Goal #39

Goal #39: time for a Goodwill run.

As I've been going through these first few weeks of reorganization, I've amassed a couple of big boxes of stuff which really just needs to be out of here.  So this week, it will be.

Recap of goal #38: the second bookshelf is ready to go, at least to the best of my ability.  I'm missing a few of the necessary parts, which mom said she found hiding someplace.  So I'm sure those will arrive any day now and I can complete the assembly.

What I'm Reading Now -- Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is a strange book so far.  I don't know much about it, except that it's not going to be typical.  Or at least that's what I've heard.

So far, all I know is that a new guy gets a job at - you guessed it - Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. Something about the store doesn't quite make sense.  There are rarely customers, the store rarely sells any books. But somehow it's open all day and night, and somehow Mr. Penumbra manages to pay this guy's salary.

How?  I imagine we shall find out.

The Farm -- Take 2

I finished The Farm last weekend, after a small hiccup.  I was cruising along, listening to the tracks from the fourth CD, when suddenly there was a break in the story that didn't make any sense.  I didn't know what was going on.  A quick check on my iPod screen revealed that we had gone from the fourth to the seventh CDs, with nothing in between.

Maybe those tracks somehow ended up unchecked in my iTunes, so didn't transfer to the iPod when I synced it.  Nope.  They just weren't there.  Somehow I had missed two entire discs worth of my story.  I had to take a pause until I acquired them.

Once I did get the missing tracks, I continued on my way, listening along with Daniel as his mother recounted her tale, not quite sure what was true and what was not.  As the story unwinds, the picture gets muddier, then starts to take shape.

Daniel's parents moved to Sweden upon their retirement, and under circumstances which hadn't been clear to Daniel. Upon their arrival in Sweden, they met the neighbors, and the first of them gave his mother the creeps, to say the least.  She kept an eye on him, his family, and their acquaintances, certain that something wasn't right. Meanwhile, the creepy neighbor welcomed Daniel's father into his circle.

I won't say more for fear of spoiling any of the story.  If you want to know whether Daniel's mother is crazy or whether his father is in on the conspiracy, you'll have to read it for yourself.

Microbrewery: Bridge Tap House and Wine Bar

Technically, Bridge Tap House and Wine Bar is not a microbrewery.  It's not a brewery at all.  It's just a restaurant, but it has such an extensive list of craft and generally unusual beers that I thought I'd include it in this little microbrewery tour.

[Aside: remember way back when I started this with Schlafly Bottleworks? Then I went a long time before writing about Urban Chestnut, which now has a new location I still have to try.  I also went to Six Row, which I didn't even write about!  Clearly, I have not been very diligent.]

I've been to Bridge a couple times actually.  Once I went with cousin M, and enjoyed the pork belly banh mi.  I went later with T feasted on a board of various breads and dips.  The first time I was there, right after I moved downtown, I had duck tacos which are still my favorite of the three.

If you're looking for a beer you'll like and are a bit intimidated by the list, ask your bartender or server.  So far they've all been knowledgeable and eager to help out.  Or just go with M, because he knows his stuff.

What I'm Reading Now -- An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth

Mom sent me the audiobook of An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth, and I didn't know much about it.  After I got it, I heard an interview with the author, Col. Chris Hadfield, on NPR.  He sounded like an interesting enough guy, so I thought I'd give it a try.

A thought on the audiobook version as I get started -- he reads it himself.  So far, this lends it both a casual air and a sense of legitimacy.  Every now and then he'll chuckle over a word or event, and it's nice to have him be the one reading it, because you know that's exactly how he meant it to be read when he wrote it.  At the same time, he is the person who really did all these things - who trained for 20 years and went to space and learned to speak Russian, and doing all those things were so important to him that he's reading you his story himself.

I like that.

Unbroken -- Take 2

Unbroken was everything I hoped it would be. I have described it to a couple of people as a tragedy of errors.  The unending series of events which befall Louie Zamperini, and the unending courage and good spirit with which he handled them, is truly astounding.

To tell the entire story wouldn't ruin it by any stretch of the imagination, but there were just so many that I can't remember them all: there was his trouble-making childhood, bitter disappointment when the Olympics were cancelled, all the normal struggles of a WWII pilot, crashing in the Pacific, living on a lifeboat for a month and a half, Japanese POW camp, followed by another, and another, with some of the worst prison guards you could possibly imagine, and of course the self-medication which followed.

Louie himself has written two autobiographies, both with the same main title: Devil at My Heels.  The first, subtitled The Story of Louis Zamperini, was published in 1956 and is out of print in its original version (though this may be an updated version of it; I can't quite tell).  The second, subtitled A World War II Hero's Epic Saga of Torment, Survival, and Forgiveness (again with the Oxford comma!), was published in 2003. The newer version was significantly updated, and appears to have provided the bones and structure for Unbroken.

Louie died this past July, at the age of 97.

Aside: for those of you who don't appreciate the usefulness of a good Oxford comma, behold the hilarity which E sent me:

Goal #38

Goal #38: the other bookshelf.

I had two bookshelves delivered from mom.   T and I set one of them up last week, and I started loading it up.  The second one will be more of a challenge, since I have to move a lot of stuff out of the way in order to get it in place.

Recap of goal #37: new rug is in place!  Somehow I managed to move all that furniture by myself.

What I Watched -- The Notebook

I was talking to my baby 20-year-old intern earlier this summer, and she mentioned that The Notebook was her favorite movie of all time.  I'm not usually a fan of sappy romances, but I was also interested to test a theory: someone else had told me that it was impossible to watch this movie and not end up in a puddle of tears by the end. I needed to discover the veracity of that claim.

I wasn't 30 seconds into the movie when I realized I'd already seen it before.  (Apparently I didn't find it noteworthy or memorable enough to write about.)  Regardless, I kept watching for the purposes of my experiment.

Result: theory not confirmed.  There were no tears, and there hadn't been the first time I watched it either.

Now, if you're looking for a love story for the ages, this is a good one.  It's just not really my type of movie, because I find it a wee bit too unbelievable.  I suppose I'm a bit of a cynic.

Bottom line: not my can of worms, but Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams make it as real as it can be.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Farm

While I certainly enjoy a good psychological thriller, this book probably never would have made it onto my radar if not for my old stalwart book podcast, Books on the Nightstand.

The plot is this: Daniel's father calls him, telling him that his mother is delusional and had been hospitalized, but checked herself out of the hospital. Daniel's mother calls him, and tells him that she needs his help to escape Daniel's father.  Daniel doesn't know what to believe, except that his parents' outwardly placid marriage is perhaps not what it seemed.

I'm listening to the audio of this, because I especially love audio books which have multiple narrators, and this one does.  It's told from Daniel's point of view; he and his father are voiced by one reader, and his mother is voiced by someone else.

I'm about a disc into it as I write this, and I can't stop listening!

Dinner at Alumni

Several weeks ago now, on one of the first cool (and windy!) nights toward the end of summer, T and I had dinner at Alumni. In general the food was decent, and my drink was delicious, but there is one particular item of note which I would like to bring to your attention:

Do you know what those are? Those are bacon-wrapped onion rings.  That's right, those are things which exist.  They take the raw onion, wrap it in bacon, batter it, and then fry the whole thing.  They were pretty tasty, but purely ridiculous.

Just thought you should know they're out there.