Friends and Bones

What a fun day. It started at midnight with a test/repair of the computer system with India. I won't bore myself with the details. We had a window of opportunity from midnight to 4:00 a.m. to shut down the computers in Bangalore. The test failed, sadly, so i got to bed early, happily. The fun part was a chance to speak with Suresh. It is always nice to know that he is on the other end of the line.

I got to visit with friends closer to home in the evening. The HelpDesk and Editorial Systems have long been reducing their staffs before the final outsourcing of the HelpDesk. Some of the people who left these teams have been meeting periodically for beer and dinner. Dean got to join after he left The Times. I asked if I could be invited to visit with these old friends. Three joined me in Long Beach tonight. Russ is on the far left. He left four years ago. I've missed his stories about his grandsons. It was nice to catch up with "the little guy" who is now 13 and 5'8" tall. I don't think he was ever really little. Russ is doing well, working at Cal State Fullerton.

Dean, we all know, left in August. That was just a month. He doesn't look a bit different. :) He says that he is getting used to not working although he will soon start a job for his accountant and a book editing job. It would be hard to take a 9 - 5 job after settling into life around the house. He says he is spending a lot of time doing those things that can't be done when everyone is working a full speed.

Jim was the supervisor who hired me on the HelpDesk, him and Judy Blood (can't say her first name with out the last. Kids she read to even called her Ms. Judy Blood.) I think Jim has been gone for 3 years. He just started a new job 2 weeks ago. He's doing technical writing. He hasn't changed a bit. It was strange to talk with people who have been gone so long and with Dean who is so recently gone. I'm sure Russ and Jim could care about what's happening at The Times. They still know many of the people at The Times, so we got to gossip about them.

I just finish reading a book in the series that inspired the TV show, Bones. The book is Bones to Ashes. These books are pretty interchangeable. The pathologists job is to identify what happened to the stack of bones on her desk. When did they die, how? The one interesting thing was finding strangely porous bones. I won't say more, but what that meant taught me something.

The romance between the two main characters is more complex in the book. I'm not sure that they even have a real romance in the TV show. The protagonist in the book isn't as weird as the woman on TV either. It's like reading a CSI script. Since I like the CSI's, that wasn't a bad thing.

Three Cups of Tea

I had to confess to my friend, Tom, that I am as anal as he is. Well, almost. I realized that I obsess about keeping my ipod full of books. It holds about 10. Most books are broken into two or more parts. As I finish a part of a book, I load in a part of another book. This means that I sometimes forget why I bought a book by the time I read it. What ever prompted me to get Three Cups of Tea? I'd look in Amazon to remind me. Oh, yea, the book about the guy who built schools in Pakistan. Yea, okay, maybe later. Reading one of these books on the proverbial shelf becomes difficult. I guess I just have to trust my own judgement. I probably bought it for a good reason. (See On the Wealth of Nations and its fate to know how wrong that thought can be.)

I shouldn't have worried about this book. It has elements of two books that I liked, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder and The Places Inbetween by Rory Stewart. The Mountains book is about Paul Farmer, who sets up a TB clinic and hospital in Haiti. I always see a man looking at what he wants and not seeing anything else. All his actions support his goal; total blinders. It is so inspiring you want to wade knee deep in mud and filth to join him in his battle. The Places book has an equally focused man trying to reach his goal. He just wants to walk across Afghanistan. The thing that makes it similar to Three Cups of Tea is the location. Stewart's quest isn't humanitarian, he just wants to cross the country after what happened on 9/11. Maybe he wanted to learn more about Muslims and where they live. I know I learned more about how rugged that country is and how difficult it is to get anywhere. I knew about that country and Pakistan when I read Tea thanks to this book.

Three Cups of Tea is about Greg Mortensen, a mountain climber. He fails when climbing K1 or K2 in Pakistan. On his way down the mountain, he gets lost. The head man in a village finds him and cares for him as well as he can. While there, Mortensen sees the poor state of the children's school and the fact that girls aren't allowed in the school. The girls still do all they can to learn, writing their lessons in the dust. He vows to return and build a school. His single-mindedness is amazing. He will build this school, despite that fact that he has no money. He is a nurse who lives to climb. This is an exciting story. It's fun to listen to how he keeps his promise to build a school. God love scope-creep. As he finds funding, which is a trick in itself, he build more schools. And on and on.

