Another haiku from Wendy

Morning Haiku II:

I want a donut
and a steaming cup of joe
Dunkable goodness

(c) 2007, Wendy J. Gennaula, all rights reserved

A haiku from Wendy

Morning Haiku:

Dad makes the coffe
According to the Bible
The book says He-brews

(c) Wendy J. Gennaula, all rights reserved.

A haiku from Thomas

Endless Possibilities, a haiku:


Possibilities
Good or bad they are endless
Use them all your life

(c) 2007, Thomas N. Gennaula, all rights reserved

In honor of Halloween

I've decided to change the colors on our blog in honor of Halloween and autumn. My latest craze has been del.icio.us. To quote from their about page:

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website -- the primary use of del.icio.us is to store your bookmarks online, which allows you to access the same bookmarks from any computer and add bookmarks from anywhere, too. On del.icio.us, you can use tags to organize and remember your bookmarks, which is a much more flexible system than folders.

They have a feature where you can display your favorite tags on your blog or webpage--hence the new item on our blog. Follow one of those links to see the things I've marked on the web.

Tell the MPAA

Tommy, the wise (my son) has pointed out that a Pinky and the Brain Movie should be rated NC-17.

Why? for animal nudity of course.

(Oh dear! What is this world coming to?)

The history of computer languages

For my fellow geeks:

http://www.levenez.com/lang/history.html

God bless St. Nick

Here's a link to Nick Coleman's piece on the Bishop Tutu dust up at St. Thomas. It is a pity that Ann Coulter got to speak there without a prior question, but Bishop Tutu gets uninvited and then re-invited.

My childhood memories of being Catholic involve "throw[ing] open the windows of the Church" to paraphrase Pope John XXIII. Unfortunately the zeitgeist now seems to be one of a bunker mentality where the question is "are you Catholic enough to be in the bunker." Throwing open to the windows did not mean welcoming someone who speaks hate as well as Ann Coulter. I hope the re-invitation perhaps reflects a willingness to open the bunker doors and see what is around. (Something that St. Nick points out has a tradition at the University of St. Thomas.)

There goes the neighborhood.

The grown-ups are moving in folks. It's in the NY Times, so it must be true.

Read the article.

Connecting across the world-wide-web

Today is just one of those days you step back and go "this is cool". I've downloaded a mp3 of a group in NYC that conducted by grad school classmate that conducted my final piece for my masters. I did an IM with another friend I went to college with who lives in Ann Arbor, MI. And then I connected with someone I knew from my hometown when he joined facebook.

People talk about how the Internet can create distance. I think that is too simplistic a statement. In my case it's helping me reconnect.

I think we're going to need a ladder

Last year we bought a new bed from IKEA. The bed frame is great, but the mattress died after one year. (It was cheap, you get what you pay for.)

But now we have the "bowling ball" mattress. (You drop a bowling ball on one side and a glass of water won't spill on the other side.) But, is it high! We need a ladder to get in. (Or a springboard.)

The Feast of Saint Bruce and the Liturgy of the Gin and Tonic

Bruce would laugh if he knew I referred to him as "Saint Bruce". Bruce was a friend of mine who died of cancer on September 12th, 2001.

He had a great sense of humor and he had married another good friend of mine. I had made so many jokes about them as a couple (he was like 10 years older than her) that I had to promise (at their wedding) that I would "support this marriage".

Bruce died very early on 9/12. He and many of his friends had all worked at the same company (including my manager). We all hopped in cars and drove over to his house to be with his wife. Bruce's favorite drink was gin and tonic. Sometime in the afternoon we made a big pitcher of G&T's and all had one last toast to Bruce.

And that is what I'm intending to do today. I'm filing this under "Life is good" because I am very thankful that I knew Bruce.

9/11/2007

Last night I was trying to remember what 9/11/01 was like. I have such scattered memories from that day. I remember walking in the St. Paul skyway from the YMCA to my office and seeing a crowd of people gather in-front of TVs that were mounted in a bank lobby. I slowed down and saw the first pictures of the hole in one of the towers.

