1) On days when I shave my head, my scalp is so smooth that knit hats won't stay on. They slowly slide up as I walk down the street. Luckily a full day's worth of stubble is enough to keep the hat in place.

2) Yo Gabba Gabba! is currently the coolest show I can't watch because I don't have cable. Officially, it's a show for kids--It's kind of what Sesame Street would be like if it were run by silly hipsters (in this case, it's members of the band the Aquabats) and has a goofy sensibility that really appeals to me. I'm too old to have to be taught how to count, told to clean my room, or convinced to eat my vegetables. But damned if these songs don't get stuck in my head and make me giggle.

Today's been kind of a catch-up day, so I figured I'd pop in here, too. I've spent most of the afternoon sorting and tagging and uploading all the photos I've taken since last July to my Flickr account, if you're bored and need something to do. (UPDATE--the Flickr uploader ate my first attempt to post those photos. I am uploading all the pictures again right now, but they will be untitled and untagged for a while until I can redo all of that. It's sloppy and crappy and I feel stupid leaving them like that, but at least they'll be up.)

What's new with me? For one thing, my crurrent contract at work ends the last day of February. There's no word yet on whether or not it will be extended, so I really need to get moving on the job search. If they renew, I'll probably keep looking anyway, just for the hell of it. The chances of being hired on as staff are pretty slim, and I'd be much happier with something more secure. I've been playing a lot of Rock Band--a LOT of Rock Band-- and telling myself that maybe I should do a little less of that, and a little more, you know, book-reading or new-software-learning or LJ-posting. We'll see how all of that goes. Oh, and It came to my attention last night that the season of the Cadbury Mini-Egg is once again upon us, a full two months before Easter. My dentist and the clerks wherever I'm going to have to go to buy bigger pants will be thrilled.

Now I should go out and start Adeaide, as the temperature is rapidly dropping and I learned last year that she needs to be started at least once a week in the winter to keep her happy. As always, I'll try to post more often, but if past experience is any indicator, it may be a while. We'll see.

I am currently in beautiful Morton Grove, IL, visiting my mom. I arrived Friday evening around 7, about 21 hours later than I planned (thanks to bizarrely bad weather here and two canceled flights). So far I've manged to have dinner with my Dad, meet my mom's new boyfriend (I approve) and completely empty, then restock the refrigerator--the storms knocked out the power from Thursday afternoon until today around 1:00, and everything in the fridge went bad. Tomorrow will be a trip to the cemetery and an evening flight home.

I'm no good at taking vacations. They always feel too long when they begin, and too short when they end. I never manage to see everyone I should visit when I'm in town, and I certainly don't spend enough time with my parents, especially as they get older and more and more of my family dies off. It's something I wish I was better at, and kind of assumed I would be as I got older. Turns out that's not the case at all.

If you've known me for any length of time, you know that there are some things I swore I'd never do. You might also know that my resolve tends to give way in the face of certain things, including (but not limited to) a really, really good joke that the victim didn't see coming. Today was one of those days where, after over 8 months of planning, I went back on my word.

( Read on if you dare (or care) )

My brother turns 40 in a few weeks. Throwing a big party (surprise or otherwise) is out of the question. I'd like to at least get him a decent gift, which will violate our "no exchanging gifts" policy but he's turning 40 and I want to do SOMETHING besides just take him out for a nice dinner.

Unfortunately, I'm at a loss for ideas. He doesn't want an iPod. He just built himself a new computer. He already has a fancy watch, a good digital camera, a Palm-Piloty thing, and a solid DVD player. He wouldn't use a bike. He doesn't want to jump out of a plane (sky-diving or otherwise). So what do I get him? Any suggestions for a suitable present would be much appreciated.

In return I offer the promise to post for real sometime this weekend (which may or may not be an incentive), and the following picture which I have captioned "People will have ANYTHING delivered to their workplace."
( Read more... )

There's a big long post brewing in my head, but I never quite get around to spitting it out... sooner rather than later, I hope, but no promises. Suffice it to say for now that the "holiday season" such as it was went quite well--I had a great time with visiting friends, went to a couple of lovely parties, and generally enjoyed myself.

That's not what you're here for, though, is it? You want to be ENTERTAINED. To that end, here's The Keystone Kops in Star Wars.

( And here's a few pictures I took over the weekend with my crappy phone cam. )

One of the student interns brought this sweater to work on Friday, but the consensus was that it looked better on me. I think it shows off my figure nicely.

