Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Recent reads

I got online specifically to write a blog entry, and two hours later, here I am. It's so easy to get lost on the Internet.

I'm trying to compile a Christmas book wish list, and I could use suggestions. Right now I'm 9 percent of the way (kindle terms) into Gone Girl, and I have high hopes. Thrillers/Mysteries aren't the genre I usually turn to, but my mom suggested I pick this up and I'm excited to read more.

I just finished The Language of Flowers, and it hit me so hard I wasn't sure I would be able to make it all the way through. I recommend choosing this one only if you have enough time to yourself to have a serious, gut-wrenching cry while you flip through the pages. It was hard to follow the book's main character, Victoria, through a series of tragedies to a very deep, dark and seemingly hopeless place, but thankfully, author Vanessa Diffenbaugh finds a way to bring her out of the ashes and dust us all off by the end.

Let's see, I also recently read the Nora Roberts Three Sisters Island trilogy for fun, and it was fun. I kind of had  the feeling when I was reading that I had read the stories before, like, when I was ten. Who knows.

Oh, and in the spirit of variety and pursuit of literary edification  I read Cannery Row by John Steinbeck and tried to be "a filter, not a sponge." (I've got to see the Perks of Being a Wallflower on screen -- a quick re-read when I heard it was coming out reminded me how much I loooove that book). But back to Steinbeck, I thought Cannery Row was actually a really timely piece to pick up now, with the economy still in the pits and the story staged in a small, working-class community during the Great Depression. I also bought Sweet Thursday on my kindle as a follow up but couldn't get into it.

I might try again after Gone Girl.



Friday, September 14, 2012

Want to type race?

I've been smoking everyone in type racing competitions and bragging about it like a brat this week. But I'm nowhere near the leaders on the boards of the free site I was using to play. I want to meet and watch someone who can type 300 words per minute. Seriously.

My highest score so far is 96 wpm. Anyway, it's Friday and if you want to play for 10 seconds, here's the site I was using.

http://play.typeracer.com/

Let me know how you do!

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Remembering 9/11

Last year, Cindy Wolff and I interviewed local firefighters who made the scene at the Pentagon on 9/11 with Tennessee Task Force One.  About a week before the ten year anniversary of Sept. 11, these heroes bravely worked with us to bring buried memories to the surface.

You can click on their pictures with this interactive feature and read our vignettes. This was a project with lasting power, and I'm happy to share it again today.

 http://www.commercialappeal.com/remembering-911/
In August 2001, members of Tennessee Task Force One completed training to work in collapsed buildings, information they planned to retain along with other skills they learned.
Then came September.
Four hours after the attacks, 62 men and two women raced home, grabbed their gear - backpacks, steel-toed boots, knee pads, elbow pads, breathing masks helmets, leather gloves - then boarded buses headed to the nation’s capital while other teams from around the U.S. flooded into New York.
When they arrived at the Pentagon less than 24 hours after the attack, the Memphis area team - doctors, nurses, firefighters - joined federal agencies and others already there. They worked 12 hour shifts, slept three or four hours, searching for human remains, shoring up walls, removing debris - fueled by purpose and anger.


Monday, September 10, 2012

Oh, the Horror!

After I watched The Descent, probably in 2006 or 2007, I stopped watching horror movies.
Until lately....
But I still get nightmares.
Here's some of what I've watched, and a rating on the nightmare scale.*





Paranormal Activity 3.
Nightmare scale:  7


Absentia.
Nightmare scale: 8




The Mist.
Nightmare scale: 5






The Woman in Black.
Nightmare scale: 8









The Devil Inside.
Nightmare scale: 7















Silent House.
Nightmare scale:1











*The Nightmare Scale
0: Slept like a babe
1-2: Woke up in the night, but probably not out of fear
3-5: Can't remember dreams, but they could have been scary
6-7: Scary dreams unrelated to film
8-9: Terrifying dreams, directly related to the movie
10: Descent status, will abandon horror films for at least five years after viewing
**Note: My nightmare scale has not been tested, proven, or backed in any way by evidence or science.

