Well, since you all asked, here's the picture I took of the garage, filled with boxes after three straight days of unpacking.

Scary, huh?

Posted by: Random Penseur at 02:38 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

Simple, really. Don't act your age, put whatever stupid sense of self-regard/dignity to one side.

Just be the only father at the pool today to do a cannonball. Make a really big splash. Bask in the admiration of the Girl Child.

Pray she does not request a demonstration of the belly flop.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:46 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 66 words, total size 1 kb.

I was detained, last night, by evil companions (a good friend and my wife) and only managed 5 hours of sleep. That's ok, all you need is five hours if you then go and mortify the flesh in the gym for about two hours. Indeed, that's also a good way to make walking later too painful to do much of. But back to last night.

I went with a dear friend who is an international expert on rare books and manuscripts and toured some of the highlights of a private book and manuscript collection at a private club here in New York City. Seeing and handling rare books is a pretty interesting experience. I don't have the rare book bug, although I probably could catch it if I let myself. Its just that I lack the time, the money, and the education. I have the inclination, at least mildly, but the inclination by itself will not a collection build. Which is good. Collections are a responsibility and I'm never really certain who owns whom. Does the collector own the collection or does the collection, which requires special care and storage and handling and security and professional care, own the collector?

This collection had some highlights and I was really very fortunate to be able to touch and admire the following:

*Mark Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (London 1771). Catesby predated Audubon and his drawings of birds and plants were so extraordinarily colorful, even after some 230 years and so lifelike. It was the first natural history of America. We didn't look at the fish, but maybe another time.

Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida, & The Bahama Islands is one of the great achievements of Anglo-American science in the eighteenth- century. Catesby's great folio plates provided the means by which Europeans could view the natural produce of North American and thus were a part of the continuing discovery of the continent. Most of Catesby's figures were based on watercolor sketches that he made in the field or upon specimens made available to him in England. The work remained a major source for the study of American plants and animals through its own century and even into the next.

HereÂ’s one of his prints of the Teal (blue winged):

Regrettably, when his books come up for auction, they are often bought by dealers who cut them up and sell the prints individually. I think thatÂ’s cultural vandalism, personally.

*Ptolmey's Geographica (Venice 1511). This was one of the most interesting of the renaissance version of the atlas and while they corrected some of Ptolmey's mistakes, they couldn't bring themselves to correct all of them. Especially noteworthy is that this contained the first map that showed North America, or so I'm told. A nice link here. Here's the map. Love the little putti:

I think the thing that most blew me away with this printing was the title page. It was in red and in the form of an inverted pyramid, I assume in homage to Egypt. It was such a modern feeling graphical design presentation and the red was so beautiful. So exceptional.

*A couple of examples from the William Morris printing house, Kelmscott Press. These were rich, lush and detailed printings. Stunning stuff. You can see some examples here. A nice collection of information on Morris here. We then saw the 1903 printing of the Doves Bible by Cobden Sanderson, a protege of Morris, who rejected the rich and lush look for a much more sparse and very powerful look. Cobden Sanderson believed that the font stood for itself and should be powerful enough to support the work by itself. Here is the first page from the Doves Bible, one of the most famous pages in printing history, I'm told:

Pretty impressive, no?

*Leaving out some of the Renaissance era architectural books we looked at, at my request, we also looked at sketches and drawing by George Cruikshank, a noted satirist and caricaturist of the 1800's, in the tradition of Hogarth. The drawings were marvelous, a collection of full out water colors in exquisite detail all the way down to doodles he did, and signed, on the backs of envelopes and receipts for erasers. My favorite was a very powerful unfinished sketch for a series of illustrations for Milton's Paradise Lost. The edition was never published and Cruikshank destroyed the plates and the drawings, except for this one. It was quite a thrill to see it, to know that I was looking at something that existed nowhere else. Cruikshank also painted wonderful animals -- dogs and horses, in the best tradition of an English artist, it seems to me. The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco has a large collection of his works and many of the images are online.

We finished off the visit with an hour long drink with the curator as we chatted about wonderful rare books he had seen in the course of his long career. A very real book nerd evening. After he left, we adjourned for dinner.

All in all, an outstanding night. It is really quite an experience to hold a book published in 1511. Makes one feel a little less important in the grand scheme of things, which may not be so bad at all in our very individual focused society.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 02:28 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 900 words, total size 6 kb.

IÂ’ve been musing a bit about knowledge. How do we know what we know and why do we think we know it? IÂ’m sure that philosophers and just philosophy majors have spent years and years debating these questions and have honed them down into a manageable mess. I am not a philosopher and I did not major in philosophy. Nor, for that matter, have I read much philosophy, preferring to leave my mind uncluttered to better appreciate the simple pleasures of beer and baseball, preferably at the same time. So, I bring no baggage to these questions.

My musings were prompted by a book IÂ’m reading. My dad gave it to me, I threw it into my bag and forgot about it. It isnÂ’t heavy, so carting it around without remembering I had it for several months was no hardship. I found it this week when I went digging for my as of yet not located notary stamp. Damn that stamp. Anyway, the book, One Nation Under Therapy : How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance , is interesting. One chapter in particular got my attention. The chapter on grief counseling and grief therapy.

