What're you reading?

Rupert Everett was the first to wish me a happy birthday last week. Unfortunately, it was not in bed as he rolled over and sighed, "You know, it turns it was just that I hadn't met the right woman!" Or over tea and scones at some English tea room as he shared witty tales of life in the theatah and I imagined skiing down the slopes of his finely chiseled cheekbones. No, I didn't even get to lay eyes on him at all. Rather, he wrote me what I'm sure was a very sincere wish for a happy birthday on the inside of his new book, "Red Carpets & Other Banana Skins." It was a lovely and thoughtful gift from my friend Jennifer Brooks, who got to see him read in Glasgow last week.

I'm only a few chapters into it thus far, as distracted as I've been by polishing some shaky fiction for my MFA application, a process that has me feeling more terrified and insecure about writing than I have in years. In addition, I've been picking my way through "A Drinking Companion," which you'll be glad to know isn't a guide book. It is, as its subtitle explains, a look at "Alcohol & the Lives of Writers," which interests me. For no reason whatsoever.

The book is by Kelly Boler who, I discovered in the author's notes, is a journalist in Asheville, NC. Since I happened to do a great deal of drinking in Asheville, I thought that a good omen. Boler examines how alcoholism affected the writing careers and lives of such notable authors as Kingsley Amis, John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Anne Sexton, Tennesse Williams and Carson McCullers. While I think it's a terrific topic for a book, it seems to rush through each writer's story and doesn't feel quite...full, I suppose. Plus, when you're talking about the destructive qualities of alcohol, I have to question the judgment of starting each tale off with a description of and recipe for each author's favorite drink.

I'm also starting to read the screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, by Charlie Kaufman, as we start studying that next week in screenwriting class. Screenwriting class which is, by the way, kicking my ass. The more I learn, the less competent I feel, the less equal to producing this strange and unfamiliar type of product. The fact that the majority of the rewrite is due Monday and I currently have no idea where the story is going, is not a good sign.

The only book I've read in its entirety lately is People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue, (the answer - Clooney) which my sweet husband purchased for me as bathtub reading. Wait...what? That doesn't count as a book? Then I'm really screwed. Which I may have been anyway, since I'm apparently no good judge of what sexy is, disagreeing with a good 99% of their picks. (I mean, really, Diddy? Vulgar, yes. Sexy? Nope. Matt Damon? I'd like to give him a pat on the head, but that's about it...)

How about you? What're you reading? Register to comment below and let me know and I'll add your picks to my long, long list of actual books I may someday get around to reading.

Laggin'

It seems like it's taking me a very long time to get over my jet lag this time around. We've been home for four days and I still feel sluggish and cloudy-headed. I suppose one could argue that may be my natural state. One would have a point.

Among the zillion other things on my plate, I've finally uploaded a small set of photos from the trip. Alas, there are none of our last evening there, where we celebrated my birthday in Scotland for the first time in 25 years. We had a lovely dinner out - me, Chris, my Grandma, my uncle Douglas and aunt Noriko - at a lovely wee restaurant on Byres Road called No. 16. Unfortunately, like a dolt, I forgot my camera. Ah, well. I'll be back soon enough, I'm sure.

In the meantime, if you're interested in such things, you can visit my Flickr page to take a look at the pics I did remember to take!

And also

I have that thing where you've traveled for a long time and you sit still and it feels all weird and floaty like you're still moving. Very disconcerting.

The longest travel day ever

It probably wouldn't take much detective work (probably wouldn't require leaving this very blog) to find my making that claim on previous occasions - Istanbul or Argentina, anyone? But really. We've just arrived home in Ann Arbor after rising at 3 am Glasgow time to head to the airport for an early morning flight to Amsterdam, then dally and deal with protocol for a while before boarding an extra-long flight (thank you turbulence over Greenland!) to arrive home nearly 19 hours after we started out. It's at times like this that I swear I'll never ever leave my comfy chair again to go abroad. That should last about five days before I start daydreaming about the next trip. It's not that I didn't enjoy my trip, it's just that traveling abroad seems such hard work at times. A luxury complaint, I realize.

