no time to write much now; I should have time to update tomorrow morning with schedules for this weekend. However, if you are one of the lucky few with my mobile #, just give me a call and ask

Another Monday. ugh.

There are half formed thoughts of stuff I could be posting here: maybe some notes on wine, since the movie Sideways seems to have suddenly increased other folks' awareness of that lovely beverage, or something on the writing process (yes, again) because that does take up a fair chunk of my time and mental effort, or maybe something off the wall like how I'd direct Hamlet or fun things to do when you only have $3 cash or maybe the "Top Ten things Matt wrote down in his notebook while drunk." (it's bound to be really funny. or insightful. or something)

None of that seems to jive with my current mood which is, as stated, is "Monday. ugh." Those other entry ideas sound pretty good though, don't they.

After three months of watching what I eat, and trying as much as I can to exercise, I finally got my weight back to where it was 6 months ago.

gotta love that crap. My goal is to lose another 10 or 15 pounds by the end of summer, so that when I start to put on weight again next winter it won't look nearly so bad on me. [chuckle]

I have my differences with the (mother) church. I am no longer a catholic. but...

in our modern day-and-age there are only so many souls that speak truth. There are fewer that speak truth with courage and conviction. --No matter now that I might (still) disagree with him, I respect him. And in his memory, I resolve to do better in my own life, to live up to his example.

RIP Pope JPII
we are all poorer for this loss. I hope the conclave can pick a suitable successor.

After about 6 months, I finally got around to filling another notebook. I use these for all kinds of notes, from work schedules to plot outlines, but mostly I use my notebook as a sort of fly paper for thoughts. Nothing gets away, no matter how drunk... I mean, no matter what the circumstances, because I’ve trained myself to always have it on hand, and in a worse case scenario, I can always ask the bartender... that is, a random bystander, for a pen.

And since I am about to retire another notebook to the dusty crypt that is my closet, I thought I’d take a minute to pull some choice quotes from it before consigning it to the depths:

a quote from Karen Armstrong, though I neglected to cite the exact source: “Religion is like a raft. Once you get across the river, moor the raft and move on. Don’t lug it with you if you don’t need it anymore.”

Tucker Carlson, CNN crossfire host: “You’ll never commit adultery when you wear a bow tie; you won’t have the opportunity.”

Campbell: “the Truth is one; the sages speak of it by many names”

--

My own random thoughts may not be as deep. Here’s an arbitrary Top 10.

10. Patience is often rewarded. Not so often with cash, but you take it when you can

9. New Years: another year down, the arbitrary start of an illogical calendar, an excuse to get drunk, the celebration of big round numbers

8. I’ve noticed a tendency among small children playing with toys that have various sound effects (like the books w/ sound we sell at the store): they take great delight in making the same sound (usually the most annoying available) over and over again. I think some never outgrow this tendency, which explains the creators of that godawful house/electronica/rave crap, and its adherents.

7. If you are what you eat then, hi, my name is Guinness

6. I need to budget better. Right now it’s not so much like keeping to a budget, it’s more like lighting a fuse each payday and waiting for the self-destruction

5. Sometimes, 2nd place is a good place to be. We all celebrate winners, but there are more losers than winners. We are the base of the pyramid.

4. The problem with alcoholism-as-a-lifestyle-choice is that you are always coming across at your worst when the best opportunities present themselves. Seen in this light, the fact that I have occasionally gone home with phone numbers should be seen as a major accomplishment.

3. Pipe smoking cost/benefit analysis-- Pro: nicotine buzz. Con: withdrawal headaches. Pro: women randomly come up and talk to you. Con: no one wants to kiss you. Pro: women find it comforting and familiar. Con: no one wants to sleep with Grandpa.

