Jim Rittenhouse's semidaily journal of news, commentary and reports
Susan and Mere are doing a rummage sale today (Friday) at at our house: 577 Hitchcock, in Lisle, IL. (Roughly IL 53 and 55th/Maple Avenue.) I will either be inside hiding from the heat or outside in my wheelchair; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and selling more of the boxes of books I [...]
My daughter Meredith is a competitive roller skater, and her skating club is doing a big rummage sale Saturday and Sunday at the Lombard Roller Rink in Lombard from 9-3. I will not be there; Susan and Meredith are running the table, and I had an operation earlier this week and in no shape to [...]
See it because you are curious about what it will look like on the big screen. See the original TV show for the story; it’s cut to ribbons in the movie because of time limits, and a lot has been reworked – think of the later HARRY POTTER books versus the movies for the level [...]
At the present, my LEFT foot surgery has been rescheduled for the 5th of July; hopefully nothing else will blow that out of the water. My RIGHT foot – well, went to see a podiatrist on that, and he took new X-rays of my foot that show how crippled up it looks (which never fails [...]
I’ve been asked to speak at a Wright State University forum; their Honors Institute is having a symposium on Chinese-American relations called “Connecting With China”, and I’m to talk on “Exploring Issues in Cross-Cultural Adoptions” from 2-4 pm, February 17th. The event is free to the public, but you have to register in advance to [...]
The Bruce Schneier Action Figure! At $100, it’s a steal! Be the first on your block! Now, i’m just waiting for the RJ Johnson and Bill Roper Auctioneer Action figures…
http://www.newsweek.com/id/225492/page/1 The Power of Two: http://www.newsweek.com/id/225098 Photo gallery of the kids, etc. The Intro picture is particularly stunning. This has been in the works since spring. Newsweek came in with a Pulitzer-award winning photographer who was fresh from covering the White House and Obama and Bush to do the shots. The interviews mostly were around [...]
The family has taken up a new and very nice practice; having family reading times – not scheduled as such, but so everyone has something good to read and is in the living room together reading. It works pretty well, I think, and is an improvement over endless oh-I-can’t-watch-that debates about TV stuff. Tastes run [...]
I was watching an old TWILIGHT ZONE episode tonight about a boxer on his way down who charms a little boy, who enthusiastically uses his ‘big wish’ power that he goes on about during the earlier part of the show to change the result of the fight; instead of the boxer getting flattened and dropped [...]
Saw the trailer for 2012 at Harry Potter 6; I was going oh geeze and razzing the ridiculous POS. Maybe my present health situation has made everything-go-boom Novels and Stories a whole lot less interesting, but this one is just trading on the latest millennial fear nonsense. I say it’s spinach cilantro and I say [...]
Saw it with the family today; Mere and Kay have been whomped with allergies, and I think they’re turning into sinus infections. The kids hate taking stuff for the allergies and hate the nasal sprays, but they hate worse being sick. In any event, I wasn’t all that thrilled with the film, mostly because so [...]
This weekend, Meredith, her cousin Kay and I got out on a rare outing to a movie, and saw STAR TREK on the big screen; the kids were ‘I-dunno-about-this’ until they got sucked into the story, and they want MORE. I thought for a re-boot of the original series, it was actually darn decent. [...]
Just blame Deb Geisler for getting me started with the damn Girl Scout Cookie door-to-door photo.
Cecil Adams on Jim Butcher’s DRESDEN series (which I have not read; I saw a couple of the TV shows based on it) and how it does and doesn’t fit the realities of Chicago – and a bit on the ‘underground’ of Chicago (mostly downtown).
The short end of it is that Susan, Meredith and I will be totally occupied with a Seekrit Project from about dinnertime Thursday to Friday evening (the first night of Duckon). Mike Harrington is flying in on Friday morning from Birmingham to be Duckon’s Science Guest of Honor, along with his daughter Meredith Ellen, and [...]