Play (Soft)Ball!

Today was supposed to be our first softball game of the season. Unfortunately the park district has not prepared the field yet, so the game will be rescheduled. During my first two summers here, our team finished close to last place. It seemed we could do nothing right. Balls were not caught, throws were off the mark, nobody could hit. Last season that all changed. We won the championship with a record of 18-6. Everything clicked and we got many lucky bounces. So for me at least I don't feel any pressure to win it all this season.

I started playing as a replacement my first summer here. It took a bit of getting used to since I had not played 12 inch. I'm not a very good fielder. Plus the difference in size required a different strategy at the plate. Swinging for the fences gets you no-where if you don't have the bat speed. Lazy hits over the infield or punching it through the gaps is the sure bet. And aggressive base running in a league of poor throws and catches goes a long way. My second season I became a regular and since the pitcher left the company, I took over. That first season as pitcher did not go that great. Lobbing a ball underhand so that it reaches a six foot elevation then drops just past the plate 40 feet away is not easy. But then you have to place the ball so it is more difficult for them to hit. High and inside, High and outside, Just plain low. I have gotten better as a pitcher and hopefully I can build on that this year. Though alot has to do with how well the team fields the balls they do hit.

Back in Chicago we played in a league with teams from employees of different architecture firms. We played 16 inch softball which is a soft ball with a surface somewhere between tanned leather and suede. The ball is bigger than the softball used everywhere else. It is almost too large for standard softball mitts so the ball is caught with your bare hands or sometime pop ups and fly are 'basket' caught. Elbows down and close together with your hands about shoulder height and facing you. Hitting it is similar to hitting a pillow so powerful swings do more damage than bat speed. Throwing is a bit awkward and if your fingers are not open enough on a ball thrown to you, you could end up with a jammed finger.

The environment on the field toggled between laid back friendly and overly competitive. Some of that had to do with the architectural community being so close. You probably know someone on the other team which could be good or bad. And my favorite part was that it was a reason to spend time outside with your favorite beverage. Beer was stocked up before the game and people would even bring their beverage out onto the field with them. Then most times teams would meet up afterward for more drinks, conversation, and sometimes pool. Good times.

Stock Photography - Too Funny!

The other day I was flipping through the local daily magazine that they pass out in the Metro and came across the following ad looking for medical testing participants:I looked at it, chuckled, and a wide smile grew on my face. I had seen a picture of those two before a couple years ago, but they were not smiling. I got home and consulted one of my Onion books and confirmed my suspicions with the following article:
I'm still chuckling. It is just too funny that the pharmaceutical company chose a photo from the same set of stock photographs.

Anne Marie

In the early eighties, Anne Marie found herself an intelligent and well read woman without a college degree and overweight. The persistance in her character would soon become evident. She began taking night classes and decided to take up jogging to help shed the pounds. After a decade of night classes and two different universities, she received her college degree.

Running started out as a way to loose weight, but soon became a major facet of her life. She joined a local running club (The Lincoln Park Pacers) and attended their monthly meetings. She also joined CARA (Chicago Area Runners Association) and began running in the races on their circuit. Soon she was running in about three races a month of varying distances (5k, 5 mile, 10k). She subscribed to Runners World and Runner magazines. She kept a daily log of her distances. Soon it became her identity. She was a runner, but it didn't stop there.

She decided she would attempt a marathon as the next challenge. Marathon running was not in vogue as has become today, especially for women. Back then it was almost only for people who were seriously into running. Even then you had to have some special drive to think about attempting it. Today it has become a major industry with prescribed training programs everywhere and groups that meet once or twice weekly to help you through your long runs. Back then you were pretty much on you own with a handful of possible training programs to follow. In 1985 she completed the Chicago Marathon in four and a half hours. She had caught the bug.

She ran Chicago again the next year, but there was also the Lake County Marathon in the spring. So she went out and ran that one. She has continued to run Chicago every year, but has completed many others over the years. She had worked herself up to six marathons a year. She even ran the Pikes Peak Marathon. A 7815 foot ascent and descent in addition to the 26.2 miles. In 2001, her finish at the Chicago Marathon marked her 50th marathon. She at one point attempted to qualify for the Boston Marathon, but her times were not getting any better. So she decided to take on another goal.

