The other day I had a very leisurely lunch at one of my favorite regular lunchtime haunts, the Aladdin’s in Independence on Rockside Road. With the November issue of “The Atlantic” as my sole companion, I read through four articles and learned about, among other things, former NBA star Kevin Johnson’s run for mayor of Sacramento, the finer points of visiting a Japanese “onsen”, or hot springs, and a bitter Italian liqueur called Fernet Branca. (Read the entire article here.)

Aside from the fact that I learned something new from each one of these articles, I got a distinct pleasure from reading such finely crafted sentences as this one, where author Wayne Curtis describes a walk through the storage room filled with the herbs, roots, and spices that go into making Fernet Branca:

To walk through the room is to reconnoiter a peculiar olfactory geography, crossing from the republic of one aroma into another, with the borderlands between the two sometimes under detente, but often not.

As a writer, I know how much work goes into making a good sentence. So any time I encounter such writing, I’m especially thankful for the intellectual thrill it delivers.

But now that President-Elect Obama has named Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff and the speculation about cabinet appointments has begun, not to mention the meeting today with Bush in the Oval Office, the transition is in full swing. And it occurred to me today that what we’re seeing is a shift from the Texas-centered, oil and gas-based Bush family influence to the Illinois Democratic, Chicago political machine type governance. Of course, that might be oversimplifying, but I’ll be curious to follow the developments in the new Obama White House either way.

Read about the Chicago factor (or lack thereof) here in a post from Frank James on The Swamp.

In the meantime, maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get reacquainted with Chicago’s astute political observer, the late, great Mike Royko.

I’ve got a little something to say about it in this month’s Northern Ohio Live magazine. Check it out.

I, however, will be camped out within the leafy confines of suburbia, watching the Browns beat the Ravens. And if they happen to lose, I can always take a walk.

The point is that Facebook (or Crackbook as I’ve heard some refer to it) can be a wonderful thing. In a little less than 48 hours, I added a few dozen friends, reconnected with family I usually don’t hear from through the normal brick-and-mortar channels (face-to-face, weddings, funerals, christenings, that sort of thing), found new friends of friends, and even reconnected with some old high school friends.

The difference might be the “active” aspect of the whole thing, as opposed to simply sending an email or having to cold call someone on the phone and talk to them. Instead, if you log on and stay on, you see pictures of your connections, know if they’re currently online, and see updates to their profile or their status. This makes it much easier to stay active in each other’s lives, say hello, and simply, well, stay connected.

Since I opened an account, there’s never been a day where I haven’t been surprised by a friend adding me to their list or a cousin dropping me a note. Hell, even Dennis Kucinich has added me as a friend, although I’m sure some lowly staffer somewhere thoroughly vetted me (I am in his district, after all) and only then decided to add me. C’est la vie.

I’ll post some thoughts soon. In the meantime, I’m really curious to see what the Browns are going to do in Jacksonville this afternoon after the bizarre week of Winslow, bruised feelings, and staph (or “staff”) infections.