Tag Archives: WGOM featured

At The Movies

Whatever Movie Day

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Haven't done one of these for awhile...

This recent conversation got me thinking about the current state of movie theaters. Definitely a lot of options out there, but each one seems to have its proponents and detractors. For example, the idea of picking out your own reserved seat on a seat map seems really weird to me (love the idea for baseball games though). I really don't get out to the movies much, mainly because I don't feel the need to see things right after they come out, nor do I like the idea shelling out $40-50 to go see a movie.

My favorite theater? The $2 one by our old house (and still not too far away). It's got those reclining seats, cheap popcorn, and I don't care if I inevitably pass out at whatever boring kids movie I'm at (looking at you Good Dinosaur).

What's everyone else's favorite viewing experience?

First Monday Book Day

FMMD – The Economist

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First Monday Book Magazine Day - The Economist

I’ve been a subscriber to The Economist for many years. I like that it has kind of an external view of things (a different perspective than what I read in the daily online broadsheets). I also watch BBC World News.

I usually get it in the mail on Saturday, and a goal has been to get through the prior week’s version before the next one shows up (a goal often missed). In fact, one time I got so backed up that I cancelled the subscription, but then caved and re-upped. I’m at parity this week.

It’s where I often learn new words, like Iftar (first meal after Ramadan), bête noire (a person or thing that one dislikes), liguica (Portuguese smoked sausage with garlic), poisson d'avril (April fool), civvy street (civilian life).

I generally share the world views of The Economist editors (open markets, free trade, cultural liberalism).

I read The Economist from back to front (the obituary, world market charts, exotic job postings, book reviews, articles about natural selection (in markets, economies, insect-world, shopping behavior, etc.), then country-specific blats, and if I can’t get to the first part (recent news) that’s OK as I’ve heard all of that stuff on the Internet or radio.

They’ve got some standing opinion columns I enjoy – Johnson writes about language (e.g. Oxford comma – “We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.” “We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.”) Schumpeter (business), Babbage (technology), Buttonwood (Finance), Lexington (US stuff), Charlemagne (EU stuff), Bagehot (British stuff).

As an analytics guy, I like their charts/graphs. Big Mac index is good. I find it interesting how they selectively pick which countries to include on their graphs. I’ve made several investment decisions based on their articles (SQM – huge win; NBG – win but right before Greece went kaput; and several disasters - genomics  startups comes to mind).

So, WGOM peeps, what books/magazines are you reading?

Friday Music Day

FMD: 2017 Summer Mix

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Alright, everyone, it's that time of year. Please put your candidates in SPOILER form below. Please list up to 3 choices (further choices will be ignored). The first choice is automatically in, and the other 2 choices will be put in a pool to be selected from to fill out the mix.

A kindly volunteer will corral the suggestions* and then we'll pound the mix out after that.

Also, drop yer lists below too.

*Since it's processed anonymously, it's possible that someone could get all 3 songs on the mix. I can't recall if that's happened before...

Parentgood

FKB: Lack of Progress

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We're about two months into the great potty training adventure and . . . there are about 10 stickers total on our progress chart. The first weekend, as expected, had one success and many accidents. The second weekend had several more successes, and we thought he would be ready to take it to school and keep working at it. Instead, he had an absolute meltdown that Monday at school, so we backed off a little bit. Then we went to Germany and his grandmother, who promised to keep at it, ... did not keep at it. Since then, we've had a few successes at school and a stray one at home. He's willing to patiently sit on the training potty and read books for extended periods of time, but nothing happens.

So we bribe successes with stickers, M&Ms, and the ultimate reward of ice cream if he ever fills up his chart. We also make a really big deal any time there is a success to support him. Any other ideas?

First Monday Book Day

Books, Books, Books

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Did you know that April 29 was Independent Bookstore Day?

