Bummer. Yard sale starts in five minutes and it's pouring down rain. Somehow I don't think we're going to get rid of quite as much stuff as we had hoped.

Hard not to feel loved when you become the inspiration for a Friday rap.
I'm currently reading a book called "backpacker" by Emily Barr about a girl who backpacks through Vietnam, Loas, Thailand, Singapore.....It's the perfect chicktion before our journey.

My friend Matt occasionally will send out a "Friday rap" to all his friends on email. Today we were the subject. The last line is a reference to the fact that we go out for chicken wings most every Sunday. Dig dis:

G-raj sale money trying to lighten the load,
Marky Mark and Marj-ry bouts to hit the road,
Goin on a trip but who knows how long,
Tiki bar pint slammin wit the Viet Cong,
Safe and injected with the ant-e-dote,
Yellow fever ain't the flava with the bags in tote,
Extra supa happy meal, burger made of dog,
Sunday night spicy, bufflo wing? no bufflo frog.

Last day at work -- for who knows how long. Woop! There's going to be a lot of water under the bridge before I can really start enjoying my time off though. Every day for the next two weeks is mapped out. It's no fun being this regimented.

Stuff is gradually disappearing from our house, into boxes, or the hands of friends, or the garbage can. Possessions are a burden, but so is the lack of them.

TWO WEEKS TO GO I'm working daily to check things off on the "to do" list. Traveller's checks have been purchased, prescriptions for Malaria prophylaxis filled, charity truck scheduled to come and pick up all the items we don't sell at the yard sale, flyers put up around the neighborhood advertising the yard sale. Every day there's a list of tasks I try to take care of so we'll be ready to leave. In spite of all this activity though, it still doesn't seem real. I suppose the reality of going won't hit me until we get on the plane.

This is interesting. I actually used to work with the guy, before he switched over to this latest project. He's a smart man, and doesn't seem to be as nefarious as Safire is painting him to be, but who knows. His latest initiative does sound frightening.

I'm a little irked at Hotmail right now; for the past week or so, I keep getting

You have made too many unsuccessful sign-in attempts with an incorrect password

messages whenever I try to log in. It takes me five or six tries to get through. Wonder if someone's trying to hack my password or something? I'd complain but Microsoft won't let you complain unless you sign up for their Passport service. Serves me right for getting into bed with them this far. Too late to switch to some other mail service now; too many people know my Hotmail address...

Not for the faint of heart. Please remember, he had plastic surgery to look this good.

I'm hopping on the band wagon and copying Mike's googlism. Here's the edited version of the Marjorie seach
Googlism for "Marjorie".

marjorie is born
marjorie is the author of the book the divine right of capital
marjorie is one of mistaken identity
marjorie is an astute observer of people and behavior
marjorie is a gifted artist
marjorie is having a midlife crisis
marjorie is placed within the boundaries of her home
marjorie is also a contributing reporter for the show
marjorie is often on the road giving demonstrations
marjorie is her mother
marjorie is a hopi field nurse
marjorie is part of london zoo’s history herself
marjorie is listed as appearing
marjorie is on pages 1
marjorie is out enjoying her garden
marjorie is on her way back to the ocean
marjorie is one of our best tour guides
marjorie is sitting at her desk at home
marjorie is content to do what she thinks he wants
marjorie is a profoundly loving and compassionate healer
marjorie is recovering from a mental crisis
marjorie is going to stay at your house until march 27
marjorie is a successful motivational speaker
marjorie is not volunteering at the peace and environment resource centre
marjorie is almost like a jewish phyllis
marjorie is founder and chief executive of sane
marjorie is
marjorie is reluctant to tell her friend to leave
marjorie is pleasant to be with
marjorie is not catholic
marjorie is responsible for making sure all parties are medically screened and the results forwarded to the doctors offices before any procedures are done
marjorie is also illustrating children's books and greeting cards
marjorie is already encouraging him to call her "mum" ;by day three they're rolling around in bed together
marjorie is a fearless driver
marjorie is a regular moderator on diabetes station
marjorie is the well
marjorie is a mess
marjorie is returning home from work and stops at a corner store
marjorie is certainly no stranger to difficult circumstances
marjorie is extremely well read
marjorie is the instigator of everything
marjorie is already a cartoon
marjorie is suffering from a severe case of midlife angst
marjorie is the co
marjorie is available for bookings in clubs
marjorie is a brilliant lady with a keen sense of curiosity and the tenacity to plow through details that would send anyone else running
marjorie is restless
marjorie is now
marjorie is very proud to be returning to the bus after a north american tour
marjorie is a member of the huronia rose society

Some stores are really dangerous too. They should be required to have warning labels on the doors "WARNING! You will not be able to leave this store without spending at least 2X's what you planned". Target's one of those, and so's The Container Store. The Container Store is particularly dangerous when you're moving/going on a trip, and you're not allowed to buy anything else. The Container Store is also the only store I know of that is equally appealing to both men and women; the perfect combination of aesthetic appeal and functionality.
The yard sale is on for Saturday, I'm off to flyer the neighborhood, as the local paper wants $70!!! for an ad (who would pay that?).

Movies are dangerous. Compare and contrast this and this. The obvious solution is to ban all movies, because stupid people will try to imitate them!

Son of a...! I just got mail from Mellon Investor Services, asking if I can confirm that I am the Mark S that was living at a certain residence in Orlando, ten years ago. It's in reference to assets on this one share of stock I own in a company that I received as a gift, that was paying dividends of something like $0.34 a year. They can't find my address anymore. The sinister thing is that I looked this Mellon company up, and they're a subsidiary of ChoicePoint, a company that compiles databases about people, a la J. Edgar Hoover, and sells them. Quite a racket they have going as middleman spies. I'll have to contact the company I have the stock in directly.

Just for fun, I'm taking a trip down geek memory lane.

Some time in the late 70's, my dad bought a KIM 1. It had a whopping 1K of ram and you had to store your programs on a cassette tape. It had a hexadecimal keypad (seen here on the lower right) for inputting your programs in machine code and six red LEDs as the only display. All the circuitry was exposed. Despite the limitations, I was hooked immediately. I remember punching in machine code to play Hunt the Wumpus. (And, amazingly, chess. Some guy wrote a chess program that fit in 1K.)

In '79 or '80, our school got a TRS-80, which I pretty much took over. I still get a little lump in my throat looking at the old pictures. I still remember playing some of these games, especially Defense Command.

Another fond memory of this time was connecting my dad's dumb terminal to a university computer to play Adventure. Due to the partially disassembled state of the modem, I remember there was an alligator clip we had to attach to a screw when we heard the carrier signal.

Around '82-'83, my dad started bringing home an HP-85 from work. Wow, what fun. It could draw lines for graphics instead of just blocks like the TRS-80. It had a little thermal printer built in, like you see on cash registers.

Shortly thereafter, my dad and I played a ping-pong match with high stakes. If I won, he'd buy a TRS-80 Color Computer for the house. If he won, I'd have to get a job and pay for half. Did he let me win? I'll never know, but he came home with the computer a few days later. Sixteen K of RAM! Color! And a screen as big as whatever TV you plugged it into. What a joy. (I remember a friend of my dad's had one with 32K of RAM. 32K! How could anyone possibly ever use that much? As a point of reference, my new laptop has over 16,000 times as much.)

That was the computer I really learned to program on. My brother and I wrote really good knock-off of Activision's Atari 2600 game Kaboom! in assembly language. I remember we had to shorten our variable names just to be able to load the whole thing into the editor, so I guess I started to realize that maybe 16K wasn't so much.

Thanks for indulging me...

It's the little things that make me happy! Eggnog Lattes are back at Starbucks. Yummy.

Ah, the joys of the last week at work. In tech sectors, the last week of work always means one thing: writing up documentation. To top it all, someone or something deleted some earlier documentation I had already done, so now it has to be redone. If there's one thing worse than documenting, it's redocumenting.

