Friday Night Randomness

Thoughts and blather...

• Wow, the whole Pitino extortion story gets all Weekly World News-ish weird. Okay, maybe not THAT weird, but still wicked weird. The allegation is here.

• I have a big ol' Portuguese family, so the odds were pretty good that more than one of us would put our gift for useless but uber-nerdy knowledge to use in a blog. I'm pretty proud of my baby cousin MOVIEBOB, though. He's been nominated for at least one super geeky award. (Although big cousin Lou just surpassed him by two on her Google reader subscriptions-- take that, geekchild!) Check him out. He kind of rocks.
  

• City Block is closing. The only concert I've ever felt compelled to attend there was Hanson. And I didn't. But, come on... "Mmmm Bop" makes you smile, doesn't it? Smile big and perky? I need to go download that right now.
  

• The tix for the Holy Trinity at Slugger Field are a whopping $69.50. If you've been thinking about asking Lou out for a date but have just been too shy or too nervous, now's the time. Yes, I'll go to see Dylan/Willie/Mellencamp with you. And I'll even buy the hot dogs... if you'll just snag us a couple of tickets.
  

• Big Mama Lou is visiting for the weekend, and as I dropped her off at the Residence Inn (where I lived in Ike-delivered exile for nearly six months... it was actually awfully nice to see the place, especially the front desk crew, again) I was happy to see that Market Street from DCE to Baxter was hopping. Big Mama and I will be hitting the Cherokee Triangle Art Fair tomorrow in this absolutely blissed-inducing weather.

Hope the weather induces bliss in you as well this weekend.

... And All Was Right in The World: Quills Re-Opens

Mama has had a tough eleven months or so. A year ago next month, Lou was diagnosed with breast cancer. Four months later, a tree fell on her house, crushing half of it and forcing her to live in a hotel for five and a half months. And in between these two tragedies, Lou suffered another blow: the closing of her home-away-from home, Quills.

Breast cancer sucked, but Lou's doing just fine. The "new" rebuilt house is oodles prettier than the old house was. And now, Quills has reopened as of this past Saturday, bigger and better and more "Lou-ish" than before. Mama has come home. Hip hip hooray!

The New Quills is located next to Flanagan's Ale House on Bardstown and is open from 6a-11p, weekdays and 6a-midnight on weekends.

We missed you guys. Missed you something awful. There's no underestimating the power of that "third space" and its importance in some people's lives. I'm a coffeeshop nerd. Long live the coffee shop.

Quills-- A little birdie told me mid-January

This past weekend, I bumped into one of my favorite baristas (os?) from the late, great Quills Coffee and Books, and he said we could look forward to seeing the new Quills open at the location on Bardstown next to Flanagan's sometime in Mid-January. This is hugely welcome news.

(Hopefully my Ike-crushed house will "re-open" around the same time!... sigh, probably not)

I told my Quills friend that, while I've been seeing a few other coffee shops since July, I'd been unable to forge a meaningful relationship with any of them.

And truly, before I got sick, I did have a very meaningful relationship with Quills; I went there at least four or five times a week. Quills was indeed my "second home" for a year or so, and I have missed it terribly-- especially since I've been displaced from my "first home," too.

Which meant that when I started reading posts like this and this about my favorite coffeeshop's "Christian underpinnings," this godless heathen was aghast. Yes, Mama can be a bit oblivious to her surroundings at times, but aside from the occasional Bible-reader or even the occasional Bible-study group that I saw there, I had never noticed any blatant religiosity about the place or about the wonderful people who worked there.

I'm looking forward to having them back.

... on another note, my already irregular blogging may get more irregular for the next week or so. Surgery tomorrow, hopefully with a much better rebound time than the last one. But if I'm down for longer than I expect, happy holidays and much love!