Red State Showdown

Another national championship with Florida vs. Ohio State. The two states most responsible for the moron in the White House in the battle for supremacy among the mediocre schools.

And to think that it was almost Georgetown vs. UCLA.

Bye Bye Briny Breezes

In the late 1950's, my parents and I would drive to Florida for 3 weeks each February - March. We would pull a travel trailer with us and stay at a trailer park called Briny Breezes, right on the coast between Delray Beach and Boynton Beach. In 1958 they offered the lots for sale. Lots near the ocean went for $2500, while the lots on the other side of AIA were $2000. (Prices are from wikipedia, I don't actually remember the amounts.) My dad turned down the opportunity, but would later say that he probably should have taken the deal. We went back one more time and rented a space from someone who had bought one. We went to Florida one more time and stayed in Hollywood in what was then the only other ocean front trailer park on Florida's Atlantic coast. We didn't like that place, primarily because it was predominately populated with French Canadians. I looked for the place in Hollywood years later and saw that it had been replaced by high rise condominiums. My dad would not be pleased to learn the latest, as Briny Breezes, the last trailer park on the coast, is being purchased by a developer who is paying over half a BILLION dollars for the place. Each lot owner will receive over $1,000,000. Not bad for a $2500 investment. Article here.

Links

John says in his blog that he doesn't know how to make links work. I will demonstrate here so that he will know how to do it AND to see if he reads this... (actually I will probably put a comment in his blog about it to see if he looks at comments.)

When composing a post, select some text and click on the link icon.

That will bring up a dialog box in which you enter the URL. Leave the dropdown list as "http:"

Up in Honey's Room

I should start out by saying that I feel ripped off. This is a reflection on the situation, not the book or the author. The first Elmore Leonard novel that I read was Cuba Libre, in late 1999. Over the next year or so I managed to read all of the non-western books that he had written. Since then, a new Leonard novel has been an event for me. I have everything from Pagan Babies forward in hardback, not because I am a collector or want them as trophies, I just haven’t been able to wait. But then when I would have one in my hands, I wouldn't read it right away. I would save it for the right moment. Tishomingo Blues, for example, I read in a deck chair on a Panama Canal cruise. In some cases I saved it so long that the paperback was out before I read it. This time was different. I received a copy of Up in Honey's Room, which will be on sale May 8, before it was released. I was one of a handful of regulars in the online forum at Elmore Leonard's website who were given advanced copies. The catch was that you had to write a review. No savoring, no waiting, just read it. The book isn't even out yet and I am already done with it, waiting for the next one. It would have been worth the wait.

Up in Honey's Room is the third story featuring U.S. Marshall Carl Webster. The first, 2005's The Hot Kid, introduced us to the young lawman, who in the story would be glorified in True Detective and the book-within-the book Carl Webster: The Hot Kid of the Marshalls Service. "If I have to pull my weapon I'll shoot to kill." We also meet his wife-to-be Louly, who wants the world to think she is Pretty Boy Floyd's girlfriend. It was set in the 1930s in Oklahoma. Carl's father Virgil, who he lives with, had been a supporting character in Cuba Libre, a Marine who had been blown off the deck of the USS Maine when the Spanish blew it up.

The second installment, Comfort to the Enemy, was not a book at all, but rather a 14 part serial that ran in the New York Times Sunday Magazine from September to December of 2005. Set during World War II, we saw Carl investigating a murder of a German POW at a camp in Oklahoma, his relationship with one of the prisoners, Jurgen Schrenk, and the ultimate escape of Jurgen and another one of the prisoners.

Up in Honey's Room takes us to Detroit, where Carl is tracking the escaped Jurgen Schrenk. It is April of 1945 and the war in Europe is winding down.

So the debate goes: What makes an Elmore Leonard novel so interesting? Is it the characters, the plot, or maybe the dialog?

First let's look at the characters.

One of my problems here is that I finally realized that I don't particularly like Carl Webster. In many ways he is a typical Leonard protagonist, a man of few words, strong on principle, attractive to women, handy with a gun, etc. Most of the books have a main character that is a variation on this theme, sometimes a law enforcement type, sometimes not. There are a few things about Carlos that don't sit right, though. He seems to be more of a publicity hound than he should be, had read his own publicity one time too many. The part where he made a conscious decision to cheat on his wife, a situation eventually avoided by happenstance rather than a change of heart, bothered the hell out of me.

