The rehearsal of my older brother’s wedding occurred on Thursday, August 7 at the chapel at Bastyr University, the site of the wedding.  To get there from our townhouse on Lake City Way we drove northeast up and around Lake Washington and turned south through Bothell and eventually into Kenmore, WA.  It took us more time than expected due to rush hour traffic.  We arrived five minutes after the 5:30 appointment time.

Bastyr University is a college of alternative medicine located in a state park.  The campus used to be a monastery and seminary for Catholic monks.  On the way through the park we saw a sign giving directions to a concert.  The chapel is very large with a high ceiling.  Large copper-plated doors open to the interior.  Its pews face each other rather than forward and are elevated so that everyone can see the aisle clearly.  Stained glass windows depicting Biblical scenes line the sides.  It has a large altar with the image behind of a sun in copper relief rather than a crucifix.  Perhaps this reflects the chapel’s current secular affiliation with the college.

The officiant for the wedding ceremony was in charge of the rehearsal.  He was very tall, probably taller than anyone else there so it seemed natural to follow his direction.  He was a non-denominational Christian minister.  We started by getting in a circle and going around introducing ourselves and stating our affiliation with the bride or groom.  My uncle stated that he was the official family “toaster” as in one who gives toasts.  Later someone jokingly asked him what kind of toast he made and he answered, “Rye bread with raisins.”  We then went through an abridged version of the ceremony starting with the part after we would have entered and taken our positions.  The officiant would shorten his speeches with “blah-blah” that made some parts sound humorous.  We had to figure some things out such as how we would position our hands.  We also had to work around the fact that all three of the bridesmaids and one of the groomsmen weren’t there.  The best man taught us how to go up and down the steps by stepping on each step with both feet since the bridesmaids we would be escorting would be wearing heels.  I mostly just stood during the practice ceremony enjoying one of the best views of it.  The best man, maid of honor, parents, readers, veil, cord, and coins sponsors, and the bride and groom had much more to do.  We then practiced the recessional where we walked out of the chapel and then went through the processional back in with the music.  The idea was that it would be easier for us to walk in if we knew exactly where to go.  We quickly went through the processional and recessional again and by then the one hour for which we had reserved the chapel was up.

We then drove to the restaurant for the rehearsal dinner that was just down the road from Bastyr University in Kirkland, WA.  It’s in a strip mall and directly adjacent to a bar with pool tables with which it seemed to share the restrooms.  They seated us at a long table and my mom insisted that our immediate family split up and mingle among the others.  I ended up sitting next to my aunt on my dad’s side and the bride’s cousin who was also the maid of honor.  I sat across from the bride’s mother.    The restaurant has Indian-themed decorations, but music playing over the speakers was American Rock and Adult Contemporary.  They played “The Final Countdown” by Europe as we finished dinner.

The served a preset dinner family-style.  First came plates of pakoras or vegetables such as potatoes and onions fried tempura-style.  They came with two chutneys for “dipping area”: one a green and white color and the other reddish.  The pakoras had a spicy taste and were delicious even without the chutneys.  They brought large plates of basmati rice flavored with oil and separate bowls of three different curries: chicken, beef, and vegetable.   They were slightly spicy and came in small bowls that didn’t seem like a lot.  I didn’t try the vegetable curly since it had cream.  Nor did I try the spinach and cheese dish.  My aunt on my dad’s side, by whom I sat, also doesn’t eat dairy making it easy to figure out what not to eat.  They served large platters of thick Naan bread that went well with the curry and platters of juicy, flavorful Tandoori chicken.  It was a lot of food and all very good.

I spent most of the dinner conversing with the bride’s cousins who was also the maid of honor.  She’s actually from Southern California and she went to Cal Poly Pomona.  After college she found work at Boeing in the Seattle area.  She met my brother who also worked at Boeing and, not long after, introduced him to the bride.

This was my first time at a wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner and also my first time in a wedding party.  It was a fair amount of work but the food was good and we had some left over for other meals.  My parents generously picked up the check.