Basically, the book asserts, the long held and widely held beliefs that you need therapy to deal with your grief, that you need to vent, to share your emotions and how you feel about your loss, is a bunch of hooey. The belief doesnÂ’t stand up to scientific review. In fact, for some, therapy simply prolongs the grief. The book notes that the 5 stages of grief that have become common cultural touchstones are in fact a distortion of the work of the shrink who came up with it. The 5 stages were not meant to apply to survivors but to people who had just been told that they had an incurable disease. Interesting, no? Pretty much anyone you ask will tell you (I know, over-generalization but, hey, its my blog) that grief and recovery from follow certain recognized pathways, right?

I paid particular attention to this because of the state my grandfather is in, you know.

Well, how is it that this is thought to be true if it isn’t? How do we “know” something? How can we be certain we know something?

We learn things by hearing them or by reading them. We rarely examine primary sources or conduct experiments ourselves. In fact, I think that for most things, we are probably three or four, at best, stages removed from the knowledge. The experiment is performed and the results are observed. Stage 1. The results are written up in a paper and presented somewhere. Stage 2. The results are then published in a journal. Maybe Stage 3 maybe just another stage 2. Then someone, maybe someone with no science training, writes an article about the report. Stage 4. That article is read or skimmed in the newspaper by the consumer. Stage 5. Public exposure of the article results in, maybe, a television appearance in which someone long removed from the experiment discusses the experiment and the results. Rarely is it the scientist. Stage 6. Maybe you’ve caught the 120 seconds of television airtime summarizing the article that summarized the report that summarized the experiment. And you become guided by it. Maybe you repeat what you think you’ve learned to your friends or co-workers, always with the authoritative phrase, “studies show” without really knowing that maybe it was just one experiment. Stage 7. And then we have public knowledge. Far removed, in 7 approximate stages, from the experiment and totally dumbed down.

That is how as best as I can figure out, knowledge becomes widely spread. At best, for most of us, we get our knowledge at Stage 4, the article. At worst, Stage 7. It doesnÂ’t have to mean that the knowledge we obtain is unreliable, but it doesnÂ’t bode well for a high reliability factor, does it, not when I break it down like this, right?

Sometimes we learn from school and from text books and from lectures from teachers or experts. Again, we are asked to accept the “knowledge” imparted in the book or from the lecture. We are asked to accept it as true. But we all know that information in this context is rarely complete and that information is often distorted by outside political forces. Take, for example, textbooks. Textbooks are often reviewed for “sensitivity” issues, for whether they may give offense to other cultures. In that regard, how can we ever accept, uncritically, anything that ever appears in a textbook, again, knowing that the contents have been, perhaps, distorted? Don’t believe me? Go forth and see what Diane Ravitch has said about some of these things (and then throw up):

*Diane on Math and

*Diane on Language Police.

So what can we do? I think that when you have the time, you should read and read critically the source material that an assertion claims to be premised upon. Grief counseling evidently rests on a very shaky foundation of science, or so the book claims in synthesizing the research of others. Don’t accept the bland “studies show” assertion. Go find out for yourself. Inform yourself, educate yourself, empower yourself.

But do it selectively. I mean, at some level, you have to trust or at least decide that the matter isnÂ’t important enough for you to spend the time researching and you might as well accept what you read. Reductio ab absurdum and you find yourself repeating NewtonÂ’s experiments on gravity or learning ancient Greek because you donÂ’t trust the Sophocles criticism you were reading. So, clearly, at some level, it canÂ’t be taken too far. I assume we all, intuitively, know what that level is. If not, good luck figuring it out.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:16 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 968 words, total size 6 kb.

I had the great pleasure of spending some time in one of the New York City offices of the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles yesterday. I had to return license plates now that I have the cars registered in Connecticut. While there, I saw a t-shirt on a young woman which bore the following inscription on the chest:

Objects under this shirt may be larger than they appear

Based on my careful examination of her shirt, I'd have to say that my test results were inconclusive. Still, great shirt.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:52 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 99 words, total size 1 kb.

Comments, as I have noted before, are the best thing about blogging. Comments make it more like making love and less like intellectual masturbation.

I hit a milestone, yesterday, when Tuning Spork left me my 3000th comment since coming to MuNu. Wow. 3000 comments. I am really very grateful and a little bit overwhelmed by the number.

Rob said it the best on his blog, in referring to the people who comment on my blog:

You have, without a doubt- The best collection of "commenters" I have seen, bar none.

Rob is right. Y'all are the best! Thanks so much for making this worthwhile for me.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:34 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 110 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Oh, no. Please, thank you!

Posted by: Wicked H at August 09, 2005 01:33 PM (iqFar)

2 Congrats, RP! Someday when I grow up, I too shall have a nifty batch of commenters. Even if I have to enlist all my personalities. *sigh* Now I have "commenter" envy. Great.

Posted by: Rob at August 09, 2005 01:48 PM (Gkhif)

3 You deserve the visits & comments, You deserve the high praise. The quality of your writing and your wit is what compels us to return.

Posted by: michele at August 09, 2005 07:39 PM (ZUSFz)

4 I think why RP gets such great comments is there's a lot of respect there. You will almost never see someone calling you names, or talking crap, because you don't put up with it and we/they know it. Plus your stories are great! Sometimes it's hard NOT to leave a comment.

