Category: General

Random updates:

I feel great this morning, physically, at any rate. I’m still feeling the energy from my run last night. Running feels great once your body gets used to the stresses. When I’m running it feels like almost my entire body is working in concert. My senses are alert, scanning around me for obstacles or other things of interest; arms pumping and providing balance; back and stomach keeping me upright; legs doing their thing, keeping rhythm, feet pounding the ground; heart and lungs feeding the rest…

It all comes together in a continuous action. I feel like I could go running right now.

The house felt much quieter this morning. It’s finally time for Smacky’s “snip ‘n’ chip”. I dropped him off at the vet last night and they’re going to do him today. I missed having him around, although I’m happy I didn’t collect any new scars from him pouncing on my feet as I get out of the shower while blinded with water and soap in my eyes. (Warning: do not attempt to diagram the previous sentence)

Yep, Smacky’s going to be “chipped”, which means he’ll be a cybercat. How could a geek like me resist the opportunity to electronicize my animal companion? Much more geeky than a tatoo.

It doesn’t look like my Mac Mini will arrive today, after all. I jumped the gun a bit when I saw that it had “shipped” but apparently that only means that the finished building it and left it on the dock for someone to pick up, which didn’t happen yesterday. The page shows that it’s still on the dock this morning, if I’m reading the Fed Ex tracking page correctly. Of course, that page shows local time, so that might have been yesterday. I don’t know. All I know is that the tracking page doesn’t show a delivery date yet. *sigh* And I was so excited.

Yay! Got the email this morning: My Mac Mini (with SuperDrive DVD-burnin’ schweet goodness!) is shipping today!

I’ll have it tomorrow!

And my iPod Shuffle comes today!

Yay! Brand new infusion of Apple Crack © ™ !

Walking home from the bus stop tonight, just about 15 minutes ago, I saw a falling star. Very bright, looked like a fast-moving airplane at first but faded quickly.

I was listening to a little Blues Traveler and was in the right mood to make a wish.

For a materialist atheist I’m inappropriately romantic/sentimental/superstitious sometimes.

No, I am not going to tell you what my wish was.

Awful. Awful.

Hunter S. Thompson has apparently shot himself tonight.

One of the world’s best journalists is dead.

I’m doing a couple of shots of tequila in his memory.

I have a Whoo-HOO!! and a complaint.

My iPod Shuffle, that I ordered weeks ago, shipped out today. Yay! I’ll get it next week. Finally…

However, ghoddammit, I paid for overnight shipping. And I feel like I paid that extra amount for nothing. It’s shipping on a Saturday? A Saturday of a three-day weekend, no less. I won’t be at work on Monday, nobody will, which means I’ll have to wait for it until Tuesday. Which means my “overnight” shipping will take four calendar days.

Also, still no word on my Mac Mini… waiting… waiting…

John the Morning DJ over at KEXP, sends out an email every day after his on-air duties are over. The bulk of it lists what he’s played that day. Plus he includes emails from listeners, information about upcoming shows, things like that. It’s an interesting read.

He also lists some of his favorite music. Here’s two of the lists:

============================================
JOHN’S FAVORITE SONGS EVER-AN OPINIONATED WORK IN PROGRESS
============================================

1.Pixies “Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)”
2.Jesus and Mary Chain “Just Like Honey”
3.Joy Division “Love Will Tear Us Apart”
4. Sugar “Hoover Dam”
5. Stone Roses “I Wanna Be Adored”
6.Echo and the Bunnymen “The Killing Moon”
7. Ride “Vapor Trail”
8. The Clash “Police and Thieves”
9. Jeff Buckley “Hallelujah”
10 Radiohead “Let Down”

============================================
JOHN’S EVEN MORE COMPLICATED LIST OF MUST HAVE FAVORITE ALBUMS
============================================

1.Pixies “Surfer Rosa”
2.Radiohead “OK Computer”
3.Nirvana “Nevermind”
4.Sugar “Copper Blue”
5.Pixies “Come On Pilgrim”
6. Massive Attack “Mezzanine”
7. Chemical Brothers “Exit Planet Dust”
8. My Bloody Valentine “Loveless”
9 DJ Shadow “Endtroducing”
10. The Clash “London Calling”
11. U2 “Achtung Baby”
12. The Cure “Disintegration”
13. U2 “Joshua Tree”
14. Jesus and Mary Chain “Darklands”
15. Depeche Mode “Violator”
16. Jesus and Mary Chain “Psychocandy”
17. Radiohead “Kid A”
18. Pixies “Doolittle”
19. Radiohead “The Bends”
20. Jeff Buckley “Grace”
21. Smashing Pumpkins “Gish”
22. Pearl Jam “Ten”
23. Jane’s Addiction “Ritual de la Habitual”
24. Morcheeba “Big Calm”
25. Underworld “Dubnobasswithmyheadman”
26. Unkle “Psyence Fiction”

My emphasis added

So, among all his other favorite music, he likes Radiohead. That’s a good thing.

…and yet, if he likes Radiohead so much, why, why, WHY hasn’t he played any Radiohead at all this week???

