Rugby!!

Hooray for rugby games!

M and M (or should I say M&M?) were here this past weekend from Chicago for a rugby game.  (Remember them from my dinner at Moonshine?)

Many awesome things: I got to enjoy a lovely few hours in the sun.  I got to see some rugby.  I got Radar out of the house for a bit, which lamentably happens all too infrequently.  I got to sing rugby songs while drinking bad beer.  I got to eat a delicious burrito at Flaco's Cocina.  I got to marvel and the strange leotard outfits and the overabundance of plaid at Novak's.  And I got to see the Ms!

Generally it was an awesome day, as it should have been; after all, Saturday's a rugby day.

Quote of the Day

"There are so many people we could become, and we leave such a trail of bodies through our teens and twenties that it's hard to tell which one is us.  How many versions do we abandon over the years?"
  -- Dan Chaon, "Big Me," from the short story collection Among the Missing

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 22

Otherwise titled: Deja Vu at Ernesto's

I'll spare you the gory details.  Same place, different dress.  Although we were sitting on the patio and it was getting cold, so I have on both a sweater and overcoat.  Food was delicious, as it has been all three times I've been there so far.

Sorry for the weird glare on the camera!

Really, how better to cap off a cool night on the patio than with some hot coffee?

Another charming client

Yes, another one.  I had a woman in my office yesterday who had some questions about her will and powers of attorney.  No problem.

She starts asking me about my life.  I try to be conversational, because it's all about building relationships.  Then she comes up with this: "Well, why did you become a lawyer?  I mean, did you marry a lawyer?"

Huh?

First of all, I'm not married.  I wasn't wearing a ring and we had been sitting across my desk from each other for half an hour, so I'm not sure why she thought I was.  Second (and seemingly obviously), you don't become a lawyer by marrying one!  What the heck does that question even mean?

I wasn't sure where to go with it, so I just said, "No, I'm not married."

On the plus side, at least she didn't proceed to draw me a picture of my future wedding dress.

Quote of the Day

"MEN WANTED for hazardous journey,
small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness,

constant danger, safe return doubtful,

honour and recognition in case of success.

Ernest Shackleton 4 Burlington st."

Disclaimer: apparently this ad never actually ran in the London Times, as it was purported to have done.  But people are still searching for it!  Regardless, I thought just the idea of it was entertaining enough.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 21

Otherwise titled: One Last View of the Sky

The second time T and I went to Cielo was actually a bit of an accident.  We had a deal for a four-course dinner with wine, but it turned out that we weren't able to use it on that particular night.  So, damn the bad luck, we had to go back again to use it before it expired!

I even tried to be adventurous this time and get the mussels instead of the Caesar fondue that I so love, but they were out of mussels!  So much for that.  The rest of the menu:
Appetizers: mozzarella bites and vitello tonnato
Entrees, potato gnocchi and ribeye
Desserts: strawberry crostata and tiramisu

Unfortunately, the light was terrible and the picture turned out tinted blue and a bit fuzzy.  I spent a couple minutes messing with it, but couldn't get it to look quite right.  Instead I turned it sepia - figured that was better than looking seasick.  But you have to see my awesome silk dress!

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 20

Otherwise titled: A Historic Brunch

Many months late, our long-awaited brunch with S & V (aka June and Ward) finally happened!  As they say, the third time's the charm.

The first plan was to go to Cafe Madeleine, but there were some calendar mix-ups so we ended up two people short in our party.  Then we had a plan for Sunday to go to Nadoz, but the weekend before, they decided to cancel their brunch buffet.  And, in a very poor business decision, they did so by literally throwing out their reservation book.  No phone calls to people had future reservations, no offer of a coupon, nothing.  Just - plunk! - in the trash.  So that happened.

Finally, in a very last minute rush, T had the bright idea to go to Bixby's, the restaurant in the Missouri History Museum, which I didn't even know was there!  It was a rainy day last Sunday, but stopped just long enough to get a picture on the way out.