I remember getting back to my desk and trying to call home. It seems to me that the phone lines where starting to go crazy and I couldn't get through at first. When I did get a hold of Wendy she told me she was seeing it on TV. I think while we were talking we heard of the second tower getting hit.

Somewhere in all this my manager, Diane, came by to tell me to go the hospital because Bruce was saying "goodbye." Since about January of 2001 my friend Bruce had been fighting lung cancer. He never smoked. For me 9/11 is a tangle of thoughts about loss both national and personal.

That day Bruce said goodbye to many of his friends and his daughter. He was moved from the hospital to some 30 miles away in the country so that he could die at home. I'm pretty sure Bruce was unaware of what had happened that morning. All his friends talked about the events out in the waiting room at the hospital and at his home before the ambulance got there with him.

There was a brief moment at Bruce's home when I was alone with him in the ambulance while things were being prepared for him in the house. I remember I was at such an utter loss for words. Bruce was fighting so hard just to have enough energy to survive the move into the house. I've always wished I could have said something, anything in that moment. I feel like I let him down by being so quiet.

I remember driving home from Bruce's and being aware that I was driving under a sky without jets. Our house is near the airport so the sounds of planes is just background noise to me. On that day it was quiet, and sunny, and blue skied, and so unlike the smoke that rose over New York. So unlike the pain Bruce was in.

Tolkien quote

"Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time."

from Mythopoeia by J. R. R. Tolkien

And the french word for today is "avis"

And today's word is "avis" (ah-vee), meaning "opinion."

A while back I found the website A French Word a Day. Back in 1994 Wendy and I visited France. Rather than finding the French rude we found them quite helpful if you made the attempt to speak the language. (Having said this I should point out that Wendy is from New York state and I lived there for 8 years.)

Although language was always my weakest subject in school, I had such fun trying to learn a bit of French while we were there. Someday perhaps I'll take a class in it here in town.

So this is "mon avis" for the day. (Hopefully that wasn't a major "faux pas")

A scene from "The House of Gennaula"

(At rise: Father enters dining room. Mother and son, Tommy, is seated at the dining room table. Tommy is playing his Gameboy DS and apparently not listening to the conversation. General small talk between Father and Mother until...)

Mother: ... and Tommy has been a very good boy.

Tommy: (Without looking up from his Gameboy DS) That's what SHE thinks.

(end of scene)

Walk on the Stone Arch Bridge

Wendy and I took a walk tonight on the Stone Arch Bridge. You can still see the wreckage of the 35W bridge. We stopped several times just to stare at it. Normally you could have heard the sound of the traffic from where we were.

But tonight you could just hear the water. The part of the channel that leads up to the lock and dams just above the Stone Arch Bridge was very green and foul smelling. They haven't been opening those locks so the water is very stagnant.

As we were looking for a place to park we actually got pretty close to what is left of the bridge on the north side. It is right next to a childcare center. Since it happened just after six we hope that most of the children were gone and didn't see anything. We think one of the girls that was in Tommy's class last year was on the bus that was on the bridge when it fell. Hope she's OK. We don't think she got hurt, but it must have been so scary.

Happy Sunday

We're having our week-before-labor-day Sunday steaks today. The weather is so great we're not even taking a chance that it will rain next weekend. Time to put those nice T-bones on the grill. Baked potatoes too. I'm marinating tomatoes right now as well to serve.

There is something so simple and elemental about a good steak dinner. We have no plans really for today.

Dolce vita!

Summer is almost over...

I hate August. I hate muggy weather. I'm ready for Fall to begin.

And September will soon be here!

bumper sticker

Saw this bumper sticker today while driving:

Frodo Failed. Bush has the ring.

Tonight we don't Fringe

Well the plan was to Fringe tonight--but both Wendy and I are dead beat! OY!!!

We've seen some really great theater. We also saw one show that was pretty bad. But in the interest of not creating "bad karma" I've decided that if I really don't like a show this year, I'm just going to not blog about it.

Wendy has about 4 reviews that she wants to get done tonight. I still have shows I want to write about. If les enfants cooperate, we might be able to do that.