Tag: life

Running Around

Sunday was mostly errands — replacing the lost rice cooker (In the rush to clear things out of the old apartment, I walked into the kitchen 3 or 4 times to grab or check things, saw a box sitting in an open cabinet, thought “I need to grab that on the next trip,” and promptly forgot about it each time), getting stakes to train the morning glories in the backyard to curl around something other than the patio furniture, getting a new welcome mat (which of course was missing a label, the last one on the shelf, and wasn’t actually on the shelf, so we had to guess which empty bin it was and convince the clerk that it was the correct one), etc. Groceries.

I also launched a new comics-focused blog to go with my Flash website. I’d started posting news on the front page, and wanted to simplify management, and realized I was basically building a mini-blog already. And then there was that domain name I picked up last year and couldn’t figure out what to do with. I had some other stuff I wanted to finish first, but I kept running into news items I wanted to post, and figured it would be better to have them on an actual blog. So I set up a new copy of WordPress, pointed SpeedForce.org to it, picked a suitable theme and and put together a few posts to get things started.

Coming Up

Things I’m looking forward to in the next few months:

  • Having a new place to live.
  • Going to see Bernadette Peters in concert.
  • Firefox 3 being released (I’ll get to use inline-block on websites!).
  • Our annual trip to Comic-Con.
  • Seeing my name in print as a contributor to The Flash Companion (about the comic character, not the animation format).

Things I’m not looking forward to in the same time period:

  • Getting that new place to live.  All the financial crap and wrangling.
  • Packing everything up to move.  I think I won’t mind the actual moving as much as the packing.
  • The possibility that we might have to move twice, if we manage to buy a place but it isn’t ready for move-in before we have to clear out of this place.
  • Possible shuffling around on projects at work.
Current Mood: 😡stressed

Heat Wave and a New Car

Last weekend I spent a lot of time reading on the balcony after things cooled off enough that outside was better, with the slight breeze, than the inside. I finished rereading A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, and started on The Farthest Shore.

Monday alenxa and I tried to run out to the local second-run theater and see Pirates 3 again, but they were sold out. None of the other movies looked interesting, so we spent an hour and a half in Barnes & Noble instead, then went for an early dinner at Ruby’s.

Even though it cooled off substantially Monday night, the apartment stayed warm, no matter how we arranged the fans. We seriously considered sleeping out on our balcony.

Tuesday I had the dubious honor of changing a tire in 85-degree heat, which was better than changing it in 100-degree heat on Monday would have been, but still not much fun. I took it to Costco, where they said they could repair it (it was an obvious puncture, with a 1/2″ bolt sticking out of the tire), but the tire was worn down far enough they wanted to replace it. I told them I was looking at replacing the car in a few months, so they stuck with the repair.

As it turned out, we ended up replacing the car this weekend.

Current Mood: 🙂relieved
Current Music: Almost Rosey, Tori Amos
Current Location: home

Cool

The theme of the day, at least for me, has been trying to keep cool. I went to see Transformers (and I have some things to say about it at K²R) in part because I was curious, in part because I found a Regal movie pass I’d forgotten, but in part because movie theaters are air conditioned better than our apartment is.

Came back mid-afternoon. Rehydrated. Opened up all the windows since it had gotten to the point where it was just as hot inside as outside, and at least outside had a breeze. Thought about swimming, then thought about just sticking my head under the shower for a minute. Finally settled on swimming, for the first time in several years.

We’ve been in this apartment for something like 6 years, and until today, neither of us had ever used the pool. The last time I swam was on our 2003 trip to Hawaii with the IVC choir (with alenxa of course, and also andrea_wot and zehntaur, though I can’t recall whether either of them were on that side trip), when we stopped at a small bay on the north shore of Oahu. That was salt water, so buoyancy was another issue. (On a related note, every time I walk down the main aisles of the Spectrum, I get stopped by the “Wonders of the Dead Sea” spa people. It’s getting to the point where I want to start responding, “Yes, I have heard of the Dead Sea!” and then rattling off a bunch of facts about it. Then telling them I still don’t want their spa products. Do I look like their target audience?)

Treading water is more tiring than I remember. And I seem to have no natural buoyancy. When I lie on my back, I have to flap my arms and legs from time to time or my face starts sinking below the surface. Still, I was out there for about an hour, trying to keep out of the way of the family teaching their two kids to swim (I think it was the mother and an aunt, with the father sitting out on the deck). When I realized that my eyes were clouding up with chlorine, and my fingers were beginning to look like prunes, I climbed out and walked on unsteady legs back to the apartment, rinsed off, and collapsed for a few minutes.

