zzz. zzz?

it is that boring week between christmas and new year's when no one is doing anything. and no one is in the office. i believe, if nothing else, i shall take a half-day on friday.

on the other hand, it's only boring here. halfway round the world, there are (at last count) probably 100,000 people dead or dying. that's an amazingly depressing number. of course, we can help, but donating a few dollars or some clothes still doesn't help your mind wrap itself around the whole thing.

i wonder if anyone has yet started a donation fund for creating a tracking system, similar to what the u.s., japan, australia and other maintain in the pacific ocean. we can help now, but even better, we can help stop it from happening again.

what the...?

as of 2:14pm, the NEXRAD at the NWS station in mount holly, nj, appears to be severely fucked up.

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/radar/latest/DS.p19r0/si.kdix.shtml

if it's not by the time you read this, well...i have a screencap of it

stop mocking me.

sick again. stupid viruses.

(and no, it's not "virii." if anything, it ought to be "viri" because it's "virus" not "virius." but "viri" is already the plural of "vir" which means "man" (c.f. virile). i don't think "virus" is a true latin word anyway, so the normal declension rules don't apply to it anyway. therefore, viruses :P ;)

coffee.

you know it's time to get up when you're dreaming about coffee *grin*

and merry christmas, everyone.

when life imitates art.

today is the last day the office is open for the week. it's starting to feel like i'm stuck in a dilbert cartoon.

we email our client: "if you combine this, this, and this subcommand, the processing is impossible."

client: "the end customer has promised not to do that."

apparently it escaped their attention that the code still needs to do something.

and somehow it escaped my attention that yesterday was the solstice. whee! soon i will not have to walk home in the dark.

brrrrrrrrr. again.

dammit. it's 12F outside with a windchill of -6F (that's -11 and -21 for you weird metric types). i haven't had to put up with weather like this since i left the university of hoth :P

oh well. they say it's supposed to warm up on wednesday and then rain. at least it snowed last night. bitter cold sucks, but bitter cold without snow just feels utterly pointless.

today is a big, floppy sweater day.

we had a party last night. i made too much food, but people ate it anyway. the spring rolls were an unexpected success, although most of the spinach-yoghurt dip went down the garbage disposal. but people ate, and drank, and enjoyed the fire which unaccountably smoked into the room before deciding to decorously use its flue (and yes, before you ask, it was open).

but today there are dishes to be done, and the house smells like smoke, and there's no sun at all because it's supposed to rain and then snow.

mmm...big, floppy sweaters.

awwww.

maybe it's because he's done it so often in his movies, but i don't find this at all hard to picture.

actually, it's kind of cute :) i mean, once you get over the whole life-in-danger thing.

keep running.

so we're having the company christmas lunch today at 11:30am. which, except for being dreadfully early for lunch, is not all that bad.

then my boss sticks his head into my office and says, "we're having a presentation before lunch." and i'm like...ok, a presentation. and then i hear someone say, "we're doing team-building today!"

>_<

it's that time of year again.

dammit.

went to the doctor last night, finally. "upper respiratory infection"; "pharyngitis, acute." oh well. antibiotics are incoming. in the meantime, i am continuing to inhale ibuprofin and cough drops.

fire.

we tried out our fireplace for the first time last night. mmm...fire. it works very nicely. the chimney draws properly, and the fireplace has a circulation vent around it to get more heat into the house. and fire is snuggly.

however, apprarently after it cools off, the cat likes climbing inside, finding pieces of not-burnt-to-powder wood (charcoal?), and hiding them around the house. now he's got soot all over his paws. and of course, the fur on his legs is white. stoopid cat.

comfort reading

Murder Must Advertise

it's a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery. and i'm sick and it's a good one. now if only the cat would stop chewing on it. or sitting on it. stupid cat.

well, that sucks.

i appear to be getting sick. i hate that getting-sick stage where gradually, over the course of several hours, you start feeling more and more like crap. i my body would just get sick and get it over with. phbt.

this is why i like cats.

i went to get my hair cut last night, and the owner of the salon has a dog. i think it's some kind of bulldog. anyway, it's one of those dogs whose face is so squished in it can't breathe properly. but he's very friendly. the owner has let him run around the salon since he was a puppy, so he's all used to seeing lots of people.

so he comes up to me, and i'm like, "aw, it's the dog." and i'm not sure what to do with it, so i try to pet it between the ears. and he must like that, because the next thing i know, my jeans are being drooled on. and it's not just dog slime, it's mixed with bits of food or something. *ahem* EW. they were very nice about it, and they gave me a towel to wipe my jeans off, but...ew. and it's on my jacket too.

i don't think my cat has ever slobbered on me. i've never had to stuff my clothes in the wash after i've met a cat, even for the first time (this wasn't the first time i'd met the dog, but when you only see an animal every 3 or 4 months, you don't really expect them to remember you). oh well. at least he didn't pee on me.

happy hannukah.

hanukkah. hanuka. channuka. chanukkah. and so forth. i can't remember how it's actually spelled in hebrew or that might help the transliteration.

anyway. it starts tonight. mmm...latkes.

current reading.