Posted by: Oorgo at August 10, 2005 04:16 PM (lM0qs)

5 You have that knack for inviting conversation. I'm jealous.

Posted by: Ted at August 10, 2005 04:41 PM (+OVgL)

6 Um, Thanks, Rob??

Posted by: Mark at August 11, 2005 12:32 AM (Qy2ks)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Been awhile since I've done one of these but there were lots of interesting things to note, so:

Births, today, in

*1593 Izaak Walton, a name known to anyone who ever picked up a fly fishing rod. He wrote the Compleat Angler in 1653 or thereabouts.

*1930 Betty Boop born in in Max Fleischer's animated cartoon Dizzy Dishes.

*1938 Rocket Rod Laver, one of the greatest Australian tennis players, winning the Grand Slam in 1962 and 1969. He also never lost at Davis Cup play.

Events, today, in

*BC 480 Persian forces of hundreds of thousands defeat Greek forces of 7000 led by Spartan king Leonidas and 300 other Spartans at the Hot Gates of Thermopylae. The Spartans were wiped out to a man but caused huge casualties among the Persians. The epitaph remains:

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

*378 Battle of Adrianople (with nice diagrams), the surprise arrival of the Visigoth heavy calvary defeats Roman Army, setting the stage for the end of the Roman Empire.

*1638 Jonas Bronck (link is to cool page on history of the Bronx) becomes the first European settler in what later becomes known as "da Bronx". Always, "the", by the way, the only borough in New York City to be named that way.

*1854 Henry David Thoreau publishes his essay, "Walden", on his time spent on Walden Pond in his cabin:

*1902 Edward VII crowned King of England after death of his mother, Queen Victoria. The Victorian age ended.

*1936 Jesse Owens wins his fourth gold medal of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, making Hitler crazy. See article at ESPN on Owens. Owens died from lung cancer after smoking a pack a day for much of his life. I note that Owens, America's greatest track star, never denied taking steroids (whether he was asked is, of course, besides the point).

*1945 US drops the second atomic bomb ("Fat Man") on Japan and destroys part of Nagasaki.

*1965 Singapore gains independence from Malaysia. Celebrates National Day. See message from Prime Minister here.

*1974 Richard Nixon (bio from Nixon Foundation website), our only Quaker president, resigns presidency in wake of Watergate. Gerald Ford takes over "under extraordinary circumstances". I've been to Ford's museum in Grand Rapids. Not too bad, but I really hate Grand Rapids.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 395 words, total size 4 kb.

Christina, at Feisty Repartee, is hanging up her spurs. I will miss her sure handed and spare writing (never a wasted word), her clever insights, her penetrating observations, her sometimes heartrending stories and the terrific anecdotes of her way too smart children. Today, we lose one of the really great ones!

Thanks for the excellent writing and wonderful memories, Christina!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 05:09 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 64 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Bless you for the very kind words, my friend; however, I shall be haunting you here. ; )

Posted by: Christina at August 08, 2005 05:55 PM (zJsUT)

2 NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O!!!! I didn't visit often enough, but I also loved it when I did. This is a sad day in Munuvia.

Posted by: Tuning Spork at August 08, 2005 09:18 PM (ZgQJ1)

3 I've left my incredulity over there but I'll just add an "awshit" over here. *sniffle*

Posted by: Margi at August 09, 2005 02:39 AM (nwEQH)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

I'm not saying I'm going to hell for this, but I am certainly not scoring any points with the Big Guy. The problem? I had a major Jimmy Buffet craving this weekend. I gorged on a couple of cd's and what, you may ask, what song did the Girl Child, supported by her brother, want to hear over and over again until she could sing along?

My head hurts, my feet stink, and I don't love Jesus

Hearing her sing along to this, if I don't die by Thursday I'll be roaring Friday night!, made me realize I would have some small explaining to do to our religious Mormon nanny. All she said, when I explained, was: "oh, my."

I'm not helping myself at all here, am I?

Oh, and do you know the song 1985? The Girl Child knows all the words to this one, as well. And she sings it with the 2.5 year old Boy Child. I could hear them one night when we were staying at my parents' house. It went something like this:

GC: She was gonna be an actress, she was gonna be a

BC: STAR!

GC: She was gonna shake her ass, on the hood of White Snake's

BC: CAR!

My wife and I just about fell over when we heard this little duet. Putting to one side the fact that we were not particularly pleased that the last nanny played this song enough for the Girl Child to learn, by the way. Not pleased in the slightest. Still, pretty darn funny.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 12:23 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment
Post contains 281 words, total size 1 kb.

1 Oh man, that's a good one. At least your kids don't say stuff like the little one on "The Fockers"... asss hoooole I still laugh. Whenever we hear our little guy swear (which isn't often, thank goodness) we pretend we don't understand what he's saying, i.e. "Sit? Did you say sit?" .. it doesn't work very well though, especially when he even says it in the right context.

Posted by: Oorgo at August 08, 2005 01:24 PM (lM0qs)

2 You should teach them to do the Run/DMC Aerosmith version of Walk This Way. That would cool.

Posted by: Howard at August 08, 2005 02:31 PM (u2JaN)

3 Did you clear the Mormon Nanny through Howard????

Posted by: Wicked H at August 08, 2005 02:34 PM (iqFar)

4 ***snort*** I agree about "Walk This Way," but really any Beastie Boys song will do -- that's exactly what I pictured when I read the duet! Glad you've gotten settled in -- somewhat, anyway. Good luck in corrupting the mormon na...um...I mean...meeting the nanny's approval...uh, yeah.