It’s still warm, but it’s a manageable warmth. Evening should be more comfortable.

Current Music: Aimee Mann, Ghost World
Current Location: home

Random

Got out to Santa Monica last week to meet up with my brother and his coworkers as they returned from a conference in Taiwan via LAX. Must remember to post pictures of dinosaur topiary and sundry oddness. (Edit: I finally got around to it.)

Speaking of photos, alenxa and I managed to get some really interesting cloud & sunset pictures yesterday.

Saw Stardust w/ andrea_wot and zehntaur. It was good. Disappointed to find how few people went to see it, though. Seriously, Rush Hour 3? At least it didn’t lose to Daddy Day Camp. Anyway, Stardust is highly recommended. If you haven’t seen it, try to catch it this weekend while it’s still in theaters.

Apartments are resurfacing the parking lots this week. Tomorrow through Saturday we’ll have to park on the street. This place doesn’t have enough street parking normally, never mind when 1/4 of the spaces are unavailable.

Quick bits

Finished The Bard’s Tale this weekend. [Review moved to website.]

Also watched This Film is Not Yet Rated, which alternates between an expose of just how arbitrary the ratings are, and an attempt to determine just who actually sits on the ratings board, since their identities are kept secret. I think I lost faith in the ratings system in high school, when The Joy Luck Club (which we’d read for school) came out with an R rating.

Visited alenxa’s family on Sunday for her sister’s birthday.

Finally packed up the old camera to send it in for repair so we can have two cameras at Comic Con this year. We kept trading off who had the camera last year based on who was going to which panel, and kept running into “If I’d only had the camera!” moments. There’s only so much you can do with a fuzzy, fixed-focus, zoomless VGA-resolution cell phone camera.

Off-by-one error

Since I came into work on Sunday afternoon, I’ve been feeling one day off all week. Monday felt like Tuesday, Tuesday felt like Wednesday, and Wednesday felt like Thursday.

Today I’ve evidently internalized three days’ worth of “No, it’s a day earlier than that!” because I keep thinking it’s Wednesday.

Drove out to Foothill Ranch yesterday on my lunch hour just to explore a bit and get pictures of the nearby hills where you can actually see what color they are. It’s been hazy enough that from my usual vantage points, they look faded grayish yellow-brown, instead of yellow-brown. (Though by this time of year they should look green. Yay drought.)

In other news, earlier this week I watched someone zip around a truck to pass it on the one-lane uphill cloverleaf section of the Ramp of Doom. Oddly enough, car and truck made it through unscathed.

Off to UCI tonight with alenxa to see The Lark, a play about Joan of Arc by the author of Becket.

In other other news, today’s Forgotten English phrase is “crotch-trolling.” No, it doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Current Location: work

Vacation: Week 1

Long story short, alenxa needed to use up some vacation time, fast, so we ended up taking two weeks at the end of March.  Unfortunately, we didn’t realize until later that our tickets for Wicked were smack in the middle (tonight, to be precise), which meant no two-week trip because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of trying to exchange the tickets.

We’ll be going to Las Vegas next week.  This week was mostly hanging around, not having to go to work.

Saturday: Helped andrea_wot move into her new apartment.  Later drank my annual Murphy’s Stout in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

Sunday: I went to Wizard World LA.  My con report got linked on The Beat.

Monday-Wednesday: Expeditions to Halloween Club (Katie’s planning a new costume for Comic-Con) and Fry’s (new video card).  Hooked up the spare monitor my brother gave us when he moved to Florida.  Discovered our current switch setup couldn’t handle more than 1024×768 without serious ghosting.  Back to Fry’s for a new switch. Watched several more episodes of Battlestar Galactica season one.  Invented a drink: 1 shot mango rum, splash of orange liqueur, fill the rest of the way with 1 part pineapple juice, 1 part cream soda, leaving room for a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

5 Minute Wait!Thursday: Disneyland — for the first time in maybe 5 years.  There are definite advantages to visiting in the off-season, during a weekday… like the 5-minute wait for Pirates of the Caribbean.  Thankfully, the changes to align it with the movies were minimally invasive, and the last view of Jack Sparrow demonstrates some seriously impressive motion capture.  Some other nice updates to Haunted Mansion and Jungle Cruise.  The new “wildest ride in the wilderness!” recording at Big Thunder Mountain, however, is a travesty.  Splash Mountain and the train were closed.  They seem to be piratifying Tom Sawyer’s island.  Pirates, Indy and Big Thunder kept breaking down, but we still managed to hit all three (some of them twice).  It was odd to see fruit carts all over the place.  It’s actually possible to eat mostly healthy food at Disneyland now.  Finished off the day with dinner at the Blue Bayou.

