June 2005

Must be Tuesday.

Bryan realized, about two months ago, that we have diverging television interests. At least for the summer. Now that Lost and Desperate Housewives are on summer hiatus, and Bryan has totally given up on Alias, we need a common show. (The exception being Tim Minear’s new show, The Inside, which is dark and tasty.) We’ve decided upon self-enforced syndication.

On Tuesdays, we’ve begun watching Buffy, starting with the pilot. At 144 episodes, it’s nearly four years worth of non-stop Tuesdays. That ought to keep us busy for a while. We can’t decide if we’re going to have the crazies and start watching Angel when it “begins” concurrently with season 4 of Buffy. I think it means watching Angel on Wednesday nights. Bryan thinks it means keeping up with all the time-slot changes Angel went through until it settled on Wednesdays. I find my idea to be less of a headache.

I’m currently just hanging out with a box of nearly-empty Puffs Plus tissue and Cherry Honey Ricola. Plus entertaining my stuffed up head with my Firefly DVDs. 94 days, in case you weren’t keeping track like me.

Who gets a cold in the summer? I do, apparently. Saturday it was pretending to be allergies, so I tried to soothe it with Newcastle and some calamari. (Hooray for Max’s Restaurant!) Sunday I woke up with a sore throat and was stuffed up, but went to work. It got progressively worse, and I sat at my desk most of the day. Sunday night I could barely see straight, the pressure in my head was horrible.

I woke up this morning to find it migrating to my chest. I think. Who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow. Being sick is no way to spend two days off. Then I work for seven straight. I’m not convinced it will go well.

Happy birthday to god! Joss Whedon celebrates another year on the planet, and there was much geek rejoicing.

Seriously.

People at the gym who are on their phones annoy the crap out of me. The lady next to me this afternoon was shouting into her phone to be heard over the noise of the ambient music and the machines. Despite the volume of my iPod (and the fun of Outkast), I could practically follow along with her yammering. There were two girls sharing the leg press machine, and they would trade off holding the phone and talking with actually working on the machine. Maybe I just don’t know enough people, but I can’t talk on the phone that much. Mostly I don’t even like the phone.

Bryan’s “phone buddy” the other day was the best. This guy was on one of the modified elliptical trainers, talking on the phone (to his girlfriend, while his wife kept calling and interrupting him) with one hand, and drinking a gigantic $tarbucks drink with the other. I watched him for a moment, and felt like running up and sucker punching him in the nuts, just for fun. How’s he going to stop me? Muahahaha. Rather than get kicked out of the gym for committing violence against the entitled, I just worked out.

This can be mitigated by the fact that my favorite person to watch was working out today too. She’s got crazy six-pack abs, and her workout would make me cry. I am obsessed with watching her and trying to figure out what she does when she’s not at the gym, and why she’s so damn fit. And how. I believe you have to get down to about 7% body fat before your abs show like that, and for women, it’s really hard to get down that low. Hawt.

During one of our regular automatical verification procedures we’ve encountered a technical problem, caused by the fact that we could not verify the information that your provided during registration.

I’m sorry, what? I sometimes love the spam I get. Because some of it, I can understand that people might think that it’s legit. But “automatical?” Sweet cyber Jesus, at least use real words. It’s also interesting that the email is double-spaced, with small, white letters appearing at regular intervals under the “real” words. (Which I could only see when I went to cut-and-paste, and which also screwed up the pasting part.) I wonder if it’s mind-reading code, sent by aliens to eat my brain…

It’s the way she talks. I’ve finally figured it out. I watched “Inside the Actor’s Studio” where James Lipton (who else *only* sees Will Ferrell whenever they look at Lipton?) interviews Angelina Joile. I’ve always really liked her, but I could never pin it down. Duh, she’s hot, but that’s not it. While watching her be herself for 45 minutes, I realized that it was her voice. Her enunciation. Her choice of words.

Language fascinates me. Words, and the way people use them, choose them, and manipulate them. It’s one of the things that first drew me to Joss Whedon’s show. The English language was never so flexible than in the hands of Joss. (It can be argued that the English language was also inordinately flexible in the hands of my Kiwi friend Jolon after a few drinks…)

Is it the English major in me? It was literature that brought me to the major, not rules, as was made abundantly clear after I slept through a semester of Modern English Grammar. The varied and sundry ways the English language can create a story…it’s amazing. And there are some people that can tell a story, or speak, or orate in a manner that draws me in. William Faulkner. Charles Bukowski. Sedaris (Amy and David). Billie Holiday. Voices, words, communication. It’s gas for my tank.

