Summer

Ah, it's been a whole season since I last posted. Let's see.... After working in the office for three months, I'm back to working at home now. It was a fun project and I definitely enjoyed not being on production for those three months. Sadly, it's back to the grind. I will enjoy, however, not having to commute over an hour each way.

The house is still relatively bare; K and I haven't purchased any rugs, furniture, etc. since moving in. We want nice stuff and didn't want to fill it with cheap furniture. Besides, we had to replace a gutter and the indoor AC unit. So, for money that could have gone to furniture, we had to blow on home repairs. Oh yeah, I also had to spend loads on maintenance for my car. We're looking for a bedroom set as well as some rugs for the house.

Commuting to the office did give me opportunity to read a lot. I read a bunch of books by Eric Ambler, Gregory Mcdonald, and Alan Furst. Furst is similar to Ambler, but Mcdonald's books are pretty light and funny. His Fletch character was almost ruined by Chevy Chase. The character is so much better than the silly one in the movies. I read After the Quake by Murakami and To Have and Have Not by Hemingway. The latter is a weird novel in that it switches from first person to third person, and then back to first person from another character's POV. Also, aside from the first five minutes, it's nothing like the Bogart movie.

This Sunday we're going to my sister's house down south. It's over an hour away so hopefully traffic won't be bad and add to too much to it.

Back to work....

Spring

The weather's been so nice lately. It's awesome not to have to use heat and let the house warm up naturally.

Last night K and I ate at an Italian place with some of K's college friends. It's a local chain, but the food was pretty good. Beforehand we went to the gym and before that we watched The Hangover. It wasn't as funny as I was hoping it to be, but it was still pretty good. It had it's moments that's for sure. I loved seeing Mike Tyson. I said to K, Is that Mike Tyson? Wth.

I while I was working last week I watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. I liked them. They're dialogue heavy and plot light to say the least. I think I liked Before Sunset even more. The characters were more mature, less idealistic, and seemed more, I don't know, desperate. Desperate for their life to be how they want it. I also like the ambiguity to the end of Before Sunset. Will they get together? I'd like to think they do. I think he misses his flight and spends some time with Celine. But then he has to go back to NY and be with his son. So how are they going to work this out? It's an impossibly sad situation since they're in love with each other. Maybe they're just destined to long for each other and meet up on occasion. I want to watch them again.

I also watched Sunshine. It was visually stunning, but the plot was pretty bad in parts. It's like Alex Garland had a notebook full of cool sci-fi movie scenes and just threw them together in a single movie. The idea was interesting, but the crazy captain of Icarus I plot point was stupid. Also, I didn't like the slow deaths where the characters scream for a few seconds. That seems really unrealistic.

Hard rain

(I feel like i've used that title before but i couldn't find it)

Anyway, it's supposed to rain its ass off for the next four days or so. That's too bad because my mom is coming to stay with us over the weekend. We might go to the mall or check out the new Alice in Wonderland. Might be too much motion for my mom on the IMAX 3d though; she gets motion sickness easily and it wouldn't be too enjoyable for her.

I've been plugging away at work these past couple weeks since I slacked at the beginning. I think moving into the new house and all that that entailed through me off this quarter. So as a result, I'm a little behind. But I should be able to do it in the next two weeks no problem.

I finished a short story collection of Dashiell Hammett and followed that up with Cain's Double Indemnity. Indemnity was crazy to read and know that it was published in the 1936. It deals with an insurance agent murdering a husband of a woman the agent fell in love with. They murder the poor bastard and then trouble ensues as they try to carry out their plan to collect on the, ahem, double indemnity insurance. Cain also wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice, another tale about murder most foul.

For a change of pace, and at the urging of my friend Brett, I just started Genius, the biography of Richard Feynman. He's been a source of fascination for me for some time now and I'm glad to finally read his bio.