Sunshine

by Robin McKinley

recommended. vampires and cinnamon rolls *grin* also, Neil Gaiman apparently liked it, and while his taste is not entirely aligned with mine (*cough*PerdidoStreetStation*cough*) it's generally reliable.

information wants to be free!

in a seemingly rare instance given our current government, the NOAA has just adopted a policy of information dissemination that continues to preserve its excellent weather, environmental and research information being provided to the general public for free, and also using open-standards-based technology.

the NOAA had designated the first six months of this year as a period for public comment. and it appears they overwhelmingly received comments that supported their continued information distribution to the public. interestingly enough, there is a rumour going around in the /. threads that if you actually read through all 1649 comments, several were a form letter from accuweather employees which claims that the NOAA should distribute its information to commercial entities first. which is very, very interesting, because the NWS provides, for free, NEXRAD updates at 7-10 minute intervals on average, and closer to 5 minute intervals when the area is experiencing precipitation. accuweather.com makes you pay for any updates more frequently than 15 minutes. hmmmmmm.

i am extremely happy that the NOAA has chosen such a policy. not only am i completely addicted to their site (ya think? :) but i'm entirely relieved to see a federal agency under the bush administration choose explicit public good and public service over catering to business interests. not only that, but it's an agency which is actively engaged in environmental research, and we've all seen what the bush administration does with that.

muzak and real people.

i have had it proven to me once again that any amount of muzak (even christmas muzak) is worth it to talk to a Real Person.

i have a thursday-through-sunday subscription to one of philadelphia's major newspapers (because i want the sunday paper and thursday for the Food section, hehehe). i signed up for the subscription 2 weeks ago online. that week, i got all 4 papers. last week i only got the sunday paper. i thought, well, maybe because it was thanksgiving, you know? and i never woke up early enough to call them and complain. but then today, thursday, there was no paper again. so i called the complaint number within the deadline this time (10am), and went through the automated system and asked for a re-delivery.

then i thought, wait, what if their database screwed up, and i'm actually in the system as having a sunday-only subscription (they have several options). so i called back and listened through 10 minutes of distressing muzak until i got to talk to a real person. he confirmed that i had a thursday-through-sunday subscription, and not only that, he credited my account for the missed papers! woo, etc. sitting through that muzak assault was worth it.

more strange effects of technology.

i've started getting these phishing spam emails. so far they've been "Account Violate the User Agreement" (sic) and "Account Violate the User Agreement Second Notice" (sic). the body of the text is very threatening. it says if i don't update my user information, my account will be suspended and then terminated. and, while my account is under suspension, i'm not allowed to sign up with a new account.

now, you can just look a the subject line and go "pfft. spam." but i can see how people would read the body of the email, and go "ack!" and, of course, i'm paranoid, and i'm like, "did they somehow find something about me?" because like practically everyone else on the planet, i have, in the past, used ebay.

then, of course, i kick myself in the back of the head and say, "why do you care? you don't have an ebay account!" that's what very trusting friends are for ;)

harry potter.

while my sister (who, for reference, just got her B.Sc. in biology) was down for the thanksgiving break, she bought the 5th harry potter book on tape for her to listen to on the 5-hour drive back from philadelphia to rochester. as we were driving home from the mall, she insisted we listen to it. just listening to the opening snippet made me finally realize what i don't like about harry potter.

now, there are, apparently, lots of reasons to not like harry potter. the web is full of sites by "hardcore" sf/f fans who won't get within 10 feet of a harry potter book. i'm not really interested in hearing why j.k. rowling sucks because she doesn't follow directly in JRRT's footsteps (and trying to do that often gives you even worse results, c.f. robert jordan *shudder*).

i can also see what's good about harry potter. she's stripped out a lot of the sex and violence and highfalutin philosophy and complicated language that often accompanies fantasy. she's made the fantasy genre completely accessable to the mainstream reader. and as a fantasy fan, i can't say but that's a good thing. the more it gets demystified, and the less things like "using futhork runes" ends up on the ADL website are good things by me (adl.org is a general anti-racism and specifically anti-anti-semitism website. at one point in 1999 or so, they added the futhork runes to their list of signs of white supremicist activity. they were then inundated by hordes of emails from fantasy fans, pointing out that JRRT, among others, used the futhork in his book The Hobbit, and they were needlessly lumping a whole genre of literature in with some admittedly disgusting activity. 3 days later, they took it down).

no, what bugs me about harry potter is her apparent resistance to any tendency to actually develop the characters of harry's muggle family. now, admittedly, making them caricatures makes them easy to hate. but isn't that a little immature? why not make them fully 3-dimensional characters, to be pitied instead of mocked? what harm could that possibly do to the story? actually, i think it would make it better. they're small, close-minded people who are missing any family connection to harry potter. frankly, i think that's sad. instead of giving them trite dialogue, dialogue that can be predicted even if you haven't read the book, why not make them real people? as long as you're going to use them as a framing device for every single bloody book, don't make them a torture to read, please.

now what?

it's funny, for the last 4 weeks, i've been consumed by the pressure of NaNoWriMo. i have to say, i never thought i'd make it my first year, much less make it early. i've never written anything that long before this. now that the pressure's off, i don't know what to do.

finish it, i guess. i've never finished any work of fiction either.

phrnglff.