I am breaking radio silence to let you know that today is daft's birthday. Stop by her page or drop her an e-mail and wish her her a happy day, won't you? Otherwise she'll be sad. And when daft is sad it makes Evie angry.



You wouldn't like her when she's angry.

But I never thought it would doom my eternal soul!

and while we're all waiting for that, ( here's some links and pictures: )

One of these buses drove by my office this morning as a couple of my co-workers and I were talking... my boss squealed with delight as he dug out his camera to get a picture. I'm not that fast, but luckily they had their interweb address painted on the back of the bus:

http://www.www.golamers.com

What else is there to say? The promo pictures speak for themselves.

Somebody's making dinner in Central Square... and you're invited.

( Tonight's Menu )

Last night I was up too late doing the dishes (again) and thinking about how the Internets and computers have changed daily life. It really is amazing that I can look up information on any stupid thing that pops into my head by just sitting down in front of my computer. When I was in high school, I'd have to at least find some time to stop in the school library (if not make it all the way to a real library), and then go through the card catalogs and encyclopedias and stuff... any kid born after, what, 1990? will never need to venture out of his or her own house to research a term paper.

This led to thinking that anyone born after 1990 or so has no understanding of the term "photographic evidence." There was a time when truth could be established by the existence of a photograph--if there's a picture of something, it must exist/have happened, because there it is on shiny photo paper, and you can't fake that. Not easily and not convincingly, anyway. Nowadays you've got your newfangled Photoshops and such, and anything can be faked pretty damn well without a lot of effort.

And that led me to wonder about the progression of cynicism in society. I grew up in the 70s, right after Watergate, and have always understood that politicians were not to be trusted. I didn't realize until I was in my mid-twenties that my attitude was a recent development. People were genuinely shocked by what Nixon did, and that began a landslide of lack of faith. If you couldn't trust the President, who could you trust? (That feels strange to type, even in context, these days.)

I also grew up thinking that photographs were infallible and trustworthy. The camera, as they said, never lies. Now that that's out the window, where do people look for truth? What can you trust without reservation?

On a semi-related and lighter note, goofing around in Photoshop never fails to crack me up. Here's a tutorial on how to give anyone a quick-and-easy fake beard using a simple custom brush. And this is a prime example of why I think Photoshopping someone's head onto a different body is hi-larious..

This week is a tidy collection of reasons why I'm so happy to be back in Boston. The weather's getting colder and more fall-like every day, I've got three shows to see in 5 days (Man Man last night, Erase Errata tomorrow, and either the Reverend Glasseye or the Wrens on Saturday), drinks with friends in between, and no matter where I end up, I can walk home when it's all done in under half an hour and still get enough sleep to make it to work on time the next day.

Yeah, I missed this.

I know I said I was going to start posting regularly. I just didn't feel like I had anything interesting to offer. It might have been due to my weirdly-shifting sleep cycle, where I was getting a lot of sleep for a couple of days and then very little. Or it might have been my quitting coffee on workdays, which I think still may be affecting my moods a little (this is week 3). Either way, nothing much was happening that seemed worth reporting.

The past few days have been eventful, though, so I'm back. Friday night we had dinner with Dawn, who was in town for a wedding and made time to hang out. I hadn't seen her in maybe 8 years, and between then and now she's gotten married and started a pretty much full time gig as a jazz singer. In her spare time she works at her husband's family's vineyard and also does some coding on the side. It was really great to see her and catch up on everything, even if she did insist on dessert at the evil place that injects ice cream into cupcakes.

Saturday we loaded into Adelaide (yes, she lives!) and drove to New York to see Dan one more time before he leaves for jolly old England and a graduate program in Typography. We got a late start and showed up in Brooklyn around 7, so we headed right out into the rain for dinner with Mr. Josh and the yummiest shepard's pie ever (even if that first mouthful did sear the back of my throat--I'm still feeling it three days later). After that we went for drinks with daft's ex, Jim, and in the wee hours even managed to run into vividry, which was a bonus. Sunday brought dim sum, lots or wandering, and the realization that our plan to head home that night was ridiculous. So we spent the evening sitting around Dan's apartment reading old comics instead, and came home on Monday bearing as much as we could fit into Adelaide: shelving units, a steel surgical table on wheels for the kitchen, and boxes of art supplies. We got free stuff, Dan had a lot less to get rid of before he moves, and everyone went away happy.

One more thing: after a year of sitting on my ass, I finally managed to go through the almost 600 pictures I took on my trip to Israel last year. About 300 of them were in focus and/or worthwhile, and I've started uploading them to a Flickr account. I've already reached my monthly posting limit, so these will have to do until next month.