The thing about going back to Glasgow is that it's different from a proper holiday, like escaping to the rainforest to unplug and decompress for days. It's a decidedly good thing and one I enjoy, but returning to one's childhood home is a relentlessly nostalgic process. Virtually every building, park, street, shop inspires a memory, a contrast, a confusion, even, about the notion of home and identity. I walked past a bush on Hyndland Road yesterday and automatically reached out to pluck a green mottled leaf from a bush, bending its waxy surface until it split neatly into two, then four, and so on. It wasn't until the pile was in my hand that I even realized that I had done it -- and that it's what I used to do, as a child, passing that very bush (or perhaps a cousin thereof) on the way to my Grandma and Grandpa Smillie's flat.

My childhood is everywhere there - in the particular light of a rainy November afternoon, in the floury smell of fresh-baked rolls wafting from Gregg's bakery on Byres Road, in the warmth from my Grandma Pringle's electric fire. And when I'm there, the talk - inevitably - turns to my mother, over and over again. Which is good. Which is right. It's largely why I'm there, to keep those precious connections open with her side of the family. But it takes something out of me, weighs every joy with an equal amount of melancholy.

On top of all of that, I get to rediscover Glasgow as an adult. As a child, my world there was small and there's so much more to the city now. Nor was I likely to appreciate the architectural masterpieces the city has to offer, from its trademark Victorian sandstone tenements to the infamous Charles Rennie Mackintosh design of the Glagow School of Art to the shocking ultra-modern "shell" of the armadillo conference center. Glasgow is a city of contrasts, a world-class city that somehow still feels like a small village, where the steeples of medieval churches and industrial smokestacks on the river bank share the skyline.

I used to say that I was going home when I went to Glasgow. Somewhere along the road, that changed - and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. The Scots would sigh and wave a hand at my sentimentality, urging me to pull up my bootstraps and soldier on. I guess it proves where my home really is that the American in me wants to wallow in it a bit more, thinking about The Meaning of it all and wonder Who I Am.

But maybe not tonight. Tonight I'll just draw myself a bath and climb inside my own tub, keeping the reheats coming until the hot water gives out. Then I'll struggle to stay awake until the earliest hour I can possibly crawl into my bed with my sheets and my kitties. And I'll be home.

A sleepy Glasgow morning

It's nearly 11 and we haven't made it out of the impossibly cosy basement flat we're staying in. Our bodies are still a bit out of whack and it's raining again. Everyone tells us the weather has been beautiful here for weeks, right up until our arrival. A lesser person might take it all personally. We're planning to hit a one o'clock showing of a local cultural fave here, A Play, A Pie and a Pint. For 15 consecutive weeks, the Oran Mor presents 15 different plays by 15 different writers with 15 different casts - you get the drift. For ten pounds, locals crowd to this event and enjoy some lunchtime theatre, a pie lunch and a pint of whatever tickles your fancy (beer, soft drink, etc.) Glasgow has a habit of converting former churches, most of whose congregations slowly dwindled, into wildly successfully nightlife, pubs and restaurants. The Oran Mor is considered one of the best examples, housing two pubs, two restaurants, a nightclub and private event space. Interetsing repurposing, no?

Dowanhill Church, right near where we're staying, was the church where my parents met. My Grandma and Grandpa Smillie were considered pillars of the church-going community (I know, what happened, right?) and it's probably a good thing they didn't live to see the day when it too was turned into Cottier's, a really cosy-looking pub, restaurant and theatre we walk by almost daily. At night, they light it with candles and firelight and strings of fairy lights in the windows. It's probably worth a stop-by sometime, but I keep thinking of Grandma Smillie and the disapproving glance I'd most certainly earn. Ah, well.

But I digress. Anyway, if the weather holds, we're heading up to the Glasgow Necropolis, a magnificent cemetery overlooking the city - this town's answer to Pere Lachaise. From there, we can stop in at the Glasgow Cathedral, parts of which date back to the 13th centure.  and then, we hope, Provand's Lordship, the oldest standing house in Glasgow, built in 1471.

And now I see the sun has made an appearance, so it's probably time to get off my arse and make it out into the air! Those in the know say to go early for a play at the Oran Mor - at least if you want to be close enough to hear the dialog.