As a kid and teen, I could spend ages at Waldenbooks or B. Dalton at the mall, and I was blown away the first time I visited the Hungry Mind in St. Paul. I don't make it to bookstores as often as I'd like these days, and I was thinking about where I have gone within the last year or so. The Red Balloon is the store I go to most often, particularly for events. They provide free gift wrapping year-round, which I appreciate every time I don't have to frantically wrap a birthday present at the last minute. I took the boys to an event at Wild Rumpus last spring and they loved it, though they were so caught up in looking at—and following—the various animals that inhabit the store that they hardly noticed the event.

It occurs to me that there are bookstores for adult books (as in: non-children's books) as well. Most of my books come from the library—I feel so lucky that Hennepin County has a fantastic library system and that I work just a short walk from Central Library. I did make it to Common Good Books for the first time last fall, and it was fun to see what they had on the shelves.

On my list to visit locally:
Ancestry Books
Birchbark Books
I'm not sure if Babycake's Book Stack has opened yet, but I'm curious about that one as well.

So . . . where do you get your books?

First Monday Book Day

Minnesota Books

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The Minnesota Book Awards took place last weekend, and I'm pleased to say that in 2016 I read two of the winning books. Hey, so what if one of them is a 32-page picture book with rather sparse text? It's also a delightfully transgressive tale of annelid love.

Laurie Hertzel summed up the awards better than I could--her article in the Star Tribune begins:

The finalists for the Minnesota Book Awards this year included a National Book Award winning-novelist, a New York Times bestselling writer, and a Newbery Medal-winning writer of children’s books. But this year’s Minnesota Book Awards bypassed these venerable writers and bestowed honors on a mostly new crop of authors.

The rest of the article--including a full list of winners--is here.

While the event is largely a celebration of Minnesota's literary culture, the speech that will stay with me the longest came from poet Sun Yung Shin, who spoke about the importance of listening to the voices of those who have long been marginalized. If I find her speech posted online (and I really hope it will be posted), I'll share a link here. In addition to being a poet, Shin also edited the anthology A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, which I read last summer and highly recommend.

Along with recognizing writers (and occasionally illustrators), there's also a special award for a Minnesota book artist. This year the award went to Steven McCarthy for his project Wee Go Library. The project involved "harvesting" books from Little Free Libraries and modifying them in various ways. (Not to worry--he left a replacement book for every book he took from a LFL.) You can read more and see some photos of the finished projects here.

So what have you been reading?

Parentgood

FKB: Father of the Freakin’ Year

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I've made some pretty boneheaded parenting moves over the last month.

First: I left the baby sleeping on the bed while I went downstairs to get breakfast for the other kids. She seemed completely out. Of course she woke up a short time later, and didn't make a sound until she fell onto the floor. I think she probably had a mild concussion, given the way she was acting for the first half hour or so after the fall. I had a thing scheduled at work and I made plans to take her to the doctor after I got back from it, but she was back to her old self by the time I got home. Still, it was kind of horrifying.

Second: It took me more than a month to really respond to Aquinas' complaints of bullying before I took action. And it seems like that action was much needed, and has gone a long way towards correcting the problem (thank goodness for the fact that they're first graders, and still open to being good kids instead of blaming the one who told on them). My fear of ruffling feathers was too strong and my kid paid the price.

Third: And yet, in communicating about this issue, I may have inadvertently sent some signals that didn't exactly endear us or my kid to the teacher. I'm not quite sure why we can accurately observe that one kid is faster or stronger than a different one, but we can't observe that one is smarter than another? (I didn't straight up say anything like that, but I fear some unintended implications were taken (look, the class isn't particularly rigorous, and there is some classic "things are going too slow for him" stuff going on (I don't say this to brag about Aquinas, only to observe that this class is moving really slow. Halfway through the year and he's still doing math work that he did at this point in Kindergarten.)(also, he's absolutely going to keep getting 90% on everything you teach, no matter the difficulty, let's not act like 100% is needed to move on...))).

Fourth: Here's the biggie... I forgot my kid. I usually pick up Aquinas from school. If I can't, I arrange for him to take the bus to daycare. Well, I had a hearing out of town and... I forgot. So he walked to my office, per usual, only I wasn't there and the door was locked. So he started walking to the daycare, which is about a mile out of town. On the way there someone - a stranger to him (and us, but not other relatives) - stopped and offered a ride. He happily accepted because, as he put it, "he was tired of walking." The stranger brought him right to daycare (and apparently has done the same for other kids), so in a way it's a "no harm, no foul" situation. Except that my kid accepted a ride from a stranger. So... big time foul.