50,351 words. holy fucking shit.

my cat hates my NaNo.

he likes sitting on my lap, see. and he has determined that when i'm typing, i'm not playing with him. so he has taken to sitting on my lap, and then either pushing my keyboard away, or laying his head on my hands so i can't move them. he's a spoiled brat.

also, he likes to chase the mouse cursor around on the screen.

happy thanksgiving.

happy thanksgiving!

all my canadian readers can pretend i said this a month and a half ago ;)

well, that was short-lived.

apparently, my quest to solve the murder mystery on *ahem* "ABC's hot new show 'Desperate Housewives'" has been enthusiastically derailed. i don't think i've watched the show in 3 weeks now. apparently, i just don't have the structure in my life to be able to remember to watch a 1 hour tv show once a week. either that, or i'm just entirely out of the habit of watching tv. maybe i'll download all the episodes and watch them on my own time. it's cheaper than a tivo, heh. i wonder if nano has been part of it...i've been so far behind on weekends that by sunday night, i'm rushing to catch up (still about 2000 words behind right now...supposed to hit 40,000 by the end of today). also, the fact that my partner doesn't like the show, and they introduced a really annoying character made me kind of lose interest.

oh well. next victim: House,MD on Fox. i think yesterday was the second episode. whoops. http://www.fox.com/house says it's on tuesday nights at 9pm. dammit. at least we both like this one :P

oog.

this weekend was a waste as far as writing is concerned. i am now days behind. i think we're having leftovers for dinner tonight. if we have dinner. the kitchen is an utter wreck.

getting drunk both saturday and sunday nights probably didn't help *grin* sunday night we celebrated our anniversary and buying the house, but, as my father says, you never need to go looking for reasons to open a bottle of champagne. however, what emerged was a vision for remodelling the whole condo. that is, you know, if we had a couple thousand dollars just lying around. which we don't, having sunk a fair amount into our down payment. eh. it's something to think about, at least. sober, for once ;)

in other news, i only have to work 3 days this week, so that's good. yay for holidays and stuff.

i crave attention.

non-blogger.com members can now comment on this blog.

sorry about that. i had never really thought about it, and the i realized that i hate it when other sites (evite.com, i'm looking at you) insist you sign up to comment or reply or whatever. so. you may now comment with your privacy intact. assuming you see anything here worth commenting on ;)

whaddya know.

it turns out someone did take my phone last night. they thought it was someone else's. how you mistake an incredibly un-cool blocky nokia (no colorscreen! no camera!) for someone's sparkly silver clamshell is beyond me. but at least we know where it is now.

strange effects of technology.

i can't find my cellphone this morning. this is strange, because i left it on my desk last night. when i tried to call it, it rang less than it should have before dumping me to my own voicemail. which is equally strange because it had a nearly fully charged battery. so it's either under something where it can't get reception, or someone took it last night (a thought i don't really like to consider, because everyone who was over last night was a friend).

the strange thing is, i've only had a cellphone for a few years, now. i used to walk quite far, alone, through a city without one, and i never felt the lack. but now, faced with walking a mile and a half through the suburbs in the near-dark without one, i am feeling distressingly paranoid. i have quite come to rely on it as a sort of safety blanket.

i wonder where my phone is.

whee!

i passed the 25,000 word mark! halfway there and only one day behind.

new sneakers.

one thing i do have to give these shoes, while they may look like silly little mesh slippers, they're bouncy as hell.

*boing*

call the fashion police.

what the hell has convinced shoe manufacturers that walking sneakers should only be made in white?? you're walking in them, for fuck's sake! one assumes, if you're walking, you know, you might be walking on the ground? where there is dirt? geez.

plus, white shoes simply don't go with a thing in my wardrobe.

on the other hand, they're comfortable, and i appear to have no recurrance of the shin splints i was suffering last week.

brrrrrrr!

so i'm up in northern NJ today, with my mother's family. we all got up early to watch my cousing play his first playoff football game for the post-season. football is even harder to make sense of when all you can see are the refs making weird hand motions for no apparent reason. and then in the fourth quarter, someone on the opposing team was laid out and they called the ambulance. that was when some of us went home.

%$*&% #$&% $*@%(*$#ING $%@&#$ it was cold on those bleachers! coldcoldcold. i had my hood up, my scarf wrapped around my face (the ninja elf returned!), gloveses, and i was still freezing. i put on an extra jacket my aunt had brought to sit on (but nobody sat because there was ice on the seats) and i was still cold! bitter, bitter wind. brr! the things you put up with for your family.

oh, and my cousin's team won.

ow.

blister.

wizard needs new sneakers.

test.

this is only a test.

brr.

we had our first real frost this morning. it was still cold enough while i was walking to work for the sun to be up, but the frost was still glistening on leaves, grass, and cars.

i wore my heavy coat, but said, "aww, there's no wind. i don't have to wrap my scarf around my face." haha. cars make wind as they go by. by the time i was halfway to work, i was convinced my earlobes were going to freeze and fall off. of course, my body was sweating. that made for an interesting contrast.

in other news, i am 4000 words behind for NaNoWriMo. *dies*

woo, and stuff.

posting from my bed. hahahaha.

and the cat's over there asleep. he's going to be very unhappy when i try to explain that it's my bed, and no, he can't spend the night there.

well, finally.

we have internet at home. woo.

paradoxically, it's cheaper to combine basic cable with internet than it is to get cable internet alone. so i guess we have tv too.

5 years, at least.

yay? ugh? i'm not sure. moved into our first house this weekend. well, condo, really, but it's 2 floors and we own it. no more renting, yay! signed half our lives away, ugh. on the plus side, though, everything went smoothly at settlement. no interest rate surprises, and our realtor very nicely over-estimated our closing costs, so we walked out with a cheque. made out to us(!) well, 2 cheques, actually. very exciting.

we vacuumed before we moved in. we need to vacuum again. dust, and dust, and more dust. my goodness. the cat is going to freak out again. we took the vacuum cleaner out of the closet last night, didn't even use it, and he darted to the far side of the house and curled up in a little ball.

on the whole, though, for 3 days of moving, everything went pretty smoothly.