Glasgow, here we are

It's Sunday morning, a bit gray and overcast, but such is to be expected in Glasgow at this time of year. Truth be told, if yesterday's intermittent bursts of rain and sunshine are anything to go by, it's actually quite a mild autumn here. It's certainly warmer than Michigan generally is and there are far more leaves still on the trees here. We're staying in a really lovely little flat in the West End, just a block or so from the shops and restaurants of busy Byres Road and half a block from the flat where my Grandma and Grandpa Smillie used to live. It's a five minute walk to visit my Grandma Pringle and my uncle Douglas and aunt Noriko. Couldn't be more perfectly situated.

We left Detroit Friday around 6 pm, landed in Amsterdam about 7 local time (12 ours, and we hadn't slept), then caught a 9:30 plane to Glasgow. Needless to say, we were exhausted upon arrival and yesterday just sort of disappeared, between our sketch comedy efforts to extract enough cash from machines to pay for our flat, grabbing a quick bite to eat, a fast nap, a speedy shower and then heading over to Grandma's flat for cups of tea and a plate of shortbread. Chris could barely keep his eyes open and thus we headed home early last night, stopping at the marvelous Marks & Spencer's Simply Food (why can't the US make really good, healthy food so convient?) shop for a few supplies and we were in bed and fast asleep ridiculously early.

We both slept for just under 11 hours! Lazy buggers and we have the morning to ourselves as friends and relatives go about their business. I'd love to say we headed out and made the most of it, but we've stayed in and made the most of it, drinking big glasses of water and large cups of coffee in a two-fisted effort to stave off jet lag. This afternoon I think we'll stick to visiting family and wandering about the West End.

Tomorrow we're planning a walking tour of some of Glasgow's medieval landmarks, then Chris will head to London on business Monday night. I hope to spend Tuesday with my grandma, going through the piles of photos she's recently dug up, most of which I doubt I've ever seen. Chris comes back Tuesday night and Wednesday we'll head to the Kelvingrove Galleries, which have been closed for the past few years for a massive renovation that cost somewhere along the lines of 27 million pounds. We used to go here quite regularly when I was a kid and I haven't been back in 25 years. The good thing about art and artifacts is they don't seem to change much, so I'm expecting massive nostalgia for my free-admission bucks.

Wednesday night I'll celebrate my first birthday in Glasgow in 25 years with, I hope, a quiet dinner with the family and then it's up super-early on Thursday morning to head back to the states. Dag. That exhausts me just thinking about it.

I want to blog!

I do! I want to catch everyone up on the excitement that is our Ann Arbor lives. I want to tell you about the workshops I've been teaching at 826 Michigan, how much I'm learning about what I do (and don't) like about the process. I want to tell you of the mad scramble to pull together the massive amount of crap necessary to apply to graduate school and how scary and old and unprepared it's making me feel. I want to express my frustration with rewriting my screenplay, how the more I learn, the less I'm sure I know and my confidence wanes daily in my ability to produce. I'd love to tell you how our dear friend Denise came to visit last weekend and how much fun we had tooling around town and how we even learned about cheese- and gelato-making at the Zingerman's Creamery tour. I want to tell you how crazy it has been getting to know the process of editing my first foray as editor of the Knight-Wallace Fellowship newsletter.

I want to chatter on about the Dem's recent victories, the suspiciously-timed ouster of Donald Rumsfeld and why that isn't a perpetual headline when Britney and K-Fed's divorce is. I want to tell you how bummed I was to be too busy to go see Shawn Colvin last night but how surprised and impressed I was when I finally made myself watch Flight 93, as recommended by my screenwriting teacher.

I want to tell you how we're leaving Friday for a quick five-day stop in Glasgow to visit family and friends and how excited I am. But I can't. Because there are transcripts to call for, lesson plans to figure out, student works to read, screenplays to peruse, revisions to make, layouts to proof. There are meetings to attend, hairs to be dyed, luggage to be dragged out of the basement. There are letters of recommendation to be begged for, hats to be finished for Tibetan orphans, travel arrangements to be made, guests to be arranged for December's Free Candy.

So for now, you'll just have to wait. And I will just have to breathe.

Gratitude, even before the fact

Stephannie sent me this beautiful picture this morning, to forward on to all of you who have been so generous in offering to help the girls at the orphanage/school in Tibet. There's one big box of hand-knit goodies on its way from St. Louis (thanks to the organizational skill of master knitter Margaret O'Connor) and I'll have another in the mail within a week or so, filled with hats and other goodies from knitters here in Ann Arbor. Stephannie's promised us more shots of the girls modeling their gifts as soon as they arrive.

