We’ve been sitting on some big news over here at the Edmunds house, and trying to keep this secret has forced me to zip my lips so tight that nothing else could come out either.

A few weeks ago Bear had a meeting with the regional VP of the company he’s hoping to leave to. Let’s call them “Providential.” Everything went great, he charmed them right and left, had answers to every question, and schmoozed like the champ he is.

So they leave the meeting saying, our COO will need to interview you, he should be in town by the end of September and then we’ll go from there.

Bear got an email yesterday, asking to meet this morning. September 1. A little sooner than expected, but we’re cool with that. Of course we can meet.

Bear’s all nervous, weighing our future if this job doesn’t come through, weighing the possibility of working at this promise-reneging, incompetent-promoting, bend-on-over-cause-you’ve-got-pretty-lips company for the foreseeable future. Depressing indeed.

So instead of meeting with the assorted VP’s and administrators and trainer and underlings he was expecting to meet with, it’s just him and the COO in a room. Again, Bear’s schmoozing away, putting his back into it.

He goes to make a football analogy (he’s full of those) and the COO follows up on it, yadda yadda yadda, turns out that Bear’s old football coach, the one he still regularly visits when he’s in town and who calls him “Legend” when he walks in the door, is the COO’s close personal friend.

Needless to say, he got the job.

Finally. After a year of sitting here scratching our butts waiting for this company to keep their promises that made us pay for our own move here (twice! long story!), that looked like after 6 false starts was finally going to be the career that supported us, after all the demotions and paycuts and humiliations, not to mention all the work that came before we ever got to this point, finally, on November 1st, Bear will have his dream job.

I’m already spending the money. I convinced Bear that we needed to celebrate which took the form of two books for me, a book for him, two candles for me, and two cheap playstation games for him. And in my head I’m already buying sheets and towels and new underwear. When you’ve been poor for as long as we have you make do with the boring stuff as long as you can so that when you have a couple bucks you can do something fun with it. Now, nothing sounds more fun than fresh white sheets with not a single hole in them.

I just got back into town from “the OC.” We had to run down for Bear’s 10 year high school reunion and we brought our new Canadian friends with us. It was great fun and boring and I feel terrible about it all rolled up into one big neurotic ball.

When we lived in New Hampshire I hardly had any friends. I hated probably all but 4 people we met there, and I’m the type that prefers to be alone rather than suffer the company of people I don’t like. So then we split and move off to Modesto where there is absolutely not one soul we can find that fits us. Not even someone that I don’t like, not a soul. Everyone we meet is in their late thirties, with kids, and completely uninterested in a social life. So it was just the two of us for the past year. Thank heavens for the internet.

And then, about a month ago, Bear’s doing some work at the church, and who should stroll up but a cute couple in their 20’s, looking for some help moving in! And what do you know, in all of Modesto they were moving into our apartment complex. Hooray!!

Since then we’ve rarely left them alone. Bear and I are truly lucky that we are honestly best friends and prefer each others company over absolutely anyone else’s, but eventually even filet mignon gets boring. So when we found out that the Girl Canadian would have the same time off as Jared, we invited them to come along so we could show off our old stomping grounds. It was so much fun. The Canadians are great company. Boy Canadian is SO hilarious, he kept me giggling for 5 days, and Girl Canadian is such a sweetheart, she was always checking up on me and my health and making sure I was comfortable. They are fast moving up my list of favorite people.

So then on Saturday night we had to go to the reunion. I got all dolled up wearing the super high stilletos so the gams were shown off in their best light, and slathered on the makeup to play my part of trophy wife. And then I spent the next three hours smiling and nodding and shaking hands and saying nice to meet you as the person’s name went flying right out of my head. I was bored to tears. Bear had a good time, I think. He was voted “Most Changed” and at first we wondered what that could possibly mean. He was All State Football, captain of the wrestling and football teams, student body president. He was freaking Zack Morris in the flesh. But since everyone else there was a drunk in high school and apparently still are, I guess the fact that he has a job and got rid of the anchorman hair is enough to push him over the top.

Bear was actually quite worried about going. Like most former college football players, those muscles have migrated to his belly, and his career isn’t exactly in a place to be proud of yet. But considering that everyone else we met were either just barely graduating from grad school or said they were either “in sales” or “in real estate,” and many were already working on their second marriage, I think he left feeling pretty good about himself.