I actually found the escaped German tank commander to be a more compelling character than Carl, wished we had learned more about him. He seemed like he would have been a fascinating person to meet, have a drink with, discuss the differences between our cultures, etc. I find myself wondering what became of him. Did he fulfill his fantasy about becoming a cowboy?

I was not real fond of the villain here. Leonard's bad guys can be right scary. In my mind, part of that scariness can be attributed to my willingness to believe in the character. Clement Mansell, Ordell Robbie, Lionel Tavalera, Dr. Taulbee, these were all people I could believe existed. I just could not accept Bohdan Krevchenko. The Ukrainian transvestite assassin seemed like too much of a comic book character.

Honey Deal (the family name Diehl was changed at Ellis Island) was a wonderful character. A gold digger with a library card, she worked at J. L. Hudson's in Better Dresses. Otto Penzler, the Waffen-SS officer who escaped with Jurgen, got interesting just before he disappeared from the story on page 83. On the cover of the Advance Reader's Edition of the book, Leonard says that he auditions his characters in the opening scenes and by page 100, if they haven't found their voice, they are out. In this case, it looks to me like Otto found his voice in the part where he was being written out. Darcy Deal was the obligatory redneck, surprisingly not connected (so far as I could find) with Leonard's The Moonshine War, although the time and setting would have fit. Walter Schoen, Honey's ex-husband and Himmler wannabe, managed to be convincing and almost sadly sympathetic. Vera Mezwa, the head of the "spy ring" bothered me at first, I more or less lumped her into the same comic book as her boy Bohdan, but she got better.

There is not a lot of plot in this book but it has some unexpected subtleties to it. You would expect this story to be about Carl tracking down and capturing Jurgen, but that is more of the context than the story. The spy ring (or rather Walter) is hatching a plot. Honey is trying to seduce Carl. What has happened to Otto? Is Darcy going to cause trouble? And so on. This all leads to a confrontation that we see coming for some time, which is resolved in a manner that we don’t see coming.

It’s all pretty satisfying, but the real reason that this book is so enjoyable is the dialog, particularly the conversations that include Honey. There are some great lines, like when Honey says to Jurgen “I got to know more about you, Hun”, but it is the give and take amongst the characters that kept my interest. Carl and Jurgen discussing bull riding and then making fun of “Valter” and his doomed plan to take out FDR. Honey and the FBI guy Kevin talking about the war. Otto and the woman he would run away with, discussing Bertold Brecht.

So what did I think, did I like the book? Definitely. Is this among my favorite Elmore Leonard books? No. I am kind of glad to be done with Mr. Carlos Huntington Webster, actually. Hopefully he welcomes Louly home from the war and he reconsiders the desk assignment, his luck can’t last forever. With Cuba Libre the exception to the rule, I prefer the books written about the present. Elmore Leonard’s sound is at its best when it is the sound of today’s street. I wouldn’t mind finding out what happened to Honey and Jurgen, though.

The complete Up In Honey's Room Reviews thread on The Dutch Forum

Picture from Willo Home Tour 2007

Learning how to provide title and caption.

Phone Stuff

I am experimenting with sending things from my phone to this blog. The previous post was a picture that I sent directly. This post contains a video that I took with the phone. There is supposed to be a "send to blog" feature in pocketcaster that will allow me to send the video direct to the blog, but I can't get that to work yet.

My corner of my lab

Phoenix Home and Garden Show (or something like that)

We went with Mike, Lori and Kaelyn to the Home and Garden show at the Fairgrounds (which is like 5 minutes from the house) last weekend. I think I need to go to such things maybe once every 10 years or so. I had no idea how many different companies were in the business of water purification systems, or offering services of sealing, staining and beautifying concrete.

What a weekend

Saturday was to be an eventful day. John found an apartment in Berkeley (a one month sub-let) that sounded reasonable and has a job interview (helping parolees readjust to society) on Wednesday. So he got his car checked out as road-worthy and we got him ready to leave on Sunday morning. He felt bad about leaving before Mike and Lori had their baby but she wasn't due for another week and a half and the way things go he could wait for a month. He wanted to see them before he left though so Susan planned a spaghetti dinner and proposed that we drive out to Maricopa with the food. A couple of days before, though, Mike said they would come to our house, that they needed to get out of the house... Anyway, just after 6 on Saturday they pulled up in front of the house. Lori needed to visit the bathroom somewhat urgently. When she came back out we found out that her water had just broken. They left for the hospital, which is in Chandler. So we had a very good meal without them. We kept in touch on the phone and things moved slowly. Lori's parents headed in from Yuma and got a hotel room. We last spoke at around 11:00 pm.

