Month: November 2007

Thanksgiving Weekend

Wednesday: Scrambling to finish a section of this big web project for work so that the client could test things over the weekend, and still get out early enough to pick up alenxa when her office closed at 3. Planned to leave at 2 & hit the comic store first, but got out at 2:50. So I went straight to pick her up, and we got stuck wading through pre-TG traffic and grocery store madness. (Gripe: The express lane clearly says cash only. Why do some people insist on paying with a check anyway? (Answer: because the store doesn’t want to lose that sale, so they call over a manager to take it, and thereby inconvenience all 12 people waiting for the process — which takes 10 minutes instead of 1 for some reason — instead of inconveniencing the one person who really should have been in another line in the first place. Thus do we reward people being either clueless or inconsiderate.)) Helped Katie a bit w/ baking.

Thursday: Thanksgiving lunch w/ Katie’s family. Worked out pretty well, since it meant neither of us needed to eat dinner.

Friday: Holed up in the apartment, venturing forth only to run by the pharmacy. Re-read first 3 volumes of Scott Pilgrim & read the new one. Still holding up.

Saturday: Drove out in the Tustin Foothills/Lemon Heights area to take advantage of the really clear air and see what I could see. Got to see Catalina Island from about 10 miles inland. Also between this and a similar drive early in October, I have some interesting before & after pics of some of the hills touched by the Santiago fire. It got a lot farther north than I thought. Edit: Forgot to mention, got a kick out of driving around the wealthy enclave with “Sinister Ducks” playing on the iPod. Gotta love random.

Then afternoon & evening for a secondary Thanksgiving dinner w/ my parents & brother, who’s out visiting from Florida (but moving to San Fransisco next month). Haven’t seen BSG: Razor yet. Will probably watch it tonight.

Sunday: Ran errands, went to see Beowulf in 3D. Sushi & tempura for dinner (Maki Maki has a teriyaki chicken roll, plus everyone has veggie rolls), then minor shopping.

Monday: I think we may have finished off the leftovers, except for a turkey leg.

Somewhere in all this I took a few hours to pare down my inbox from ~650 messages to ~250, mostly by filing and deleting things I’d already dealt with or didn’t need to (though I replied to a couple of things). Probably around 40 of the remaining items are to do/to read items I sent myself. At some point I’ll need to do this with my work mailbox.

Current Mood: 😴sleepy

Crazy Drive Home

Encountered the aftermath of a fairly major accident on the way to pick up alenxa after work. Someone had hit a traffic signal at Jamboree and Michelson and knocked it over. Police were investigating the shattered bits of one of those little equipment covers, as well as the pole, while what remained of the car sat halfway into the intersection. I hesitate to think how fast they must have been driving when they hit. Or, for that matter, what happened to whoever was in the car.

After I picked her up, I decided to take MacArthur to avoid all the spillover traffic. Driving over the freeway, we saw flames climbing up the wall of a sports club building from its sign, occasionally dropping to the ground to join another blaze at the base of the building.

A few minutes later, a fire engine zoomed by on the opposite side of the street. I pulled the car over to the side, and some numbskull decided instead of pulling over behind me and waiting for me to start moving again, they’d creep around me. As if I had pulled over to make a right turn, rather than pulling over because of the big red firetruck with flashing lights and a siren. WTF?

Current Mood: 😡frustrated

Musical Weekend

Friday night alenxa and I went to a Gin Blossoms concert in Cerritos. They spent most of the show alternating between songs from the new album (which is surprisingly good) and their old standards. Encore was 2 covers: Rocketman and something I didn’t recognize.

Funniest remark: “We don’t get to play many Performing Arts Centers. Mostly we play casinos and dog pounds.”

Saturday I spent some time filling in random songs for our music collection, going with Amazon’s DRM-less plain old MP3s when possible and iTunes when not.

Sunday we watched Phantom of the Paradise, a truly bizarre mash-up of Phantom of the Opera and Faust set in a satire of the 1970s rock music industry.

Halloween, Nanowrimo, Pushing Daisies

Last night we got the biggest Halloween crowd we’ve had in years. Which isn’t saying much, since it was only around a dozen kids, but I think there were a couple of big groups that collided, because about 6 or 7 of them showed up at the same time. alenxa redid her Sylar Victim makeup, and scared some of the kids. (One actually asked, “Does that hurt?”) After that first round, she stayed in the back room and I handed out the candy.

Official NaNoWriMo 2007 ParticipantSince I was up late anyway last night (making sure everything on the laptop worked after upgrading to Leopard), decided to get an early start on Nanowrimo after midnight rolled around. Only jotted down 135 words (including the title & byline), but it’s a start. Then I spent too much time looking around the site for counting tools and such. Should’ve gone to bed as soon as I stopped writing. I’ll probably be blogging progress reports over at K2R this year, instead of here. Haven’t decided for sure yet. Here’s my profile.

Pushing Daisies continues to be fun. Anyone else here watching it?

Current Mood: 😴sleepy
Current Music: The End of the World, Gin Blossoms