WhimsyLand

I've been so bad.  On the other hand, I haven't gone a day in a month without working for at least a few hours, so I have a feeble excuse.   Dima finished the Solaris port of the touchscreen driver, a project that was starting to take on the aspects of the Bataan Death March until we started to think outside the box.  I continue to work with Ilya on the Project That Must Not Be Named, and perfecting firmware for future versions of the Amazing Playaway.  A client of my mostly dormant CET Software products has required a lot of help in using our mostly untested MySQL Interface.  And then there's the Windows-to-Linux port of a complex USB driver and subsystem that Dima is ramrodding and for which I am providing the occasional mid-course correction.  Junie, as you might have guessed, has been a thousand miles away since Las Vegas, so I have plenty of time to work during the day and feel sorry for myself at night.  Well, feel sorry for myself and call Junie and cook dinner and drink wine and watch old movies, which isn't so bad actually. 

Speaking of cooking, I've been culinary all afternoon, preparing for the Many Mountains Moving Volume VIII Bash tomorrow.  If you're anywhere near Boulder tomorrow, drop by, by all means.  Contributors (including Diane Glancy, Aaron Anstett, Jeff Franklin, Juan Morales, Ginger Knowlton, Debra Bokur, Rita Kiefer, John Latham, Devin Murphy and others) will be reading their work, and we will host the usual open mic afterwards.  For the occasion, I'm bringing a case of this terrific Terrai wine I recently discovered, available in Grenache, Tempranillo, and a delicious white.  Oh, and some Izzies and Fat Tire and colas.  I'm also bringing a 5-pound Mother of All Meatloaf and two big World's Best Salmon platters.  Oh, also three varieties of hummus, including Caribbean Lime Black Bean Hummus and Red Pepper-Kalamata Olive Hummus.  Also, Roasted Red Potatoes to go with the MOAML.  Also, 3 pounds of big shrimp cooked quickly in their shells on a bed of kosher salt, just like you get them on the streets of Malaga.  I might get ambitious and think of a few things more before I get there.  Barbara Sorenson, the capable Head Poobah of all MMM Salons and Reading Events, will be cracking the whip.  Anyway, it's always a lot of fun, so I hope you can show up.  Bob Hicok and G.C. already said the 2,000 mile drive was probably a little problematic for even a great party.  Tricia Lockwood and Rebecca probably found the drive a little daunting, too.

Speaking of G.C., I can now report that my two reviews in the Colorado Review were for G.C. Waldrep's Disclamor and Mary Jo Bang's Elegy.  I received my contributor's copies today and the reviews looks so great that I can only imagine that Stephanie cleaned them up in her usual amazingly competent fashion.  Ms. G’Schwind is the editor of CR and produces an amazing journal, with a wonderfully balanced set of work in a beautiful package.  Since originally writing the review for Elegy, it has become the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.  I'm hoping to spread this good reviewing karma around and suspect that G.C.'s terrific Disclamor will also earn the distinction that it deserves.

While I've been cooking, I've been listening to RLJ's terrific Pop-Pop.  I recently bought these Athena WS-100 speakers that made my old speakers seem old and muddy.  It was something of a trial, actually.  I was cruising by CompUSA, which was going Out Of Business on a national scale, to pick up a couple of LCD monitors.  There was this stack of speaker boxes discounted from $599 to $419.  I googled them and found that they had rave reviews, so I bought a box (which included a pair of speaker columns).  When I got home, I found that one of the speaker columns had a fuzzy speaker in the stack, so I drove back only to find that All Sales Were Final.  I phoned Athena and they said basically, tough luck, go back to CompUSA.  The manager there said all inventory was owned by a liquidator and go back to Athena.  This went on for a week until I finally just wrote a letter to Athena explaining my situation.  I got this nice phone call from the Customer Relations guy at Klipsch (who apparently owns Athena), who told me just talk to Yvonne again (I had, multiple times) and they'd sent new speakers.  I eventually settled for a Return Authorization and sent them off for a replacement, but not before buying another pair from CompUSA, who now had them discounted to $349.  So, I'm figuring that Derek will get the other set, since Ky probably has speakers and whatever given the fancy new job and raise he got.  At this point, the Lexus has been parked for a month with a flat tire, one of many it gets in the winter for no apparent reason.  I'm driving the Subaru that my dad sold me and I gave to Der for high school that has a)  146,000 miles on it   b) a bashed in right rear door due to an ice-slide by either Der or Kyle's gal Eileen, can't remember which, c) really dangerously dimmed headlights due to some sort of headlight glaucoma, and d) a bashed in bumper due to either Der or Kyle's gal Eileen, can't remember which, but I made matters worse by ripping off the entire thing leaving a party at Barb and Tony's and put the whole bumper assembly in the back area and drove home.  So, lately when I've picked up Junie at the airport it's been in a Subaru with no bumper, bad headlights, and terrible gas mileage owing to the complete lack of aerodynamics at this point.  So Der and I had this great idea!  I get it all fixed up and load it up with More Derek Stuff when he visits in April for the BB King concert and we drive back to Chicago, except this time it's not freezing and snowing like hell and we live to get there.  I think we can throw the new speakers in the back, and my old subwoofer and my old Sony amp, and all of Der's stuff that Cath was keeping in her basement, but now has a new big house with her guy Terry and would just as soon that the drum set we drove to Albuquerque to pick up from my nephew doesn't actually make it onto her moving van, and hey, I understand.  I think this will be in mid-April, so I have to get on the stick and see if I can arrange a lunch with Simon or Robert in Lake Forest or Arielle Greenberg or somebody.   Or stop in Iowa and see Seth.  So many possibilities.

Have you heard of LinkedIn?  It's a social networking site for professionals.  You can post your resume, add people to your "professional list of friends", and generally schmooz and make contacts.  I must have the weirdest set of friends in my circle.  They include Silicon Valley types, fellow poker players from the past, and poets, to name a few. You can find me here.

OK, gotta go back to the kitchen.  I need to Cuisinart the excellent potato chips with the fresh dill in preparation for scattering all over the mustard covered salmon.

I'll try not to stay away so long.