Enemy of Entropy

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I’m Feeling Better!

19 February 2010, 12:04 am. 1 Comment. Filed under Health, Movies, Reading.

(I think I’ve already used “Not Dead Yet” as a title, and I really don’t like to be too repet­i­tive.) I haven’t been post­ing much, and it isn’t really because I haven’t had any­thing at all to say. In fact, I’ve repeat­edly started to write posts. In fact, I’ve fin­ished writ­ing some posts — but each time, I’ve been side­tracked by the fact that the bit of geek magic that makes my words post here and to my LJ account is bro­ken. I did a cou­ple of posts by hand, but that’s inel­e­gant. Hence, the pub­lic has been deprived of my wis­dom. There, there now. It will be all right. Truly.

I received a note from an old friend here today. I’m try­ing to remem­ber how long it’s been since we were in touch — def­i­nitely more than a decade, but 12 years? 13? Time does fly. It will be inter­est­ing to hear how his life is these days.

Noth­ing earth-​​shattering to tell, hon­estly. I can’t truly remem­ber what I have and haven’t shared with the world at large, which often seems to be nar­rowed down to Sam, Katie, and the merry-​​go-​​round of health pro­fes­sion­als I get to see. Well, there are also the myr­iad per­sons who pop­u­late Katie’s social life, who I’ve given up enu­mer­at­ing. I think it speaks well for her that while there are fre­quent new faces, few of them ever leave. It makes it dif­fi­cult for me to keep up with them because there are so many! I know and have reg­u­lar con­tact with lots of peo­ple, and of course I value the con­tact we have online, but I don’t often get to see you with my own eyes and hug you with my own arms, and I am a tac­tile per­son at heart.

I’ve logged on to Sec­ond Life again a cou­ple of times. Sam has returned to reg­u­lar use of it. Voice chat does not make any­thing eas­ier for me there. In fact, it’s a bit worse, because I can’t go back and catch what I’ve missed in the logs. Sam did mar­velous work (thank you, love!) in chang­ing my avatar for me so that she looks far more real­is­tic, which I greatly pre­fer. I hate the whole porn star look that most females sport in SL. For one thing, it’s damned bor­ing. For another, I feel that it’s ridicu­lously dis­hon­est. Yes, I sup­pose one could just look at it as a fan­tasy life, but I don’t really fan­ta­size about look­ing that way, so it doesn’t do a thing for me. The whole avatar busi­ness is silly, for me. I’d rather just com­mu­ni­cate, with­out play­ing around with dolls. But obvi­ously, I’m in the minority.

I’ve been read­ing, of course. I read the Kathy Reichs books on which the TV series Bones is based. I enjoy both, or I wouldn’t have read the whole series (obvi­ously), but they have very lit­tle in com­mon other than the fact that the main char­ac­ter is named Tem­per­ance Bren­nan and she is a foren­sic anthro­pol­o­gist. The books’ Bren­nan is in her 40s (mid to late, I think — she has a daugh­ter in her 20s), is almost divorced, and splits her time between North Car­olina and Mon­treal. She con­sults with law enforce­ment in both juris­dic­tions. Her per­son­al­ity and back­ground are com­pletely dis­sim­i­lar to the TV Tem­per­ance (played by Emily Deschanel), who lives in the D.C. area and works at the Jef­fer­son Insti­tute, backed by Agent Booth of the F.B.I. I don’t recall hear­ing Temperance’s age, but IMDB says she was born in 1976, which would make her more than a decade younger than the books’ hero­ine. I’m not ter­ri­ble sur­prised to see that there’s at least one book out based on the tele­vi­sion ver­sion, authored by Max Allan Collins (I think, I’m not feel­ing like look­ing that up at the moment). There’s also far less humor in the books, which are much darker in gen­eral. If pushed, I’d have to say that I pre­fer the tele­vi­sion series a bit, but both ver­sions are val­lid for what they are.

I’m get­ting new glasses! I found some frames I like on eBay, of all places, so they’re in the mail. When they arrive I’ll order lenses to go in them. Since they’ll be my first bifo­cals, I fig­ure I shouldn’t try order­ing the lenses online for the first time, as well.

I might even try con­tacts again. I had plugs put in my tear ducts, which along with eye drops will hope­fully help resolve the dry eyes prob­lem enough to try them. 1 If that isn’t enough, I’m start­ing allergy shots again in a cou­ple of weeks, and the aller­gist insists that if I do the shots faith­fully twice a week my aller­gies will improve within three to six months, in which time I will try con­tacts yet again. And I’m told that there are contact-​​safe anti-​​allergen eye­drops now, too — when I was wear­ing lenses years ago, I had one eye doc­tor who would mix up some of those espe­cially for me, and when he moved out of state I was out of luck and couldn’t tol­er­ate the lenses any more. I miss periph­eral vision!