And this stuff will never be read, either. It's tempting to put in such descriptions as, "The purpose of this page is to display a tasty recipe for gazpacho" or "The inclusion of this field is a vivid demonstration of why management needs to start cracking down on three martini lunches". No one would ever know.

For the record we also saw a little green heron and several osprey. And here's a shot of one of the manatees that came up to my parent's dock. None of the ones we saw had any propeller scars, which is an atypical but welcome sight.

Some other highlights:

Seeing my new nephew Bryce (or Cooper, depending on which parent you ask). Bryce is very big and gurgly and interactive with his environment for such a young age. What a cutie.

Finally bonding a little with my niece Chaeli, who's four. Growing up in the sticks of northern Florida as she is, she must hear a lot of southern drawls; she apparently thinks I "tawk funny". Her mom (my sister Danielle) has picked up a drawl too!

Food, and lots of it. I always turn into a pig when I visit my parents.

Chasing manatees in a little dinghy, with Marjorie, who's a little dinghy herself, ha ha. *Ouch* Ooh, that's going to bruise.

Roadkill spotting. We saw raccoons, armadillos, an alligator, and a wild boar. In Atlanta we only get squirrels, cats, and dogs.

Thanks, family! You all are the best!

BACK FROM FLORIDA
I definitely married the right man. Not only is he wonderful, but his family really couldn't be nicer too. We went to Florida yesterday (returning late today) to visit Mark's family one last time before we leave, and in spite of the Red Tide, which contributed to dreadful air quality, we had a fantastic time. His parents, grandmother, and siblings have really been incredibly supportive of us and our desire to see the world, which is not something I want to take for granted. I occasionally hear stories about scary in-laws from friends of mine, and I'm so glad that neither I nor Mark can relate. We both really like our in-laws.
I really enjoyed visiting Florida too. We saw manatees today off the dock at Mark's parents house and several jumping mullets (fish, not hair), and later driving around I saw a kingfisher, and several cormorants. Yesterday a large blue heron landed in front of the window, and last night, when hit with a middle-of-the-night panic attack of the "what are we doing! we're going to be jobless and homeless in three weeks!" variety, I went out and sat on the dock to watch the waves and stare at the never-ending expanse of stars and sky and, in-spite of Red Tide air quality which left me with a sore throat this morning, I felt calmed and centered by all the beauty of the natural surroundings. Florida really is a beautiful state, in spite of all the over-development, strip-malls, and Jeb Bush.

As Mark noted, we saw Elvis Costello last night. That was our fifth time seeing him together. There are a few more shows to look forward to this month as well, Glen Tilbrook is playing the 17th, and the Strokes are playing the 24th. I plan on being at both shows. I've started a concert list for myself, though it's far from complete I'll try to post it later today.
The Friday Five will be skipped today, as its regarding elections, and I'm still bitter.

We couldn't resist. Elvis Costello played in town the last two nights. We almost held out. The tickets cost way too much. But in the end, who were we kidding?

Great stuff all the way through. A funny thing about Elvis is that he has at least fifteen to twenty songs that whenever I hear them, I think "This is in my top five". He played at least six or seven from that list last night, including "The Other Side Of Summer", "Almost Blue", and "I Hope You're Happy Now". And there were some nice surprises, like "I Wanna Be Loved", "Brilliant Mistake", and "Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down".

My good friend Jim has a second child on the way. Today they found out it's going to be a girl. Which is disappointing, because if it had been a boy, they were going to give him the middle name of "Action". As in, "Action is my middle name." Seriously. Such a middle name wouldn't, uh, go over so well for a woman.

I got my hair cut today, now it's perfectly chin length. I treated myself and went to see my old stylist, Julian, at Van Michael's Salon. I don't generally go see Julian anymore because he's too expensive. However, he's the best stylist I know, and since I'd decided to cut my hair in a short and easy to maintain without appliances style, I figured I should go to someone good. I also had my eyebrows waxed when I was at the salon, eyebrows always look so much better/neater after waxing. The make-up artist admonished me for overplucking though and suggested I "not touch" my brows for a month. That seems like a simple enough request, but brow plucking is like an addiction. I never noticed my eyebrows until I first had them waxed when I was 25 or thereabouts, now I can't leave them alone. Clearly my life is too pampered if this is what I blog about. Oh well, my pampered days are numbered. We leave in exactly 20 days now.

Our entire office has been pushing people down stairs all day. Even though it's just a simulation, I'm not going to walk down the stairs in front of any of my cow orkers for the rest of the week.

OKAY, Here's my concession speech. I may have been a little too shrill/strident in the last post. And yes Mark, I acknowledge that there are some people I know and love, and am very closely related to, that drive SUV's (although honestly, it's an SUV-Lite) and many more who live in the suburbs. Forgive me, I was upset.

As promised, here are pictures from Halloween. I'm in the cheesy mustache, Marjorie has the blue hair. My favorites were our friends Brooke and Toby, who'll you'll find in the lower lefthand corner in all their glorious Royal Tanenbaum-ness.

I'm worried that anyone just wandering in here might get the wrong impression. They're likely to see a lot of liberal pontificating, and notice that we're leaving the country. Maybe from this they might think that we are leaving in protest, or are abandoning the country. That just isn't how it is. If we didn't care about this place, we wouldn't be upset about the way things are going. It will be nice to get some different perspective for a while. But we're not Baldwins.

"And the liberal, with the small L, cries in front of the TV......and wearing badges is not enough in days like these"
I'm utterly depressed. Seems Mark and I picked the right time to leave Georgia. It's so sad, and really Billy (Bragg) says it best "The majority by their silence shall pay for days like these". All the news stations here are shocked. All their polls predicted a solid victory for the democrats, especially Governor Roy Barnes. I guess people just didn't vote, excepting the conservative right-wing, SUV driving, suburb living, anti-choice, neo-fascists that live all around us, they clearly voted. The Republicans here didn't even run on a platform, they just showed a series of negative mudslinging democrat-attacking ads. I'm going to go and cry now.

I'm speechless. I am without speech. How could the people of this country want to give one party unilateral power? Especially that party? I fear for us. I really do. The Dems needed to find a message, one that people can rally behind. They had none. Of course it's too late now anyway. Now they're goners, and it'll be two years before anything can be rectified. Scary times.

Mark and I went to see Bowling for Columbine last night. The film really explores the gun/violence issue in the United States in a very insightful, balanced, and provocative manner. I left the theater with a renewed respect for Michael Moore. I really think it should be on everyone's "must-see" list.
Now I'm off to vote.

A couple of friends of mine are participating in NaNoWriMo, a project centered around inspiring people to write a first novel, by encouraging them to write 50,000 words during the month of November and reporting their progress. It's engrossing to watch, and inspiring. Maybe next year I'll try.

I know what my third book is going to be about. It's an idea too choice, too irresistible to pass up, but it's also too ambitious for a first try.

It's science fiction, like most of my ideas, but also political. The idea is that mankind has sent off a "generation ship" (as has been suggested in sci-fi numerous times as a way to reach the stars -- because it takes so long to get to any other star, you create a large spaceship that's self-supporting, and generations live and die on it before it reaches its destination). Just before it gets where it's going, there is an election on the ship, that's close, and hotly contested (the parallels to recent history should be obvious). When they arrive, they discover two planets orbiting the star that are habitable. So all the liberal supporters of the one candidate go to settle the one planet, and all the conservatives supporters of the other candidate go to settle the other.

That would just be how it starts. There's worlds of interesting and comical possibilities that can grow from that seed, methinks.

For no reason whatsoever, here are five movies that I think are grossly underrated. Are they my five favorites? Quite possibly, but there are some more popular ones that would probably squeak into the list. In no particular order:

Remains of the Day -- IMHO, Anthony Hopkins gives the best acting performance by anyone, ever. A study in repression.

