I'm A Footnote

I meet my mum for lunch in a couple hours as she'll be swinging back through town on her way back to Chicago. I've got to find out Mel's new room in Meriter as she's being transferred as I speak. A customer called so I've gotta call him back. And, in general, I've gotta sort my schedule out. Now that the cruise has been pushed back to late October, I'll be able to go to the Marillion show in Chicago on the 2nd. It would also behoove me to snag a ticket for the MSO's performance of Beethoven's 9th. That's coming up quickly and there's nothing like a bit of the old Ludwig van!

I see that the Isthmus published my letter to the editor. Of course it was truncated thereby removing all of my sarcasm. It was a short letter yet they saw fit to include only a couple sentences whereas everyone else was given many more words. Go figure. One of the few times I actually engage in brevity and I'm reduced even further. My editor emailed me last week and asked if it was me that was quoted in the new Allan Moore book. I had no idea so I asked her for the quote and she sent it. Sure enough it had the words of your humble narrator. I now exist in the print world as a footnote! Allan Moore is a professor of music in some capacity at some university in the UK. He has written a slim volume about Jethro Tull's Aqualung album and he quoted from my essay on Tull. I think I can lay claim to the title of Madison's Authority on Jethro Tull. Not a particularly glamorous title, I grant you, but, hey, I'll take what I can get.

In a more botanical vein, our garden is for shite. It looks as if I'll be doing precious little canning this fall. Just a handful of tomatoes so far. AND NO HOT PEPPERS! Now that's enough to piss off the Pope. Instead I've decided to make some sauerkraut. I was out at Pete's parents' place yesterday to sort out Sharon's computer and borrowed a bucket from Bill for this purpose. A jaunt to the Coop for a case of cabbage will be next. Invite a couple people over for some beer and grating and in a couple months we'll be in like Flynn.

On a geeky note, the new version of Firefox is, as Darth Vader might say, impressive. I haven't had a chance to give its RSS capabilities a spin but must say that it handles plug-ins like a fucking charm. Inversely, Windows Media Player 10 is a mixed bag. While minimizing to its own toolbar hasn't (yet) caused a fault in explorer.exe like 9 did, it is blatantly annoying to have a normal playlists and a Now Playing playlist. Intuitively you'd add files to a normal playlist and let 'er rip. But they don't appear in the Now Playing list so you've really gotta fuck around to sort the track order and whatnot. So I've reverted back to Winamp. I'm tempted to upgrade to 5 but have this sneaking suspicion that its footprint is gonna be huge and that there will be all sorts of built-in features that I don't want doing things I don't want them to. And I don't know if my Shorten, Ape, and Flac plug-ins will work.

Weekend: Spent some time at Miss Rosie's yesterday. We ate, drank, and caught part of the debacle that was the Packer game. Got the gossip on The Pollack too. Apparently Mr. Z had to bail his ass out yet again lest the bank foreclose on his house. And he hasn't paid child support in a few months. I've no idea what he does with his geld.

Uncle Tupelo does a good version of "Orange Blossom Special".

What else? We had our neighborhood block shindig Saturday. We've got some amusing neighbors. Everyone was quite friendly. This Greg character is a hoot too with all his play-by-play of the Badger game. The Dulcinea came over but felt quite uncomfortable so she hid most of the time. So I joined her. We engaged in some naughtiness and eventually went back to her place to check out her new bed again. (I had been there in the afternoon to drop off a desk.) And we gave most of her new toys a go as well...