Now this looks like a fun meme for Wednesday (vectored from filkerdave and katyhh:
Pick one person on my friends list, and tell me something good about them that you don’t think I know.
Figuring that someone on my friends list might either know this sort of information or have access to someone who does, I thought I’d pass along this query from my friend Jeff. If anyone can help him, please contact him at the address below. Thanks!
My name is Jeff Williams, and I am an English instructor at Wayne Community College in North Carolina. One of the classes I teach involves business writing, and I always try to provide both realistic and interesting writing situations for my students. This fall, I am introducing a new project. The students are going to design a new mall. However, there are problems that I need to address, most importantly my lack of knowledge in this area, and I am hoping some of you might be able to help. In order to build this project, I need general information about a number of subjects:
- Average construction costs for regional and super-regional malls. I do not need specific costs for specific malls.
- Average utility costs for regional and super-regional malls.
- Average operational costs (security, maintenance, upkeep, and other expenses).
- Rent ranges for stores, kiosks, carts, and outparcels.
- Criteria businesses, particularly national chains, use for determining whether or not to locate in a particular mall.
- Hidden items found in a typical mall (office space, security, delivery areas, and physical plants).
I’m also looking for stories about unique items found in malls around the country as well as any public access documents about operating expenses, bond issues for mall construction, etc. Any information any of you could provide would be most appreciated.
I can be reached at jeffwill@waynecc.edu. Thank you once again for any help you can offer!
Almost entirely fiction this week, although I have been dipping in and out of Harlan Ellison’s Watching, a collection of film essays. More on that when I actually finish it.
- Newton’s Cannon by J. Gregory Keyes
This is a book I’ve been trying to read for quite some time, but odd circumstances always seemed to keep me from it. I’m glad I finally got a chance to make it through. Keyes has imagined a rather bizzare alternate history, where Isaac Newton has discovered the secret of alchemy, Louis XIV has achieved immortality through a strange Persian elixir, and young Ben Franklin stumbles upon an international plot of intrigue that threatens to destroy England. There are odd historical and literary figures dropped here and there throughout the novel, and an ending that I absolutely did not expect. There are three more books in the series, and the first installment makes no pretense to standing alone, so I suppose I’ll have to wait until I read the next three to truly evaluate the story. It’s a page turner though, and I enjoyed Keyes’s imaginings a great deal. - Coraline by Neil Gaiman
One of the problems with having fallen out of the habit of reading on a regular basis is that books I would have normally read the moment I bought them lay untouched for months. Such was the case with Neil Gaiman’s delightfully spooky young adult novel Coraline.Coraline is a bright, bored young girl with a broad imagination and loving if inattentive parents and an assortment of weird neighbors. But something mysterious is lurking on the other side of the big door in the living room that opens on a blank wall…or does it? She soon discovers a mirror world on the other side of the door, populated by beings claiming to be her Other Mother and Other Father, and it will take her ingenuity and perseverance to set her life back the way it was.
This is just as wonderful quirky as Gaiman’s best work always did, and my enjoyment of the book was doubled by the fact that, with her peculiar combination of contrary whimsy and earnest practicality, I couldn’t help but picture our heroine as a young nrivkis. 🙂 Highly recommended. Read it to your kids.
- Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold
Another book I had been neglecting, Paladin of Souls is the sequel to Bujold’s fantasy novel The Curse of Chalion. I love the setting and the characters of this world, and I grew to quickly like Ista, the reluctant recipient of the gods’ favours. Bujold’s talent for breathing life into her three dimensional characters is in great evidence here, the dialog is crisp and the plot is a page turner. Of course, the centerpiece of the book, as it was in the previous, is the odd, intricate cosmology of Chalion’s gods. Paladin of Souls is, ultimately, that rarest of all novels: a sequel that is at least the equal of it’s original. I am looking forward to Bujold’s continued efforts on this series.
This is especially for all the poly folks on my friends list:
Dave Coverly’s Speed Bump
it’s all your faults you know. Everyone kept saying that I needed to write in my journal more, an effort I’ve now been sustaining for over a month. But as a result, you now get to be subjected to such banality as “What I had for Lunch”.
While we were out and about yesterday at lunch, eloren and I noticed a newish restaurant on Windward Parkway called Thai Picasso, which billed itself as a Thai-French restaurant. We thought this was intriguing, and we both like Thai food (though I admit to still being woefully undereducated about it, so we figured we’d go give it a try.
The lunch menu was nicely priced, with most of the entrees in the $6 range, with a set of specials up around $10. eloren had the spicy basil shrimp special, while I elected for an appetizer of crunchy fried shrimp and ginger beef. In addition, we each had a bowl of soup, with eloren taking the coconut soup and myself a bowl of Tom Yum soup.
