Like Christmas in July

My last few days have been eerily reminiscent of Christmas. (This phenomenon is perhaps appropriate in July.) I have received some excellent gifts. I got a free day off of work due to weather, like a snow day in summer. And I've even had significant interaction with a Kringle.

Let me explain.

As most of you know, my birthday was yesterday. This fact explains the gifts. Sarah (sort-of) surprised me with a really fun trip to Wisconsin. (I knew she was taking me somewhere, I just didn't know where.)

Our specific destination was Racine. That small city is the home of a very nice, free, public beach. We walked along there for a while, and, pleasantly, saw surprisingly few plus-sized people stuffed sausage-style into swimwear, as I'd expected in Wisconsin. We also walked around the downtown area a bit. Much of the town really is lovely.

After noon, we found our way to a very fun British-style pub called Toad Hall for lunch. There we had some large burgers not exactly in the British style but delicious nonetheless. Sarah had a California-themed "NWA" (Neufchatel and Avocado) burger, with some poblano peppers as well. I opted for the "Ryan Express," which I assume is named for Nolan Ryan, given its Texas-style composition. It featured jalapenos, cheese and a new condiment to me called "bacon relish." This relish comprised what I believe to be poached bacon lightly pickled with red onion and perhaps peppers. It lent a nice, lightly sour note to contrast the rich hamburger, which the menu claimed was ground in-house.

Sarah has pictures of the food, which perhaps I'll be able to post later, or perhaps which she will post on her blog. Here's a picture of the inside of the place. It's not great but gives you an idea of the dark wood interior. You can't quite see the TV here, which was appropriately trained on Euro Cup soccer.

Princess in the Toad.

I should note that this spot was second choice to a much nicer-looking place Sarah had picked but wasn't open on Sundays. On a side note, many businesses in Racine are similarly closed on Sundays, or open only until noon. This fact made it difficult to achieve Sarah's main task in the town, which was to pick me up a birthday Kringle.

For those unfamiliar, a Kringle is a large pastry of Danish origin, made up of many layers of flake-thin dough and filled with an assortment of nuts, fruits or other delights. After passing two of the four Racine bakeries known for this treat, both of which were closed at the time, we found our way to Lehmann's where we were successful in obtaining a cherry-and-cream-cheese-filled Kringle. We delayed our gratification in eating until we were home. (Sarah also has pictures of this).

On the way back to Illinois, we stopped at the Pleasant Prairie outlet store, where Sarah bought me a new shirt. This shirt having been picked from the outlet store clearance rack, Sarah insists that it does not count as a proper birthday gift, though I feel it is perfectly legitimate both as a gift and piece of attire.

That brings me to today, and why I am at home typing this post instead of sitting in my office at work. After arriving home yesterday, I received a call from work that the campus was without power due to a storm. I had to put out some communications stating as such yesterday, and I was told to be ready for a call at 5:30 a.m. today telling me whether classes would be held. I got the promised call, and, lo and behold, the university was closed today, as forcing people to work or study in 100-degree heat without air conditioning was deemed unacceptable. Yippee!

It's been nice. So thanks to all who called, sang, gifted and wished me a happy day. And to all a good night.

IWU Woo!

In case you didn't see this, my proud alma mater, IWU, made the sports page of the Chicago Tribune because of the great story of both its men's and women's basketball teams making the Final Four of their respective D-III NCAA Tournaments (while NO D-I teams from Illinois even made the field of their Big Dance).

It's made even more impressive by the fact that the women's coach, Mia Smith, has led the team during a grueling treatment for breast cancer. I had her for one class, and she is very sharp. She also worked with the student newspaper while I was there to try to get people to go to women's games, attempts that were not overly successful in increasing attendance but that did help me earn an Illinois College Press Association Award for editorial writing (see lead editorial, page 4, here: http://collections.carli.illinois.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/iwu_argus&CISOPTR=1255&REC=4).

I just heard that the men's team lost their Final Four game, but them women have advanced to the final. You can keep track of the action at iwusports.com.

Anyway, it's a nice story, and nice that a small D-III school and one of its dedicated coaches are getting richly deserved recognition.

UPDATE: The women have won it all! http://www.pantagraph.com/sports/college/basketball/women/national-champions-iwu-women-win-d-iii-title/article_b4a759f8-7094-11e1-9903-0019bb2963f4.html

Vacation, part 1 - Nash Up

So we got back from our first-ever weeklong vacation yesterday. I believe it was also the first substantive time I've taken off of any job apart from holidays. It was a very good trip, with an activity itinerary mostly planned by Sarah and a dining itinerary mostly planned by me. Thus I think we struck a good balance of expending and consuming calories.

Our route, traveled by car, took us from our home in Chicagoland all the way to Southern Florida and back, with overnight stays in Nashville, Jacksonville, Orlando, Clearwater, Gainesville, Atlanta and Pigeon Forge (Tenn.) Here are some highlights of the first leg:

Tennessee, round 1

The first day of our trip took us to Nashville, Tennessee, where we met up with our friend Dea. We toured a little around downtown where Dea's apartment is located, saw her top-tier law school (Vanderbilt), ate a behemoth meal at a restaurant called Monell's, and then did very touristy things around Broadway, also known as Nash Vegas.