People, I love this dress!  It's new, this was its first outing.  And possibly every dress I buy in the future is going to be just like it.  Okay, actually that's probably not true.  But I will buy more dresses like it, for sure.

Oh yeah, and there was food too!  The buffet portion of the brunch was, for the most part, standard classy brunch fare, but I really loved the a la carte menu.  It had six or seven additional choices, and they were all small (for example, a belgian waffle about as big in diameter as a softball), so you could try more than one without throwing away massive quantities of food.  (I also had the bread pudding - good, but not as good as Jimmy's.)

Actually, maybe the waiter being ready with the champagne the moment we sat down was my favorite part.  Tough call.

Side note: consider this Part The Second of my rant against inappropriately casual dress (Part The First; I thought I had already written a second part, but after much searching, I can't find it).  Jeans and t-shirts are not appropriate.  Special thanks (sincere ones, not sarcastic) go out to the guy who refused to wear his hat at the table despite his wife's nagging about how his hair looked.  Nice work, hatless guy.

P.S. Special thanks to T, who shooed off all the sales ladies and helped me accessorize my outfit!  He did a good job, don't you think?

Room -- Take 2

I finished a book!  Hooray!

I'm not sure yet whether I'll be going to the book club meeting for Room or not, but regardless, I listened to the whole darn thing, unabridged.  Go me.

First, a bit about the story.  The story is told by Jack, a five-year-old who has spent his whole life within the confines of a single room.  His mother was kidnapped at the age of 19, and has been routinely raped by her kidnapper during the seven years since then.  Jack is the product of one of those nights.

Ma, as Jack calls her, has done an impressive job of making Room a place where Jack can live and in many ways thrive.  He's smart and perceptive, although the simple language of a five-year-old's vocabulary, even a smart one, tends to get a little boring.  Also, Jack calls many of the objects in Room, including Room itself, by its generic noun as though it were a proper name.  Instead of "I was sitting on the bed," it's "I was sitting on Bed."  This lack of articles gets a bit tedious, although I noticed it less and less as the story went on.

Regarding language, it's fun because there are little hints - an odd word or turn of phrase here and there - which let on that the author is actually European.

The tedium of life in Room, especially for Ma, who has experienced the outside world, is portrayed to the reader in the form of repetition; in fact, the first third or so of the story is actually pretty dull.  I had to get through three of the nine CDs before the pace picked up a bit.

But for Jack, life is still full of excitement.  Reading this book reminded me a little bit of Plato's cave allegory (which I haven't read since high school, so bear with me); the cave is actually mentioned towards the end of the novel.  For example, they have a television, and from it Jack has learned about lots of things that exist outside of Room, but he doesn't really understand what's real, and what real things look like.  He has no points of reference about how big a tree is, or what a dog's fur feels like.  He's seen pictures, but it's just not the real McCoy.

What's also interesting is to watch Jack change as he learns more about the world outside of Room, and learns to interpret things differently.  He changes his behavior based on what he learns that people expect; he learns to lie.

And one note particular to the audio version: the narrator doesn't identify any chapter breaks.  I still haven't picked up a copy of the paper book, so I'm not sure how the chapters are identified.  Maybe there are none, maybe there are some but they don't even have numbers.  In any case, I found this particularly annoying, which is odd, because it didn't really matter where in the book I was.  Maybe I like chapter beginnings and endings as a way to mark progress.

On the whole, a good read (or listen, as the case may be).  The second half was particularly compelling.  Definitely not the best I've ever read, but surely above average.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 19

Otherwise titled: the Laurel and Shula's

It's been a busy dress week so far!

On Wednesday, I had the good fortune of touring another downtown redevelopment project, and I loved it!  Seriously people.  You all know how I feel about living within the city limits.  If this guy can pull off his vision, it might get me to do just that.  Do you understand how astounding that is?

