Serial Killings, etc.

I'm afraid my reading had a theme lately. My lunch time friends had been discussing the Showtime series, Dexter. I had liked the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter, so I knew this "loveable" serial killer. Last week I got the DVD and watched the first season all weekend. It's well done. You never see all of what he is doing. What you do see is creepy enough. Adrian is enjoying it as well. We both agree that we like the supporting characters as much as Dexter himself.

I got the next book in the series at the same time from Amazon. Yes, I still know how to read books. I don't have to have all my books read to me. There are differences. Some of the characters on the TV show were killed off in the first book. Horrible things happen to others in this book. I understand from those friends who have Showtime that the new season of Dexter isn't at all like the book. I can understand why. This might be named Terribly Troubling Dexter. The sociopathic nature of these killers is, of course, sub-human and troubling. I'm not sure that I will pursue this series. The good thing about it is the perspective of the narrator. How the story is told is very interesting.

So is the story in Hit Man. I got this because Audible had a book sale and this was one of the sale items. I didn't really think about it being about a hitman. Duh. This guy is as bad as Dexter. But he seems more human. I don't know which is more troubling. He gets paid by this nice lady on Long Island and her boss to kill whomever, where ever. He goes out and does the deed. It's like short stories. He travels to the location, decides what to do and how to do it. That takes most of the short story, lots of local color. Thenhedoesit. All that happens in a sentence. Back to Manhattan to wait for the next assignment. I like the writing, but it kind of bothered me that I was following a trend. I think my next book will have to be non-fiction and not about anatomy classes. I guess it's time to finish This is Your Brain on Music.

My family has been busy. My nephew is a firefighter in San Diego. I saw this picture on The Times website of firefighters in that area who were caught in a firestorm. They have some protective cover they wrap up in during those circumstances. All the guys in this picture were okay when the fire moved on. The pictures on the website are amazing. The faces of these men and the action shots are more moving than video. I just don't know how they do what they do.
My sister wrote that Natalie and Maggie were on the front page of their local paper a couple of weeks ago. I was able to find the photo through some fancy Googling. These Campbells are very active politically. I admire their energy. I'm not sure what Natalie was thinking when this picture was taken. I'm glad the precious Maggie has good health care and doesn't need it. Maybe that was what Natalie was thinking.

Eugene and the Platypus

When I read, I think about Monty Python. And now for something totally different. It was Python who said that, right? What to follow Einstein and the British upper crust. I know, a philosophy book. A joke book. A philosophy book. Slap.

The authors describe different philosophical theories by using jokes. As always, I remember the beginning of the joke or the theory or the end of the joke. Putting them all together would take another read. I loved the beginning of the book. And got really bored near the end. I don't know if the book started to have a certain sameness or if I prefer Plato to modern philosophers. I don't even remember their names. It could have been the jokes. I'm not sure that God is always Jewish and calling everyone Bubbela. I prefer the description of a realist. A pessimist says the glass is half empty. The optimist says it is half full. The realist says the you have the wrong size glass. This book was not the right size.

The counterpoint in my reading was a mystery from an author I like. I suppose I like that there is a woman protagonist, a lawyer. That is not as rare as it used to be, but it is always interesting. She has a close relationship with her father who loves to cook. The mysteries don't usually involve savagery. Brutality is big these days. The books are well written. I really like the people in it.

Best of all, they take place in Eugene, OR. Julie and Adam live in Eugene. I go there now and then to visit with them. These books don't dwell on locale as much as I would like. Or I don't know the area as well as I would like. Guess I will have to visit them more when I am retired. Julie is back in school and doing extremely well. That makes it difficult for the moment to see them. But then, I will be in D.C. for some time. I guess I will just have to be happy with short trips until she is done with school and I am fully out of the working world.

Speaking of the working world, two of my three questions have been answered. Will I really be leaving The Times on 12/21? Yes. Yesterday I got my final papers with my final date in black and white. When will Bill and I be going to the East Coast? 2nd week of November. This means that I will be leaving Florida the weekend before Thanksgiving so that Adrian and I can drive up north to enjoy Thanksgiving with my family. We drive up Monday and then start shopping, cooking and visiting. The final question is about India. I'll just have to be philosophical and wait. Or, I can consider it all a joke.

Herr Doktor

Isn't he cute? Ladies, don't you just want to throw yourself at him? Me neither. What was the charm of this little German? I thoroughly enjoyed this book about him. It debunks a lot of old Einstein Tales. No, he didn't flunk out of grade school. He was always precociously bright.

