• 10:38 Fluffy is sitting next to me intently licking her ass. Good times. #
• 19:01 Here come the thunderstorms #
• 21:02 @reesie: go go go #

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• 13:14 @slowtokyo: the g8 summit is next week in hokkaido. Did someone arrive early? #
• 13:21 Hailstorm...cannot ever recall this happening here in ma #

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Pam and I went down to Newport last weekend to get away and also to meet up with a college roommate of mine who was in town for a wedding.  After a painless one hour drive we checked into our hotel and decided to see some of the city before meeting my friend for dinner.  We had hoped to check out a few off the cottages, but we only had time for The Elms.

The Elms was built in 1901 for Edwin Berwind, who was a coal baron and was inspired by the Château d'Asnières in Asnieres, France.  When you realize that many of Newport's most ritzy estates were build by railroad tycoons like the Vanderbilts, someone getting ridiculously wealthy by mining coal makes a lot of sense.  You have to make all those trains move somehow.   It's interesting that while the Berwind family still owns coal mines, their wealth has diversified by design.  Funds like this were the genesis of the entire venture capital industry.

Anyways, in today's dollars The Elms cost about $22 million.  That for a house that was occupied at best 10 weeks of the year.  The audio tour made an excellent point.  When you're worth hundreds of millions of dollars and there is no such thing as income tax, social security, medicare, etc you can do a whole lot of things with your money.  Like building The Elms.

Unfortunately you are not allowed to take photos inside of all the marble, statues, paintings, etc.  Though they say it's to preserve the artwork, really it's so they can sell books of professionally taken photographs of said artwork.

The grounds were laid out in French style, though unfortunately all the namesake elm trees are dead (bloody Dutch!)
so only the beech trees (which were pretty cool) remain.

Here are some photos, the whole set is here.

The Elms1

The Elms2

The Elms3

From the gardens.

The Elms4

I'm sure that there is some symbolism involving defeated business enemies here...

The Elms5

The Elms7

The Elms6

The Elms8

Cool fountain in the gardens

The Elms9

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We've been getting the kinds of super-intense thunderstorms lately that remind me of my time in North Carolina.  This did as well. 

I didn't realize it was hailing until the wind started blowing the hail into our window. 

Hailstorm

Hailstorm2

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• 10:21 Is Twitter a business tool or a waste of time? I lean towards "neither."

  Http://tinyurl.com/42b68t #

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I saw this on Hapalove's blog and decided to play along just to see how many I'd read.  I'm also going to add another category: "Never heard of it"

By my count I've read 26 of them. 

1. 1922 Ulysses James Joyce (got about 20 pages in, did not have the endurance for more)

2. 1925 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald (loved it)

3. 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce (got about 20 pages in, see above)

4. 1955 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov (loved it)

5. 1932 Brave New World Aldous Huxley (loved it)

6. 1929 The Sound and the Fury William Faulkner (read it, but always found Faulkner long winded for no good reason)

7. 1961 Catch-22 Joseph Heller

8. 1940 Darkness at Noon Arthur Koestler (never heard of it)

9. 1913 Sons and Lovers D. H. Lawrence

10. 1939 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck (loved it)

11. 1947 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry (never heard of it)

12. 1903 The Way of All Flesh Samuel Butler (never heard of it)

13. 1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

14. 1934 I, Claudius Robert Graves

15. 1927 To the Lighthouse Virginia Woolf

16. 1925 An American Tragedy Theodore Dreiser

17. 1940 The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter Carson McCullers

18. 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut

19. 1952 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison (read it, Vox wont' bold it)

20. 1940 Native Son Richard Wright 21.

21. 1959 Henderson the Rain King Saul Bellow (never heard of it)

22. 1934 Appointment in Samarra John O'Hara (never heard of it)

23. 1938 U.S.A. (trilogy) John Dos Passos (never heard of it)

24. 1919 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson (read it in high school)

25. 1924 A Passage to India E. M. Forster

26. 1902 The Wings of the Dove Henry James

27. 1903 The Ambassadors Henry James

28. 1934 Tender Is the Night F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. 1935 Studs Lonigan (trilogy) James T. Farrell (never heard of it)

30. 1915 The Good Soldier Ford Madox Ford (never heard of it)

31. 1945 Animal Farm George Orwell (read in high school. loved it)

32. 1904 The Golden Bowl Henry James

33. 1900 Sister Carrie Theodore Dreiser (read in high school, long winded)

