New Place

Hi, everybody. Being as this blog seems to have run its life cycle, I am starting something new at thatsmyminute.blogspot.com. Check it out if you are so inclined.

Peace.

Criminal Minds

Something has gone horribly wrong with this show. Mandy Patinkin is gone this season, and that presents problems, but that's not the big deal. It's details, friends. Details. This show's integrity rests on the details. It's about a group of FBI agents that are major crimes/serial killer profilers. They do their work by anticipating and noticing the little things.

Here are two incidents from recent weeks which indict, I would guess, writing and post-production respectively.

1) An exchange between a parent and a child who is writing at the kitchen table:
PARENT: What are you working on?
CHILD: Multiplication.
PARENT (Startled and impressed): Multiplication!?!
CHILD: Yeah; it's for extra credit. The rest of the class is still on long division.

Think about it, chums. You can't do long division without multiplication. Am I wrong? If so, correct me, elementary teachers of the world.

2) A woman is having a conversation on a land-line telephone. She is speaking to a friend when she hears a busy signal. We learn later in that show that the conversation was interrupted because the line was cut. Apparently, a phone connected to nothing magically generates a busy signal. I understand that if you just have a line go dead, it doesn't tell the story. It just sounds like the other party stops talking. But I'm not sure that the fix to the problem is to use a factually inaccurate stand-in for silence.

This used to be a smart show, but it has rapidly moved off of my must-see list. Smart shows? Friday Night Lights and Numbers.

Quite a Weekend / Quite a Day

This weekend has been quite draining, both physically and emotionally. It was homecoming at CMU, my charming alma mater, and Saturday (with the parade and the game) was enveloped by a constant downpour. But, the team won (its first win of the season and I'm guessing the first homecoming win for a while). And, because of the new fake-turf field, they didn't get mud on their uniforms despite the torrents. The day concluded with time spent staying up too late with old friends and good conversation.

Then came today, which was full of solemnity and joy and wonder and wonderfulness and pain and exuberance and excellence.

Today was the day of the memorial service for RPD, the choral director at CMU. It was an amazing service, held on campus at Linn Memorial UMC where his choirs had sung for the 26 years he taught and directed. It was a unique situation -- when a lawyer dies, people get up and say "he was a nice guy, and he did good lawyering." When a preacher dies, people get up and say "he was a nice guy, and he touched a lot of lives." But when a choral director dies, people get up and say "he was a nice guy," then everyone in the room stands up and illustrates how the decedent changed them by joining their voices -- if not perfectly, then at least joyfully. The choirs that sang, that had been led by RPD until the second week of this semester, sounded beautiful (even singing music he had written), but so did the congregation singing wonderful hymns including "Come O Thou Traveller Unknown." That's one of my favorites and if you want to know why, I'll tell you sometime. Several people gave remembrances, but the message was given by Linn's pastor, and former RPD student, Icky. He was also one of my very best friends at CMU and we shared the burden of bad nicknames. The service ended with a beautiful reading of a Robert Burns poem, and the congregation following a bagpiper out of the sanctuary to a reception across campus.

While there, I had a nice conversation with husband of CMU's president who pointed out that this gathering was really a symbol of what RPD had worked very hard to achieve. "We don't have a lot of CEOs," he said, "but we have a whole lot of people who go out and change the lives of others." Very true. (And very humbling for me to realize that I go out and change the lives of others by garnishing their wages.)

At the reception, the Beta Mu chapter of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, as well as all the Sinfonia alumni present (maybe as many as 50) sang an elegiac hymn in RPD's honor, and everyone sang the alma mater to which he'd written the music. Afterwards, the Sinfonians moved under the clock tower central to the campus and sang for a long time. I don't think I've ever seen that many men singing there before. It was amazing.

Homecoming notwithstanding, that was the real reunion for me. Because of Mom's place in the college, I always ran with the music folks (and that's also how Tracy and I fell in together). And folks from all ages came back to celebrate a life well-lived, and to do so by using some of the skills he had given us.

After coming home, I called my Mom to make sure she was doing okay, and I think she really was. I also had good KC friends drop by for just the briefest moment, but it was good to see them.

The weekend has been full, and now I am off to rest.

Umm . . . the dog ate my bookmarks?

I've recently started singing with a local community choir. It's volunteer, but of a very high quality. There are a lot of people whom I've started to know by their first name, quickly to discover they are more frequently addressed as Dr. such-and-such. That seems to happen with some degree of frequency in this college town. And that one.

Anyhow, we had our first performance last Saturday. It was the day after I learned that my college choral director had passed away after a long and storied career shaping young voices (and corraling some of our young wills). It was not an easy concert.

