two memos:

to: localfolk
from: fox
re: september

seriously, guys. i'm coming back from vacation september 12 and getting the truck and driving it away on september 18 (please help me load it!); returning some time in the low september 20's for the car and leaving again soon afterward. i can stay a couple of nights, max, the second time (will have to repaint the walls, for a start), but basically if Something's Going To Happen, the week of september 13 is where there are available days. but they're filling up fast, so let me know, eh?

thx


to: self
from: fox
re: the usual

oh, stop it!

rar.

oh, there was a weekend.

had a good shopping day on saturday. successfully bought jeans (second pair for half price), and they are slightly longer than my existing jeans, which is all to the good, assuming they don't shrink in the laundry. (the existing jeans are fine with most shoes, but my extra-cool boots have a tiny bit of a heel, which causes the pants not to break quite how i'd like over the instep, and depending how they're sitting on my hips they can actually look Too Short, which is ugh. the new jeans, i was thinking of getting the long length -- but the difference between "regular" and "long"? is like six inches, and dudes, there's just nothing i can do to make those not too damn long.) also picked up five shirts (at old navy, i'm a medium-sized man!) and three pairs of pants, and had to go up a size, as one has to at old navy -- but the size up is actually too big. i'll have to find my belt. (but the regular size would have been too small, is the thing. and other things about how they don't make odd-numbered sizes for people over the age of twelve.)

(incidentally, do girls who normally wear size 8 feel the same about size 10 as girls who normally wear 14 and 16 feel about 16 and 18? is 10 a Boundary, i mean to say, because it has two digits -- or is this a thing for everybody, and a girl who normally wears a size 2 feels rotten if she has to go up to a 4?)

hung out with ellen_fremedon and neotoma saturday evening, had some yummy dinner and chatting, and then when N went home E and i saw i, robot, which was fine. nothing exciting, but ( spoiler. )

all this was after picking up my new contact lenses in the morning, yay rigid gas-perms, the doctor agrees with me that they are superior to soft lenses in every way (preciseness of vision correction, oxygenation, tear exchange) ... except convenience. yes, i have betamax contact lenses.

sunday, what did i do sunday ... i think i lay on the couch and watched the olympics until noodles, then hung out with datlowen, jgesteve, darthrami, sowilo, ellen_fremedon, and mearagrrl where there were no rice krispies treats (we finally pointed out to the manager that we're there every sunday, so he promises me there will be rice krispies treats in the future), and then back to 1215N to sit on the couch and watch more olympics.

which is what i'm doing now. nutty day at work, but i'm in the home stretch there, so no worries. things with moving and whatnot are clicking into place, etc., so i'm trying not to fret about it. now: olympics! go swimmer boys! (phelps, thorpe, van den hoogenbaand -- who wins the Best Name in the Games award -- and the fourth one, whoever he is, i don't remember*) and after they take their, i don't know, seventy seconds or whatever to do their 200m freestyle, then i'll make some dinner.

*of course there are actually five other guys in the pool. but four of them know they're just there because it's tacky not to have people in all eight lanes. if you're not in lanes 3-6 in this final, there's no point in your being there at all, really. (which are words we're all going to eat when some french dude in lane 1 wins the whole megillah.)

commentators are dumb, but interviewers are dumber.

in 1988, dave santi cornered brian orser after the final of the men's figure skating, when brian boitano had won and orser took the silver in the "battle of the brians" (i don't make this stuff up), and said -- and i believe i'm quoting directly -- "well, brian, you lost. how do you feel?" (orser, to the eternal credit of canada, did not punch santi in the face.)

but i'll tell you, i've now heard the swimming post-comment people ask two gold medalists in a row, "what was going through your mind in the last ten meters of the race?"

what. was going. through. your mind. in the last. ten. meters. of the final.

i'm not an olympic-caliber swimmer, but i'll guarantee that what's going through their minds in the last ten meters of the race is SWIM! SWIM FASTER!

the roman empire's the only other one who's ever done that, so be VERY careful.

can we talk for just a second about how vaguely creepy it is to see an american gold medalist with his hand over his heart and a wreath on his head?