Safe at home with our beautiful prize

"Since Celia's baby was born, she had a new sense of her mental solidity and wisdom. It seemed clear that where there was a baby, things were right enough, and that error, in general, was a mere lack of that central poising force."

- George Eliot, Middlemarch

So, the happy ending: We have a son! His name is Martin George. He was not quite as enormous as predicted. And he's wonderful.

In a little while, just a little while...

A couple years ago I bought a journal from Ex Libris Anonymous as a gift for a friend who was expecting. The good people at E.L.A. make journals out of discarded old books, leaving a few key pages of the original inside along with the blank paper. The book I bought was Mother and Baby Care in Pictures by Louise Zabriskie, RN, a sort of proto-What to Expect when You're Expecting published in 1935 (this edition was from the '40s). I spent some time browsing before I wrapped it up for my pregnant friend, and it was so terrific I found myself wishing they'd left more pages intact. Although this review of the book from 1935 suggests that I should be grateful to have missed pages 68-71. Imagine, giving people detailed information on what the labor and delivery process involves! That might fly with your "younger generation," but no "old family doctor" would stand for it. Parents-to-be should be either zonked on drugs or barred from the hospital entirely, the way God intended.

I had a feeling I'd find this book helpful someday, so I scanned a few illustrations for future reference. And now that my own pregnancy is nearly at an end -- and by that I mean the baby is arriving tomorrow -- let's take a moment to see how I've done.

Through mem'ry's haze

I lived in New Haven the summer after my junior year at Yale -- a baby step toward living on my own for real when college was through. I had long thought it might be fun to be a campus tour guide, but during the academic year the competition for the job was too intense, and the time commitment too burdensome, for me to bother. The summertime tour-guide gig was much more my speed, and so when I knew I would be in town I decided to try out for a position. To help me prepare, I got a copy of the tour-guide "script," and I was, quite honestly, appalled. This was 2002. The script I got was from about 1990. It hadn't been updated since it was first typed, except for a few notes in the margins. That explained why I was always hearing tour guides claim that, because Connecticut Hall had a computer cluster in the basement, it wasn't necessary for students to have their own computers. (This despite the fact that everyone I knew had his or her own computer.) A lot of other things had changed, on campus and in the world, in the last decade or so, and few of them were documented in the "official" guide. The "Women's Table," for example, hadn't even been installed when the script was written. No wonder guides who stopped there always told stories about the Vietnam War Memorial instead.

An alternative view of Central Park

This summer, the husband and I took my nephews to see Up (which was excellent, by the way. I highly recommend it). Five-year-old Seamus sent us this drawing as a thank-you note. (Click to enlarge.) It's helpfully captioned by his mother: "This is Central Park and you can go uptown or downtown and I am in a truck."


The truck is very detailed. Check out those tires -- and the taillights! I'm not sure what that brown stuff is (is it a dump truck?), or why Seamus is riding in the bed instead of the cab. But I haven't had a chance to ask.

Even more fascinating is his representation of Central Park, and (I guess) the roadways around it. To me it seems inspired by subway maps -- although it looks more like this alternative one than the official MTA version that Shea would have seen. It could also be influenced by those maps they have in the backseat of taxicabs to help you figure out where you are... I can't find one online, but New Yorkers will know what I mean.

Once, I picked up Seamus's older brother at school and took him somewhere in a cab. He was probably about five at the time -- maybe four. When we settled in, he was sitting with the map right in front of him, and he pointed to it and said, "Doesn't that look like a rhinoceros?" I can still picture him pointing, with his little mittened hand and his short arms making it difficult for me to tell what exactly he was pointing to. But I looked at the map, and specifically at the paths winding through Central Park, and: he's right! It does look like a rhinoceros! Now I look for the rhino map whenever I'm in a taxi. Kids are the best.

On the back of his magnificent picture, Seamus wrote a message:


You're very welcome!

Birthday Book, part four

We have come to the final page of my birthday book -- and, as you can see, Connor saved the best for last.


This makes me laugh each and every time I look at it. Everything about it is awesome -- the gills! The blunt top fin! The way it emerges from the left margin! The upward-slanting caption! But I think the yellow, different-sized eyes are my very favorite part.

