:: Life of Dave ::

:: Thursday, July 31 2003 ::

Wow. That was quite a trip. On Monday, Sasha and I got up bright and early and headed off to Chicago by car. The purpose of the trip was twofold - Sasha needed to get her visa from the french consulate, and meet with the folks from the Newberry Library. Apparently, because she is being given the fellowship by the Newberry to study in Paris, it is considered good form if she has at least some idea of what the Newberry is all about. So she was to meet with them on Monday, and then on Tuesday go to the French consulate bright and early so she could stand in line all day, and hopefully get a visa.

Meantime, I was going to wander the city with my nephew, in a vague attempt to get him out of the house for a while. I figured if we were going to Chicago anyway, might as well take him along.

The trip quite nearly took a turn for the worse early on, when we stopped at a McDonald's along the highway and I managed to drop my ATM card on the ground next to my car. Fortunately it was still there when I got back. Scary.

We stayed in the Essex, right downtown across from Grant Park. It was valet parking, and I must admit I had some concern the car wouldn't start for them when they went to bring it down. Fortunately, the first time we went after the car they hadn't even tried to move it yet, so that problem was avoided. We basically hit the hotel at a run and immediately left to drive Sasha to the Newberry because she was running late.

...Or so we thought. In point of fact, we had forgotten to set our watches back an hour when we crossed time zones, so she arrived one hour early for everything. It's probably a good thing they've already given her the money....

While she was off doing that, Rob and I walked North for several miles. He had it in his head that he wanted to find a hobby store. It was most assuredly the proverbial needle in a haystack. Once we met up with Sasha, she suggested we find a phone book and look. We jotted down a couple of addresses, and since we were near one of them rambled down to take a look.

What we discovered is that 'Collectibles' can have a variety of meanings. The first place we visited, Christa's, turned out to be a little on the pricey side for a kid with $12 in his pocket. So we gave up and headed back to Gaylord, an indian restaurant downtown. Sadly, the food was only OK, which at over $20 per person is a little unexpected. We then wandered back to the hotel, by way of the House of Blues (Rob doesn't have his driver's license yet, so we couldn't go in). We also started looking around this time for a place which did passport pictures, as Sasha didn't have any yet, and needed them for her visa application.

Tuesday morning I could barely walk. We had really put some serious miles in the day before, and I was feeling it. So, of course, we started the morning by wandering up and down the strip looking for visa photos (after breakfast, naturally). Then Rob and I went in search of a hobby store while Sasha headed to the French embassy.

If you've never walked South on Michigan for an extended distance, I don't recommend it. As Rob and I wandered further and further South I got more and more nervous. The first address we were looking for was boarded up, as were most of the buildings around it. I wasn't certain how funky the neighborhood was, and we only had a couple more blocks to get to the next place, so we carried on. And turned off Michigan Avenue. Then I got really nervous. I'm fairly certain Rob had no idea what was going on, because he was just blathering on and on, and the whole time I'm thinking about how to extricate us from the situation we have found ourselves in. We walked for a couple of blocks, and then I made an executive decision and found a bus stop. The bus, fortunately, took us right up where we wanted to go, which was the art institute.

I'm not certain how excited Rob was by the whole thing, but it was nice to go again, see the old favorites, take in the special exhibits (Daguerrotypes and Himalayan art), and grab a nice lunch in the courtyard restaurant. The wait was a bit much, but the food was tasty and the atmosphere couldn't be beat!

To round out the day we headed over to the Navy Pier, in hopes of finding Rob the arcade he so desperately hoped to see. No soup, but we did get some ice cream. We then grabbed a bus back to the hotel and picked up the car, and made the epic journey back to Michigan. I call it epic because we stopped for perhaps two hours in Michigan City, Indiana trying to find a place to eat. We ended up grabbing some food at a grocery store and eating on the drive home. We finally made it back to Ann Arbor about one a.m. - which meant I had perhaps six hours to sleep before my dental appointment.
:: David (12:11 PM in Michigan, 6:11 PM in Paris)
...