I can't stress enough, too, how much they still need your help. So if you're no whiz with a knitting needle, please remember that you can donate money to Stephannie via PayPal using her email address zangthal@mac.com. Easy as pie! And considering they're currently digging up cash to buy mittens for all the girls, which are $1.40 per pair, you can see how parting with ten bucks seriously helps out.

The first snow fall

 

For a few minutes there, it took over everything. Big, soft wet flakes flurried from the sky, nesting in my hair, coating my scarf, blurring my vision as they landed on my eyelashes. There I was, tromping along Main Street after a nice lunch with a new friend, woefully under-bundled for the sudden onslaught of winter - a giant grin spread across my face.

Ask me how I feel in January, but there are few things on earth that make me smile as broadly as the sight of snow tumbling from the skies. No matter how old I get, how many times around the bend I've been, there's something about snow that brings all the good childhood feelings bubbling irrepressably to the surface.

Now, it's cleared up again, but there are still a swirl of tiny flakes, disappearing as they hit the damp ground. I've got a window seat at Sweetwaters Cafe and a lovely big latte. All's right with the world.

My own gridskipping moment, Sydney-style

When I'm not traveling, then I'm usually thinking about traveling - looking forward to a trip, reminiscing about a recent one or, most often, wishing I were in a position to jet off. In case the latter ever happens, I tend to browse the web site Gridskipper quite regularly. Lately, they've had a reader challenge to design a day spent in a particular city on $100 or less. Recently, they had an entry on Sydney, a city I love immensely, despite the fact that I've never actually been. You know how you just know you'll love a place? And it's become even more attractive to us since we now have dear friends there, our lovely fellow Fellows Kimberly Porteous and Gerard Ryle.

So after I read the Gridskipper suggestions for Sydney, I sent a link to Kimba for her perusal, just for a laugh. I always have a reaction to tourism articles about the city I live in. I wanted to see what she thought of the suggestions. Kimba countered, as is her way, with a very thorough and very thoughtful list for an alternate day in Sydney. I think it sounds much better. She'll probably throttle me when she finds out I posted her not-meant-for-publication suggestions on my site but a) they're too good not to share and b) I only have four readers anyway, so what's the problem?

And although I'm not immediately planning a trip to Sydney, maybe you are. In which case, maybe this'll help, even though it appears Kim was mad at capital letters when she wrote it.

Kimba's Day in Sydney

Starting in bronte is the way to go, although i would enforce that it has to be on a weekday so you don't have to share the beach (or the cafes) with a crowd. sejuiced was always my favourite spot (they did the best juices, like a strawberry and orange "hangover quencher: and they had a real, cold-press juicer) and their breakfasts were amazing: lightly toasted blueberry bagels, crunchy with brown sugar crystals, served with fat dollops of mascarpone, and their cooked breakfasts came with yummy hashbrowns and generous sides of perfectly green avocado. anyway, there are about 10 places in a row for a good post-swim refuelling. one serves some terrific organic coffee from east timor, or there's the bogey hole cafe (named for the aboriginal rock pool at the cafe end of bronte beach) which still has its original victorian shopfront with coloured glass and pressed metal ceilings.okay, next.

i would not recommend taking the bus to the uni library. why spend a nice day inside a 70s-era building? bring along some good reading material or source some from a good bookstore, which we'll be stopping at shortly. jump on the bondi beach explorer bus which will "take you along a picturesque path through Sydney's affluent Eastern suburbs, out to Watson's Bay and on to cosmopolitan Bondi Beach". don't get off at bondi - it's full of cheap backpacker eats and tourists - but catch a glance at the long, boomerang shaped beach from your window.

continue on to watson's bay, a little fishing village at the sydney heads, and get out to look over the side of the sandstone cliffs (a very high drop, and a favourite suicide location) and across the sea towards new zealand. then turn around and you can see the whole harbour stretched out before you, full of yachts and commuter ferries, ending with the opera house and the harbour bridge. don't dally at the parks or the waterfront seafood restaurants here though; get back on the bus back towards the city.