Ultra-marathons. Now she had completed ultra-marathons before, but they were ONLY 30 miles (a marathon is 26.2). She attempted and finished the Ulmsted 50 miler near Raleigh, NC in 2000. Then she completed it again the following two years. But then there was another goal. The 50 miler at Ulmsted is the shorter of the two races held. The big race is the 100 miler. The runners are given 30 hours to complete the course along the trails in the Ulmsted National Forest. In 2002 she attempted the 100 miler, but came up 10 miles short due to serious blisters and an unlikely finish before the time cut-off. 90 MILES completed in 27 hours. She decided to give it one last try the following year, but had to stop at 70 miles.

Since then she still runs a few marathons a year. She is up to 71 not counting the ultra-marathons more than once. But now she has a new beau and her interest in running is now shared with her interest in Harley Davidson motorcycles. She has a Superglide that her partner converted into a trike (three wheeler). She has logged 15,000 miles on it and takes it out for long rides on the weekends. Her fashion has changed from brightly colored running apparel to jeans and black Harley t-shirts. I mention this because I find it interesting how her outward appearance now shows the strength of character I have always seen in her. And it's just fun to say my mom is an ultramarathon biker chick.

Prague Oct 1991

This is my favorite picture from Prague. I was there in October 1991 travelling with five other students. This was soon after the wall had come down so the city was not ready for the influx of tourists. Accomodations were quite different than other cities. There were no hostels or hotels. We arrived late at night after the tourist office had closed. Running out of options we decided to take up the offer of one of the many people in the train station offering a place to stay. Shortly we found ourselves following our guide through dark deserted winding streets. It was one of the scariest moments of my life. I thought it was a set-up and at any moment a large mob would descend on us.

We ended up at a residence where the family gave up their beds for us to sleep and prepared us breakfast the next morning. Unfortunately it was the one city on our trip where nobody spoke the local language and almost no locals spoke English. So it was quite awkward with no means of communication. We thanked them as best we could. The price was very cheap, but it was still odd to sleep in their beds while they slept on the couch.

Prague was a beautiful city even at that time before they cleaned it up for the Westerners. It was kinda like a majestic city that now had a layer of grime from the communist years. Even with the grime it was quite a beautiful city. It is one of my favorites. I seem to have an odd affection for slavic and germanic locales even though it is a very small part of my heritage. Maybe it's because I grew up in a German neighborhood.

I like this photo because of the perspective, the old trolley and the lights of the old car. It is a bit out of focus because of a hand held slow shutter speed at twilight.

Hockey

Unfortunately, the hockey season came to a close here in Montreal a couple nights ago. Although I probably saw all of 40 minutes during the whole season, I did notice quite a difference in my understanding of the sport. As a side note, don't think I was giving hockey the short stick with only 40 minutes. My time alotted to watching any sports has been cut down severely.

During the previous season when the NHL was on strike, I played ice hockey for the first time. I had played floor hockey as a kid and know how to ice skate better than your average person south of the border. But I was (and still am) just starting out when it comes to stick handling. And I can't skate backwards. Regardless, I came to understand the rules and strategy of the game.

So when I watched the overtime of the second playoff game, I was really amazed by the skill of the players. I could really understand the difficulty to do what they do. Plus understanding what is going on goes a long long way. Blue line, icing, back checking, line changes. They were all vague concepts before, but now I follow what they are and have experienced those things first hand. Not to mention that the overtime was a really exciting.

That said, there is one thing that still surprises me about the sport. The randomness of the movement of the puck and really how even though these guys are experienced professionals, it still seems like much of the time they are just slapping at it. They have infinitely more control over the puck than I have, but in most other sports I follow there seems to be much more control of the object in play.

So I'm making progress on the hockey front. At this rate, I should have a good handle on it when our daughters get older if they find it interesting and are possibly even interested in playing.

Movie Literate

There is a list of movies outlined by Jim Emerson on Roger Ebert's website that he considers a sampling needed for someone to be movie literate.

...they [are] the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They're the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat "movie-literate."

AJ and Patrick have both shared which movies they have seen. I'm into pop culture so I thought I'd share my list also. The ones with the astericks (*) are ones I have seen. I was going to include commentary, but this is going to be long already.

