The Daily: Weekend 2

Another week of firsts in home ownership for us. This week we got the water softener up and running, which was as easy as adding salt to the bin. Now, in addition to shuffling 50-pound bags of sand and salt around the long driveway, I get to lug 40-pound bags of high-quality 98.5 percent pure salt cubes through the living-room to the basement. Fortunately, I’ll only have to do this every one-and-a-half years.

I finished John Grisham’s, The Litigators last night and found it to be better than his recent books. It was entertaining from start to end, as it depicts the evolution of its protagonist attorney David Zinc from “big law” grunt to small firm hero. Unlike some of Grisham’s early books, like the The Firm, there is less emphasis on physical chase and more legal and/or courtroom drama. I recommend the book.

More from the Grisham front, the TV show The Firm premiers tonight (Sunday) at 9PM on NBC. We’ll see if it’s a worthwhile watch.

It looks like a beautiful and sunny Sunday, which means I should run to work before I start chasing the dog and setting up the fire pit. Have a great week and you’ll hear from us soon enough!

The Daily: Distillation of Ideas

The Elusive Big Idea – NYTimes.com.

In the past, we collected information not simply to know things. That was only the beginning. We also collected information to convert it into something larger than facts and ultimately more useful — into ideas that made sense of the information. We sought not just to apprehend the world but to truly comprehend it, which is the primary function of ideas. Great ideas explain the world and one another to us.

I have always made lists of small ideas, thoughts, things to do. I have on- and offline lists that I am constantly trying to merge into a master list. I do this for writing – to remember story ideas – and for other facets of my life. The longer-run outcome of keeping these lists is that they evolve, as I learn to understand them and distill their content into some larger more meaningful (or at least more useful) thing that I can implement or use to create.

Do you keep lists? If so, are they on- or offline? The people want to know!

The Daily: The Apartment

One: Last night, Lindsey and I finished watching The Apartment starring Jack Lemon. It won five Academy Awards in 1960 and has a handful of good quotes. Here are a few:

J.D. Sheldrake: Ya know, you see a girl a couple of times a week, just for laughs, and right away they think you’re gonna divorce your wife. Now I ask you, is that fair?
C.C. Baxter: No, sir, it’s very unfair… Especially to your wife.

C.C. Baxter: That’s the way it crumbles… cookie-wise.

C.C. Baxter: You hear what I said, Miss Kubelik? I absolutely adore you.
Fran Kubelik: Shut up and deal…

Fran Kubelik: He’s a taker.
C.C. Baxter: A what?
Fran Kubelik: Some people take, some people get took. And they know they’re getting took and there’s nothing they can do about it.

I was surprisingly entertained by the film because I usually find the acting in older films to be overly dramatic – like the actors are trying to act. In this movie, that wasn’t the case. It was humorous and entertaining. Does anyone know if there are any remakes?

Two: This morning, I managed to finish shoveling half the driveway about fifteen minutes before the plow truck arrived. I was concerned that we hadn’t met the five-inch threshold and he wouldn’t come. Turns out I was wrong, but put in a good workout early.

Three: Tonight, Lindsey and I went on a nighttime hike through the back part of our lot and along East Shore Road. In reviewing saved articles after retiring to the couch to watch Michigan v. Virginia Tech, I happened upon the following Robert Frost Poem titled, “Dust of Snow”:

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

My day was just fine, but the cold fresh air filling my lungs is a good balance to sitting in front of a computer for a large part of the day.

The Daily: Dantonio Wins

Yogi BearThat lovable guy to the right is Monsieur Yogi Bear Rogers, and he is either testing the purity of the snow or expressing his feeling towards us for not naming the house after him. (The condo was named, “Chez Yogi Bear – Mr. Slobber Face.” Or something like that.)

While Yogi was braving the blizzard, I was parked on the ol’ living room couch at Mom and Dad’s house watching MSU keep up and eventually overtake Georgia. It was nice to sink into the cushions long enough to leave a dent, and I was glad to see Mark Dantonio win his first bowl game – in triple overtime, no less. We’ll see if U of M can put on as good a show tomorrow as MSU did today and the Lions did yesterday.

Much of the rest of the day was spent organizing for the year ahead. Scanning, sorting, PDFing, etc. Such is life in a digital world. For all the benefits of technology, we spend the time saved having to sort through the overabundance of communications that no one would have dreamed of putting on paper twenty years ago. (Or so I assume, as I would have been ten years old and didn’t correspond much at that point in my life.)

Which leaves me with two inquiries for each of you:

  1. How do you organize your digital content?
  2. Who’s going to win the Sugar Bowl? UM or VT?

The DDD Day 1: Welcome to the Double Dogleg Daily

Introduction

Good Evening and welcome to the Double Dogleg Daily. Writing daily is a goal for 2012, and this daily email newsletter is one way to accomplish that. While the Daily may evolve between now and December 31st, I expect to include an interesting hyperlink and a look at the most recent 24-hour’s news from our hillside. Also, I promise to keep it short, but cannot promise that it will always (or ever) be pithy. I’m just not that interesting.

The History of the Double Dogleg

We have nicknamed our new house the “Double Dogleg.” If you are not an avid golfer, a double dogleg is golf hole that has two bends. For example, it would curve to the right from the teeing ground to the landing area and then curve to the left from there to the green. These are rare and can be challenging. Like a double dogleg golf hole, our driveway turns left and then right as you ascend to the house. We’ll see if the name sticks!

Lately, I’ve wanted to erect a ranch sign over the driveway. However, it does not look like this is permissible per the Peninsula Township Zoning Ordinance. Instead, we can install what is termed a “name plate” sign. The maximum height is four feet and max square footage for the sign is three square feet. So, come summer, when you’re driving E Shore Rd, you can look for the “Double Dogleg” sign and both know it is us and know what it means.

Happy New Year 2012!