Everything was delicately spiced, without anything being overpowering. The “crunchy friend shrimp” turned out to be jumbo shrimp wrapped in a spring roll cover and flash fried, with a sweet sauce for dipping. The Tom Yum was spiced just enough to give it flavour without ever being overbearing, and the ginger beef was succulent and soft in the mouth, with a delightfully subtle taste.
To finish the meal, we split a piece of tiramisu, since eloren‘s more expensive lunch order came with a complementary piece of cake. It was a wonderfully light and sweet finish to a delightful meal.
If you find yourself in the Windward Parkway area of Alpharetta, give this place a try. I was not disappointed.
Last night after telynor left, we decided to go out and have a dinner out as we didn’t feel like washing any dishes. We ended up at Famous Dave’s Barbecue, where we had a massive plate of food. Upon returning, I walked into the bedroom, where I saw Jenna sitting on the bed obscured by shadows. To my amazement, when I flicked on the light, the shadows didn’t go away!
Further investigation revealed that she had managed to get past the mesh screen protecting the fireplace and was now covered with soot! Our lovely white kitty was now an odd mottled grey!
I think she thinks she’s in trouble. I’m trying hard not to wound her dignity by laughing too hard at her!
It was a pretty quiet weekend here, mostly spent hanging out with telynor and her son G.
Friday night, telynor called and asked if we’d like to have dinner with her and her son. We thought this was a fine idea, and decided to head over to TGI Fridays for a relaxing meal. We had shrimp and ribs and steak and all kinds of goodness, then came back to our place to watch Blazing Saddles, which telynor had never seen.
Saturday, kitanzi and I went over to the Alpharetta YMCA to see what their prices looked like. Definitely reasonable for a family membership, but the setup cost was more than we wanted to do today. They have some nice facilities, though, including a new outdoor pool with a water slide that looks like it’ll be a lot of fun when it’s completed.
Having checked out the amenities, we decided to take a look at the Alpharetta Big Creek Greenway, which is a six mile long nature trail that follows down the flood plain of Big Creek. We entered the trail right around the 5.5 mile mark, and decided to walk to the 4 mile mark and back. This turned out to be just at the limit of our endurance on a bright sunny day, but it was a very pleasant stroll and there was a lot of, er, mobile scenery to appreciate, as lots of folks were out in their shorts on bikes and roller blades. This is definitely a place we intend to revisit often.
We came home and took a nap, then telynor and G. came over again and she prepared us a wonderful dinner of beef Stroganoff. We had intended to go to the Atlanta housefilk, but we were all feeling a bit bushed, so we decided to veg out and watch a few hours of Firefly instead, since telynor and her son haven’t seen it yet. We watched four episodes before deciding that bed was the better part of valour. telynor and G. elected to stay the night, so we all toddled off to dreamland.
The next morning was a lazy day, which consisted mostly of more Firefly, laundry, and conversation. Don’t really have anything more exciting to report, I’m afraid.
So what’s been off my shelf this last week?
- The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire by John Christopher
When I finished The White Mountains a couple of weeks ago, I was somewhat frustrated because I was missing the second book in the trilogy. So I went to abebooks.com and ordered a copy. When it came, I immediately jumped back into the world of Will and Henry and Beanpole as they struggled against the domination of the Tripods.
These are pretty brisk reads, and I must admit that there’s a lot of things that the older reader in me would love to have seen addressed in more detail, and some odd science here and there. But the story is just as good as when I was a kid, and the ending still leaves me with a touch of sadness. I hope that in the end, the people of Earth do manage to get their act together.
- Sir Apropos of Nothing by Peter David
Peter David is one of my favourite people writing in comics, and I had enjoyed some of his previous forays into prose fiction, so I was looking forward to this book. It turned out to be very satisfying, although I wasn’t sure at first if it was going to be. The first quarter of the books concerns itself with our protagonist’s ignoble birth and upbringing, and somewhere in those two hundred pages I began to wonder if David had set out to try and write an engaging fantasy novel without a single likable character in it. Once we catch back up with the present, however (the exposition is told via a lengthy flashback), the story gets seriously underway, and it’s very hard to put down. Despite the fact that Apropos whines too much, you do start to pull for him towards the end, and I commend David for resisting the urge to wrap it up with a cliche happy ending. If you like anti-heroes and atrocious puns, this may be a book you’ll enjoy.
Who’s your favourite anti-hero?
Today was the sort of day that I hate being trapped inside for. For lunch, eloren and I went to Loco’s Deli, and sat out on the patio in the sun, enjoying the nice breeze and 70 degree (F) weather.
Ah, spring. 🙂