I finally finished reading The President’s House on Thursday. It’s a comprehensive two-volume history of the White House, 1,231 pages long, from the building of the house through the present; the Clinton and Bush II years are covered in an epilogue, because most of their administrations’ papers haven’t been released yet. I bought it the day after Christmas and started reading it over the holidays. Every workday from the beginning of the New Year until last week, I lugged the first volume, and then the second, back and forth with me on the subway and train to and from work.

I know so much more about the house, the presidents and their families than I did when I first started. Fascinating stuff.

And now I have to find a new book to read on my commute. Until I do, I’m catching up on my New Yorkers.

I had an upper endoscopy yesterday. They knock you out and stick a thin tube down your throat with a camera attached to it to examine your esophagus, stomach, and first part of your small intestine. I’ve had chronic stomach problems for much of my life — without giving TMI, I’ve long had problems being “regular” — and I decided it was finally time to see if there was a reason. So my regular doctor recommended a gastroenterologist, and I saw him a couple of weeks ago, and he decided to explore various causes. (Fortunately I didn’t need a colonoscopy — I already had one of those about a decade ago and it didn’t find anything unusual, so the doctor said it wasn’t necessary right now.)

I didn’t sleep very well the night before, because I was nervous about having an IV put in my arm and being sedated. I don’t like the idea of anesthesia — what if they give you too much and you don’t wake up? (Despite the fact that people do this procedure every day and doctors have perfected all the details over the years, I still worried. ‘Cuz that’s what I do.) Also, I realized that I’d taken an ibuprofen three days earlier and wasn’t supposed to, because the instructions said not to take ibuprofen or aspirin or anything that can thin the blood for seven days before the procedure, and I’d forgotten about that. Fortunately, when I told the nurse and she went and asked the doctor about it, he said it was fine.

So I put on a gown and got wheeled into a little room and they stuck a needle in my arm and I didn’t look at it. Then they had me lie on my side and I tried to breathe slowly and relax and not be nervous. I didn’t know whether or not they had started administering the anesthesia yet, and I thought, Am I supposed to be falling asleep now? How am I ever going to fall asleep if I feel this nervous? What if I don’t fall asleep and I’m awake while they stick this tube down my throat?

Then the doctor put a plastic mouthguard in my mouth and said I might feel a slight burning sensation in my arm. I didn’t, but I did suddenly feel this lovely, heavy, gauzy sensation come over me…

…and the next thing I know, a nurse is waking me up. The mouthguard and IV are gone, and so are the doctor and his assistant. The nurse brings me some juice and some cheese and crackers.

I was probably out for all of 15 minutes. I didn’t have a sore throat afterward or anything. Just some burpy gassiness. I had no awareness or memory of the procedure being done at all.

I saw the doctor briefly — he said everything looked pretty normal except that I have some minor acid reflux. I asked if that could cause stomach issues, and he said yes, although when I researched it online later, I didn’t see much indication that the two are related. I don’t usually suffer heartburn or a burning sensation in my esophagus, although I have noticed sometimes in the last couple of years that it’s harder to sing than it used to be (I’m in a chorus) and that my speaking voice sometimes doesn’t feel like it’s at full strength. Andy has written about how his opera career was cut short due to acid reflux.

Anyway, I’m supposed to take this daily medication for two weeks and see if it does anything and then go back to the doctor. I guess I’ll see.

Fun fun fun.

The Jack McBrayer Response to the Internet Response to the Republican Response to the President’s Address to Congress:

“The inevitable pain of living a full life.”

I just saw that phrase here. What a great, profound, simple concept.

Tropicana, the orange juice company, recently revamped their packaging. Customers hated the new design (me included). So they’re reverting to the old design. Yay! [via kottke]

I didn’t even realize that big orange geometric shape on the new packaging was supposed to be part of a glass until recently. When all you see the front of a bunch of cartons lined up next to each other, it just looks abstract.

I need new glasses and an eye exam. Can anyone recommend a good place in NYC?

I really hate PowerPoint presentations when the presenter doesn’t know how to do them properly. How are you supposed to concentrate on the words someone is saying while simultaneously reading the words that appear on the screen? What’s the point of even using PowerPoint slides in such a situation?

PowerPoint is good for charts and illustrations, things that cannot be conveyed textually. Other than that it’s useless.

The school edition of the musical “RENT” is having trouble getting produced in schools, even though the school edition eliminates the profanity and the simulated sex.

I’m just waiting for “Avenue Q: School Edition.”

This kind of connects to what I was writing about in my previous post. I may have to give another try at reading The Silmarillion.

Since I’m on a Lord of the Rings kick:

One thing I love is the contrast between (1) how enormously comprehensive Tolkien’s universe is and (2) how so many of us are first introduced to it. It makes me think of how things relate to each other in our own universe.

The events of the Lord of the Rings trilogy are just a small portion of the vast timeline of events in Tolkien’s universe. Even Middle-earth itself is only a part of that universe. It was just a few years ago that I tried reading The Silmarillion for the first time, which is essentially Tolkien’s Bible: it contains the creation story of his universe, followed by the stories of other significant events over the course of time, all in exalted language. Tolkien’s universe has an incredibly complex cosmology, which I didn’t even realize until I found the Wikipedia article in that link.

