{"id":2951,"date":"2008-11-24T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2008-11-24T09:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=2951"},"modified":"2008-11-23T19:20:54","modified_gmt":"2008-11-23T23:20:54","slug":"what-it-is-112408","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-112408","title":{"rendered":"What It Is: 11\/24\/08"},"content":{"rendered":"

What I’m reading:<\/em> Finished that Ring Lardner book<\/a> last week, and have been un-booked for a few days.<\/p>\n

What I’m listening to:<\/em> Distant Hum<\/a>\"\", by Stella Schindler. I went to grad school with her c. 1995, but lost track of her after a few years. I haven’t looked up her up because, well, I forgot her last name. I kept coming up with “Kowalski,” and I knew that wasn’t it. When I met some old friends in Atlanta last week, one of them asked about her. One of them mentioned her last name, so I looked her up when I got home and discovered that she has a music career. I downloaded both of her records via Amazon’s MP3 store, and really dug this one. So, um, awesome.<\/p>\n

What I’m watching:<\/em> Home for the Holidays<\/a>, our annual Thanksgiving week tradition. And Rushmore<\/a>, which I really should own a copy of.<\/p>\n

What I’m drinking:<\/em> G&T with Plymouth & Q Tonic. Drank too often during the conference last week, so I’ll take it easy this week. Funny thing about Q Tonic: I bought a 4-pack of it in Whole Foods for $6.49. Subsequently, I’ve found it in a pair of higher-end liquor stores for $7.75 and $7.99. This may be the first product that’s ever been priced cheaply at Whole Foods.<\/p>\n

What Rufus is up to:<\/em> Eating a chunk of his food-scoop’s plastic handle, because the idiotic dog-walker left it upstairs with him after feeding him while I was away. He was also up to vomiting up pieces of plastic for the next few days.<\/p>\n

Where I’m going:<\/em> I may head into the city or Princeton to visit friends at some point.<\/p>\n

What I’m happy about:<\/em> No biz-travel till March! No office till December! And meeting up with old friends during my trip last week! All happiness-inducing!<\/p>\n

What I’m sad about:<\/em> The biz with Rufus. People goof on me for being a micro-managing control freak, but in things are where they are for a reason<\/em>. You move stuff out of place and things can go wrong. Leave something that smells like his food in reach of a dog who’s sitting around bored all day because his owner’s away, he’s gonna end up chewing on it. So I’m sad about the fact that I have to trust other human beings not to mess something up. But I’ve been sad about that for a few decades now. On the plus side, my associate editor is doing a great job of handling our Corporate Capabilities profiles for the big year-end issue.<\/p>\n

What I’m pondering:<\/em> Whether I’ll really get all of my to do list of house-stuff taken care of in the next few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What I’m reading: Finished that Ring Lardner book last week, and have been un-booked for a few days. What I’m listening to: Distant Hum, by Stella Schindler. I went to grad school with her c. 1995, but lost track of her after a few years. I haven’t looked up her up because, well, I forgot … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “What It Is: 11\/24\/08”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34,61],"tags":[440,457],"class_list":["post-2951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventures-in-gin","category-adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis","tag-ring-lardner","tag-stella-schindler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-LB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2918,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-111708","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":0},"title":"What It Is: 11\/17\/08","author":"Gil","date":"November 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: You Know Me, Al, by Ring Lardner. A pal gave this to me for my birthday a few years ago. I haven't read it, but I noticed that it's available on Manybooks for my Kindle, so I loaded it up for this trip. Oh, and I finished\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B001FMYPEY","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2230,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-81108","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":1},"title":"What It Is: 8\/11\/08","author":"Gil","date":"August 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Finished The Good Rat, by Jimmy Breslin, continuing Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, by Blake Bell, and getting back to reading Montaigne's essays. What I'm listening to: my iPod, endlessly shuffling among 13,000 or so songs. What I'm watching: Fourth season of The Wire,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Rufus and\/or Otis","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-rufus-and-or-otis"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B00134XEQE","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2034,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/what-it-is-552008","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":2},"title":"What It Is: 5\/5\/2008","author":"Gil","date":"May 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"What I'm reading: Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, on my Kindle via Manybooks.net. And Lush Life, Richard Price's new novel, via Amazon's Kindle store. What I'm listening to: Third, by Portishead. It sounds like them, but not like them in 1995. There's one song on the album that annoys\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0374299250","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1330,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/adventures-in-gin","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":3},"title":"Adventures in Gin","author":"Gil","date":"February 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"We stocked up for tonight's party at Bottle King yesterday and, as is my wont, I sidled over to the gin section to look over the wares. They had one of my favorite gins in stock: Martin Miller's. There were two of the six-sided bottles on the shelf, so I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Adventures in Gin"","block_context":{"text":"Adventures in Gin","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/adventures-in-gin"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1973,"url":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/stumped","url_meta":{"origin":2951,"position":4},"title":"Stumped","author":"Gil","date":"March 31, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It starts out with dog-blogging, and then it gets weird. Rufus & I are pretty schedule-oriented. He seems to like steady routines, to the point at which he hasn't figured out yet that weekends are the time to sleep in. I'm hoping he'll learn. 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Michael Carroll joins the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/compositeWEB.jpg?fit=1200%2C719&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/compositeWEB.jpg?fit=1200%2C719&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/compositeWEB.jpg?fit=1200%2C719&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/compositeWEB.jpg?fit=1200%2C719&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/compositeWEB.jpg?fit=1200%2C719&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2951"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2952,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2951\/revisions\/2952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}