the bus will drive along some of the hilly harbour suburbs so you'll see plenty of sparkling blue water and posh mansions.once back in the city, stroll down macquarie street to admire the nicest colonial buildings (its downhill, don't worry) and drop into the museum of sydney - one of our smallest historical museums (perfect as time is tight) - but also a beautifully displayed one with a real designer's eye.you'll see some of the best australian photography here, plenty of aboriginal history and there are darkened galleries with talking holograms (actors reading from narrative histories, diaries, etc).walk a few blocks (still downhill, you are heading to the harbour) to the historic rocks district. you could spend hours strolling through the old buildings and convict-built tunnels, cobble-stoned lanes, craft and art galleries, candlemakers etc. very old pubs here, some squeezed into triangles of land no wider than an armchair at the tip. here you'll also find the excellent bookshop, ariel, a well-edited selection of books you have to read.

at the rocks you can also see susannah place museum, an old row of terrace houses with preserved interiors. you could also climb up a set of convict-carved stairs to reach a park on observatory hill with an awesome view of the harbour, or walk along the harbour bridge until the first pylons. walk up the stairs to the lookout on the roof for only $5 - perfectly safe and about $150 cheaper than climbing the arch of the bridge. also much faster.after looking at the harbour you probably want to get onto it, so go back down to circular quay and hop onto a ferry, any one will do, for a nice boatride.

you can take one to the zoo to visit some cute native animals, or to the coastal resort suburb of manly (where there is a lovely bushwalk along the harbour) ,or to a lovely restaurant on a beach in an old domed bathers pavilion for late lunch but if time is short just stay aboard and make the round trip. or better yet, do this trip and have lunch at the bathers pavilion before you start tramping around the rocks district and climb the harbour bridge (ok, i'm new to this, don't sue me) before sunset falls, walk around (semi-) circular quay to the sydney opera house. take a backstage tour if you like, or else head inside where the bar should be open for its early evening performances.

buy a refreshing drink, admire the concrete ribs of the cathedral-like ceilings, then take it outdoors to watch the commuter ferries churn past and the cars and buses stream over the harbour bridge. the fairy lights should be coming on at luna park and along the rooftops of the old brick dock buildings at the rocks, now all art galleries and restaurants. ideally you've got tickets to a show tonight - music, ballet, drama, or whatever, there are lots of performance spaces inside - so head inside when the bells ring signalling the start of the performance.if not, grab dinner somewhere - maybe at one of our ethnic neighbourhoods. a 16-course lebanese banquet for $25 perhaps? we have the best thai restaurants in the world (yes, better than bangkok) and the seafood's pretty terrific. or maybe you want something quiet with candlelight by the beach, so head back to our place and we'll take you to barzura at coogee beach, just south of bronte. probably a bit over $100, but take out the lunch and dinner and you'll romp it in!

Don't know about the rest of you, but I'm even more eager to go to Syndney now, thanks to Kim's gorgeous descriptions and expert knowledge. Time to start saving those pennies...

Mayor Slay's excellent denial

In response to yesterday's report declaring St. Louis the most dangerous city in the US, eloquent Mayor Slay responded: “It’s bogus.” Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

I swear, it wasn't me!

Right on the heels of some people called the Cardinals winning something called the World Series, poor St. Louis takes a hit today by being named the most dangerous city in the United States. Good thing we moved, right? Wrong! Number two on the list is Detroit, the nearest major metropolis to our cozy fairytale low-crime zone of Ann Arbor.

Which has me thinking - maybe it's us. Maybe it's Chris and me. Maybe while we think we're sleeping, we're out committing dozens and dozens of murders and other, you know, crimes and stuff. It would certainly explain why I wake up tired so many mornings.

One emperor down, one monarch still goin' strong

On July 29, 1981, I arose well before dawn. I was ten years old and bleary-eyed I climbed on the couch next to my mother and my sister to watch the wedding of Lady Diana Spencer to the Prince of Wales. As British subjects, living at the time in Louisville, there was no way I'd miss out on seeing the fantasy come true, a real life princess and a fairy tale wedding. I remember the morning vividly. Sixteen years later, I stayed up late on the evening of August 31, 1997 when the news of her car accident broke on late night television. My sister awoke me with a phone call early the next morning. "Diana's dead," she said.