Birthday Book, part three

On the third page, Connor broke from the animal theme to do a portrait of me. I don't care to inquire about the not-so-subtle echoes between this page and the PIG drawing on the previous page.


My hair is particularly short (and a little patchy) because this was created just about a year after I finished chemotherapy. "You're wearing one of those shirts with no sleeves that you wear," Connor told me when he presented the book to me. I really don't wear tank tops that often, but obviously my muscular upper arms made an impression. (Part one here. Part two here.)

Birthday Book, part two

My nephew was, and is, a lover of animals (an "animal expert," as he once put it), so the subject matter of my birthday book was pretty much a given. As you can see, he drew the animals with loving attention to detail. This one is helpfully labeled:


I love the concentric circles that form his crazy eyes. And of course his little blue hooves. And the nose! It's almost cubist. Part three coming soon...

Birthday Book, part one

For my birthday two years ago, my then-almost-five-year-old nephew made me a book. It's been on our coffee table ever since, but the colors are fading rapidly, because he drew it using those "Color Wonder" markers that only work on certain kinds of paper. Good for avoiding messes; bad for archival purposes. Since the book is too precious to lose, we decided to make a digital copy, which means I can now share the book with all of you. The husband scanned it and then I increased the contrast to bring out the many different colors, an important element of the artwork (notice how many times he switched markers!). That's also why the paper looks so blotchy and yellow, by the way.

So, this is the cover -- click to see it bigger.


The artist explained it all to me at the time. I believe that's an octopus up top -- note the suckers on his many legs. There's a very detailed "X-ray fish" in the center, and a jellyfish (with a sideways smile) in the bottom left corner. He also wrote his address here on the first page, so either that's the title or he's combined the title and copyright pages. (I scribbled out the street number to protect his privacy, but I can tell you at least one of the digits is backward.) As for the part in blue, my sister told me he asked her, "Mom, how do you spell 'to'?" And then, before she could answer, he said, "...Oh, 'two'!" And so he wrote "2MOLLIE," Prince-style.

Stay tuned for the next page... And in the meantime, you can visit the Mother Load blog for more of Connor's excellent work.

Ora pro nobis

The Church has five new saints today -- as of about 4:30 a.m. EST -- and one of them, Jeanne Jugan, is an old friend of the family. I wrote about how she and her Little Sisters of the Poor have been part of my family's life over at dotCommonweal. I also happened to be awake (thanks to an upset stomach) to see the canonization rite more or less as it happened. The sisters in Scranton were watching live, too!

If I can't take my coffee break...

When it comes to coffee, I am a Dunkin' Donuts devotee -- although most of the time, it's home-brewed. My parents started brewing DD coffee at home years ago, when I first developed my morning-coffee habit, and when I got the husband hooked I made him a DD fan too. Now he always makes the coffee at home, because he's much more serious about it than I am (there's a trick to measuring the beans I can't master, or honestly even understand). And it's always from Dunkin' Donuts.

Here's how addicted we are to Dunkin' Donuts coffee: we went on a three-day private retreat earlier this week, for which we rented rooms in a tiny lakefront cottage. We left behind many creature comforts -- which was sort of the point, it being a retreat and all -- but we knew they had a coffeemaker in the cottage, so we brought a bag of Dunkin' Donuts coffee grounds with us...because what were we going to do, just drink the coffee they had there? Please. There's asceticism and then there's mortification of the flesh.

So anyway, we like our Dunkin' Donuts. But lately we've been seeing all these ads for their flavored coffees, and they leave us scratching our heads. I mean, hazelnut I can understand, and even caramel, but who wants their coffee to taste like raspberries? Or blueberries? The other day I saw a print ad on the side of a bus shelter with this image: a cup of DD iced coffee covered with a square of red-and-white-checked fabric, like it was a jar of homemade jam. Which was a cute idea, except: who would find that appetizing? I don't want my coffee to be jammy, for heaven's sake. And if you do, you should probably switch to some other beverage.

Given all that personal history, I very much enjoyed Nathan Heller's piece at Slate this week taste-testing and ranking coffee from Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts. It validates my own preference (there's no contest, seriously), and I'm pleased to see such a frank and unapologetic acknowledgment that Starbucks coffee is really very bad. But the writeup is also very entertaining.