Posted by: Allison at August 08, 2005 03:55 PM (ddjrP)

5 Heh. My friends have learned to carefully ignore any swear words their 4 year old says. Any sort of attention to them make them much more likely to appear again.

Posted by: owlish at August 08, 2005 03:59 PM (kVnh2)

6 Once I made a mix. It had a Jimmy Buffett song on it. And lots of other songs. I was getting ready for a party and I grabbed some mixes. Later, while we flipped burgers and kids whacked a badminton birdie around, Jimmy sang out loud and clear, "Wha' don't we get drunk and skroooo?..."

Posted by: Amy at August 08, 2005 06:09 PM (nUCsP)

7 Yes, Wicked, the Nanny has been cleared by me. I gave her my official Seal of Approval..."Dude, she's hot!".

Posted by: Howard at August 09, 2005 02:15 PM (u2JaN)

8 Oh my word! I laughed so hard. There is a country song out now called "Hillbillies" and the chorus is "like it in the hay" and my 2.5 year old son sings along. The funniest is when he says "you know how we get when we get it on" and it comes out just "get it on!" Priceless, too bad you didn't get it on tape.

Posted by: Oddybobo at August 09, 2005 03:08 PM (6Gm0j)

9 OMFG - I read this yesterday, and again today and I am still laughing my ass off!!! I want my Hello Kitty pencils!

Posted by: Mark at August 10, 2005 09:55 PM (Qy2ks)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

It has been a long time since I did a Behind the Curtain post, but that's just because nothing or no one caught my particular fancy for awhile now. I don't go out looking for these people, they sort of have to find me. Today, I was found by Mr. Soulé. A colleague of mine asked me if I had ever heard of him. He told me that Soulé served as President Pierce's ambassador to Spain in the 1850's and, while there, managed to grievously wound the French ambassador in a duel and give the Spanish government a 48 hour ultimatum over something (which they ignored) and, finally, consorted with ant-royalist activists and intriguers. Curiosity officially piqued.

All in all, seems like a perfect candidate for a Behind the Curtain portrait.

As always, the rest is in Extended Entry! more...

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:09 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 1165 words, total size 7 kb.

I spent the morning at summer camp. It was the last day of the Girl Child's summer camp and they were putting on a little skit they had been working on in drama class. She was very excited and, despite the fact that it seems as if I have been out of the office more than I have been in the office, I decided to take the morning off and attend. After all, ten years from now I will not remember what I did in the office this Friday but I will remember attending her little skit in ten years.

It was charming. They were "going on a bear hunt" and acted out the whole little story. They put the Girl Child smack in the middle of the line of kids, I think because she's so tall, and she did just fine. Then they gave out t-shirts to the kids. The counselors all made t-shirts for each child and presented them with a few remarks about why each child received that particular shirt. The Girl Child was given the most creative camper award t-shirt, for all of her creative work in art class and because she loved doing the art projects so much. The expression on her face was priceless. She was so self-consciously pleased with her t-shirt.

And then we left them to their devices for the remainder of the camp day. But her counselors had nice things to say about her to me ("she's sooooo smart"; "she made so many friends"; "she was up for anything we did") and her drama teacher said that the Girl Child was fearless and enthusiastic and a big risk taker. All of this, of course, was music to my ears. Nice music, not industrial grunge, just to be clear.

Otherwise, we didn't even mind being outside for this as the temperature was already 87 degrees by 10:00 a.m.

It was a very sweet morning.

*Any takers for telling me what the title of this post is a reference to? Without using a search engine, of course. I bet a number of you erudite readers know what this is.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 01:53 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 362 words, total size 2 kb.

My desk is a lovely shade of reddish/brownish wood. I had forgotten it was so lovely. It only took just under five hours today to clean it up enough for me to see it again. Also, while on the subject of good news, I do not appear to to have buried anything of a time critical nature such that I have defaulted on something, let a statute of limitations run, missed an important deadline, or otherwise committed malpractice per se. That's always the really big risk with having a messy, messy desk.

Yup, looking mighty shiny and clean in here today. I can practically see my reflection in the surface of the desk.

What the hell. Beats working!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:24 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
Post contains 122 words, total size 1 kb.

In what other city could you possibly buy from a Japanese language bookstore, for $1, a copy of Bill Cosby's book, Fatherhood, translated into Norwegian (title: Kunsten Å Være Far), ?

Of course, I bought it. I mean, how could I not?

I love this city.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 76 words, total size 1 kb.

Thanks to some guy in Missouri, vicarious liability is dead in NY. Vicarious liability ("VL") is a really interesting concept. It has to do with ownership of a conveyance -- a motor vehicle now but a carriage before. VL means that liability for the damage caused by the motor vehicle is imputed to the owner of the vehicle and not merely the operator. This meant that car companies were on the hook if a leased car got into an accident. NY was one of the only states with this law.

VL dated back quite some time and came into being when horse and carriage travel was popular. It made a lot of sense. Horses and carriages were very expensive things but they were generally driven not by the owners but by a poor and poorly compensated carriage driver. If the driver hurt someone, there was no recourse. So the NY State Legislature provided recourse to the owner of the horse and carriage, generally a person of substance.

The concept was simply carried forward to motor vehicles later.