unexpected setbacks:
- we don't have a trash can. uhm, whoops.
- the cat had never seen stairs before. the first time someone came down the stairs, his fur puffed up to twice its size and he ran and hid in the kitchen. this was less than ideal, as his litterbox was going upstairs. he's acclimated now. he's even discovered he can stop half way up, instead of tearing up or down at top speed.
- all the dishes, glasses, pots and pans, etc had been packed in newspaper. this necessitated several runs in the dishwasher to clean everything. i don't want to see our first water bill >_<
- we had minimal food. which is to say, we had spices, tea, oils, and alcohol. thank fuck for parents ;)
- the cable tech never came despite being scheduled. we still don't have internet access at home.

on the good side:
- arcade is taking the whole week off work, so many little things will be ironed out, and much shopping will be done.
- the cat is extremely happy with his situation now. less puffy tail, more purring.
- the cable company is going to pay our first month of internet because their tech never showed up.
- it's our own house.
- we have an attic. yay for storage.
- i can walk to work. this is much extremely better than spending an hour breathing exhaust.
- we don't have to do this again for another 5 years, at least.

aha!

this was actually a pretty neat article. it tells us who to blame for neat things like cell phones, credit ratings and venture captial ;)

USATODAY.com - Innovators helped shape America

on a lighter note.

i'm not a satanist, i'm just in research!

http://www.usatoday.com/life/lifestyle/2004-11-02-ancient-foods_x.htm

i'm sorry.

i did tell myself i wouldn't get political on this blog. and indeed, i think i showed admirable restraint throughout the campaign. but now...i don't know. i'm just depressed. i'm depressed that we've elected a president who only sees black and white. i'm depressed that we'ev elected a president who misuses his power, one who trades on fear, one who uses a personal grudge as an excuse to destroy the lives of, at the very least, hundreds of thousands of people, one who wants to destory the carefully balanced government that some very, very intelligent men set up two-hundred-some years ago. a president who is apparently so ignorant as to how the government in this country works that he thinks he needs a consitutional ammendment to define civil marraige. i'm depressed that we have a majority in this country that is not only easily distractable but is so damn scared.

i can't stand the thought of another 4 years, or more, of destruction of due process, customer (consumer) rights, of a further widening between "rich" and "poor"...of simple, stupid things that are so telling once you pile them up in a heap, like viagra being covered by medicaid/care, but birth control isn't.

i'm not interested in blaming anyone or anything, for once in my life, i don't care about the root cause of something. i'm just feeling...depressed right now. helpless. i went out and voted yesterday. PA gave kerry all our 21 electoral votes. and now what? who knows.

i think, though, i'm most depressed that Tom Daschle, who is probably one of the best and smartest men in the u.s. government right now, was voted out in favour of a candidate who had to be ordered by a judge to stop following native americans back to their reservations from the polls and writing down their license plates.

this is why i love the net.

we have a subscription to USA Today here in the office, and sometimes i check it out online because it's easier than waiting for my co-workers to put it back when they're done with it. so i go visit today, and i check out the "Money" section.

headline: Wells Fargo Customer Data Stolen

right next to a Wells Fargo credit "Apply Now!" ad. hee.

just a hunch, but i think their clickthrough rate might be a little lower today.

time to panic, i think.

for all intents and purposes, there are 3 days left. we still need homeowner's insurance.

oh, and a fridge. a fridge would be good too.

yay

i have a plot! i have a main character! i have conflict!

i'm still so screwed ;)

NaNoWriMo

i know i said i wouldn't blog my novel, but i'll probably bitch about it a lot.

like right now. i don't even have a main character yet. dammit >_< i do have a basic plot though.

better late than never.

although i do feel sorry for the poor kitties.

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Town pardons executed "witches"

damn you, blogger.

i noticed this afternoon that blogger is having a NaNoWriMo gimmick they're calling NaNoBlogMo, which is very cute. and i got interested, and i followed their link to the NaNoWriMo site, and...i signed up >_<

i don't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting 50,000 words written in the month of november, seeing as i have a full-time job, i'm moving on the 5th (and 6th and 7th and...). but i liked their reasons. especially this one:

Can anyone participate in NaNoWriMo?
No. People who take their writing (and themselves) very seriously should probably go elsewhere. Everyone else, though, is warmly welcomed.

*grins*

and i need something to do. i feel like my brain is atrophying. early this year, i actually started writing, but my surgery put a quick end to that. so i'll use this as an excuse to try again. also, they put the emphasis on "quantity, not quality." it's very easy to get defeated by too-high standards. so i'm not going to be able to worry about stupidity or awkward prose, i'm just going to write it out and leave it at that. maybe i'll edit it into something more publicly digestable when i'm finished. if i finish.

and yes, that mean's i'm not going to be part of NaNoBlogMo. i'm sure you're all heartbroken. wish me luck anyway? ^_^

milestone.

almost literally. the golf ticked over 100,000 miles this morning on the way to work. and we figured it's just about exactly 3 years since we bought it. what do you get a car for its birthday? :)

business practises.

it finally happened. the long-awaited consolidation of the u.s. cellular market has begun. it ends when you decide, and we both drink. er. for more immediate web-type coverage, go check slashdot ;)

i have to say, i've been pretty happy with my cingular service. scanning the posts on /. it appears to be about 50/50, depending where you live. verizon around here sucks ass. and their customer service sucks ass. and sprint sucks ass. ever since t-mobile became t-mobile (i.e. when Deutsche Telekom bought out voicestream), they've been getting better. if i switched, i'd switch to them, but...ya know, my calls connect, my voicemail works, and i get reception. what else do i need, really?

that's not to say it's been all perfect; i've had my share of billing problems with cingular, but they've always been very nice and polite, and quick to answer my questions and resolve any problem. as an added bonus, their call center is in oklahoma instead of india.

probably if i was an AT&T customer, i'd be more concerned, but all i'm really curious about is: will they keep att's "go phone" plans? no credit check and no contract sounded like a phenomenal deal to me. i almost switched last september when my free phone offer came from cingular (every 2 years, they give you a free phone, but it usually involves a plan "upgrade"), but even back then i heard cingular was going to buy at&t wireless, so i figured to hell with it.

well, well. it ought to be interesting to watch, at least.

why i'm not in marketing

so Levi's is trying to re-awaken interest in their classic "red tab" line of jeans. instead of using a creepy mannequin, i thought they should use Underworld.

