despite what i said about television recently, and my hatred for the word twist, i purchased a new television. i splurged a bit and picked up a panasonic 27″ hd-ready (a little future-proofing) tube. lea got a dvd player to complement it, and i must say that watching a movie on it is a step up from watching movies on my computer (which surprises no one).
the word twist may just be enough in and of itself to make me stop watching TV.
a quick read, over almost before it starts, but good none the less. i especially liked the essay/story/whatever titled repeat after me, with its metadiscussion on storytelling and relationships.
all of our stuff is getting thrown in to boxes. in three days, we’ll move from mallville to the apartment farm, from the cradling crook of the beltline to the far flung reaches of highway PD. utilities have been called and alerted to the move. the current apartment is currently a mess. people (well, at least one person) are coming in from out of town. it’s all pretty crazy.
for those of you who noticed that i was gone last week, you may be interested to know that i was in the boundary waters canoe area wilderness. the fishing was pretty abysmal, but the company was good (both brothers and my father, as well as two uncles and their sons). at some point, i’ll get a hold of the pictures from it, and i’ll post them. our trip went through entry point 45, morgan lake, and our target lake was vista, but full campsites caused us to deflect north to horseshoe.
i am 24.
other holidays of the day (not that my birthday can rightly be considered a holiday), according to holidays.net: alcoholics anonymous anniversary (and what do people do to celebrate their birthday?), corpus christi day for all those catholics out there, nursing assistants day (and week), and my favorite, day of portugal (celebrated in portugal). a googling turned up this fantastic foxsportsworld article, whose headline contains the word “asshighlight.”
apparently, jacques cousteau’s birthday is tomorrow. some of you are aware of a rather slurred reference i once made to jacques cousteau. obviously, there’s some sort of connection here. the best defense.
also, lea and i ate at the blue moon bar & grill last night, which was pretty ridiculously tasty. i had a “piledriver” burger, which is a 1/2 pound burger with four slices of ham and probably that many as well of cheese on it. SO greasy, but SO good, too. and i washed it down with a cap amber. life is good, neh?
though tomorrow is a good day, for one reason or another, it is also a somewhat sad day: drew is moving to a different building at work. i will miss his presence, to be sure.
that being said, i would now like to post a comment to drew’s last post to his front page, using the following image of the west side of madison stolen from yahoo maps and marked up with numbers.
i currently reside at (1). drew and i both work at (2). actually, we both work a little to the east of (2) — i put it on the wrong spot on the map. drew is moving to a different building for work, at (3). the wasteland that he refers to is marked with a little purple blotch on the map. his “beloved madison,” as near as i can tell, is marked by (4), and the little area contained within the blue line around it. if (3) is in some sort of wasteland, then (1) certainly is as well, and i shudder to think what opinion drew will hold of my new apartment’s location, marked by (5). the joke’s on him in a year, though, because that’s when he (and i) move to work at the new new big building, marked by (6). or perhaps the joke’s still on me.
today i woke up at 6:15 (note to self: it is quite pretty outside at half past six) and showed up at work at 6:45 (note to self: sitting down to start work at 6:45 feels remarkably similar to sitting down to start work at 8, despite the associated lack of sleep), apparently before any of my coworkers (no one else is at work at 6:45 on monday morning? inconceivable!). my reason for showing up early was to make up for the produrgatory i seemed to be in last week. what’s produrgatory, you ask?
pro-dur-ga-tory
n. pl produrgatories, syn: durg
1. a cross between productivity and purgatory: a state of limbo, in which one gets nothing done.
2. a cross between production and purgatory: a state of toil, in which one must strive greatly for inconsequential gains.
usually one of those will lead to the other. the net result? i was at work today at 6:45.
the first song on the album give up by the postal service, titled the district sleeps alone tonight, is easily the album’s best. driven equally by its simple pop melody delivered via ben gibbard’s emotive voice and jimmy tamborello’s beats, this song is an example of the best sort of result one can hope for out of a “supergroup.” i do now know whether this melody would be stronger if set against conventional instrumentation; certainly, the beats are appropriate, and serve to capture the sense of apology and subsequent catharsis that springs from backdrop of loneliness, but it is also the case that this topic is ben gibbard’s bread and butter in death cab for cutie, where it is handled quite adroitly as well. regardless, this is an excellent song.
