Tag: entertainment

Feeling better

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I took a sick day from work today. The allergic reaction I had took a lot out of me and I felt like I needed a lot of sleep. Plus, I wanted to call the doctor and check with him on what had happened. Indeed, it sounds like an allergic reaction and benedryl was the proper course of action. No other symptoms since taking it and I should avoid the shampoo product I used at the W. (I’ll probably avoid all W products, and possibly all Starwood products at this point, just to be safe.)

I have lazed around in bed all day thus far. In fact I am still in bed as I write this, but I feel like I’ve gotten plenty of rest, and it’s about time I got up and got a few things done today. I did manage to watch the first two episodes of the BBC miniseries, Planet Earth. They were amazing. I plan on (finally) finishing up I. Asimov today and starting on In Memory Yet Green later today. Back to work tomorrow.

Contact

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A week or two ago, I used a gift card I’d gotten to order some books and DVDs. They were at my door when I got home today. The book I ordered was Robert Silverberg’s Book of Skulls, which he himself recommended to me when I wrote to him to tell him how much I liked his time travel novel Up the Line. The DVDs I got were Contact and 2010.

I hadn’t seen Contact in a while, and I watched it again this evening. It stood up to my memory of it, and to this day, I still think it’s the best movie based on a science fiction novel I’ve ever seen. I loved Carl Sagan’s novel, Contact–it’s on my list of favorites. The movie, although with some differences in it than the book, stands up and is impressive, and to me, very moving. (The opening sequence is outstanding, as is the scene where Ellie is traveling through wormholes.) It’s intelligent, thought-provoking, and by far the best and most realistic movie I’ve ever seen about alien contact.

Another lazy Sunday

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We slept in until 9 AM, which was the beginning of the lazy day we had today. We seemed to linger about until nearly 1 PM before actually doing anything. (That’s not quite true. Kelly did a lot of laundry and wrote a letter of recommendation. I did a little reading.) At around 1 PM we headed out to grab a bite to eat, and then went up to Greenbelt to walk around the lake. It was cool, but pleasant. It was nearly 4 PM by the time we got back and an hour later, Kelly headed home.

I did some reading. It was my plan to work on my application to Viable Paradise, but I never got to it today. I rented The Usual Suspects from the iTunes store and watched that. This was the third time I’ve seen the movie, but the first time in quite a while. I also downloaded some music from the iTunes store, something I haven’t done much of lately.

Yesterday, I got the coolest poster in the mail, a birthday gift from kevnyc. It’s a kind of visual history of the “Race to the Moon”, an almost ideal poster for a science fiction writer, and one that will look great in my office, once it’s suitably framed. Thanks, Kevin!

Got a phone call from Michelle tonight. First time I’d talked to her in a long time. We spoke for nearly an hour and it was good to hear from her.

It’s late. I’m heading off to bed only to get up in less than 6 hours and get started on my day. I’ve got a lot of little things to do tomorrow. I guess getting a good night’s sleep is not among them.

Lazy Easter Sunday

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Today was a lazy day and it was great. We slept in until around 9 AM, then headed to a relatively empty grocery store to do some grocery shopping. Came back home, at breakfast and then lazed around for hours while doing laundry and watching TV.

About mid-afternoon, we headed out to get some air, up to Greenbelt lake. The weather was a little cool, but bright and sunny and the lake was crowded with lots of Easter picnics. We walked twice around the lake, getting our exercise for the day, before coming back home.

For dinner, I made ravioli (large ones this time) and spaghetti sauce, to which I added, while the sauce was still heating up, some hot pepper that gave it a nice kick. And for dessert we had apple pie, which we got at the store. Then more TV watching and lazing around until all of the laundry was done. Kelly headed home around 7 PM. I won’t see her until Thursday (I’m going there on Thursday this week instead of Wednesday because my birthday is Thursday and we’re going out for a birthday dinner.)

I’m packing my lunch and then heading off to bed. I’m 65 pages into Factoring Humanity and I plan on getting another hour or so of reading in before lights-out. Tomorrow evening I hope to finish up the revisions on “The Golden Watch”.