We went to the Argentinean restaurant, Malbec, to celebrate Dad’s (my father-in-law’s) birthday on August 1 (his actually birthday is August 3).  It’s located on Green Street a few blocks east of Lake Avenue in Pasadena.  We took the opportunity to use the Gold Line light rail to get there.  We had ridden it before but only to one stop.  This time we went through nearly all the stops.  As we rode northeast out of downtown it was a bit difficult to figure out exactly where we were.  The names of the stops gave some clues such as Southwest Museum, and Highland Park.  It was still fun, though.  The train was full but not too crowded and we were able to find seats together.  The Gold Line runs at and sometimes slightly above ground level so the views are pretty good on both sides.  I was surprised by the number of green trees such as palms among the houses and buildings in the neighborhoods.  As we neared the Highland Park station, we recognized Avenue 52, a street near which the parents of a friend live.  Mission station is near the restaurant called “750 ml” in South Pasadena.  We went there last year to celebrate my wife’s raise (good old days).  We were soon in Pasadena and after going through an industrial-looking stop and the Memorial Park stop, the Gold Line went down the middle of the 210 freeway.  We got off at Lake Station and climbed the stairs to get to Lake Avenue above the freeway.  From there we walked 0.6 miles in 20 minutes to get to the restaurant.  As we walked south on Lake Avenue, we passed Wolf Burgers, the headquarters of Indymac Bank, the Washington Mutual building where my sister-in-law used to work (not at WAMU), and a couple of Countrywide buildings.  They were a couple more reminders of good days now past.

Malbec is located in a storefront space away from Old Town Pasadena.  The buildings are only a few stories tall and they include law offices and a jeweler.  We arrived at around 6:15 pm well before our reservation time.  The place wasn’t very crowded with maybe 2-3 tables occupied but like most good restaurants we’ve visited, this would change.  Malbec has benches along the east wall with tables and chairs, circular booths along the west wall, and tables in between.  They also have tables set up outside.  It’s a medium to large space with dark red walls, a long, high bar in the back and numerous bottles of Argentinean wines on shelves in one corner.  On the walls hang large framed black and white photo prints.  The lighting is dim for atmosphere and smooth jazz plays over the speakers.  When we came in I noticed some Spanish language magazines on the host’s desk just inside the entrance.  They seated us at a coupled of tables along the east wall near the corner with the bottles of wine and a tower fan.

The first page after the cover of the menu had their specials that included appetizers, salads, and entrees such as New York Steak and Corvina a la Mediteranea, or Chilean Sea Bass with a Mediterranean sauce of olives, tomatoes and capers with asparagus on the side.  A personal coincidence was that I was reading a book that said that people fished for corvina and tilapia near the Salton Sea.  It was nice that they listed the specials with their prices right there on the menu so there are no surprises.  The regular menu is ample and complete with sections for appetizers, salads, sandwiches, entrees, beverages, and desserts.  The entrees include great variety including pasta dishes, steaks, chicken, one salmon entrée, Argentinean specialties, and a wide variety of side orders.  We noticed that the beverages include Alhambra and “Negra” Alhambra beer.  The menu has the dishes in their Spanish spelling such as noqui for gnocchi, though the Italian influence is unmistakable.  Our main waiter, Santos, was very nice.  Twice during the evening he told us we were “a beautiful family.”  He admitted that the meat they served didn’t come from Argentina but was still top quality.  He also said that he was Mexican.  I overheard him introduce his son, who also worked at Malbec, to another table.  They provided a decanter for the wine we brought.  My wife thought the decanter looked like a large playing piece for a boardgame.

We placed out orders and they brought us some Argentinean-style bread in small slices with some “dipping area” of chimichurri sauce: a sauce of oil, green herbs, garlic, and pepper.  With anticipation we watched them serve large steaks to another table.  Our orders soon arrived.  I got the Suprema, a thin-fried breaded chicken breast topped with an arugula salad.  It was delicious and the chicken and salad went well together.  It was only lightly fried and not greasy at all, fully cooked but not dry.  It was also quite large, about the size of a small plate.  I only finished half of it and doggy-bagged the rest.  My wife had the Napolitana: chicken fried and breaded steak topped with tomato sauce, ham, and melted cheese with mashed potatoes and vegetables on the side.  She greatly enjoyed it and like my entrée it was so much food that she doggy-bagged about half of it.  She enjoyed it even more as a leftover a couple of days later.  She also enjoyed portions of the rib eye steak entrée that mom shared with her.  For dessert, Santos had them assemble samples of some of the dessert choices on a long, narrow rectangular platter.  It included the Copa Helada or three flavors of artisan natural ice cream from Fosselman’s.  The three flavors were the standard chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry and they came with sweetened malted granules.  The sampler also included Panqueques de Manzana:  crepes filled with caramelized apples and pastry cream topped with vanilla ice cream and dulce de leche sauce.  The third dessert in the sampler was the the Flan al Caramello that came with whipped cream and dulce de leche as “dipping area”.  They garnished the panqueques and the flan with a couple of sliced strawberries with caramel sauce.  My wife enjoyed portions of all the dessert samples.  Her favorite was the malted granules that came with the ice cream.  They charged us $15 for the dessert sampler, less than the sum of the individual prices of these desserts.

