Posted by barb on Aug 18, 2004 in
Wedding The hair consultation went well this afternoon. It turns out that the stylist I talked to doesn’t actually do up-dos herself, but talked with another stylist about doing it for us, and then she’d do styles for the others and everyone’s make-up. She also said that they could open up the salon that day for us, so that everything they need would be handy, which is cool.
Oh, did I mention that Mushi gave me an amazing circlet for the wedding? One worry has been that my head is a bit too small for the circlet (or the circlet is a bit too big…). Well, the hairdressers had a great idea for anchoring it to my head — they are going to do part of my up-do around it. It’s going to look really cool, and I won’t have to worry about the circlet moving around or falling off my head. (I’ll only have to worry about taking my hair down, but of course that’s the least important part.)
She’s going to get back to me in a day or two with an estimate for the cost. Yipes.
Posted by barb on Aug 18, 2004 in
Random Thoughts I’ve never had any real problems with any neighbors I’ve had, and I really don’t like to start a conflict, since there’s no real way to know how long you’ll be neighbors. But our new neighbors, who are renting the house next to us, are really starting to get on my nerves.
The owner, who lived there for about a year before moving out and putting up rooms for rent, also got on our nerves, but not so much that we needed to say anything. We haven’t actually met the new tenents.
Yesterday the parking lot in our housing development was striped and painted. We were asked to park 2-3 feet from the curb while this was going on. Since Andrew and I were at work, we didn’t need to worry about that. But our next-door neighbor was home, so pulled their SUV out a few feet. In the process, though, they angled the SUV toward our parking spaces. This meant that we could only use one of our parking spots, unless our second car was a Mini (which it isn’t). I knocked on their door to see if I could get them to move before Andrew came home, but no one answered. He parked in a visitor’s spot.
Okay, we thought, we’ll go out to pick music tonight, and the SUV will be straightened out by the time we get back. Lo and behold, when we got home at about 9PM, the SUV was still there with it’s ass blocking our second parking spot.
Alright, we thought, we’ll park in the space of a vacant house across the street, and surely they will move the car by tomorrow. (I think you see where this is going.) It is now 2 PM on the day after the parking lot was striped and painted. The SUV is still there, with it’s ass blocking our parking spot.
I’m going to put up a polite note on their door before I head off for my hair consultation. Anyone want to bet whether or not it will still be blocking our parking spot when I get home? I know where my money sits.
Posted by barb on Aug 18, 2004 in
Random Thoughts I’ve had my new car for two months now, and have put over 2000 miles on her. She finally told me her name about three weeks after I came home with her — her full name is Delphinus, but she goes by Delphi for short.
I’ve noticed that I drive differently with Delphi than I did wil Arthur. I’m certainly more comfortable on the Beltway than I was — I had started getting paranoid that cars were crushing in on my during my commute. Now I’m much more comfortable, probably because Delphi sits higher on the road than Arthur did.
I drive faster than I did in Arthur. Arthur had a 70 mph shimmy that alerted me when I was going 70 mph. Delphi, however, does not shimmy. In fact, she doesn’t even shimmy at 80 mph. So, it’s way too easy for me to go fast without knowing it.
I also drive a bit more agressively. That’s not entirely good. In Arthur, I would just sit in the second-right lane for the first half of my trip to work. This is the lane I need to be in when the Beltway splits off for I-270 (I stay on the Beltway). Now, though, I’m zooming in the left lanes, unsatisfied with the “slow” cars in the right lanes, until about a mile or two before the I-270 split.
All in all I’m enjoying my new car. I still get a small twinge of guilt when I see one of Arthur’s many cousins, but I know that he’s hopefully serving as an organ donor to these many cousins in the area.
Posted by barb on Aug 17, 2004 in
Wedding Wedding bits are coming in fast and furious now. Tonight we picked the music for the cellist. I went out to the music school with Andrew where his teacher played several wedding pieces for us in lieu of Andrew’s regular lesson. We’ll be having him play Bach’s Arioso for the processional, Corrette’s Concerto Le Phénix for the recessional and a smattering of stuff for about 15 minutes or so as our guests take their seats.
Yay!
Tomorrow? My hair consultation.
