Football and family: Glass, Modern, and Mormon

I know I know. It's still basketball season, and Frank Martin is awesome, and we have the big ESPN Gameday tomorrow against KU and everyone is excited. Including me. But football owns my heart. My soul. My toenails. Everything. So it was monumental that an email from John Currie appeared in my inbox this morning, talking about the new and improved 2010 football schedule.

Here it is, in all its glory:

September 4 UCLA
September 11 Missouri State
September 18 Iowa State (Arrowhead Stadium)
September 25 Central Florida
October 2 BYE
October 7 Nebraska (ESPN)
October 16 at Kansas
October 23 at Baylor
October 30 Oklahoma State
November 6 Texas
November 13 at Missouri
November 20 at Colorado
November 27 at North Texas

I'm pretty pumped. Not only do we get a rematch in Kansas City vs. Iowa State, but we have a big Thursday ESPN showdown with Nebraska. And it's at home! What a great week that will be. It is particularly helpful because cousin Ben is getting married on the 9th, and I would have had to sulkily attend while pining for a day of pajamas, hot wings and Lee Corso. Now I can attend both happily. God is good.

***

“What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by, or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse.” - Salinger; January 1, 1919 - January 27, 2010

JD Salinger died this week. I, like the rest of the world, am impatiently waiting to see if a treasure trove of work exists in that mysterious house in New Hampshire, but I'm anxious about it. Is it disrespectful to want to see it? Is it greedy of me to want more? I've always been mystified by his work, particularly the Glass family. Franny and Zooey eluded and annoyed me. Nine Stories made me hurt more than anything I've ever read/seen/heard. This, plus the restructuring of Miramax makes me feel as if the world has outgrown my interests. Melodramatic? Most definitely. Though the New York Times provides some hope for a change.

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Family Programming

You should all be watching Modern Family. Eric Stonestreet (Cameron) is a K-State alum and was absolutely adorable in his Ellen interview. Ed O'Neill is hilarious and crotchety and so real to me. Ty Burrell is ridiculous. And I am so so happy that Sofia Vergara does interviews. I haven't met anyone who doesn't love it, so I defy you to find fault.


My other favorite "modern" TV family are the Henricksons. Steven and I just finished season 3 of Big Love and boy howdy, do they know how to spin a web of conflict. It is a serious inspiration to all those novel writers in search of plot. Big Love is masterful at creating roadblocks.

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My Best Friend's Wedding

I'm going to Omaha this weekend to be a good maid of honor. Hailey and I are pre-wedding dress shopping for the destination wedding of a lifetime. (Hers, not mine). I'm posting this now because I am trying to make an effort to take more pictures and post them on this blog. I know how you all have been waiting patiently for more examples of my photographic prowess, not to mention creative and witty anecdotes about life in steak city. This will be my first trip to Omaha with no class obligations and I am looking forward to kicking back with a good conscience. If I do not follow through with the pictures and post of our adventures, please send me a mean comment. Just not too mean. I bruise easily.

Deep Clean

I took advantage of my three day weekend (thanks MLK Jr.!) by getting the apartment clean clean clean before the Spring semester starts. I got all the Christmas presents put away, took down the tree, and got all of my important files organized instead of sitting in stacks on the floor. I'm hoping that this extra effort now will help with the inevitable stress that comes later when assignment deadlines start piling up. Currently I have all of my old music slowly moving it's way to my brand new 1TB external hard drive, and Keith Urban is entertaining all on today's episode of Ellen. A perfect afternoon.

However, there was one casualty one of the deep clean. In the past month, the DVD player has declared war on all of the silly TV on DVD marathons that I force it to supply for us. First it started screaming in this high pitched technical shriek. Then it refused to communicate with the TV screen. And then, as it's last stand - it refused to open. This would've been fine, as it was a $25 machine that was purchased when I was 19, but it refused to open with the second disc of Gilmore Girls season 3 held inside. Not cool. Not cool at all. Some of you know that I have the entire Gilmore Girls series on DVD, except for the last disc of season 5. Season 5 was the first season I received as a Christmas gift, and due to packaging error (or another person's faulty DVD player) the last disc never made it to the store. So I was not about to lose another disc if I could help it.

This is what Steven spent the second half of the K-State game doing.

You can see that the Gilmore Girls were rescued, and placed securely back in their package. I've had quite a lengthy discussion with our new Memorex about the importance of Lorelai and Rory in our home, and I think we're on the same page. We christened the new machine this weekend with a showing of 500 Days of Summer. Such a cute movie. Oh, and Betsy - there's choreographed singing and dancing. Check it out. Does anyone else think Joseph Gordon-Leavitt looks a little like Heath Ledger? (Or even, maybe, a teensy bit like Steven?) And the hipster outfits were perfection.