Santos said the he hoped our visit was the beginning of a long friendship.  Overall, it was a great celebration of Dad’s birthday (allegedly his 43rd.)

My younger brother and I walked around Belltown in Seattle on Thursday, August 7.  Belltown is the neighborhood between Downtown Seattle and Seattle Center where the Space Needle is located.  When I lived in Seattle many years ago I worked in Belltown.  We walked around the blocks that were my old route to work.  Belltown has become much more upscale since I worked there.  They’ve constructed all these condos and luxury apartments above many of the storefronts.  There are also many high end restaurants, bars, and coffee shops that weren’t there before.

We wanted to have lunch and spent a long time looking for a place to eat.  We first went to Westlake Center that’s just south of Belltown and connected to Seattle Center via the Monorail.  Unfortunately, the monorail was closed for repairs.  I wanted to eat somewhere that was unique to Seattle but the Westlake food court had mostly chain eateries that we could find anywhere.  There was a smoothie place that looked promising, though.  I thought we’d find an Ivar’s around there someplace.  Ivar’s is a Seattle-based fast seafood eatery.  We left Westlake and looked for the Pacific Place mall.  On the way we passed a Daily Grill and walked through the Rainier Square shopping center.  We went to the food court next to the Borders but we didn’t feel like having anything there.

We finally decided to return to Westlake Center and once there we went to that smoothie place called Emerald City Smoothie that turned out to be unique to Seattle.  Above and behind the counter was a large menu with the names of over 40 different smoothies.  They were listed under different categories:  Treat My Body, Low Sugar, Bulk Me Up, Help Me Lose Weight, No Fat, MRP’s (I don’t know what this stands for but it includes the smoothies Lean Body, Lean-Out, and Mini Mass), Unique Blends, and Boost My Immune System.  Customers can also choose flavors and add boosters such as fiber, fat burner, vitamin C, and soy protein.  Each smoothie costs between $4-$6.The smoothie that caught my eye was the PB&J under Treat My Body because I always eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.  The smoothie version had peanut butter, strawberry, marionberry, blueberry, raspberry, and protein.  Marionberries grow in the Pacific Northwest.  I had never before seen or heard of a PB&J smoothie and I realized it was a great idea.  I was also looking at the Apple Andie smoothie under No Fat that combined apple, banana, nonfat milk, and protein since I’d also never heard of an apple smoothie.

I decided to have the PB&J and I asked that it be made non-dairy to which they complied.  My brother ordered the Pineapple Bliss smoothie under No Fat.  They made our orders quickly and served them in 24 ounce cups.  Unfortunately, they had run out of spoons.  I tried my smoothie and it was excellent tasting very similar to the sandwich version.  I could taste the peanut butter throughout and the berries had a sweet flavor.  It was also very thick and filling and had 630 calories, as a high as some of the smoothies in the Bulk Me Up section.  My brother wasn’t as impressed with his Pineapple Bliss.

After finished our smoothies we walked to the nearby Men’s Wearhouse to pick up my tuxedo for my older brother’s wedding.  My younger brother bought us a hot dog from a nearby stand to supplement our smoothies for lunch.  It was hardly necessary for me but perhaps moreso for him since his smoothie only had 210 calories.  We then caught the 72 bus in the Westlake bus tunnel to return to our townhouse on Lake City Way.  It was awkward carrying the tux on the bus, a bit like transporting a body.  We made it back in time to get ready for the wedding rehearsal.  I’m glad we eventually found place that was unique to Seattle.

