Friday, February 20, 2009

This month is too short

First weekend in Feb: up to Port Jervis for a birthday celebration.

Second weekend in Feb: back up to Port Jervis for more birthday celebration and family time.

Third weekend in Feb: Taxes. All day movies. Gym. Dan.

Fourth weekend in Feb: All apartment hunting, all the time.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Blogs I Love, Vol 4

Tomato Nation
I tend to skip the baseball commentary, mainly because I don't follow the game and therefore it reads like Greek to me. However, her advice column--The Vine--and her language and usage commentary are the reason I love the site so much. An example:

Re: Why we need the Oxford Comma
The function of language is to communicate; the function of usage rules is to aid in that communication, and it's clarity and accuracy we should prize...
An entire entry on punctuation! As an editor, you would think I would be passionate about spelling and grammar rules. Really, though, my true love is punctuation. Ah, nerdiness.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Books, Movies, Music

I just finished Schuyler's Monster. I had been wanting to read it for awhile, as I follow Robert Rummel-Hudson's blog, and have found his writing to be just what I love: smart, funny, sarcastic, and touching. The book is exactly like that, causing my eyes to well up several times while riding the B train to work. I also laughed out loud a lot, which might be even more embarrassing. A fantastic book. "Rire!"

Next weekend I'll be going to see all five Best Picture nominees in the theater. The tickets were all sold out at Times Sq., but Kips Bay still has them, and you can buy them online. I even gave up the $5 discount I was entitled to as a Movie Watcher member (card-carrying, thank you very much) and paid the $1.50 surcharge to ensure I got my ticket. My butt will be numb, my stomach will ache with popcorn, and my contacts will dry out. I can't wait.

Lastly, Julia Nunes is awesome. I discovered her through the Vlogbrothers, who are also thoroughly enjoyable. I was blown away by a video she did in which she layered the audio of several videos of her singing to create an amazing harmony. I'm in such awe of people who can sing. I bought her CD I Wrote These and have been listening to it incessantly.

Blogs I Love, Vol 3

Design*Sponge

Because it's so pretty to look at, even if I can't ever afford to buy the stuff I see on there. It has, however, given me a lot of ideas about how I plan to decorate my future mansion.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Employment

Any time I start complaining about anything to do with life, someone please remind me that:

1) I am employed

2) I am employed at a job I really like

3) I am employed at a job I really like where I got to spend my morning here:







I'm a lucky bastard.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Blogs I Love, Vol 2

Dooce.com is also celebrating a birthday today: Heather Armstrong's daughter has turned 5.

Reading that entry and watching the video, I started thinking about the next generation of children and how they will react to technology.

People in my age group are old enough where we remember the "time before the computer," but young enough where it's kind of a distant memory. We have adapted pretty quickly, embracing new technology and new ways of communicating with each other. I was in college when Napster blew up, and spent a lot of my time IMing with friends.

The next generation of kids, the ones who are being born now, are growing up not only knowing technology, but being in it. Some are having their lives documented as part of a blog. Their growth, their changing faces, and bodies, and vocabularies.

What will it be like for them, how will the approach technology when they are old enough to interact with it?

Hard decisions to make:

Should I go to Egypt for 9 days or 12 days?

As you can see, the 9 day trip is more affordable. However, the 12 day trip does allow me to break out my red polyester pants suit:







Tough call, right?

Blogs I Love, Vol 1

Happy Blogiversary, Brooklyn Arden!

Cheryl Klein has been blogging for 4 years now, along with being a guiding force behind the Harry Potter books. As an editor at Arthur Levine (an imprint of Scholastic), she has one of the only other jobs I want beside my own.

Congratulations on both the longevity of the blog, as well as the ALA kudos for A Curse as Dark as Gold.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Right now I'm...

Reading: Octavian Nothing II

Listening to: Julia Nunes, I Wrote These

Enjoying both very much.

A thought...

Could Obama please pick someone for his cabinet who knows how to fill out a 1040?

It'd be cool if the people running our government -- you know, spending our tax dollars -- knew how to actually pay their own taxes.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Fracture

Some movies feel like the writer or creator had a single idea and then built a move around it, instead of fleshing out a full plot.

In Fracture's case (SPOILER!), it is the idea that attempted murder turns into murder if the victim dies after the trial, and those are two different charges, negating double jeopardy.

Take that idea, cast Anthony Hopkins as a smart-as-hell bad guy, pit him against Ryan Gosling, and bam! Movie. But when Hopkins's character is built up as an incredibly meticulous man who has thought of everything, it's hard to believe that the flaw in his plan was his failure to realize that attempted murder and murder are two different charges, which seems quite an obvious thing to me. And I've never meticulously plotted anything.