Friday: Took the car in in preparation for the road trip.  Then spent the rest of the day hanging out at home.  I mostly worked on my website, while Katie mostly tried out new games.

Now I’m looking at the pre-trip to-do list, trying to figure out how I’m going to get everything done in the next two days and go up to LA tonight and get together with friends tomorrow.  (And yes, “post to LiveJournal” is on the list.  One item to cross off!)

The old year passes

Friday, Dec. 22. Finishing key stuff at work before leaving on vacation. alenxa  had the day off, but was sick. Dinner with maldis , andrea-wot , and zehntaur at Koji’s (shabu-shabu). Service was surprisingly terrible, but the company was great.

Saturday, Dec. 23. Shopping, by myself. Hit the Block, Main Place, and (briefly) the Borders at South Coast. Much weirdness.

Sunday, Dec. 24. Katie was well enough that we both went shopping. Finished up at South Coast. Which actually wasn’t bad for the first few hours. We got their around 11:00-11:30, parked less than 100 feet from a mall entrance, and the crowds were light. We ran into some former classmates at Williams Sonoma (well, Katie did — I was dealing with the cashier), then went across to the former Crystal Court to hit a couple of stores. Had lunch, hits a few more stores, came back to the main section of the mall…which had gone insane in the two hours we’d been gone. Left around 4:00 and spent the evening wrapping presents while Katie baked.

Monday, Dec. 25. Christmas. Went to my parents first for lunch, then we all drove down to visit my grandparents in Temecula. Ended up getting lots of pictures of my aunt’s dogs as they explored the back yard. Dinner was late due to an inaccurate or simply misprinted recipe that indicated a cooking time for the roast about two hours shorter than necessary, but on the plus side, leaving late meant there was practically no traffic except for the mile or two leading up to the 15/91 interchange in Corona.

Tuesday, Dec. 26. Dropped Katie off at work, then spent the day on a mix of Internet, running errands, and doing laundry. After work, went down to Laguna Hills Mall so I could pick up my tux and Katie could look for some of the last-minute checklist items for maldis  and kayshabeast ‘s wedding. Had dinner at an Italian restaurant in the area called Scarantino’s.

Wednesday, Dec. 27. Drove into LA for the wedding. I’ve done this trip in ~40 minutes in good traffic, but allowed 2 hours because traffic is rarely good. Remembered a time in high school when the Literary Club went to see a matinée of Les Miserables at the Pantages. In the middle of the week. Leaving at lunchtime. On the Wednesday after Christmas. And despite allowing 2 hours, ended up at our seats literally as the opening fanfare began. Realized this didn’t bode well. As it turned out, everything was clear and fast up until we hit the 91, at which point it dropped down to stop-n-go. Arrived at the Bonaventure at 3:00, just in time for check-in, and managed to drop stuff in our room, then get back down to the lobby.  Wandered around trying to figure out which part of the lobby we were supposed to wait in, briefly met Sean, Nicola, Chris and H’Sien, ended up waiting for the second round of the “shuttle” and made it to the rehearsal around 4.  The rehearsal, dinner, and after-dinner get-together could probably fill its own post (and besides, 2/3 of the people reading this were there).

Thursday, Dec. 28.  Breakfast downstairs in the hotel.  Katie went off for the bridesmaids/groomsmaids hair+make-up session.  I hopped on the Internet to check some work-related stuff, then walked around downtown LA sightseeing.  I’ve never just spent time in the area.  It’s always been a place to go for events.  Drive in to see a play, drive out.  Drive in to visit a museum, drive out.  Got a little nervous when I realized I was walking around a major US city taking photos of buildings, but no security guards with too much time on their hands told me to stop.  Grabbed lunch at a deli, sat down and was asked for change as I was unwrapping my sandwich.  Decided to take it back to my hotel and eat it there.  Went over to the groomsmen call, and we’re again into wedding territory.  The wedding went very well, and again, I’ll jot stuff down in its own post.  Too tired to go to the post-reception party at the hotel, though.

This way to weird LA photos…

Friday, Dec. 29.  Slept in a bit.  Packed.  Went downstairs for a light breakfast, then went back to grab luggage and check out.  Stopped on the way back to have lunch with alenxa’s parents.  Got home earlier than expected, so we stopped at home to unload the car.  Katie took a nap (she’d started coming down with a cold the night before).  Went out to return the tux, then went to Katie’s cousin’s for a semi-Christmas dinner.