I loved you in Monsters Inc.

My latest celebrity-on-the-street sighting: John Goodman, on his way (presumably) to Studio 54. Which reminded me: Waiting for Godot got really enthusiastic reviews. And this in a season when Roundabout has been the not-for-profit everyone loves to hate. I guess that means I have to see it.

Have you been to the TKTS booth since it reopened in Duffy Square? It's cute and everything -- I like those stairs, and I like that you can see the boards while you're standing in line. But: why did they leave so little room between the ticket windows and the curb? It's still so cramped. Isn't that the sort of thing a redesign should fix? Not only is it really difficult to walk away from the window once you've bought your tickets; when you do manage to free yourself, you're standing in the path of people trying to cross the street. It's not ideal.

When I was last at the booth, buying not-discounted-enough tickets for God of Carnage (only 30% off, and $83 should be full price for orchestra seats at a 90-minute play, if you ask me), I got in a line that looked short but, of course, wasn't, because the people in front of me took forever to complete their transaction. I gathered that this was due to their knowing very little English. I could only hear the TKTS guy's side of the exchange, because he was speaking into a microphone. And it went like this: "Hairspray? Hairspray is closed. Do you mean Hair? [Tourists confer briefly, then say something in broken English, ending with "...Hairspray."] I'm tryna TELL you, Hairspray is CLOSED. DO YOU MEAN HAIR?!" And so it went, back and forth, until finally (I think) they ended up with tickets for Mary Poppins. Meanwhile, the people at the window next to us were asking, in equally uncertain English, "Do you have Wy-ked?" It's a regular United Nations down there in Duffy Square, I'm telling you.

Best. Party. Ever.

As you know if you read my many, increasingly stressed-out posts on the topic, my wedding, in January 2008, was the culmination of nearly a year of planning and fretting. Our goal was to have a liturgy that captured the significance of the sacrament, followed by a party that expressed the joy we felt. And since we both come from big Irish families, and since the reception would be attended by a number of kids (cousins, nieces and nephews), we tried to make that family spirit a part of everything we did. In my not-so-humble opinion, all that planning paid off, and the day was a big success. But you don't have to take my word for it: just ask my niece!


That inscription, in case you don't speak kindergarten, says "I went to my aunt's wedding" (or "I wat to my auts wading." Aren't you impressed with how she broke the word at the end of the line?). The best celebration she's attended in all her six-and-a-half years. I'm very proud of that distinction. I think the cake had a lot to do with it -- it was banana flavored, and it turned out to be a very big hit. "I don't even like bananas," Celia's brother Regan told me the next morning, "but I do like banana cake!" Imagine!

By the way, you might assume, as I did, that Celia's drawing depicts Mr. O'Reilly and me in our finery. But my brother told me he's pretty sure she actually drew herself and either Regan or her fellow then-five-year-old cousin. (Obviously.) Not to worry: the kids are central to our own memories of the day, and our professional wedding-reception photos include a lot of shots of the kids having fun on the dance floor, just as we'd hoped. They'd been looking forward to the big day for months, and they could not wait to break in their dancing shoes. Here's a shot of what the reception looked like within the first 10 minutes (click to enlarge; Celia is in the group on the left, wearing black tights):


Regan was right about the cake, by the way. It rocked. We didn't expect to have leftovers, but the staff at the hotel thoughtfully boxed up the top layer and sent it up to our suite, so we dutifully wrapped it and froze it as tradition dictates. A year later, on our first anniversary, we defrosted it and dug in, with some trepidation.


The icing tasted a bit too much like the Ziploc bag it had been in, but the cake itself was surprisingly fresh and banana-y. Here's to many more years of sweet memories, and family celebrations!

Grounds for impeachment

A few weeks back I crossed a major item off my to-do list: I backed up my computer, including my mp3s, on an external hard drive. My previous laptop died pretty suddenly, taking with it all sorts of files I don't need but was sorry to lose. And that was before I'd started using iTunes. So, as the present one reaches middle-age, I decided it was high time I prepared for the worst.