I'm not sure you do.  But regardless, I'll carry on with the adventure.

Anyway, the project is two buildings, one on each side of Wash Ave.  The one on the north side is going to be a museum, hotel, and apartments, and everything is really coming together.  They are supposed to be opening in less than a month!  On the south side, there's going to be a luxury movie theater, restaurants, and ... wait for it ... parking!  Safe and secure parking (or so they say).  But I parked my car there, and still had all tires and windows, so that's a good sign!

Me outside what will be a restaurant.  Sorry it's fuzzy - light was bad,

and it was cold so I was having trouble standing still!

Then we got to see the most amazing apartment ever.  It's near Wash Ave. and is basically a three story loft, although the top two floors are really only half-floors.  But because of that, the ceilings on the first floor are super high, and two walls are lined with double arched windows all the way from one end to the other.  There is a long bench that runs the length of one side under the windows, and under the bench are books, books, books!  The kitchen is right in the middle, which to me seems like the best place for a kitchen, since that's where all the action is anyway.

The second floor is an office, from which you can look down onto the entire first floor below you (although this loft is actually on the top three floors of the building).  And the top floor is a sitting/guest room.  And from there, you can go out onto the rooftop deck where they have an enormous garden with tons of produce - kale, Swiss chard, carrots, strawberries, etc. - and bees to pollinate everything!  And since bees make honey, I got a commemorative jar of honey to take home with me.

We left the apartment and ventured to Shula's 347 Grill, which is a nationwide establishment, although there are only a dozen or so locations.  Between the five of us we had three bottles of wine and a variety of appetizers.  The BBQ shrimp were particularly good, although I'm realizing now that I didn't try the chocolate mousse cake for dessert, and that's a little disappointing.

What I Watched -- The Station Agent

I first saw The Station Agent when I was on a plane to Africa.  I'm not sure what made me want to watch it again, but the urge struck, and I was in luck because they had it at my local library.  (I'm so old-fashioned!)

Not much happens in this movie.  It's a sweet film about a dwarf who loses his only friend in the world and then leaves the New York City suburbs for a small town in rural New Jersey.  He's desperately lonely and tries to keep it that way, but his plan for solitude is foiled by one man's relentless cheerfulness and one woman's deep depression.

This really is a character-driven movie; there's hardly any plot to speak of.  Peter Dinklage brings gravity and quality of acceptance and understanding to every scene as Fin McBride.  Bobby Cannavale (whom I know from a Sex and the City episode) is the ever-optimistic Joe, who sells coffee and hot dogs from his coffee truck every morning.  For reasons that are never explained, Joe parks his truck near Fin's off-the-beaten-path home/train depot, and Fin just can't seem to shake him.  And there's Patricia Clarkson as Olivia, who nearly kills Fin twice, then opens up to him in a way that many people seem to, even though Fin makes a point of not inquiring about their lives.  There are also bit parts played by Michelle Williams and - another Sex and the City alum - Lynn Cohen, who my fellow SATC lovers know as Magda.


Bottom line: great casting all around.  Don't expect a lot of action, but expect to enjoy the lack of it, because you will.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 18

Otherwise titled: A Rooftop Extravaganza

Remember this awesome date? Well, we did a second iteration of it on Saturday.  I had the weekend off work, so I put on another fun dress and we headed back down to Cielo for dinner!

We had the Caesar fondue again - because it was so much fun last time! - as well as the Cielo bruschetta.  Dinner for me was basil pappardelle with duck (which T even said was "not bad," which is about as high of praise as I've ever heard him give to poultry other than chicken), and T had the halibut.  The pasta was good, and came with lots of sauce, which I love!  Not cool to skimp on the sauce.  T's fish came with polenta cakes, which often can be tasteless, but these were good!

And for dessert (because there's always dessert!): I had the Italian dessert tasting with the trio of chocolate mousses - which I refrained from finishing even though I know I could have!  T had the pistachio semifreddo, which he was kind enough to let me try.