Rushmore -- Certainly my favorite of the last few years. Quote: "I saved Latin. What did you ever do?"

Welcome to the Dollhouse -- If you were raised outside the US and are curious to see what it's like to be an adolescent here, there is no more accurate depiction. I know a lot of people who can't watch it because it's too accurate and brings up painful memories.

The Thin Red Line -- A deeply psychological and philosophical war movie. This one leaves me in a fog for days after viewing it.

Fearless -- A disturbed and disturbing tour de force. Jeff Bridges' best work. Rosie Perez is even tolerable.

While on the subject of movies, a pox on TBS for always hooking me in by showing those movies that you can watch over and over. The Shawschank Redemption, As Good As It Gets, The American President -- do they ever show anything else? And yet they hook me every time. If they were to add Groundhog Day and The Princess Bride I'd never be able to flip past that station. Not my favorite movies, but they suck you in...

And while on the subject of TV, I'm giddy that The Larry Sanders Show is now on nightly on Bravo. I find that show just fascinating to watch.

Some Halloween pictures, for your bemusement. Unfortunately, Marjorie was still getting ready while we were futzing with the digital camera. We'll take more pics tonight. But, here's a shot of me and one of me with my friends Mike and Matt. Listen all y'all this is sabotage!

Had dinner last night with friends Brooke and Toby at the always-amazing Fritti. I'm sad that with only 26 days left until we leave, we'll only get to eat there, like, 26 more times.

I kid. But as foodies, we have been keeping a list of places where we have to dine on our last week here. These include:

Sotto Sotto (Fritti's sister restaurant)

Fritti (of course)

Tortillas (for Marjorie)

Ma Li (for me, love the Pik King Pork)

Neuvo Laredo (there's always an hour wait, but for good reason)

Yacht Club (me again, love the beef brisket)

We never made it in to see Hot August Knights at the Clermont last night -- we were having too much fun across the street at the Local doing karaoke. Marjorie and I butchered a version of Wouldn't It Be Nice. It was a hoot though. My friend Matt took second in the costume contest, mostly because we shouted ourselves hoarse for him.

Non-sequitur of the night: "Paintball guns are an underused form of social commentary."

WORD OF THE DAY
The Merriam-Webster word of the day is
sanguineous • \san-GWIH-nee-uss\ • (adjective)
1 : bloodred
*2 : of, relating to, or involving bloodshed : bloodthirsty
3 : of, relating to, or containing blood

I'm glad to see they're getting into the Halloween spirit.

I'm working on a theory that the stages of human development can be mapped directly to how we dress for Halloween. To wit:

Infancy -- Your parents dress you up for Halloween.

Childhood -- You dress up. Halloween rules! Can I be Batman?

Adolescence -- You are too cool to dress up.

Early adulthood -- Hey, dressing up is fun. Why did I stop?

Adulthood -- Who has the time? Maybe if a friend is throwing a party.

Parenthood -- The kids are dressing up. Why not me?

Old age -- Get off my lawn, you mischievous little brats!

Okay, it's not a perfect theory.

Somewhere in America, a woman is sexually assaulted every 2 minutes
I learned yesterday that a friend of mine was recently drugged (GBH or rohypnol) and raped while on vacation in San Francisco. This is the third person close to me, that I know of, who has been raped. I spent last night tossing and turning filled with rage and impotence to do anything about this problem. Women are simply not safe in this country. Today I donated money to RAINN, The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. You too can donate at www.rainn.org.

My favorite new conspiracy theory, now that Mondale is leading in the polls: the Democrats killed Wellstone, so they could win the Senate seat with the sympathy vote. Maybe it was Clinton!

Moooooon river..... Had my first physical in four years this morning. Got a clean bill of health. If there's one thing this adventure is doing for us, it's getting us to take care of a lot of little things we should have been doing all along.

CHECKING OUT the Blogdex site Mark referred to, I came across this article that ponders "Was Paul Wellstone Murdered?" A question that has probably occurred to every cynical liberal in the country at this point. The article then remembers another recent liberal politician who died in a small plane crash "Mel Carnahan, who lost his life in 2000, three weeks before Election Day, during his Senatorial race against John Ashcroft. Carnahan went on to become the first dead man to win a Senatorial race, humiliating and defeating the unpopular Ashcroft posthumously. Ashcroft, despite his unpopularity, went on to be appointed Attorney General by George W. Bush." Kinda scary to think about kids, isn't it?

I would really love to make a website like Blogdex -- that is, a news/interesting link website based on polling hundreds of blogs -- that would have the following improvements:

It would be human-edited, so advertisers couldn't phony their way onto the list like often happens on Blogdex.

Each entry would have a paragraph of description, not just a few confusing words.

Separate links which point to essentially the same story would be collapsed into one place on the countdown.

A homespun graphic to accompany each entry would be nifty.

So would a comment feature/discussion board for each.

Sort of a cross between SlashDot and Blogdex. With all my current plans, though, this will probably fall into the bit bucket of conceived-but-never-realized projects. On the road to big money and internet fame, there's a lot of wreckage in the ravine...

More vaccinations this morning... We both got polio boosters, which should fix us for life. I also got my first Hepatitus B, and will get another just before we leave and another 6-12 months down the line. (Marjorie's already finished with her Hep B.) We also got prescriptions for three different malaria preventatives which we can choose from. Now we must choose which of them we want based on the trade-off among side-effects, time of coverage, and price. The good ones are $5-$10 a pill, to be taken daily.

When people from southeast Asia come to visit the US, do they have to get vaccinated for things that they have no natural resistance for? Like, yuppie flu, carpal tunnel syndrome, or the summertime blues?

GOOD GIRL
I'm having a very productive Monday: I've scheduled the movers to come; Confirmed our doctor's appointments for more vaccinations; Got money orders for our visa's for Vietnam; Mailed off our visa applications; Returned our library books; Turned in the applications for our international driver's permits, and picked up the permits; and checked on the baggage restrictions for our flight to S'pore. I love checking things off the "'to-do list".

I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Speaking of seedy -- last night, patrons of a local country bar known as the Crazy Horse were treated to the second installment of my karaoke tribute to Johnny Cash -- this time it was Folsom Prison Blues. Love to sing that baritone.

There's a strange place in town called the Clermont Lounge, which for most nights of the week is just a very seedy strip club. They say the only requirement to become a dancer there is that you can in no way be the least bit attractive. On Saturday nights, however, it becomes one of the most popular discos in town, and is usually packed to the gills by both men and women. The seediness only adds a strange energy to the place.

There's a strange band here, too, called Hot August Knights who are a Neil Diamond cover band. And by all accounts they are amazing; the lead singer is apparently the spitting image of Neil, both in appearance and voice.

This coming Thursday night, the latter will be playing at the former. In addition, the band will be dressing up as the band Kiss, in full makeup, and will be adding covers of Kiss songs to their set. The lead singer will still be singing in his Neil Diamond voice though.

And people wonder why I prefer city life!

Scrambled around today trying to put together Halloween costumes, only to find that everyone we know is doing the Halloween thing next weekend. At least we're ready for next week. You'll have to wait for pictures to find out what we're going to be though...

Yes, Billy Bragg did preach a bit. But he wasn't quite the flaming Marxist he's rumored to be. He was a lot more pragmatic than I was expecting.

Oh, and the music was great too.

At one point he played a rather pointed new song dealing with the Iraq situation called "The Price of Oil". At the end he handed out a dozen or so CDs of it that he asked people to upload to the web. That's not something you see at a lot of concerts.

I've revamped my list of concerts I've been to, and added this one. I'm still missing a bunch, I'm sure. The ones marked with an asterisk are ones I saw with Marjorie.