One of my many favorite sayings is "Nothing Is Easy." I used to have NIE written on the white board by my desk in the Learning Center. You may think it will be a piece of cake, but you forget all that is entailed in baking that cake. Mortensen learns that little lesson all through this book and his adventure. There is one interesting obstacle after another on the way to completing the first one. One advantage that he has is that he has an amazing facility with languages. It's almost like the writer of Born on a Blue Day. Mortensen can learn the rudiments of a new language in a truck on the way to meet the head man in a different village in Afghanistan. Enough to get him started in his discussions about building a school there with a man who has been known to tie a person he didn't like to two trucks and drive in two different directions.

Fearless, single-minded, hyper-focused and dedicated to solving the underlying issues of poverty in northern Pakistan and then Afghanistan. It's an amazing story. Please read it.

A Body at Work

I read a book called Body of Work. Can you tell which one I read? I get the pictures from Amazon after I've finished reading. They have bigger thumbnails. I bet the guy on the left does, too. When I did the search for the name, both of these came up. That guy on the left is a DVD, unrated. I'm just glad he visited my humble blog.

Of course, I read the book on the right. This is about a medical student and her dissection class. It was interesting reading. She doesn't just tell about the parts of the body, but how the experience affected her and her thinking. She was an English teacher before she decided to take up medicine, so she has a better grasp of the language than most doctors. I would recommend this if you are interested in the sciences, death, history of dissection, how your body works or if you are considering donating your body to science. That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, after reading how helpful it is to get in and peel back the layers. Yea, my mind is drifting to the picture on the left. Peeling back the layers.


I recently finished the book Restless. Following the theory of alternating between fiction and non-fiction, this was fiction. As you can see by the big bold letters, this was written by a man. It is about an English woman and her mother. I think Boyd did a good job of writing from a woman's perspective. That was pretty surprising. This is a story about the mother's life in WWII and the daughter's life now. Chapters alternate. The mother's story was very interesting, she being a spy and all.
The daughter has a more ordinary life. It seems that Boyd tried to match them in intrigue, but it was hard to compare WWII spying and an Iranian anti-Shah rally in the 80's. You do expect to see someone's head blown up at any moment, but...
I would recommend this. It is on the best seller's list for fiction. It is well written and it won't win any prizes. But you will enjoy reading it none-the-less.

Visiting and Reading

I thought I would never leave the house without my camera. When I lost or threw away the battery charger for my camera and bought one that is a strange size and hard to use, I sort of lost my confidence in the camera. Pretty silly. Because of this, I didn't have my camera when I went to visit my friend Rachelle and her charming husband, Jack.



So, trust me when I say that Rachelle looks fabulous. Her new life becomes her. I drove to their house at the end of the universe this Wednesday after work. What a great house! It is very liveable and spacious. I could have just stayed there and talked with them all night, but we went out to dinner. The food was good, the company was great. I promise that next time I won't have a martini after a long day at work. None-the-less, I got home at 10:30 in one piece. It was a long day, but it made me happy to see an old friend living the life that she has always wanted and deserved.

I have been reading in the midst of traveling and visiting friends. This has been all non-fiction all the time. I just finished Born on a Blue Day about a young British man with Asperger's Disease, a type of high functioning autism that is also known as an autistic savant. Rainman was about this type of person. The thing about the book that is he wrote the book himself. It's so interesting to see what it feels like to view the world through a completely different prism. He has an fantastic vocabulary and understanding of language, so the book is well written. But he is just learning about emotions and relating to the people around him. The book would seem flat at times because of that, but even when it is flat, he offers a totally different perspective to living.

Let's talk about a totally different perspective to living. Since I had spent such a wonderful time in Sonoma celebrating my birthday, I thought it would be interesting reading about one of the first families of wine country. 464 pages later, I have read about the Mondavis; I know everything there is to know about the Mondavis, more than anyone needs to know about a group of self-absorbed individuals. I seem to recall that they made good wine back in the day.

The most fun about the book was remembering how the Napa Valley and California wine was changing as I was. I remember when we started to make wine that could be drunk with a good meal instead of from a brown paper bag in the alleyway. Mondavi was instrumental in making that change happen. I suppose I should tell them thank you. I just wish they had enjoyed the trip as much as I did. All families have issues, mine certainly does. But we always love each other and have a place in our lives for even the whitest sheep. The Mondavis have rifts as big as the Grand Canyon. I didn't need 464 pages to appreciate my own family and the wine we drink, but it was thought provoking.