2. I really love the fact that for the most part, women’s jeans don’t fit. Don’t get me wrong, a really good fit often does wonders for a set of natural curves, but when jeans don’t quite fit right they reveal wonderful bits of skin and naughty underwear as our lovely visiting angels bend and twist through otherwise boring everyday activities. [I appended a note to the end of this later: "for tabulas, subject line, I am a pig"]

1. I have to say, few things are as satisfying as sitting at the bar with a lesbian and bitching about women.

I predict a finished first draft (yes, of that damn novel) by the first day of summer. I should have a manuscript ready for submission by September.

You can hold me to this one. No, really. I mean it this time. I can almost feel the story pieces rotating, moving, clicking into place. It's almost like having a buzz on, but I'm stone sober at the moment. I know that the damn thing will be done soon. There's a whole lot of work yet, but I can see that there is an end to it.

I can't wait to get home from work tonight so I can write. Heck, I may try squeezing in 30 minutes of writing during my lunch break.

I'll be busy this week (with work & personal projects, including the damn novel) and have family coming in from out of town over the weekend--

I'll update when I can, but it may be a week or ten days before I manage to find the time. I'm sure my 2 (count 'em, 2) regular readers will manage without me for that long
[chuckle]

my work week is really sucking at the moment. I hope somebody gets that RFID technology up and running (and makes it cheap enough) so that I never have to physically count the damn inventory every again.

I guess that's just wishful thinking. Even when we get to the point where every item can be tracked individually, remotely, at all times, some stone-age mind at corporate will still have me count DVDs, "just to be sure".

I know you don't care, so let me check the random buffer file for something I might have written earlier, when I wasn't pissed off at 5 in. diameter pieces of plastic.

--

Coppola Diamond Chardonnay.

Tastes like white wine. Good shit. Oh, OK. Something more descriptive;
in 20 words or less: Dry, clear, clean-- the adjective that leaps immediately to mind is crispness.

The wine has a light acidic tartness, with notes of oak and apple. This is not a sweet wine, so the fruitness is left to stand alone, along with something more subtle: a flavor reminiscent of ham-and-pineapple pizza. (hey, I'm doing my best to describe it; you want professional, don't go to some random guy's web log) A lot of natural grape flavor comes through on the back end, while the aftertaste reveals a faint tannic bitterness. (if you think 'bitterness' is a bad quality, let me say this is just a fraction of the bitter you'd find in coffee, or even Guinness-- it's just another facet of the flavor)

It's a white wine; obviously this is good match for white fish, chicken, or pork. However, I think you could also pair it with veal successfully, or even a steak. This is a better match for butter sauces than cream, and more suited for herbal flavors, rather than pepper or chilis.

So, a suggested menu:
Grilled Mahi Mahi (or Filet Mignon) with herb butter (just throw it on top, no need to make a sauce); pasta (or potatoes) and steamed vegetables as sides. Followed (yes, I said followed) by a salad with ranch or vinagrette, and some fresh fruit for dessert-- sliced pears would be nice. The Coppola Chardonnay will work well as an apartif, during the meal, and for lingering afterward. Get two bottles.

I was playing trivia last night at a sports bar, an o.k. sort of place called Jocks & Jills. Didn't win, didn't place, came in something like last place (actually, fifth out of nine teams-- but four teams went home before the last round.)

It came down to the final question. I was only 4 points out of first, so I bet the full 20 points allowed, and got the question wrong. That's what makes DJ Rob's version of the game so much better than some others. Strategy. Drama. (and humor, when you have the right DJ.) (last nights DJ was... ok. nothing to complain about. I need to figure out where DJ Rob himself is doing trivia these days.)

I also spent some time just hanging out at the bar, before and after the game. Jocks & Jills is...

Hell, I've been there at least a half dozen times already. Let's do a full review. Haven't done one of those in a while.


