invasion fleet. Afterward John tears up the charter of rights and declares Robin an outlaw. So Robin and Marian run off to live in Sherwood forest with their band of ne'er do wells and a drunken Friar Tuck. The whole movie is a re-imagining of the Robin Hood story, and frankly, it sucks. Robin plays up the "Englishmen's rights" and "taxation without representation" angle - sounding like an angry American Tea Partier - but when you consider that he's really a lowly archer who has never had any rights to even know that they were being exploited nor any property to tax, his whole argument rings false. Robin Hood is a rip-roaring adventure set in 12th century England, but that's all it is. Really, Robin Hood: Men in Tights was a superior Robin Hood, and Erroll Flynn's The Adventures of Robin Hood was more swashbuckling. The story makes no sense if Robin Hood isn't himself a displaced land holder. A Knight's Tale does a better job with the Knight-as-crusader-for-social-justice story. If you can ignore all that, and you're in it for flying arrows and action, then it's a great deal of fun.

Little else of interest. I finished up the sponsorship packages for Scottish Rite Sunday and in the evening, I hauled our little flat screen TV into the front parlor, set up the cable and we watched the last episode of Lost. I have to admit I'm left disappointed. The unanswered questions far outweigh wrapping up the castaway's story. We don't find out about the Hanso Foundation, the Dharma Initiative, the "Others," and a dozen other things that have been dangled our way for the past 6 years.

At some time on Friday, there was a huge fire in an apartment complex down the street. A beautiful set of row houses, built in 1914, was utterly gutted, and I really hope that a) no one was hurt (I haven't heard anyone was hurt, thankfully) and b) they can restore this gem in the neighborhood. I have a feeling it can't be saved, and we'll get some ungodly low income in-fill houses there that add further damage on an area that is teetering between blight and returning to low-to-middle income prosperity.

Click on each thumbnail to see full size.

 

May 17, 2010

7:07 a.m. - Why do I always sleep so poorly on Sunday nights? I woke up at 4:30 and could not get back to sleep for quite a while, and then only in five to ten minute bursts of sleep. Of course, I fell into a fitful rest around 5:55, only to wake up at 6:00.

May 16, 2010

Welcoming guests at the KSA breakfast at the Scottish Rite

I'm behind Gene in this picture.

4:28 p.m. - So, dear reader, you've been gnashing your teeth and wailing that I've left you hanging for the last two weeks. No doubt, says you, young Mishka has been off galavanting about the globe and generally behaving like the citizenry of Makefing on May 17, 1900 after Lord Roberts lifted the seige. Not so, says I. In fact, it's been so boring, I have nothing of interest to tell you. In a nutshell, my biggest achievements in the last fortnight were the B/R/W breakfast at the Scottish Rite. We had about 65 to 70 attendees, and everything went perfectly. The speakers were on-target, and the audience was riveted. In short, as events go, it was perfect. And we got 5 or 6 KSA petitions out of it, too, which ain't half bad! And yesterday, I drove one of the mini-'57s in the Council Bluffs parade. It was damnably hard to drive yesterday, and I'm still stiff as a board. Had a few mishaps, but nothing serious, and made it through the parade with only sore legs and arms.

Before	After (not!)

As for today, quiet at Casa de Evans. I went out and spent two week's salary (yikes!) on 3 suits, two pairs of slacks, two shirts, shoes, and ties. Time to update the ol' wardrobe. Time to ditch the frumpy look for something slightly more grown up and professional. We'll see if the tailor is able to work wonders and make this (before guy) look like this (after guy). Problem is: will the suits be a suitable wrapper for me? Hopefully for that kind of money, I'll look sharp, and even more hopefully, perhaps I can get back into shape and necessitate buying more suits. Either way, I will enjoy feeling smart in new suits when they are back from the tailor next week.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.)