NPWA
We went and saw Billy Bragg last night. It was a wonderful show, and of course, Billy was very riled up and ready to share his latest political agenda...Which leads to the explanation for NPWA, Billy's latest slogan which stands for No Power Without Accountability. A simple enough concept, and one this country was supposedly set up to maintain through a system of checks and balances...alas, lately we seem to be falling short. However, Billy's slogan was not meant directly for the U.S.A. , but more for the gross imbalance of power to the big businesses of the world (World Banks, Industrial monopolies and so forth) as compares with the average person, and in particular the IMF and the shear lack of accountablility this agency seems to possess considering the amount of power they wield. Like I said, it was a great show, and very thought provoking. The most surprising thing about the show to me were all the voices of dissension in the audience from seemingly right-wing minded individuals, I mean honestly, did they not expect the author of "Waiting for the great leap forward" to not talk about politics? Or were they shocked by his very leftist/Marxist idealogy? Had they ever listened to a Billy Bragg album before buying a ticket to his concert? One can only wonder. Beyond the politics though, I gotta say he sounded great. The show consisted mostly of Billy, alone with his guitar, though occasionally he was joined on-stage by Sir Ian McLagan, and the sonic quality of the show was full and beautiful. One of the better shows I've seen, overall. Billy's off to Florida now, to convince the people at his shows to not re-elect Jeb Bush...Although I can't imagine many Billy Bragg fans in Florida would have voted for Jeb anyway.
I suppose maybe Mark and I should make our own personal pleas to family and friends in Florida to please, please, please get out and vote this year and get that man out of office!

FRIDAY FIVE
1. What is your favorite scary movie? Jaws, I love that movie.

2. What is your favorite Halloween treat? Hm.. so many yummy goodies to choose from, I like anything with chocolate, but that's an around the year kinda thing, so I'm going to pick candy corn, because I only eat candy corn around Halloween.

3. Do you dress up for Halloween? If so, describe your best Halloween costume. I usually dress up, though my costumes are usually less than spectacular. My best costume is probably the bear costume I wore last year, but we rented from a costume shop last year, so it's not like I put it together myself, which is a little like cheating.

4. Do you enjoy going to haunted houses or other spooky events? Yea, somewhat. I though the last haunted house I went to was at a fraternity house and it seemed to be an excuse for the guys to wear costumes (be anonymous) and molest co-eds. So it wasnt' really the best experience I've had.

5. Will you dress up for Halloween this year? yeah, probably. I'm actually supposed to go to a friend's house this evening to look at some old costumes of her's that maybe I could borrow.

Tragic news out of Minnesota: Senator Wellstone has died in a plane crash. He was a courageous man who stood up for his principles in the face of overwhelming pressure on many occasions.

I am bummed out.

Rarely do I pass along links that are just pure entertainment, but when it's an animated version of Tom Lehrer's amazing song about the elements, how can I resist? Back when I was doing the ACM programming competitions, it was a point of geek pride among some of my team members to have this song memorized.

New feature test

Testing another new feature of my upgrade -- the ability to post via
email. If you see this, it worked. If you don't, please let me know. ;-)

Tonight is for Billy Bragg. I'm very excited. Billy is one of several
artists that Marjorie introduced me to who I may now like even more than she
does. Opening act -- Ian McLagan. Anyone heard of him?

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To follow up on Marjorie's post, I too am starting to freak out a little. The culture shock will be a little rough to deal with. And I'm worried about the toilets, too. Especially since my love for the cuisine of the region is -- how shall I say -- unrequited.

We're going to make mistakes, sometimes, and be taken advantage of, occasionally, and be uncomfortable, frequently. But we're hardly the first person to visit there, and I think we do better than most tourists, because we're generally respectful and we don't expect people to cater to us or speak our language just because we're Americans or anything.

A photo from our wedding in Key West, courtesy my sister-in-law. Thanks, Kim! Here Mark demonstrates his drinking problem with a bottle of Schnitzius wine.

We've just got a little more than a month before we leave on our trip. My mood swings wildly each day between extremely excited and happy about our upcoming adventure, to terrified and hysterical that we've commited ourselves to a journey that will surely lead to one of our deaths. Anyway.....at the moment I'm very optimistic as I've spent the last hour looking up beach resorts in Vietnam and Thailand. It really will be an adventure in the truest sense, and hopefully we'll enjoy ourselves. The scariest part is giving up creature comforts like sit-down toilets and the relaxed ability to trust that ice cubes won't give you Cholera. Frighteningly, up to this point, Mark and I have never even managed to go camping together (in spite of several planned then cancelled attempts). So far, roughing it for us has meant staying in a hotel that doesn't have an iron or blowdryer in the room. I really think the most important thing that either of us can bring on this trip is a sense of humor.

Freaky coincidence last night. I was out with some friends, and happened to play a really obscure Stones song -- "Dear Doctor" -- on the jukebox. I actually picked it because I had no idea what it was. Well, when I got in my car to leave, what should come on the radio but that very same song. (It was played on WRAS's Tuesday night country show, "Cowtipper's Delight"). What are the odds? That's a really obscure song.

I'm not one to put much stock in coincidences, though. With all the billions of things that occur in life, they're bound to happen...

Messing with the image uploads now. The only picture I could find on my computer right now that was worth uploading was this. This is what happens when you drink too much around my friends. At least there was no make-up applied (that time).

Getting down to crunch time. Yesterday I picked up a copy of all my medical records. Today I got my eyes examined, and some new contact lenses. Also made an appointment for a checkup. And Marjorie made us an appointment to get more shots and malaria pills.

IraqJournal.org deserves a look. It is a news site that breaks ranks with the mainstream press on the Iraq war issue. The slant is decidedly anti-war -- as am I, but I am not endorsing all the views presented there. I just think they deserve credit, and a link, for presenting an opposing viewpoint.

Some words on the sniper situation in DC, in a roundabout way.

When the Gainesville serial killings were going on back in the 80's, I was living in Orlando, about an hour south. There was phenomenal pressure on the police to find the killer. They responded by finding a scapegoat, who as it turned out was completely innocent of the crimes (but admittedly had his own issues). I remember this so well because the scapegoat was the brother of a friend of mine. I won't post his name; you can look it up. The family was dragged through enough unwanted publicity as it was. My friend ended up having to drop out of school, and her brother had his rights basically trampled. They convicted him of some other crime that should never have gone to court, and gave him the maximum sentence for that, solely because he was a suspect in these horrific murders. There was no public apology when the killer turned out to be somebody else.

After I moved to Atlanta, history repeated itself in the form of the Olympic Park bombing. Again, there was enormous pressure on the police to come up with a suspect. And they singled someone out, and trampled his rights. Even worse, they used dirty tricks to try to get him to confess (actually, they probably did enough of that in the Gainesville case too). I won't post his name either. He too was completely innocent.

These incidents were particularly galling, not only because of what happened to the scapegoats, but also because they gave the public a completely false sense of security, while the real perpetrators walked around free.

There is as much pressure on the police in the DC sniper case as there was in the other cases I just mentioned. I have no doubt that they'd have a scapegoat already, EXCEPT that the ongoing nature of the crime is preventing this from happening. Anybody they take into custody will be pretty much exonerated by the fact that they're being held while the next day's incident occurs. So this must be particularly frustrating for the DC police (and all the other agencies involved). All I can suggest is that people lay off and stop pressuring them so much, unless you're the type who can somehow take solace in the police having a suspect who is quite possibly the wrong man in custody.

Let's just hope they get the real killer(s), and soon...

Woops, things might already be happening...

In an earlier blog I mentioned how perplexing I sometimes find my alarm clock in the morning. This morning was a classic example. When it went off, I awoke convinced that there was a numeric keypad on top of it where I'm supposed to key in the time that I want to get up. In actuality, all that's there is a snooze button and an off switch. I banged around on top of it for about fifteen seconds, totally nonplussed. This is the same alarm clock I've been using for (I think) over twenty years now.

