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.
This is where I regret that Veronica Mars is only imaginary. I’d like to institute a “the obnoxious customer is always tasered” policy at local grocery stores. We had a guy try to buy a gift certificate, it was taking too long to validate and he…walked out of the store.
There’s apparently no way to reverse the charges once the gift cert is activated, so the store couldn’t refund the card, but didn’t feel right charging the guy.
I would have felt perfectly content to just hang on to the gift certificate for them…
Ugh. That really brings up the question of where the money “is” — sort of a Schroedinger’s dollar.
I think the worst delayed-line experience I’ve had was driving back from one of the D&D sessions at your place in MB. I stopped at McDonalds for a soda on the way back, and it took at least 20 minutes because the car in front of us had ordered a zillion McFlurries at 2 AM. They handed back an empty box of fries before McD finished making all their flurries. (alenxa posted the whole tale)
hehe Scott Pilgrim, good memories of that
Fires were actually sinisterly (quack) beautiful. I remember on the way home I saw from the freeway an eerie orange light in the foothills. It’s like seeing Disneyland fireworks except you know this isn’t pleasant. Still, the beauty of it was undeniable.
Yeah. From home there were too many buildings in the way to see much, but I could see some of the glow from near work, and we both saw it one night from the parking lot by On The Border.
You might have seen this one, but while wandering around online I found an incredible photo taken from Mission Viejo showing the view from the southeast side of the hills.
Minus the lights in the foreground and yes that’s what I saw…
Still beautiful. Foreground lights actually adds an immediacy and contrasted surrealism. Just like the feeling I got when I arrived home. Nobody panicked. Nobody evacuated. All seemed normal. If it wasn’t for the ash and the burnt smell with it, I wouldn’t have thought there was a fire less than a mile away from me… sheesh