Account of the bank

At lunch I stopped by the bank to pick up some rolls of quarters for laundry. (The next time we move, a washer/dryer hookup will be part of our criteria.) For some reason, the teller was acting really nervous. When I asked to withdraw two rolls of quarters, she stammered that I should swipe my card while she went to get them.

This in turn made me nervous. I watched her talking to one of the other tellers, wondering what was going on. Did I have a doppelganger on the FBI most wanted list? Was I acting suspiciously without knowing it? Was I just really jittery from all the coffee I drank this morning? Is there some unwritten rule about how many rolls of coins one may reasonably withdraw at a time? Was I going to spend 20 minutes talking to the security guards before they were satisfied that all I wanted to do was withdraw some cash from my own account?

She came back with the quarters, I evidently managed to mistype my PIN, but I got it right on the second try, and the transaction went fine (except for her pronouncing my name wrong)—though I decided to keep my hands in plain sight, just in case. All told, it was an odd experience.

Current Mood: 😕confused

Weekend

Plans/goals for weekend:

1. See Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (tickets already arranged for tonight).
2. Get a replacement hubcap (oh, i haven’t been posting the car saga, have I?).
3. Finish posting Hawaii photos.
4. Get some sleep.

Re: #1, we tracked down a copy of Clone Wars Volume 2, which is much heavier on story than volume 1, and looks like it leads up to about 5 minutes before Episode III begins.

The car saga

A matter of perspective

Yes, you really do notice different things on foot than in a car. For instance: after the heavy rains this past winter, all the empty lots in the Irvine Spectrum area are full of weeds. But in spring, when the weeds are green and in bloom, those fields look an awful lot like meadows.

The lot (or meadow) in front of the Ford building, in particular, had so many birds wheeling and swooping above it that I stopped to watch, and also spotted butterflies and a ladybug that zoomed past my hand to land on the bag of allergy medication I always carry whenever I go somewhere to eat. (I moved it over to the hedge I was standing next to and waited for it to jump off.) A bit later in the walk I started to notice bird songs, and something I couldn’t quite identify as a very loud cricket, a frog, or just a gravelly-voiced bird.

Not all the empty lots look like this. The one nearest the building where I work is, at this very moment, being reduced to stubble by some guy on a power mower.

Still preoccupied with 1995

Heard “1985” at lunch today and finally got a chance to listen to the lyrics. It was followed up with “Dreams” by the Cranberries (whose heyday was the mid-1990s). The two songs together got me thinking. I’m fine with the fact that it’s been more than 10 years since I graduated high school (1994). But it still weirds me out that it’s been more than 10 years since I started college. They’re only a summer apart, but for some reason one feels more remote.

Of course, I still haven’t gotten used to the fact that I’ve now been a college graduate longer than I was a college student.

Current Mood: 🤔nostalgic

Googolplex: a virtual reality movie theater

Here’s an interesting idea: Googolplex Theaters creates a virtual reality movie theater so that, effectively, everyone gets their own screen.

Of course, once you simulate a screen in VR, why stop there? You’ve already got 3-D in the display, and between the backlog of 3-D movies and a decade or so of computer animation, there are a lot of possibilities.