The only problem with the weekend, and the one that I feel horrible about, is that I ended up standing up my dearest friend The Good Twin. Every time I come down we mean to get together, and there’s always other things pressing in on our time there. The last couple visits we’ve managed to squeeze out an hour or so, but this time, with the reunion and family and our new friends, there was just no time left. So poor TGT was calling and calling and waiting and waiting and did I ever show? Nope. I suck. But that’s something she’s probably known for quite some time.

This website: griddlers.net is trouble.

I love puzzles, word searches, logic problems, etc. In fact Bear just bought me a huge 500 puzzle book from the grocery store and I finished it in a week. I can’t put the things down.

Years ago I worked for a consulting company where my job was to basically act as backup to a woman who had a stroke and couldn’t type anymore. There was almost never anything to do. So she shared her computer game collection with me. This was all pre-internet, so it consisted of a couple shareware puzzle games from everett kaser (kaser.com)

So when I was at my last stupid office job looking for something to kill time I looked them up again out of nostalgia and found a whole treasure trove of puzzles to keep me from watching the clock. My favorite was called Decartes Enigma. I’ve also heard these called Paint by Number or Griddlers. Oh. My. Gosh. I love these stupid things.

I think it’s because I love the artwork of pixelization. Knitting, crosstitching, even my experiments with perler beads, a lot of the artwork I do involves rendering an image in a series of little squares. So this combines that love, with a logic puzzle. A match made in heaven.

I’ve gone through the Decartes Enigma puzzles about a dozen times, so I googled to see if I could find more for free, and to what should my wondering eyes appear but the most glorious use of internet technology known to man! Over 20,000 griddlers to solve, with more submitted every day! And I can make my own! And they come in color! And they’ve got triddlers which add a new dimension!

So far I’ve been a member for maybe 4 days and I’ve already spent 8 hours on the site. I find myself pacing around the house trying to get comfortable, sitting down at the computer for a change of scene, and all of a sudden it’s 3 hours later and I’m in agony from sitting up for so long. And yet I don’t care.

I know. I’m an unstoppable geek.

It’s time for yet another clearinghouse post for this dang 50 Book challenge. I’m realizing that reading 50 books won’t be a challenge for me at all, but the writing about them sure is a pain in my butt. These books have been sitting next to my computer for weeks, so long that the OCD in me is screaming to put them away, and just long enough for me to forget everything I was going to say about them.

The Broken Heart by Bruce C. Hafen
This is the second book in a series dealing with the Atonement of Christ and applying it in your life. I really love this author because he’s not a happy happy joy type. He fully admits the things that suck in life and still finds ways to get through it, and that’s so much more approachable than someone who thinks there should be no problems just because you have faith. He taught me a ton.

The Whore’s Child by Richard Russo
I’ve been into the short stories lately, and this is yet another collection. This time from the author of Empire Falls, the Pulitzer Prize winning novel and mediocre movie from HBO. I think if I have aspirations of writing short stories, I should probably stop reading them. Or at least stop reading them from such a high caliber of author. Holy crap it’s intimidating. His stories were so good, and so complete even in this short format. I usually bristle at short stories because there is so much left unknown and unsaid, but not in Russo’s work. The title story was especially moving, but each story focused so intently on people trying to come to terms with one thing or another. That laser focus provided a clarity to emotions, conversations, descriptions, and plot. The reader watches as one after another, Russo’s characters journey to acceptance. It’s an elegant transition to watch.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
What could I possibly add to the reviews of this legendary book. It’s legendary for a reason? I liked it? Sufficed to say, all the raves are true. So let me just say, Yadda yadda yadda, great book and comment on one thing. Twain fearlessly experimented with dialect throughout this whole book, even carefully noting the difference in pronunciation between two white southeners from different parts of the south. Before the text, this “Explanatory” note is included,

“In this book a number of dialects are used, to wit: the Missouri negro dialect; the extremest form of the backwoods Southwestern dialect; the ordinary “Pike County” dialect; and four modified varieties of this last. The shadings have not been done in a haphazard fashion, or by guesswork; but painstakingly, and with the trustworthy guidance and support of personal familiarity with these several forms of speech.
“I make this explanation for the reason that without it many readers would suppose that all these characters were trying to talk alike and not succeeding.”