"and here comes another god/ here comes another god/ like a buffalo thunder/ with a smell of sugar/ and a velvet tongue/ and designer voodoo/ and i got phone sex to see me through the emptiness in my 501s/ freeze-dried with a new religion/ and my teeth stuffed back in my head."

hmm. maybe not ;)

addictions.

things i am addicted to:

1. coffee. well. caffeine of any kind.

2. the new ABC show "Desperate Housewives." although articles like this make me a little less ashamed: CNN.com - Commentary: Why 'Housewives' is thriving - Oct 25, 2004

3. yoplait nouriche yoghurt smoothies. i drink 3 a week. at least. you can't let them get warm, but they're fortified with more vitamins and minerals than i knew existed. panthotenic acid? biotin?

4. cigarettes? well, maybe. i'm one of those people who says, "i can quit anytime i want, i just don't want to yet."

5. www.weather.gov and its parent noaa site. especially image archives.

6. watching mortgage rates, even though we've already locked. and settlement is in 11 days anyway. and articles like this: USA TODAY - Existing home sales surge in September

7. car reviews. i don't know why! this one is most puzzling. but i can't stop reading about all the new features and technology and marketing gimmicks behind new cars. i mean, cars i don't even care about otherwise like minivans.

i can't think of any more right now. and i haven't included little OCD habits, because i don't think they quite count as addictions.

creativity.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Sex pledges to boost US vote turnout

it's creative at least, you have to give them that. although it could cause problems for those of us in relationships with non-citizens. does that mean john kerry can't have sex with his wife? i can't remember if teresa heinz kerry ever acquired u.s. citizenship. i guess she must have since her husband is running for president, after all.

kibble.

after 3 weeks, the cat is finally eating normally. and, of course, we move in another 3 weeks, which means he'll get all upset again. poor kitty.

when we got him, i guess we didn't think we'd be moving this year. but mortgage rates stayed low, and house prices are skyrocketing, and the general advice we got was either buy now, or wait five years for rates and prices to settle down and normalize. since the fed is raising rates, it meant by this time next year or in two years, probably mortgage rates would also be up, but property prices still wouldn't have come down. a double whammy, as they say. then, of course, we found this place, and got stuck with a 6 week interval between our apartment lease ending and being able to make settlement on the house. and we jumped at it, because we were one of four offers made within 24 hours of it going on the market. we'd already lost one bid by that time.

*sigh* the poor cat. felines and financials apparently don't mix. oh well. one of the reasons we picked him at the shelter is because he was, in fact, a very assertive and friendly cat, right from the start. we spoil him to death, too. moral of the story is: if you're going to buy a house in a seller's market, make sure you have a confident and well-adjusted pet. or just wait until after you move to get one :)

bad timing.

so, we had cable in our apartment, and we actually got the food network, but my parents don't have cable. *sniffle* not that i watch that much tv, but i'd like to see this. anyone want to record it for me? ;)

CNN.com - John Cleese's guide to wine - Oct 18, 2004

grumble.

bad mood this morning.

and have i complained about how much i hate my job recently? i really hate my job.

at least i'm old enough (mature enough? have enough good taste?) not to do something ridiculous, like play "Karma Police" on repeat for 5 hours.

*ponders* also because the only Radiohead album i own is Kid A because it's the only good one.

i still hate my job, though.

current reading.

Weaveworld

by Clive Barker

birthday gift.

obit.

somehow, i missed that Jaques Derrida died last friday from pancreatic cancer. very sad. the last of the 20th c french philosophers.

work.

you know the rest of your life is boring when the high point of your week is discovering that Mozilla Mail handles S/MIME certificates and encryption properly.

current reading.

Going Postal

by Terry Pratchett

i go through these too fast. they're fun, though.

shoes?

USATODAY.com - Slip into the sole of yesterday, ease of today

ironic shoes. good lord.

current reading.

Monstrous Regiment

by Terry Pratchett.

borrowed from a friend. i missed The Last Hero, apparently. i shall have to see if i can snag it at some point.

justifications.

it's really very amusing to watch people try to justify their racism. well, amusing and kind of depressing at the same time.

"oh, i would just feel uncomfortable letting my child marry someone...different."
as if single-race (monoracial?) marriages never break up because of "irreconcilable differences." and race makes it impossible to compromise. yes, indeed.

"but the children won't know who they are!"
yes, because fitting into little checkboxes of race is so important. and, of course, the human mind simply can't extrapolate and create.

