Catching Up

1. I’ve been going through old comic books looking for Hostess ads from the late 1970s.  They had these one-page stories where a hero would run into a really lame villain, and be able to stop them by distracting them with Twinkies, or fruit pies, or cupcakes.  Some of them are total crack, and there’s a web archive with snarky commentary.  I got the idea to profile the villains that the Flash fought (even though there’s still a bunch of minor villains and supporting characters from canon to add), so I’ve been looking for pages to get higher-res scans.  I found 2 of 4.

The funny thing?  It turns out that the Omnivore’s 100 list I posted includes Hostess Fruit Pies because the author was nostalgic for those ads.

2. Dinner with MIL Saturday, after alenxa went to a cousin’s wedding shower.

3. Majorly dehydrated on Sunday, or something.  Tried to start going through the piles of boxes against the edge of our living room, but ended up spending the afternoon on the couch reading, sipping water.  Read sections from The Flash Companion and a comic book trade, Supergirl and The Legion of Super-Heroes: The Dominator War.  I’d picked it up months ago, before we moved, since it was a sequel to a story I’d liked that came out in 1989 (Invasion!) but hadn’t gotten around to reading it.  Not bad, but didn’t wow me either.  Fortunately felt better in time to…

4. Hit the Orange Street Fair on Sunday evening.  Passed on Abelskivers (sp) this time.  Was in line, but realized I just didn’t want them.  Agreed we have to explore Old Town Orange sometime when it’s not a fair and businesses are open.  I think the last time I did that was more than 10 years ago.

5. Responsible day today.  Groceries, Laundry, etc.

6. Interviewed the outgoing writer on The Flash last week!

Goals for this week:
1. Locate cable outlet.
2. Arrange for some sort of TV service.  The fall season is starting, and we’ll actually be watching stuff live and not just off of DVDs.

Movies, Moving and More

  1. Saw Iron Man on Saturday. Very good, possibly the best superhero movie since the first Spider-Man. Perfect balance of action and humor — it knew when to take itself seriously, and (more importantly), when not to.
  2. Tried “curry chips” at an Irish pub near the movie theater. French fries, only lightly salted, and a bowl of curry to dip them in. Surprisingly good.
  3. Also watched Never Been Kissed via Netflix. Funny, but in a painful way, since the movie is all about public humiliation.
  4. Boxed up most of the books on our main 2 bookshelves. The plan is to put most of our books (and the shelves) in storage until we get a more permanent place, except for one to-read box. 10 boxes later, we still have the non-fiction shelf, the manga shelf, the humor+coffee table shelf… We’re going to need more boxes.
  5. Speaking of which, we’re down to less than 2 weeks to the move. Once we landed an interim apartment, I was relieved, but now I’m starting to worry about whether we’ll have time to pack everything up. Which reminds, me, I never got a response on my request for a quote for movers. More calls to make…
  6. Finally replaced the last of my large plain T-shirts with mediums after almost a year of holding at 150-155 lbs. Printed shirts are a bit trickier.
  7. Sleepy+hungry. Finally got around to reading Superman: Birthright last night, which was considerably better than the online consensus would suggest. But it meant I was up past midnight, and I got up early so that we could go to the DMV before work this morning. (alenxa and I both had stuff we needed to do there…this week. The funny thing is, we ended up at windows right next to each other, despite being in different queues.) So I got too little sleep and had breakfast 2 hours earlier than usual, and now I’m ready for lunch at 11:00.
Current Music: Jet Black Sunrise (Gin Blossoms)

Weekend Thoughts

Rain should not fall at an angle more horizontal than vertical.

Whoever came up with the idea for a warning chime to let you know your headlights are still on is a genius, and has saved my car battery many times over.

It doesn’t take much rain to screw up freeway visibility. I could swear I’ve driven in heavier rain and been able to see better.

Our apartment complex suffers from the same problem as UCI: no one bothered to build in decent drainage. Fortunately that’s only been a problem with the sidewalks so far, and not, say, parking or storage.

What the heck is “white whole wheat” flour? It sounds like raw Twinkies, or wild tofu, or Sweet ’n’ Bland. Is it a 50/50 blend or something?

If you run a Persian restaurant, and advertise belly dancers, no one really cares whether the dances are authentic. On that note, Caspian is very loud, at least on Saturday nights. But the food’s good.

The web is a stranger place than you think. Yesterday I was looking at website referrer stats, and discovered a link to our Comic Con photos on a site that specializes in super-heroine, uh, “fantasies.” I.e. dressing models up as superheroines and then, shall we say, reversing the process. Apparently with rope often involved, though that’s almost classic if you’ve seen any 1940s-era Wonder Woman. They had a page full of links to people’s convention photos, focusing on cosplayers.

Just how do they fit Christmas lights into the box? I’d rather let the cord tangle up and then untangle it next year than go through the exercise in frustration that involves trying to get them all into the plastic framework, only to have them pop out, not fit in the box, etc. At least when you untangle them to put them up, you get something out of it: pretty lights on the tree (or window, or roofline, etc.) All you get from carefully placing each light in the frame is a box you’re going to put away and ignore for 11 months, and you can get that much more easily just by jamming the string of lights into the box in the first place.

Semi-Random Thought of the Day

Just what is so “Fun” about “Fun Size!” candy? Did they look at the gap between “Bite Sized” and “Regular Size” and say, “Hey, we need another size in here, should we call it ‘Mini Size’ or something?” “Nah, that sounds small, we don’t want that! Let’s pick something that sounds appealing, something that sounds like fun. Hey, why not just call it ‘Fun Size?’”

(Inspired by the bowl of leftover Halloween candy sitting on the receptionist’s desk.)

Current Mood: 🤔contemplative
Current Music: the drone of the tape drive that I eventually want to get off my desk and into the server room