I am in awe of this effort. In modern fiction, it’s not in vogue to write in dialects, but the work Twain put in to the construction of these written languages is astounding and pays off in the novel. This was not a racist construct, it’s another way of watching Huck’s travels through the US and making that journey real. It’s a shame it’s not done properly anymore.

The All True Travels and Adventures of Lydie Newton by Jane Smiley
Oh I was so disappointed in this book. Granted, I read it write after Huck Finn, so it would have been hard for anything to measure up, but seeing as I bought this book at the remainder table, I think I’m not the only one who felt that way. I love Jane Smiley. She’s one of my favorite authors, partly because of the intense research she shoves into each of her books. After writing Moo, she’s probably qualified to run a college by herself, among other things. So here we have a book by one of my favorite authors, set in the turbulent “Bloody Kansas”,with a main character that one reviewer said, “Huck Finn would have been proud to claim as his big sister.” It should have been great, and yet it goes so wrong.
Namely because Smiley seems to get mired down in the minutia of frontier life. So much time is spent building houses and making dinner and spent with the women involved with their own contributions to the war, all things that are interesting in their way, that the plot just drags and drags by.
Lidie Newton is an unattractive woman who marries an eastern preacher and abolitionist and comes to Kansas to try to help settle the slave question. There she encounters the hardships of the western frontier as well as the constant threat of war from the Missouri ruffians trying to settle the slave question their way. Her husband is eventually killed, and Lidie decides to seek revenge.
But by the time she cuts off her hair and starts living like a man, the book is nearly 2/3 over. And she ends up getting distracted from her mission, and that’s where the book lost me.
When the book ends, it’s so unsatisfying that it feels like Smiley just wrote to a word limit and stopped. So disappointing.

Say When by Elizabeth Berg
Elizabeth Berg is my go-to author whenever I’m looking for a book to take on a plane, to the beach, or, in this case, as a palate cleanser. Her books are reliable for two things: 1)The plot will not tax your brain as anything complex or weighty, and 2)Her characters are so relatable, her dialogue so believable, that you really won’t care. Berg is as close as I get to chick-lit, or straight fiction. She’s not exactly literature, but her books are well written with sharp characters, so I’m not wasting my time or brain cells.

This latest book involves a couple, Ellen and Frank struggling to decide whether to stay together or divorce. Ellen decides that she has found true love outside of her marriage, and leaves her husband and child while Frank tries to move on with life and get over her. Berg’s specialty is understanding the emotional motivations behind each person’s actions. So even in circumstances that are foreign to me, and that I cannot imagine forgiving so easily, I understand why they behave the way the do, because Berg as shown it so clearly. She has a masterful gift for understanding and deep compassion for her characters.

Whew! Now the stack is cleared off. Too bad I just finished another book last night. I just can’t seem to stay ahead!

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life the Universe and Everything
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Mostly Harmless
by Douglas Adams

I first discovered Hitchhikers when I was about 13. I was just starting to get into crafting, but sitting there doing needlepoint was not fascinating enough for me, so I went to the library and got a bunch of books on tape. I happened to luck into the radio play version of this novel, and was spellbound. So in honor of the movie release, I decided to go back and reread all the books in the series.

I was shocked to discover that the books had only a superficial resemblance to the radio play. The characters were the same, and the plot held up almost all the way through the first book, but there the two deviated and never related to each other again. I had heard somewhere that Adams originally wrote the series for the radio and basically made it up as he went along, literally handing the script over moments before they went on air. If that’s true, it explains a lot. In the radio play there were holes in the plot, there were characters that were abandoned, and there was not near enough of Adams narrator with his inspired explanations of space life. It must have been the case that Adams revised everything when he had the time to do it.

So in many ways, these books were brand new to me. Hitchhikers remained familiar with it’s quest for the question that would give the answer 42 for the life the universe and everything, but everything else was completely new to me.