It probably seems strange and maybe even a bit like hokum to people in the States, to know how moved I was by both Diana's marriage and, in turn, her death. When you grow up with the monarchy, especially, I think, as a little girl, there's something magical and resplendant about the whole thing.

Thus, I was really moved by parts of the film The Queen, which I saw this afternoon at the Michigan Theater. It details the life of Queen Elizabeth II and brand new Prime Minister Tony Blair in the week following the death of Diana. It's a good movie, with Helen Mirren doing a spot-on job of playing the monarch and a handful of other fine performances by a whole host of vaguely-familiar-looking Brit thespians.

Yesterday, we saw another performance by Brit thespians, although our nosebleed section seats made it difficult to say if they were vaguely-familiar-looking. We had next-to-last-row balcony seats for the Saturday matinee of Julius Caesar, as performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Power Center.

Now, I can't say for sure how things seemed down in the fancy people seats, but from where we were sitting, the performance was absolutely...mediocre. Which isn't what I was expecting at all. Granted, perhaps it was altitude sickness or my own idiocy, but I just wasn't blown away. Decent Cassius and Brutus, which helps, and the Caesar was good. But the Mark Antony was very yell-y. And I don't think Shakespeare would have appreciated that very much. No writer would. In fact, since I like to draw comparisons between me and The Bard, please don't yell this blog posting out loud.

So there you have it. Julius Caesar, thumbs down. The Queen, thumbs up. And bear in mind that you can see The Queen ten times for the price of a ticket to Julius Caesar. Although that would just be silly.

Anyhoo, these performances were both in honor of my father and my step-Marvin (his wife, Marilyn...long story), who are in town for a couple of days. Friday night we dined at home and it turns out our stove does work! Who knew? Then we headed up to Zingerman's for dessert and Dad got to spend a birthday gift certificate at the cheese counter, stocking up on roquefort, stilton and a giant lovely wedge of parmesan cheese.

Saturday was perfectly horrible, weather wise - cold, rainy and with a biting wind. Any hopes I'd had of wandering around town and showing things off were dashed. We did duck into Cafe Zola for brunch, where I had the most glorious little concoction called a cafe borgia - an espresso with a dollop of whipped cream and a grate of orange zest. Our breakfast was, of course, fantastic - their omelettes and crepes are to die for. But the place is ridiculously loud when busy and it really takes the charm out of a meal to have to holler across the table. Hey, a thought just occurred to me: maybe Mark Antony ate breakfast there!

Dad and Marvin were knackered Saturday evening and stayed home while we headed out for dinner with some of our '06 fellows who were in town. We had a bang-up Indian meal (which my father refers to as a "bum burner") at Shalimar on Main Street with Rainey, Graham, Drew, Sally, Birgit and, at the end, Bacon. I had such a terrific time catching up with everyone but it wasn't, of course, enough time and it does tend to highlight how much I miss everyone and wish we'd gotten that whole Fellowship commune going instead of splitting and going our separate ways.

This morning, we went to a brunch at Wallace House hosted by the class of '07 to celebrate our Thomas Kamilindi's political asylum. It was a really nice affair, although it's strange to be back in the house and be an outsider, sort of. Plus, there were enough '06-ers to really confuse matters!

It was beautiful this afternoon, so we did a little popping in and out of Main Street shops and then, before the movie, hit the fish counter at Kerrytown and picked up some things for dinner. We then met Rainey and Graham at Z's for some coffee and too many slices of cake and then it was off to the theater.

Now, we've got a fire in the fireplace. Marvin's zonked out on the couch and, as a portrait of the close modern family, Chris, my dad and I are each sitting silently and wirelessly interneting. It feels like a Sunday night. There's a bath in my not too distant future and maybe hope of an early night's sleep. It has, all things considered, been a good weekend.

I don't usually invite comments

Why risk it, you know? But in this case, I encourage all of my faithful readers to register to comment on my blog. It should (I hope) work much more flawlessly than Movable Type, so I guess now I just need to write something comment-worthy, eh? You will be glad to know that I resolved my bedskirt issue. Ikea has a Queen/King size one for $19.99 and, no, that is not expensive. Of course, it wound up costing me far more than that when you take into account all the extra crap that made it into my cart while I was there. Can't. Help. It.

