Wednesday afternoon ponder
70 degrees and sunny outside today when I can’t go out and enjoy it for a couple hours, and it’ll be 45 again this weekend when I can. Poo. At least I’ll be back in western Virginia and might be able to catch up with some people.
The iPod is so nice. I’d forgotten how good that really-loud on-demand Jean-Michael Jarre could be for my moods.
Robotech.com mentions this week that there will be a Robotech CCG this summer, and that Robotech: Shadow Chronicles is in pre-production as we speak. Yeah… I will believe in them both when I see them, and wait the same period before I trust in the quality of either. The CCG especially – designing an entertaining CCG with staying power isn’t the cakewalk a lot of companies think – and they take a *lot* of money to support.
I haven’t been real focused the last week or so, and haven’t gotten many things done that I’d hoped to. Have to reign myself in on that.
Eight years and (happily) counting!
Sunday night raininva and I celebrated both an early Valentine’s Day, and a late anniversary of the day we began a serious relationship. We drove out to one of Rain’s favorite restaurants as she told me about the incredible gift she’d got me that would blow me away.
Well, we got settled at the table and she presented me with my gift – the first season of Gargoyles on DVD. Now, that was certainly cool and something I’m pleased to have in my collection, but it didn’t quite measure up to the hype she’d been giving me. But I played along, and told her I was very pleased with the gift (not hard to do, since I did like it).
She said, “Yeah, I’m glad you like it; though I did get you a backup gift in case you didn’t.” And she hands me a 1 GB iPod shuffle.
iPod!
An iPod has spent quite a long stretch on my list of “things I’d like to have but I’m not holding my breath”. And I have to admit it’s keen to have a device which plays hours and hours of music on a single charge, with no moving parts besides the control switch. And it’s tiny, and weighs nothing!
A passing waitress saw me looking at The Precious and said, “You must have been a very good boy lately!”
Not really. But my sweetie loves me 🙂
*****
Rain got a nail in her Pontiac’s right rear tire Friday night, and assuming the tire was unsalvageable, we headed to Wal-Mart on Sunday afternoon for a replacement. There was a five-hour wait there! I swear, I’m going to start boycotting Wal-Marts not because of any political feeling, but because they are always overcrowded and scary. I want to start bringing a machete when I go to the Superstore down here!
So, I was about to admit defeat – Wal-Mart was impossible, and everything else was closed – when I saw a Shell station with a bunch of tires propped outside; I rolled the dice and pulled in. Turns out there was a friendly good-ol-boy in there who wasn’t even busy, and had the tire plugged and airtight in 15 minutes, and even re-inflated the spare for us. Only charged about 15 bucks, too!
Here’s some karma for you, guy. You deserve it.
Captain’s Blog…
He shouldn’t have spent the latinum on that AssimilatedJournal account.
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/649.html
Clearing the mental registers
Latest reading / writing progress: Finished a re-read of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising, which is like The Lord Of The Rings of military thrillers; long and complicated, but internally consistent and plausible and worth the read if you can stick it out. Trying to read Terry Pratchett’s Men At Arms or The Truth, but I keep stalling in the early pages of each. Last year, Witches Abroad did a much better job of sucking me in.
Wrote a bunch of flavor text last night, and a few hundred words for “Cat Out Of Hell” over the weekend. Also figured out what the MacGuffin should be for “That Goat Doesn’t Belong To You”, making it more a part of the story and slightly less of a MacGuffin.
Our Lord of the Rings CCG is addictive, and I’m not saying that as an employee, either. raininva keeps killing me at the Bridge of Khazad-Dum, though.
I got honked at on the way to work this morning because someone mistimed his sudden acceleration and wasn’t able to cut me off as he’d planned. I guess he was trying to say, How dare you prevent me from being rude to you!
I did nothing for Mardi Gras last night, continuing a tradition I’ve maintained as long as I can remember. I will probably continue that tradition next month in a few months for Cinco de Mayo too. But at least Card Night will probably be a go this weekend – MarsCon and sicknesses have put a damper on the last few.
Just discovered NeoOffice, the OS X port of OpenOffice. Basic MS Word / Excel functionality, for free? I knew this had to suck… except it doesn’t. Now I’ve got it installed on all the machines I use at work or home.
And that’s Wednesday morning.
“What? The Outfit’s Not Enough?”
I glanced through a magazine article this morning that discussed the poor box-office performance of Catwoman and Elektra. “Looks like audiences aren’t ready for female superheroes,” commented a studio exec.
Right. We’re not ready. Or, maybe, they were weak movies to begin with? Idiot.
I bet the guy who did Batman: Dead End and World’s Finest could make a kick-ass Catwoman or Wonder Woman flick. Maybe someone should suggest it to him.
From sepia tone to sickness
So I’m finally fully aware again, for the first time since Wednesday night. raininva had brought home Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow last week, and we settled down to watch it, but halfway through the movie I couldn’t stay vertical (and it wasn’t the film, really). This turned into an excruciating night’s fight with stomach flu (I lost). It’s taken this long for the nausea and weakness to fully recede; last night was my first full meal in days, and eating a proper dinner felt sooo good. Of course, insult to injury, Rain was battling the flu too by Friday morning 🙁
Sky Captain‘s visuals impressed me – the integration of the virtual sets was very slick and never distracting. I think “Dex” won the spot of my favorite character over the leads, though. Interesting to watch that movie in such close proximity to The Aviator (which I really liked, but I’m an aviation geek and a Cate Blanchett fan).
I heard on the radio this morning that the B-52s covered “Paperback Writer” for a Buick commercial that won’t air. The heck with the commercial, I want a copy of that cover!
Busy morning. Information Services is the only career I can think of where one will be metaphorically asked, “Come over and move some furniture for me; I’ve lost the keys to my house, so bring burglary tools.”
EDIT: Almost forgot! I have addicted one of our houseguests to Katamari Damacy. Resistance is futile!
