So the Lovely Liz and I headed down to FL to visit the wonderful masdoc and diadem8 and their adorable daughters. We both had a great time and Liz is now firm friends with two of my oldest and dearest friends, which is awesome. Plus, there are now more pictures of Liz and I together (on facebook), which can only be a good thing, since Liz's loveliness distracts from my dumpiness.
I have to give mad props though for a funny thing on the flight back. We had an early afternoon flight so I got a coffee as my on-flight drink, while Liz had a diet coke. The coffee was nice, but when I finished, I was still thirsty, so I asked for a coke, but "no hurry." Flight attendant came by again about 20 minutes later, so I reminded her. She acknowledged me, and headed off. No coke. After 20 more minutes, we'd already started final descent, so I gave it up as a bad job. When I got off the plane, I thanked everyone, like you do, and standing right at the door holding up a coke was the flight attendant. I thanked her profusely and we both laughed.
Day 17 is Villain, and I kinda want to pick Mitt Romney, so I'm going talk about politics, and give the answer in another post. At last week's debate, Gov. Romney noted that he was going eliminate funding for PBS as a way of closing the deficit. PBS gets $444 million a year in funding, which sounds like a lot, but is in fact, .02% of the deficit. My facile comparison was "like eliminating your morning coffee to pay your mortgage," and thousands of others popped up (along with a myriad of Big Bird image macros).
Of course, running a country isn't like running a household, so in fact, those comparisons aren't really relevant, but there is a point to make anyway. As someone who has been in debt by an amount close to his yearly salary at the time, I understand a little something about cutting back to pay things down. One of the things I learned is that it's the big things that drive debt--while the little things make life livable. Paying off my bills accelerated when I got rid of my car (well, actually, it died); forgoing coffee had no appreciable effects on my finances, but made my life that much more unpleasant.
In the same way, PBS is a mark of the little ways in which we're civilized; a minor expenditure to bring quality information and entertainment to people who otherwise might not get it. It costs a pittance and pays back manyfold in quality of life for the citizens who enjoy it. Getting rid of it will in no way resolve our fiscal problems unlike, say, halving our defense budget would. Instead, a little less goodwill will be created, a little less information disseminated, a little less culture shared, all resulting in a slightly less civil populace. It's a gain that evades calculation, but is very real nonetheless, as I can tell you from personal experience.
Okay, so I finally thought of something to say and now I'm only like five days behind. There's a small, circular flower patch in the middle of my Mom's backyard. Before that it was a stump with a flower pot on top of it. A long time ago, there was an apple tree. It was already a ratty old thing, neglected and dying of fungal infection by the time we moved it, but to kids born in the city and their cousins and friends, it was the greatest thing ever. It was a challenge, a game, a building, a spaceship, and mostly endless fun. Like I said, that old apple tree is long gone, but it lives in my heart and always will.
I wonder if it's coincidence that I'm rereading C.S. Lewis as my dad's (and my niece's and my goddaughter's) birthday rolls around. (No, not A Grief Observed; I'm rereading the Space Trilogy.) I dunno. I mean, I just picked it up because I found them again after buying more bookshelves and reordering my books. (I have ~850 books, which is disappointing. I thought I had a thousand.) I certainly wasn't thinking, "Oh, it's the middle of June; it's time to reread Lewis."
Lewis would, of course, say it's not a coincidence--that the connection that led me to it is outside of my scope of consciousness. But then, Lewis was a) much better at belief that I am and b) a weird dude. So anyway, I'm most of the way through Perelandra, and I guess I'll just keep reading and see where it takes me. I'm already sure that I prefer Diane Duane's conception of how we relate to evil than Lewis's, but I may have more to say when I'm finished with That Hideous Strength.
Seven weeks into Weight Watchers and I'm down 15 lbs. Awesome, no? Of course, I still have 50 to go to get to my goal weight, but I can't get through the last 50 until I get through the first 15. Progress is being made.