"you're diluting your culture."
because, of course, you can't teach your culture to your children. or to your spouse. nope.

maybe it's not racism in the classic sense, but it's certainly ignorance. and i don't feel sorry for those people at all. and i'm very blunt about it. as you see *grin* they can get offended if they want. i just wish they'd leave us the hell alone.

neglect

i feel like i've been neglecting my blog recently, but really, it's more like i've been neglecting my life. things have finally slowed down, it seems. eh. give it another month. i'm sure things will become hectic enough when we move again.

heard the best phrase the other day...

unfortunately, i can't take credit for it myself. we were discussing the vagaries of a friend's co-worker when he said, "yes, he suffers from cranio-rectal spatial distortion."

hee.

food.

so, my birthday happened to fall on the last day of restaurant week. my father graciously agreed to take me out, seeing as there were some neat restaurants on the list, and it meant he didn't have to get me a birthday present anyway ;)

i chose Twenty Manning based on their proffered menu, which was larger and more interesting-looking than probably 90% of the other restaurants on the list. what i discovered after the reservation was made was that it had a reputation for being a collection place for rittenhouse square's chic-est of the chic. which, needless to say, isn't me. on the other hand, one assumed that the clientele would be somewhat different during the restaurant week promotion. in the end, dad said he'd like to come back for the food, but he felt too old for the place.

since it was my birthday, and even though i hadn't eaten for 7 hours or so, i decided to have a cocktail to "start off with." i don't usually drink cocktails; i don't like sugar with my alcohol in general and they don't generally go with food. but they had a "ginger cosmo" which was (iirc) "ginger-infused vodka" and cranberry and grapefruit juices. the ginger was more apparent in the nose than on the palate, but it wasn't as sweet as i was fearing (do cocktails have a nose?).

it also went surprisingly well with my first course, peking duck spring rolls. the peking duck filling was very, very mild, and unfortunately rendered essentially flavourless by the inclusion of a sweet and hot sauce. however, it enabled me to drink my cocktail without falling off my chair.

for my main course, i had seared mahi-mahi over grilled vegetables in a green coconut-milk-based curry broth-thing. that's an incredibly sophisticated description, i know. but it was very good. the curried coconut milk and the still-crisp vegetables cut the monotonous flavour of the fish very well. i like fish like mahi-mahi and tuna in steaks, but i find that uninspired chefs will present you with a block of fish over something bland, like rice. halfway through your meal, you desperately want to taste something, anything other than your fish. this one was very nicely done. for dinner, we had a dry riesling which was alright because 3 of the 5 of us ordered fish, and my brother is too young to drink anyway.

dessert was a "sampler" that included some very good ice cream and a disappointingly unripe blackberry in the fresh fruit melange. there was also a cinnamon-dusted puff pastry and a chocolate thing.

all in all, it was very good. the waitstaff was attentive and not snobby, although the restaurant was so full with tables that they could barely get through. also, if you happened to be left-handed, they kept missing your water glass.

i really enjoy philly's restaurant week promotions because they work exactly the way they're supposed to: you can try out new or previously unknown places, or places that would otherwise be just too expensive. it's a great idea, and from everything i've read, it generates a hell of a lot of business for the city. i'm all in favour of anything that keeps philly's food scene going :)

oh yes.

happy birthday to me.

interesting...

frankly, i'm surprised cnn published this review. suggesting that a "family film" might have a gay subtext is one of the fastest ways i can think of to kill a film's financial potential in certain markets. who knows, maybe they weren't planning to get much money from there anyway. it still surprised me. i'm not objecting; i was always planning to go see this film, and now it intrigues me even more.

CNN.com - Review: 'Shark Tale' goes swimmingly - Sep 30, 2004

addendum

A Letter of Mary happens to be the one where she runs into peter wimsey. i'd been shown the section before by a roommate and when i happened across it, i said to myself, "wait a minute..."

it helps, occasionally, if you look things up. the book is also (c) 1996. i just happen to have obtained an apparently barely read hardback library copy.

>_<

current reading.

A Letter of Mary

by Laurie R. King

this is the...latest? well, fairly recent installment in her series that began with The Beekeeper's Apprentice. i didn't particularily enjoy that book, and i'm not really enjoying this one, but i am chez mes parents, and i need something to read, as all my books are packed away.

the books follow an ageing sherlock holmes and his much younger non-conan-doyle-canon wife. the author is self-conciously attempting to write about britain in the 1920s and 30s. the books are peppered with little "look at me, aren't i clever" comments about "the war" and "the earthquake in san francisco" and so on, until i want to scream. it just distracts from the story. and her character, Mary Russel Holmes, is anachronistically feminist, spending most of her time making snide comments about the ignorance and gullibility of men. which is fairly sad, because on its own, it's a fairly good mystery.

if you want to get a real feel of early 20th century england, or an authentic version of educated feminism, go get Dorothy L. Sayers. she actually was writing in the 20s and 30s, and was in one of the first groups of women to be admitted to Oxford University. instead of having to self-conciously and insecurely maintain her feminism, she managed it by pure dint of scholarship. reading Gaudy Night is like a breath of fresh air compared to ms. king's books (her mysteries are better too. IM(NS:)HO)

(side note: i believe the second book actually brings ms russel holmes in contact with dorothy sayers' detective, lord peter wimsey. it's cute, but to my ear, she gets both holmes (sherlock) and wimsey wrong).