Just for the evening Mark and I have apparently traded places. He's sweetly in bed, while I'm wide awake at 1am surfing the web. Today's Doonesbury is about web logs. I predict it's only a matter of time before everyone has their own. I wonder if we'll continue to keep one after we've finally decided where we want to live.

Some crazy people I knew in college used to do this. This was in 1987. Same yell and everything, assuming they didn't just make it all up. Looks like they were trendsetters...

I've just upgraded to Blog*Spot Plus, for the storage place so that we have a place to upload pictures during our trip. Beyond that, I have to say, the Plus doesn't add much. There's a stats page, telling us how many hits we're getting, which is mildly interesting. And you can password protect parts of your site, which I don't see ever using. Nothing beyond that. There are a few features promised "soon".

We're going to go eat Vietnamese food then go buy a new digital camera for the trip today. Maybe we'll stop in an internet cafe to see if we can upload some pictures from a strange computer later on.

I"M NOT ALONE!
Apparently lots of people, myself included,(see Marks "fun site") used to believe that chocolate milk came from brown cows. Someone in my family, probably my sister, told me that when I was a child, and I believed up to an embarrassingly late age.

I'm having one of those days where the inspiration to blog just isn't coming to me. I've had about three aborted attempts so far. So instead I'll just point you to a fun site. Enjoy your weekend.

Customer Service?
Bank of America Sucks! I tried to call them today to complain about late charges they've been applying to an account that's closed and they put me on hold for about 20 minutes before a recording stating "your call cannot be processed at this time" came up. Thanks for wasting my time folks!

As usual the Friday five is unfortunately boring so I'm going to skip it and instead use my time to call Bank of America back and bitch at some poor customer service representative (if I can ever get through).

Here's a little post I made a few months back to a mailing list I'm on, describing the experience I had just had that I alluded to a few blogs back... Posted here for posterity.

What a trip. I feel totally put through the wringer.

Today I went to court to contest a $25 parking ticket. I honestly
thought this was going to be like traffic court, where you just
describe what happened, and the judge makes a decision. Instead,
I found myself having to improvise my best Perry Mason.

I found myself scheduled in the BIG courtroom, intimidating
enough in itself. And, pleading not guilty, I was immediately
offered a choice: proceed without a lawyer and have the judge
decide, or schedule a JURY TRIAL. Over a parking ticket. Huhwhat?
I decided to just go for it without the jury, since by the time
they would've scheduled that, I would be out of the country...

They gave me a ticket on a street where there was NO indication
of "no parking" until well past where I parked. So I had taken
a series of pictures showing the layout of the street. But I
had NO idea how to submit them as evidence, and the prosecutor
jumped all over me for trying to do it at a time when I was
supposed to be cross-examining the officer. I still sat there
and questioned the officer for about ten minutes, with a whole
lot of hemming and hawing. I had some notes attached to the
photos, which the prosecutor also objected to, and I had to remove
them. Can you tell I was in over my head? The judge took some
sympathy to my deer-in-the-headlights look and gave me some
nudges in the right direction. There was still at least five
or six times that the prosecutor objected.

Bottom line was, the officer lied through his teeth about where I was
parked, and I couldn't contradict him, so I was eventually found
guilty. They waived my fine, though (I think out of sympathy).

Considering all the time I spent getting the court date, taking
the pictures, and going to the trial today, it was far from worth
it financially. But dammit, what's money without experience?
Today was an EXPERIENCE.

Phew. I need a drink.

Today's question to ponder: Would you be willing to undergo a DNA scan that tells you what you're genetically predisposed to, which might conceivably tell you how you are going to die, and at what age? This is a question we're all going to have to face, possibly even within the next year or two. Frightening stuff.

More on this morning's wreck can be found here, if you're curious...

THE ACCIDENT that Mark referred to earlier on 75-Southbound, was apparently due to a cattle truck tipping over. The poor cows had to be corraled out of a sideways semi onto the highway, with cars passing by.
My last day at work (really, I mean it this time) was yesterday. Seems like that was just in time for me to get sick with a lovely sinus infection. I'm going back to bed now, as that is the only place I don't feel like dying.

My friend Jim and I exchange interesting words we've come across all the time. Yesterday he sent me a great one -- 'Treppenwitz'. This is the term for when you think of a good response too late (from German, "stairway wit" -- wit that comes to you when you're already on the stairs). Use it in good health.

I had Treppenwitz in spades after my court appearance last month over a parking ticket. That was a story I'll have to relate some time...

Surreal driving experience on the way in this morning. There was an accident on 75 North that had all lanes blocked. There's at least six lanes where this happened, so this was a major deal. Everyone else was getting off and going over to Hwy 41, but I worked in that area before, and knew another way around. I ended up getting back on the interstate just above the accident, and for a few miles, I was the ONLY person on the interstate. Six lanes to myself!

There was another accident on southbound 75 around the same place that had most lanes blocked. Southbound is a much busier direction this time of day, so it was an absolute mess. Traffic backed up all the way to my workplace exit, ten miles north of there. Check it out here while it lasts.

This ranks up there with the time the guy passed me going sideways after an ice storm a few years back...

Some other New York observations:

Expensive or cheap? For what is supposedly one of the most expensive cities in the world, I sure did find (and buy) a lot of cheap things. Three pairs of socks for $5, a huge umbrella for $10, two slices of pizza, a salad, and a bottled water for $7.50. If it weren't for the rents, I bet you could get by living there for next to nothing, if you knew where to shop.

I must've seen twenty or thirty broken umbrellas just lying in the street like mangled peacocks. Apparently the thing to do if your umbrella breaks is to just drop it.

I love walking around the town just for all the cultural references that pop up. From movies, we walked by Bloomingdale's (Moscow on the Hudson), FAO Schwartz (Big), and the Empire State Building (Sleepless in Seattle), among dozens of others. And songs pop into your head all the time -- I found myself singing all of these lyrics at some point or other, just from chancing across the relevant landmark:

Well you can stand on the arms of the Williamsburg bridge crying hey man, well this is Babylon... Soul Coughing, "True Dreams of Wichita"

I can't give it away on 7th Avenue The Stones, "Shattered"

53rd and 3rd, standing on the street The Ramones, "53rd and 3rd"

I can slip on the East River and crash into Queens, all skittering Soul Coughing, "The Idiot Kings"

I don't want to go to Chelsea Elvis Costello (okay, he's talking about London, but still...)

The say the neon lights are bright, on Broadway Who does that song?

Won't you please stand clear of the closing doors? Soul Coughing, "The Brooklynites"

When we walked through Little Italy... PJ Harvey, "Good Fortune"

On a rooftop in Brooklyn, one in the morning PJ Harvey, "You Said Something"

I've been walking Central Park Singing after dark People think I'm crazy The Stones, "Miss You"

For posterity, here's the set list from Saturday night's show, courtesy Mike's page...

Sunday
Cactus
Breaking Glass
Fame
Ashes to Ashes
Slip Away
China Girl
5:15
Survive
I've Been Waiting for you
Rebel Rebel
I'm Afraid of Americans
Life on Mars
Heroes
Heathen (the rays)
--------------
Moonage Daydream
Afraid
Stay
Bewlay Bros
Everyone says Hi
Hello Spaceboy
Let's Dance
Ziggy Stardust

Here's the blog entry I composed over this eventful weekend...

[Friday evening] Greetings from 36,000 feet. Marjorie and I are on our way to New York City. We thought it best not to announce to the world via our blog that our house would be unoccupied for the weekend, so this will be posted when we get back.

Marjorie and I both just asked for seltzer water from the flight attendant; they gave her club soda, and me a Perrier. I guess I just exude class.