At the time, it seems to me that VL was not particularly revolutionary. I recall from my days studying Roman Law (literally, the laws and legal system of Rome and the Roman Empire) that it provided for VL. If you threw something out of a rented apartment and hurt someone, the injured person had recourse against the owner of the apartment building, whether or not the owner had anything to do with throwing the object out the window. VL, no?

However, VL in NY has made leasing cars very, very expensive and caused all sorts of havoc in terms of insurance and in terms of indemnification of the car companies by the lessee. I know because I got involved in one of the cases once. Went all the way to the Appellate Division where we lost.

Representative Sam Graves, put an unexpected end to the issue.

The provision is in the federal transportation bill under "Title X: Miscellaneous Provisions." It states that people who rent or lease motor vehicles to others "shall not be held liable under the law of any state" for any harm their vehicles cause, as long as they are not guilty of "negligence or criminal wrongdoing."

Representative Graves's amendment passed the House in March by a vote of 218 to 201, mostly along party lines, and it stayed in the bill through the conference committee process. When the full bill went to a vote, it passed overwhelmingly, because it included billions of dollars of spending on transportation projects that lawmakers in both parties wanted for their districts.

If the president signs the bill, officials said, the federal law will take precedence, and New York's vicarious liability law will no longer apply.

No matter what you think of VL, it was the law of NY and has been hotly debated, again and again in the Legislature. For some schmuck from Missouri to come in and change NY law is, to me, an abuse of the federal system. I may not have liked the law, but I resent like hell this hick coming in and usurping the powers granted to the dysfunctional NY State Legislature by the equally dysfunctional citizens of the State of NY.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:30 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 558 words, total size 3 kb.

It was a quiet Sunday afternoon. The kids actually were napping, the wife was working out, the nanny was off at church, the air conditioning was humming away, we were as unpacked as we need to be at this stage of the weekend, and, for the first time in four days, I sat down for more than a moment.

But, I am a man and in some ways a typical man so I could not sit down in my new den without holding the remote. The adult male pacifier. And I could not hold it without using it, of course. But I did strike gold. Conan the Barbarian was only moments away from starting. I settled in to the couch to enjoy, as if for the first time again, the theatrical stylings of the Governator.

This brings me almost to the point of this post. Bet you thought I'd never get there, did you?

While watching this subtle play on the nature of good and evil, on choice and destiny, on nature v. nurture, I kept seeing breasts. There were a bunch of woman naked from the waist up in this cinematic tour de force. Normally, I suppose, I appreciate the naked female form as much as the next red blooded heterosexual male. But something about these breasts struck me as odd. And then it hit me. These breasts were real! That's why they looked so unusual and even, frankly, so nice.

And now we do get to the point. The point is this: real, not surgically enhanced breasts are seldom seen in movies today. They have vanished, much like cigarette adds from television. So much so, that I am wondering whether the natural breast should be added to the California endangered species list, Hollywood Chapter. They should not be allowed to vanish altogether. We should take a stand and demand their return to the big screen.

Seriously, how messed up is it that real breasts stand out on the screen? How many women have undergone cosmetic surgery to "improve" their looks for movies?

I'm reminded of a scene from a movie I can't recall the name of. Steve Martin and Sarah Jessica Parker are fooling around, in LA, and he says that her breasts feel weird and she says that's because they're real.

Could we start a grass roots movement here? Small breasts for the big screen! A rallying cry!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:53 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
Post contains 411 words, total size 2 kb.

The movers came, the movers schlepped, the movers worked hard, they nicked walls, they damaged only one piece of furniture, and they left us with our boxes of possessions all over the house, mostly in the correct rooms.

We unpacked, to a minimum level of acceptability, our bedroom. We worked until late and then went out for -- margaritas. Well deserved re-hydration.

The next morning came with no hot water in the house. Someone had turned the furnace off, kindly meant, to not burn oil without the need. I turned the furnace back on and promptly it filled the furnace room with smoke and fumes. Service call one. The oil company. Hot water was restored, bodies were washed. Happiness returned. Ten hours of unpacking later, the kitchen was done. Kitchens take a lot of time to unpack. No question about it. In the meantime, deliveries came and went and our house became fuller still.

Friday, my father came to help. He made us a little bit crazy but he was a huge help. The kids' bedrooms were done and the den and living room were unpacked, the book shelves were adjusted, and the books were put away. Cable was hooked up so we had television again.

Saturday dawned with a trip to Stew Leonard's for pick up 1.5 lbs of jalapeno poppers. That's all we ended up eating for the whole day, as it turned out. The playroom was unpacked. The gym equipment was delivered and assembled by experts. We worked until the wee hours getting everything as finished as we could.

You should see the garage. In fact, I will take some pictures so you can see how we turned a spacious two car garage into a place where boxes were sent to die. My garage is the elephant graveyard of moving materials.

Sunday, the children came to their new home. I was promptly informed, and then regularly reminded by the Girl Child, that if it "was too hard" for her at the new house, her grandparents said she could move back with them.

Yesterday, first day back at the office and lots of catching up to do.

Today, too gruesome for words at work. Oh, and my wife has left us. You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille! Jetted off to Cinncinnati. Business, she claims. But we all know what a garden of temptation Cinncinnati is. Who knows what she's doing there.