* 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Stanley Kubrick
The 400 Blows (1959) Francois Truffaut
8 1/2 (1963) Federico Fellini
Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) Werner Herzog
* Alien (1979) Ridley Scott
All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
* Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen
Apocalypse Now (1979) Francis Ford Coppola
* Bambi (1942) Disney
The Battleship Potemkin (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) William Wyler
The Big Red One (1980) Samuel Fuller
The Bicycle Thief (1949) Vittorio De Sica
The Big Sleep (1946) Howard Hawks
* Blade Runner (1982) Ridley Scott
Blowup (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
* Blue Velvet (1986) David Lynch
Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Arthur Penn
Breathless (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
Bringing Up Baby (1938) Howard Hawks
* Carrie (1975) Brian DePalma
* Casablanca (1942) Michael Curtiz
Un Chien Andalou (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
Children of Paradise / Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) Marcel Carne
* Chinatown (1974) Roman Polanski
* Citizen Kane (1941) Orson Welles
* A Clockwork Orange (1971) Stanley Kubrick
* The Crying Game (1992) Neil Jordan
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise
Days of Heaven (1978) Terence Malick
Dirty Harry (1971) Don Siegel
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) Luis Bunuel
* Do the Right Thing (1989) Spike Lee
La Dolce Vita (1960) Federico Fellini
Double Indemnity (1944) Billy Wilder
* Dr. Strangelove (1964) Stanley Kubrick
* Duck Soup (1933) Leo McCarey
* E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) Steven Spielberg
Easy Rider (1969) Dennis Hopper
* The Empire Strikes Back (1980) Irvin Kershner
* The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin
* Fargo (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen
* Fight Club (1999) David Fincher
Frankenstein (1931) James Whale
The General (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
* The Godfather, The Godfather, Part II (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
* Gone With the Wind (1939) Victor Fleming
* GoodFellas (1990) Martin Scorsese
* The Graduate (1967) Mike Nichols
* Halloween (1978) John Carpenter
* A Hard Day's Night (1964) Richard Lester
Intolerance (1916) D.W. Griffith
It's a Gift (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
* It's a Wonderful Life (1946) Frank Capra
* Jaws (1975) Steven Spielberg
The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges
Lawrence of Arabia (1962) David Lean
M (1931) Fritz Lang
Mad Max 2 / The Road Warrior (1981) George Miller
The Maltese Falcon (1941) John Huston
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) John Frankenheimer
Metropolis (1926) Fritz Lang
Modern Times (1936) Charles Chaplin
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam
Nashville (1975) Robert Altman
The Night of the Hunter (1955) Charles Laughton
Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
* North by Northwest (1959) Alfred Hitchcock
Nosferatu (1922) F.W. Murnau
On the Waterfront (1954) Elia Kazan
Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) Sergio Leone
Out of the Past (1947) Jacques Tournier
Persona (1966) Ingmar Bergman
Pink Flamingos (1972) John Waters
* Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
* Pulp Fiction (1994) Quentin Tarantino
Rashomon (1950) Akira Kurosawa
* Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) Nicholas Ray
Red River (1948) Howard Hawks
Repulsion (1965) Roman Polanski
The Rules of the Game (1939) Jean Renoir
Scarface (1932) Howard Hawks
The Scarlet Empress (1934) Josef von Sternberg
* Schindler's List (1993) Steven Spielberg
The Searchers (1956) John Ford
The Seven Samurai (1954) Akira Kurosawa
Singin' in the Rain (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly
Some Like It Hot (1959) Billy Wilder
A Star Is Born (1954) George Cukor
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) Elia Kazan
Sunset Boulevard (1950) Billy Wilder
Taxi Driver (1976) Martin Scorsese
The Third Man (1949) Carol Reed
Tokyo Story (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
Touch of Evil (1958) Orson Welles
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) John Huston
Trouble in Paradise (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
* Vertigo (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
* West Side Story (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah
* The Wizard of Oz (1939) Victor Fleming

Wow! Only 37. That's pretty sad. I thought I'd do much better. Well in order to try to correct that. Here are the ten movies I'll try my best to see. Taxi Driver, A Streetcar Named Desire, Singin in the Rain, The Seven Samurai, On the Waterfront, The Manchurian Candidate, The Maltese Falcon, La Dolce Vita, Lawrence of Arabia, and Rebel Without a Cause. Pretty much all movies from the fifties. So how do you score?