This is the way The Silmarillion begins:

There was Eru, the One, who in Arda is called Ilúvatar; and he made first the Ainur, the Holy Ones, that were the offspring of his thought and they were with him before aught else was made.

Pretty heavy, abstract stuff.

And yet this is the way most of us are introduced to this vast universe of space and time:

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Instead of beginning at the beginning, with these vast cosmological beings at the creation of the universe, we enter Tolkien’s universe obliquely, sideways as it were. Out of all of Tolkien space-time, we zero in on a particular, totally accessible time and place — the comfy home of a hobbit, in a village in the Shire, in a year toward the end of the Third Age.

You enter Tolkien’s world through a simple adventure tale that a child can appreciate, and it slowly grows to encompass an entire cosmos — one you don’t even have to understand (and I sure as hell don’t), or even know about, in order to enjoy the tale. In fact, you can read the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy and not worry at all about the larger cosmological universe in which it all takes place.

I just find this idea very profound. It’s just like how in the vast universe (or multiverse) in which we live, an existence of stars and galaxies and supernovas and black holes, we can zoom in on a place called the Milky Way galaxy, and then in on the solar system, and then planet Earth, and then a city, and then in through a building via a sunny office window (sunny because it’s lit by an insignificant star), where we see an entity called a human being, sitting at a computer typing at a keyboard, worrying about various things that concern him in his life, utterly bound by the flesh of which he’s made and by the five senses that his body has given him. Earthy and crude and mundane and utterly insignificant in a span of several billion years, and yet on the other hand utterly important to himself and to the people in his life.

To a hobbit, elves are mysterious, exalted, wonderful beings — and yet the elves themselves are as but children of the universe.

The scale of Tolkien’s universe reflects the scale of our own, and I love that.

Yesterday was a day off and Matt had to work. I didn’t do much all day, but in the afternoon I had a sudden urge to re-watch “The Fellowship of the Ring.” I hadn’t watched it in a few years and it was time. So I popped disc 1 of the Extended Edition into the DVD player, and except for having to switch discs halfway through (grr), I was transfixed. For nearly four hours I was utterly absorbed in an alternate universe.

Fellowship has always been my favorite book of the trilogy. It’s resonated emotionally for me ever since I was a kid, moreso than the other books.

It begins in the safe, cozy community of Hobbiton, which seems like it has always existed and always will — just as I felt as a child that I had always been a child and hoped that I always would be. Children crave safety and security, and what’s more safe and secure than Hobbiton?

Then Frodo must leave home, which has always been the saddest part of the story for me. I guess I really craved safety and security as a kid. In the books, 17 years pass after Bilbo leaves the Shire and before Frodo must leave. I always cherished that interlude, imagining it as an idyllic time when Frodo could live in his house, in a village among all his friends, without any worries. But then he must go, leaving behind everything he has ever known. Once, when I was a child, I walked to the top of my street, which ended at a busy road. As I turned the corner, leaving my own block to walk along that busy road, I imagined that I was Frodo, forever leaving behind all that he loved. It felt poignant.

Next comes the most exciting, most terrifying part of the story: the four hobbits are on their own without anyone to protect them from the Black Riders. The Black Riders scared the living fucking shit out of me as a kid. I can’t think of anything more viscerally terrifying.

Then Strider shows up and becomes their protector, and eventually they make it to Rivendell — another oasis where I used to wish I could stay forever.

And then the story shifts gears and becomes less resonant for me. The fellowship forms and begins its quest, and the book turns from a tale of terror into a full-blown adventure story. It’s still entertaining and I still love it, but the hobbits are protected by an elf, a dwarf, two strong men and a wizard, so you know everything will turn out okay; where’s the terror?

The next two books of the trilogy are less straightforward and harder to follow, as the group breaks up and people do different things and meet more characters and things get more complicated. But the first book is pretty linear, which might be why I find it more accessible. Also, Fellowship is filled with these lovely oases separated by danger: The Shire, danger, Tom Bombadil’s house, danger, Rivendell, danger, Lothlorien, danger. Every time they arrive at one of those oases, the kid in me wants to stop and stay there forever.

Peter Jackson’s movies make some plot changes that bother me, but I really like the arc of the first film. It seems to traverse so much emotional territory, and the last 20 minutes always move me. Howard Shore’s beautiful score helps.

When I finished watching the movie yesterday, it was 7:30 and dark out. I just sat there and let the credits roll as the music washed over me, and I awoke from my reverie.

Homer commented here that he went to the Social Security Death Index and found out at 387 people who were born on his birthdate have already died. I just looked up my own birthdate and saw that 125 people born on my birthdate have died.

There’s something incredibly depressing about seeing these people’s names and death dates.

Today is the 200th birthday of both Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Isn’t that weird?

Why does thrift mean the practice of managing your money wisely, but a spendthrift is someone who throws money around recklessly? Until recently I thought that spendthrift meant the opposite of what it actually does.

Stupid English language.

Okay, this is totally viral marketing and I’ve totally fallen for it. Bradley Cooper, Justin Long, and Kevin Connolly, male stars of “He’s Just Not That Into You,” enact ten chick-flick clichés that are apparently not in the movie. [via Rebel Prince]

Matt admitted to me last week that he totally kind of wants to see this, and I admitted that I totally kind of want to see it also.

NYC in Legos. But not quite in the way you think. Awesome.

Decorate your own Oval Office with IKEA.

Because every Oval Office needs a grand piano.