delights

I've been watching reruns of Cheers lately, and I've been repeatedly surprised and delighted by the guest stars and character actors; some are early appearances by actors who have a few years to go before their big break, others are Broadway actors making occasional TV appearances.

I have a collection of bird calls in my iTunes library (the Stokes Field Guide to Bird Songs), and I love to include those tracks in my random playlists.

The other day I was listening to some songs, and the recording of king eiders and common eiders came up.

It was fabulous.

The recordings at Cornell Lab's All About Birds aren't quite the same, but they're still wonderful:

I was so lucky to get to see the latest Wim Wenders film recently: Perfect Days.

I love Wings of Desire,  and so many of his other films are on my list, especially Alice in the Cities.

But I'd seen the trailer for Perfect Days, and I was really looking forward to it.

I just loved it.

As with so many things I love, it inspired me to go find out more about some of the things it showed me - for example:

I have this memory -

I've had this memory for years:

I remember a review in Musician magazine about the first Crowded House album (and so the only Crowded House album). I remember reading that review. I remember it saying, basically, "You should buy this album." The album was that good.

So I did. I bought it.

I've been reading Lost Japan and really enjoying learning about the places the author (Alex Kerr) has lived and all the ways he's experienced his life in Japan.

I especially enjoyed reading about his home on the grounds of Tenmangu Shrine ... and it occurred to me that I could easily look up the town and the shrine, to see if there were any photos of the place, and the grounds, which sound enchanting.

Reading some old Ask MetaFilter questions about podcasts, I found several recommendations for New Books Network, which is a huge consortium of podcasts featuring author interviews: "Covering 100+ subjects, disciplines, and genres, we publish 70 to 100 episodes every week."

Here are some of the sites I'm visiting the most this month:

Kwiziq Spanish and Kwiziq French

I don't do a lot of the quizzes (although I could be doing more than I am, I should do that), but I find the grammar explanations and the example sentences really helpful. Some sites have example sentences that seem like things that no one would ever say, or that don't really illustrate the grammar point very well; Kwiziq does a really good job here.

I came across this great comment by dutchrick over at MetaFilter recently:

I was watching one of my favorite Explore webcams, the Africam Tau cam, when I saw these amazing tall white birds with long, thick, yellow beaks.

They reminded me of Garfield Goose.

Board Game Geek is a website, database, and forum covering "not only board games but also dice games, card games, tile-laying games, and games of dexterity." It's a remarkable achievement - impressively thorough and detailed. Each game lists facts about the game - how many players, average playing time, age range, game designer and other credits, alternate versions and expansion options - along with community input including ratings, comments, and player reviews, both written and video. There are extensive photo galleries, which are wonderful ways to get a sense of each game.