November 2006

Wendy and I went down to Owensboro Kentucky so she could participate in the 30th annual Madrigal Dinner hosted at her undergrad, Kentucky Wesleyan College. She was particularly excited that “Doc” (whose real name I never learned!) was coming back to conduct the assembled chorus.

We drove down on Thursday so that Wendy could attend an evening rehearsal. We made good time (about 4 hours) and got checked in at The Executive Inn, Owensboro’s most notable hotel. We got checked in and Wendy was off to her rehearsal, leaving me to fend for myself. I had dinner at the CAPITAL STEAK AND SEAFOOD HOUSE in the hotel. I enjoyed Crab cakes, tomato mozzarella salad, NY Strip (nicely medium-rare), sweet potato, broccoli. Red wine.

Take half a loaf of decent (though a day or two old) French bread. Slice it down the middle and open it flat. Saute some minced fresh garlic in (too much) butter until it’s nicely aromatic. Pour the butter over the french bread, top with Mozzarella, Cheddar, Provolone, and Parmesan cheeses, and broil to melt the cheese and warm everything up.

This was a delicious, terribly unhealthy meal that I enjoyed tonight. I ate some yogurt and drank a glass of milk (3% — a mix of whole milk and 1% that we had on hand) with it, so that practically makes it healthy, doesn’t it?

Tonight was Wendy’s early night off of work, so she got home around 7:00pm. I’d been home since about 5:30, reading over the Only Revolutions website & forums. Mark Z. Danielewski is one tripped-out author — he’s the same guy that wrote the mammoth House of Leaves, a 700+ page horror story told on many levels. It was described by the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle as: “A rollicking Pynchonesque oddity, a Nabokovian linguistic obsession, and a Borgesian unreality, House of Leaves jumps and skips and plays with genre-wrecking abandon, postmodern panache, and an obsessively imaginative scope that absolutely shames most books on the market today”.

 

Only Revolutions carries on in the same twisted tradition as House of Leaves – they are both a books that are very aware of the fact that they are books, forcing you to consider not just what you’re reading but how you’re reading it as well. In each book, there are pages that are formatted in such a way to make you spin the book or read backward (or through a mirror). “It is a great mix of pop culture, intelligence, sex, angst, and a great story in a world so detailed that it must be real. At times, it is a play within a play within a play and sometimes you’re not quite sure how many layers there are. The layout of the book itself is also amazing.” (M. Keisler “PhilosophyMusicMan”) And, even 6 years after the original publication of House of Leaves, people are still finding things ‘hidden’ in the footnotes, or putting together pieces of the puzzle. If the television show LOST had a decent story (that went anywhere) and was a book, it might be a lot like the work of Danielewski. 

 

Wendy & I had dinner this evening at Outback Steakhouse — not the type of place we’d normally dine, but I was given a gift certificate, so we wanted to use it up. Their steaks are seasoned to within an inch of their lives — no tasting the beef there — but they’re tender and cooked appropriately. I had a fillet, Wendy had the tilapia, and we split an onion appetizer. 

Another at-home evening tonight, and it was very nice. Dinner was simple — food we had on hand. I had some ravioli, yogurt, and an orange.

Today we bagged the leaves that Wendy raked up yesterday. We bagged and bagged — over 30 bags (each with a capacity of 39 gallons) of leaves. Oh my aching back. But our yard looks much better, and our neighbors (who take more pride in their yard than we do and have more time to maintain it than we do) are speaking with us again. We’re the most treed lot on our street, so we get LOTS of leaves.

Wendy was going to stay home and eat diet food and I was craving Mexican. I went alone to the Mexican restaurant right up the street from us. It’s currently named El Pueblo, but that will likely change shortly — they seem to change names on it every other week.

I’d sat down and ordered Shrimp Fajitas when in walked … WENDY! Dave & Robin had called her and, since they couldn’t get me on my cell phone (which I’d left at home), they all decided to meet me there. It was a nice surprise — we hadn’t spent much time with Dave & Robin since the holidays.

I worked prep at Jean-Robert at Pigall’s this afternoon, spending time helping out wherever I was useful. My most useful contribution today was that I made a ton of ravioli (brunoise of squash, shrimp, mushroom, and greens) pretty much from start to finish. Also, I hadn’t seen Jean-Robert since they gave me my own Pigall’s chef’s coat (did I mention on this blog that they gave me my own personalized (embroidered!) chef’s coat?) so it was nice to be able to thank him in person. I enjoyed a tiny bit of ‘family meal’ — chicken stuffed with asparagus, creamy potatoes, corn & onions, and tomato soup — since I wasn’t sure what Wendy’s dinner plans would be.

Since I worked prep-only, I was home by 6:30. Wendy and I went to see FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION, the new offering from Christopher Guest and the rest of the crew. It was very funny and very good. (We hear that Catherine O’Hara is up for an Oscar for her role). Wendy’s dinner plans were to eat popcorn and M&M’s at the theater.