I posted the photos from Jason Ruiter's party, which I attended this weekend. I have also managed to put a photo from the big ann arbor fire on my server. The newspapers finally got around to putting information about it on their websites. Here's the Ann Arbor News' take on the fire.
:: David (Evening in Michigan, 3:55 AM in Paris)
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:: Friday, July 25 2003 ::

The BBC reported today that Europe will be going to the World trade Organization with a list of names it wants protected from upstart producers. Only the places for which the products are named would be able to produce products under that name. For example, Champagne or Parma ham. Amusingly, there may be dissention in the ranks before things even get off the ground, as some of the names (like Champagne) exist throughout Europe. It will be very interesting to see what comes of it, as the US is big on taking other people's names....
:: David (3:17 PM in Michigan, 9:17 PM in Paris)
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The New York Times has another article about Japan's population problems. This one states that if Japan would allow women into the workforce many of its economic problems would go away. However, it also states "[b]ut changing mind-sets will be difficult. Earlier this year, former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, a member of a government commission charged with finding solutions to the population crisis, was widely quoted as saying the main reason for Japan's falling birthrate was the overeducation of its women."

And my first reaction was "what in the heck are they doing letting Mori back into a public position!?!" He was such a screw up the first time around!!!
:: David (1:40 PM in Michigan, 7:40 PM in Paris)
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I'm not sure how many of you heard about the kid whose homemade star wars video made such a stir on the net, but there's a great story on Wired about how his parents are suing people over the release of the video. It's an interesting story when taken as a whole, especially the part near the end where you find a website raised over $4,000 dollars for the kid because 'geeks need to stick together.'
:: David (11:02 AM in Michigan, 5:02 PM in Paris)
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Good lord! I was just doing some work on the site, putting up a list of the photos I had taken in 2003, and adding a file to tell search engines to stop downloading my entire website every night, and I discovered that I still had images on the new server which dated back to the days when I had my website hosted on Xoom.com (*laugh* which I see is now a website for sending money to the dominican republic!). Well, I think everyone who knows me knows I'm not exactly a housecleaning maven. Perhaps in another decade the website will work exactly as expected... who can tell?.

Speaking of housecleaning mavens, NBC (the parent company of Bravo) was so excited about the response to Queer Eye for the Straight Guy that they have decided to air it (in a condensed form) on NBC as well. Look out!

Finally this morning, the fire I mentioned yesterday that was in Ann Arbor is still burning. According to Todd Mundt this morning, the fire may not be completely put out for days. As with the chemical spill in Ypsilanti a while back, news is coming slowly - I couldn't find a single news story online about it at all. Maybe later in the day....
:: David (10:41 AM in Michigan, 4:41 PM in Paris)
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I finally managed to post the photos from Tamara's birthday gathering. That and reading the New York Times was about the extent of my day. There was an interesting article today titled Insular Japan Needs, but Resists, Immigration in which they discussed the problems Japan is having with balancing a need for immigrants with generalized xenophobia.

This evening we went out with Lisa to a new Indian restaurant here in town. We had a long discussion with the waiter about how we wanted spicy food, and he assured us the food would be spicy. It was pathetic. It's truly sad how awful food in the midwest can be. Hopefully our complaints were an indication to these particular folks that sometimes spicy really does mean spicy....

Then, on the walk back, Ann Arbor was burning down. I took photos, but haven't posted them yet. I'll post the story when it becomes available.
:: David (7:32 AM in Michigan, 1:32 PM in Paris)
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:: Thursday, July 24 2003 ::

You know, I was just looking at my Yahoo! (I love the exclamation) mail, which for those of you still using it is not my primary email address, and I realized that like half the people I know and several others have emailed me recently and I've just let them all collect in a bucket. Crazy. If I ever have free time (is that the sound of laughter in the background?) I'm going to reply to some of those.
:: David (10:25 AM in Michigan, 4:25 PM in Paris)
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Tuesday evening Tamara had a birthday party (she'd been in the US a month and noone told me!!! At least I got to see her before she went home), and I took lots of photos. It was too late Tueesday evening to post the photos, so I thought yesterday would be the day. I was wrong - I got the photos from my camera to my computer, and that was it. Too much Star Wars and Robert Jordan (yes, I'm back reading those silly books again. You'd think after the first nine I would have learned that the plot will never go forward. But I haven't). On the upside, Sasha's Star Wars character is now moderately experienced. We took her out of the big city and into a small town, and she was clearly the most experienced there (at that time).