Posted by barb on Aug 16, 2004 in
Wedding Well, it’s not the wedding dress, but it’s getting closer. I walked out of the house this afternoon (I’d been working from home), and stumbled over a priority mail package (gee, I’m so glad the mailman knocked on my door). I had been on my way to the optometrist to pick up new contacts, but ran back into the house to see what was in the box (it seemed a bit small for the dress…plus the dress would have been mushed in there). Of course, I also had to try it on…it’s as close to trying on wedding dresses as I’ve come so far.
She said she’ll be mailing the dress later this week. Yay!
Posted by barb on Aug 15, 2004 in
Books by Valerie J. Freireich
The Harmony of Worlds recognizes three levels of humanity. The full humans have all rights and may participate in the government. Altered humans, those genetically altered in some way, also have all rights, but are excluded from being part of the govering body. Then there are the toolmen. The toolmen are men and women genetically bred for one of three specific purposes — the subs perform menial labor, the guardians guard, and the probes spy and project outcomes of government votes and schemes.
Alexander is perhaps the best probe ever created. In the course of his work, however, he betrays the Electors. Alex is subsequently “put down” to protect the secrets of the Electors, rather than facing a complete (and deadly) mind probe at Security.
Years later, Alexander’s clone, August, must struggle with his clone/brother’s reputuation. His existence is largely kept secret, and so his life is secluded and lonely. However, when his existence becomes known to the Delegate most immediately hurt by Alex’s betrayal, August’s life becomes all-too public.
Not a bad read; however, it felt under-developed. I had a bit of trouble getting into the story, though I will certainly look up Freireich’s later works.
Posted by barb on Aug 14, 2004 in
Movies 4/5 stars
I never read reviews. Why? Because I rarely agree with them, and they often give stuff away. By and large, so I heard, the reviewers hated this movie because of the “twist”. I, however, had no problem with it. The set-up was excellent, setting me on edge, and while the “twist” was not necessarily set-up comepletely, I didn’t care. Go see it.
Oh, and we had the <SARCASM> pleasure <\SARCASM> of seeing this film in the “Director’s Hall” at our local theater. Four of the screens are “Director’s Hall”s at the theater. For $2/ticket extra, you get the pleasure of sitting in leather seats and assigned seating. That’s it. Even with our extra $2/seat, they still forced us to watch the ads. And there’s not way to know that the showing is in the “Director’s Hall” from the on-line listings, so our choice was to pay the extra $4 or to wait around for a half hour for the next showing. Frankly, my time is worth more than $4/hour, so we bought the tickets, but I’d like to avoid doing that again. Probably, we’ll only go to this theater if it’s the only one showing a movie we want to see.
Posted by barb on Aug 13, 2004 in
Movies 2/5 stars
I had trouble getting into this one. William H. Macy put in a great performance as a luckless man, with luck so bad that he can stand next to a casino table and turn the whole table into losers. However, that just wasn’t enough. The story just didn’t pull me in.
Posted by barb on Aug 12, 2004 in
Memes, Etc. We finally had our third games class tonight — it dragged on due to scheduling problems, but was well worth the wait. Tonight’s games were:
- Drunter & Drüber, a silly German game. The board is a grid with spaces containing either buildings, outhouses or nothing. The town rebuilt, forgetting to put in walls for protection, a river for water, and a road. So, our job is to lay down tiles with wall, river or road. It’s perfectly okay to cover over a building, but to destroy an outhouse requires a vote.
At the beginning of the game, each player is given a type of building that they are protecting, so they have to try and direct the building of road, river and wall so that their buildings are still standing at the end of the game.
I creamed everyone. Hee hee hee
- Manhattan, which, oddly enough, is another German game. In this game, you place buildings in one of six areas, in positions determined by cards held in your and.. You can build on top of another building as long as you will have at least as many floors on that building as the player with the most floors. You get points at the end of each round by how many buildings you hold (someone “owns” a building if theirs is the last piece played on that building), how many areas you have the most buildings, and the tallest building in all of Manhattan.
Fun game, but the other two players ganged up on me — still a bit sore, I think, from our game of Drunter & Drüber.
Overall, this was a fun class, and I suspect that we will be taking another class from the same teacher — but not this fall, because life is just too busy right now.
Posted by barb on Aug 12, 2004 in
Science Musings A few notes from the world…er…universe of astronomy: