ase

The current household configuration may be equally correctly dubbed the House of Tea, or the Kitchen of Chopsticks.



Roommate Number Three and I collaborated on Independence Day grilling and dessert: I procured a grill, he bought charcoal for grilling ribs, veggie skewers and chicken, I made brownies. NOM. After several days of surprise use-or-lose PTO, R's schedule is once more at the whims of his superiors, and I had work this weekend too, but we managed a sit-down pig-out this afternoon. Happy Independence Day indeed.

In a fit of laziness and snobbery, I sort of blew off the fireworks - how can the Left Coast compete with congressionally funded fireworks, except in post-fireworks transit crush? - in favor of chilling at home. They'll be here next year, and with persistence so will I.

Yesterday I experienced a five hour Lego fugue while watching The Hunt for Red October and Band of Brothers. Apparently I really am an eight year old boy at heart: this hypothesis would also explain why I think of makeup as something that happens to other people.

Dad and Second Wife are enthusiastically packing in preparation for March, when Second Wife hits retirement and they relocate to Arizona. This has been coming since about 10 seconds after dad figured out his career track didn't include transfer back to the West: dad's decoration style since 1989 has been American Southwest In Exile. (Sometimes he mixes it up and adds some electric elements, leading to the adobe-and-computer-and-chili-pepper-lights themed home office.) So this weekend we ate lavishly, baked, sorted deep-storage boxes for moving / donation / trash, recounted horrible family stories about the dead and absent, and watched (for values that include extensive laptop time) Quantum of Solace. Second Wife thought it was dumb, which brought out my "yeah, Bond flick, duh" side.

When I returned home with the final dregs of my childhood (see "moving and sorting") I thought, "I should try to reconstruct the Legos, take a couple of snapshots for posterity, then donate them somewhere." Five hours later I was thinking, "I should buy more Legos and we should make them an entertainment fixture in the living room! It would be a roommate bonding experience!" Regression is hilarious.

Today I saw Avatar in 3D with samthereaderman (cathydalek bowed out with a head cold). It is a triumph of really spiffy special effects over an average-to-obnoxious screenplay. I saw it called Dances with Blue Cats and there is an unfortunate ring of truth to that. So this is likely to piss off people involved in disability activism, or actively engaged in the standing cultural appropriation / racism discussion, or anyone who can count the number of awesome women in the film vs the number of awesome women who die for the cause. Also, the sound effects and soundtrack did not win me over (the future has to sound right) and I think the laws of physics as established in the movie took a beating for the sake of the plot. So I am on the fence: I loved the visual effects, and my "the future is shiny" nerve center got a nice hit, but the screenplay didn't live up to the eye candy.

Tomorrow I go to work. I plan to motivate myself with Sherlock Holmes some day after work. Do I need to see RDJ in theaters? Technically, no. Do I need a reason to be sunny and upbeat at work? Yes I do.

I got out of work on time today. I still haven't recovered from the shock. However, Chinese buffet with dad and Second Wife helped a lot.

It's good to see dad, and it's great to veg out and mooch delicious food (tomorrow may be Experiments With Baking day), but I am mildly creeped out because there are no bookcases in the house. I finished one book on the metro, so I am down to a collection of best fantasy short stories of 2006. And the internet, of course. Send help. Send nonfiction. Send my bookcases. I go home Saturday to my to-do list.

To those who celebrate, have a happy Christmas Eve, and a merry Christmas. Everyone else, enjoy your Friday.

Happy American Thanksgiving! For the rest of you, have a nice Thursday evening. Today I am grateful for dads who cook. Tonight I am noodling on Perl For Bioinformatics and generating about 20 lines of error message with a single extra backslash. Troubleshooting is hilarious, especially when pecan pie is on tap.

1.) Traditional pecan pie. Day three. (Yum!)
2.) Traditional post-dinner setup: TV on, dad passing out, me with laptop.
2a.) Second Wife's dogs making a fuss.

By the way, if anyone knows how to dope five Shelties into not barking (without, you know, Second Wife noticing all of her dogs are higher than a kite), I am all ears.

Happy Monday morning! (Oh shoot, I'm late out the door!)

1.) If you saw me in the back of a police car, what crime would you assume I was accused of?

2.) The wishlist thing: I don't like it. I am picky, and like buying things that are exactly right. But this year, I will say: GIVE ME YOUR FILM.

You know you have old 35 mm film left over from the dark pre-digital days. Donate it to Project Retro! For your contribution, you get the warm and fuzzy feeling that you have Done Charity with something you weren't using anyway.

I also want peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, and maybe some fiction that is awesome. However, gender-bending intersectional postcolonial comedy with large explosions is, um, hard to come by.

3.) It's Christmas card time! Or maybe a nicely signed "my 2008 in 1 page or less" holiday letter. And me lousy at keeping my ADDRESSES.XLS file current.

[Poll #1298890]

I am lucky to work in an environment where the logical answer to "what to do for Halloween?" is themed decorations, a costume contest, and potluck of DOOM.

On the way home I saw the sort of visual moment that makes me contemplate massive budget-related stupidity: a dark vee of geese flying between a tiny white curve of the old moon and two contrails starting to glow in the sunset. No camera yet! March, maybe. Unless I get a second job, which, just - Christmas retail would not be a good idea.

I ran into one of my neighbors on the bus, and we wound up going to the 9:30 Club for soul and ska. We swapped out work bags for party wallets, he got a beer (to accompany the two he'd had before leaving his job for the day), and we took the metro into the city, admiring the costumes accumulating in the increasingly cheery party crowd. We hopped off the metro at Dupont Circle and walked from there, which turned out to be at least as interesting as people-watching on the metro. He got another beer and a sandwich, I got a hard lemonade and a vegan serape (whole wheat tortilla, vegan refried beans, salsa, rice) which was exactly as disgusting as it sounds. However, there's nothing like ideological anti-animal-product righteousness to keep the milk out of your dinner. I held out through three acts (The Ambitions, Deal's Gone Bad, The Toasters) and made it through two songs from The Pietasters before pleading exhausting and bailing for U Street Metro, leaving my neighbor to his Jack and Coke. I got to be that person who had to be woken up at her stop, but not before failing to get the number for some distractingly geeky and hot guy whose stop came up before mine.

At 1:30 in the morning my roommate poked her head in my room to start a conversation about life, the universe, and our sketchy old mail key, and I kicked her out once I'd established I was not, in fact, wearing pants.

Good Halloween. More of the same next year, please!