Oh, and of course the wine!  Figuring we would be there a while, I went crazy this time and ordered a whole bottle, despite my love of menus with a half-bottle selection.  We got a blend from the Murietta's Well Vineyard called The Whip, which includes sauvignon blanc, viognier, semillon, pinot blanc, orange muscat, and muscat canelli grapes.

After dinner, we weaseled our way to the front of the line for Three Sixty, the rooftop bar at the Hilton.  There had been a Cards game that night, so some of the crowd was in baseball gear, but for the most part, everyone dressed up like they were going to a classy joint, which was nice!  We managed to snag a couple of seats at the bar as another couple got up to leave, so we spent the evening enjoying some rather tasty vodka cocktails and the antics of the group across the bar.

The weather could not have been better, and it was the perfect evening to spend outside.

What I Watched -- A Film Unfinished

An hour-long film of the Warsaw ghetto was found in a concrete bunker hidden in a forest, along with some other footage.  A Film Unfinished is an investigation into the origin of the footage, the filmmakers and their intentions (which are not at all clear since the film was never, um, finished), and life in the ghetto.

This film, or more appropriately, the conditions of life in Warsaw as a Jew, were tragic.  But most of the film is actually pretty boring.  And it's a little disappointing - I was hoping there'd be some major revelation or discovery, perhaps about one of the filmmakers or cameramen, at the end.  You do get the identity of a couple of the filmmakers, but mostly the story just gets more and more depressing as the Nazis start shipping starving Jews off to concentration camps.  It's a little like the proverbial train wreck: you have to watch it just because it's so horrible.  So it's fascinating in some kind of sick way, but not enjoyable.

Bottom line: one for history buffs only.

52 Weeks of Dresses - Week 17

Otherwise titled: Ernesto's Wine Bar

T and I have a couple of Groupons for Ernesto's Wine Bar in Benton Park.  Well, actually, we had a couple, but we used one on Friday night.  We had planned on going down for dinner, which we eventually did, but we were really late and probably didn't start eating until 9:30 or so.

 

But when we ate, we ate.  We tried most of the different meats and cheeses, as well as the grilled cheese flight, and the night's shrimp Mozambique special.  And of course the chocolate obsession cake for dessert.  But wait!  It is a wine bar, after all, so we had the Que Syrah Sirah and Rockin' Reds flights, and T also had a glass of the Rogue mocha porter.

It was another one of those wonderful meals where everything was delicious, and we had lots of fun tasting all the different wines.  We ate too much, but worse things could have happened.

What I Watched -- Stand By Me

In honor of its 25th anniversary, I watched Stand By Me again last week.  I had seen it a couple of times when I was younger, but there was some press about it's recent silver anniversary, so I thought I'd give it another go.

I remember liking the movie when I was younger, but also knowing that there was some stuff I wasn't getting.  Now I think I get it.

Stand By Me is a coming of age story, but is also a story about friendship, and especially (and somewhat unusually) a story about close friendships between boys.  The main character is Gordie Lachance, and he narrates the story in an extended flashback 30 years later.  The older Gordie is played by Richard Dreyfuss.

The adventure belongs to four friends from a small town in Oregon: Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), and Vern (a much chubbier Jerry O'Connell).  Vern finds out where the friends can go to see the dead body of a missing boy.  They leave on the overnight trek, hoping that identifying the location to the police will bring them fame and glory.

In their search for the boy's body, they also encounter leeches, junkyard dogs, trains, and their own weaknesses.  Gordie's older brother had recently died in a car accident, and his parents don't hide the fact that they wish it had been Gordie instead.  Chris carries the weight of the good-for-nothing reputation of his older brother, and fears he will never make anything of himself.  Teddy suffers emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his mentally unstable father, a war vet.  And Vern, poor Vern, was scared of his own shadow.