I sent him an email pointing this out, and as of 8:59 AM today, he has corrected that error.

Ran like a rock star tonight.

At the gym (of course), did a warmup mile at a slow pace (around a 10:55 pace; don’t really know, just set the speed at 5.5 MPH), then stopped, stretched a bit, and then turned up the speed to 6.3 MPH, or around a 9:31 pace, and just kept going for 2 miles, then slowed back down to the warmup/cooldown pace for another mile. Don’t know if I could have kept going at the faster pace but I was impressed at the total mileage. Yay, me!

I’m thinking of doing some hills tomorrow night. Or maybe just an easy 2 1/2 to 3 miles. Not sure. Probably should go easy since today was basically my long run for the week.’

Was soooo tempted to celebrate by going out to eat but came home and had some frozen pasta-and-chicken thing. Oh, well. Saving money is glamorous, right?

This week I’ve made a resolution to eat every meal at home. No going out to eat for me. It was sink-or-swim time. I was going to determine, once and for all, just how much money I can save by preparing my own groceries.

I’m doing OK so far. Well, I have bought some Diet Pepsis this week (and I’m on a winning streak when it comes to the Pepsi/iTunes contest, too; it’s real easy to win when you can read the winning codes through the bottle) and I met a friend for coffee today and bought a delicious soy chai latte. Besides those (oh, and the Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate bar I bought) I’m perfect for eating meals I prepared.

Last night, I wanted to have some ramen (I didn’t say I was learning to prepare gourmet meals) but wanted some protein to go with all those carbs. Digging around in the back of my cupboard, I found a couple of cans of chicken, bought probably a year ago, back when I had my last “save money/eat at home” kick). Cans of chicken don’t go bad, do they? I looked all over for an “expiration date” but, finding none, I figured it was good to eat. I mean, the can wasn’t bulging with botulism or anything, there’s no holes or leaks, so it’s good, right?

But when I opened one… well… it smelled bad. Even I could tell that something wasn’t right. Ew. It all looked fine. It was the color I expected, not green or red or anything but normal white-meat chicken colored. I couldn’t quite bring myself to taste it, though.

So I called Smacky over. Set it on the floor. It’s chicken, right? And he’s not going to eat something that’s obviously bad for him (I realize that’s a dumb thing to think. I realize that now), right?

He sniffed at it for a second, then jerked his head away like it smelled… well… worse than his normal food, which smells horrible to me.

That clinched it. If it smells too bad for even Smacky to turn it down… it ain’t goin’ in my belly.

Did the weekly grocery shopping tonight.

Standing in the cookie aisle (gotta have snacks and goodies) I saw Mother’s Hawaiian Chocolate Chip cookies.

“Wha? Hawaiian? What makes them ‘Hawaiian?'”

The package spelled it out: chocolate chips… with a hint of coconut!

Ooooh…

And, yes, they’re delicious.

Intersection of two of my favorit-est things: Jhonen Vasquez and Penny Arcade.

Tycho and Gabe went to the Emerald City Comic Con last weekend, and Tycho (with whom I have exchanged email (about The Long Winters)) writes about the portent-filled meeting thusly:

The convention was pretty entertaining overall, though we had less visitors the next day. It seems like the set of people who attend comic conventions and the set of people who crave the Super Bowl (which I guess is basically the best bowl out there) would be fairly small, but I haven’t actually done a study. At any rate, I will tell you that the set of people who crave the Super Bowl (see above) and the people who crave Jhonen Vasquez is practically nonexistent. The man projects a line where no line existed – he sits down, and immediately the line goes woawrown. It was pretty interesting to hear stories from readers about monstrous things he’s done and his beastly acts toward them, and then a half an hour later to have him come over and ask us if we want shirts and hang out for like twenty minutes talking about videogames and Strawberry Shortcake. Of course, if he’s rooted in one spot for very long, there’s the woawrown again, and he has magically grafted his line to the front of our booth which gave us a real prestige. And there was this this sort of angelic autumn princess that would follow him, which made me follow them, just so I could hold the hem of her gossamer cape and think about decay.

He was really nice to us, by the way. Oh! And His name is pronounced Jonen, not Zhonen or Yonen or however the fuck I kept saying it when I was there. Eventually I realized that I had fucked it up (“That’s now how my name is pronounced”) but then I had to stick to it just to prove I was dedicated. It’s like, look Frenchy. I don’t know what the fuck kind of sound a J and an H make, okay? You’re rocking some Russian consonant activity.

He gave me an armful of Fillerbunny merchandise, and I was happy to give him everything his tubercular frame could support. I was particularly happy to hand over the Obsidian Spur, as even when I was writing it I thought the notion of a gothic line dancing troupe might appeal to him. Indeed, he might be the only person alive for whom such a concept has appeal.

Ah, thank you, Tycho; I’ve always wondered how to spell the sound a lightsaber makes. I need waaaaaaaay more practice making onomatopoeic words.

Not only does Tycho’s writing make me laugh, he reminds me that I still need to pick up the third Invader Zim DVD…

In related news, Jhonen Vasquez’s official site is both unfinished and very funny. But you probably knew that already.