(further side note: how do i justify dorothy sayers as a feminist when she has a male detective? well, there's also harriet vane, who is the focus of perhaps 1/3 of the wimsey books. although she doesn't come in until the 5th one, Strong Poison. i still recommend them most heartily).

moving

ugh. move (mostly) completed. i am now typing this from my parents' kitchen table. mmm...wireless ^_^

shockingly, we managed to actually fit all of our stuff into the storage container. just goes to show what you can accomplish with visual thinking. except for the bedframe, which we couldn't get apart because no one remembered to bring a toolkit. my kingdom for a 7/16ths socket wrench?

now we just have to go back and finish up little odds and ends...get the rest of our clothing, mostly. and paint the place. "it has to be white when you move out." *grumble*

the cat seems to be resigned to his new home. he's in a little glassed-in outside storage room-thingy (it's not quite a room...it's between the house proper and the garage). at least there's lots to look at and smell. we forgot his bed last night too, so that will have to come up as well. all the comforts of home for our kitty ^_^

i will go finish breakfast now. and then take a shower. and do laundry. and ...urgh.

cat!

get out of the damn box! i need to put stuff in there!

i feel so...so...

dot-commie, i think. i've got my desktop in front of me, and a laptop to the left with a nice, happy 802.11 card in it. the glowing red optical mouses only add to the effect. and the wireless router is talking to the wired one. communication! so much communication!

and of course, the cat's asleep, missing all the action. on the other hand, that means he's also not chewing on the (now disconnected) cables. such a hard life. sleep...eat...sleep...play...sleep...eat...sleep...geez. we should all be so lucky.

mid-week crisis.

we need boxes. does anyone have any boxes?

also, could you fix my phone here at work?

gmail is being weird. i hope it doesn't bleed over to blogger.

the autumnal equinox is occurring right now. wow.

more yay.

our mortgage has been approved. we lock rates tomorrow.

of course, the fed meets tomorrow. grumble.

happy birthday

my little brother turns 18 today. PH34R.

monday night, revisited.

so by this time, i'm probably sober enough to recount our dinner from monday night at Vetri, a craig-laban-four-bell restaurant, and called by some "the best italian food in philadelphia." now, this is not spaghetti-and-meatballs, red gravy sicialian famers' fare that most people associate with italian food. this was unusual, creative food from all over italy.

we went with my parents, and two friends, who were treating us. one of them was italian, and i will say right here that he was highly, highly impressed.

we decided on ordering the chef's 5-course tasting menu, which must be ordered by everyone at the table. the sommelier, informed by the chef as to what would be on the menu, guided our host to an unusual white wine, and then a red to complement the meatier dishes. they had made their transition to their autumn menu, so the dishes were perhaps richer and earthier than could be entirely enjoyed on an 80 degree evening in september, but the food was still certainly excellent.

we started off with an "amuse-bouche" of warm beet salad with a lemon vinaigrette and mini arugula. then came ripe olives in oil, and brick-oven-baked bread.

the first course was "foie gras fantasia," which was foie gras done 3 different ways: seared over brioche, as a soup with corn mousse, and as "pastrami", smoked and pepper encrusted over another brioche. yum. foie gras is an acquired taste, but it's definitely one i've acquired ^_^

the second course was one i should have bowed out of early on when the waiter asked if there was anything on the menu that we didn't particularily want to eat. it was peach slices and porcini mushrooms in a chicken-broth-and-cream reduction. i don't like mushrooms. i just don't. they're musty, even porcini. everything else was good, though.

the pasta course consisted of 3 different pastas and a saffron-licorice risotto. by this time we'd switched to the red, which better accompanied chestnut linguine with wild boar ragu, spinach gnocchi with shaved romano, and sweet cow's-milk ravioli with crunchy basil leaves. it was all very good.

(do keep in mind this was the "tasting" menu...for instance, there were 6 ravioli total, one for each of us).

the main course was roasted baby goat. now, i've had goat before, but that was in the caribbean, in a pumpkin stew. a chunk of roast goat over polenta tastes a lot different than cubes of goat stewed in broth, pumpkin, and spices. it had also been smoked slightly, to mask its gamey taste, but it was still...gamey. and fatty. i ate about 1/3 of it, because by that time i was very full and mildly drunk as well (my father finished my portion). probably if i had been sober, and had had it a la carte, instead of as a 4th course, i would have enjoyed it a lot more.

the last course was, of course, dessert. like the pasta course, this was a mixture of different things: peach panna cotta (mmm!), fallen chocolate polenta souffle', intriguing butternut squash gnocchi in maple and cinnamon cream, and peach-huckleberry "cobbler" (more like crisp) with "double cream gelato." the gelato was more like eating sweet butter. it was all amazing. then assorted petit fours.

wow. just...amazing. really. definitely great food, creative, great service...the sommelier was fantastic. we won't be able to afford to go back probably for another 10 years, but i'm glad i had the experience at least once :)

yay

kitty's eating again.

current reading.

Paladin of Souls

by Lois McMaster Bujold

sequel to The Curse of Chalion

i highly recommend both of them. i think i shall attempt to acquire them, in fact ^_^

friday.

guh. been a hectic week. packing is beginning in earnest. a storage container has been rented, and a lock must be obtained. the kitchen is slowly filling with boxes and crates and suitcases.

and i'm worried about the cat. we took him to the vet clinic for an ear infection. the vet forcibly cleaned out his ear, which i guess was good for him, but he threw up when he came home. i don't particularily want to have to take him back...i just hope it was because he ate something out of the trash, or licked medicine off his fur (it went all over the place when he shook his head).

my brother came down and hung out with us yesterday, which was cool. mom and dad say he's lonely now that he's the only kid left in the house. and i got my next book from the library. very excited to read it.

oh, and happy 5765. have a sweet year.

wine.

i was going to post something, but i can't remember anymore. apparently, i had a leeetle too much to drink last night. or didn't get enough sleep. one or the other.

bad foot day.

you know how people usually have bad hair days? i'm having a bad foot day. only a few hours after pulling a piece of glass out of it, it is assualted by a pair of mosquitoes. bah.

it was fun while it lasted

i went back to a right-handed cursor this morning. i'm not sure if it's me, or if it actually was the software, but the left-handed one tracked funny. either way, it just goes to prove that my brain has to work harder to do boring, inane things. depressing, wot?

headache. i shall now meander off to find something with which i can take drugs.

suburban cops

we got pulled over last night at 11:48pm by a cop who apparently had nothing else to do. got a warning card for having a taillight out. honestly, you see so many freaking people driving with taillights out, i didn't even know they could pull you over for it. oh, also we had run a stop sign. so they'd appreciate it if we, you know, stopped at the stop signs. it was kind of funny, actually. now we have 5 days to replace the taillight and take the car to a police station and have them check it. which is totally silly, because we need to get the car inspected anyway, and would have fixed it then. oh well. i guess there's little difference whether we do it now or in 2 weeks. except if you're a bored cop at midnight.

current reading.