What I find remarkable about the film is the charming and innocent portrayal of the boys' friendship. It's understated. Often, coming of age stories are filled with dramatic, over-the-top moments of self-discovery, especially when coupled with a first romantic interest.  There is none of that in Stand By Me.  There are just four friends who go out for a walk and come home the next day to the same town they left, though they are subtly but importantly changed.

Gordie closes the film by asking himself the following question: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.  Jesus, does anyone?"  Does anyone?

Bottom line: a poignant reminder that we will never be kids again.

Nice parking job

What I Watched -- Waiting for "Superman"

I didn't give this doc the attention I thought it deserved, but after seeing it, I think I gave it all the attention it needed.

Waiting for "Superman" purports to be "an engaging and inspiring look at public education in the United States."  That's not quite what I got out of it.  It was more like this: 30 minutes of all the ways in which the public education system in general is broken, followed by 70 minutes of up-close investigation of five charter or independent schools and the students who are desperate to get into them.

Each student's story was both sad and hopeful, so I guess the movie accomplished something there.  But it seemed to lose itself a bit along the way, in that it stopped being a movie about public education in general.  The first 30 minutes are likely dead-on vis a vis all the problems with the system, but the movie does no more in terms of addressing those problems than to identify them.

Bottom line: interesting food for thought, but don't expect any answers.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Weeks 15 and 16

Otherwise titled: Jimmy's, Jimmy's, and the Japanese Festival

Many moons ago, T and I had dinner at Jimmy's with E and S - the first time they had been there, and they got to experience the wonder that is Jimmy's croissant bread pudding!  Oh, and the flash-fried spinach too.

The weather was still toast warm then, and I took advantage of it to wear one of my long-neglected dresses (it has to be warm to get away with pink linen).

This past weekend, T and I went again, but this time for brunch.  That was a new experience for me.  I didn't know they did brunch!  And not only do they do it, but they also had live jazz (and the good kind, not the make-you-feel-schizophrenic kind).

For my meal, I had Derek's Omelet, along with the flight of mimosas.  T got the tenderloin Benedict and a Bellini, although we really shared all the drinks.  He'll tell you I drank most of them.  He's probably right.

We meandered our way down to the Botanical Garden for the Japanese Festival, stopping to take care of a few errands/necessities along the way.

We wandered the garden a bit, saw the bonsai and ikebana exhibits, ate beef kebabs and drank banana-plum shakes, and camped out early for a good spot to see the taiko drummers.

Bonsai

Sushi (aka ikebana)

Flowers

Windsocks

More pink!  Good thing I got it in just before the weather turned cooler!

They now do anime events at the festival, so there are some...um, interesting...outfits.

The weather was perfect, and it was so lovely to sit outside and just enjoy the weather and the sunset (and the [very Japanese] M&Ms!), and hear and feel the drums!

What K does when she is not working

In addition to sending me the penguin logic and whichbook links (currently in the sidebar), these are other fun things I got from K yesterday on her day off:

Possible hairstyles...
...or maybe we should stay long.
If you ever find yourself in a pinch.
Pop culture. Sort of.
Pop culture. For realsies this time.
K went to the show (and saw the crazy costumes) (and this) (and wanted me to see this)!

What I'm Reading Now -- Room

In truth, I'm not actually reading this book, I'm listening to it.  And while I often advocate audiobooks as a way for busy people to read (though I seldom listen to them myself because I'm always listening to podcasts), I'm not sure I like this in the audio version.

However, I joined a book group, and if I'm going to get this book finished by the meeting, it's going to have to be on audio.  And actually, I'm first on the waiting list for the meeting anyway (they cap the group at 20), so since I may not even be going, I feel that the slightly less engaging method of absorbing the literature is justified.

Also, I'm breaking my rule twice over of reading only one book at a time, although I've given up on the first one until this winter at the least.  The second one I will keep reading.