I told the Girl Child last week that when her mother went away, we could stay up late and do something fun, just the two of us. Last night, after I said good night and turned off her light, she said, "Pappa, I am sooo excited about tomorrow night!" Yay for me! I'm going to hold on to these moments as long as I can!

Another thing I'd like to hold on to? When I tell the Boy Child that I love him, in Norwegian, "Glad i deg!", his response back, "Goal die!" is too precious for me not to savor.

Finally, the kids are excited by the deer. They have seen the deer and like them. Me? I have seen the deer and concluded that, much as pigeons in the City are rats with wings, deer are rats with antlers and big ears.

More to come later.

Thanks for all the good wishes on the prior post! You all are the best!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 04:30 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 581 words, total size 3 kb.

What does that title mean? It is what I figure I will be saying tomorrow night after the movers have left us with 835,003 boxes, 834,000 of which will be labeled "Misc.". I will look at the sea of boxes and say to my dear wife, "I have the beer, we just have to find the opener". And she will smite me. Being smited is not the same as being smitten, just in case you were wondering.

I am cautiously looking forward to having our house be ours. Cautiously, because I do not yet know what surprise awaits me in owning this house, although I assume that there will be many unpleasant surprises in my future. It is all part of owning a house.

In the midst of unpacking, for which I am taking off the next three days from work, we have deliveries up the wazoo, cable and telephone people coming, alarm system people coming, post office trips and town office trips to make, and generally speaking more work and appointments than I care to shake a stick at, even though I am not generally in the habit of shaking sticks at anyone. Nor should one be. You could put someone's eye out by over enthusiastic stick shaking, you know. Don't you listen to your mother? There's no talking to you, is there?

*Whap* Down, boy, down.

Sorry, I let my inner idiot take control of the keyboard for a moment and he revealed more about the inner dialogue in my head than he should of. Oh, well.

At least it isn't supposed to rain tomorrow. Today, however, is supposed to be the hottest day of the year, according to the weather people. Although tomorrow is supposed to be hotter. And I'm in a suit and tie today. Oh, joy.

Keep cool, y'all and send me nice happy thoughts as you think of me marooned in a sea of packing boxes, searching for a bottle opener.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:25 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 347 words, total size 2 kb.

1 When in doubt or dire circumstances, one can always use the corner of a table to open a beer bottle. I'm not saying I've been that desperate, but....

Posted by: Helen at July 26, 2005 11:58 AM (ATx6T)

2 Happy thoughts...on the way. Good Luck. Here is to life back to normal soon. Once you find the bottle opener of course.

Posted by: Wicked H at July 26, 2005 12:07 PM (iqFar)

3 Happy thoughts. Just sing, sing a song, sing it loud... *whack* Sorry. Just remember, sometimes it's easier to go and buy another bottle opener. That's why my friends have 16 ice cream scoops.

Posted by: Owlish at July 26, 2005 12:26 PM (fAJnA)

4 Buy cans. Or, bring the bottle opener in your pocket. Good luck, RP!

Posted by: GrammarQueen at July 26, 2005 12:33 PM (kqNmk)

5 You're always welcome to give us a call and we can ferry one over to you ASAP. We're packing up ourselves, and are trying to offload most of the furniture in our current 2-bedroom, 1200 square foot space so we can fit into a 1-bedroom 500 square foot space. I like to think of it as our end-of-season liquidation, because otherwise it will be too much... anyone want to buy an HD TV? It didn't even fall off a truck! Sending you good vibes and thoughts, and looking forward to receiving the same soon!

Posted by: Mandalei at July 26, 2005 01:16 PM (sg0po)

6 Here's a tip: go buy a cheap bottle opener. In this heat, unpacking boxes? You'll thank me later. I'd toss you one myself, but yanno, it might get hung up in the virtual network somewhere and be no good to anybody. Especially a guy slaving away to get settled and in desperate need of a cold one. Superfluous? Never. Thanks.

Posted by: Jennifer at July 26, 2005 01:32 PM (jl9h0)

7 You know that comment you left over at Jen's about putting loose ends in a box and kicking it to the back of the closet? One thing at a time, kiddo. One thing at a time. 1) Get a cheapo bottle opener (I had one with a magnet that one could stick on the 'fridge - thus ensuring no "lost in the piles of stuff" stuff.); 2) One box at a time. One task at a time. No need for perfection immediately; 3) Savor the moments. You're good at that already, though, so I'm preaching to the converted here; and, 4) Take pictures. Laugh. Don't sweat the small stuff. It's all gonna get done; and, finally ~ 5) And don't forget your Internet friends!! Love, M

Posted by: Margi at July 26, 2005 02:06 PM (nwEQH)

8 If all else fails, (and your wife is in another room..) try using the heel of one of her dress shoes. The pointy heel will chop the lid off a bottle in no time flat. Drink fast and look innocent when she asks if you found the bottle opener.

Posted by: rob at July 26, 2005 02:28 PM (i3q83)

9 Place church key i.e.bottle opener on a long shoelace and hang around your neck. Flip-flops, cut off and the nastiest t-shirt you own should complete your outfit for unpacking quite nicely. Have another wonderful day savouring and remembering your past!