I have approximately three hours until my French final. This will without a doubt be the lowest grade I have ever earned (or more to the point, -not- earned) but it got me through the first parts of French. I'll be that much further ahead when I get where I'm going. The professor also gave me all the documents he uses to teach French 122 (the second semester of French - why it's 12x instead of 10x is beyond me) so I'll have some stuff to work on when I get there. Hopefully I can set up a schedule to work on French in the mornings and then go wander trying to use what I have learned (and let us not forget, trying to get a job).
:: David (10:11 AM in Michigan, 4:11 PM in Paris)
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:: Wednesday, July 23 2003 ::

Yet more drilling today for my crown. I like to think all of this experience will in some way make me a fuller person. Certainly the whole thing (that is, all of my experiences with U-M's dental school) would make a great short story. Something bizarre, funny, and possibly philosophical.

It's fascinating how much of any one person's life could be interesting if told right. But it's also scary how much of any one person's life can be summed up in a few well written sentences.
:: David (4:21 PM in Michigan, 10:21 PM in Paris)
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:: Tuesday, July 22 2003 ::

I just spent the past hour fighting the old 'but that's not how we used to do things' mentality - in fact, the battle is still being fought, but I managed to escape. At one point I was told 'that doesn't exist' immediately after I showed an example of its existence. Crazy!

It goes back to the idea of leaders, in some respect - we like declarative sentences. Nobody likes to hear a qualified statement, especially from someone in charge (I'm thinking of Bush right now, specifically, and the support he has in the US). People don't like 'wishy-washy' or 'mealy-mouthed' or (insert yet another term here). They like definitive. Even when it's wrong....

Tamara is in town this week, in fact it's her birthday. We're heading up to some sort of party this afternoon. Hopefully I'll get to see more of her when I get to Paris, since she's just across the water in London. It's really nice to be heading back - I just hope I can find a job!!!
:: David (12:17 PM in Michigan, 6:17 PM in Paris)
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:: Monday, July 21 2003 ::

Waxy.org is a blog with a firsthand account of the Farmer's market accident that happened last week. Interesting.

Weekend of Star Wars Galaxies, random computer fixing, reading, and not a lot of studyng. The big move is creeping up on me, which means I have to reserve a moving vehicle. Add to this dental work, needing tags for my car, and trips to Chicago (Sasha finally got the letter she needed for the visa) and maybe a trip out East, and you have a very busy David. Oh - and a Final this week in French class. Yee ha!

Now that it's getting closer, I'm getting more worried about details, and less about big picture things like... a job. Hopefully if someone doesn't contact me soon about the job I'll just take care of things once I get there. Hopefully....

But in the meantime, there's logistics, parties, people to visit, things to see, etc.

Hopefully early next week I'll be headed to Chicago with Sasha and maybe my nephew - as I said, she needs a visa, and there's also probably going to be lunch with the folks from the Newberry Library, who have given her a fellowship (or maybe the Ecole des Chartes has, but either way the Newberry is involved). As much fun as that sounds, I'll probably try to skip out on both. We'll see how it goes. Spend some time with my oldest nephew before I leave the country and he graduates from high school (good lord!).
:: David (12:14 PM in Michigan, 6:14 PM in Paris)
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:: Saturday, July 19 2003 ::

For those that haven't already seen it, the happy San Francisco anti-STD campaign:

HealthyPenis.org

What could be more fun? Be sure to read the comics!
:: David (Evening in Michigan, 5:42 AM in Paris)
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:: Friday, July 18 2003 ::

There's a whole series of political comics on Slate.com, but this one simply took my breath away. I can't even imagine how many people's heads this reference went over!
:: David (4:34 PM in Michigan, 10:34 PM in Paris)
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I read an interesting article on MSNBC today. Interesting for two reasons - the first being that it allowed me to file a critical bug with mozilla.org, because this article on msnbc crashes the mozilla browser 100% of the time. Be warned.