Called he11o_sunshine and stubiebrother today but got voicemail. Maybe I’ll talk to them later in the week.

Saturday afternoon

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Yesterday afternoon began late yesterday morning. After Kelly cleaned off her desk and I finished my book, we headed out for a day full of errands and fun. First we went to the post office so that I could mail all of my tax papers to my accountant. With that out of the way, we headed a short distance down the street to the Silver Diner, where I had my first-ever egg salad sandwich. (How it it I’ve missed egg salad sandwiches? The same way, I supposed, I have missed many other types of foods: there’s so much out there it takes a while, but eventually, you get around to it.) I enjoyed it. The atmosphere at the diner was fun too. We stopped at the vet to pick up some cat food for Kelly’s cat, Simon, and then we headed down to Potomac Yards.

We met Kelly’s friend Sarah there and proceeded to do a bunch of shopping. There was shoe shopping (or browsing). We went into PetSmart and Target. We dashed in and out of shops. Kelly and I even bought a basketball because she’s had the urge to play now that the weather is starting to get nice again. (This has nothing to do with March Madness, I can assure you.)

Next we headed over to the movie theater and the three of us caught a 2:15 PM showing of Under the Same Moon, which turned out to be a pretty good movie. I found that, for the most part, I could understand the Spanish without the English subtitles.

After the movie, we stopped at the grocery store, loaded up the cars, and finally headed into D.C. where we went to a Mexican restaurant just south of the Capital South metro for dinner. They had pretty good Margaritas, but remarkably, they were all out of avocados, so there was no guacamole to be had with any of our meals. Still, it was a good meal, and a good afternoon.

I drove us back to my place after dinner and Kelly started in on something like 5 loads of laundry. Tivo had recorded What About Bob? and so we watched that, but we were tired and headed off to bed at 10 PM, as soon as it was over.

Saturday morning

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Kelly and I went to Harry’s Tap Room for dinner last night, and it was a particularly good meal. I had this spicy, tequila shrimp dish which was very tasty. Our server warned me that this was a spicy dish, but I was looking for something spicy–turns out “spicy” is a relative term. I’d call it “medium”, but it was still good. Kelly had trout. We both had dessert and then walked leisurely back to her place. The evening air was mild. It was all very pleasant.

We spent the rest of the evening watching a few episodes of Dexter, which I had never seen before, but which I really enjoyed. It’s a well-done show.

We were up around 7:30 and slept off and on until almost 9 AM. Kelly got up to go to the gym and I finished reading Up the Line. What a great time-travel book! I’ll have more to say on it later, but I thoroughly enjoyed it–gave it 4 stars–and it has to rank up there among the best time travel books I’ve read. I’ve now read 3 Robert Silverberg books and none of them have disappointed me. They have all been terrific.

I’ll be starting on Rob Sawyer’s Factoring Humanity sometime today, and I’m looking forward to that as well.

We’ve got some errands to run this morning and then plan on catching a movie this afternoon. Sometime later today, we’re heading over to my place. I’ve still got some revisions to complete on “The Golden Watch” and I’d like to get those finished this weekend.

Another busy day

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Back to work and it was a busy day today, catching up with the two days that I missed last week. Lots to catch up on. My day was packed and, in fact, I had a meeting (from home) this evening from 6-7 PM.

I found out that Magnum, P.I., Season 8 was released recently and went out to buy it and season 7 today. This evening, I took a break and watched my two favorite Magnum, P.I. episodes, “Limbo” and “Infinity and Jelly Donuts”. I hadn’t seen them in a really long time and there were just as good as I remembered them.

I finished joe_haldeman‘s book, War Year, which I thought to be good, but too short (it ended rather abruptly). Fortunately, I received the other books I ordered from Powell’s in the mail today: Rob Sawyer’s, Factoring Humanity and Frameshift, and Robert Silverberg’s Up the Line. I’m quite eager to read Up the Line. Barry Malzberg described it as the best time travel story ever in his introduction to Silverberg’s novella, “Hawksbill Station”. I’ll probably get started on it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I’m going to watch another episode or two of Magnum, P.I. and then I’m off to bed. Got another busy day tomorrow.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

Casablanca

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Last night, Kelly and I watched Casablanca. She’d seen it before, I had not.