John was to leave early in the morning but didn't want to if Kaelyn was about to be born, although he had a fairly precise plan to get to Talia's in Hollywood in time to go out for the evening with her and then leave on Monday morning for Berkeley. When we got up early the next morning, things were moving along but there was no point on heading down there quite yet. At this point they had been at the hospital for about 12 hours. There was some discussion about the baby having an irregular heartbeat which was making them avoid giving Lori pitocin to induce labor. Finally around 11:00 we got a call that things were progressing and went to the hospital. Thus began the waiting room visit that would not end. Mike would come out every hour or so but nothing would have changed. We were beginning to become concerned. John decided that he would NOT attempt the drive that day. I was supposed to be doing the walkthrough on the old house at 4:30. About 3 Susan convinced me that I should stay at the hospital. My attendance at the walkthrough was not mandatory and more of a courtesy. I wanted to do it though because I appreciated the seller of our new house doing it for us. I called Connie the Realtor and she said not to worry, that here daughter would do the walkthrough and I could meet them another time. About 4:45 John and I went to In and Out Burger to pick up some food. As I pulled in Connie called to tell me that the buyers were upset and making noise about delaying the closing. Hard to believe what priorities people have. Not too long after getting back and eating the food, Mike popped out and said that they had decided to do a C section. Close to 7:00, Lori's dad couldn't contain himself, went through the doors, and announced that Kaelyn had been born.

Happened yesterday, details to follow

Settled In

We have finally settled in. Susan had issues with her new job at Fowler ESD and managed to return to PVUSD in her old job, starting today. We went to Durant's for an anniversary dinner on Saturday (5 minutes from home) and took John to Pepe's Taco Villa (more like 12 minutes) on Sunday. Bought a new plasma TV that receives over the air HDTV broadcasts. We can now watch the HDTV Diamondbacks games on Channel 3 that Cox does not carry in HD. It took a little antenna that cost about $50 and hides behind the subwoofer. Got a new multi-zone receiver to drive all of the speakers in the house. We got rid of all the boxes, we can park both cars in the garage, the pool is once again usable, I have mowed the grass 3 times. Life is normal and we like it there.

Moved

We moved in on the 15th, have been there ever since! Finally got the garage straightened out so that we can park both cars in it as of yesterday. The study and dining room are still in disarrary, the rest is taking shape pretty nicely.

Looks real

Our (current) house was inspected on Wednesday, we got the buyer's list of things to be fixed today. They were relatively minor and we agreed to fix them. The buyer's earnest money is now non-refundable.

We had a garage sale today, took in about $600. Took the rest of the stuff to the Goodwill. Used the rental truck that we used to haul things to the Goodwill to pick up some new chairs at Pier 1 and outdoor umbrellas at Paddock's. We will be ready for the move next Saturday. We take possession on Friday morning. I am meeting the carpet cleaners at 9:00 am, then picking up a rental Tahoe at the airport. John and I will move a bunch of boxes that Susan does not want the movers handling.

Big Changes

We got an offer for the house yesterday, made a counter offer (minor tweaks) and they accepted this morning. Close of escrow is 8/23. We will have one (8/1) overlap house payment, which is no big deal at all. Not sure how they measure days on the market but if it is from when you list it to when you have a contract, the number is 27 days, not too shabby.

Susan accepted a job as Director of Special Education at Fowler Elementary School District, starting 7/17. She was with PVUSD for nearly 20 years.

Latest developments

The housing market is in the crapper and we have lowered our asking price. The house has been on the market for 19 days and we have had 16 visits to the house so we probably should not complain, but it is nervewracking.

We close on June 30 but lease back to the current owners for two weeks.

Garage sale on July 1

Take possession at 8:00 am on July 14th, carpets cleaned that morning.

Movers arrive between 8 and 9 on the 15th.

I am taking the 30th, 3rd, 14th and 17th off of work.

There is a SOLD sign at the new house.

Lots more pictures

Here are a bunch of pictures of the house.

We bought it

We made an offer on the first one in my previous post and it was accepted!

Here is a map of the place. We are 2 blocks from Encanto Park, 5 blocks from Central, 9 blocks from the light rail stations at Central/Thomas and Central/Encanto, 10 blocks from the Heard Museum.