In the process I also expanded my music collection a bit, because registering the hard drive with the manufacturer scored me some free Emusic downloads. Sweet! The deal included one audiobook. Now, I've never been an audiobook person -- I like my books on paper. (Although I can imagine I'd adapt if I spent a lot of time in a car.) But this seemed like the perfect opportunity to check out something I've wanted to read but haven't been motivated enough to buy: Barack Obama's memoir Dreams from My Father. During the election I was so busy trying to tune out all the nonsense about how Obama was a foreign-born secret Muslim that I didn't really learn many actual, true details about his background. I had heard, though, that this book was good, and furthermore that he actually wrote it himself, so I was curious. It seemed like a good audiobook choice, because I wasn't expecting it to be such a literary masterpiece that it would be diminished in the transition from written to spoken word. And because, by the same token, I probably wouldn't mind that it was "abridged." And finally, and maybe most important, because it was read by Obama himself. With most politicians that would be a liability, but Obama -- what can I say? The man has a very nice voice.

One of the reasons I like books-on-paper is that you can find out when they were published, what edition you're reading, etc. Since I didn't have a copyright page, or even a box, to consult, I had no idea when exactly this book was written or when the audio version (read by Obama himself) was recorded. I just jumped in, and when I hit "play," the first track turned out to be a preface, for an updated edition, explaining the circumstances under which Obama wrote the book. In his signature syncopated rhythm, Obama explains that he was receiving a lot of media attention, because "I was the first African-American president..." He paused just long enough for me to do a double-take: When did he have time to record this?! -- before he finished the thought: "...of the Harvard Law Review." Oh.

As it turns out, he wrote the book just after graduating from law school, and recorded the audio version while he was a senator. It's obvious he didn't spend a lot of time preparing for his recording session: he reads with his usual bumpy rhythms, but often he begins a sentence without seeming to know where it will end. It's hard to explain in writing, but you probably know what I mean -- regular churchgoers will be familiar with this phenomenon as demonstrated by the lector-who-hasn't-prepared. (It's particularly noticeable when someone is struggling through a cold read of one of St. Paul's epic sentences.) Sometimes, as I listen, I get distracted thinking about how writing-for-reading differs from writing-for-speaking, and how inflection can be used to indicate punctuation when you're reading from a book. That's another problem with audiobooks, at least for me: my mind wanders and I forget I'm supposed to pay attention. With real books you can at least go back to the top of the page without too much hassle!

As I've noted, Mr. Obama is a particularly visible president, at least compared to his predecessor. He's always giving a speech about something -- and in these worrisome times, people are actually interested enough to listen. So we're all getting used to hearing his voice every time we turn on the television or radio. And it's a little surreal for me to hear that same voice in my ear when I'm cooking, or riding a bus down Riverside Drive... Except, instead of delivering a frank but confident assessment of the economy or foreign policy, he's telling me about his boyhood in Indonesia and his pet monkey.

I hadn't yet gotten to Obama's high-school years, and his friendship with "Ray," when the Boston Phoenix posted these audio snippets from Dreams from My Father (which I learned about via Wonkette). In context (as I learned when I finally listened long enough), the conversations between "Barry" and "Ray" lead to a sensitive, candid and truly edifying discussion of how experiences of racism and questions about racial identity figured into Obama's adolescence. But out of context, the Ray dialogue generates some hilarious soundbites. Which brings us to the Phoenix's brilliant idea to edit and post some clips. The framing device is kind of lame. The audio editing is sometimes sloppy (which makes the clips less funny). But, in the end, what you have is a downloadable mp3 of the 44th president saying, for example, "Sure you can have my number, baby." (Not to mention other hilarious, less family-friendly things.) And that's something I think we can all appreciate.

That's one solution

Last year I wondered what I should do with all the "special gifts" Catholic Relief Services kept sending me. Well, I haven't received one of those mailers since -- perhaps CRS finally took me off their list (the power of blogging your complaints?). Or maybe I just fooled them by moving to a new address (in which case, Shh, don't tell them!). But other people keep landing here at Restricted View by googling terms like "guardian angel coin," presumably in search of a solution to the very same problem. And now, at last, Time magazine offers a suggestion: You can give them to Barack!