Saturday, Dec. 30.  Mostly errands and stuff.  Finally put away the sea of wrapping paper and ribbons left over from Sunday and Tuesday.

Sunday, Dec. 31.  More random stuff.  Watched the Claymation Christmas Special from the 1980s, which I had tracked down on DVD earlier in the year mainly to show Katie the “We Three Kings” sequence.  (The three kings are camped in the desert, singing each verse solemnly, and then the camels jump in with an upbeat version of the chorus.  After a while, the kings start glancing warily at the camels as they near the end of a verse.  The whole show has a sort of off-beat humorous tone to it.)  Picked up work on my website after several weeks’ break.  Katie baked brownies, and we went over to my parents’ annual New Year’s Eve party.  At one point, someone dragged out a tape of Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind, a 1980 parody of Close Encounters done in the form of an extended trailer.  It still holds up, and is funny enough on its own terms, even if (like me) you don’t remember much about the original film.

Monday, Jan. 1.   Lunch & coffee with wayens.  (Though, come to think of it, I’m not sure any of us had actual coffee.)  More errands (mostly stuff I forgot to get the day before). Watched a pair of Justice League episodes. Really got back to the Flash site.  Intended to go to bed early, but ended up staying up late again.

Catching up

Friday night: mad dash through Nanowrimo. Still nebulous, not much in the way of direction. Still behind a day.

Saturday morning: laundry. (Yay fun.)

Saturday afternoon/evening: Went to katyakoshka and David’s wedding. Got to talk with the bride, got to finally meet the groom, got to hang out with sekl and non_seqvitvr. I heartily approve of a wedding where the bride marches down the aisle to the Masterpiece Theatre theme.

Sunday morning: Was going to work on Nano (now two days behind) but ended up reading Callahan’s Cross-Time Saloon instead.

Sunday afternoon: Went to see The Prestige. v. good. As we walked in, we saw that they were running The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D. After the first movie, figured what the heck? Got tickets for later showing. Dropped by Jamba Juice, then Barnes & Noble (finally picked up our own copy of the Temeraire series), then a couple of clothing stores (alenxa found a dress). Re: movie: I was very impressed at how seamlessly they managed to match the look of the film. I couldn’t remember which eye got the original film, and which eye got the shifted CGI copy… and I couldn’t tell. Of course, after the first few minutes, I wasn’t looking! Afterward went to Cheesecake Factory for the first time in… well, years, come to think of it (unless you count take-out cheesecake). Dinner conversation was mostly about our respective stories, mostly in veiled references, though it actually helped me crystallize a number of things about my story… including where it was going!

Sunday night: Mad writing until way too late in the morning… and forgot to update my word count until after midnight, so it looks like I skipped two days. Grrr.

Work today, then most of the evening madly typing, with a break for Heroes. As of when I started this entry, I’m officially 126 words ahead of goal. Of course by the time I finish, it’ll be after midnight, so I’ll be 1500 words behind…

Edit: Realized that the numbers didn’t add up, and the progress gauge above doesn’t measure what I thought it did. I thought it measured your word count against the count you should reach by the end of the day to be on track to 50,000 at the end of the month. It actually measures the count you should have reached by the beginning of the day. So I hadn’t actually caught up, and I’m still ~1200 words behind. And I don’t think I’ll have time to write ~2900 words today.

Word count: 8922

Weekend Report

Friday: Stuck at work trying frantically to finish a website redesign that had to be done by that evening. I honestly don’t remember anything about the evening, as the still-not-gone cold slammed into me full force once the adrenaline rush wore off.

Saturday: alenxa and I risked going out to lunch, and managed not to cough all over the restaurant. Watched a couple episodes of Justice League and finally saw The Bride of Frankenstein (which I suspect I saw when I was maybe 10, because I recognized the framing sequence — more about that later — but I don’t remember much more). It’s interesting to see just how much of the Frankenstein mythos not only isn’t in the book, but isn’t in the first movie. Much of the tearing around the countryside is in Bride, for instance, and Igor doesn’t even show up until the third movie, Son of Frankenstein (and he’s a far cry from the mad doctor’s faithful assistant!) Watched an episode of Crusade, “The Well of Forever,” which explores hyperspace and starts to hint at Galen’s backstory (told in much more detail in the Technomage novels.)

I also caught up on some graphic novels, including Sam Kieth’s Four Women (disturbing and creepy, but a good story) and The Sandwalk Adventures, a somewhat offbeat story that covers the basics of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Sort of the “Cartoon History of Evolution.”

