Step one: find the right line… Accomplished.
Two more words:
Muppet Show
Well, I just started watching the Muppet Show episode that aired the day I was born., which is an odd experience. While watching through season one, I noticed they’ve done two songs from Chicago so far, which surprised me, I didn’t know the broadway show was that old, but it was brand new then.
Also, on a related and very hilarious note, while re-reading through Girl Genius today, I noticed that in one scene, sitting on Gil’s workbench is a gorilla detector (with a post-it on it saying “Needs work!”). I just about died laughing, having just seen that episode.
Night without a PC — update.
Watched Napoleon Dynamite. I was warned by the girl at the video store that it “had no plot but was funny anyways.” Hank managed to get sucked in by the rapid fire randomness and we concluded that it was a movie that was funny, but you can’t understand why.
I think I understand now.
Catching up
Just finished watching season 2 of Dead Like Me. Finished up Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It’s a maintenance day on FFXI, so I figured I’d try and finish things I hadn’t finished, so I’m firing up Half Life 2…. if the stupid Steam engine would every finish “scanning for game updates”.
Whoever thought of the idea of making a standalone game require online access and jumping through how many levels of menus just go get started…
I live!
Back from AX.
I can write a long entry now, while it’s fresh in my mind, I suppose.
A wedding, not my own.
Today, I went to the first wedding of someone who was actually my age. And when I say that, I mean we were born 8 days apart. This is a guy whom I’ve known all my life (although we haven’t seen much of each other since we graduated college) because our parents went to college together.
The service and the reception were both in the Santa Cruz mountains on a patch of land owned by the bride’s family. It was in this amazingly beautiful valley off highway 1 and we were all very lucky it didn’t rain (as there was a chance it was going to as of earlier in the week) because it was all held outdoors.
Seeing some of the other random people that I hadn’t seen since freshman year of college was a trip. I also hadn’t seen the bridegroom or his family in years, either, even though he and his sister live in the area.
Right now, I’ve got my brother sleeping on the floor downstairs and my stepdad on the couch. In four hours, my stepdad is waking up for a supershuttle to take him to the airport to fly him off to Toronto. I just hope they don’t wake me up when they get here.
Fanime and real life
One of the people I roomed with at fanime swiped my toothpaste. I’m not pointing any fingers, though… *evil glare*
Fanime… was. There were people complaining about a lack of programming all around me, but programming isn’t why I go to these conventions anyway. Give me the karaoke room to work in, the tabletop gaming room to wander around in, and the arcade to waste time in, and enough people I know to never walk down the hallway without seeing someone, and I’ll be happy.
But anyway, I get back to real life on Monday to find a letter from the IRS. Turns out on my 2003 taxes I didn’t file a Schedule D, so, even though I paid my taxes on my Stock Options, when E*Trade finally got around to reporting it to the IRS, the IRS got a bit confused and thought there were additional transactions they want their cut of. So this morning, I had to head down to HR Block to get it sorted out. HR Block needs the 1099, of course, so I have to dig and dig and dig through the pile of unsorted papers (which I had started doing anyway, because I knew it was coming).
After that, I headed to Men’s Wearhouse to get my suit let out a bit, but I have to get it dry cleaned first. The dry cleaners has this big “1 day service” sign out on front, and a “same day service!” sign inside. I hand him the suit, and he tells me “Friday 4pm.”
Huh. Math works differently in a dry cleaners, I guess.
I then go to Fry’s to return the HD enclosure I bought that wouldn’t boot correctly, but I managed to completely forget to bring it, so that was a wasted trip.
I then went and bought new toothpaste.
Overall, a very frustrating morning.
I was suddenly reminded of an entry I was thinking of making but never did.
I went to Michael’s the other day for a… project… (which I took a picture of but haven’t put online yet, and I don’t want to ruin the surprise. Some of you have seen it) and I saw something that made me a bit sick to my stomach. They sell self-contained, customizable mission kits now.
For those of you who didn’t go to public school in California, every student in the fifth grade (I think it’s fifth) has to make a model of one of the missions. I made mine out of sugar cubes and glue, other people used cardboard. Now all the kid has to do is buy one of these kits (they have different kits for different missions, of course), and they just assemble it with glue or whatever.
This doesn’t seem fair.
The other thing is, right next to Michael’s is the new Popeye’s that finally opened up near my house. The odd thing is that it shares a storefront with and has a connecting door to a pearl tea shop. Only in California can you buy a po’boy at the same place as boba.
The third thing that was mentally attached to this stuff was, on the way back from Michael’s I saw a sign for a real estate agent whose very appropriate last name was “Villanueva.”
A very long day
Got up at 4:15 a.m. to leave at 4:45 for what Katie and I thought was a 6:00 flight but was actually a 6:30 flight. It was a good thing we had that extra half an hour, because on the shuttle from long term parking, we stopped for a good ten minutes because some lady wanted to file a complaint that she slipped and fell in the parking lot or something stupid like that that couldn’t wait because she had a 6:30 flight and of course none of the rest of us on the shuttle were in a hurry or anything so we sat at a stop while the driver was on the phone with his supervisor or something.
That’s just 5 a.m…. there’s still 20 hours of this day left.