Sam and I watched the movie Julie & Julia last month (I think? I’ve gone from hav­ing no sense of time in the minutes/​hours sense to hav­ing no sense of days, weeks, and months!). I had noticed it as some­thing he might enjoy, so I put it in the Net­flix queue. As it turned out, we both enjoyed it greatly. It is a movie about food, but it’s also a story about two won­der­ful cou­ples, and about a writer’s process, and Julia Child, who I already knew to be a fas­ci­nat­ing woman (and about whom I’d still love to know more). It’s a dif­fi­cult movie to watch just as I’d given up sugar and gone mod­er­ately low-​​carbohydrate, though!

1 Sjogren’s syn­drome, I do not love you.

Happy November!

16 November 2008, 10:35 pm. 4 Comments. Filed under Movies, Reading, politics.

I fig­ure it’s past time I check in again. Obvi­ously, I’ve given up on the Blog365 thing. I did make it 9 months or so, at least.

Katie turned 18 at the end of Octo­ber, so she voted in the elec­tion for the first time. I’m really tick­led that her first time was so his­toric! We’ll all be vot­ing in the Sen­ate run-​​off too, of course. I really hope Jim Mar­tin makes it.

I turned 42 this week. I never do under­stand peo­ple moan­ing about get­ting older, reach­ing a par­tic­u­lar age. It’s cer­tainly bet­ter than the alter­na­tive, right?

I haven’t been read­ing near as much lately, because my eyes don’t want to focus and I have trou­ble con­cen­trat­ing. I’m re-​​reading C.J. Cherryh’s For­eigner series, since it’s eas­ier to fol­low some­thing familiar.

I fell into watch­ing NCIS some­how, prob­a­bly because I got all caught up on all three CSIs. I’ve watched True Blood, but I don’t like it nearly as much as the orig­i­nal nov­els by Char­laine Har­ris. It’s much darker, and nobody is nearly as nice/​sympathetic. I don’t even like Sookie much, Sam Mer­lotte is an ass, and Jason – god­dess, why give that waste of flesh so much screen time? Why all the added empha­sis on sex and sub­stance use? As usual, the South­ern accents are abominable.

I started watch­ing sea­son 3 of Dex­ter, but I’m just not enjoy­ing it as much as the first sea­son, for some reason.

So then I was lured into watch­ing Crim­i­nal Minds, largely due to Eliz­a­beth Bear’s reg­u­lar episode reviews (posted to her LJ).

At this very moment, Sam and Katie and I are watch­ing the first DVD of Car­nivàle. That is one weird, but beau­ti­ful, show. The preacher char­ac­ter looks a lot like our friend James Jowers.

Sam and I watched Iron Man Fri­day night, I think it was. It was fun, but loud. Good thing I didn’t try to see it in the theater!

Giggles

8 September 2008, 9:55 pm. Comments Off. Filed under Movies.

We’re watch­ing Hog­fa­ther. It is insanely, delight­fully silly.

Sweet Saturday

2 August 2008, 12:55 am. 4 Comments. Filed under Family, Fun, Movies.

Sam took Katie up to Repub­li­can land to pick up her new glasses lenses today – she went to the eye doc­tor while she was with my par­ents, because they were out dri­ving and real­ized that she was squint­ing to read the road signs. Her eyes hadn’t changed much at her last few yearly check-​​ups, but they did this time. She says every­thing is very nice and clear. I need to go get my own checked, but glasses are so dan­ged expensive!

We had a nice date and a deli­cious steak din­ner. Sam’s been promis­ing that he’ll make chicken fet­tucine alfredo since last week­end, but the girl was gone, then he had a pretty tir­ing week. That’s quite a meal to cook after a day at work. So I’m hop­ing he’ll feel up to it tomor­row. The steak was really good, though!

Katie got a long let­ter from her friend Josh, who left for Air Force basic train­ing recently. Then she even got a phone call from him! Appar­ently his group1 is doing really well, so they got access to a sort of recre­ation area with vend­ing machines and pay phones after just two weeks of train­ing. Another friend of theirs who just got out of train­ing said they didn’t get that until after five weeks, which is appar­ently pretty standard.

I worry about Josh – this just isn’t a good time to be going into any branch of the mil­i­tary, as far as I’m con­cerned. But I’m sure he’ll be a good air­man, and it’s what he wanted to do.

Thanks to Eliz­a­beth Bear (), I now know that, Ohs noes! Franz Kafka read pron! I can’t quite fig­ure out why it’s such a big deal to any­one, but I’m cer­tainly not a Kafka scholar. Is there any healthy adult in the world who, given the oppor­tu­nity, has not read/​viewed porn at some point in his or her life?

The girl saw Mamma Mia with my mother, and said she thinks we’ll enjoy watch­ing it together. I don’t pay much atten­tion to what’s in the the­aters, so other than think­ing it might have some con­nec­tion to Abba I was clue­less. Bear also posted a link to an inter­est­ing review that finally gave me a clue as to why Katie liked it so much.

1 It isn’t a pla­toon – what do they call them in the AF?

Dr. Horrible!

20 July 2008, 9:24 pm. 3 Comments. Filed under Fun, Humor, Movies.

Go go go! This is the last day to see it free!

If it comes out on DVD as hoped, we’ll be buy­ing a copy. It’s hilarious.

Oh! There’s also a Cap­tain Ham­mer comic!

 

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