Jocks & Jills
Location: It's a chain. Most locations are nigh identical. This one is at the Galleria Mall (ugh. yes, I know, a mall... The Galleria is a little different, though.) address: One Galleria Parkway, 30339.
Contact: 770.952.8401 or on their website
Cost: Manageable
Best time to visit is: Thursday night for trivia. (That's what we were just talking about...)
Amenities: TV sets. It's a sports bar.
Coolest feature is: stretching the definition of 'cool' a bit... there's the upstairs dining room.
Order suggestions: Thurday night dinner special: $12 prime rib, cooked to order, with salad, roll, and two sides.
Description:

As mentioned briefly above, Jocks & Jills is a local chain of sports bars, so there is a sort of corporate feel to the place, but it's not nearly as bad as walking into national-chain "neighborhood" bar & grill. It's comparable to a Bennigan's or Ruby Tuesday or TGIFridays-- A lot of those set pieces are there, and you can tell the owners are trying to compete on that level. For my tastes, the place is a bit too brightly lit, and much more of a restaurant than a pub. (I prefer pubs, but I won't hold that against them.) J&J advertise that they are a 'sports bar', so there is the expected sports-type-crap on the wall, and they have maybe 2 more TV sets than just a regular bar.

(it is an indictment of our society that a place of convivial companionship has been invaded by TV. Rather than sit and talk with the other patrons, or enjoy dinner around a table in the company of friends and family, we can instead each sit in our little invisible boxes and watch TV, the same sort of isolation that can be enjoyed in our lonely little homes/caves. I think America is suffering from some kind of mental illness. I need to get out of this country to a place that still has some sort of pub culture left.) (enough ranting. I'll cover more on this topic later)

The surprise, if you'd care to call it that, is that Jocks & Jills has an extensive menu. Good stuff too. And they know it, and charge accordingly. There are still a few items in the relatively cheap range, under $10 in this case, but those menu items are the expected pub grub (wings, burgers, etc). If you wanted to try the pizza, or a steak, or the catch of the day, you're looking at something in the range of $16-20, before beer.

They run happy hour specials on weekdays (which is nice, because traffic around here at rush hour Sucks). They also have trivia, and karaoke, and poker tournaments-- but then again, it seems like all the bars are doing that sort of thing now. I may have to stop mentioning it, or come up with some sort of code or shorthand that I can use instead. I'm sure there's a damn Golden Tee machine crammed in here somewhere too, but from my seat at the bar, thankfully, I didn't see one.

I don't know that I'd go there to watch the game, because it doesn't strike me as a good place (or a good crowd) for that kind of thing. (which is odd, given the whole sports thing-- a sports bar that isn't? maybe that's just my take on it). However, I could see hanging out here for a couple of hours in the right company, or stopping by for dinner when the budget allows.

All in all, it's not bad. A bit too glossy, a bit too refined for my base tastes, but they have Guinness on draft and no one minded that I was smoking a pipe. I might have to come back more often than once or twice a year.

I can't say I particularly enjoy working the evening shift, though a little variety is good for me. Keeps the job from getting [more] boring.

I miss the opportunity to do things, though. Not necessarily the typical Saturday night crap (I can do that any ol' night, hangovers be damned) but since everyone and their kid brother has a M-F gig, well, you miss the opportunity to just hang out with the gang when you're at work during those prime 9pm-12am hours.

I can duck around the corner for a beer after work, though. I would have done that tonight if I hadn't gone a bit nuts and bought a dozen CDs in the past couple of weeks. (broke-- it's my default state, having money is a happy anomaly)

So, I've had some changes in the department lineup, and when my staff changes, my schedule changes. I've got quite a few Friday and Saturday nights coming up where I'll be at work. Working evenings isn't too bad, when you get used to it. The problem comes when you do a turn-around, closing the store one night and then coming back the following morning. (problem is such a harsh word. It's an inconvenience. You end up getting 5 hours of sleep or some such; it leaves you a little grumpy, but not incapacitated.)

So, with the weekend shot, what do I do to unwind? I go out in the middle of the week. A day off is a day off. Besides, during the week the bars are less crowded-- you can find a parking space, you don't need to stand at the bar waiting for service, and the crowd as a whole lacks that desperate urgency you sometimes find on a Friday night. (I take that back. There are still people who walk into a bar and immediately order shots no matter what the day or time. --what can you do?) (except say 'no' when they try to drag you down with them. I don't accept free shots.) (anymore)

The nice thing about weeknights is that's when the bars and pubs schedule the fun stuff. (well, fun to me) Dart and pool leagues. Poker nights. Trivia contests. On a friday they know they're going to make money; on a Tuesday they try harder. Occasionally you find a good beer special, too.

