Things I Really Love

Things I Really Love - A gratuitous but fun list.

• An early Sunday dinner at the Best Steak House on University Avenue. The BSH is a local chain of cheapo steak joints owned by the local Greek restaurant mafia. Not a date dinner, mind you - just myself (not that that happens often), a cheap sirloin, watching the traffic and the other patrons, mopping up the ketchup with the Texas Toast (and nobody makes better Texas Toast than the BSH), relaxing, pondering picking up the kids, looking forward to the week ahead. Which, I'm happy to say, I do, these days.
• "I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)" by Stevie Wonder. It's from "Talking Book", which may not be his best album (I said "may not", because I'm not always in the mood for "Inner Visions" - and let's be honest, either are you), but it's his best song. The chorus bleeds hope, defines the triumph of faith over experience. It was the song at the end of "High Fidelity", where it served as a nearly cathartic realization of John Cusack's character's epiphany. Standing alone, it does the same thing, and more. Wondrous.
• Being Alone. Not having to answer to another adult for who I am, and how I am.
• The Blackened Bayou Chicken at Copelands. Don't let the gray gravy put you off - this is the most wonderful chicken-shimp-calorie bomb I've ever eaten. It may be 175,000 calories, but wash it down with enough spunky-yet-drinkable Shiraz and it'll all work out.
• My marigold bush is blooming. This was my ex-wife's great moment of gardening inspiration - a magnolia in the front yard. It's still there - and it's blooming is the first tangible sign that spring has really sprung. Its blooming is sodden with metaphor - it happens early, it smells gorgeous, and it's gone in a week. And I saw the first buds this weekend.
• Doing talk radio again. I think the entire Northern Alliance enjoys doing the show. For me, it may be different. More on this in a later post.
• "The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". What an incredible movie. Along with the "Lord Of The Rings" trilogy, it's the best movie I've seen in years. Review tomorrow.
• Feeling alive. "Well, duh". No, it's more complicated than that. For most of the last five years, the stresses of everyday life left me feeling numb and disconnected from the world around me - a world that I could feel was passing me by. Whatever it was, it's passing, bit by bit - so that even though life is no less stressful than ever, I'm feeling more like I'm actually in my life again, rather than floating in a raft down a river, unable to steer or much of anything. It's a nice switch.
• Whizzing on a tree. If I need to explain it to you, you can never get it.
• Re-reading my "Calvin and Hobbes" books for the hundredth time. And probably the five hundredth, too...
• Blogging. It's still fun. And a lot more rewarding than I ever thought it would be, when I started this thing two years ago.
• "Love And Hate" by Franky Perez. This is what rock and roll is supposed to be.
• Re-doing my back yard. More to come.
• Living near Lake Como.That should do for now.

  Now get outside and enjoy the spring.

  Posted by Mitch at April 4, 2004 10:31 AM