This is what I gathered about him. He never thought like other people. He always approached problems by visualizing them in some way. I was just talking to my brother in D.C. Eric asked how I could listen to this book? How do you see the equations? I said I see them like Einstein did, in my mind (I'm not a genius, it is easy to do that with this book.) Eric said, "Ah, elevators." Yep. That's it. If you don't know what that means, you'll just have to read this book.

I also gathered that he was a man who lived totally inside his own self. He was sociable and humourous and it wasn't a trial to do that. But he only did that on his own terms. He loved women and loved being with them, but only on his own terms. He didn't appear to cater to their needs at all. He dealt with the scientific and political community on his own terms. He'd have been a lousy politician. There was no compromise in him, no politness to please another. Poor you if you weren't on is agenda.

He would have been an interesting man to know anyway. Edward Herrmann read this book. He has a wonderful voice. This could have been deadly dull, read by the some readers I've listened to. Not so here. I was never bored in the 23 hours of listening. But I did have to take breaks. This book is three segments long. Between each, I listened to a Paul Temple mystery.

These are transcriptions from an old BBC radio show. This one is from 1957. Kind of like the old "B" movies made around that time, they are full of melodrama. What could be more different from that old German Physicist, Einstein? I won't describe them. I wouldn't even recommend them unless you like this Nick and Nora kind of banter, by Jiminy.

It looks like I may be traveling before I leave The Times. Nothing is official on anything pertaining to my leaving. It appears that I will be leaving on 12/21. Nothing in writing yet. It appears that Bill and I will be traveling to the East Coast to visit four of our sister papers. Nothing in writing yet, nor a date. And finally, it appears that Harriet and I may travel to India. That is totally not official, so there is no date. Yippee, more interesting pictures of interesting place. Oh, I will be traveling on a cruise with my brother and sister-in-law in June. They are going to Alaska and have asked me to join in on the fun. That should be interesting. I'll be in D.C. then and flying out here. How cool. :)

The Other Side of The Times

My friend, Erik, has the nastiest job. He was an auditor before he came to work with us a few years ago. Yuck. Because of him I now know that all auditors are not total dweebs. It may just be him, but there could be other non-dweebs in the profession. He just had to leave us to go back to the Tribune. He must have a bff stuffed in a corner back there. Why else would he leave LA, The Times and us?

The nice thing is that he comes back to visit now again to help us prepare for audits and other harassment by the Tribune and the SOX patrol. And I get to visit and laugh with him. Considering how seldom I get up to the 3rd floor and this side of the building, it's almost like he never left.

When I do get up there, I'm most often visiting Bill. I can't do this very often because I always end up staring out his window. Yes, this is the view from his window. They tore down an old government building and opened up his view to Disney Hall. You can see that on the left. And besides, there are big machines moving old concrete and dirt around. Love to watch all this hard labor going on. I don't know how Bill and Harriet get anything done. They both have great views of all the activity. Harriet also gets to watch the myriad of strange people who come out of the court house and mosey down Broadway. They are very interesting. Instead, I'm in the black hole on the first floor, hard at work plotting my exit strategy.

Or plotting where I'm going to buy my next tomatoes, now that the season is over. I've become absolutely addicted to slow roasting these little things. They have so many uses once you do that and they keep fairly well for a week or so. I think. They don't seem to last that long. You can eat them with broiled meats or mushed up with pasta or... Here they are, neatly grouped by type, waiting to go into my very slow oven. I leave the peels on the garlic or it browns too much. Lovely.

Cooking and Reading

What a great weekend. Cooking and reading. I had gone to Old Town to watch the movie, Outsourced. I'd forgotten that UCLA was playing Notre Dame at the Rose Bowl. The city was jammed early on a Saturday morning. It was also a gorgeous day. All of Southern California seemed to be in the city. So I turned around and went to Bristol Farms instead to pick up some more Wasa crackers and tomatoes. And left with half the store. I could have sworn I was being good.

I've stopped going to the farmer's market on Saturday because I buy a lot of stuff and we can't eat it all that quickly. I have been determined to use up everything I bought at the Thursday market at City Hall and now I have to use the produce I bought at Bristol.

Saturday night we had a beautiful piece of salmon, slow roasted with fresh ginger, garlic and curry powder. Great. I made a salad of Persian cucumber, mint, green onions and heirloom tomato. I say too much green onion, Adrian says too much mint. We had this with orchiette. It was all pretty good.

On Sunday I cooked a pork shoulder butt in my favorite 7 hour cooking method. I stuffed the beautiful scalloped squash and baked those in the little oven. They are for Adrian. For me, I'm making a savory bread pudding with roasted tomatoes and garlic and with roasted garlic bread. Can't wait to taste that. Karen asked if I'd ever had that before. I told her no, that I've just been Jonesing for it since I roasted some tomatoes earlier in the week. Go figure. If it is good, I'm going to share it with the guys at work.

