Writer, Coder, Avid Reader
Superman Returns was released on DVD today and I picked up the special edition 2-disc set. I’ve already seen the movie three times, but I’m looking forward to seeing it again. And the special features as well. I also picked up Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and Star Trek: Generations. I watched the former when I got home from work this evening.
House is on in 15 minutes and I’m going to watch that and then it’s off to bed–a little earlier tonight than last night.
I’ve got a long flight tomorrow: Baltimore to Seattle with a short stop in Chicago. I hate long flights because I get bored very quickly and I travel enough to where the more I travel, the quicker I get bored. So today I picked up Seinfeld, Season 7 which was just released on DVD (I already have the other 6 seasons) and figured I would kill time by watching episodes on the flight tomorrow.
Problem is, I don’t know how I will react to Kramer, after seeing Michael Richard’s racist tirade. I’m hoping it won’t spoil the show for me, but it seems it will be hard to look at Michael Richards without seeing him on that stage, spewing all of those racial epithets.
But when it comes down to it, if it passes the time quickly, then maybe it won’t matter. The good news is that the same flight that I am on tomorrow arrived on time in Seattle today.
Quittin’ time!
I did almost nothing today. No chores, no errands. The kitchen table is a mess. My desk could be cleaned up. I’ve got a long list of things to do and a good step toward getting them done would be to just get them out on paper. Instead, I did very little. I spent most of the day watching DVDs. I did a little reading, too. I read the first few pages of both Neuromancer and Humans, and Humans won as the the one which hooked me faster. So at least I know what I’m reading next.
I probably got through 10 episodes of NYPD Blue. Meanwhile, I ignored the laundry and the dishes in the sink. I napped for a couple of hours on the couch early this afternoon. Not my normal nap, but a deep sleep kind of nap, the kind of sleep I don’t normally do laying on the couch. It’s just one of those incredibly lazy weekend days where my motivation is shot.
Mostly.
I did manage to do a few things. I got an email from Rich, first I’ve heard from him since he, Tricia and the family moved back to L.A. and so I wrote him back. I got a nice card from Bonnie and Tom, and I wrote them back as well. And, thanks to mabfan‘s prodding, I sat down and did some writing. I wrote 650 words of “If By Reason Of Strength…” It’s not great, but it’s better than nothing. The problem with the story is two-fold. I have a great idea, a fantastic one, but I’m not sure I can handle it. Second, and perhaps more important, I don’t know my ending. I’ve always followed Isaac Asimov’s rule of coming up with a problem and a solution, and then making everything else up as I go along. This time, however, I have a great idea, but no real problem or solution yet. Well, I do have a problem, but I’m not sure how compelling is. And I honestly don’t know the solution. Until I get those things figure out, I’m afraid the story will wander. Even so, I did get a few pages written and I feel pretty good about that in light of this otherwise lazy day.
I mentioned the other day that I couldn’t decide what to read and with the weekend coming up, I felt I needed to take preemptive action. So at lunch today, I went down stairs and got my spending money for the week ($100). Then I walked over to Borders. I bought 2 books, Humans and Hybrids both by Robert J. Sawyer (I’ve already read Hominids). Then, just for good measure, I also purchased seasons 3 and 4 of NYPD Blue. It came to $99.71. There goes the spending money for the week. Fortunately, I had some left over from last week.
The thing is, I’m not sure I want to read the two Sawyer books yet. Last night I was thinking about reading William Gibson’s Neuromancer (which I read once in college) and the other two books in that trilogy (which I haven’t read).
I could spend the time writing a new story, but I’m not quite there yet. (Almost, but not quite.)
Ah, they hell with it. I’m going home, watching some Blue, watching Battlestar Galactica and figure out what to do next when that’s over.
Meanwhile, it’s time for a chocolate shake.
I was up at 8 AM this morning and took my car into Saturn for my 9 AM service appointment. Last night, while in the shower, I had the strong urge to seriously consider buying a new car today, but the urge passed and sanity returned, and instead, I had my car serviced and never even looked at another car while I was there. I had the service people take an extra good look at the car since I’m driving up to New York on Friday. Everything was in good order, except the brake fluid, which they drained and replaced. They washed the car and it’s looking shiny now. It only took an hour and I was out of there at 10 AM.
I made pretty good progress this week on the software project on which I am working. I hit most of my milestones for the week and felt pretty good when I left work yesterday. Sometime between leaving work yesterday and this morning, I had an idea that would avoid some minor problems that I had been running into and make the code a little more elegant. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and so I decided to head into the office on a Saturday and get some work done. I got to the office around 11 AM and I worked until about 4 PM and I was quite pleased by the results. I even got a little ahead of where I should be in my effort which will help to make next week a bit easier.
I stopped at Best Buy on the way home and picked up a couple of DVDs: the special edition of Memento and the Star Trek “Time Travel” episodes box set. On the train ride home, I watched an episode of Battlestar Galactica on the video iPod.