Quite a weekend ahead of us. Especially tonight -- our friend Mike scored us tickets tonight to see DAVID BOWIE in a 300-seat venue!!!! It should be amazing. Especially since we're likely going to be in the front row. I hope my brother, who's been a huge fan of Bowie's since I can remember, will still speak to me afterwards...

Sunday we're going to meet with Kate and Marc in person, whom we met on-line via BlogSpot. They're the couple that seem to be living parallel lives with us, having gotten married this year and almost moving to Singapore.

Monday we're going to visit Ground Zero. We actually might be able to see it from up here in a half an hour or so. Just the hole in the skyline will be troubling enough to look at.

This is our third time to NYC together, and our sixteenth plane trip overall. Not bad for a little over four years.

[Monday night] It's now Monday night, and we're sitting in Newark airport waiting for the flight home. Quite a weekend.

After arriving and checking in on Saturday, we met up with Mike and cabbed to Brooklyn to have pizza at Grimaldi's, which is a favorite of Marjorie's and is right around the corner from where Bowie was going to play. The pizza was good enough that we ordered a second one halfway through and gorged ourselves.

The venue was a little bigger than I expected -- there were about 1000 people there. We wedged our way up front and ended up right in front of the speakers on stage right. Bowie started with a ponderous piece, from the new album I think, and I was worried that we would experience a repeat of the Beck experience we had last month, where he would play all new, unfamiliar stuff, and we'd be left scratching our heads. But for the second song he launched into an explosive cover of the Pixie's "Cactus", and I was hooked. He mixed old and new all night, and played the old stuff without any of the sighing complacency that some artists take on when forced to trot out popular favorites. From this category we heard "Life on Mars", "Let's Dance", "Rebel Rebel", "Fame", "Ashes to Ashes", and "China Girl". He played for a good two and half hours, and was obviously enjoying himself, as were we all.

Our position in front of the speakers left my ears ringing pretty bad, but luckily that passed within a day. We were even close enough to see his different-colored eyes!

After the show we tried for twenty minutes to hail a cab in the rain. Finally a very nice couple from Boston picked us up and drove us into town.

We were still abuzz from the concert, so we walked around a while and ended up in a Japanese restaurant. We had a few mixed drinks (made with saki -- very strange) and some sushi. Sitting there, I commented to Marjorie: "Will you still love me if I turn 56 and I'm not as sexy as Bowie?" She smirked and responded: "You're not that sexy now."

Sunday we met with Marjorie's good friend Karen and her husband Tom. We lunched at the Waterhouse on the East River (no bodies floated by while we watched) and just walked around the city most of the day. It was good to see them again.

That night we met with fellow bloggers Kate and Marc at Von, a beer-and-wine place on Bleecker Street. We chatted there for a while and moved on to an Indian restaurant on 6th Street. [Now writing from home.] A fine night of food and conversation with a super-nice couple. We went to sleep happy and content.

As Marjorie noted, we went by Ground Zero on Monday... The scale of the tragedy is almost impossible to get your head around. We had been to the lower floor the WTC two years hence trying to buy show tickets. Now it's all just a big hole in the sky that makes you ache to stand near.

"First We Take Manhattan....."

Mark and I went to NYC this weekend. We had a great time, but I won't talk too much about it, as he's planning on posting a text page he's been writing over the weekend about the journey.

Highlights of the trip were seeing David Bowie (which I'll let Mark write about first or he'll hate me) and seeing my best friend Karen and her husband, It sucks having your best friend live several states away, but it's nice to be able to meet someplace like NYC when you get together.

Today we went to Ground Zero, which was a truly sobering experience. Maybe even more so than it might have been due to the recent terrorist attack in Bali.I tried to be a big girl about the experience, but found my eyes welling up as we walked along the borders of where the towers used to stand. Looking up at the void in the sky was especially hard for me. At one point a little girl, around 7 or 8, was bawling behind us and I couldn't help but wonder if she'd lost a family member in the attack. Overall, I'm glad we went, but it was difficult to be there.

I love New York. Everytime we go there I imagine what it would be like to live there. Mark would love it, but I think the constant overstimulation would get to me after awhile. I don't know, maybe if things don't work out for us in S'pore or Australia, we'll see if we can make it in New York.

Might as well. Don't expect any real thought to be involved.

THE FRIDAY FIVE

1. If you could only choose 1 cd to ever listen to again, what would it be? Practical answer: Some complicated Rachmananov thing that would take me decades to figure out. From the gut: Elvis Costello, The Juliet Letters.

2. If you could only choose 2 movies to watch ever again, what would they be? I should really pick a couple of those movies that you can watch over and over again that they always play on TBS, like Groundhog Day or The American President. But I'll say Rushmore and Reservoir Dogs.

3. If you could only choose 3 books to read ever again, what would they be? Shogun, Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman, and a world atlas.

4. If you could only choose 4 things to eat or drink ever again, what would they be? Blueberry cobbler with ice cream, salame picante pizza from Fritti, Jaeger schnitzel mit spatzle, and some unbottled, unpasteurized German pilsner straight from the source. [Wipes drool from chin.]

5. If you could only choose 5 people to ever be/talk/associate/whatever with ever again, who would they be?
Aside from Marjorie? I bow out of this one too.

THE FRIDAY FIVE

1. If you could only choose 1 cd to ever listen to again, what would it be?
Wow, that would be really tough decision. At the moment I'm leaning towards Abbey Road/The Beatles

2. If you could only choose 2 movies to watch ever again, what would they be? Amelie and American Beauty.

3. If you could only choose 3 books to read ever again, what would they be? I don't know, I'm very glad this isn't a realistic scenario. Off the top of my head I'll say "Fear of Flying" by Erica Jong, "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and "Nine Stories" by J.D. Salinger.

4. If you could only choose 4 things to eat or drink ever again, what would they be? I'm going to be greedy and assume I can have 4 things to eat, and 4 things to drink. Drink: milk, water, Alice White Chardonnay, and Harp Lager. Eat: Spinach, Rice, Pinto Beans, and Monterey Jack cheese.

5. If you could only choose 5 people to ever be/talk/associate/whatever with ever again, who would they be?
What a boring life that would be... I guess if forced to be in a jail cell with 5 companions I'd choose my husband Mark....besides that I'm not going to choose. Too much potential for offending people I love and care about, (of which there are more than 5).

The beauty of real life is that I have choices and thank God for it. I'd hate to have to restrict myself to such a limited selection of ideas.

After lunch today we snuck off into HobbyTown USA. A cow orker bought a MicroSizer. They're way cool. I want to be able to buy stuff again!

Congratulations go out to Jimmy Carter, on winning the Nobel peace prize. It is richly deserved. It's hard to think of any troubled area of the world in the past twenty years where Jimmy hasn't tried to step in and use his clout as a force for good, by arranging negotiations, monitoring elections, or just focusing the spotlight of the press on wrongdoers.

By the way, the Carter Center mentioned in that article is walking distance from our house...

Uhm..... Mark's last post there is hard to follow. Sobering isn't it, but truly is anyone suprised that the Bush Administration would have something in common with facists. I generally remain shockingly ignorant about the political goings-on of the world. It's emotionally too much for me to deal with, and I feel utterly impotent in the face of it. Worse, I know I contribute, and perhaps AM the problem because I choose to remain ignorant. Me and the majority of the country. Sigh.
Work today really sucked. This morning a mother asked me one of the many dreaded standard questions. This time it was "Do you think she'll be delayed for the rest of her life?". When you work with people who have very young children with disabilities you get asked lots of questions of this ilk all the time....and they are sooooo difficult to respond to. I want to be honest, but generally it's not the best policy to share my "honest opinion". Children are malleable, especially at the ages I see these little ones (birth to three), so even if the little one is significantly delayed now, it doesn't neccesarily mean that the child will have significant delays in a year....but.. they probably will. So, knowing that, how do you respond? My usual reply is that it's impossible to predict, which is true, but I still feel like I'm not being entirely upfront with these families.
In general though, I love my job, and I'm lucky to be in a position where I can help people.

