Today in 1809 Edgar Allan Poe was born. Its safe to say that my regular readers know my affection for one of America’s greatest writers. If not, you may read here. Happy 197th Edgar!

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This portion of the post may contain profanity…haven’t decided if my annoyance has worn off yet!

Despite the pretty picture, stamps have been a bane to me this week. Let me first assure you that 364.9 days out of the year I love old people. Tuesday was not one of them. What is the deal with the elderly and the post office. I got in line to mail one letter. Should be simple, no? I had a half hour before my meeting started…no problem. I should have known things would be bad when there were only two tellers and the line was exceedingly long. By the time I got into the main room I could see that one teller had decided that rather than help the line move along faster she would hide behind a wooden screen and play with her computer…I truly understand why people “go postal”! What made this worse was the fact that several old people had decided that they needed to get any number of odd denominations of stamps…WTF? Just buy stamps! I had no idea there were stamps in so many different price ranges. And I didn’t want to know. I thought maybe the first lady I saw doing this was a fluke. Oh hell no…two more people after her had to buy every strange, odd numbered stamp they could get their hands on. It would not have been so bad if they did not have to stand at the counter doing complex math equations to figure out how they could save a few measley fucking pennies! If I ever get to the point that I cannot just slap a stamp on a letter, possibly donating a few extra cents to the post office in the process, please put a bullet in me. I see they upheld assisted suicide in Oregon…how about assisted murder!?!?!?

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Not too bad! As I left the post office, letter unmailed, the post I was dictating in my head had many more venemous and creative uses of profanity and not a few unkind thoughts about getting old and senile. Thanks for letting me vent. Sorry. I now return you to your day.

The weekend started out well, our daughter was invited to a friend’s home to stay overnight so the missus and I settled down to watch a couple of flicks, Bourne Supremacy and Happy Accidents. Looks like the wait will be another year at least before Matt Damon reprises his role as Jason Bourne in the third installment of this series. I think the two Bourne movies are my favorite Damon movies. Happy Accidents is a wonderful, quirky independent film with Vincent D’Onofrio and Marisa Tomei. It was recommended to me a few years back by my brother-in-law and Mary and I love it. If you like D’Onofrio in Law and Order: Criminal Intent you’ll enjoy him in this…he has the same bizarre mannerisms just slightly more so. And how can you go wrong with Marisa Tomei! Happy Accidents is an off-beat romantic comedy in which D’Onofrio’s character is either slightly crazy…or from the future!

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Saturday found me cleaning up the house before the guys came over to watch the playoffs. It has obviously been awhile since I performed spring cleaning on the computer room…a place I believe I once referred to on the blog as “the place where the magic happens”. It looked more like Shelob’s Lair as I found cobwebs everywhere that had seemingly defied discovery on other occasions. I am surprised I was not carried off in the night by a mob of angry arachnids as an act of vegeance for my wanton destruction of their work.

The playoffs Saturday night were every bit as sickening as we all thought they would be. Denver was handed the game by an inept Patriots team and now they only have one more game to win to make it to the Super Bowl. Thankfully there was good food (Zarda BBQ and homemade brownies) and good company (James and Jeff) to dull the pain.

Sundays’ games were no much better. I jokingly predicted that the Bears/Panthers game would end up being the best game of the weekend and am sad to report that it actually was. I really hope next weekends’ games redeem what has been a sad playoff season so far.
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I have been wanting to redecorate the bathroom for some time (it is on the Uberlist!). Mary has a color in mind that she wants and I have been wanting to add a slight classic science fiction element in there somewhere so I was excited to win the following 2 small prints from Ebay on Saturday.

They are 1976 prints of two 1950’s Famous Funnies Buck Rogers comic covers drawn by Frank Frazetta. Being almost 30 years old the prints have an ever so slight amount of wear which is just the look I was going for because I don’t want something that looks like it is brand new off the press. I cannot wait to get these and get started on the bathroom…looks like I might get that done ahead of my target date on the Uberlist.

I also won a hardback copy of a John Carter of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs double volume featuring two stories from the series with a wrap-around dust jacket featuring John Carter, Dejah Thoris and a large lion-like creature(scroll down for image) by Frank Frazetta. The copy I won looks to be in amazing shape.
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Today is the day we honor the birth of one of the greatest leaders of the last century, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So much has already been said in his honor over the years that I will just add that he is indeed an inspiration…his spiritual and social convictions were quite admirable and the world is a better place for having him in it.

Mary and I are off of work today due to the holiday and Tori is out of school. I plan on doing some more work in the basement and then we will relax, read, play games and watch movies. I love these three day weekends, especially coming so soon after Christmas vacation. The next will be in February for President’s Day!!!

I hope you all have a marvelous Monday!

