My Summer Vacation Reading List

Purchased this afternoon from Book Man/Book Woman in Hillsboro Village.

The Goblin Tower by L. Sprague de Camp

Continues a semi-tradition of reading Conan-esque books at the beach.

The Road to Damascus by John Ringo and Linda Evans

I'm pretty sure I read some Bolo books a long, long time ago. I think I even played a game based on it on my old Apple //e.

Stardrift by John Morissey

I just took a complete chance on this one since it was old (published 1973) and the blurb on the back caught my eye.

How Badly?

This past Monday I went to the barbershop in Donelson at lunch where I've been going to get my hair cut for several years now. I've noticed over the years that some of the most interesting conversations often happen in barber shops. This isn't usually the case for me at this particular shop since my barber, Abe, is the only one there on Mondays and it's usually pretty slow. Still, Abe and I have had some great political discussions this past year since he's a die hard liberal and I am a Mojo Nixon Libertarian.

On Monday, however, there was already someone in the chair and another man was waiting. I walked in just ahead of an older lady, who appeared to be in her late sixties. She was a talker, and everyone in the shop was soon talking about the GM Bankruptcy, the Chrysler Bankruptcy, etc. Various other topics were discussed that I've already forgotten, but soon after I got in the chair the lady behind me started complaining about how "the kids today don't have a clue how to use adverbs correctly. They say 'I want that so bad' instead of 'I want that so badly.'"

While she was talking I quickly tried to think whether I tend to do this myself. Honestly, I don't know. I don't think I tend to leave the -ly off adverbs, at least in what I write, but when I talk to people I'm not sure.

Later in the day I saw the promo spot for the new Project Natal for the X-Box 360. Wow. If it works as well as its shown in these demos this looks like one of the most massive leaps forward in gaming technology I've ever seen. I want one bad. (Just making sure you were paying attention there.)

This led me to the idea that soon it wouldn't be a problem to use a small voice recognition device to record everything I say during the day, then perform real time analysis on it. So if the device heard me dropping the -ly off adverbs it could give me a small buzz. Or it could generate a running score each week so I could compare my grammar score with my friends.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not really one of those people that thinks it's horrible that people drop the suffix off their adverbs. Languages are meant to evolve and in this case I think it's probably too late to save the adverbs from being abused. I just find it very interesting to think about how technology is going to converge into real life in the near future.

Ms. Mamie is Retiring

Back in 2000, my friend Dave Satterfield and I walked into City Cafe in Northport at about 4am for breakfast. It had been five years or so since I had eaten there, and several years for Dave. Both of us had eaten breakfast there several times a week when we were in college; me in the late 80's and Dave in the mid 90's.

As we walked in the door of the restaurant, Ms. Mamie looked at us, put her hands on her hips and exclaimed "where have you two been?" We sat down in a booth and she walked up with her pad in her hand and her huge smile.

She looked at Dave and said "two cheeseburgers, double fries." Dave just nodded in astonishment.

She looked at me and thought about it for a few seconds. "Three egg western omelet with extra biscuits."

At this point, both of us probably had our jaws open in amazement. This is not a sleepy little restaurant we're talking about. They probably feed a thousand people or more every day, so the fact that she remembered us from so long ago and what we liked to eat was just amazing. Ms. Mamie is just one of the many reasons that City Cafe will always be a special place for myself and many of my friends. I honestly don't think there's better Southern Food served anywhere else, and I judge all Meat and Threes by the City Cafe standard. So far none have made the grade.

Ms. Mamie left City Cafe several years ago, and now I've heard this week that she's retiring. I wish I could make it down there to help send her off, but life as usual is too busy for me to get away.

I was surprised to hear about the great sadness in her life that brought her to Northport and City Cafe just before I started attending the University and eating there. She never let it show or told us about it. She's one of those great Southern ladies that just carry on and don't let things get them down and never complain about anything. I love you Ms. Mamie and hope the rest of your life is filled with happiness and success.

Truth in Humor

How sad is it that the most sane and honest commentary on the financial situation is coming from a comedy show on a comedy network. Here's the latest example.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

CNBC Gives Financial Advice

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Joke of the Day

Hatch Follies

So earlier this week, I wake up and groggily make my way towards the basement to weigh myself on the Wii Fit. I've been watching what I eat and exercising a lot this month, and part of my daily habit has been to weigh myself every morning on the Wii instead of doing a D.B.A.N.

So I hit the basement steps, which have recently been re-carpeted. We have a bad habit of leaving items laying on the steps, so about 3 steps down my left foot slips on something and I went down like a ton of bricks. My left hip hit right on the edge of a step, right on the butt crease. My left elbow also hit about the same time, and then I slid down about 4 steps, coming to rest about half way down.

I let out a really loud groan and just lay there for a minute in a good bit of pain. Marissa comes running up to the top of the steps and looks at me through the curtain at the top.

"Are you dead?"

"Nooooo. Groan."

"Are you hurt bad?"

"Noooo. I don't think so."

"Oh good! I can start laughing now!" She then proceeded to do so.

I got up and hobbled over to the basement couch for a few minutes to let everything stop hurting. As I was weighing myself, Tori came out of her room in the basement.

"What was that loud thud?"

"Me."

Then she started laughing since Marissa had made her way partly down the steps to continue talking about it. At this point they noticed that my left ass cheek was rug-burned from the hip down to about halfway to the knee. This produced even more laughter. My left elbow was similarly marked.

The final insult to the injury was when I asked Jackson, "you don't think it's funny do you?"

"No Daddy, me think it's funny too!"

What Does The Elephant Say?

Saturday So Far

Marissa took Jack to work with her this morning at the YMCA, so I slept late. I've been waking up earlier during the week now, so it was nice to sleep in, even though it was noisy enough outside that I didn't get too much real sleep.

Marissa called to wake me up about 10:15 and I drove down to the Y to pick up Jack. He hadn't eaten too much that morning, so we stopped at McDonald's and got him a Happy Meal and then headed for the library. Jack was pretty excited and kept saying "Me get new books!" He knows how to drive to the library from our house, so when we came in from a different direction he was a little worried about it. He cheered up pretty quick when he saw the building though.

Once we got there we went directly to the kid's department. First Jack wanted to put some puzzles together and we did about three of those. Then we picked out about three books and checked them out and headed back to the car. I was feeling like getting some exercise, so we then drove to the Greenway at the dam. We walked about half a mile down the river then turned back around and walked down toward the dam to watch some people fishing.

All four of the floodgates were open today, so it was pretty noisy down there. Jack was very interested in the fishing, even though no one seemed to be catching anything. Every time someone would cast he would yell out "Cool!" or "Awesome!" I'm going to have to get some fishing gear soon and take him back out there.

Now we're waiting on Mommy to get home and we're going over to Uncle Paul's house to watch Alabama play LSU.

"Jack, what's the elephant say?"

"Roll Tide!"