You'll find a different photo on page 85 of the current issue of Time. It's the same hands holding the same objects, give or take a few, but the trinkets are spread out more, and several are identified with captions. The guardian angel coin is much easier to pick out in that shot -- it doesn't get an ID, but you and I know where it came from. And now I'll know what to do if I start getting them again. Just save them for the next time I meet a world leader in need of luck.

Did someone say 'mercurial'?

I probably shouldn't be all "Oh, the holidays are just so busy" this year, considering I am not at all busy compared to this time last year. I hardly remember Christmas 2007 as such. In my panicked prebridal state, December 25 was mostly just "three weeks till the wedding!" This year I am planning no big celebrations, preparing no seating charts... Just working and shopping and doing the usual end-of-year scramble. Which, I am sorry, has not left much energy for blogging.

Last week, on my way home from work, I took a crowded subway and ended up sitting right next to... Boyd Gaines! Can you imagine?! That's how busy I've been; I have an exciting stage-actor encounter and I can't even be bothered to tell you all about it. Mr. Gaines was, I presume, on his way to work in the hit musical PATTI LUPONE GYPSY. (If you must click that link, make sure the volume is turned way down, or you'll be sorry.) And, in case you were wondering, that Herbie mustache is real.

I haven't been neglecting the theatre, but I have been neglecting to tell you about it! In the past month I've seen both American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow, because I had the bright idea to do a review of both for the magazine. Well, American Buffalo announced its closing the day after I saw it -- so much for that. And then, yesterday, as I was finalizing my review, this whole Jeremy Piven situation screwed things up even more! Piven!!!

The audience I saw Speed-the-Plow with was the youngest, hippest Broadway audience I've seen in a long time. Everyone around me was buzzing about Entourage and Mad Men while we waited for the show to start. (Well, except for the dude next to me, who was preoccupied with taking up as much room as he could with his coat, umbrella, laptop bag, and unreasonably wide-spread legs, because of course I'm going to sit next to the guy who thinks his personal space is being compromised if someone occupies the seat next to him.) So that was encouraging: young people at the theatre! I don't know what all those folks thought of the play, but I can tell you that Mr. Piven was very good in it, so if that's what they were coming to see they certainly weren't disappointed.

I wasn't there the night Raul Esparza favored the audience with a song (and I'm really sort of thankful for that), but the scolding-of-latecomers described in the NYT's account squares with my experience. The night I saw S-t-P, a few people in the orchestra section (including Mr. Sprawly next to me -- of course) got up during the blackout before the third scene. So after the bows, Piven motioned for the audience to be quiet and addressed a woman in the third row: "You got up to go to the bathroom during the show. It's a 72-minute show. You couldn't wait?" Hee. I should have some sympathy, what with that one time I got sick and almost hurled during a show. Maybe it was an emergency. But this was the woman's response: "I could still hear you on the speakers!" "Oh, great," Piven said. "We'll give you a recording; you can listen to it on your way home."

Anyway. I'm sorry he's gone, but I bet Norbert Leo Butz will be just as good -- in fact, I kind of want to see it again. As for the "high levels of mercury," it is my understanding that mercury poisoning is actually a real and serious condition, so I probably shouldn't make fun of it, but... You have to admit, it does make for a pretty humorous press release. It certainly beats "exhaustion." The Playbill Online report read like a spoof article, especially the long quote from Piven's doctor to Variety. "We're not sure if this is from his diet, which is high in fish, or Chinese herbs, which he's been a fan of in the past, or a combination of both."

Of course, the best response came from Mamet and has been requoted everywhere, so why not here: "I talked to Jeremy on the phone and he told me that he discovered that he had a very high level of mercury. So my understanding is that he is leaving show business to pursue a career as a thermometer." Ladies and gentlemen, the master of his art, David Mamet FTW.

Too bad Mamet wasn't around to talk to the New York Times about the fortunes of the Roundabout's latest musical-theatre project. He could have given Todd Haimes a few pointers on how not to make things worse when you talk to the press. Did you see the article -- excuse me, the "Broadway memo" -- about how this new production of Pal Joey is, er, not going well? Normally I'd be like, "Oh, who cares," because I really don't. Leave the whisper campaigns to Michael Riedel. But I read the story and couldn't help wondering if Haimes was trying to sabotage the show. If the NYT is writing an article about how your show looks like it might suck, and they give you, the artistic director, a chance to comment, and you can't muster anything more than tepid enthusiasm, it might be better not to return their call. "The backstage work and the audience reaction — both positive — have been very different from the public experience in the Internet theater chat rooms and elsewhere, which has given this show bad word of mouth. I will say for myself, I feel like the production is going really well.” Oh, boy, I will just rush right out and get my tickets!