One that was fixed up though, I loaded up internet explorer and read the article in question, which talks about the way the media creates the news in presidential elections, and at the same time distorts the results. It raises some very interesting questions, and it's written by someone who seems to have a genuinely unbiased view, and who asks some very pointed questions.
:: David (4:24 PM in Michigan, 10:24 PM in Paris)
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I updated my personal page a little bit today - changed the imaged, added links to all the recent photos I've taken which don't belong to any other grouping. Fun stuff.
:: David (2:40 PM in Michigan, 8:40 PM in Paris)
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There's a tremendously interesting article published relatively recently (January 2003) talking about why Americans are getting bigger, as seen from an economic perspective. The authors are David M. Cutler and Edward L. Glaeser of Harvard University and NBER and Jesse M. Shapiro of Harvard University. The article, Why Have Americans Become More Obese? implicates the increased ease with which food can be prepared as the cause of rising obesity in the last two decades. I'd like to quote a little bit here, and forgive the econ-speak - 'discounting' means placing less value on something which will occur in the future than you would value the event if it happened now.

A Model of Self-Control Problems
Consider an individual who discounts all times in the future at a rater higher than the pure time discount rate, but trades off consumption in future states at the time discount rate. Such an individual will always want to begin a diet tomorrow (because the long-term benefits justify thelost utility tomorrow) but not today (because the immediate gratification from food is high). Reductions in the time cost of food preparation may significantly reduce the welfare of this person, by increasing the immediate consumption value of food relative to the long-term health costs.
:: David (1:59 PM in Michigan, 7:59 PM in Paris)
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Another day, another job added to my list. This one I'm particularly excited about, as it seems to fit all of my criteria for a job, in a fuzzy sort of way. I've sent the CV - the rest is up to them....
:: David (12:22 PM in Michigan, 6:22 PM in Paris)
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I heard about this yesterday, but here's the info straight from Reuters:

TV Show 'Queer Eye' Smash Ratings Hit for Bravo - The premiere episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," in which five gay men with expertise in fashion, food, grooming, culture and design remake a straight man, set new ratings records for cable channel Bravo, the network said on Wednesday.

The story goes on to say the show set several records for the station, including among "audiences aged 18-49, and audiences aged 25-54." I found this interesting because, unless I'm having trouble with my math, these look like overlapping groups. But the story informs me that "[t]he 18-49 demographic is most favored by advertisers as their core audience, while some networks rely on the 25-54 audience as a more mature target group." Which is proof to me that the people measuring television viewership truthfully have no idea what they're doing. None.

Regardless, I thought it was a great show, especially the opening credits which portray the guys as superheroes or spies, with a 'QE' emergency logo flashing on their phone which forces them to race to the black SUV which carries them to the scene of the fashion crime. And if the first two episodes are indicative, they really are fashion crimes!
:: David (10:00 AM in Michigan, 4:00 PM in Paris)
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:: Thursday, July 17 2003 ::

The BBC has finally put together a collection of some of the best (worst) things said by Japanese politicians. I had the pleasure of living in Japan during Mori's tenure as Prime Minister, and it seemed like every day something new and stupid was said. Say what you will about Bush and his incompetencies, he doesn't hold a candle to these guys!
:: David (11:47 AM in Michigan, 5:47 PM in Paris)
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I read the Baghdad Blogger column in the Guardian today - it's an interesting comment on the difference between the British method of occupation and the US method. Not really flattering to the US. I'm not sure it was flattering to the UK forces, either, but it certainly made them sound less like bad guys.

Which, by the way, is apparently now an official term in some circles - 'bad guys' - clearly the media is dealing with all of this in a mature fashion, with precise terminology.
:: David (10:36 AM in Michigan, 4:36 PM in Paris)
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Noone should ever wake up before 8am. This is my motto for today, as I had to drive Kimberly to the airport (she's going to Florida to see Sean) and we had to be there by 6:15am. On the upside, I had lots of time to study for french and watch buffy and clean my apartment up. I always find it really odd how energetic I am in the early morning when I first wake up. Now that energy is gone, and I'm looking at three more hours here trying hard not to fall asleep. On the upside, I have lunch today, as the deal was that I would drive Kimberly to the airport if she would make me a lunch to take to work (pretty random, huh?) So now I'm counting the hours to lunchtime.
:: David (10:15 AM in Michigan, 4:15 PM in Paris)
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French homework. Yuck. But the test is tomorrow, so that means studying for David. I have to drop Kimberly off at the airport tomorrow, at some absurd hour, so I'll be up in plenty of time to make it to work and then take the test. I'm meeting with Erik after to watch some anime, which means 3pm (when I get out of class) to 5pm (about the time he'll arrive) will be devoted to cleaning the house up so he can find a place to sit. I've managed to fill four boxes with books and movies, which is virtually all I have in my place besides clothes. So the shelves are fairly empty, but the house is fairly full of boxes.