But, despite the mortal overtones, it was fun. The last time I performed with a (formal, evening-wear, non-church) choir, I was a cocky but not-particularly-confident 22-year-old with a great tenor voice. It's interesting to me how different I am now. My voice is weathered (n.b. - Tracy's is seasoned) but I have tons more confidence. I guess I fear audiences even less than I did then, and maybe I'm a lot less worried about what my peers are thinking and what I might be doing wrong. Apparently experience trumps talent for me in this context.

The concert itself (and its contents, wonderful, are perhaps matters for another post) made me realize how much I miss performing. I want to be on stage and I have lots of ideas (and generous opportunities from friends) on how to do this, but I need to pick one and commit.

This post was to be a subset of a larger one, but chasing that wild goose may keep me from posting this, so I stop here.

HuHot Mongolian Grill in Columbia

I eat a lot of places that please me, and I don't usually try to tell people about them, but we had such a good experience here last night that I want to get something up. This place is a national chain, and has been open in Columbia since October. However, this week and weekend have been their official "Grand Opening," with half-price appetizers and desserts, so Tracy and I decided to go after a Friday night movie.

I generally like Mongolian Barbercue (essentially, you pick what you want of meats, veg and sauces from a buffet line, and workers grill it up for you). I think Genghis Khan in Westport is terrific, although Tracy finds it a bit dark (from age, wood, and lack of windows) for her taste. The few times (twice?) I've been to bd's (another national chain), I've been really disappointed. I feel like its overpriced, and (much like Joe's Crab Shack), they act like you should be really honored and excited to be there, without really having the good food or service to back it up. Tracy says they act like they were the ones who discovered this concept, and aren't you feeling lucky that they brought it to you. Anyhow, I found them annoying enough that I was a bit hesitant about what we would find at Huhot.

I shouldn't have been. We went in about 9:15 (we had looked on the web, and the only hours listed were 4p-close, and it has a bar, so we figured we'd be fine on a Friday night of their grand opening. The place was nice and bright, but not annying. There were signs around explaining what to do, but not so many that you couldn't find a place to rest your eyes. We had some appetizers that were fine, although not great, but certainly worth what they charged. We had dollar frozen drinks, and each got the buffet. Because of the format, we didn't hustle to the buffet, but waited for and slowly ate our appetizers. We had a great server named Mandy. She kept checking on us and seemed genuinely nice and engaging. We finally got to the buffet area about 9:45, and got seated again a little before 10. Then, just a few minutes after 10, they started to break down the food and put it into storage and start cleaning up the grill. Then, we overheard someone say that they closed at 10.

As I'm sure you know, I like eating. Normally at a place like this, I'll go through twice -- a light bowl with chicken and seafood, followed by a dark bowl with beef. I probably would have done that last night, too, although I certainly didn't go hungry with just one bowl. I wasn't extremely bothered by them starting to tear down. "Perhaps," I thought, "the hours were on the door, and we didn't see them." I was a little annoyed, but I could deal with it.

Tracy, however, with her background in customer service, seemed genuinely disturbed. She asked me if it would be okay with me if she asked for the manager (she knows conflict makes me nervous) and I acquiesced. She did so, making sure than Mandy knew we weren't displeased at all with her service. The manager was on the phone, but after a few minutes came up and asked how he could help.

I wish I had picked up his name, but I didn't. Tracy explained the issue and her disappointment, and he immediately took personal responsibility. He didn't blame corporate policy, or something that had happened out of the ordinary, he just immediately apologized, saying it was his fault. Apparently, they normally do a "last call" to each table, and he had missed ours. Because it was their grand opening weekend, and they had been through such a long night, they were eager to close. I was impressed that he took the blame on himself, and, frankly, I would have been satisfied with that. But he immediately comped our entire meal. Wow. I was really startled, and impressed with that act. We left pretty quickly, and left a generous tip for Mandy, promising we would tell our friends and be back. And we will. The place is actually very near where I work, and I will not hesitate to give them as much good word-of-mouth as I can next week. As we left, a server behind the bar greeted us cheerily, and said to come back and REALLY get all we wanted. Word, apparently, had moved quickly.

Everyone, and every business, makes mistakes. True colors shine through in how you deal with those mistakes. Huhot Mongolian Grill totally compensated us for a minor inconvenience. And, every person we encountered was super-friendly without being fake about it. I often say that I don't care if a server is being fake friendly for a tip, as long as I can't tell if it's fake.

Right as we were leaving, Mandy mentioned that this location is owned and managed by the group that owns and manages the Flat Branch in Columbia. That explained a lot. The Flat Branch has a great reputation for good food and service. We went there for Valentine's Day and had a really lovely time. So, go to those place when you are in Columbia. And, as Megan M. and the college kids say, don't forget a trip to Trops.