Sunday: Ran some errands. Finished Black Powder War. Actually ran the air conditioner for a while, though the floorplan means it doesn’t actually accomplish much. Went to Orange’s International Street Fair for dinner.

Monday: More errands. Re-read the second round of Tangent Comics that DC put out in 1998. This was the series where they took the names of various heroes and villains and created entirely new characters. Overall, the first set was better, but it was still an interesting side universe that I would have liked to see more of. Caught up on a couple of items I’d been meaning to add to my website. Also read half of the first book of A Distant Soil, which I first heard about ~20 years go and have been meaning to check out for ~10 years. After several issues of setting up a major space epic, it’s suddenly shifted to an Arthurian battle. I assume the plotlines will converge by the end of the book. Watched about half of Grosse Point Blank. It wasn’t as good as I remembered, and when Katie said it just wasn’t grabbing her, I realized I was more interested in showing her the movie than re-watching it myself.

I’m finally getting over this #$!@ cold, though I’m still coughing from time to time. And with the heat and dehydration, it’s still leaving me feeling completely wiped out several times a day. Oddly enough, I found myself looking forward to going back to work because the AC (when it’s running, anyway) is more effective than what we have at home. At least my ears are finally getting unplugged. Lunch on Saturday was really odd, because voices were muffled, but the background music wasn’t. Of course now everything sounds oddly loud.

The Long Weekend

Friday: Goo Goo Dolls/ Counting Crows concert at it’s-still-Irvine-Meadows-’cause-“Verizon-Wireless-Amphitheater”-just-sounds-dumb. Nifty view of the central Orange County valley before the sun set.

Saturday. Spent the day lying on the couch with a fan running, catching up on the Babylon 5 script book commentaries. So far I’ve only read about 1/4 of one script, but the introductions are a fascinating insight into the process of making the show. Given how much was out in the open (since JMS spent several hours a night online during production), some of the stuff that wasn’t revealed back then is mighty interesting. (Example: we all thought season 4 was compressed because they weren’t sure they’d get a season 5, and wanted to get as much done as they could. It turns out that at the beginning of the season, they were told in no uncertain terms that there would not be a season 5. So getting that fifth season on TNT was a real surprise.)

Dinner at CPK, then Superman Returns Enjoyed it, but no interest in seeing it again. It already felt like deja vu since there were so many references to the first two movies with Christopher Reeve. There were some great moments, but overall it was just kind of okay.

Sunday: Finished Bad Twin. Decent book, but not exactly a major insight into the secrets of Lost. Waited several hours until checking my email, at which point I discovered I really should’ve checked earlier… so I could bring a server back online. Went down to the office, brought the server up. alenxa tagged along and we had lunch at the crepe place at the Spectrum. Happened to glance over at one of the wall alcoves, which held a vinegar bottle… labeled Temeraire. After some shopping for food for upcoming family get-togethers, went home and played Heroes V for a few hours. Fortunately I was still awake when the same server went down again at 1AM. So I drove back, brought it online, figured out a way to make sure that it would automatically start up again next time, then came home. Still trying to diagnose the cause, but whatever it is does seem to like holiday weekends…

Monday: Traditionally, the 4th of July consists of hanging around at home followed by looking for fireworks. This year, both our families wanted to get together. So on Monday we went to visit my grandparents, carpooling with my parents and my brother. My aunt and her husband brought their dogs, which meant I spent most of the afternoon in a Benadryl-induced funk, despite drinking way too much Dr. Pepper to offset it.

Tuesday: I squeezed in an hour or two of Heroes in the morning, then it was off to visit Katie’s family, with more BBQ. Dinner was relatively early, so we cleared out around 7:00 so we could make it back to Laguna Beach for the fireworks display there. They launch the fireworks off one of the bluffs, out over the ocean, and the viewing is pretty good from the beach. We caught the tail end of it a couple of years ago, while driving around looking for displays. Two years ago we got there too late and missed the entire show while we walked from the car out to the beach. (Hey, have you ever tried finding parking in Laguna Beach?) Last year I was sick, so we just walked out to where we could see the local display. This year we made it with plenty of time to spare, parking up on Forest (roughly in line with the Laguna Playhouse, and maybe a few hundred feet from the entrance to Tivoli Terrace, where we had our wedding), and snagged a spot on the beach. The wind blew the smoke in our direction, so a lot of the fireworks were half-obscured, but they lit up the smoke a lot more than I can remember seeing anywhere else. After the show, we did our semi-traditional stop at Diedrich across the street.

Today: Back to work. I’ve been stress-testing the server, trying to get it to crash under controlled circumstances so I can get some information about what’s causing the problem… and it just won’t crash!