William Reardon’s Blog

After visitng Target & Office Max with my mom, we headed next door to Vroman’s bookstore. A sign of upcoming apperances listed Orson Scott Card appearing on Monday, Sept. 6th. While I didn’t actually know today was the 6th, I did know it was Monday. Damn, I thought — the time of his talk was at 7pm, so I must have just missed him. Except I realized that I had no idea what time it was either, and after flipping open my phone, found out it was 7 o’clock on the dot. Apparently, the fates had scheduled me to see Mr. Card.

Not one to argue, I got directions to where he speaking in the store & headed over. Apparently, he was in there to pimp his new book and a play. I had heard him talk once before, up north, with Neb & Miza. For whatever reason, I liked his first talk more. It could be the audience asked more compelling questions, but it was interesting to hear his views on the war (in general & in Iraq), history, and a few other topics. Not much was asked this time other than “Tell us about you. How do you go about writing?” Feh. I’m not a writer and thus have no interests in how he goes about writing. Actually, even though I’m a developer I have no interest in hearing about how Carmack or Linus codes, so I suppose even if I was a writer, I still wouldn’t care. What the hell does the logistics of writing have anything to do with anything anyway?

Tim Russert had an interesting point the other night about why some Americans may favor George Bush. When Bush speaks it’s generally in clear, simple terms: I was right about the war in Iraq then & I’m right about the war now. I think this about Terrorism… whereas Kerry will tend to be more like “I’ve studied these issues for 22 years…”

As mentioned in the news, it looks like Bush has gotten a bump off the RNC, which also seems to be reflected on the very cool www.electoral-vote.com.

Visit with Mom & one of my brother Chris is going well. On Friday, spent the day mostly in Pasadea area, visiting the Huntington Gardens & driving the Angels Crest Highway towards Mt. Wilson.

The Huntington was cool for me as well, for despite having been a member for two years, I never actually visited the library until yesterday. Even knowing they had a Guttenburg, it was still awesome to get see it, along with editions of the Bible pre-dating the printing press and hand-copied by monks. While behind a glass case, the manuscripts where held open allowing one to see a couple of pages. It’s one thing to have read about the ornamentation enscribed on each page, quite another to actually see them.

I would have been sufficently impressed with the Bible collection alone would have been amazing, but a few rows over first editions of the Leviathan, works by Locke, Common Sense, and so on… This place is a U of C’ers wet dream come true. I tried reading what I could through the glass, but next time I’m showing up with my dog-eared Penguin Classics versions to see how closely the line-up.

Oh yeah, the family trip.

Today was West LA, driving through Mulholland drive (as recommended by Sang), stopping for lunch at the Saddle Ranch on Sunset, then onto Venice Beach and Santa Monica’s 3rd Street Promenade. Tomorrow is a small BBQ & a chance for my mom to get to meet some of LA friends. Chris leaves Monday out of LAX, so following dropping him off, I’ll probably take my mom to see more of the nice houses in Beverly Hills & maybe stop off at the Grove. Tuesday’s still TBD, possibly a tour of Warner Brothers.