The other day, I was talking with my friend Sarah at work in our bike shop. We were having a conversation about something, and we were getting quite animated. Joe was upstairs, and commented that we should sell tickets to our conversations, because they were a spectator sport. Maybe I should talk to myself.

A good Wednesday to you all. I know that right after saying I was trying to blog more, I disappeared for a while. I came down with a lovely stomach bug, and didn’t do much of anything for a few days.

Mark your calendars! Not only will September 30 bring us Serenity, less than two weeks later we get the movie adaptation of RENT! All but two of the original Broadway cast members will be reprising their roles in the film. (The new folks include Tracie Thoms, previously of Wonderfalls.) I’m enormously excited about it. You can read about the production process in the RENT blog, in which cast and crew participate with observations and photos.

I didn’t get to see it on Broadway, but I saw the London production when I was on my whirlwind European beer tour. (Ok, it was really a vacation, but felt much more like a tour of all the places in Warwick, London, Dublin, and Paris one could drink things made with hops.) The night after the clown car incident, we went out and saw the show, and I was blown away. I admit to being quite a musical geek, but I love this show.

The trailer for the movie can be found here. Watch!

If you didn’t know, tomorrow, June 4 is National Trails Day. This is the event I’ll be participating in. It should be a great day out on the trail. I’ve got to work in the morning, but I’ll get an hour-plus of work in.

If you’ve got time, get out and help. I know the weather out here will be perfect for it. =)

As you may be able to tell, I’m trying to blog more. I feel like the more I write, the more articulate and interesting I’m able to be. For me, it’s not the story, it’s the way you tell it. Going through and reading some of my old stuff from when I was in Japan…I used to be pretty good. So I’m going to try and write more. This includes blogging, as well as trying to write more for Bryan. (There’s something coming, and I’m excited to contribute.) I’m also going to try keeping in touch with more people. Try to write, call, and then keep doing it. I mean, it’s clear that I’m “old and married,” but I am trying to break out of that.

There are four or five people on my “must write tomorrow” list. Saying “I don’t know where to begin” is just an excuse, so I will simply just start writing. I may have a chance to see a far-away friend while I’m in Boston, and that’s sort of started me on this whole kick. I should be able to see my not-far-away-friends more often. Or at least send a damn email. There are people I used to see weekly…now I can’t even tell you what state they now live in.

Is this a mid-year resolution?

Cross-posted to the Mac Observer forums.

Now that I have a few days off, I actually have some time to participate in this little meme. As you may know, it’s not new. There are over 500 photos from people who are playing along on Flickr.

Let’s see…

• Timbuk2 Metro bag which I use as a purse. It’s big enough to carry all this crap. ;)
• 40GB (4th generation) iPod
• 2 sets of headphones (earbuds for the gym, quality for just listening to music)
• a packet of Yogi Green Tea (mmmmm)
• my business cards, and one for my massage therapist
• my day planner, because paper is better than PDA
• Kershaw Chive knife
• Leatherman Juice S2
• work keys (too damn many)
• home keys (also too damn many)
• Airborne because everyone at work is sick
• padlock for my locker at the gym
• free chapstick from a sales rep
• Polar F6 Heart Rate monitor
• DaKine Minx wallet
• expired Visine
• Native Hexx sunglasses (discontinued…I bought several pair on eBay)
• 24 Hour Fitness pass
• my last Kleenex
• a small Band-Aid
• subway token (from Boston?)
• 3 pens (the middle one used to light up, the right one is out of ink)
• earrings
• a piece of my car’s interior that came off while loading a giant piece of IKEA furniture
• a pin from the OmniGroup from Macworld SF
• my Store of the Year pin from 2004
• normally my cell phone would be here too, but it’s on the couch

I will eventually get this up in my Flickr account too…but that’s something for later.

Let’s see. I get three days off in a row. It’s like Christmas, many months later. I can only wait for Boston, when I will be taking five whole days off. It’s a shame I have to rush back from pah-king my caah in Haaavahd Yaaahd to do mid-year inventory.

Bryan and I went to the Apple store tonight. I did some undercover Browncoating, setting all the computers in one row to different Serenity websites, and having a G5 iMac loop the HD trailer for the film. It’s all about coverting just one person, right?

I received my $7 Diesel Sweeties shirt, and I got Vote Robocratic! and it’s fab. I wore it out tonight. Plus they sent stickers. Sweeeeeeet.

Monday was Memorial Day. I believe our troops, past and present, deserve to be honored. But when junior ROTC wankers wear their little costumes out in order to get free shit on the day, that’s exploitation, and a demonstrates one major component of wearing one’s ass as a hat.

That is all.