Odds and Endings

My camera battery died on the day that Dean left. I got to take a couple of pictures and then nothing. This is Dean, looking very happy about leaving. All who care will be happy to know that he is pursuing all that he had wanted to pursue, including his grand daughters.

He had packed up his desk. What a mess of memories spread out all over it. You wouldn't believe it today. Dianne came in and took out all our unused computers to be used in a different office. She works very hard at managing the hardware, software and technicians used by and at The Times.

Here she is at her desk. Talk about messy places. She has a lot of nieces and schedules. Remnants of both are on her walls and all over her desk.

We celebrated my 30th anniversary last week. I'm afraid I embarassed Bill. He gave me this pen and pencil set as a, hum, what, rememberance of my 30 years? The Times used to give out lovely gifts in the past. Poor Dan got a film camera for his 30th. In an age of digital, to give a film camera to a tech person is, hum, what, stupid? So we have gone even lower tech. Pen and pencil. It has Times written on the clip. I threw it in the trash. A note would have been nice. A cheap ass pen set? Insulting. Dianne dug it out of the trash. I guess she is holding it until I calm down. That will take a while.

I was rewarded for my bad behavior with a trip to Chicago. I arrived a day early so I could enjoy a bit of the city. Since Laura lives close, she came into town so we could have lunch at Gino's famous pizza place and then go to the Art Institute of Chicago. The pizza was not thrilling. The Art Institute was. They had a special exhibit with 3 of the 10 panels from the doors of the Bapistry in Florence. They are called the Gates of Paradise. I love the panels and was very excited to see them. The museum also has a good Impressionist section. Once again, I missed the American modern stuff because I don't really care for abstract work. They have a bunch of that too. It was all lovely, but my knees could only take so much. So we went back to the hotel to visit the wine, cheese and chocolate bar. Num.

They offer different wines in flights. A flight are 3 small glasses of wines of a type. White, sweet, dessert, dry. Whatever. The presentation is beautiful and there are cards to remind you of what you ordered. They do the same thing with the cheese. You can see that we got 3 cheeses. This one included condiments. We had guava paste, olives and almonds, and slices of bread. This was very good.

We got two flights of wine and two of chocolates. It seemed like a good idea at the time. The chocolate was the weak link. Go figure. It was good enough and it went well with the wine. It's just that 3 little pieces for the money they charged was not pleaseing to the palate. Or a sense of value. It all was enjoyable, just not the experience I would have wanted.

We stayed at the InterContinental. They have a gorgeous swimming pool that I was directed to see. Per has stayed here often in his consulting days for CCI. He was right, of course. The pool was amazing. Harriet was tempted and next time, I think she will bring her swim suit.

You may not believe this, but we worked, too. We met with people from Sun Sentinel and Newsday as well as Tribune. No boring details. But we did meet in a conference room and all tried to connect to the Tribune network through a hub that Sarp had one of his folks set up. It never worked right. On the first day, I was the only one who could connect to the network. Bill tried to get things working the second day. He is older than me. Yes, it is possible. And look how limber he is. That's him, under the table, plugging in my laptop. I couldn't get that close to the floor, much less turtle up like that. Go Bill.

Have You Become Addicted to . . .

I have become addicted to blogs. And I am so disappointed when the bloggers are away in Virginia or mourning a mother-in-law's death. They have taught me patience.

I have become addicted to Gchat. Even though mine says that I am Available, but Choosy, I am much more available than choosy. My sister is flying off to France today with her husband. We chat several times during the day. She left without a Blackberry or a computer. Doesn't she know that this is 2007? Almost 2008? They will be on a barge in Burgundy. I don't get to talk to her and I don't get to throw a rope while in a lock. No wine from a tap, no lovely French markets. Merde.
But Per is in Denmark and he is on Gchat most of the time. Don't know how to say hurray in Danish.

I have become addicted to my Blackberry. Instant communication, even when in the head. And that is where I always catch up on news headlines. I won't know what's happening when I have to turn this puppy in.

How did people live without instant communication? I am planning for my trip across the US. Got to have a broadband wireless card for my laptop so I can log on every night and download pictures to my blog. Stay tuned. Prairie Dogs. Open plains. Lone cacti. Dining at the local Dennys. Endless vistas. Endless blogs. Endless communication. Heaven.