What struck me most this time through the “trilogy” was how silly the whole thing was. Silly in the best possible sense. Silly in the Monty Python, adults never get to do anymore, sense. Also, in reading it in preparation for the movie, I realized just how little of a plot there actually was. I kept wondering to myself, how on earth they would create a two hour movie with a traditional story arc out of this delicious mess of imagination. It was like an archetypal hero’s quest, as told by a three year old who kept loosing the story thread but had all kinds of fascinating side stories to throw in.

These books have been remade in a legendarily large number of formats, and it’s easy to see why. Not because the story itself is so resonant, but because the mood of the story is. It reminds us of the best times in childhood pretending, when anything was possible and any danger could pop out at any moment, and the silliest imaginings could protect us from that danger. The Hitchhikers Trilogy is so utterly unique in how it captures that childlike spirit while being gutbustingly funny on an adult level.

I never did make it to the movie when it was in theaters, but I’m a little afraid to rent it now. I’m afraid the inspired silliness I treasured in this book will be lost.

Elevator Music: A Surreal history of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong by Joseph Lanza

I’m a huge fan of quirky history, so I thought this book and I were going to be fast friends.

Oh. My. Gosh. I hated this freaking book.

What really sucked me in was the book designer. The cover has this blue photo of a whole bunch of men in gray flannel suits from the 50’s with little comment bubbles coming out of their mouth, all reading, “Fascinating!” from a whole bunch of different critics. Then you open it up and every chapter begins with groovy martini lounge graphics. How could this book be boring?

Because it’s bad history writing, that’s how. I read better papers coming out of History 103.

First and foremost, there is absolutely no thesis to this book. The authors bio says that Lanza is a “writer who concentrates on ‘speculative’ non-fiction.” Whatever that means. But he’s sure not an historian. Good history interprets the events, puts them into a larger context, extracts some meaning or precedent. This book is a timeline in written form, full of page after page of playlists, names of audio engineers, discographies. There were SO many times he could have come out with something really interesting. One chapter begins with a few anecdotes of how background music has has had a deleterious effect on listeners, including one woman who used to have seizures when easy-listening was played. Instead of dwelling on this bizarre and fascinating phenomenon, Lanza uses that as a segue to discuss the timeline of one specific man’s career.

There were some fascinating things to read about, but every single time they are mentioned and dropped without further development. Bonneville, a company owned by us Mormons, was a competitor to Muzak for a while. This intrigued me and I wondered if he was going to speculate on why a religion would want to get into this type of music? No, he didn’t. He moved on with the timeline.

He mentioned how carefully Muzak’s programmers arranged songs to take into consideration the time of day and even within one hour to increase productivity and not distract. Did he fully flesh this out or discuss the ethical questions of mood control? No. Did he comment on the fact that Muzak’s philosophy has changed over time and they now include vocals when that was strictly forbidden in the early days? No. He moved on with the timeline.

Lanza’s writing reminds me of a doctor character in a movie I just watched. He wants to be a researcher and considers his interactions with the patients to be a waste of time and consequently has no bedside manner. Lanza has no bedside manner. He never takes the time to explain who Percy Faith was, we’re just supposed to know. He describes some of the music as if he’s writing a musicology text, not a piece of non-fiction, we’re just supposed to understand. He doesn’t flesh out his timeline to address some of the more interesting developments, he just pats us on the head and continues with his research.

It’s a real shame, because there is so much here that could have been fascinating if he’s ignored the precious timeline and just focused on where the meat was. Muzak was responsible for incredible technological advances in the field of recording; there’s a complicated relationship between people and background music: many dismiss it as shlock, and yet the demand for it increases daily; it changed the way songwriter royalties are protected; how do popular artists feel about it?; all of these subjects I learned about through this book, but they were all mentioned, with at best one or two anecdotes, before Lanza pressed on with the timeline. It was maddening.

And. AND! Cardinal sin of historians! There were no citations! Every once in a great while there’d be something at the bottom of a page, but no real footnotes, a HUGE bibliography full of interviews and monographs that were not once cited in a proper sense throughout the book, but no endnotes, nothing.

And there was no conclusion. Not in any of the individual chapters, nor at the end of the book. In once case, the chapter ended at the end of an interview with a Muzak programmer. It just stopped. No interpretation, no context, no repeat of the thesis -BECAUSE THERE WAS NO THESIS – bleck. I’m amazed I made it through.