Audrey

Audrey was born in south central Illinois soon after the turn of the century. She was a flower child born decades too soon. A liberal open-minded free spirit born from liberal parents in an highly conservative part of the country during a highly conservative time by today's standards. "She treated everyone equally and held no prejudice" wrote my sister. "She taught her family to live life without bias, to be optimistic, and to never stop learning." She was a country girl who dreamed of life in the big city if not the world. In her teens she ran off with a friend to the nearest big city, St Louis. She was married at an early age, but it did not last. She left him and divorced at a time when divorce was uncommon.

She then moved to Chicago where she met and married an Filipino man. Interracial marriages were also uncommon at that time. She continued to dream. She studied the city of Paris and people who had travelled there would be convinced she had been there due to her knowledge of the place. She dreamed of drinking cafe au lait on the Champs Elysee. She would have six children with this husband, but would also leave and divorce him.

Her third husband was a Japanese performer who had recently lost his wife and his career. "She was his morning glory who gave new meaning to his life" my father was quoted as saying. She would have another child and in her senior years she lived downstairs from us. Her imaginative nature lended to hours of creative and imaginative play. She would hold meetings of 'The Endangered Species Society" where we would study animals on the brink of extinction. The meetings were very formal with role being called. We played games like the Grand Prize Game. Just like on the Bozo Circus filmed blocks from our house. During the summer she would sit on the front porch making us clover flower jewelry as we ran to collect more.

As my cousin Cathy said of her "she was way ahead of her time. She got the most out of life, and did exactly what she wanted."

Many people called her Audrey, but I called her Grandma. Years after her passing, I was fortunate enough to live in Paris. I got to know the city quite well. I wish I could have shared it with her.

3 Women

Over the next three Sundays, I will post articles about three women in my life. These three are/were women of great character who have/had great influence over who I am today. I feel this should be acknowledged.

Ste Chapelle - Cracked

Probably the most professional photo I've taken. Long exposure with a tripod. Taken in Paris, March 1995.

Here's the story behind the crack. I put it in one of those frames with a glass front and only clips holding to the backing. Well somehow a corner got wet and glued itself to the back of the glass. Then I tried soaking the whole thing in water hoping it would detach. Then I could hang it to dry like photos in the old days. No luck. Now most of the photo is glued to the back of the glass and there are air bubbles in places. Then at some point while trying to tranport it, it was dropped on a corner. So that's how the crack came about. Unfortunately, it is the only copy that I can locate at the moment, so I scanned it with the crack. I figure it gives it a bit of character.

Friday Night Road Rage

The CAA monthly journal Touring ran an article a while back talking about a study on road rage. Apparently local law enforcement set up a hotline for people to call in when they witnessed road rage. The most notable discovery from the hotline was that HALF of the phone calls were received on Friday night. I thought it was pretty interesting, but didn't think too much about it afterward.

Well over the past few months I have started to notice a trend that matches that study. People really do go crazy on Friday nights. There's a lot more tailgating going on. People gun it when the light turns green. They give it a bit more gas than the rest of the week in order to advance through traffic. Everyone is just a little more aggressive. It has been a bit bizarre to notice this trend.

So why? Well the obvious reason is that every want to start their weekend as soon as possible. It's not people from the 'cinq a sept' (happy hour) because I'm usually on the road as that is starting up. So someone would have to do a few shots immediately after work and head straight home for that to be a factor.

But whatever the reasons, it is really a bad way to start the weekend for the rest of us. I have been avoiding as much as possible to get worked up in traffic. But Friday nights are tough. My adrenaline is usually flowing pretty good by the time I get home, but not for good reasons. Maybe we should spend the extra hour and take public transportation on Fridays.

By contrast, back in Chicago I would get worked up on almost every commute. Maybe it was just my perception and maybe I took everything a bit too personally, but I'd be pretty stressed out when I arrived at work or home. There was no chance to take a breather and the nerves were getting quite frazzled. It was only about a year that I was required to drive to work, but it was enough to temporarily give me a distaste for one of my favorite activities. Driving. I was very happy when I was able to take the el to work again.

So what is your preferred time for road rage? Monday morning going back to work? Wednesday night due to the mid-week blues? Or Sunday morning just for the fun of it?

