I got through more than half of my to-do list for the day. It helps to be unambitious.

Suddenly, over the past few days, both my local Chinese restaurant (which was within walking distance, at least as I define walking distance) and a good Asian fusion restaurant reasonably nearby have closed. I rarely eat out when I’m home, but it is convenient ( Read more... )

Weird Incident: I left my office and was walking to the metro Tuesday night when a woman came up to me and started talking about how wonderful my hair is. It was just pretty weird. She went on and on about how I should never dye my hair. Now, I do like the color of my hair for the most part, though, if I worked in a less conservative area, I ( Read more... )

As usual, I have a bunch of catching up to do.

Used Bookstores and Spices: I finally got around to doing a used bookstore run last weekend. It was a particularly successful one, in that I left the house with 65 books and came home with only 4 of those (plus 18 new to me books, but that is to be expected). I also took advantage of the last store ( Read more... )

My catching up here is going to be somewhat non-chronological. I think it makes the most sense to write a general entry first, in which I will mention a couple of things that deserve their own entries, and then write those entries.

Attempt at Movie Going: I have lamented before that most of the movies I see, I see on airplanes. I made an ( Read more... )

Rosh Hashanah made this a quiet week, so I can finish catching up. This is all the odds and ends I have been saving up, including several mini-rants. Well, everything except the longer entries I have been planning on the subjects of politics, dating, and social networking.

5773: If it isn't obvious, I wish a happy, healthy and prosperous year ( Read more... )

I've got a week between travels and I am thinking about the problem of being interested in too many things. It's only a problem because time is, alas, all too limited. I have to just keep telling myself that it is better to be too busy than not busy enough.

On the plus side, it means I have plenty of things to write about here.

Traveling and ( Read more... )

A transit system birthday haiku:
The Metro System
is now 35 years old
and showing its age.

Celebrity deaths: There are a lot of recent celebrity deaths. In the political world, I'll note both Warren Christopher and Geraldine Ferraro. In show biz, there was Farley Granger and, of course, Elizabeth Taylor. (Oddly, I think the only one of Liz's ( Read more... )

Puzzles: The rather silly title of this entry (which translates to "a collection of scraps") is a minor tribute to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, which is this weekend. I can't attend due to my commitment to the Virginia Storytelling Gathering, but I want to wish happy solving to my friends who will be there ( Read more... )

Work: We do an annual review with our group Vice President and I was on the hook to brief this time. It went reasonably well. While he did offer up some advice, I left feeling like I had successfully defended my existence.

Life at work, part 1: At most of my previous jobs, there was a stream of collections for gifts for various events. At my ( Read more... )

First, here is a great description from a not entirely satisfying mystery (The Cereal Murders by Diane Mott Davidson). "For the Bronco get-together, she wore a chartreuse knit sweater and skirt trimmed with fur in dots and dashes, as if the minks had been begging for help in Morse code ( Read more... )