2004-03-30 
 

compare and contrast

20 years ago today, it was 1984.

People are talking about Baby Bells.
Congress rebukes President Reagan on use of federal funds for mining Nicaraguan harbors.
Efforts to end apartheid continue.
The first megabit chip is produced at Bell Labs.
The Soviets boycott the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Mary Lou Retton wins two gold, two silver and two bronze medals.
Vanessa Williams becomes first black Miss America.
A title that is taken away after nude photos of her surface in Penthouse.
"Where's The Beef!?" slogan from Wendy's Restaurants is the lingo of the day.
Apple Macintosh introduced 8 February.
Sixteen Candles (Automobile?)
Ghost Busters (who's it gonna be?)
Gremlins (Never feed them after midnight!)
The Karate Kid (Wax on, wax off.)
Footloose (Let's hear it for the boy!)
There are approximately 1,000 hosts on the Internet.*

Some things you wouldn't have understood back in 1984. (Random phrases I collected today in passing.)

SBC's having a special on DSL upgrades.
Beam it to my Palm.
Her birthday's on Thursday, so I'll have to Amazon.
Send the photo to my cell.
Put the DVD on our Netflix.
Just Google it.
The Six Feet Under website has new jpegs!

All in all, I'm pretty happy in 2004...although I'd love to see another 16 Candles.

*All facts from the 80's in review)

* posted by me at 11:00 PM

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2004-03-28 
 

what i saw

A little photo journal of my week up in St Helena. (The nonwork parts of it.)



A fun sign at the Harvest Inn.



The Manor House at the Harvest Inn.



My room in the Manor House.
(I thought I would get much fun poked at me,
but my coworker ended up having the "Earl of Ecstasy" room and saved me from ridicule.)



A whole wall of my room was dedicated to the fireplace...and television.



Cozy fire at night. (Glass of wine is out of frame on the table.)



The deck off of my room...if you look close you can see the green top of my Softtub.



View of the vinyard from my deck.



Home again at the gayest intersection in the world.

* posted by me at 2:59 PM

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2004-03-24 
 

starry night

I'm away on business and on dial up, so this'll be short...but I had to pop in to say that it's nice to get away from the city now and then and realize just how many stars there are up in the sky. I got back to the room tonight after a long day and spent a good hour soaking in the Softtub out on my deck and getting reacquainted with some old friends up in the sky.

Yes, the job still does have some perks. Might be few and far between these days, but it's still nice when they pop up.

* posted by me at 1:52 AM

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2004-03-21 
 

living in my own little world

A few more too late nights and a desperately needed paycheck arriving help me to truly enjoy this weekend. Note to self: Ikea trips on or around the first of the month are dangerous and should be avoided. As a little self reward for all the hard work, I went out and got the Sims: House Party expansion pack. I won't bore you with the details, but it's quite like a drug.

Did manage to get out of the house for a little bit yesterday to zip over to the postoffice. (Dude gets older VERY soon...hee hee!) We also saw another not so great apartment. A little depressing to never find quite what we're looking for, but also a bit nice to reaffirm that the place we're in is actually pretty cream of the crop. If only it were on the second floor!

Speaking of the place we're in: Rearranged the living room yesterday...or tried to. If the hearth were only two inches shorter! Or the couch! Right now the couch is on a very slightly odd angle that's going to bug me after a while...and in an odd way it feels as though we're blocking access to the windows now even though they're actually a bit easier to get to than they were before with the tables and such in front of them.

Photoshoot next week in Napa. It's not the most fab location that I've been to, but it should be fun. Also, the localish location means I only have to be up there for two nights and can enjoy next weekend. (I was originally scheduled to work on through.) Yay!

Final thought. Spellcheck wanted me to replace photoshoot with petticoat. I think it might've been fun if I had.

* posted by me at 3:11 PM

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2004-03-18 
 

create a map in your mind

After coming home too late last night, I ended up going through the pile of bills for some reason. Masochist? No...just following intuition. In that pile I found an unopened letter from EW that had been sitting around for the past two weeks. (a free magazine offer or some such thing...or so I thought) It ended up being a free pass for two to a screening of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for tonight.

I'm not linking to the movie site. If you want to peek ahead that badly, go ahead and do a search and find out all about it. Websites give too much away sometimes. My recommendation is to go into the movie blind not knowing quite what to expect. All you need to know is that it's about love, about modern society's unwillingness to commit to something because we end up getting caught up in all the bullshit of our day to day existence and lose the big picture. It's about the hope in the bottom of Pandora's box.

I already hear the objection from some of you,"but it's Jim Carrey...I can't forget that it's him up there." Give him a chance. Except for one particular moment in the film, I forgot it was Jim Carrey in the role and allowed myself to be swept away. (The one moment, while Carreyesque, was not gratuitous. It was as if nudity had been required to advance the plot and he bravely dropped trou.) Don't be confused. That's not a promise of the full monty by Mr. Carrey. Just a nifty simile that occurred to me. It may help to watch The Majestic before seeing this film. It's a very unCarrey film. It may also hurt. I didn't like that one so much, but it did allow me to divorce Jim Carrey from the Rubberman persona my mind had him married to.