Connoisseur

There are some things that I just can't get a feel for. One of them is humidity and the other is the finer points of taste. On the humidity front, I can say it's humid when it's foggy and dry in the desert, but otherwise I can't tell between a dry heat and a humid heat. For me, it's just hot. I say that because people from either Chicago, Montreal, or Paris keep suggesting that it's better or worse in one place or the other because it is more or less humid. I can't tell a difference. For me 32 degrees Fahrenheit is 0 degrees Celcius, that's it.

So when I talk about a lack of sense of taste, I am specifically referring to alcoholic beverages. In my adult life, I have made attempts to become well-versed in wine and scotch. With wine, I bought Wine for Dummies and read it cover to cover a couple times. My goal was to get to know Bordeaux wines in particular. So we would buy a few bottles at a time and drink one over the course of a couple days. It may have been our technique, but for me they all tasted good, but knowing whether it was great eluded me. When wine was served at other places, others would try it and say this is a very good wine, but for me it wasn't any better than another. Of course, I know the differences between the different type such as Bordeaux, Burgundy, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon or Cotes du Rhone. But between wines within each category the differences (other than glaring ones) escape me.

Regarding scotch, a friend of mine was a bartender at a bar known for their scotch collection. I would meet up with other friends the night he worked and he made attempts to introduce me to scotch. I bought Mike Jackson's book on scotch, again, read it cover to cover a couple times and even analyzed the summaries in the book for each of the scotches offered by the pub. This one is more citrusy. That one is more salty and smokey. Another is more smooth. Again it eludes me. For me it's hard to see past the sting of the initial sip. It's almost like I was looking for scotch without the sting. Again, some of the more pronounced scotches like Talisker, I was able to see what they were talking about, but the others tasted the same.

That said, there are a couple other beverages that I do have a better feel for. Coffee and beer. Though not on the level of connoisseur. I can taste the difference between the different coffees offered at Starbuts or Second Cup as far as different strength and acidity. It's probably because I have so much experience drinking it. It's not like I have been drinking two or three glasses a day of scotch for the last twenty years. For beer, I love all the different kinds and microbrews up here. We used to smuggle home bottles of Fin du Monde and Maudite before it was offered in Chicago. Sometimes there is not much difference, like between Boreale Rousse and Belle Guelle Rousse. But for the most part the variety of microbrews is impressive. I am making my way through those offered by the local grocery store. Hey, maybe I could be an amateur beer connoisseur!

The French Resolution

of 2006. I have now been here almost three years. Although my conversational French has progressed enough over that time that I keep getting complimented on my language skills, I still have a ways to go to become fluent. I still find myself missing parts of conversations and programs on television. Sometimes when I'm speaking, I can be quite fluent, but many times I'm still searching for words or trying to use the francosized version of a word in English. This said, I have the impression that I have plateaued and made little progress in the past year or year and a half.

As far as the written word, it is quite similar though worse. I can get through many texts quite well, but I'm better off keeping a dictionary handy to be sure I have the correct understanding. My writing needs the most work. I have done very little and most of my understanding of the language has come through listening and speaking. Grammer and how phrases are turned are the biggest obstacles. I have studied much of the basic tenses, but those like the future and the more complex tenses are unknown to me.

In short, it's all about practice. Maybe a bit too often, we opt for television in English. Many times I'll pass on text written in French because I feel I am short on time. And lastly, I'll do the same for writing in French. If I am sending an email and I know the person on the other end will understand English, I will likely write in English. By no means is it out of disrespect since when speaking to them I always try to keep it in French, but my writing is lacking behind. Lately I have been reading more and more blogs in French, but my responses have stayed in English.

So this is my resolution. I will write at least one, hopefully two, posts a month in French. My idea is that the best subject to cover would be my progression in learning French. I have written an overview before, but this should go into more detail. I can't say they will begin soon because I just thought of this. Plus they will take probably more than twice as long to write even a short post. But I figure since I am taking the time to write in this blog, I could at least use some of that time to make some progress. Lastly, I will probably not include an English translation for a couple reasons. One it will take more time. And second that my intention is to write in French, not to write in English, then translate to French. Just as when I speak in French, I am thinking in French. Translating back will take more time which is in short supply as it is.

So there you have it. Hopefully I can keep to it. As far as those resolutions earlier this year, each of them started off pretty good, but have now regressed. Though I haven't given up on them.