I found Nashville to have less charm than I'd expected, though parts of it were nice. The best parts, aside from seeing Dea, were eating at Monell's and meeting a dog named Chloe in one of the countless Western Wear/kitch shops on Broadway.

Monell's is a restaurant located in a converted house the Germantown neighborhood. It has a varying nightly menu of Southern cuisine, served family style. Parties are seated together at tables with other guests in the order in which they arrive, so it forces some degree of sociability with total strangers. Dishes such as skillet fried chicken, fried green tomatoes, cheesy hashbrowns, green beans, biscuits, catfish, pulled pork, meatloaf, mac and cheese, etc. are brought out of the kitchen in large bowls to be passed around tables. All you can eat, along with never-emptied glasses of sweet tea.

Vanderbilt's law school is, expectedly, fancy



Outside Monell's



Inside Monell's



One of several plates I ate at Monell's, featuring, clockwise from top, fried catfish, fried (pickled) green tomatoes, hush puppy, green beans, peach preserves, cheesy hasbrowns, fried chicken (middle), mac and cheese. Not pictured is that evening's dessert of from-scratch banana pudding.



Broadway, aka Nash Vegas

(Sorry this post is so late. Subsequent parts of the trip will be posted on an varying basis!)

So...

I realize I haven't posted in eons. I guess that means Sarah and I have become one of those old boring married couples. My day-to-day life, anyway, has heavily revolved around work, which while possibly interesting to the outside world in a few ways on a few occasions, mostly involves me sitting at a computer. I'll make an effort to get back in the habit of writing about things in my life.

But since that hasn't been a regular source of teeth-clench-worthy copy, I'll share this pretty interesting story that just popped into one of my feeds.

I always wondered how agencies like the CIA (or their foreign counterparts) recruited people to work for them. According to this piece, the British GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) has traditionally recruited smart recent college gads, "but in the digital age, it says, there may be a lot of bright young hackers out there who are worth talking to."


Thus it has set up this web-based challenge. Apparently, if you can crack the code they put on this website, you can join up with them. Promotion for the challenge has been done mainly through social media. I'm sure it's beyond even that wisest wizards in my regular readership, but I thought it'd be interested for someone to at least give it a shot.

When I saw this, I did think immediately that this could be a good way to update a familiar movie plot from the 80's-90's, where video games morph in some way into real-world action, like WarGames or TRON.

TV Weddings

As someone who celebrated a wedding not too long ago, I think I'm in a pretty good position to judge a good TV wedding. And as the fall television season is set to kick off next week, it's a pretty good time to reflect on two that happened fairly recently. They are both from NBC comedies that I like.

Parks and Recreation



This clip achieves a good balance between sincerity and humor. It also employs music to strong effect - Simon and Garfunkel's short yet poetic "April Come She Will" - good not only because it is a good song but because the girl getting married is named April. The dedication that Chris Pratt brings to the character of Andy is always impressive, and he does a nice job in this scene. Notable are the at once sweet and funny look of sentiment on his face when April tells him "I never really seemed to hate you" and his vow to fight "him" - the female minister - if he had to to protect April.

The knowing looks captured by the camera on the periphery characters' faces are nice, and April's similarly unenthusiastic sister's applause is hilarious as well. Of course, the payoff comes at the end of the scene, a comic surprise that often still makes me laugh out loud when I watch the scene.

The Office



The Office wedding of Jim and Pam was one of the show's most anticipated developments, and it did not disappoint. I remember dreading that the two-episode installment of "Niagra" parts 1 and 2 would be as bad as the rest of the season was, but I was pleasantly surprised, again, by a nice blend of sentiment and humor. While Ed Helms' Andy Bernard stole the entire installment, this scene nicely played homage to the central importance of Jim and Pam's relationship to the show - while also highlighting the comic talent of the rest of the cast.

Again, music is central to the scene - playing off the internet meme of the song being used in a real wedding. But the interlaced shots of the wedding in the church with Jim and Pam's secret escape on the Maid of the Mist brought a new level of romance to the song, which I admittedly never recognized before when hearing it on the radio. The sweeping shots on board added an air of majesty to the scene which worked well. The payoff is, of course, the dancing procession. Here are the best entrances in my opinion:

1) Dwight kicking the girl in the face
2) Creed
3) Kevin
4) Andy Bernard
5) Jim's dark-haired brother

The surprise of the scene comes near the beginning, with the start of the music/dance sequence, layered with Jim and Pam's escape, and overall it works well. I was moved during it in a way I had not expected to be, though the knowing glances between Jim and Pam are less effective. I've never been a big fan of their "mugging."

