it’s not that i’m not updating, it’s just that nothing’s happening. just waiting around, working, sleeping, biding time until this weekend when i go back to lost angels to see hmc. but somehow time is standing still, and it just gets longer and longer. it seems like days have become weeks. and everything’s still the same. and i’ve still got that outkast song “hey ya” in my head all the time.
meanwhile, whales are exploding in taiwan.
so hmc got us one of those roomba robot vacuums for xmas, and it finally made it up here so i could try it out at home. it’s pretty cool. once you charge it up (12 hours!), you put it in the middle of the room, choose a room size, and off it goes. it helps to clear out all the clutter, and it really doesn’t like things like power cords (especially thick ones attached to industrial strength power strips) and loose paper, but it does a good job of systematically going around the room and cleaning up. is it better than if you had done it with a regular vacuum? no. is it better than if you didn’t vacuum at all? much. plus, you can just turn it on and go away and let it do its job. it really does a great job of going under the bed or sofas or whatever, places where it’s a pain for you to do it. and plus, the key thing is that i’m no doing it. the robot is.
next step: rosie, and then skynet, and then the matrix. ah well, live it up until then!
so i had something that could have been a bad day yesterday. only it wasn’t.
it started out with putting on my dress shoes, and breaking a shoelace.
and then driving my car to work, i noticed that the steering was noticeably wobbly, quite unlike the normal tight control of my miata. but being late for an appointment, i figured i’d just check it when i got there. but still noticing that something was definitely wrong. and then i started hearing a brump brump brump brump sound. and then feeling a brump brump brump brump sound. and then smelling burning rubber (thank goodness i had the top down), which is never a good smell. so i pull over to the slow lane, and get off at the next exit, and find my rear left tire completely flat and shredded.
so i’m screwed, and i can’t make my meeting.
disaster, right? well, i dunno. i called and told people i couldn’t make it, but was going to dial in instead. i called aaa to come change my tire (ok, i could have done it myself, but if i’m paying for auto club, i should use it if i need it, otherwise what am i paying for?), and then called the local wheel works to see if they had the proper tires to replace my rear ones, which were admittedly on their last legs. they had them in stock, and so i drove over there on the spare, and they threw them on in less than 45 minutes, most of which i spent dialed into the meeting. i already knew i had to replace those rear tires soon anyway, so it wasn’t some big financial surprise.
and the broken shoelace? well, i just put on my other pair of shoes.
my point being that these events could have justified a terrible terrible day, but it just wasn’t. it wasn’t a big deal. maybe it’s just how you take it. or your attitude towards everything. you can make things be really horrible, or you can make things be not so bad.
a lot of times, it’s just up to you.
so i’m going down to lost angels again this weekend, and hmc’s parents are driving michael up to school after winter break, so they’re staying at our place so they don’t have to rent a hotel.
however, this means that i’ve been running around the last couple of days, not just doing the requisite cleaning and such, but making sure that all the stuff you normally don’t think about is no longer in sight. things like contraband, paraphenelia, assorted recreational toys and home appliances, and things like those copies of playboy that are just for educational use. and don’t forget about hiding the porn star snow globes!
what a pain this is. for all of you thinking, “i don’t have these problems when my parents or in-laws come to stay over,” my response to you is, “are you sure you’re having enough fun in your daily activities?”
so for some reason, every few months i get these calls from some hr recruiting firm that keep trying to offer me some fantastic new job opportunity. which is fine and normal, only that it’s a fantastic new job opportunity in the health care industry. let it be known that i’m a tech head, and have not, and likely will never be, in the health care industry. i can’t imagine what list they got my name off of, but they definitely seem to think that i’m some sort of practitioner or something. perhaps it’s my doppleganger they’re looking for?
speaking of which, just after thanksgiving i got a note from the post office that they tried to deliver something for me from amazon.com. however, when i tried to pick it up, on every occasion, they weren’t able to locate the package. after some sleuthing, i figured out that it was a fooly cooly dvd (which, by the way, is a fantastic and incredibly bizzare and crazy anime that everyone should watch immediately) that someone had bought for me off of my amazon.com wishlist. after many repeated phone calls to the local post office “authorities”, they finally fessed up, a month later, that they had no idea what happened to it and they had probably lost it. i was able to wheedle amazon to give me the gift note sent with it, so i could at least thank whomever it was who tried to send it to me.