The only reason I read A Dictionary of English Literature was the same reason I read a similar dictionary earlier this year:  to prepare for Jeopardy!  This dictionary is longer than the Dictionary of American Literature because England and Great Britain have about 1,000 more years of history than the U.S.  Just like that prior dictionary, we received it from our late acquaintance from the puzzle parties who used to prepare the L.A. Times Sunday crossword.  Also like the American version, this dictionary was published in the 1950’s, but different in that it was published by Barnes and Noble.  I didn’t know B&N were around in the 1950’s and that they published books.  As I stated, it’s longer than the American version, it has more entries for authors I hadn’t heard of, and it has separate sections for authors, anonymous works, literary terms, versification, and a timeline of the authors and events in English history.  In the preface, the dictionary compilers state that they “hope that this book will prove as readable as a good short history of English literature.”  I’m not so sure they exceeded since I found it long and tedious but I still learned some interesting things.
I learned about influential authors and poets that I believe would come up in Jeopardy! questions such as Spenser, the 16th century poet who wrote “The Faerie Queen”, Thackeray who wrote Vanity Fair, and Sterne who wrote about Tristam Shandy.  Some entries evoked memories of authors and poets I studied in my high school English classes many years ago such as Oliver Goldsmith who wrote She Stoops to Conquer, and Andrew Marvell who penned the flirtatious poem, To His Coy Mistress.  We had fun discussing that poem in 10th grade English.  I also learned some new words.  A “poetaster” is a writer of low quality verse.  The compilers describe some of the authors as poetasters.  The entry for Thomas Peacock describes how many of his novels have a formula where he “gathers a miscellaneous crew of crotcheteers.”  I couldn’t find the word “crotcheteer” in the dictionary but I did find “crotchet” that means an odd fancy or whimsical notion.  A crotcheteer must be someone who embodies this quality.

A couple of authors seemed familiar or had a connection for non literary reasons.  Though I hadn’t heard of the Wakefield Master, I am very familiar with the “Huntington Library in California” where the original manuscripts of this author were (and presumably still are) preserved.  The name of the poet and author Cecil Day-Lewis rang a bell and quick research revealed that he is indeed the late father of Oscar-winning actor Daniel Day-Lewis.  Unlike the Dictionary of American Literature, I wasn’t able to determine whether any of the authors mentioned in A Dictionary of English Literature are still alive today.

Like the version for American literature, many authors of English literature have humorous titles for their novels, poems, and other works.  Eliza Haywood wrote The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless.  The poet Thomas Gray penned the Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes.  There’s Stephen Peacock’s Plan to Relieve the Depression in Six Days, Remove it in Six Months, and Eradicate it in Six years that’s about the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Thomas Fuller titled three of his works Good Thoughts in Bad Times, Good Thoughts in Worse Times, and Mixed Contemplations in Better Times.  Cuthbert Bede also wrote a series of works with funny titles: The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, Oxford Freshman; The Further Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, Oxford Undergraduate; and Mr. Verdant Green, Married and Done For.  The most humorous title is of a play by Henry Carey: The Tragedy of Chrononhotonthogos, being the most Tragical Tragedy that was ever Tragedized by a Company of Tragedians.

The authors have some humorous premises for their works.  David Garnett’s Lady into Fox is “the story of a woman’s metamorphosis into a red fox and her husband’s efforts of adjust to her vixenish temperament.”  Thomas Tomkis’ play Lingua is “a spiritual anatomical allegory in which the tongue argues against the five senses in defense of his right to qualify as a sixth.”  Then there is the guidebook of George and Richard Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, that includes a section on molding poems into pretty shapes such as eggs, lozenges, and pyramids.

When the authors’ works don’t provide humor, the dictionary compliers sometimes add it to their descriptions both intentionally and unintentionally.  They describe a work by Sir William Blackstone as a “reminder that some lawyers write clear, comprehensible prose.”  Thomas Chatterton has an entry because he tried to palm off his own works as literary antiques.  William Falconer wrote The Shipwreck, a narrative poem that has little reality to support that he actually experienced a shipwreck.  However, he later drowned in a real shipwreck.  About Martin Farquhar Tupper the compilers state, “So great is the gulf between the worth of (his) work and its appalling popularity among the Victorians that it has become trite to laugh at his triteness.”  Robert Montgomery is also not in the dictionary for his greatness but because the more famous author, Macaulay, wrote a bitter review of Montgomery’s poems calling them “inane” and describing one couplet as “the worst similitude in the world.”  In contrast, the compilers describe George Meredith as one of the most intellectual of Victorian poets and authors.  But more interesting is that while Meredith’s marriage to Mary Ellen Nichols was a great struggle for both of them, he used his experience to write great novels.  The compilers state, “From a literary point of view, their union was fruitful.”  After they divorced, Meredith remarried and was much happier but the subsequent books and poems he wrote were less interesting to the readers.

