Dream State

The past few weeks, especially this week, have seemed sort of unreal to me. This week is definitely because of losing Bunky; he's been around for so long when he wasn't supposed to be that I thought he would ALWAYS be here with us. Work has been changing a lot too, and although it was initially my doing, I'm not really sure if it's good or not. I hope this clears up soon because it feels strange.

I thought that I would break down sobbing at some point over Bunky, at least once, since I did twice for melon. maybe that's a part of it, the grief is stuck inside and can't come out for some reason. I have moments where I well up a bit (we got a card today from the vet who told us he would be dead within a year back in 1998; it was a few simple phrases but very sweet and heartfelt. You would think vets always have clinical detachment, but I guess sometimes they don't), but no sobbing. I don't know if it will happen now, and I don't know what that means. Maybe the scab will be ripped off next week when I pick up his ashes.

Two things I wanted to mention about Bunk was the way he liked to snuggle you. He would bury his head in your armpit or elbow and be content to lay that way until you moved. Being cat people, we would try our hardest not to disturb the cats unless we lost total feeling in the snuggled appendage. I liked to scratch his back hard, I'm not sure if he liked it or not, but I wouldn't stop until he made this "mrat" noise. I hope he liked it. He would also give you a kiss on the mouth sometimes, but you really had to beg for it. He gave me one on Saturday, which is nice to remember now.

I still hope to write blogs about the rest of our animals, past and present. I'll try to get moving on that. Taking a break from Facebook to do something mildly constructive on the internet would be a refreshing change of pace. You may also have noticed that my book blog posts have fallen by the wayside. I was going to note that here awhile back when I joined Goodreads, but I stopped updating that too. Oh well, maybe I'll try again next year. One book-related promise I made to myself is to read the children's book The Enormous Egg this year. Why? The summer between 4th and 5th grade, we did a summer reading project where you would get a prize if you read the most books. I forgot what the prize was, but I won handily with 100 books. The Enormous Egg was on the list, but I actually did not read it. I had a pile of library books that had to be returned, so I just returned them all and told my mom that I had read them all. I felt bad about it, but it wouldn't have affected the outcome. To this day I feel bad about this, which is why I finally want to read it. Is that weird?

Books #5 & #6

My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult

I have read a few of Jodi Picoult's books before; I was introduced to her work in a book club and I read another after that one because I enjoyed it. She apparently specializes in fictionalized accounts of real life news stories. This one happened in the early part of this century, where a couple had a daughter with a life threatening disease, and they conceive a baby (with the help of reproductive medicine specialists) so they can use the blood from the umbilical cord to help save the daughter. Jodi Picoult picks it up from there, and has the 13 year old donor daughter sue her parents for medical emancipation. I enjoyed the book, it was well written and I liked most of the characters. However, the ending was unforgivable. I won't spoil it for anyone, but it cast a pall over the rest of the book for me.

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

I tend to stay away from what everyone else labels as science fiction, so I'm just getting to this. I did read The Man in the High Castle years ago and enjoyed it, but I suppose I didn't consider it to be sci-fi. I knew it had been the basis for Blade Runner, but I haven't seen that either (I plan to now). Rick Deckard is the main character, his job is to retire (kill) androids on what's left of Earth, which was devastated by a nuclear war, which has also wiped out most of the animal species. There are 6 escaped Nexus-6 model androids on Earth, and they are so advanced that they could possibly pass the empathy tests developed to identify them.

I wish I hadn't waited so long to read this, I liked it a lot and finished it very quickly so I could find out what happened. Even if you're not a sci-fi nut, I think you will enjoy this book. I am planning to read more of Philip K. Dick's books, and I will definitely see Blade Runner.

I am currently reading Life Of Pi by Yann Martel, so look for a poorly thought out post for that book soon!

Book #4

Under The Dome, by Stephen King

Every time I go to the library, I check the Stephen King section because I have a backlog of his books that I need to read. I would reserve them, but then I'm never able to make it to the library in time, and they get put back into circulation. But this time I managed to find one I hadn't read, and Good Lord, it is a large one, over 1000 pages. And it figures that it took me the least amount of time to read it of the books I have read so far this year. But I read most of it on the plane to Vegas and the drive to AZ, so that's why I finished it so quickly.

Not much to tell about this one, it's not one of my favorites of his, but I didn't hate it like the Tommyknockers (bleah). It's typical Stephen King, supernatural tales filled with endless description (which I do like). It was kind of like putting on an old pair of jeans, comfy and familiar. For awhile there he kind of got away from horror/supernatural, and I really enjoyed those novels very much (Hearts In Atlantis is probably my second favorite of his). I think all I have left of his is two short story collections and whatever he just released. The most exciting news is that there will be another Dark Tower book! It's supposed to come out next year, but I most likely will not be in line the day it is released. I'll wait a year or two until I find it in the stacks.