Love that I can read and cook at the same time. First I finished The Art of Aging. Well, if I'm going to be an old lady, I'm going to have to figure out how to do it with gusto. It seems that I may be okay on the gusto front, but it will take constant vigilance. I just really can't recommend this book. I think he had a good pamphlet and tried to expand it into something bigger. Here are the things to remember: get plenty of exercise (yea, sure), don't overeat, maintain close relationships, take calcium supplements, be creative.

The most important thing is to adjust what you consider to be old lady behavior. Understand that the body won't work as well as it used to. Make plans to do things and not just sit and write your blog while listening to books. Do, plan, love, create. And take calcium.

Then I finished The Wheel of Darkness, an Aloysius Pendergast book. They are always a little supernatural, always thrillers. Rene Aubergenois read it. Pendergast is from New Orleans originally, so the ability to be charming and syrupy is an important ability. This starts in a Tibetan Monastary. The Wheel of Life is a popular Buddhist symbol. The writers have perverted this into an uber-menacing symbol. I'm not sure why I read these thrillers. It struck me as I was about 2/3 of the way through that I used to just turn to the end of the book or put in the last tape or CD to make sure everyone is okay. Of course, everyone is always okay, but you have to read enough to learn how they got to that state. I don't love to read about un-natural deaths or deaths in detail, no matter how natural.

So, yes, I skipped a huge part of this. Huge to me, maybe 1/6 of the ending. I was happy. I did go back to find out a couple of things, but I didn't have to read about all that turmoil to enjoy the book. And I really did enjoy it.

Today I read Power Play. This is not part of a series, but I didn't know until the end that I had read quite a few books by this author. He writes about different businesses and puts the protagonist into peril. This industry is aerospace. But, really, they are interchangeable. I'll have to recommend this to my brothers. They like the genre. This type of book is easy to read while moving around, cooking. It doesn't matter if I miss a sentence or two. In fact, I woke up early to watch Sunday Morning on CBS and then continued to read the book while lying abed. Yes, I may have dozed just a bit when they were having dinner. That could have been an interesting part, I may need to go back to listen to that. It did not hurt in figuring out what was happening in the rest of the book.

I think this type of listening is much harder for non-fiction; especially non-thriller-fiction. The suspense may be taut and the writing might be, too, but you don't miss out on the enlightenment that comes with hearing every word of most non-fiction books. My next one is This is Your Brain on Music. What if I find that music is vital? Will I have to stop reading as much and start listening to music?

Around The Times

The new police station is being built across the street from The Times. It is amazing how fast this building is going up. All pictures were taken from the parking garage across 2nd street.

When I was in India, I liked to watch the construction because it was mostly done by hand. The floors were held up by an intricate weaving of thin poles until the concrete had set. It was pretty scary to think that when they were done, they became the apartment I was living in. Or one just like it. The apartment complex seemed to take forever to build. We would pass one every day on the way to work. I was so anxious to see the exterior of just one of the apartment blocks with the roof on. It was just not to be. I often didn't see anyone working on the exterior. I hope they were inside putting up wall board.

The top picture was taken September 20. Look at the pretty fluffy clouds. What a beautiful place to work. This fall is beginning to look like a keeper. The middle picture was taken a week later. Look how big that crane is. I have to be on the 5th floor of the parking structure to get the whole thing. When you are in the cafeteria on the first floor of The Times building, the crane looks like a sky hook.

This last picture was taken this evening. The sun is setting earlier. I'll have to go out at lunch to get a good picture. The building has grown a lot in two weeks. Now they have the elevator on the right running up the side of the building. We'll see how big it is in two more weeks.

Clif and I have become enamored of the Farmer's Market in front of City Hall. That's the pointy building in the background of my pictures. They have lovely produce closest to The Times. There are lots of food booths closer to City Hall. Clif has been hitting the Greek barbeque place. I like that, but this week I just stopped at the ice cream vendor (I've had spiced strawberry and mint chocolate nubs in recent weeks) and picked up some gorgeous produce.

Clif is standing just outside my officle. Do you see the cut out on the door? There is a long window in the door that people used to stare through. I found this cutout advertisment of an old friend. We put him in the window so he could look back and keep them away. I don't know if it's scared anybody yet.

With a Shoehorn

Did I say I was anal about keeping my Ipod full? I just finished half of a book and my podcast of the New Yorker, and jammed in one more book to take their place. I now have 6.8 MB left on my 2 GB drive. And all my books in the library have been downloaded. Will I be happy with the 11.5 books there until 10/22 when I can order new books? I certainly hope so, but that little devil on my shoulder has already started to whisper.