34. 1934 A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh

35. 1930 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner

36. 1946 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren

37. 1927 The Bridge of San Luis Rey Thornton Wilder (read in high school, liked it)

38. 1910 Howards End E. M. Forster

39. 1953 Go Tell It on the Mountain James Baldwin

40. 1948 The Heart of the Matter Graham Greene (never heard of it)

41. 1954 Lord of the Flies William Golding (one of my favorites)

42. 1970 Deliverance James Dickey (great movie, didn't even know it was based on a book)

43. 1951-1975 A Dance to the Music of Time (series) Anthony Powell (never heard of it)

44. 1928 Point Counter Point Aldous Huxley

45. 1926 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway (read in high school)

46. 1907 The Secret Agent Joseph Conrad (read in high school, good book)

47. 1904 Nostromo Joseph Conrad

48. 1915 The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence

49. 1920 Women in Love D. H. Lawrence (read in high school)

50. 1934 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller (read on my own, loved it)

51. 1948 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer

52. 1969 Portnoy's Complaint Philip Roth

53. 1962 Pale Fire Vladimir Nabokov

54. 1932 Light in August William Faulkner (read in high school)

55. 1957 On the Road Jack Kerouac (started on my own, never finished)

56. 1930 The Maltese Falcon Dashiell Hammett

57. 1924-1928 Parade's End Ford Madox Ford (never heard of it)

58. 1920 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton

59. 1911 Zuleika Dobson Max Beerbohm (never heard of it)

60. 1961 The Moviegoer Walker Percy (never heard of it)

61. 1927 Death Comes for the Archbishop Willa Cather

62. 1951 From Here to Eternity James Jones

63. 1957 The Wapshot Chronicle John Cheever

64. 1951 The Catcher in the Rye J. D. Salinger (read in high school, great book)

65. 1962 A Clockwork Orange Anthony Burgess (read in high school, great book)

66. 1915 Of Human Bondage W. Somerset Maugham

67. 1902 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad (read in high school. loved it for being the basis of Apocalypse Now)

68. 1920 Main Street Sinclair Lewis

69. 1905 The House of Mirth Edith Wharton

70. 1957-1960 The Alexandria Quartet Lawrence Durrell (never heard of it)

71. 1929 A High Wind in Jamaica Richard Hughes (never heard of it)

72. 1961 A House for Mr Biswas V. S. Naipaul (never heard of it)

73. 1939 The Day of the Locust Nathanael West (never heard of it)

74 A Farewell To Arms Hemingway

75. 1938 Scoop Evelyn Waugh

76. 1962 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark

77. 1939 Finnegans Wake James Joyce

78. 1901 Kim Rudyard Kipling (read in high school)

79. 1908 A Room with a View E. M. Forster (read in high school)

80. 1945 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh

81. 1953 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow

82. 1971 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner  (never heard of it)

83. 1979 A Bend in the River V. S. Naipaul

84. 1938 The Death of the Heart Elizabeth Bowen (never heard of it)

85. 1900 Lord Jim Joseph Conrad

86. 1975 Ragtime E. L. Doctorow

87. 1908 The Old Wives' Tale Arnold Bennett (never heard of it)

88. 1903 The Call of the Wild Jack London (one of my favorites)

89. 1945 Loving Henry Green

90. 1980 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

91. 1932 Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell

92. 1983 Ironweed William Kennedy

93. 1965 The Magus John Fowles

94. 1966 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys (never heard of it)

95. 1954 Under the Net Iris Murdoch (never heard of it)

96. 1979 Sophie's Choice William Styron (great book)

97. 1949 The Sheltering Sky Paul Bowles

98. 1934 The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain

99. 1955 The Ginger Man J. P. Donleavy (never heard of it)

100. 1918 The Magnificent Ambersons Booth Tarkington (never heard of it)

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• 10:37 Heading to Newport to meet an old college buddy #

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• 17:32 Fluffy now has her own cat safe plant to eat and chew. I have never seen her so excited about anything #
• 17:42 Pam also got Fluffy a can of gourmet cat food which she is devouring. Best kitty day ever! #

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• 17:40 Monsoon rains again. We sure will not be having any water shortages in the near future #

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At some point Metallica needs to learn about this Internet thing and manage it accordingly.

From what I read of them, the reviews were complimentary:

http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/06/metallica-chang.html

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