Posted by: Azalea at July 26, 2005 04:05 PM (hRxUm)

10 definitely new to your blog and a stranger among your commenters, but you visitied mine and left a remnant of your presense so though i would do the same....thanks for stopping by. am in the middle of moving myself but don't have nearly as many boxes as you do and bottle opener got packed in with the beer ;-)

Posted by: rae at July 26, 2005 04:14 PM (4pf2K)

11 As I begin to unpack and start getting into the goal implementation mode of "must get this done by..." I to somehow try to remember the following phrase: "How important is it?" How important is it to unpack all 835,003 by Sunday? In my experience not at all. I wish you all the best as you begin this wonderful new journey in your new home.

Posted by: Michele at July 26, 2005 07:40 PM (ht2RK)

12 Happy thoughts and cold beer! Congrats on New Home.

Posted by: Amy at July 26, 2005 07:45 PM (nUCsP)

13 Just play the replacement game and all will be well. The replacement game happens when you need something that is in one of those thousands of identical boxes. Pick a box at random and go through it. If the item you need isn't in the box you select the best replacement for that item from what is in the box. Much less frustration and it becomes a creative outlet. ;-)

Posted by: Jim at July 27, 2005 06:44 AM (oqu5j)

14 We raise a virtual toast to you! Cheers, MCNS

Posted by: Mark C N Sullivan at July 27, 2005 10:38 AM (pbCqD)

15 Dude, Colt45 has twist-off tops on their quarts. Now that you're moving to Connecticut, you're too good for the malt? Say it ain't so, RP, say it AIN'T SO!! Moving Friday and Saturday. Good luck to you, my friend.

Posted by: Howard at July 27, 2005 10:46 PM (dWu8M)

16 What, aren't you one of those talented people who can open a bottle of beer with their teeth? :-P

Posted by: Hannah at July 28, 2005 10:08 AM (DlnyL)

17 This time next year, it will all be just a vague memory. Until then, soldier on. It will get done.

Posted by: Peggy at July 28, 2005 08:24 PM (xPBsZ)

18 I second the "buy cans" advice. Cans are made of aluminum with is thinner than glass so they take up less space. They're also much lighter than glass. Both of these atributes make cans much more pleasant than bottles to lug when the return-for-deposit trip comes along. Oh and, HOWDY, NEIGHBOR!!!

Posted by: Tuning Spork at July 28, 2005 10:41 PM (0ovgk)

19 The good thoughts are still coming your way! Someone must be sending us some... we sold almost 1k worth of stuff at our garage sale on Saturday, so the sun burn was worth it. Good luck with your unpacking! Hope the kids are loving the new digs, too!

Posted by: Mandalei at August 01, 2005 08:47 AM (KlM1B)

20 Helloooooooo? Hello? Um...RP?

Posted by: Helen at August 02, 2005 09:37 AM (ATx6T)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Lunch in New York, at a place with cachet, no matter that the cachet may be old, is conspicuous. Many are there to be seen, to see, to impress, to negotiate, to cut a striking figure, to cut a deal, to flatter, to flirt, or sometimes, to dine. But much of the time it is done conspicuously.

I just had lunch with an old friend. A friend who is both older than I am and a person with whom I have been friends with for long enough to qualify as an old friend. He was retired for some years, got bored, and is now back in the international finance game. In other words, he could afford to take me to a $250 lunch (I didnÂ’t mean to see the bill, but I did). $250 for lunch in New York is also conspicuous. Lunch for two people. One bottle of wine. It was delicious, donÂ’t misunderstand, but a part of me none the less is embarrassed by having been taken to a $250 lunch. That, by the way, was before tip.

What does one eat for $250? A bowl of chilled fennel soup with grilled tiger prawn and saffron oil followed by a burger. Not just any burger, mind you, but a burger of chopped sirloin stuffed with braised short rib, fois gras, and black truffles. We drank something white and delicious and I never actually got to see what it was. We spent about two hours there and caught up with each other.

On one hand, it was a delight. Catching up with a dear friend who is whip smart and well educated and opinionated is great fun. On the other hand, it was done in a restaurant not in my tax bracket and I think that made me a little bit uncomfortable. I can’t quite puzzle out why but I thought I could try here. Maybe it was the huge disparity in wealth between the two of us, although that never bothered me before. Maybe it was the in your face nature of the restaurant. Maybe it was being served wine in the middle of a very hot day – I am now officially sleepy, by the way. Maybe it was the sheer expense and the thought that $250 could have been spent better or wiser or just that it seemed like a lot of money to spend for lunch. Maybe I’m just hopelessly middle class.

Either way, I tried not to be conspicuously middle class. There was enough that was already conspicuously on display without me being there, too.

U P D A T E

I finally figured out what really bothered me about that lunch: it made me feel like we got suckered. It wasn't worth $250. I have spent that much and more on dinners before, really fine dinners. I should not, or my friend should not, have to spend that much at a place billed as a bistro. The food was quite good, but not great. The service was competent and professional, but not at the top of the game. The room was packed too closely together and too noisy. For $250 the restaurant should furnish you with more of a quiet hum than a loud roar. Conclusion? The meal did not represent good value for the money. And that's why I was so uncomfortable. I walked out feeling like a mark, a sucker, like we were just conned out of a lot of money.

I feel better now that I figured it out. A day later, mind you, but better late, etc.

Thanks for all the comments!

Posted by: Random Penseur at 03:40 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 607 words, total size 3 kb.

I went to a meeting last night at the private beach club I belong to out in Westchester. It shall remain without name here for a very good reason, as you will see.