Posted without comment:

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."
- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Go, carbon-based bipeds! After grandmaster Gary Kasparov was humiliated by the computer program Deep Blue in 1998(?), many thought that computers had surpassed humans in chess for good. Well, the humans are battling back. Yay, us!

I think many are amazed that computers can compete with humans at this high level of intellectual competition. Me, I'm amazed that humans even have a chance against machines that can consider bajillions of board positions every second.

I wrote a chess program a few years back. It's called Buzz, which was my father's nickname growing up (he's the one who taught me how to play chess -- hi Dad!). If you can compile a C program, you can check it out. It was a lot of fun to write. It even beat me a few times (I'm a sloppy player). Someday I'll go back and work on it some more. Maybe I can put a web interface on it...

Weird how the brain works, isn't it? I was just typing the word "constants" and instead typed "constance". I type homonyms like that all the time -- I guess the part of my brain responsible for typing occasionally just "takes dictation" from the part of my brain that is internally "speaking" what it wants to have written. And I occasionally will type commands from programming languages I haven't used in years, out of the blue.

Marjorie and I both have books and movies and such indexed in our brains by their first letter, and at least for me, by the length of the words I'm trying to remember. Recently I was trying to come up with a book title that I wanted to read, but all I could remember was that it was one long word that started with an "C". (It was The Corrections, by the way.) We both do that all the time (especially when we play trivia games!).

Another weird thing I experience is that when I play word games such as Yahoo Word Racer, and I get in a "zone", memories of things long forgotten, unrelated to anything else I'm thinking about, will occasionally pop into my brain. It's sort of trippy.

Oh, and the alarm clock in the morning. I can't tell you how many times I've been completely confused as to its purpose when I wake up, or think that I can just turn it off (instead of snoozing it) for no reason that makes any sense whatsoever, or just plain forget how to work the snooze button. All because my brain has yet to engage. It just utterly befuddles me just about every morning.

I'm sure everybody's brains do strange things from time to time...

Now how can I write about the baseball game I saw tonight without looking like an insensitive clod? Anyway, while Marjorie was feeling sad, like a typical male I was at game 5 of the Braves series against the Giants, with Marjorie's dad and some friends. And we lost, and the season is over. I got to see living legend Barry Bonds hit a home run. And it may be the last game I see for... ever?

Now I'm all melancholy...

HI HO, HI HO, It's off to Ho Chi Minh we go...
I'm a wreck today. I think I'm suffering from "oh my God! What have we done?!" syndrome, with a little premature grieving thrown in for good measure. I haven't even begun to worry about all the things we need to do. I'm still too emotional, worrying about all the things we're leaving. In my saner moments, I know we've got plently of time to prepare ourselves for this move. The actual packing process should go pretty smoothly. The hard part will be deciding what to take, and what to leave, but in some small way, I think having these extra months to contemplate the move will make it easier for me to leave some non-essentials behind. It's just stuff after all. What I will have trouble leaving are the people in our lives, particularly my parents and their dogs Beau and Sadie. Sounds silly to miss dogs, but ya know, they don't e-mail, and they don't talk on the phone, and worse than that, they don't know you still care about them when you're gone. As for my parents, they do e-mail, read our blog, and talk on the phone, but it's been nice having them so close for the last several years (they live in the Atlanta area too) and I know I'm really going to miss them. I'm not as worried about missing my friends for some reason. Most of my best friends live far away from us now, so our day to day relationship won't change much with regards to the move-I can still e-mail them and talk on the phone, and I hope/believe Mark and I will still try to see them at least once a year regardless of where we live. The blog will also help us keep in contact, I hope, that was the original reason for starting this.
I know everything will probably be fine, and truthfully, it's so much easier to do this now then it was when my parents moved overseas for the first time more than twenty years ago thanks to the internet. But it's still a little scary, and a little sad to leave our present lives behind.

Now what? We have so many other things to do. I don't know about Marjorie but I'm going to have to deny myself the fun of looking through tourist guidebooks, except to reward myself for getting other things done. First things first. I have to get my paperwork in order for Australian immigration, and that's a major pain. We have to get all our doctors visits scheduled too -- lots of innoculations still left to get, and I need a physical and an eye exam. There are bank accounts to set up too.

Couples having their first child often fret that they don't know what they're doing, and people always assure them, "It's okay, no one ever does, the first time." This is maybe a little like that. Without the labor pains though.

Thoreau once wrote:

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not LIFE, living is so dear... I wanted to live deep and suck out the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms... and be able to give a true account of it...

I've been thinking about this passage a lot. The "marrow" bit has been quoted overmuch lately -- it's the deliberately that really resonates with me. Almost all of what I (or maybe we) have done with our lives up to this point has been the path of least resistance. And there has always been friends or family nearby for counsel. This is the first real deliberate thing I've (we've) ever done, and with that comes enormous potential for self-doubt. Marjorie's right, though, we really have nothing to lose. We'll only have each other to count on, but that's not chopped liver.

HOLY GEEZ!
We've finally done it. We booked our tickets for Singapore tonight. We leave on Thanksgiving Day (sorry Mom and Dad). It's exciting, but scary. I've been so anxious to do this, but I have to admit that I feel some trepidation now. I suppose that's the nature of change. We really don't have anything to lose though. Worse case scenario, we spend a few months traveling around Southeast Asia, before we look for work in S'pore, and if we don't find anything we'll have to come back to the States. IF that happens, we wouldn't really have lost anything, and we will have had the chance to explore another area of the world.
At the moment, our plan is to go to S'pore, leave most our things at our friend's place, then fly to Hanoi to start our travels.We'll probably travel (Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand head the agenda) throughout December/January until Chinese New Year's (Feb. 2 this coming year). After Chinese New Year we'll get serious about looking for work. In the meantime, we're still trying to submit our migration paperwork to Australia so eventually we could look for work there.
The next few months should be pretty exciting.

FRIDAY FIVE
This week's Friday five is devoted to shoes. Finally, a Friday five I can get behind ;^)

1. What size shoe do you wear? I usually wear a 7.5, for some shoes I wear an 8. This in an European 38, and a Japanese 24.

2. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Less than 20 (barely), which considering I have a bit of a fetish lately, isn't too bad.

3. What type of shoe do you prefer (boots, sneakers, pumps, etc.)? Judging by my shoe collection, I'm a fan of slides (open-toed or mules).

4. Describe your favorite pair of shoes. Why are they your favorite? I recently acquired a lovely pair of black mules with little flowers stitched into the top and little pointy one inch heels. They're so cool. The first day I wore them this salesguy at Banana Republic was fawning all over them, pointing them out to other salesfolk and such, and he told me "you must be sick to wear those in public".

5. What's the most you've spent on one pair of shoes? Honestly, the most I've spent on shoes is probably a little over a $100.00 several years ago on a pair of Birkenstock Boston's. I bought those shoes when I was a very poor undergraduate, and at the time that was an outrageous amount of money for me to spend on shoes, but they lasted forever and I plan on buying another pair soon. Generally though, I'm a bit of a cheapskate so I'm not likely to spend much more than $50 on a pair of trendy shoes.

The other day I wrote about how we can't even get data to test with. So yesterday I wrote a utility where you can spoof whatever data you want as if it were coming from the back end. It works just spiffy. I feel all proud of myself.

Bossman is impressed, I think. I was just happy to have some stimulating work to do.

ANY IDEAS
Mark and I want to buy a digital camera for our trip. Preferably something with lots of memory for pictures, that doesn't eat batteries, and is ideally pocket sized so as not to attract too much attention. Anybody know of something like that, or have a camera they really love?