Other things I learned from A Dictionary of English Literature were that the names and people, groups, and things I know today were originally the names of other people, groups, and things.  Before “Erewhon” was the name of a health food store in West L.A., it titled the description of a satirical utopia by Samuel Butler who came up with the name as an anagram for “nowhere.”  Tom and Jerry weren’t originally a violent cartoon cat and mouse duo but the human protagonists of a popular sporting guide to London by Pierce Egan.  Before it was the name of a Norwegian New Wave band from the 1980’s who were very popular in the Philippines, Fra Lippo Lippi was a poem by Robert Browning about an Italian painter of the same name.  Chris McCandless, the main character of the recent film and nonfiction book, Into the Wild, adopted his nickname, Alexander Supertramp, from W.H. Davies’ memoir, The Autobiography of a Supertramp.  The 1970’s band Supertramp came up with their name independently.  Speaking of rock bands, in 1645, during the English civil war Parliament created a “New Model” army under the command of Oliver Cromwell long before the existence of the band New Model Army.

The most significant original name for a group of people was the term applied to a group of Romantic poets in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s.  The chief poets among them were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the lesser-known Robert Southey.  They lived in Westmoreland and Cumberland, better known as the English Lake District.  Thus, there were know as the Lake School, the Lake Poets, and, most significantly, the Lakers.  I theorized that if we equate the chief poets of this group to the Showtime Lakers of the 1980’s based on the quality of their work, Wordsworth is Magic Johnson, Coleridge is Kareem Abdul Jabbar, and Southey is somewhere between Kurt Rambis and James Worthy.  Also interesting is that under the entries for the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell and the Scottish reviewer Francis Jeffrey, the dictionary mentions how they fought against and prosecuted that experimental poetry of the Lakers.  Scots are of Celtic ancestry implying that the Lakers-Celtics rivalry has been around for over 200 years.

I needed an audiobook to accompany me on a long drive home from West L.A and I also wanted to get some more chores done.  Since I happened to be in the Science and Technology section of the Los Angeles Central Library for other reasons, I grabbed an audiobook from there that looked promising.  After the last audiobook I listened to (see the review of On the Beach), I wanted something more uplifting.  I was already familiar with James Herriot’s books because I used to watch the BBC TV series “All Creatures Great and Small” with my parents on public TV in Alaska.  I found the show humorous, though some may call it fuddy-duddy.  It combined light humor with some drama and fairly accurate depictions of veterinary science.  The show was based on the book of the same name along with 2-3 other books by James Herriot including All Things Bright and Beautiful.

When I checked out the book I thought it was the first in the series.  It’s actually the second, but order really doesn’t matter much since every 1-2 chapters is more or less an independent vignette.  They’re based on James Herriot’s real life experiences as a veterinarian in the Yorkshire countryside of England during the early 1940’s.  Along with his partner in practice and his partner’s younger brother, Herriot mostly treats farm animals: cattle, horses, sheep, and pigs; though he also works with family pets such as dogs, cats, and a bird in one case.  Subplots include flashbacks of him awkwardly wooing his future wife, his more present adjusting to life as a newlywed, and his partner’s younger brother, who is a student in veterinary science, behaving mischievously.  Nearly all the vignettes end happily.  Most are humorous and a few are laugh-out-loud funny.  Herriot goes into great scientific and graphic detail about his work that almost made me queasy.  But his remarks about how much veterinary science has progressed between the 1940’s and the 1970’s when he wrote the book are interesting.

Most interesting are the people with whom Herriot interacts: the farmers, the pet owners, and some of the other vets.  Some farmers are so old-fashion they don’t believe in telephones.  They have their own traditional names for animal ailments that Herriot must learn in order to work with them.  The pet owners can be very eccentric such as this woman who owns dozens of cats.  One of Herriot’s vet colleagues always takes him out for drinks after doing difficult surgery and Herriot always drinks too much under pressure of the hospitality.  The actor reading the book, Christopher Timothy, does a great job with all the English countryside accents and he captures the emotions and sets the scene of each episode.  Timothy portrayed Herriot on the TV series so he has a strong connection with him.

I found the book to be a nice change from the previous one.  It helped me on my long drive home through traffic and helped get some chores done.  I recognized many of the vignettes from the storylines of the TV series, though not all of them made it to TV.  There are some differences between the characters in the book and the TV series such as their ages and their descriptions and portrayals.  The TV show focuses more on an ensemble of characters while the book is told entirely from Herriot’s point of view.  All the happy endings may make it a bit sappy and the vintage setting may seem fuddy-duddy but sometimes that’s what I need.