Book #3

She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Quite a few years ago (before we got an iPod), I began to take a lot of audiobooks out of the library. I started with a few that I had already read, but then I began to listen to books that I hadn't read yet. At first I thought it was cheating, but I soon changed my mind. I think I was less lazy around the house back then, and I was always doing things, so I didn't have time to sit and read. The only time I ever sat down to read was on my lunch break at work (still true to this day, for books at least). But since I got an iPod and Sarah got me into podcasts and I have grown fat and lazy, all of that has changed.

When I was into audiobooks, there was one reader that I really liked, named George Guidall, and I would get books that I never heard of before just because he had read them. One of those was I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb, a sprawling book about twin brothers and the mental illness that affects one of them. At the end of the audiobooks, there's usually a section where there are other books you'll enjoy if you liked this one are mentioned, and She's Come Undone was listed there, so I got the audiobook for it. My audiobook reading comprehension is just as bad as my regular reading comprehension, because I did not remember that I had listened to this book when I found a copy at Sarah's lending library at her work. It wasn't until halfway through that I thought that I MAY have already listened to it. It was nice though, because it was mostly new to me again.

The story is about Dolores, a girl who comes from a broken home and is raped by a neighbor in her adolescent years. She can't really find comfort in her family, so she turns to food and television, and eventually has to spend time in a mental institution. After her constant therapy there, she leaves and gets married, which ultimately fails when Dolores realizes she is married for the wrong reasons. After her divorce, she has some ups and downs and also meets Thayer, who is smitten with her and willing to wait until Dolores is ready. They eventually marry and at the end of the book, Dolores is seemingly at peace with herself.

I guess this didn't have the same affect on me as I Know This Much Is True because I didn't remember it at all. It was a good book though, the most amazing part of it being written by a man from the first person perspective of a woman. But of course, I am a man too, so I only have second-hand info to go on. It's written very well and keeps you engaged. Like I mentioned, I normally only read at work, but I read this at home too because I wanted to know all the things that were constantly happening to Dolores.

This was an Oprah Book Club pick in 1996, 4 years after it was released. I didn't know she was doing the Book Club in the 90s, I'm not really an Oprah follower, but I assume that it did a pretty good business after that. I have only read these two books by Wally Lamb; don't be put off by their length, they are both well worth the effort. I do recommend this book to any reader, but I would read I Know This Much Is True first.

Book #4 was supposed to be Uncle Tom's Cabin. We were reading that for Classic Book Club, which Sarah runs at the library. We both started reading it, but neither of were able to finish it. So of course, a complete stranger showed up for the first time at Classic Book Club, so we talked about the book a little and also about Civil Rights in the 50s and 60s. It turned out to be a very interesting discussion.

The actual Book #4 is Under The Dome by Stephen King, because I have to keep up with the literature, right? :/

Book #2

My Turn At Bat by Ted Williams and John Underwood

This doesn't bode well, I finished the book over a week ago. Oh well.

I of course knew of Ted Williams and his best season average record (mainly because George Brett came close however many years ago), but that was about it. As a Yankees fan growing up, I was supposed to hate the Red Sox, so I didn't really look into any of their history, other than Babe Ruth and the Curse. But I digress.

This book showed up at Sarah's lending library that she has at work, so I picked it up, hoping it would get me excited to watch some baseball this year (I read Jim Bouton's Ball Four around this time last year, but it didn't work). It was definitely an interesting read. You get the feeling that however much Ted Williams loved and intently studied baseball, he had more fun fishing. The book goes through his not so great childhood and his playing career and his stormy relationship with sportswriters and fans. He definitely hated most sports writers, but he seemed kind of ambivalent about his fans. He apparently only tipped his cap to the fans once, and refused to do it ever again, despite their love for him. I really didn't understand that, but what do I know? Maybe he just wanted to go fishing.

I did not know that he was in WWII and Korea and lost 5 seasons of playing time. It makes you wonder how many more records he would have had, as he hit over 500 home runs during his career. It also is puzzling that the Red Sox never parlayed a World Series win during Williams' tenure there (they only made it once, and Williams only went 5 for 25), but I suppose that one player does not a team make.

The impression I had of Williams before I read the book was that of an excellent player who wasn't a team player and was mean to fans. From reading the book (and since he had a co-writer, you really don't know how much was embellished or cut out), this idea didn't really change very much for me, but he was pretty self-effacing. He was his own hardest critic, even more so than the sports writers he loathed. He spells out in the book that the reason he was so good is that he was constantly practicing and striving to be better. His one goal was to be the greatest hitter who ever lived, and I think he came pretty close to succeeding on that front.