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Books, Canada and Cats


I've read some tolerable, and some terrible books lately. But hey, at least I’m reading. Let's start from the top:

Finished Bossypants, and I'm sorry to report that I was just as disappointed as my friend who told me it was disappointing. I'm not sure that, after reading, I gained any more insight into whom Tina Fey actually is than I could have gotten from wikipedia. I didn't mind that she didn't want to go into the story of her scar, which is the apparent result of a crazed man who slashed her as a kid. What I minded was that she started out by telling me that she was most definitely NOT going to go there. And then she didn't really go anywhere after that.

I can respect her need to maintain some modicum of personal privacy, but the result was a bundle of thin pages. Some anecdotes, some jokes, a lot about her neuroses, and then the book just sort of fizzled, as if after a month or two of plugging old stories together, she finnaaally managed to meet her minimum word quota and walk away.

Sadly, I gleaned more enjoyment from a silly book about a woman who falls in love with Vlad the Impaler, and an even sillier (if possible) book about a woman who realizes she is a witch when a "fetching spell" rips her from her online grocery shopping into a magical community in Berkeley, Calif.

And about a month ago, I picked up an inspirational little book called "What I know Now: Letters to My Younger Self.” It’s a nice addition to the coffee table, and rather validating to hear from a selection of established writers and successful businesswomen who were counseling themselves at about my age. Even though I may not follow advice that I probably should--at least I'm not the only one who hasn’t. And these ladies, without listening to their own advice, are now just fine. Yeah, maybe that’s not supposed to be the takeaway from the book, but they're in there because they came out on top, right? I’m glad to know some of their struggles are my own.

Which brings me to Canada. This was a vacation where everything was going wrong. There were booking troubles, and then weather troubles, and I found myself walking around alone in the rain for two days. A month later, I'm glad I went, though. I could have canceled and counted my losses, but I didn't. Instead, I ate a juicy bison burger on the last day of the trip with my Dad, in a restaurant with a front row view of Niagara Falls. That's a memory I'll always have. 


And finally, because it has been a while since I’ve blogged, I will end with a picture of dear Seessel. I am switching him over to adult food because I think the kitten chow is encouraging his obesity, but he will always be a teacup in my heart.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Anchorwoman


This was the first, and I think only, broadcast package I put together in college. It's wonderfully embarrassing.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Summer reading

I had a dream last night that I wrote an entry about the last couple of books I've read. Like a, "What these books say about me and said to me," kind of post. I'm not sure if I'm so into that now that I'm awake and the day is almost over, but here I am. Thank God they aren't ALL fantasy.



I started Steve Jobs around Christmas last year--read half pretty quickly-- and then set it aside. I picked it back up a couple weeks ago. I loved that Jobs was trying to find a way to save newspapers and revamp the textbook industry in his last year. I can only hope another genius will fulfill that mission. Anyway, after reading, this quote kept popping back to mind. Maybe it's because I'm youngish and at first I didn't see this as a revelation, but rather as pretty obvious. But the more time I give it, the more I think it is a revelation, and in a larger sense than I have maybe before considered:

“I had a real revelation. We were all in robes, and they made some Turkish coffee for us. The professor explained how the coffee was made very different from anywhere else, and I realized, “So fucking what?” Which kids in Turkey give a shit about Turkish coffee? All day I had looked at young people in Istanbul. They were all drinking what every other kid in the world drinks, and they were wearing clothes that look like they were bought at the Gap, and they are all using cell phones. They were like kids everywhere else. It hit me that, for young people, this whole world is the same now. When we are making products, there is no such thing as a Turkish phone, or a music player that young people in Turkey would want that’s different from one young people elsewhere would want. We are just one world now.”


Before that, I read Bad Girls Go Everywhere. Here's another book about a powerhouse boss, but completely different in content and nature. I don't agree with all of HGB's views about using one's femininity to get ahead in the work place, but I do agree with what I think was her point--and she was making it ahead of her time-- that women should know it's possible, and laudable, to climb to the top in a man's world. And that there's no need to apologize for breaking ground.

Prior to BGGE, I read a couple of Fantasy books, including the latest in my beloved Sookie Stackhouse series, but I said in my "blogger" bio that I wanted to read more nonfiction, so I'll focus on that.

I've got Tina Fey's Bossypants ordered on my kindle, and I'm hoping it's as good as Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And other Concerns) but I've heard from friends my order is up for a cheesy basket of disappointment.






