On a lighter note, Thom and I will be out of town through Sunday. Yay, road trip! Well, mini-road trip. Tonight we’re heading a few hours south to see Sheldon and Gretchyn. It’ll be our first time visiting their new place (which I hear is impressive).
Boy, is it dark already. Fall is definitely here. Have a good weekend, kids. Go visit a pumpkin patch or something! (Mmm, pumpkin.)
I found the following ad in today’s edition of Express (PDF, p. 25), the free version of the Post:
So he’s basically saying, vote for him to avoid God’s wrath. Hm, for one thing, same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts (and some foreign countries, but he might not know that, since his foreign policy views seem to wish that other pesky countries would just disappear)… where are the “fire bombs”? Is this guy for real? I guess he is. Crazy.
Thanksgiving plans with the folks, check. Patiently waiting for a drop in Thanksgiving airfares has paid off. I just bought a roundtrip ticket (Washington National to SFO, departing the day before the holiday and returning the following Monday) for $149.50 total on Continental. Rock on. Can’t do any better than that. Seriously, that’s definitely the least I’ve ever paid to fly coast to coast. And that fare seems to be valid on travel way into 2005. So anyone else with flight plans between Washington and San Francisco, you can find the fare at the Continental website. (It’s also available at the major travel sites like Expedia and Orbitz, but they charge extra service fees of $5 or so.) I hate to sound like a commercial, but as someone who watches airfares like the stock market, I’d say act now.
By the way, I usually start with the “Best Fares” tracker on My Yahoo (which I’ve set up as my browser’s home page). Seems to work pretty well.
I hadn’t really gotten around to regularly reading Zach Braff’s blog (he of Scrubs, Garden State, The Broken Hearts Club, et al.); however, Susan recently linked to a post in which Zach mentions her girl, Fiona Apple, and which I rather enjoyed for this passage (I’m quoting verbatim, though it contains a couple of errors that are testing all of my self-restraint not to correct or at least throw in a [sic] or two):
Onto more important things: I really enjoy washing my car in those “pull your car into the stall and rent our water, hose, brush and vacuum” places. I don’t know why, but there’s something very cathartic about it. If you’ve never tried it, give it a try. I recommend going alone, cause if you go with someone else, you’re gonna be all in your head if it’s someone from the opposite sex about whether or not you should go for the “slow-motion chewing gum commercial moment” and spray them with the hose. So go with someone of the same sex. Unless your gay, then you’re stuck with the hose problem again. (no pun intended) Hmmm. Fuck it, just go alone. Why do you always have to do things with other people; being alone is refreshing. Washing your own car allows you to quiet your mind for 10 minutes (or more if you have enough quarters).
So true.
Thom had the day off today, whereas I had to go to work. Grr. In other non-exciting news, we both went to Hour Eyes at the mall this evening to get our eyes checked and buy new glasses. Let me say that this is not the place to go for thoughtful customer service. (I know, what did we expect?) We ended up spending at least a couple of hours there, waiting for this and that, and what help we did get was minimal. Anyway. I ended up ordering a pair of chunky, geekier-than-thou Gucci frames. I currently have thin wire frames, so these plastic ones will be a nice alternative. I hope. (That’s the thing about buying eyeglasses: it’s difficult to tell how they’re going to look on you.) And thank goodness for insurance. I paid less than half the retail price, which is, granted, still a lot. Oh well, as the L’Oréal girls say, I’m worth it.
The pupil-dilating eyedrops that the optometrist administered are just now wearing off. I can actually focus and see normally again.
Tomorrow: I go to the dentist. It’s just a nonstop joyride over here.
Susan and Art are getting married today. Yay! I’ve known Susan (along with Kesha, fellow core peep) for a few years now. Flashback to fall 2001. We were all relatively new members of the Rufus Wainwright message board following the release of Poses, and finally met in person for Rufus’ D.C.-area shows in the spring of 2002. And since then, the core peeps have been criss-crossing the country following good music (our boy Rufus) and even better shopping. I have yet to meet Art, but he must be a great guy. I know he watches Family Guy, after all.
So raise a glass to the happy couple. Congratulations, Susan and Art!
Last night Thom and I went to see Varekai, my first Cirque du Soleil show ever, and wow, it’s almost indescribable. It’s like a wild, crazy dream. (Well, I wish my dreams were this vivid… especially if they include the twin gymnasts Andrew and Kevin Atherton, who performed the aerial straps act. Read T. Kevin‘s review for more.) Amazingly skilled performances and great music overall. And the setup is pretty impressive too: the various stage pieces, all that rigging, and the tent itself, which as you drive up to it is a whimsical flash of light on the otherwise dark grounds of RFK Stadium. While I’ve seen some Cirque stuff on TV, there’s nothing like seeing it live and up close, with the performers soaring over your head. Fantastique.
Varekai plays Washington, D.C., through Sun., Oct. 24.
I guess I’ve known about aerial imagery available on the web for a while now, but recently I came across a surprisingly clear photo of Dupont Circle, linked from a post on Michael‘s site, that suddenly made me aware of the quantity and quality of land images out there.
I’ve been playing around with the USGS “Urban Area” data set on TerraServer, and here is a quite recent photo (Feb. 27, 2004) of San Francisco International Airport at 4-meter resolution. (Each pixel represents four meters.) So there you have the parking garage in the middle, surrounded by the terminals. Almost kind of artsy, don’t you think?
And here at 0.25-meter resolution is the open hub of the parking garage. Ooh, taxis!
Cool.