I highly recommend this book to any baseball fan, especially if you like the glory days of baseball, when substance abuse meant drinking a lot and eating a ton of hot dogs before the game. The names he rattles off almost second-handedly in the book are like a Who's Who of baseball greats from the past. The book was written in 1969, after he had retired as a player and was about to start managing the Washington Senators (I had no idea they were still around in 1969). Since I finished the book I have done some Googling and found some unsavory info about Williams' cryogenically frozen head, which I won't go into here.

I am currently reading She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb, which I also found at Sarah's library. I picked it because I listened to the book on tape of I Know This Much Is True (also by Lamb), and I loved it. I have since discovered that I may have listened to this one also, but I barely remember it, so it will still be a surprise. I stopped listening to books on tape when I started getting into podcasts a few years ago, so therefore I read less, if you count that as reading (I do).

Book #1

As I mentioned in my last post, I will be writing about all of the books I read this year, and perhaps every year. I don't know how good it will come out because I'm not that good at reviewing any kind of media, other than "I liked it" or "I didn't like it." Perhaps I will get better as the year progresses. That would be nice.

Enemies and Allies, by Kevin J. Anderson

This book was given to me by my friend Adam for my birthday last month. I love Batman and have for a long time, but my exposure to Superman has only been through TV and movies, and of course general pop culture. I was looking forward to reading this book because I have a few Batman short story books that I read and enjoyed very much. It's kind of nice to read a story about Batman and not have to look at a lot of pictures. I know this is practically blasphemy to comics fans, but I have always been more of a story person. I catch myself quite a bit reading the story in a comic and barely glancing at the art.

The book is set in the 1950s and revolves around how Batman and Superman met and had to unite against their common foe, Lex Luthor. The basic tropes of each character are added along the way, and some of the aforementioned pop culture tidbits relevant to each character are mentioned. I did like that, and I didn't think it was overused to the point of corniness.

This being a superhero book set in the 50s, you can guess the outcome. It was an easy read and I enjoyed it very much. I usually only read books during my lunch break at work; what I read at home is usually just Entertainment Weekly or other magazines. But I did manage to get a few chapters of Enemies and Allies in at home as well, so that's usually a sign of a good book for me. My only complaint is that there seemed to be more chapters based around Superman than Batman (each chapter was headed by the Bat symbol or the Superman symbol, so you knew who the main focus of the chapter would be). Anderson really plays up the differences in the two superheroes; the almost goody-two-shoes alien Boy Scout Superman, and the dark, law-breaking Batman. That's probably why I prefer Batman, because he could actually exist, but in this day and age someone would be able to find his secret identity very quickly.

I would not hesitate to recommend this book to a comics fan or a Batman/Superman movie or TV fan. You don't really need to know the backstory of each character to enjoy the book, as Anderson basically gives all of that to you during the book. But if you're not a superhero fan, you should probably read something else.

Wow, this was a lot harder than I thought. I'm definitely not a book reviewer, so I'll have to come up with a different method of writing about the books I read. The next book is about the baseball player Ted Williams, so that will be interesting. I don't know much about him aside from the fact that he is one of the greatest hitters in the history of baseball. And he's angry.

Recycled Blog Idea/Adulthood Dream Come True

Happy New Year!

I was looking at a friend of a friend's blog, just out of curiosity, and she had posts relating to books she had read during the year. For example, the first book she completed was posted as Book 1, etc. I thought this was a cool idea and that I would try to copy it this year. I'm not a book reviewer by any means, but I will share my thoughts on said book and give it a thumbs up or down. I just started a new book yesterday about Batman and Superman, that I got for my birthday from my friend Adam. It's pretty good so far. Before that I read Blockade Billy by Stephen King, which I had not heard about until I saw it on the shelf at my library. It's more like a short story, it only took me a few lunch breaks to read it. Stephen King loves baseball, and it comes through in this story. It was kind of weird too, because King wrote it as if the character telling the story was telling it to him. I have a lot to catch up on with Stephen King, so you'll probably see me write about some of his books this year.

A few years ago, we went to a local restaurant for the first time, and they had on the menu something called pineapple bread pudding. I had never had it, and it sounded good, so I ordered it. It turns out that I had had it, and quite often when I was a kid. My paternal grandmother always made it, and I had totally forgotten about it. It was exactly like the scene in Ratatouille where the critic is instantly transported back to his childhood (this happened before I saw the movie) after taking a bite of the ratatouille. I thought I was going to start crying right there in the restaurant, but I managed to hold it together.

After I had this experience, and I saw the movie, I started to hope that one day I could do the same thing for someone else. As I have mentioned, my dad was a baker when I grew up, so we had a lot of bakery stuff around the house. Christmas was my favorite time because there was a lot of different stuff that you didn't get the rest of the year, stollen being my favorite. When I got to my current job I started to experiment with it at Christmas time. I started it maybe 5 or 6 years ago (my manager looked at me funny when I asked for a bottle of rum), and I could barely give it away. This year, I had an order for 2 before I even started making them, and people came in and asked for stollen specifically. I'm not making hundreds of stollen every year, but it's a far cry from that first year.