The Professor and the Madman
A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

by Simon Winchester

who, me? a geek?

note to self

when making chicken fried rice, remember to thaw the chicken >_<

what was it someone called me once...oh yes. doof.

all's fair...?

this is...almost cute.
Singles look right or left for mate

although what's interesting to me is how i reacted to the descriptions of the dating sites. ActForLove's "Take Action. Get Action." seemed much funnier and attractive to me than Republican Singles' "images of the U.S. flag and the Statue of Liberty"...this makes me hope i'll never become a republican ;)

freak!

so i started using a left-handed mouse cursor at work yesterday. so far, it doesn't seem to be impairing my 1337 mousing ski11z (read: i'm still fucking up at about the same ratio in minesweeper). no one has commented on it, which i take to mean no one has decided to help themselves to my computer recently.

like that one guy. so, we're supposed to be working on the same project, right? and i'm doing something that he can't. and i come in to work one morning, and there he is trying to use my computer. and he gives me some kind of garbled explanation, which is basically a redux of what i told him the night before. and i really, really want to say, "you have no idea what you're doing, do you?" but i don't. i just mumble something about working on it and shove him out of my office. grr.

deep breath. he's in another sub-department now, so i (hopefully) will never have to work with him again. geez. a company of 15, and i talk about "sub-departments." probably because the whole company is basically one department: engineering. oh well. in the meantime, i'll still use my left mouse cursor and see what happens. i can't say that it's helping my headache right now, but it's not hurting either, so...

testing, testing...

this is only a test. it should not hurt.

zzz

i've been trying to think of something to post, but, like, the most exciting thing has been that we bought aster (the cat) a new carrier because he outgrew his old one. it's not a bad cat carrier, either. it has a door in the top so we can just drop him in. and it's big enough that he can lay down and sprawl out (as cats are wont to do), which is a good thing, because he'll probably spend several hours in there as we move all the crap out of the apartment.

comfort

took a long shower this morning. i've come to believe that the more time you spend pampering your skin, the better you'll feel in it. which will translate to a better body image.

well, it worked for me, at least ^_^

i mean, ok, shampoo, conditioner, moisturizing body soap, facial cream wash, cocoa-butter based saving lotion, and 2 separate lotions afterwards. mmm...comfortable.

er.

apparently i deleted a comment today. remind me not to click on little icons that make me think, "is that a trashcan or some kind of weird hat?" because, inevitably, it's a trashcan. and of course there's no "are you sure you want to do that?" dialogue. hmf.

>_<
apologies all round.

cat

my kitty got huge, btw. he's 12.5lbs. o.O

i just hope he's not going to mind having to move twice in six weeks. i mean, i know i'm going to mind it, and i at least can understand what's going on.

hurricane

i remain glued to updates on hurricane frances. i don't know why; i'm not even in florida.

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/

http://www.goes.noaa.gov/ECIR4.html

btw

would anyone like a gmail invite?

hi again

i've come back from buying a house and will now make an almost-serious attempt at blogging.

so, yeah. in the past couple months we bought a house, which has been nuts. apparently we're missing a package from the mortgage company. woo!

also, we went to Otakon, which totally rocked. l'arc~en~ciel did a great show. the industry panels were really interesting, especially the conflicts over fansubbing (at a convention showing unlicensed fansubs, no less). saturday night was Con Night From Hell (scheduling conflicts, abandoned by all my friends, shitty panels), but it happens to everyone at least once. and i might be doing a panel myself next year. ack!

last saturday night, exactly a month later, to make up for Con Night From Hell i finally got to see the rest of Zatoichi in a 35mm subbed print at a local theatre. so that was all good.

btw, this blog is posted ET. google/blogger/blogspot.com doesn't seem to note the timezone.

^_^

it's my birthday in a month

Eloquence Passe', Even for Presidents

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday May 30,2004.
Section M

Do We Care?
In business, even though communication is important, it's not everything.

"Would I be less inclined," Geoffery Nunberg, linguist and professor at Stanford University, asks rhetorically, "to invest in a corporation run by someone who doesn't speak in complete sentences?"

Look at Donald Trump.

When you speak well, it is assumed you are smart. But the converse is not necessarily true.

Of all the areas in which commmunication is essential, political campaigns may actually be one of the more forgiving. There seems to be a relatively high tolerance for politicians who don't always say what they mean, mean what they say, or even say anything meaningful.

"As a democracy, America has an ethic of equality. That leads us to hold our intellectuals in not very high esteem, because someone who is smarter than the average person is not playing by the equality rules," says Jon Radwan, a professor of communication at Seton Hall University and a board member of the American Communication Association.

"The people who have the crudest, simplest message often prevail because they can catch attention more quickly," says Andrew Robertson, author of The Language of Democracy.

it's vaguely depressing to consider, that as people talk of the "dumbing down of America," America seems to be dumbing down itself.

hello world

this is only a test.