Birthdays Crushed Anticipation Levels at Critical

I’m trying to maintain my composure and focus at work today but it’s a losing battle. My thoughts keep wandering to a certain little bundle of love holding court in the greater Los Angeles area whom I will be blessed enough to actually meet in person tomorrow. The First Blog Reader has met all of her grandparents except me and we’ll correct that deficiency in her postnatal education tomorrow. Before that though I’ve got several large projects staring me down at work, including planning the move to the new facility. I’m in charge of moving the entire company from one side of Worcester to the other next summer and to keep daily operations going un-interrupted – kind of a cool challenge.

The Magic Picture of my Contemplative Granddaughter

I’m finally through the crush of birthdays. It seems for the past month there was some friend or family member having a birthday exploding, of course, with the arrival of the First Blog Reader last week. My sister had a hard day at work yesterday on her own birthday but she was buoyed throughout the day with a picture of my granddaughter was sent to her as part of a happy birthday text. She works in a critical care ICU as a nurse and you can imagine the day can get stressful. Whenever anybody felt down yesterday my sister showed the above picture and spirits were lifted immediately. The power of the First Blog Reader manifests itself!!! Interspersed throughout all these days of birth were the serial celebrations of my own 60^th birthday. I know anybody who reads this blog regularly will have noted the numerous occasions I’ve been offered the opportunity to celebrate this birthday – almost dizzying when I come to think about it. The hopefully final one occurred yesterday with my excellent boss and the management staff presented me with a birthday cake, card, and appropriately snide remarks about my advancing senility.

Since tonight I will be decisively engaged with canine transportation, packing, and the long neglected house cleaning (I’m bringing my Favorite Panamanian back with me) I snuck away to see a movie last night. Love the Coopers should have been right in my wheelhouse. A schmaltzy comedy centered on a family at Christmas time, told from a dog’s perspective. Should have, but despite a truly luminary cast the movie doesn’t work. It tries to delve too deeply into too many sub-plots and that’s difficult; especially when it’s hard to root for the characters involved. I definitely did not love the Coopers, an extended family pursuing their Christmas Eve traditions with “dogged” determination in Pittsburgh.

There were some funny moments. The sub-plot with Allan Arkin (who can do anything!) and another with House’s 13 and a Soldier were fun with some snappy conversation. The obligatory senile aunt, the over-involved mother clinging to holidays past, awkward teenagers, a self-obsessed spinster aunt were all explored as well as Ed Helms playing Ed Helms. A film that tried to do too much and didn’t manage to do half enough, if that makes any sense. I’m the kind of guy this movie was aimed at. They missed terribly.

I also polished off my latest foray into New York City with Lawrence Block’s excellent Everybody Dies featuring my newest favorite literary hero – Matthew Scudder. This one was a little darker as several long running characters get killed off to send Scudder on his required search for justice. His incongruous friendship with a Hell’s Kitchen crime lord leads to a deadly confrontation when someone tries to muscle in on the friend’s business. When Scudder’s friends are caught in the crossfire the perpetrators are faced with the relentless pursuit of justice Scudder always aims for.

The final confrontation in an upstate farm was impossible to put down until I found out who survives. This was definitely a departure from prior novels where the fireworks and mayhem are more subdued but Block shows a real flare for intense action as well as his usual insight into Scudder’s investigations. This one was a real pleasure. Here are a few of Block’s words from Everybody Dies, as the philosopher knight Scudder contemplates the nocturnal environment while he helps his friend bury some bodies:

The wind blew a cloud in front of the moon, and we lost a little of our light. The cloud passed and the moonlight came back. It was a waxing moon, and in a couple days it would be full. Gibbous-that’s the word for the moon when there’s more than half of it showing. It’s Elaine’s word. Well, Webster’s, I suppose, but I learned it from her. And she was the one who told me that, if you fill a barrel in Iowa with seawater, the moon will cause tides in that water. And that blood’s chemical makeup is very close to that of seawater, and the moon’s tidal pull works on our veins. Just some thoughts I had, under a gibbous moon….