Even better was this part about the replacement of Christian Hoff:

Mr. Haimes declined to respond directly about whether he had been concerned about Mr. Hoff’s dancing.

“You know what, I don’t think any of this is anyone’s business,” Mr. Haimes said. “The entire world economy is falling apart, and many nonprofit theaters are facing grave financial issues. My feeling is Christian Hoff is an absolutely lovely man, and discussing this only hurts Christian.”

Boy, it's a good thing Mr. Haimes declined to respond directly! Wouldn't want to "hurt Christian"! Let's see, how could you have avoided giving the impression that you actually do want to "hurt Christian"? Maybe by giving a defensive nonresponse invoking "the entire world economy" and conspicuously failing to say anything even vaguely positive about the performer's abilities... Or maybe, rather than helping the paper create such profoundly negative buzz that it renders the next day's very negative review redundant -- maybe you could just say "No comment." Something to try next time.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope my nephew won't mind that I'm using his artwork -- I think it strikes the perfect festive note. Hope you have lots of blessings to be thankful for this year!

Sickness is normal to me as health is to you

Why no posts for so long? And why two posts today? The answer to the first question is the usual stuff -- busy schedule, real job, other outlets for my creative energy... plus a new and exciting factor called The Flu. Yes, I have the flu, or something very flulike, which has left me without much energy to turn on my computer, much less type coherent sentences. I'm into day five of feeling lousy, although I feel less lousy than I did yesterday, so there's hope. That's the answer to the second question, by the way: this is day five of flulike symptoms, and day three of absolutely no productivity, and I'm getting antsy. My body and my brain are not quite up to real work -- the sink remains full of dirty dishes; my coat has been draped over a chair since I took it off Wednesday night -- but at least I can blog for you all.

Wednesday I stayed home from work, because I couldn't get out of bed till 9 a.m., and that was only to stagger to the couch (which effort wore me out so much I had to take a nap). I had press tickets for a Broadway show that night, and I was really not in a going-out mood, but I figured I could get through it as long as I rested all day. So I set out for the show a little after 7, leaning heavily on the husband's arm. I'm not going to tell you what show it was, because I don't want to invalidate the review I expect to write, but suffice it to say I had a very good seat, close to the stage and on the aisle, and I was enjoying myself in spite of feeling thoroughly achy and ill. And then, late in the second act, the play turned suddenly and stomach-turningly violent. I was expecting this (I'd just read the script), but I guess I wasn't "prepared" for it, or maybe I was too prepared for it, because in the aftermath of the stage violence I found myself overcome with nausea. Those susceptible to carsickness will recognize the sensation: you start to get dizzy, there's a roaring in your ears... This is happening to me as I'm sitting completely still, in my seat, a few feet from the stage. So I'm making desperate mental calculations: should I make a run for it? In my advanced state of dizziness and weakness, the odds that I will make it all the way up the aisle without collapsing and/or vomiting are, I judge, about 50/50. The odds that I will make it out of the building, or even as far as the lobby, are lower still. And in the best of circumstances, leaving my seat to rush up the aisle seems awfully disruptive, especially since the action onstage has reached its climax. And I am right up front. Not only do I have an unrestricted view; the actors have a perfectly clear view of me. So I decide to put my head between my knees and hope for the best.

Guess what? The head-between-the-knees thing? It really works! But you have to stay that way for a while. And I had to pull off my sweater, too, because I had broken out in a cold sweat (fortunately I was wearing another shirt underneath). So there I was, head-between-knees, trying to keep one ear on the play, and then deciding against it because that just reminded me why I was sick in the first place. I had my hat at the ready in case I needed something to puke into. But I managed to regain my equilibrium by the time the play ended, about 10 minutes later. I still feel bad about my bad audience behavior -- I had a dream that night that one of the actors was yelling at me for distracting him -- but the husband assures me that I did not create a scene. (Even he thought I must have dropped something, for the first few minutes, anyway.) So I guess the only other person I might have bothered was the lady sitting behind me, and since she was distracting me throughout the play with her loud, jangly bracelets and inappropriate laughter, I don't feel so bad about that. Me puking into her lap would have been more distracting than my sitting quietly doubled-over, I tell you what.