The club is old, about 100 years, and filled with members who grew up there as kids and now are raising their kids there. I have described it before, I think, as idyllic. It is a special and wonderful place, by the water, where kids can be kids and where the older kids are actually nice to the little kids. The Girl Child is at camp there this summer and appears to be having a wonderful time. In short, the place feels like a protected throw back to a more innocent and happier time. I am often soothed just by being there. Seriously. I think it may be a combination of the light, the water, the breeze, and just something in the air. I really do love the place.

Last night, there was a special meeting. It transpired that a child, under the age of six, has alleged that she was assaulted on Sunday night at the club. Now, go back and re-read that sentence very carefully. An allegation was made of an assault.

I think that we all assumed that the assault was sexual in nature, although the police chief who addressed the meeting last night declined any opportunity to confirm that. In fact, and what I thought was particularly interesting, was that the police chief seemed to stress that while they were fully committed to the investigation, they still didnÂ’t necessarily know whether an assault had even been committed.

Kids lie. Little kids lie all the time. They may not mean to, but they do. Our pediatrician says that they simply donÂ’t know the difference between reality and their own thoughts. I donÂ’t envy the police chief his job in sorting out whether an assault actually took place. Either way, it will be a horrible task and everyone who comes into contact with the investigation will be changed in some way. IÂ’m just glad we werenÂ’t there on Sunday night.

I hope that no assault took place. I hope that this turns out to be a huge waste of time and that the child never experienced anything that will change her life. I hope this with a yearning so strong. I hope that if she did tell her story from reality, that the adult who assaulted her is caught swiftly and punished.

I sat in this meeting for over an hour. There was scant information proffered. There was a lot of parental anxiety in the room and some hostile questions for the board of the club and for the police chief. I think that by the end, everyone had calmed down a lot. Both the police and the board seem to be on top of things.

Still, for me at least, something died in that room. No matter how this investigation turns out, it will never be the same for anyone. For me, no longer will I be so quick to pick up a child who has fallen and is crying. I will no longer throw other peopleÂ’s children around in the kiddy pool when they ask me to after they see me sling my daughter around in the water. I wonÂ’t take that risk that an innocent touch, an innocent contact, can be misconstrued or misunderstood. That makes me very sad.

Another thing at the meeting. A woman made the suggestion that the police come and talk to the children at the club about, well, sexual predators. I would not want my child to be included in that discussion. SheÂ’s only 4.5 years old and would have way too many questions about things she doesnÂ’t have to know about. She doesnÂ’t have to take responsibility at her age for her own security. ThatÂ’s my job. ThatÂ’s why my wife and I do not let her or her brother out of our sight anywhere at any time. We may let them run ahead, but we can always see them. ThatÂ’s called parenting. When I asked the chief at the meeting what I should tell my daughter about this, since I thought she was too young to have a conversation about sexual predators, there was a small chorus of dissenting voices. ThatÂ’s fine. They can raise their children and I will raise mine. Right now, I choose that my daughter and my son stay innocent a little bit longer. Right now, my vigilance preserves their idyll. My daughter knows vaguely to be skeptical about strangers. More than that, sheÂ’s too young to have to deal with.

I wonder if everyone in the room looked around and wondered if that assault took place, was the assailant in the room with them?

In any event, given the age of the girl, odds are that I know her and her family. I kind of hope I donÂ’t. Either way, my thoughts are with them.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 10:16 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 845 words, total size 5 kb.

The bank and I owned this house for 19 days before the first problem reared its ugly drip. I got a call from my wife who got a call from the contractor that the air conditioning unit in the attic was gushing water onto the floor of the attic and screwing up the ceilings below. Enter crisis mode. Immediate call to a/c people who promised to dash over in the afternoon to see what they could do. Meanwhile, the contractor promised to do what he could do. I took the next train out to CT to see the damage for myself.

First, of course, I stopped for a moment to bang my head on the desk a couple of times. Know why? Because it feels so good when you stop.

I got out to the house just fine. Did I mention that it was in the 90's yesterday and so humid that it felt like you were swimming? Any advantage accrued by living so near to the coast was purely theoretical yesterday.

So, there I was, drowning in my clothes, looking at the pretty new patterns on the ceiling of the guest room and on the ceiling of the first floor below the guest room, when I realized, gee, it isn’t nearly as bad as I feared. The a/c guy fixed the problem easily – blaming it on an improper installation coupled with a filter clogged with saw dust – and I realized that this is only a painting problem at the end of the day. And you know what? I just happened to have a painter standing right there who could fix that problem lickety split as soon as it dried. How about that? In the great scheme of things, not so terrible.

And while I waited for the a/c guy to finish up and then to go forth to procure correctly sized filters and return with them, I hung out outside on my new property. This was probably the longest time I had been there by myself, so far. ItÂ’s lovely. Really lovely. A view of old, huge, majestic trees. Pretty little fawns. I heard what I am reliably informed was the sound of some wild turkeys calling in the woods behind. I went ahead and tasted one of the wild strawberries. I pictured my children running around the yard, chasing soccer balls with me. I painted quite the idyllic picture. I was content. Hot, sweaty, dripping, soaked through and disgusting, but content.

And to top it off, the a/c tech serviced my a/c units and told me that they were in great shape and should last for years and years. I heart good news like that.

Posted by: Random Penseur at 09:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 463 words, total size 2 kb.