Last Friday evening Mary was out with the Tarts so Tori and I had a dad-daughter night. We ordered pizza and wings from Pizza Hut (love those Honey BBQ wings!) and watched The Island. Had forgotten how much I enjoyed this box office bomb.

After the movie, around 9 p.m., we started work on the 550 piece puzzle I had stumbled across earlier that day at Hobby Lobby featuring the above image, Eleanor of Aquitaine, a painting by one of my favorite artists Kinuko Y. Craft. I became a fan of Ms. Craft’s work when she began painting works for book covers for Patricia A. McKillip‘s elegant fantasy novels. I was so excited as Tori and I had recently completed a Frank Frazetta puzzle and I was itching to do another one with her. Kinuko Y. Craft’s works (examples can be seen here) are so full of detail and rich color that they are marvelous illustrations for puzzles. A company called Master Pieces Inc. has four of her works made into puzzles. I loaded up a bunch of music on Rhapsody and we set to work. Around 1:30 in the morning Mary arrived home at which time Tori and I figured we better stop working on the puzzle and get to bed! We had 3/4 of it completed and finished the rest Sunday afternoon. It looks wonderful and was a great deal of fun!

As I stated above, the image from Craft’s work is of Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of two illustrations she has done on this fascinating woman. Curious to a fault I decided to find out if said Eleanor was a real person and indeed she was! From Wikipedia: “she was raised in one of Europe’s most cultured courts, the birthplace of courtly love. She was highly educated for a woman of the time, and knew how to read, how to speak Latin, was well versed in music and literature, and enjoyed riding, hawking, and hunting. She became heiress to Aquitaine, the largest and richest of the provinces that would become modern France, when her brother, William Aigret, died as a baby.” She gained notoriety during her first marriage to Louis VII when she led some of her ladies-in-waiting and vassals to the Crusades. Her second marriage to Henry II resulted in the births of Richard the Lionheart and his successor, his brother John. Henry and Eleanor’s story is featured in the play The Lion in Winter by James Goldman that was made into a film starring Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn and later remade as a TV Movie starring Glenn Close and Patrick Stewart.

So there you go, a story about how Tori and I spent Friday night and an art and history lesson about a fascinating woman from history. What more could you want?

This is a day late due to problems uploading picture.

(Pat and I at a work Halloween party a few years ago…me as Sparrow-ish pirate, Pat as Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds)

Today is my dear friend Pat A.’s birthday. Pat is a therapist at my place of employ and for a number of years we had shoebox offices side by side on the first floor. I don’t exactly recall when Pat and I became fast friends but she does…she said it was when I recommended Dava Sobel’s amazing book, Galileo’s Daughter. She can tell the story better than I but evidently that moment insured her that I might actually have a modicum of taste and a friendship was born.

For years Pat and I spent time each week in one or the other’s office talking about movies, television, music and books. Pat was the only person I know besides Mary and I who lived and died by NYPD Blue. We all felt, and feel, its loss tremendously.

Pat is one of the coolest women I know, a fact shared by her grandsons with whom she often attends films, because she keeps up with the lastest pop culture in movies and television and has an incredible range of literary, film, and musical likes. She has never shied away from any film or book or music recommendation no matter how crazy it may seem and we have been able to introduce each other to wonderful books and movies over the years. Pat also shares my affinity for P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R. Tolkein, Sarah Brightman and Neil Gaiman which has made her a saint in my eyes.

Pat and I don’t see each other daily like we used to now that I’ve moved up a few floors (where the air is thinner!) but we do make a point of talking regularly and keeping up with what each other are reading, watching, etc.

Pat’s friendship has been a blessing and a gift from God and I am so thankful that I recommended that book as my life would be much less rich without Pat in it.

Have a happy, wonderful, magical, special birthday Pat.

(I know this is a spring image but I like it as a representation of the Spirit of the New Year whispering in the ear of our inner child encouraging us on to adventurous exploration of our world.)

Today is resolution day for so many people and I found this article on the Comcast home page. My favorites are:

“I resolve that by the end of 2006, people will want me for my body and not just my mind!”
–Tanya L.

Joan Rivers’ saying to her husband (way back when) that her resolution for the upcoming year was that she was going to have sex 365 times. He said, “That’s great, Joan! Put me down for two!'”

As we enter 2006 I had intended to write my own New Year’s wish for you but as I looked over Neil Gaiman’s 2005 wish (one I gave many people last year and one he recycled from himself from 2001) I realized that it continues to evoke so perfectly the hopes and wishes I have for myself and for all of you this year. With heartfelt sincerity:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

and although implied I would add:

Throughout the year make time to watch the sun rise, to breathe fresh air, to visit the trees, and to look at the stars…experience the simple pleasure of really noticing all the wonder around you.

Happy New Year Everyone!