I'll leave you with this: Eternal Sunshine blew me away. An incredibly beautiful film. I loved it so much that I'm going to want to see it again to make sure that it wasn't just a fortunate conjunction of the planets that left me so deeply affected. I'd say more, but it'll pump it up too much and your expectations will be too high.

The truth is that you may hate this film. Quite a few people ended up walking out of the theater...most during the first third of the film. Either it hit home too hard or they didn't want to have to think on a Wednesday night.

I stayed.

* posted by me at 1:06 AM

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2004-03-17 
 

tally up

pro: helping studly man change into many different outfits today
con: transcribing many different outfits into tedious spreadsheet today
pro: studly man one of the few human beings to look good in bikini briefs (very good)
con: professionalism stops me from fully appreciating rare specimen
pro: drank lots of diet coke for free
con: needed lots of diet coke to keep working until 10:30 p.m.
pro: get to spend next week in beautiful location
con: will be working in beautiful location
pro: will be surrounded by hunky men in beautiful location
con: will be surrounded with coworkers in beautiful location
pro: will get nifty freebies from hotel
con: will have no g at hotel
pro: get to go to sleep now
con: must wake up too soon
pro: i like making silly lists

* posted by me at 2:51 AM

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2004-03-15 
 

golden weekend

JN came to visit this weekend. G and I welcomed the excuse to eat well and take some time to just relax around the city.



went up to the headlands


walked through the tunnel


puzzled over some graffiti


G taking in the view


went to the beach, windy, but nice


almost a pic of a very cute guy on a bike


objects are closer than they appear

* posted by me at 2:37 AM

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2004-03-12 
 

strange relief

Been working much too hard this week for too many hours, yet I come home today and find myself trying to solve the Retail Alphabet Game. Just a tad ironic doncha think?

* posted by me at 8:17 PM

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2004-03-07 
 

storage solutions

Went to Ikea yesterday, and I'm happy to report that the desk organizer that I put together today makes my computer space so much nicer to sit at. The nightstands we snagged for the bedroom do the same thing in there. I suddenly feel like grownups live in there. Wishing I'd bought an extra one of these:



It would be nice to have one in the bedroom to help capture all the stuff that's cluttering up the bookshelf.

In other news: Thought I may have spelled mondegreen incorrectly in my last entry. (I had, I left out the third "E".) Did a quick google search on "mondegren", and this site popped up as the first hit. I wasn't alone though. It seems other people have misspelled it in the past. I've fixed it in yesterdays, but just realized that my site will still come up in future searches because of the sample misspelling above. Oh well.

* posted by me at 10:44 PM

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2004-03-05 
 

musical mishap

Today I thought that I'd been the victim of a mondegreen when I suddenly realized that Nora Jones is singing "I'll be a vagabond, driving down the road alone." instead of "I'll be a bag of bones." Vagabond made so much more sense! How could I have thought anything else? But then I checked the official lyrics and discovered that "bag of bones" is correct after all.

Why is this so important? Because I used this little anecdote today to make people laugh, and this is my way of untelling them.

* posted by me at 9:03 PM

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2004-03-04 
 

very addicted

Couldn't sleep, so I made my way over to the computer to play with the Star family. (I'm living my own little soap opera through virtual reality characters that I created...start to finish.)

Tonight, Alan and Troy fell in love.

* posted by me at 7:02 AM

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2004-03-01 
 

the message was clear

Let me tell you a secret.

Nine years ago I saw San Francisco for the first time. I felt as if I'd walked into a movie set of my life. (Other than a special weekend back in college with M, this feeling had been a rare one for me.) I fell instantly in love with the palm trees along Dolores. Like so much of the city, they weren't natives yet somehow I couldn't imagine them calling any place else home. The remainder of that week only served to deepen my appreciation...but this isn't a song to the city. It's about looking into someone's eyes and seeing your soul.

Two days before I was to head back east, I spent the day wandering around by myself, trying to take in enough of the city to last me through to the day when I could come back to stay. Towards the end of my walk, I found myself at Castro and 19th street and saw a young man waiting to cross on the other side. We stared at each other from across the street, and I got an odd feeling that I ought to talk to him. At the time I had yet to fully conquer my shyness without the aid of alcohol or serious self prep, so we smiled as we passed by and even looked back once or twice, yet I walked on. He had dark hair, a slight build and wore a little smile on his face that I'll never forget. The smile and accompanying spark in his eyes matched those that I knew my soulmate would someday own. About half a block later, I cursed myself for not being bold and turned around to find him no longer there. But I was always sure someplace deep inside that we'd meet again.

G smiles that way.

* posted by me at 9:57 PM

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playing god

I didn't watch the Oscars tonight, instead I spent tonight (and most of the weekend) ruling over my very own little neighborhood of Sims.

Frightfeningly addictive...for some...frightfully boring for others. It seems I'm in the former group.

* posted by me at 2:39 AM

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