however, it was from someone named david, who had a phone number that i didn’t recognize, and had some historical reference that sort of described me, not not exactly. “I wonder how it compares emotionally to watching Robotech for the first time on TV in a dorm room in 1985? “ hm, well, i was watching robotech in 1985, but i was still in high school then. and no david that i knew had that phone number.
so i phoned up this mystery david from my past, and fessed up that i didn’t have any idea who he was, but thanks anyway? it turns out that there’s some other ed out there, with my exact same name, and they were positive it had to be their friend ed who had went to ucla, this from the stuff on my wish list, as well as my one list on amazon of dvd’s actually worth owning, which they swore had to be written by him.
but it’s not him. it’s me. isn’t it. i wonder if he’s working in the health care industry?
i baked my first pie today.
not counting the one that wanda and cheryl and i baked, but that one sort of came out funny and runny and we forgot to put any sugar in so it was also a little tart. but not literally.
it certainly took me long enough, but you know, the first time, you can’t quite rush things. after poring over the primer chapters (different kinds of flours, fats, 50 kinds of apples, etc) in carole walters’ great pies and tarts, i finally went out and blindly bought some apples and some fresh flour yesterday. only to come back and realize that i didn’t have any vegetable shortening. or a rolling pin. effort expended, i called it a day and fell asleep.
but today, with the two last items obtained, i bravely started out on my culinary quest, making my “flaky pie pastry #1” by sifting the flour, sugar, and salt, and then working in the butter and crisco (although isn’t that bad? i thought everything hydrogenated is bad for you?) with the very handy pastry blender (which hmc had long ago told me was a very ineffective potato masher, indeed), and then adding water, eventually making two disks of dough.
then came the pie, made from some granny smith apples (good) as well as the kind i randomly picked (bad! bad ed! bad!) at rainbow, which i think were winesap apples, which it turns out seem very similar to red delicious apples, which are not at all good for pies, as they tend to get mushy and are better suited for applesauce. caveat emptor. the thing that took the most time was the peeling, coring and cutting of apples into nice slices. man, what a chore that was. not until i was 2/3rds done did i remember that hmc had received an apple corer/peeler for xmas ‘02, which had never been used and i had in fact stored unopened in the box down in the garage. i ran down and got it, and blam! instantly cored and peeled apples. tools are genius!
ok, so at the end of the day, i ended up with a very respectable looking pie. it looked like a pie, it didn’t collapse, it had a golden brown top (and not burnt edges, thanks to the special edge protector! you know, this is a lot like how i ended up learning to snowboard— having all the gear first, to the point where you’re like, “well, i might as well learn how to use all this crap.”) which was nicely domed. and as for the taste test, it’s really not bad at all. good filling, good taste, crust respectably flaky, although i’m not sure how well the bottom held up, since i don’t have a pie serving thing i end up mashing the bottom trying to serve it with a knife. but all in all, quite acceptable for a first pie ever.
the cats like it too!
one of the useless things i’ve been pondering recently: voip, or voice over ip. basically, it’s using the internet for telephony, so you get a telephone number that you can call using a regular phone, but it actually uses tcpip to ring a phone connected through your dsl or cable modem or whatever. it’s been around for a while, mostly at the corporate level, but now it’s really making inroads and looks to be viable for the consumer market.
the big player in this seems to be vonage, who is already offering service that you hook up through your broadband connection, with QoS (quality of service) to ensure that your porn downloading doesn’t mess up your sex chat line phone calls at the same time. $35/month for flat rate service nationwide and canada, compared to like $75 for comparable service through the phone company. or $25/month + 500 minutes of long distance. plus free features like call waiting, caller id, voice mail, etc. and due to the recent telephone portability act, they can even transfer your phone so you can keep your number.
very tempting, although i guess still in theory for now. because they don’t yet support my area for keeping my number, which is nostalgically important to me. i guess it’s just as well, preventing me from mucking things up for no good reason.
it’s also interesting because the fcc is still trying to figure out what to do with it, and if they want (and how) to regulate it. who knows? you could sign up for this and then they could impose regulations and really mess things up.