I've managed to fix a few more web pages that got lost when the site went down a few months back - the transfer didn't take, I guess, so there were errors all over. I'm fixing those up as I type this. For those that haven't seen my photos from April and May, 2001, here's your chance!
:: David (Evening in Michigan, 4:25 AM in Paris)
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:: Wednesday, July 16 2003 ::

Surreal experience today - my dentist called today (we had planned on working out when we would finish my little dental project) and we went and had beers in a metropark. Ask me for all the crazy details, as I don't want to post them here. Definitely my life is weirder than it ought to be....

Only one week left in my French class. I feel as though I haven't learned a lot, and yet at the same time I feel as though I've learned an amazing amount. I'm glad I did it, as I will feel much more comfortable when I finally get there.

Last tidbit - the packing has begun. Two full boxes (and I mean full) packed, and my shelves look so bare! It's always exciting to move out of a place, watch it return to its primordial state.

And now it's time for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy on Bravo. According to the website, they are "Five gay men, out to make over the world, one straight guy at time." The basement is full of people over for the premiere episode, which has to be a good sign for Bravo, because I've never even heard of their channel before this, and now we're having a viewing party!
:: David (-3:51 AM in Michigan, 3:51 AM in Paris)
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:: Tuesday, July 15 2003 ::

I have realized that, unlike (apparently) some people, I rarely have a clear memory of when someone entered my life. This is apropo of (yet another) conversation with someone who says 'when I first met you detail detail detail' and I go 'oh. really?' My memory is fragile at best, so people sort of enter my life, and one day they've been there awhile, and it's like they had always been there. And days become weeks become months and suddenly people are gone and I wonder how it happened. It's interesting, really, to deal with people who have that razor sharp memory, because it means, unlike me, they have a clear idea of what I was like when they were not part of my life. I wonder if they see me more clearly than I see people...?
:: David (0:01 AM in Michigan, 6:01 AM in Paris)
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Clearly time to fix that clock - I see it's negative 3:17 on my last post. I'm just too lazy to do the footwork!
:: David (-3:22 AM in Michigan, 3:22 AM in Paris)
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A morning spent in the joyous rapture of a root canal, phase two. Today we drilled to a depth of two centimeters and placed random things in the cavity thus created. I love it!

French class was much more entertaining, in that I got assistance for a letter Sasha is sending to the Ecole des Chartes asking them where her acceptance letter is (so she can get a visa). She wasn't sure the French was correct, so my French teacher looked it over. After that, some tennis (two days in a row now - it's fast becoming a habit!) and a nice greek salad to make the day complete.

There's an interesting show on AMC this evening about Hollywood's influence on the Arab world. We're watching in the hopes it will either be (a) informative or (b) so badly done it's entertaining. It would be sad if it is truly badly done though, considering how few American outlets address these issues.
:: David (-3:17 AM in Michigan, 3:17 AM in Paris)
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:: Monday, July 14 2003 ::

Lots of TV watching (trading spaces, etc.) and some tennis playing, along with a couple of parties and so serious clothes shopping. I'd love to say something exciting happened this weekend, but I'd be lying. Well, actually the party at Matt's Friday night was pretty fun, but for the most part I've spent the weekend -not- thinking about tomorrow, when they mount some kind of big spike in my mouth so they can mount a crown on top of it. *sigh* All because I didn't go to the dentist for a while. I've been a fool!

On the upside, after tomorrow there's very little left to worry about this summer - I'm going to reserve a moving truck for getting out of my place, work on filling some boxes, and take a little time out to see anime. So all is not lost on the weekend.
:: David (-1:20 AM in Michigan, 5:20 AM in Paris)
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:: Friday, July 11 2003 ::

So my mom called today, trying to figure out whether the overtime pay changes currently before the Senate (the house apparently approved the changes yesterday) will affect her or not. I had heard the basic version - if you make less than 20K you must get OT pay, if you make more than 60K you probably will not. Which leaves that place in the middle. So I thought to myself 'I should figure this out'. So I headed over to the U.S. House of Representatives and looked around, trying to find the changes. I finally found them, sort of. Here they are - see if you can figure out anything about them (I recommend choosing the measure which actually passed, not that it really matters!)