Anyway, I'm working at this parent thing. This morning I built a huge pillow barrier around the baby as she slept on the bed, and still went up and checked on her just about every other minute, and caught her just as she was waking up 6 minutes into me leaving her there... And I remembered to have Aquinas take the bus when I was gone on Tuesday. And I bribed him, so he got 100% on his spelling test last week. Maybe by the time they leave home I'll feel like I'm on the right track.

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – The Comic Book Store

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So far, 2017 has turned out to be the year of the comic book for me.  Here's five series that I've been reading.


Monstress		 This is my favorite new discovery of the year. It's kind of steampunk, kind of high fantasy with definite Asian influences and a dash of Elder Gods thrown in for good measure. It's a little gory, and a lot convoluted, but I've really enjoyed it. I've read through issue #10, and I'm struggling over whether to wait for the collections, or buy the issues as they become available. The art is really really good. Although the story seems like something you've heard before (orphan girl struggling against forces much greater than herself), there are plenty of factions and intrigue to keep it interesting.

Mooncop		 It's sparse and a little funny and a little sad. A policeman on the moon drives through his patrol. The moon is emptying out, but still there are just enough people around to create small stories.

It's not a big book, but you will be pulled in.
Trees I didn't really know of Warren Ellis, but reading this and the next series on the list, he has a pretty incisive way of world-building.  Trees are alien spaceships landed without explanation that seemed benign until the end of volume 1.  Volume 2 gets a little bit more into how governments and other systems are reacting to a threat they don't understand.  Volume 1 was very good.  Volume 2 I hope is building toward something else that's as good.

Injection		 Another Warren Ellis book.  Another fantastic introduction to a new world.  In an attempt to spur more global innovation, The Injection occurred, and now it has taken on a mind of its own.  It sounds like its the singularity, but probably not in a good way.  I was really into the first few issues of this, and I have another 3 or 4 sitting on my bookshelf to read soon.  Ellis loves a dystopia that's not quite a dystopia yet, and he does it pretty well.

Paper Girls		 I have only read the first issue of this one, but it seems very cool.  Set in the 80's, a group of four newspaper delivery girls are defending their routes from Halloween pranksters when they find a ... time machine? maybe?  I don't really know yet, but when I get the chance I plan to keep reading.

So, what have you all been reading?  Comic book/graphic novel or otherwise?

Parentgood

Father Knows Best: Boredom

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Things have been rough lately, mostly because at least two people at any given time have been sick in this household--sometimes all four of us--since at least Thanksgiving. It's exhausting. But at least it's fairly simple to figure out what you need to do to get through each day. I think about when Henry was a baby. I was tired constantly; some days I could barely keep my eyes open. But while I was by no means confident in what I was doing, I knew pretty much every decision was around eating, pooping, or sleeping. Not that complex.

I'm not nearly as exhausted these days, which I won't complain about. But I'm more frequently being faced with probably the hardest part about being a parent so far, which is boredom. That sounds harsh, but I don't know how else to explain that agonizing feeling when Henry wants to read the same book 12 times in a row, or play the same game (in the wrong way, of course) for an hour straight (and I only barely tolerated it the first time because he was being adorable), or the same routine day after day after day because with his autism it takes tremendous effort to talk him into deviating from original plans. I've learned that sometimes the only way to get him to do something I want to do is to just do it without asking, which works okay if we're going to a new park, but usually not well when it's playing with a new toy.

I know that in six or seven years he might barely ever want to play with me at all. He certainly won't want to hang on my leg or beg me to pay attention to him. Nor will he say, "I love you Daddy," genuinely but with an ulterior motive of getting a cookie. So I want to enjoy every second. But too many nights I just can't wait until he goes to bed so I can do something interesting. And I feel horrible about it.

So, what advice say you guys? How do you keep focused and interested in toddler time night after night after night?