Is anybody besides me really disturbed by "The Bachelor"? I caught about 10 minutes of this show last night and it really horrified me. How desperate are these women!? The whole idea is really wrong. The trend of lots of women vyiing for one "eligible" man (i.e. "Who wants to marry a millionaire") on television is a really disturbing notion to me. What is this teaching young girls watching these shows? What happened to all the momentum behind the women's rights movements of the Seventies, do people think we've achieved equality now? If anything it seems shows like this are giant leaps backwards in terms of women gaining equal status in this culture.

I was listening to 91.1 WREK on the way home Tuesday. This is the station that's been known to play hours of squeaking saxophones and the sound of plates breaking (I've always thought their motto should be "91.1. Hunh?"). Anyway, they said to call in if you wanted tickets to see Enon, so I called in and won, for the first time ever. So I went and saw them last night. I wasn't all that familiar with their stuff, but I took a friend who's a fan. They're an above average indie-rock band. It was good stuff, but they didn't go on until 12:45am. Yikes. I'm feeling it today.

In other music news, somehow Polyphonic Spree (that band I was raving about a while back) made it to number 17 in Blogdex, a site which ranks links by how many people in the blog community have included them. They must be catching on...

Gotta love working with the public.
I had my own version of work woes today. The first family I was scheduled to see claimed (incorrectly) the appointment was supposed to be at 2:00pm, I was there at 9:00am. Also, the mother didn't realize that I, and the speech therapist accompanying me, needed to see the child, she assummed that for the EVALUATION she just needed to fill out more paperwork. When we explained we did need to see the little one, she claimed she couldn't wake him up because he won't cooperate with her. Just to clarify, I am not the first contact people have with our agency. First there is an intake process where someone comes out to fully explain the program and the evaluation process to the family. Next, an evaluation appointment is scheduled, generally over the phone with the parent to make sure the appointment is scheduled at a time that's good for the family. Next, a letter goes out giving the family written confirmation of the appointment. Then finally, the day before the appointment, a service coordinator calls the family to remind them of the appointment. I'd like to point out that the first assessment was scheduled at the family's home, so all they had to do was be there, answer the door, and wake up the kid. Some days that's just too much effort for people. But I guess I shouldn't complain because I'm getting paid (thanks taxpayers).

I'm so glad I only contract for this company. On my desk sits a little commemorative lucite plaque/trophy that has the company logo and says "Extreme Effort" on it. They had a big box full of them, and handed them out the other day. There's a date on them too -- five months ago. No names or anything though. Color me motivated!

It's more than that. This is a long contract -- I've been here fifteen months now. We've been building a web site for a government agency. Our company insisted on using their COBOL back-end database, which is a 1960's technology. And the people responsible for maintaining this database are several steps removed from us. We're not allowed to talk directly to them. (The front end, BTW, is mainly Java servlets and JSPs.)

To top it off, now they are denying us the use of any data in the database we use for testing. So, we have to code functionality into the web pages we're building, then submit it to them and hope it works. It's rather like trying to paint a picture by reaching around from behind the canvas.

And when there are problems, they are reported to us using the company issue bug reporting software, which is mainframe-based, and was designed by dullards. For instance, to view the second page of a bug, you type slash-D-1, then hit the F11 key. (Why? My personal theory is that it's an inside joke.) If you want an idea how old this software is -- it prominently features the color cyan in its interface. Cyan is as sure a sign of obsolescence in software as Bakelite is in telephones.

Myself and the core group of developers here could have easily had this thing built in three months with a decent database we could actually access. Heck, we could've even handled that end of it ourselves. But if we did it that way, it would have only ended up faster and easier to maintain.

How can I complain though? As a contractor, I'm expected to just do the work and cash out. And fifteen months getting fat on the company teat is nothing to scoff at, especially with the job market the way it is right now. Still, it would be nice to contract like this for a company that isn't always reaching over its shoulder to scratch its backside.

I don't want to work today. The office is freezing, inspiring me to look into Websites for the Vietnamese mountains. I'm thinking maybe Christmas in Sapa would be nice. This place looks all right.
Mark and I are going to New York City probably next weekend. We saw a deal for the Alqonquin hotel. Now the real question is whether or not it's worth a couple hundred dollars to sleep where Dorothy Parker and pals used to get witty (and loaded) on a regular basis.

A couple of entries back I mentioned visiting Halong Bay as one of my lifetime goals. I had forgotten about that one, actually. But that did inspire me to go back and find my list of lifetime goals that I made up a little while back, so here it is. I've knocked a few off since I first made the list -- those are crossed out.

• Visit
  
  
  
  • Machu Pichu
    
  • Antarctica
    
  • Australia
    
  • New Zealand
    
  • Scandinavia
    
  • Rio
    
  • Greenland
    
  • Hawaii
    
  • Alaska
    
  • Madagascar
    
  • Taoudenni
    
  
  
• Hear song I wrote on radio.
  
• Publish a scientific discovery.
  
• Write a novel. Hmmmm.
  
• Live in
  
  
  
  • NYC
    
  • San Francisco
    
  • London
    
  
  
• Become intimately familiar with a complete classical symphony.
  
• See in concert:
  
  
  
  • Tom Waits
    
  • Pete Townshend
    
  • Rolling Stones
    
  
  
• Dive with a whale shark.
  
• See a shark while diving/snorkeling.
  
• Do a dive in a shark cage.
  
• Swim with dolphins.
  
• See a live volcano.
  
• Be in an earthquake.
  
• See the northern lights.
  
• Ride on a motorcycle.
  
• Balloon over Serengeti.
  
• See NHL hockey game from front row.
  
• Parasail.
  
• Ride race car on track with high banked walls.
  

Hmmm, that last one I might have to attempt while I'm still living in the proximity of someplace like the Atlanta Motor Speedway.

I cleaned up on the football pool this week. For three of the games, I was the only person -- out of nine -- who picked the right team (San Diego, Kansas City, and Baltimore).

This is the sort of gripping news that will earn this blog a devoted fan base. I can just feel it.

I caught the movie Signs last night. Spoilers follow, so stop reading if you still plan on seeing it.

It held my attention, but it bothered me for a few reasons. One, the joylessness of the household where it was set made me not care about the characters so much. And two, it wasn't really science fiction. The aliens were just a plot device in fair-to-middling human interest story. I want grand scale on my alien invasions.

I remember seeing Indochine in the theaters back when it came out, and vowing I would someday go to the bay where the boat scenes were filmed. I always thought it was in Thailand, but it turns out it was Halong Bay in Vietnam, which Marjorie just mentioned. I love it when a plan comes together.

I hate Mondays. I know that's a horrible cliché, but I always stay up too late Sunday night for no good reason, not wanting to give up the weekend. And I'm just full of resentment when the alarm goes off in the morning.

TIGER TIGER BURNING BRIGHT
Mark neglected to mention that the tiger was playing with a big ball romping around in the water, and occasionally he took a little break to come and spray the window with his, um, urine. It was as if he spied someone he particularly liked every once and awhile and decided, okay you're mine now, I've marked you. Whatever he was thinking, it was definitely amusing.
By the way we've offficially decided to go the S.E. Asia job or no job. We've set a go date for the end of November/beginning of December. Pretty exciting stuff. I'm sure they'll be many future posts on the subject. I'm personally really looking forward to visiting Vietnam. Halong Bay in the north seems particularly amazing.

Things I did this past week that I haven't done in a long time:

I went to the library. I even got a library card. I haven't had one in twenty years or so.

I took a nap. It was nice. I hadn't taken one in a year at least.

I got pooped on by a bird. Twenty years at least on that one too.

Today we did something we do do pretty often, which is go to the zoo (no offense, Mike ;-). They had several new exhibits, including bats, a king vulture, and a Komodo dragon. Plus, we got to see one of the tigers romping in the water from just on the other side of the glass. A magnificent beast.