As I reread through the bill, I noticed it also funded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That makes sense!

Anyway, I'll be darned if I can find the changes in the bill, so I headed over to The Department of Labor to take a peek at what the current rules were. They also had a side by side chart showing who can be excluded from overtime pay based on criteria like job function and weekly pay.

So after all that, do I have any idea on whether my mom is affected? I'm not sure. As near as I can tell it's all good - she doesn't deal with customers, nor supervise people - thus I think they have to pay her for more than 40 hours work per week. The real question here, though, is why it's so difficult to answer a question which matters quite a lot to virtually all hourly workers in the United States. I'm not unskilled at sifting through documents, and that was still a lot of work - work that most people won't put in.

In a related 'our government hates us' topic, Sasha and I were walking down the street yesterday, talking about how our government makes people disappear (suspected terrorists and other foreigners), and I had a realization - remember how when it was 'us versus them' (the cold war) and we heard all the horror stories of how 'the russians' would make political dissenters disappear (or more recently, with the Chinese government)? I used to wonder what it would be like to live in a state where people could suddenly come up missing, and noone had any power to find them. Now I know - you rationalize it. You say 'it makes us safer' or some other platitude that makes it OK for some random person to go away and never come back. You learn to live with it.

When did the US become the type of state I was taught to fear as a child?
:: David (10:12 AM in Michigan, 4:12 PM in Paris)
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Today was fairly exciting - I got a letter from FedEx France telling me they had received, reviewed, and rejected my application. Oh well - can't blame me for trying!
:: David (-1:23 AM in Michigan, 5:23 AM in Paris)
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:: Thursday, July 10 2003 ::

There's an amusing little... let us not say tirade... more of an... 'irritated essay' by Neil Gaiman regarding the American government and their immigration policies. Even fame can't protect you....
:: David (12:02 PM in Michigan, 6:02 PM in Paris)
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It Doesn't appear my handy-dandy new time keeping system works so well. Such is life.

Nikki sent me a website - Select Smart - which helps you work out which of the myriad candidates agree with your personal views on the way the world works, or ought to work. It's actually quite nice.

Other than that, work, French tests, and random reading for today. I've been slowly working my way through a book Kimberly recommended (or at least has read herself) - Chung Kuo: The Middle Kingdom by David Wingrove (Amazon.com). It's cute fairly fluffy reading. I suspect I'll be reading the new biography of Kathryn Hepburn before too long - it's being released (I think today) now that she has passed on. It was really interesting watching "On Golden Pond" the other week - it's a movie from 1981 in which she played an older mother who was sort of the go-between for her daughter and her husband. Very interesting movie - I think she chose the role well. Anyway, I'd be very curious to see what she has to say, since everyone else seems to be ready to put words in her mouth (apparently, this is the reason she did the book - so at least some of the words would actually come from her, rather than being put there by someone else).

:: David (10:02 AM in Michigan, 4:02 PM in Paris)
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First test of my new date system - we'll see if it works.

We played tennis by Sasha's house today, primarily making fools of ourselves. It felt good to get out and be active - hopefully we can play some more before the summer is out - perhaps make it a weekly occurance or something. I took some pictures of the proceedings and promptly posted them. This evening holds lots of French homework for me, as I have a test in the class tomorrow. I must learn to say 'I would like...' and 'I am able to...' correctly, along with a bunch of other stuff. Yuck. Memorization. Off I go, then....
:: David (1986: PM in Michigan, 12: AM in Paris)
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:: Wednesday, July 9 2003 ::

