Personal – Page 32

We’re Home

Usually I try to get at least something on the blog when I travel but this was a particularly activity-packed 4 days in New York and I barely got online at all while we were there.

One of my favorite ways to describe New York to people who’ve never been there is that it’s just like anyplace else, only much more so. Coming home again after a year away reminded me how true that is.

One of the things you tend to forget about NYC after you’ve been away for a while is the sheer sensory overload of the city. The noise, the activity level, the sights, even the smells come at you nonstop the moment you set foot outside your door. It’s very intense. And you either love it or hate it.

I still love it. And miss it.

Some pix, and a cute anecdote about one of our nieces, coming soon.

Scott will love this…

… he’s a big fan of classic horror flicks.

Comcast Corp. and Sony Corp will launch a horror films on-demand cable, Internet and wireless network on Halloween this year, an executive at the top U.S. cable operator said on Sunday.

Movies for the yet-to-be named network, which will debut on October 31 and expand Comcast’s programing lineup, come from more than a thousand horror titles in the Sony and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer libraries.

Me … not so much. That’s OK though. One thing we’ve learned over the years together is that although we have a lot in common, some things we’re never going to get the other person to like.

He’s still getting mileage out of the time I got him to sit through The Piano. And I can counter with having had to sit through Species.

At least we agree that Big Trouble in Little China kicks ass!

Spotty Blogging

I know, my blogging quantity and quality have both really slipped the past few weeks. The semester has entered its busy zone, the unending rain has had me down, and we’re going home for Passover, which has added to the chore list considerably.

I’ll try to get two or three decent ones up before we leave for New York, though.

I Am So Over This Rain

Since my last post on the issue of how freaking much it has rained here in the Bay Area, it’s rained pretty much every day since. If this is what Seattle is like (I wouldn’t know, on my one trip to Seattle back in 2000, the weather was perfect the entire time), you can keep it.

I’m sick of it. I’m tired and cranky and generally unmotivated.

Some of this could be just regular second-half-of-the-semester workload issues combined with the job, but the weather definitely isn’t helping my mood any.

25 / 31

As I was waking up this morning, I hear on the radio that 25 of the last 31 days have been rainy ones here in the Bay Area. We’re fractions of an inch from being the wettest March on record.

I wonder if that’s why I’ve been feeling so draggy, tired, and generally uninspired recently.

UPDATE: SFGate has more.

Meet the e-GeForce 6600 GT

Many years ago, the very first gift Scott bought me was a new video card for my woefully underpowered x386 box. This showed up for me today. Ah, geeks in love….

I’m really bad at buying things for myself, especially the more expensive stuff. My current video card is about 2 years old, and I have been puttering along with its limitations because, well, it works, and new cards are expensive. We’re doing better these days now that I’m working again, but still, more often than not the “oh, we don’t have any money” fears linger and inhibit my buying behavior.

Flashback: Some years ago, I went out one Saturday with my grandmother to shop for kitchen curtains to replace ones that after many years of service and laundering were starting to look a little ratty. We went to several stores, but Grandma ended up not buying any new ones because everything was either too ugly or too expensive. We went home without any because she couldn’t bring herself to pay “too much” for new curtains, even though she could well afford them.

Grandma came to this country quite poor and then weathered the Depression, so her frugality is understandable. But here I am, years later, doing much the same thing. Is it learned behavior from my family, a sign of ageing, or or did the years Scott and I spend struggling financially change my behavior in similar ways?