The day before Christmas Eve was a pretty emotional day for me. I was tired as my schedule ramps up around the holidays, and the store ran out of propane, so all of our ovens were down, ruining some of the stuff I had made. I actually threw a bucket in the back room and put a hole in the wall that day, which I feel bad about now. After we opened and had put the stollen out, one of the managers was walking out to the store when a customer stopped him and asked him about the stollen. He referred her to me (I'm the only one who makes it, my co-workers are afraid of it). She told me that it was delicious, and that it made her husband cry because it reminded him of the stollen his mother used to make. I don't remember what I said to her because I was concentrating hard on not losing it right there in front of everyone (I managed to bottle it up until I got home). But whoever you are, that was best compliment I ever could have gotten and probably ever will get. Thank you for making the holiday better for me.

A Childhood Dream Come True

I don't think I've written about this yet, I'm too lazy to check, and I have never tagged anything, so you get what you get.

Remember the Scholastic Book Fairs in elementary school? They would take over a classroom for a few days, and there would be books piled everywhere that you could buy. It was heaven for me. It was a lot better than the catalog, where they had only a smattering of books and then you had to wait for them to be shipped to the school. I did love getting Dynamite magazine from the catalog, but I can't remember if they had them at the fair.

One of the books that I bought at the book fair when I was 8 or 9 in the late 70s was the Guinness Book of World Records. I absolutely loved that book, I used to pore through it everyday. I think I first heard about it on the Brady Bunch episode where Bobby and Cindy are trying to go for the see-saw record. I believe it was also the first time I saw a current picture of Paul McCartney. I was a burgeoning Beatles fanatic and at that time, had only seen pictures of them as Beatles (I think Paul was in there for songwriting).

The entry that most captivated me was for the World's Quietest Room. At that time, it was located in Bell Labs, in my home state of NJ! I had no concept of where it was, but I knew that it was close by. The entry mentioned that you were able to hear your own heartbeat while in the room, I think that's what really got me. I built up an image in my brain of a dark room with red lights all over the place, trying to match the air of mystery the room had in my head. (I was also fascinated with the phone at the time, which is much different than it is now. My family went to Sears once, and I remember seeing a darkened inside window, and I could see red LED lights and make out the outline of a person inside. I asked my mom and dad what it was, and they said it was a switchboard room for the telephone system in the store (my mom was a phone operator at one time). So I think I transferred that mystery to the Quiet Room.) I read the entry over and over and dreamed of going into the World's Quietest Room. But eventually, I grew older and forgot about it and the Guinness Book.

In 1995, I started working for the food service contractor Aramark. The building that Aramark was servicing was AT&T in Murray Hill. Murray Hill was vaguely familiar to me, and I thought it was because of the sign for it on Rte. 22. But you know where this is going already, right?

On my first day of work, I found out that my friend's dad also worked in the building, and both of us were very surprised to see each other. We caught up a little and saw each other a lot at work over the years I worked there. His son and I were in a band together, so we talked about music a lot (he was also a musician).

Eventually I found out that I worked in the same building as the World's Quietest Room! I asked my friend's dad about it and told him my story. He told me that it was indeed in the building, and that it was no longer the World's Quietest Room, which made me a little sad. I don't know if I broached the subject of my seeing the room, but he didn't take me there then.

On my last day at Aramark, my friend's dad came to the kitchen and asked me to come with him for a little while, and I got pretty excited. He took me into an auditorium and showed me the sound system that was there, which was pretty cool. Then we were standing at the door of the World's Quietest Room! It was nothing like what I had dreamed about. First of all, it was huge. Wikipedia says it's wedge shaped, but I recall more of an oval, but it was a long time ago now. You entered the room in the middle of the wedge/oval, and the floor was made of some kind of netting (the engineer in there told me what it was, but I have forgotten). It was a little rough walking through there, but upon entering, it felt as if your ears closed up on you, but you could still hear. You know how when you hold your ears shut with your fingers, and you can hear yourself in your own head? It was like that, but much clearer, and of course you weren't holding your ears.

One of the coolest things that the engineer showed me was when he walked a few feet away from me, and his voice had the same volume as it did when he was standing next to me. Then we all stopped talking for a minute, and sure enough, I could hear my own heart beating (it was going pretty fast at the time!).

Even though I had forgotten about the room and it had lost its worldly stature, it was still one of the coolest things I have ever done. And my friend's dad was the best for taking me to see it and fulfilling a childhood fantasy. Thanks Al!