So I've been trying to tell myself I'm not fat while at the same time telling everyone else in the world that I am. ( Collapse ) Then I had a physical and found out I am now over one hundred pounds heavier than the day I graduated high school. It's not no hundred pounds of muscle neither. Clearly all the little things I've been trying to do to control my weight while telling myself my weight problem is manageable have failed. All of which is a long way of saying I've joined Weight Watchers. Wish me luck. I've got a long way to go.
So I was going to write a long, philosophical post for my birthday, as I often do, and then I decided, fuck it, I don't need the hassle. Happy birthday to me; I am 40 years old today. At some point today, to prove my manly vigor, I will do a pushup. And at some point in the near future, as in the recent past, I'm going to go drink a hell of a lot of beer.
So I wanted to start the new year by posting every day, but a sudden attack of the Martian Death Flu put the kibosh on that. I'm creeping back toward coherence, though, so I can at least do an "I hope I feel better" post before going to bed tonight. My plans for the weekend are to hide indoors until the last of the crud passes and home I'm back in fighting trim (fighting fat?) by Monday.
In the meantime, I hope everyone's New Year is getting off to a better start than mine has. Check back here tomorrow and maybe I'll have a real post about something important. Oh, who am I kidding? Maybe I'll call someone an asshat.
A little late with the Happy New Year wishes, I suppose, but here they are anyway. Happy New Year everyone! Hope your 2011 is better than your 2010 was, but not as good as your 2012 will be. As for me, looking back makes it seem like 2010 was a pretty shitty year, but I'm not sure why. Living through it didn't seem too awful, other than losing my job, but I definitely have a sense of one step forward two steps back. Sort of like the Giants, but that's another story.
Anyway, as far as 2011 goes, I guess I have three resolutions. The first one is pretty blindingly obvious: get a friggin' job. I'm tired of not having work and not bringing in the kind of money I know my skills are worth. Second is to lose some weight this year. I'm carrying way too much baggage into my 40s and I need to do something about it. Third is to keep writing. I had a reasonably productive year, but considering how much free time I had, I could have written so much more. So I need to keep plugging ahead with that. We'll see how it all goes.
I had another idea for a resolution, but I think it's kind of destructive—not self destructive, like in the sense of saying, "For 2011, I wanna drink more," but accepting the tutoring of a Sith destructive. How's this for a resolution? For 2011, I want to use sarcasm less frequently but more effectively. Think I could pull it off? And if I did, what would the results be? Not pretty is my guess.
I'd like to be able to say that I took my fandom to new levels of dorkdom on Sunday, but I don't think I can. I think the 80 hours of (free) work I put in on the Annals Kelsonus Nuptis Regni back in 2002 still remains my high water mark of dorky fandom. That said, I did get to do dorky fannish things on Sunday, as I was a Tower Guard for Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal's Towers of Midnight signing at the Coop in Harvard Square.
For those not in the know, Tower Guards, like last year's Storm Leaders, are volunteers who helped keep the signing organized and fun, since a couple hundred or more people are a bit much for beleaguered bookstore employees to handle. So along with five like-minded souls, I was recruited via dragonmount.com to in the words of Palpatine, "Do what must be done." In my case, that was ask trivia questions and hand our prizes. So I wrote about a dozen questions, thinking some were really easy and some really difficult, with little in the middle. Turns out I was wrong; they were all very difficult. So I made up some other questions on the spot, and they were difficult too. Still had a lot of fun asking them, and plenty of people seemed to get a kick out of it, too. As I said at the time, my Wheel of Time trivia lived up to its name.
The other incredibly, awesomely cool part was having a half-hour or so lunch with Brandon Sanderson and Harriet McDougal before the signing started. Brandon is a very pleasant and accommodating person. He answered all of our questions with a smile and good grace, and despite being on a very tight schedule (train out of South Station at 7 after a signing at3 that was expected to last several hours), he made sure to take time to hang out with us and with people after the signing. And Harriet (RJ/Jim Rigney's widow) is just a wonderful, classy lady. She was limitless in her joy and enthusiasm at sharing time with Wheel of Time fans, and was just a classy, classy lady. So it was great to meet both of them, and if we really didn't find out plot-wise anything worth sharing here, well we had a lot of fun talking to them. And really, that's all that matters.
masdoc and 
sad
contemplative
pleased
okay