Chris and I were up late last night doing the technical duty on getting his newest Sharesleuth.com investigative piece up on the web. It's a long read but it's a great story and represents months of hard-core investigation on the man's part.

And now we're running around frantically trying to straighten up the place. This weekend is a riot of guests. My dad and his wife Marvin (really it's Marilyn, but I like to call her Marvin) are coming in tomorrow afternoon. It's their first visit to Ann Arbor and I think it's going to be right up their alley. All my dad needs to be entertained is a coffee shop and a book store, and we gots loads of them.

Plus, former fellowship couples Graham & Rainey and Drew & Sally are coming in (from Boston and DC, respectively) and I'm very excited to see all of them. Plus, Sunday we'll venture back to the Wallace House in the morning for a brunch the class of '07 is throwing to celebrate the fact that our classmate Thomas Kamilindi has been granted political asylum by the United States. (You might remember the post I wrote last year about Thomas' experiences with the genocide in Rwanda.)

Oh! And the Royal Shakespeare Company is in town and we've got tickets to a Saturday matinee of Julius Caesar. Don't tell me the ending! I want to be surprised. I read it in high school and simply do not recall the part where he invents that salad. But boy am I glad he did! And Chris, apparently anticipating the same demise in caliber of theater audiences as movie audiences, plans to yell out, "Ooooo, don't go near Brutus! Nuh-uh!" during key moments.

Also, it will be daylight savings time. At some point. Which all sounds like plenty to keep us busy, don't you think?

There are some things in life I will never understand

Including the cost of a bed skirt. Seriously. It's this little bit of fabric that goes around the bottom of your bed. Nobody really wants one. Nobody even really knows why they need one, except maybe to hide all that junk under the bed. (Lord knows that's why I need one.) And yet, everyone wants to charge me upwards of $30 for what looks suspiciously to me like about a yard and a half of cheap cotton.

AND they only have them in-stock in chalky green or cat-food beige.

My life is very, very hard.

Charity for lazy people

So I've been meaning to send my friend Stephannie a small check to help out the girls at the Tibetan Orphanage (see post below, complete with beautiful and eager smiling faces.) But I'm one of those people for whom writing a check and getting it in the mail is a giant undertaking. Thus, I was thrilled to find out that we (that's me and you) can donate to the girls using PayPal. If you have a PayPal account, you can send money -- and remember, when they say $5 or $10 goes a long way in Tibet, they ain't kidding -- securely via PayPal using Stephannie's email address, zangthal@mac.com. The coolest part was when I made a modest contribution yesterday and got an email from Steph saying that she was going to use it to buy socks and some other supplies for the girls. Socks! How often do you get to know exactly how your contribution is affecting the lives of people? Not often, is the answer.

And now I'll stop talking about Tibetan orphans. For now, anyway.

I'm back!

I've done it! I think. After a week or so of struggling with Movable Type (which was my blog software) and phpBB2 (which was my forums software) and my hosting company (which was GoDaddy), I've managed to make some big changes. But not after nearly an entire week lost to computer problems and hair-tearing. That means some changes. You're witnessing the first one, which is that I've switched to Wordpress for my blog. It's not nearly as flexible, not nearly as pretty but, man, it's easy to install and manage and I've just run out of time and patience for managing MT. Until I'm a gabazillionaire and have my own IT department, it's going to have to do. (When I get some time, I'm going to play around with templates and see if we can't get it to look less like a sixth-grade HTML project, etc.) I think I've made the transition pretty well, losing only a couple of entries during the import stage. Nothing important, of course.

It also means that, after much consideration, I've done away with the reader forums. You guys were so great and loyal in keeping them going for five years but, let's face it -- activity had dwindled a lot in the last year. It made sense to have an online gathering place while I was posting a weekly column that drove traffic to the site. But for right now that's not happening, so it no longer justified the amount of time I spent trying to manage and maintain it. I hope you understand. I can't thank you guys enough for your continued readership and support.

If I've done things right, though, then you should actually be able to comment freely on this blog without any trouble - another kink I hope to have solved moving to Wordpress. So I expect all you Usual Suspects to keep in touch that way.

Thanks to all of you for your patience!