I see nothing mystical about Saturday night. Occasionally I miss the crowd, the atmosphere of a bar on a weekend when everyone is there to cut loose, but I can adapt. The beer tastes the same on a Wednesday.

This is a side project I've had occasion to come back to on several occasions. Hamlet is Shakespeare's longest play, by a fair piece, and Hamlet himself (as a character) is full of contradiction: conflicting motivations, emotions, the difference between his public action and private thought (as is demonstrated by the numerous soliloquies)-- This is the Mt. Everest of acting; no wonder so many actors try interpreting the role at least once in their careers.

Still-- from my own reading, well, Hamlet is fucked up. A lot of scholars (and actors) have all done their own analyses, from Olivier's (perhaps most famous) Freudian interpretation to others that range from scattered to just plain nuts. (My favorite is Kevin Klein-- It was a PBS special; I'm still looking for this version on DVD)

My own thought is to divide the role into two. Hamlet has a shitload of lines; let two actors carry the load. Soliloquies become dialogs-- literally, Hamlet talking to himself. It might actually be fun to decide who is talking to who, working with two skilled actors to turn speeches into conversations.

One actor takes the lead in the first act. He is the public face of Hamlet, but still debates himself-- he changes course, he plays at madness, he sets his traps, but over the course of the play his other side (the 2nd actor) takes over more and more of the role, until during the duel at the end of the fifth act, our 2nd Hamlet has all the speaking lines, carries out all the action, while the 'original' Hamlet is forced to watch the carnage from the sidelines.

My other thought, and this may be a second inspiration, is to give one of the Hamlets the lines of the Ghost, Hamlet's father. The ghost is there, a physical presence standing behind one of our Hamlets, the ghost's hand resting on his son's shoulder-- but the lines would be spoken by Hamlet's mirror image, his shadow. Thus the dichotomy of Hamlet's character has its origin in the confrontation with the spirit of his father in the first act. (and the conversation with the ghost is part of the set-up for later scenes-- is Hamlet faking madness in the middle of the play?)

If I ever have the opportunity to direct, I will do Hamlet.

I only have a few minutes before I have to head out for the afternoon (it occurs to me that it is a bit ironic to get in the car and drive 20 miles just to go out for a run-- but the atlanta area is so built up I guess you have to make special efforts to find woodsy cross country trails.) (the Hash is nice because someone else is scouting trails like this each week; I shouldn't complain about the distance.) but I suppose I can take these minutes and post something here...

Thursday I did the trivia thing at J&J again. I went home with a little money, always nice. (well, it's a gift certificate thing, but it will take care of next weeks bar tab.)

Last night, after work I went to the Fox and Hounds for a pint or three and a small bite, before heading out for a Softball game. (playing, not watching. at least, as much as someone as bad as I am can be said to 'play' softball)

and then the planned crap this afternoon. Running. in the rain, apparently. and after the aformentioned driving.

I realize this is healthier (physically and socially) than sitting at home all afternoon, but I am starting to wonder if it's going to be worth it. (Maybe I'll run Monday night instead with the Moonlight Hash.) I hate sacrificing a Saturday, particularly with the difficulty I've had recently actually freeing up a Saturday to run, but with the weather...

screw it. I'll go running anyway. I may do the 3 mile loop next to the river instead of driving to the 'burbs. (after all, I can walk to the river). You realize of course that as I type this, the minutes keep ticking toward the scheduled start time for this afternoon's hash; literally, as I debate all this internally I'm typing it. You're getting a unique glimpse into the decision making process.

Hell, it's not about the running, or the weather, or the drive. It's about meeting folks (new friends and old) and maybe knocking back a few beers.

sorry, gonna cut this short. gotta run.