smacky and bucky

Wife called just before I left work yesterday and said she had to attend a meeting that could go until 9pm. To me, that meant I could take the long way home and stop at the used CD place up the road from my office. They also carry some DVDs, but I usually only give them a cursory glance. But yesterday they had a copy of The Lost Room sitting on the shelf. This was a SciFi channel original miniseries about... well, it's a little complicated. There's a good review of it here. It retails for $20. It's $15 on Amazon. This place had a brand new copy, two disc widescreen, for $9.99. Sold! It just came out on Tuesday, so I'm shocked they had it, and that it was new, since they usually only have used DVDs. And yep, that's the guy from Sports Night and Six Feet Under.

Labels: DVD, sci-fi

As I mentioned earlier, last night we were scheduled to meet up with a friend from my Peace Corps days. His plane was supposed to arrive at 5, so after work I went home and mowed the lawn, finishing around 4. As I came into the house, my cell phone rang. He ended up on an earlier flight and was already at the hotel. Wow. I got cleaned up and we met up in Dupont Circle.

We went to a Mexican restaurant (something ending in "cantina") and the three of us (wifey came along) split a pitcher of margaritas. Perfect drink for an evening in the mid 80s. A few hours of catching up, reminiscing, and a seafood chimichanga later and we dropped him off back at Dupont Circle, where he probably went to a bar and met some guy (he's kind of a whore like that... always meeting guys wherever he goes.)

It was a lot of fun to see him. It was nearly 10 years ago to the day that we first met in Georgetown before leaving for Africa. I recalled that on the flight from DC to Brussels, he sat down in the empty seat next to me and handed me a Cognac. He confessed later he thought I was gay (He said "thought," I said he had "hoped" I was). So now I remind him that the first time we met he tried to pick me up. (It's not the first time a guy has flirted (unsuccessfully!) with me, but that's another blog post entirely!)

The episode of Drive last night was pretty good. The best part was the demonstration that the organizers of the race do not play around: When you are eliminated, you are eliminated. No trying to get back into the race. A big-ass truck saw to that.

Heroes was good too: plot advanced, characters moved about, one died and returned, one died and didn't.

Just started this:

After finishing this:

Hey L, since you asked earlier, I've got your global warming right here!




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Labels: happy, hubcap, luck

First of all, who knew mouse infestation was such a widespread problem among bloggers?

Wow.

I hit a pothole and lost a hubcap this morning. I didn't actually lose it. I know exactly where it is: sitting in the third lane of a busy highway on a blind curve. Nowhere to pull over to retrieve it, no chance to walk out and get it before getting splattered like Frogger. And it's probably been run over about 20 times already in the last hour.

Sigh.

I went online and found a replacement for $25 delivered.

Still, if that's the most annoying thing that happens today, I can live with it without too much complaining.

Wow, me, the king of slack and relaxation actually had to bring some work home with me last night! It was only about an hour's worth, but still... my wife was completely shocked. I blame it on the fact that in the middle of the day I had to run to a health food store and buy a bottle of 100% essential oil of peppermint. Not for its new-agey medicinal purposes, no, but for something more insidious. It supposedly repels pests, including ants and mice. Apparently these animals don't like the smell. While we're not infested with either at the moment, we did catch two mice over the winter, which was enough to investigate ways to deter them from ever entering the house. The fact that it supposedly repels ants is a bonus. (I'm using supposedly here because reviews of this method seem mixed, but with about 75% reporting success, so that was enough to lead me to try it.)

Long side story there ("Tale of the Essential Oil" by Chaucer). The work I had to do was explain changes to the back covers of some books to a graphic designer. It would have been a lot faster on the phone or if they'd ever get video-phone technology widespread. Instead, I had to write sentences like, "Second bullet, third line, change ____ to ______."

When I finished that work, I went to work with the oil and a large bag of cotton balls. I placed between 5 and 10 drops of oil on each cotton ball and placed them, well, everywhere: behind major appliances, in cabinets and closets, in the crawl space, outside under the front porch, in the garage, in the attic. Our house smells minty fresh, with no danger to the pets. Even if we didn't have pets, we wouldn't use poison. Think about it: a small mouse eats poison, then returns to where it's nesting (in the wall, for instance). The mouse dies. Um, there's now a dead mouse rotting in your wall. Gross!

I finished all those chore-type things in time for dinner out and got home in time to catch House, in which they tried to figure out why a six-year-old girl got her period.

That was Tuesday.

I was going to post about how since I rather like the new Fox show Drive, and because it was cocreated by one of the creators of Wonderfalls, it will probably get canceled in the next month.

I was also going to post about how much I'm enjoying exploring the past incarnations of Doctor Who, especially Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy.

I'm going to take a day off from my usual foolishness. Just a day.