In other sad casualty news, two more businesses closed in Manhattan. Doe's Eat Place, the giant steakhouse right by our apartment will serve giant expensive beef no more. And the Candlewood location of Digital Shelf is gone after 5 years. If the other Digital Shelf closes I don't know what we'll do. Probably finally take advantage of our Netlix account. Which, by the way, is anyone else stoked about being able to stream your Netflix movies through the Wii? I have been whining for months about the lack of features on the Wii, and now this. It's perfect. We're watching Tootsie every night. But the Digital Shelf holds so many memories from the beginning of my relationship with Steven. During the semester that I was living back home in Garden, I took a trip to Manhattan and surprised Steven at work in Candlewood. We ordered chinese food and watched Joe vs. the Volcano and bantered with customers and had a great night. Whenever we wanted to rent cartoons or multiple seasons of ER, or embarrassing chick flicks, we would always go to the Candlewood location so that Steven's friends wouldn't mock him. Now, all our rental decisions will be subject to judgment. And if the Aggieville location doesn't have it, that means no one will. Stupid redbox, taking over the world.

How I Met Your Mother - Suits the Musical

2009

My favorite movies this year (in no particular order):

1. Inglourious Basterds
2. Up!
3. Julie & Julia
4. Away We Go
5. Funny People
6. The Informant!
7. Adventureland
8. Public Enemies
9. The Blind Side
10. The Proposal
11. He's Just Not That Into You

Favorite pastimes:

1. College football
2. Wii
3. Mahjong
4. ER
5. EW.com
6. How I Met Your Mother
7. Tennis
8. Monk marathons
9. Nebraska antique shopping
10. Searching for library jobs

Signs that I'm an old lady:

1. See list of pastimes
2. Use of the word pastime
3. Cardigan collection
4. 9:30 Friday night bedtime
5. Vacuum for Christmas

At the end/beginning of the last decade, I was in the St. Dominic's gym, dancing with Eric Pratt at the elite KH/AH dance party. I watched whatshisname be the first million dollar winner on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire right before I left for the dance. "I just wanted to call and let you know that I'm about to win a million dollars." So cheeky. I came home from the dance and vowed to do something, and ten years later I have no memory of what or how or if I accomplished it. However, here are some things that I accomplished in the past 10 years:

1. Graduated from High School
2. Graduated from K-State
3. Made it halfway through Graduate School
4. Qualified for Nationals in 2 events
5. Got a full-time job WITH benefits
6. Survived a semester of substitute teaching
7. Attended a Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting
8. Got a short story published (in a course manual, but still)
9. Traveled to New York City, Salt Lake City, Houston, Austin, Corpus Christie, Madison, Memphis, Nashville and Oxford.
10. Turned 21 and then some
11. Recorded a CD (with a group)
12. Bought a truck
13. Lived with 3, 2, 1 and 0 roommates
14. Learned to cook... a little bit
15. Escaped my teens without a tattoo, criminal record, baby or permanent body piercing (you can hardly tell my nose was pierced).

So tonight, as I ring in the next decade with a wild round of Bananagrams, I leave these and other things behind, hoping for a surprising new decade. A decade that brings the end to OU's football dominance, and the resurgence of the Snyder dynasty. A decade where the literary world is set on fire by Steven Miller and Susan Alsop. Or maybe just new Lorrie, Miranda, Antonya and Dan. A decade of wispy female folk music and indie picaresque films full of cutesy dialogue and thrift store wardrobes. The summer of George? The decade of Susan. Bring it on.

Lucy Wainwright Roche

Is anyone else out there listening to Lucy? I love her a little more each day.

New link - maybe it will work longer

Have you hugged your library today?

My family laughed at me this year when I mentioned that I was thankful for libraries because they do such good work.

But it's no joke. They really do! Here's an example:

At University of Nebraska-Omaha, the reference department was looking for a new answer to the Interlibrary loan problem. Students wanted materials faster, and couldn't wait the 48 hours to receive an article via email because their paper was due in 10. The library purchased Kindle's so that students could purchase the article and walk away with the technology right then and there. Unfortunately, Amazon's collection of peer-reviewed journal articles is not quite as extensive as their popular fiction, so the service flopped.

Rather than giving up entirely, the reference staff came up with a new idea. Academic libraries do not historically build popular fiction into their collection development each year, even though students from all subject areas ask for it. Rather than trying to build a collection from scratch, they used the Kindle's. This eliminated the space issues, and made sure the technology investment was put to good use. Before budgets became tight, UNO students could request a new book, and the library would purchase it for them on the Kindle and then rent out the machine for 2 weeks (with an option of one renew). Now that budgets are smaller, students can still rent the Kindle and purchase what they want, with the understanding that the library will delete the purchase when it is turned back in. Not only can students get the books they want at a fraction of the cost, but they also get to test drive the Kindle to see if they like it. The way I see it - Amazon owes UNO quite a bit of money. I'm sure if UNO wanted to expand their collection, they could even get Amazon to donate the product.

The next time you're at the library, thank a librarian for all that they do. Then ask them to give me a job. We're all in this together.