It seems that making the date appear exactly as I would like it to appear is more difficult than I expected. But I'm working on it. Of course, I have better things to be working on, but....
:: David 16:09:31
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I had to work today, and soon after arriving I was informed that Aletha Rose, my co-worker Aletha's great-granddaughter, was having a sixth birthday party here at the office. At about ten twenty she started going to all the offices giving us a 'cupcake countdown' - how many minutes until cupcakes. Then she came by on an invisible bus and took us all back to the coffee hall for cupcakes. Then back on the bus and back to our desks. Sometimes this office is truly amusing.
:: David 15:40:45
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Managed to acquire a ticket to Paris today. Leaves in September, returns in December, just in time for Christmas. We'll see how it gets used. Who knows - maybe come Christmas I'll be flat broke and burned out on Europe, ready to come home and try to find a real job....
:: David 05:08:55
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:: Tuesday, July 8 2003 ::

Another day, another $1000 wasted on my teeth. I went in for a routine filling and came out with part one of a root canal. *sigh*
:: David 00:46:21
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:: Sunday, July 6 2003 ::

We're off to see X-Men 2, or X2, or whatever the heck they decided to call it. It's playing at the (2) dollar theatre, and I threw out the suggestion this morning that I might like to see a movie on the big screen. I just hope it isn't so cold in there that I freeze to death.
:: David 20:48:06
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I managed to replace my old digital camera last week, with a spiffy new FinePix 2800 (well, a spiffy refurbished FinePix 2800, but who's counting?). I took some sample photos for giggles. Pay special attention to the drinking turtle!
:: David 16:59:08
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...and now I'm scared to death to press the 'submit' key, because the new blog software I just wrote is live. All posts from here on out were generated using my spiffy new software, which means if one day the blog looks like a nuclear weapon hit it, there's a bug in my code. Assuming this works, however, you should see exactly what you've always seen, except now the time is wrong, because I haven't worked out how to fix that yet.
:: David 16:10:45
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So Saturday morning I had the weirdest dream ever. I dreamt I was writing, or perhaps co-creating, a sitcom for one of the networks (you'll see in a moment why I'm certain it had to be a network show). The theme was simple - sort of... - four african americans driving a truck. One, I'm sure, was Whitney Houston, and I think Eddie Murphy may have been the driver. Anyway, Whitney Houston played a very religious character (I saw her sing "Amazing Grace" in the pilot), and, here's where it gets even weirder, Cedric (the comedian from "Barbershop") and two others played angels, presumably making sure they got where they were going. And as near as I can remember this was intended to be a sitcom. I woke up Saturday morning thinking 'what the hell was that!' and had 'Amazing Grace' stuck in my head for much of the morning.
:: David 16:07:45
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:: Thursday, July 3, 2003 ::

Writing along, trying to get the blog program working. I have a form set up so I can enter the blog, and I even have a user/password if I want to get fancy. The output goes to a test file which shows the output before I fix the output up too much - notice the time shows the time in the UK - not sure if I'm going to fix that or not. But overall, I'm getting there. I'm to the point where I'm ready to roll it out next time I have some time. It'll produce some ugly blog for a little while, but I'll get that fixed up and then I'll never have to deal with blogger again! Yay!
So today, party with classmates. The rest of the weekend? Who knows? I think I have things planned, but generally people call and tell me, which is better for all, 'cause it means I'll probably (not always!) show up.
:: David 3:46 PM [+] ::
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:: Wednesday, July 2, 2003 ::

What a flippin' morning! Sasha and I were over at Fin and Misty's last night playing cards until late, so we headed back to my place to sleep. At 7:30 this morning the work crews arrived to dig a gigantic hole in the street just outside my window. So, having determined that the sound of metal being dragged across concrete is no the best way to wake up in the morning, I headed into the kitchen to make coffee. Only to find I was out of milk. So no coffee, no sleep, and no sleeping in for Sasha, who thought she'd be getting a ride home with Finian once he was fully awake. Instead she decided to get the heck out of my horribly noisy apartment and take the bus home. So as we're walking into work, what should we see drive by? The bus she needed to catch. So she got to sit in the bus stop waiting for a half hour for the next bus. I am not high on her list of favourite people right now... Otherwise, life goes on. I'm still working, still trying to find a job, still not having a lot of success. We haven't managed to get the contract from our landlord yet, and we still don't have a bank account. No pressure. I hate mornings like this. On the upside, I've managed to buy a camera on eBay, for about $200, which is about $90 cheaper than I thought I would pay. So assuming I ever make it to France, I'll be able to take lots of pictures.
:: David 12:16 PM [+] ::
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