Afterward, on a whim, I went to see the new Iron Man movie at the AMC. Jennifer didn't want to see Iron Man II particularly, so I figured why not? The first movie of this franchise gave us playboy Tony Stark, millionaire military-industrial whiz kid, and Robert Downey, Jr. does his usual perfect job as Tony in the sequel. The movie was thoroughly enjoyable, laced with testosterone and Scarlett Johansson (as a mysterious new hire) in a tight cat suit. Things explode, and Downey delivers Tony Stark/Iron Man with relish. The problem is: its a sequel. By definition it is not as good as the original. Same hero, same supporting characters, new bad guys. True, I did utterly enjoyed it, and I look forward to a third movie. But it wasn't a brilliant piece of movie-making by any stretch. It was exactly what it was supposed to be: a sequel. The CGI effects were good enough to make believable other short-comings, a serious failure on the part of Spider Man II and III. My other problem are one or two deus ex machina moments that had no logical fit in the movie whatsoever: Stark's battle royale with Rhodey at his party and Stark's father's (Roger Slattery playing Stark's father, a loose rip off of a young Howard Hughes) "City of Tomorrow" which turned out to be a road map to the exact item Stark needed just when he needed it. The scenes were a bit thick to me, but Downey is a talented guy and can pull off a bit of additional BS without any major taint on his skills or the movie.

The movie gave us a couple of teasers to the upcoming Captain America movie, which strikes me as a lame way to promote what is going to be a lame movie. Iron Man was made relevant in today's world. Yes, I said it. Deal with it. Captain American should stay in the 1940s. Having him fight Nazis or Russians is so last century.

May 4, 2010

Jennifer took Gryffindor to Legend Comics free comic book day last Saturday, and the Imperial Army took an immediate shine to the dark puppy of the Sith. This is not the Maltese-Poodle you're looking for.

7:15 a.m. - All quiet on the western front. Went to Florence Lodge last night, which ran long. We spent too much time deciding about which brothers' dues to carry, but I was proud to see about 5 brothers (myself included) step up to pay a couple of nearly-50-year members' dues. Meanwhile, the numbers are coming in for this Saturday's B/R/W Breakfast at Scottish Rite, and it looks like we'll have a nice turnout!

Jennifer was up at the crack of dawn - 5:30 or so - and out the door by six for the Trustees' breakfast. I took the dogs out and got dressed, but I'm moving slower than molasses today. I definitely need more sleep - I think squeezed in at just under 7 hours last night.

May 3, 2010

8:17 a.m. - Monday again. I had the strangest dreams last night. Jennifer was right - I probably ought not have taken that nap around 2:00. I slept okay, but I could have done with a deeper sleep than tossing around febrile-y all night along. The cold/allergies are getting better, but I still have awful sniffles.

May 2, 2010

9:40 p.m. - Nice day at Casa de Evans. The weather today, in spite of a few intermittent rains, was utterly perfect. I grilled chicken for lunch this week and a couple of perfect steaks for dinner, with asparagus, and salad. Today is one of those days that ought to have lasted for a few weeks.

May 1, 2010

Meet Charlie and Kate, Julie's new Bengal kittens

9:03 p.m. - Ahhhh, Saturday. Most relaxing of the days. We looked in on Matsu Sushi for a light lunch this afternoon. Jennifer, of course, has perfect parking karma and found a parking space on one of the busiest days of the year downtown right out front of Matsu Sushi. With the farmer's market, the Berkshire Hathaway meeting at the Qwest Center, great weather, and diverse & sundry events going on in the Old Market, parking is as rare as a pink honeybee. I would have enjoyed walking around the Old Market to people watch and enjoy the weather, but Jennifer wanted to head back. Afterward, I took a brief nap - and kept snoring myself awake every five minutes - and Jennifer watched an episode or two of Doctor Who on DVR.

In the evening, we met Mom and Mike at Johnny's Italian Steakhouse out west at Village Point. What an incredible meal! Jennifer had a crab stuffed shrimp, and I had three wee filet medallions topped with some kind of bleu cheesey parmesany topping which were so moist, you could have cut them with a butter knife. I'm so full, when the server tried to wheel around the dessert tray, I could have slid under the table.

Nobody was in the mood for a post-prandial movie, so Mom and Mike headed home. Jennifer looked in on Bed, Bath, and Beyond to bolster the economy, and I looked in on Brix, the wine store, to see if they had any Scotch I couldn't live without, but they had nothing that raised my skirt. Or at least, nothing I could afford don't already have.

8:35 a.m. - Ahhhh, Saturday. One of the rare ones where there is no Reunion, breakfast, meeting, parade, event, or otherwise. Of course, that means it's a day where the dogs are up at the crack of dawn because a butterfly cleared it's throat in the next county, which sets them off barking.

Quiet Friday evening here. I got home, took a very brief nap, and we had a leisurely evening. I got carry-out from King Kong simply because I didn't feel like cooking. We spent about 30 minutes sitting on Julie's porch across the street playing with her new Bengal kittens, and then lazed about until bedtime.

As far as I know there is nothing on the docket for today. I could get used to that.