so close: silly and stylish, but somehow entertaining. extra point for the gratuitous lesbian kiss at the end, and also for the slo-mo hair anytime something’s about to happen.
princess blade: almost completely a waste of time.
the triplets of belleville: this is pretty great. wild and silly, and beautifully odd. leaves you smiling. go see it now!
tuvalu: no, not that island country that sells out its domain name (.tv) so stupid shows can have their own websites. well, ok, it is the same country, but it’s not about that at all. it’s a funny little film about a swimming pool, with a very jeunet-carot feel, and very wet like delicatessen or city of lost children. also quite a sight.
back from new york. i can’t believe that it was warmer there than it is here. a couple of nights ago, i’m walking around manhattan at 3am, and it’s 57 degrees outside. the first time i actually see my breath is waiting on the bart platform at SFO. to think i hauled my parka all the way out there, only to leave it in my suitcase the whole time (compressed into a little orange tube, thanks to those great pack-it compressor bags). so despite clear plans to the contrary, we never quite switched over to eastern standard time. we were sort of good one day, but then new year’s eve reset us back, and for all the rest of the days hmc couldn’t get up before 10am and just got worse and worse every day. we ended up rebranding it a “evening” trip to ny, which is fine, but which means you can’t really go see museums or the such. although we did manage to go to the american museum of natural history. which is cool, but on the other hand, what’s the big deal? all these stuffed animals in dioramas: wouldn’t it be better just to go to the aquarium and see things live? although that hall of biodiversity is actually way cool. and that hayden sphere is pretty cool. ok, so it’s worth seeing. there’s also this sonic light show with tracks mixed by moby, but we didn’t see it.
sunday was marked by getting up late, packing and cleaning, and then a quick dash to the shoe stores to hit the sales. hmc picked up these way cool pair of futuristic leather boxing shoes. and then trying to get back to the apartment to get to the airport in time was a little bit of a thrill, but all turned out ok.
on the flight back home, i saw matchstick men, which was incredibly mediocre. possibly offensively so.
it was so bad that the book that i had been reading, dave eggers’ you must know our velocity! felt annoying and mediocre as well, where it hadn’t before. is it possible that something so bad contaminates everything else around you, like a bad taste in your aesthetic? but shouldn’t it work the other way, if it’s that bad, when you go back to something not bad, it should clearly be better?
so there’s this really hot musical currently on broadway. it involves puppets. puppets that sing. and have some sex. or something. it’s called avenue q.
we didn’t go see this.
instead, we went to see the strangest thing that resembled this. it was way off off off broadway. it involved puppets. puppets that sing. some songs were about sex. and being pirates. it was part five in the ongoing saga of the pyrate puppetship jollyship the whiz-bang. it was amusing in parts and certainly in concept, but not quite funny enough. but it did have some good parts. and it was cheap. and we could get in. and they served beer.
we went to jo’s nye party, which came out of nowhere when we decided to come out here for the holiday, and it actually ended up quite a little turn out, with about 50-60 people showing up throughout the night. and just before the year ended, someone ended up making a marriage proposal to fulfill their resolution (she said yes). very exciting! see? there is hope for all of your january health club-joiners.
originally, we were going to stay in jo and suj’s apartment on the fold out couch, but instead we only spent the first night there, having found a studio to sublet for the rest of the week on the vacation rentals section of ny craigslist. thank goodness, too, because that allowed us to go home and go to bed, without having to wait until the party broke up (never) or the bollywood movies to end (also never). it’s actually really nice, a studio with a loft bed, bare brick wall, and even washer and dryer, over in the now fashionable meatpacking district. just across town from jo on the L, so pretty convenient as well. it was also extra cheap ($75/day) because we had to look after a cat named dill, who is very sweet as well, and in fact i’m glad to have a cat around.
new year’s day evening we ended up only energetic enough for a movie, and tragically saw tom cruise’s the last samurai, which absolutely should be avoided at all costs. ok, there was one good fight scene with the ninjas, but everything else was pretty horrible. the script was terrible, the dialogue was terrible, the concept was terrible, and it was two hours and twenty minutes too long. it did, however, have the asian orlando bloom in it, who also did some hair tossing while shooting arrows as well. i could say some more denigrating things about this movie, but that would require me to try and recall some of it, and instead i’ve been trying to erase it from my memory.