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P.S. The stats page tells me a couple people have actually been looking at my posts; if you have any good books you'd like to share, please do!





Sunday, May 27, 2012

Potty Humor

After I got off the plane on the way home to Memphis, I passed the bathroom nearest the gate with the very long line and proceeded to the exit. The next one had no line. In fact, the white-haired woman in a pink top and blue pants who walked in with me was the only other occupant.

I took the stall to the far left and she to the far right. After a few seconds, I heard a loud but unalarming noise. "Oh!" the woman said, sounding surprised. "Excuse Me!!"

Unsure of whether her beg of pardon demanded a response, I kept quiet. We washed our hands and I gave her a smile, holding the door for her as we left.

The situation was so curious, I'm still thinking about it. Excuse you?

Sweet lady, we're strangers in a public restroom, at the airport. You are excused.

Monday, April 30, 2012

And the beat goes on

I've been quiet, of late, and busy. I'm covering the city of Germantown now for the paper. It's my first beat, and I'm still learning how to build sources. My coworkers in the suburban office have been patient, encouraging and helpful these last two months. To say the least.

While I've been away from the blog, I've tackled some of my first government meetings, looked at the budget, revisited progress on roadwork and development, covered events and thrown in features from wherever I can find them.

Wherever journalism goes, I only hope it doesn't go away because I enjoy my job and believe that what we all do at the paper is important to and for the community.

Out of the office, I've been playing kickball and our team (Drunk Again & Looking To Score) is 2-2. We play #balls tomorrow night -- yes, the hashtag is part of the name. And in other news, Mr. Seessel is great, full of life and fatter than ever. But not fatter than Meow.



(Left: Seessel wedging himself under the glass table in what I imagine he thought was a sneak attack on my hand.)




(Below: Anderson Cooper holds Meow, a two-year-old who is almost 40 pounds. I want to hold him so bad it hurts. I got the photo from Gawker.com)

Thursday, January 12, 2012

The mask of Seessel

Once the tissues disappeared from the Kleenex box, Seessel took a peak inside and discovered a whole new world. What's odd is that he really seemed to like it, stuffing his head inside the box so many times I got worried and threw it away. Not before I shot a little video, though.


Home for the Howlidaze

We had snow flurries today as the weather finally dipped below freezing. With the bitter winter slowly approaching, I think I’ll look back at happier times -- the warmth that emanated both emotionally and atmospherically during my holiday.

  • Six months after Kapone the pit bull was picked up by Memphis Animal Services and then disappeared, an anonymous tipster helped a Cordova family reclaim their pet 50 miles from home in Senatobia, Miss. I wrote about the happy reunion. December 20 Weather: Scattered showers, Hi  65°F Lo  50°F
  • New church founders raised $10K and decided to give it away in gas at an East Memphis station at Poplar and Perkins. I went to the event and wrote on what may have been a case of good intentions gone awry. December 22 Weather: More rain, Hi  49°F Lo  45°F
  • Police recovered a stolen truckload of holiday hams. Enough said. Christmas Eve Weather: Sunny, Hi  50°F Lo  35°F
  • Tried eggnog AND boiled custard this year and discovered I liked them both. Especially with a helping of fireball whiskey. Christmas Eve Night: Clear skies, Hi  50°F Lo  35°F
  • Dad came to visit after I covered Christmas services Downtown and cooked for me! London broil, asparagus, mashed potatoes and a couple bottles of wine from one of our favourite wineries in Sonoma. Christmas Weather: Sunny, Hi  53°F Lo  40°F 
  • Wrote a special obituary on one of the only white business leaders in Memphis with courage to fly against the grain following Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination here. New Year’s Eve Weather: Sunny, Hi  66°F Lo  37°F 
  • Traveled to Georgia for a quick visit with my mom. We shopped at the outlets and went to weight lifting and restorative yoga classes. I’d like to find something similar here; it's one of my many resolutions for 2012, which I’ll write about later, hopefully after accomplishing at least one. Maybe I'll start by breaking a world record… Or attempting with vigor like evangelist Telisa Franklin did with her Zumba workout. January 7-9 Georgia Weather: Light rain, Hi  70°F Lo  41°F