I decided to take the rest of the evening off and chill. Earlier in the week, I’d had my TiVo record Beverly Hills Cop and Beverly Hills Cop II, both of which I hadn’t seen in a long time. I settled down to watch them this evening. No reading today, but that’s okay.
I’m in one of those reading dry spells where no matter what book I pick up, I can’t seem to get interested in it. So this evening, I lazed around and finally put on the HBO mini-series, Band of Brothers, which I have watched several times before. I watched the first two episodes tonight and now I’m getting ready for bed.
Mets are winning 1-0 in the bottom of the 4th inning. They need to win tonight to stay alive.
If it wasn’t clear from my perfectly coherent post last night, we did not end up going to the Whitney museum. I left work around 2 PM and was first in line to board the sold-out 3 PM Acela to New York City. I sat in the Quiet Car, as usual. This time, I have no idea if it was really quiet or not. From the moment I sat down, until the train ducked under the Hudson River, I watched the first 7 episodes of Scrubs Season 3 on DVD. It made the 2 hours and 50 minutes fly by.
Jen, Jason and I met outside crowded Penn Station.
And just as an aside here, Penn Station was really crowded. Perhaps it was because for some people it’s a 3-day weekend. But whatever the reason, during the middle of the weekend rush hour commute, in the midst of a massive pedestrian intersection in the bowels of Penn Station is not the appropriate place for that young woman to be standing perfectly still, talking on her cell phone. That’s just wrong!
It was decided to skip the Whitney and to find a bar at which we could watch the Yankee game. We took the subway partway and then a cab the rest of the way to Jen and Jason’s place. We stopped there for 5 minutes and then headed down to Molly’s, a bar on the corner. We managed to get a good table, and proceeded to spend the next several hours there, eating, drinking, laughing, and watching the Yankee game. (Jen and I were also trying to figure out if this bar was, perhaps, the Bar that barmaidblog works at.) We left the bar in the 8th inning and watched the rest of the game from Jen and Jason’s apartment.
I watching a couple of episodes of Scrubs before I went to sleep (around midnight). I was up this morning before 8 AM and spent the time reading more of Andy Rooney’s Out of My Mind.
Aside from the Yankee game at 4 PM this afternoon, I am told we are going to some candy shop that Jen wants to visit. We also have dinner reservations at what is supposed to be a great BBQ place in Harlem. And tomorrow morning we are having brunch with Jon and Hollie.
That’s all for now. I need to shower. Jason is making breakfast and I am hungry!
Why I don’t believe in karma:
One would think that because I turned in the $100 bill I found on Saturday that I had a little karma coming to me. So today, one of my co-workers asked if I had a DVD that they could borrow to test the DVD functionality of a laptop. I happened to have the Scrubs Season 1, Disc 3 in my iBook, so I popped it out and let them use it for their test.
Well, they forgot to get it out of the drive of the machine they were testing, and the owner of the machine has gone home. I had 3 more episodes which I was looking forward to watching this season. Now I have to wait until at least tomorrow.
Doesn’t sound like karma to me, but then again, I don’t believe in karma.
Today has been one of those slow Sunday afternoons typical of early fall. I don’t feel like reading, I don’t feel like writing. I would otherwise be pretty bored, except that last night I picked up the first three seasons of Scrubs on DVD so I’ll probably spend the afternoon watching an episode or two.
Ten years ago today, I began reading Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes for the first time. Here is how I described it in my diary:
Today was a good day and I think it was because I started reading Something Wicked This Way Comes at lunch. I love the book. It made lunch great, and made my evening great too.
The next day, I wrote the following:
I did more reading tonight than I have in a single night in quite a while–nearly 100 pages of Something Wicked This Way Comes. What a great story! It was so pleasant to be sitting, eating a good turkey, ham and cheese sandwich, and a crispy mug of Coke. That, coupled with the fact that it’s fall, and feels like fall made it a wonderful read.
I have to mow the lawn again (it’s grown in quick since the last time). It’s really nice out right now and I should probably go out and take care of that, but I’m feeling a little to lethargic lazy. Maybe later.
My landlord invited me to an outing and concert at his home (a rambling farm) on October 14, which was very nice of him. It would be fun to go, but I will be in L.A. that weekend, and so I had to take a rain check.
I’ve been listening to Coldplay much of the early part of the afternoon.
That’s what I spend the early part of my evening doing. I am so sick of pizza, I am always telling people how sick of pizza I am, but this evening, what did I do? I ordered a pizza from Pizza Hut. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt bad for a delivery man. This man must have been close to 80 years old, no kidding. He seemed barely able to walk from his car to the door. And here he was delivering pizza.
I sat down with my pizza and watched After the Sunset which I’d gotten from NetFlix today. It was about what I expected, nothing great. The blooper reel and Charlie Rose interviews were the best parts of the DVD.
Got a couple of birthday cards today: one from Mom and Dad; another from Tawnya. Thirty-four years old on Monday!
I got this DVD from NetFlix today and it is one of the funniest things I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve always been a Christopher Walken fan, but this is him at his funniest. I laughed through the entire hour and twenty minutes of skits.
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