(Pause to allow shock and dismay.)

What a wonderful movie! While I hadn’t seen it before, it seemed as though I knew about 25% of the dialog because it has entered our language as almost cliche phrases since the movie was released. Of the top of my head:

“Here’s looking at you, kid.”

“We’ll always have Paris.”

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walked into mine.”

And of course, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I think I annoyed Kelly because I kept pausing it every time there was a quote that I recognized and pointing it out excitedly, like a little kid. Bogart was terrific and Bergman was stunning. It’s definitely in a class by itself, a true “motion picture” that makes today’s “movies” simply pale in comparison.

Rainy weekend

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It was another very busy day at work yesterday. My workday started at 5:40 AM and finished up at 4:30 PM. And I still have work I have to do over the weekend. It rained most of yesterday. After work, I met Kelly and we headed to Hard Times for chili and beer, which was the perfect meal for that kind of weather. Later in the evening, we watched The Heartbreak Kid with Ben Stiller (and Jerry Stiller, who in my opinion, was funnier) before heading off to bed.

We were up at 8 AM. Kelly headed off to the gym and I caught up on email. We are planning on heading over to Tyson’s Corner shortly. I’ve never been there before.

I checked the extended forecast for Orlando, Florida and the weather for the time we are going to be there with vickyandnorm looks really nice. We are both in desperate need of a break. It will be a lot of fun, and is only a few days away.

Kitchen juggling and other miscellaneous stuff

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Happy March!

Last night I prepared the most complex meal I’ve ever done so far. It was not complex in terms of ingredients or anything light that. I made ravioli with pasta sauce, and steamed broccoli, which I suppose is fairly simple. But I had three burners on the stove going at the same time, and managed to plan it well enough so that all three finished cooking at about the same time. (And while doing this, I was also checking some work email.) It was the perfect amount of ravioli, enough for a bowl full for me and for Kelly. And the sauce was a spicy sauce with just a bit of a kick to it. It was very good, and I was pleased with my ability to juggle multiple tasks in the kitchen.

For the second time in a couple of weeks, I accidentally texted he11o_sunshine in response to a text from someone at work. I’m not exactly sure how I manage to do this. I can only suppose that so much of my concentration is taken up by other things that I simply don’t pay attention to what I’m doing. Fortunately, Jen has been through this before and takes it patiently and with good humor.

We watched The Martian Child on DVD last night. The movie (starring John Cusack) is based on David Gerrold’s Hugo and Nebula award-winning novelette of the same title. We both enjoyed it, despite it being sad at times.

This evening we are heading over to A.J. and Denisse’s for a Peruvian dinner, which should be fun. We’ll probably end up playing some games too. Denisse asked me to bring Apples to Apples with me for that very purpose.

I have to work tomorrow. Since I am a fast writer, I agreed to write a significant portion of the user documentation for an application that we’ve been developing for a while and is close to a beta release. It will probably take me several hours tomorrow afternoon, but at least I can do it from home.

No captain, my captain

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This morning, I resigned as the co-captain of our softball team. It’s just one of those things I have to give up, when prioritizing everything else. I’m still going to play, but I can no longer afford the time it takes to prepare lineups, and wrangle players. I didn’t want to do it, but playing with time is a zero-sum game. If I’m going to get back to regular writing (and regular workouts) some other things must go.

Speaking of which, I’m not missing TV at all. When Kelly is over, we’ll watch something–usually something that’s been Tivo’d. But since new shows have come back, I haven’t watched one of them, not a new episode of House, not even a new episode of Smallville. I’m fine with it. My cable bill went up and I’d love to get rid of cable all together. The only reason I don’t is because Kelly likes to be able to watch TV sometimes. Since we usually watch old movies or something, maybe I can get rid of cable in the near future and re-up NetFlix. We’ll see. In any event, I’m not missing television at all.