I suppose it is a credit to the actors that I found their suffering so convincing. My visceral reaction probably has more to do with my illness than with their work, but still, they'll have to take it as a compliment, especially since I was unable to summon the strength to applaud when the play was finally over. I was thrilled to get outside into that sub-freezing air. The husband had to flag down a cab to take us home (a matter of blocks), and I was sticking my head out the window like a dog to avoid getting sick all over again. That's what I get for my show-must-go-on attitude, I guess.

Today I feel like I'm on the mend, and I'm desperate to go outside, because I'm starting to get a bit Fosca-like in my extended illness. But I think I set myself back Wednesday night, so it's probably safest for me to stick to nauseating television until I'm back to normal.

Limited time offer

New workplace, new cafeteria. Today there was a sign on the dessert table:

HOMEMADE COOKIES
.49
3 for $1.57

...I bought two.

Yes, I am still alive

I don't know what to make of the fact that traffic to this blog has been rather steady during the past week, even as actual blogging has been nonexistent. Does this mean I have reached a point where my blog is self-sustaining and can be released into the wild to fend for itself? Can it survive entirely on people searching for crossword-puzzle clues, pictures of turtles without shells, and the correct pronunciation of "Duquesne"?

Of course not. The American people -- the hockey moms and Joe Six-Packs and families sittin' around the kitchen table -- know I'm not in this for page views! At least a few of you have been coming here hoping for actual content, or maybe just wondering whether I am still alive, and I apologize for letting you down. The fact is, I just started a new job as an assistant editor at Commonweal magazine -- yes, that's right, your favorite independent, lay-published Catholic journal of opinion, religion, politics and culture! I'll be doing some writing and much editing of other, smarter people's writing, as well as a bit of blogging when I'm feeling feisty. (What do I think of the bishop of Scranton's leadership style? I'm so glad you asked.)

So, TWoPpers, that's why I'm not recapping anything this fall -- not even Private Practice, I'm sorry to say. It was a difficult decision, because recapping is fun. But the fact is, the fine art of picking apart a terrible television show is time-consuming, and I don't have that time anymore. And although I do miss my weekly date with Kate Walsh, Taye Diggs and Audra McDonald, it turns out I can't bring myself to watch the show they're on unless I'm getting paid. Oh well.

Obviously having an actual full-time job I really care about is cutting into my blogging time too. But never fear -- while it's possible this will be the last post I ever write, I'm pretty sure I'll continue posting here. At the very least, I will be shamelessly promoting my own writing when it is published elsewhere, even though much of it is likely to be available to Commonweal subscribers only. (Which means you should probably just subscribe. Try two free issues!) It's especially likely that I'll find time to blog a bit after the election is finally over, because obviously right now all of my internet time -- like yours, I assume -- is taken up with watching clips of Sarah Palin "answering" questions. If I had been blogging this past week, I probably would have just been posting one interview excerpt after another, because I have been unable to focus on much else. But it looks like we've finally seen all of the devastatingly hilarious footage, so now I can just post this highlights reel.



Also not to be missed: Slate diagrams Palin's sentences and anthologizes her poetry.

Check out all his majesty

The facades of Italian churches -- especially Tuscan churches -- hold all sorts of surprises. A close study of the inlaid marble images on the facade of the Cattedrale di San Martino, in Lucca, reveals the Medieval origins of one of the internet's most fearsome creatures...


Holy crap! It's Trogdor! I mean, TROG-DORRRRRR! I made sure to get my rather dashing husband in the photo so you would believe me that this totally awesome image is also totally legitimate. Now let's move in for a close-up.


This puts the "holy" in "Holy crap!" Does it not? No beefy arm, of course. And I don't see any consummate V's. So let's say it's an early prototype... But he was still TROGDOR! And that is just one more reason why Catholicism is awesome.