It's tough for me to judge between the two, especially because my belief that The Office has gone downhill (before and) since this leaves me with a negative bias and also because it marks the end of the romantic tension (and therefore appeal) of Jim and Pam's relationship. Acknowledging that bias, I still give the nod to P&R, mostly because the surprise payoff at the end is so unexpected and hilarious, and because I love the song. I'm sure I would be in the minority in having this opinion.

I suppose this opinion also could reflect my natural preference for less elaborate, yet still meaningful, weddings.

Pilot of Interest

I saw an intriguing television commercial (and billboard) the other day for a new show to premiere in August on CBS, called Person of Interest. It is intriguing mostly because it stars Michael Emerson, who played the deviously brilliant Benjamin Linus on LOST. It also features another actor I like (even though he's a basically crazy Republican), Jim Caviezel, who is most famous for playing Jesus in The Passion of the Christ but who I like better for his roles in The Count of Monte Christo (2002) and The Prisoner (2009).

Person of Interest is based on a screenplay by JJ Abrams, who created LOST and is being produced by many people Abrams worked with on his first sci-fi foray, Alias, so that is obviously encouraging as well. While the premise seems a little off to me, I definitely will still give it a chance.

The show, according to its Wikipedia page, focuses on a mysterious billionaire (Linus), who develops a computer program that can predict the identity of a person who will be involved with a violent crime in the future. It cannot tell if the person will be a victim, perpetrator or witness of the crime, nor can it tell when or where the crime will happen. Caviezel plays an ex-CIA agent, whom the billionaire hires to prevent the crimes based on the information he gathers. This seems like a fairly thin premise to me, and close to a take-off of the ideas in the 2002 movie Minority Report and the Philip K. Dick story on which it was based. But the preview also instantly reminded me of the season 5 episode of LOST The Economist, where we see Linus (himself a man of considerable resources) guiding ex-Republican Guard super-spy and torturer Sayid through a series of off-island assassinations. The lack of detail given by the prediction program appears to provide plenty of opportunity for excitement and variability in the action of the show.

Here's the one-minute preview, if you haven't seen it yet:



I'm glad to see that Emerson has found another primetime vehicle, and to be working with Abrams et al again, especially since his previously rumored partnership with LOST's Terry O'Quinn, Odd Jobs, appears to be mired in delays.

Person of Interest has apparently tested well, and though I am troubled by the potential weaknesses in its conceit, I do think it sounds more in line with the intrigue and action of LOST than Odd Jobs did. We'll see how it turns out. Whatever happens, happens.

Comedy of Errors

So Sarah and I went to the Cubs-Cards game last night, which the Cards won handily on two homers by Yadier Molina, one by John "The Federalist" Jay and, one by, of course, Prince Albert. It was a good game on a perfect evening. But it wasn't the most entertainment I got from a local baseball team recently. That distinction goes to the floundering Lake County Fielders.

The Fielders are near and dear to us, in a way, because we originally had planned to take our wedding group out to a game their following our nuptials. They are located pretty close, and they are partially owned by Kevin Costner of Field of Dreams fame (hence the team's name), so we thought it would be fun. Weeks earlier, though, we read about problems they were having completing the stadium, so we decided to go to a game ahead of time and make sure it would meet the demanding standards of our guests. To our semi-surprise, it did not.

The stadium was only partially complete - with little parking, exposed infrastructure, NO BATHROOMS (but lots of beer - a dangerous combination), a funnel cake stand that DIDN'T HAVE A REAL DEEP FRYER - and many other travesties. But that's just the beginning of their problems. Since that time it's been a perfect cycle of errors.

Note: I hadn't kept up with their travails since the game we attended, but recently saw a tidbit about them in a local paper. That prompted me to read reports over the past two months on them, and this is what I've pieced together from that time. It was difficult to establish a firm timeline from the various articles, but this should be a fairly accurate recap:

-Manager Tim Johnson quits (via email) in late July because he hasn't gotten paid anything yet.
-Radio Announcer quits on the air also because he has also not been paid.
-A day after the players find out the manager quit, 11 of them refuse to take the field in a show of solidarity. None of them have been paid yet either.
-Hitting coach Pete LaCock appoints self as interim manager and fields a team for the game anyway, using several non-pitchers as pitchers in a loss against the Yuma Scorpions, who win behind a six-inning pitching outing by Jose Canseco (yes, THAT Jose Canseco.)
-The next day, LaCock resigns, then is fined $2,500 by league commissioner Kevin Outcalt for "making a farce of the game."
-Fielders pitching coach Chris Thompson manages the next game only to be released the next day.
-Days later, Tim Johnson takes a job with the Scorpions.
-The Village of Zion threatens team owner, because the team owes the town $185,000 in back rent.
-Team trades or releases all of its players and begins to play games using a semi-professional team from Kenosha as the home team.
-August 4, team is forced to forfeit home game because they did not have an adequate supply of baseballs.
-In early August, the Fielders plan a long trip to play a tour of games in Hawaii. Players show up to the airport only to be told that the team cannot afford to fly them all there and are forced to stay home.
-League officials issue statement that Fielders are no longer part of the league.
-Fielders insist they are still part of the league.