Significant event of the weekend: I was an asshole.

Everything about moving sucks. The weeks before, with the packing and the running around, are stressful. The actual going up and down stairs trying not to drop boxes/furniture/etc. is exhausting. I consider myself somewhat of an expert, because I have moved something like 10 times in the last 12 years.

I don't ask my friends to help me move anymore, because I know it's such a pain, and because other people sometimes just make it worse. The last time I actively solicited help was back in 1998, and it was a particularly bad move--when the day came, I wasn't done packing, the house hadn't been cleaned, etc. I warned people in advance that it would be a disaster. The people who showed up spent the day complaining and berating me for doing such a crappy job. Since then, I have tried to do as much on my own as possible.

I do try to help other people move whenever I can. Sometimes I feel like all I have to contribute to the world is manual labor, and the lifting without all the planning stress is not a big deal. I spent a few summers in college moving furniture in and out of dorms, so I feel that I have some expertise on the subject of getting large things up or down narrow staircases. When it's done, I feel like I've genuinely accomplished something.

My friend Pat and his wife (I missed their wedding last year because I was in LA) just bought a house, and moving day was Saturday. A week ago I told him I would be there at 8:00 Saturday morning to help with the moving. Friday afternoon I emailed to confirm that I'd help. Friday night I went to a party and stayed out much later than I should have, thinking that I would get two hours of sleep and then head out (after all, I managed to do the same thing a few weeks ago when my mom was in town).

Saturday morning I slept through two alarms and woke up at 9:15. Ran out of the house to Pat's old apartment (I couldn't get to the new one on public transportation) and got there over two hours late. I called the one other person I knew was helping to find out they had just arrived at the new house. Nobody else had showed up, so the two of them were doing it all themselves.

Asshole.

I have discussed in the past how much I hate the fact that my cell phone can't take a picture without making a very loud "shutter-click" sound. I know it's there to protect the innocent from me as I stalk the locker rooms of the world, but more often than not it just makes me too self-conscious to catch little episodes of weirdness that pop up throughout the day. I feel like it's too obtrusive to whip out my camera on the bus, or try to focus on a person sitting at the table next to me in a restaurant, but I could get away with playing with my cell phone...if it didn't make so much damn noise.

I present this as an explanation and an apology. In a better world, I'd have a very nice picture of Benjamin Franklin talking on a cell phone in a booth at McDonald's to show you. But I didn't take that picture, because ol' Ben would have heard the camera sound and attacked me with his Quarter Pounder.

Yeah, that does sound dirty, doesn't it? Probably a better image than the picture would have been.

It was a good weekend overall--beginning with an old semi-friend Friday evening, continuing with a bunch of people I moved back across the country to be around on Saturday night, and interspersed with a person who probably knows me better than anyone else at this point, and whom I hope I can stay connected with long after he leaves the country. In between all the socializing, I also got to spend some quality time with daft, which was nice because it's been a while since we've been able to just sit and talk for a few hours.

Coming this week: movie reviews (we finally burned through the 3 Netflix films that had been sitting on top of the TV for over a month), an Adelaide repairs update, and if I'm really lucky, a better sleep schedule... sure, I'm posting this at 3 a.m., and going to finish the dishes after. But tomorrow I'll be better. Honest.

Time was I could eat just about anything and not really feel it. Today I was reminded that those days are long gone. A couple of my co-workers ventured out late in the afternoon to a dessert place in the North End called Trani. Their shtick is that they bake cupcakes, brownies, etc., inject thjem with ice cream, and cover the hole with chocolate sauce. So it's 4:00, and I find myself face to face with two (they're small, and they only sell them in pairs! Honest!) chocolate-covered, ice-cream-filled cupcakes. I ate one, and then while I was thinking to myself "I should really put this in the freezer for tomorrow" I ate the second one as well. They were amazingly yummy.

15 minutes later, I felt ill. And proceeded to remain ill-feeling until sometime after 9:00. Stupid, stupid me. Lesson learned: you can't just eat piles of crap and expect to get away with it anymore. Even if the ice-cream-filled cupcakes are sitting right there in front of you looking delicious and begging to be eaten.

In other less painful news, my pal Dan is in town and staying with us for the weekend. Officially he's here for Typecon, but hopefully we'll be able to hang out in between official events. He's moving to England next year for grad school, so I need to get in all the quality time that I can before he's gone.