Moving?

We have decided to sell our house and move to some place like the Willo or Roosevelt districts. Here are a couple of houses that we have looked at:

I was ready to buy this one

{This was a link to a house on West Almeria, the link is no longer valid.}

Susan didn't like the flooring in the first house and thought that the yard would be too much work. The second one turned out to have the businesses facing McDowell across the back alley (pawn shop, tattoo/piercing parlor, apartments).

We have gotten hooked up with a real estate agent and have started cleaning out closets.

Need to post more often if I expect anybody to read this stuff

Lori and Mike are having a baby and buying a new house in Maricopa. Plenty of details on Mike's blog (link to your right). I am starting to get used to the idea.

We leave for Vienna on Friday.

Korea is leading the US 7-1. I can't watch anymore.

PC blues, iPod stuff

First, the new computer wouldn't burn DVDs. As I mentioned below, I was concerned that it was getting too hot in the cabinet, so I moved it out sit behind the subwoofer in a corner of the room. No help. I called HP. This was the second time. The first time that I called, the nice man in Mumbai told me that I need to have Lightscribe disks. I subsequently found out that this was not true. A Lightscribe drive can burn to any disk, only needs Lightscribe disks to burn labels. Anyway, I had tried that before calling back. This time (it was Saturday morning) it took me twice to get somebody that I could understand and that had a decent connection. My intention was to have them ship me a new PC or a new drive and then ship them back the old one when the data was transferred. The guy asked me a bunch of questions and concluded that "the drive is working". I disagreed but he contended that since I could read DVDs it was working. My only option was be transferred to another nice subcontinental fellow who would charge me $60 for the privilege of speaking to him. IF that person agreed that it was an HP problem and not my fault, then they would waive the charge. Right about this time Mike came to the door to take me to Lowe's to buy some cabinets for the garage. I had no time for this nonsense so I chewed the guy out and hung up.

My options appeared to be:

1. Take the thing back to Best Buy with the same story
2. Roll the dice on this dubious sounding $60 venture
3. Give up. I hadn't needed a DVD burner and would have paid the same amount for a PC that didn't have one. It was just a matter of principle.

I spent the rest of the day and most of the next dealing with the garage. On Sunday night I noticed that the Squeezebox was not lit up, which happens when it can't connect to the server (which runs on the PC we are talking about). This will normally happen when it loses its wireless connection. But it stayed that way. I switched the plasma over to PC mode and there was nothing there. I checked the PC and it was off. I couldn't make it come on without pulling the power cord, reinserting it, and turning it on. It came up OK, the Squeezebox came on and I switched back over to watching TV. A little later I noticed this happened again. Some time the next morning I had determined that it couldn't stay up for more than about 5 minutes.

This was great. I had a demonstrably dead soldier on my hands that Best Buy would take back without question, which they did. They had it in stock and I now have a new PC, which can burn DVDs. What had I lost? Not much other than the work of setting the PC up the way I wanted it and a $1.99 episode of Dragnet that I downloaded from iTunes. I had my iTunes library on the Nano, right? All I had to do was load them back down to the new PC. It turns out that this is not so easy...

If you hook up an ipod to a different computer than the one you are synched with, iTunes will tell you that and ask you if you would like to wipe out the songs on the iPod and replace them with the ones from the (in my case empty) library on the new computer. If you answer no, it will bring up your iPod in iTunes but the songs are grayed and you very specifically can't drag them to your library. I guess they don't want people sharing songs. Here is what I did:

Enable disc access to the iPod. That mounts the ipod as a drive which you can then access like any other files. If you drill down you find the songs. Unfortunately they are in folder named F00, F01, etc. all with names like XHRW.mp3. So if you relied on the file names for anything, you had lost them. After some experimentation I found that if you enabled the option that allows iTunes to manage the filenames, etc. AND told it to copy a file into the iTunes hierarchy, that it would place it in a folder under artist and album AND construct a meaningful name. So the procedure was to copy each folder of songs off the iPod into a temporary folder, then tell iTunes to import all of the songs in that folder. When done, you have all of the songs from the iPod in your library, organized in a reasonable fashion. You can then tell iTunes to update your iPod, effectively putting back what it already has. You can also delete the folder of temporary files. Turning off disk access is good too because with it on you have to manually eject the ipod in the application before removing it from the dock.