Everyone has heard about the college shootings by now. I visited friends there several times in the mid 1990s when they were students, but I haven't been there since. I went to some good parties there. It's a nice campus. Big. It's a big part of Virginia. Nearly everyone has family or friends who are alumni of that school. It's horrible what happened, but the location was just a result of the circumstances that brought the guy there. It could have happened anywhere. At any school, at any store, in any community.

That's all for today.

Hawaiian legend Don Ho died Saturday of heart failure. He was 76. His big hit was, of course, Tiny Bubbles.

I'm getting tired of writing about the deaths of people who only made the world a more interesting place. Here's a respectful slide show tribute, but I prefer to remember him this way: from his 1970s TV show, covering Peter Gabriel's Shock the Monkey:

As a working mother of three, volunteer at the hospital, and treasurer of our neighborhood swinging group* I find it hard to find time to read. But there's always time for a new zombie story, and here's one I've started:

"Deathbringer" is a horrible name for a book, isn't it? It's like the author used Babelfish and found the direct translation of the Chinese word for "killer." It's like calling a chef a "foodcooker" or an author "bookwriter." You get the idea.

I approach these with low expectations, and hope for the best. This one is pretty good so far. The book has the requisite amount of gore, sex, and violence, and that's all you can really ask for in a zombie book. Plus it was cheap, since I got it recently at a used book store. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not literary snob.
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*Footnote: I'm none of those things. I'm a childless dude, don't volunteer anywhere, and I only swing to the sounds of Sinatra. K? Everything you thought you knew about me is still true. But wouldn't it have blown your mind if I suddenly admitted that the last few years of blogging have all been a lie and I was a middle-aged mother living an active fantasy life???

Labels: book, zombie

Seven years ago today, Laura and I had our first date. I had met her a week earlier. She went to college with someone who was in the Peace Corps with me. I got her number from our mutual friend and asked her out. She couldn't resist my boyish charm (in other words, I sounded frightened on the phone). We had dinner at The Front Page in Dupont Circle, and went to see The Emperor and the Assassin. She thought I was arty, not suspecting I was just a geek that loved martial arts films. Sucker! I'm a lucky guy. She's my Dale, and I'm her Flash. Together, we save the universe from Ming and those other Mongo bastards. Soundtrack by Queen.

Labels: anniversary, flash gordon, martial arts

The weekend started normally enough. Friday afternoon we tossed our bags in the car and headed to the river. Saturday morning the cordless phone kept beeping, signifying the power going off and on repeatedly. I got up to investigate and heard the wind. Pulling back the curtain, I was shocked to see snow. Quite a bit of snow. We ended up getting nearly four inches before it stopped. By Sunday, temps were back in the 50s and the snow had almost entirely disappeared. My father-in-law and I had been planning to get the boat back on the water, but we obviously had to cancel that. Five days earlier, I mowed the lawn on an 80 degree day.

Well, last night's Lost had two women handcuffed together, beating each other up, and falling in the mud (this last part was after the fighting was over, so no mud wrestling) . Decent episode. We learned a few things, like for instance, in three years, Juliet went from a timid lab worker to someone with lightning-quick reflexes and kick-ass kung fu moves. I could see her still being a spy for Ben if he asked her, but it does legitimately appear she was left behind and is now an outsider. I'm looking forward to the episode that fills in the gaps of the previous night and what happened to Locke (hurt hand, leaving with the Others, etc.).



I stopped by a used CD place after work since I had to pick up some allergy meds from the nearby drug store. I stumbled across Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, 1984-1989. My college years were in the '90s, but this band's music brings back a lot of memories, mostly good ones, but a few bittersweet ones too. One of their songs is called Jennifer, She Said, and we (a girl named Jennifer, naturally, and I) were probably in year two or three of the about six years we were together. The song is about a guy who gets the name Jennifer tattooed on his arm, and of course then they end up breaking up. I never went as far as to do that, but I did purchase an engagement ring (which I later sold during grad school), so I can certainly relate to the overall tone of the lyrics, even without the tattooed reminder:

jennifer we can't go wrong let's put it in writing
jennifer we can't go wrong let's do it right now
maybe you were a little hasty
but they say love is blind
now her name on you
jennifer in blue
did you ever have a bad dream wake up and it not stop?
did you ever feel for a girl for a time and then stop?
well it's written there in blue
with a heart and arrow through
her name on you
jennifer in blue
and forever you said that's forever you said yes forever
and forever she said that's forever she said yes forever
but you change with the weather
you change with the weather
and this is the rain

Anywho, yeah, we ended up formally breaking up, I went to Africa, and she ended up marrying the next guy she dated. Wasn't meant to be. I picked up the CD for $5 and listened to it, and that's what led to this post.

Labels: Lost, music