What's Nu?

Dear Blog:

A lot has happened this past month. I finally found a full-time job after almost 15 months of part-time and freelance. This is a solid company and has been in business for over 500 years, no kidding. I just want to put in 15 good ones and retire, no desire to reinvent the wheel or get ahead.

Before I started the new job, I took a trip to Gouverneur, NY to visit my friend and his wife on their sheep farm.

Cathedral of Hay

Each time I go I try a new farm job. Last time up there I was spreading manure, this time I was working the chain saw cutting logs. It’s a whole other world there and I have to get myself to the farm more often.

How to Shear Sheep


We lost our turtle Speedy this month.

I cried for the first time since my mother-in-law died. Speedy was brought home by my wife in 1993 at the approximate age of two. When he was palm-sized, my wife did most of the care but in recent years as he grew to Whopper proportions, he was all mine. He had a health crisis three Super Bowls ago and I pulled him through it with the vet’s advice of vitamins and extra clean water. In the last two months he seemed to have gained a lot of weight and in the last week the tank seemed cleaner. I’m thinking he had some kind of intestinal failure.

Speedy, I want to tell you about an English TV show called Red Dwarf. Lister, the last surviving member of the human race awakens from suspended animation on an interstellar ship, all alone. To help prevent him from going crazy, the ship’s computer creates a holographic companion for him, Rimmer. Even though Rimmer is an annoying prig, he does his job and eventually becomes mates with Lister.

Speedy, when I was underemployed twice in the last few years, you were there for me, giving me something to do. Now that my kids are young adults, I don’t get the satisfaction and fun of caring for anybody who totally depends on me, but you gave me that. There was this lady who watered the plants at Applause Books and she told me about her cat. I told her about my turtle and she reacted that of course having turtle was not like having a cat. I disagreed.

MINI-REVIEW: THE SAVAGES on DVD

I just saw THE SAVAGES. Let me start by saying that I've met Phil Bosco, who played the father, and I'm a fan of his since THREEPENNY OPERA back in the day. Laura Linney is as good as Meryl Streep without the fluttery eyes and accent. PS Hoffman was chaneling my oldest brother, permanently pissed but getting it done. I thought there would be more laughs based on the DVD cover. That little exercise LL does cracked me up, like Elaine from SEINFELD. She also jogs in the last scene and has jogged in other movies. This may be a clause in her contract.

SAVAGES portrayed one of the most common but least portrayed relationships in film, brother/sister, and for that alone deserves credit, in addition to taking on a topic that’s not box office, caring for an elderly parent.