Weekly Update: July 27, 2007 Edition
Getting scary here, two Friday's in a row with an update... and this one's rather quick compared to last week's as less has gone on...
Work
Continuing the story of people who don't pick up or call back, the woman who went South is still out of contact. However, the other woman, one who works for the state, who hadn't returned voicemails in over a month, decided to pick up the phone when I called her earlier this week. This was relatively exciting, until she basically told both myself and a co-worker that needed to talk to her to go away in as nice a way as possible. For me, I mentioned a client and she didn't even bother opening the file - she just asked how it related to her department, why I was calling, and gave answers based totally on that. Further, she told me if it would make me feel like I was covering my bases, I could send her the papers I was asking to send her. Meanwhile, her department should have those papers to know who to contact and bill in the event the client dies. Why bother with that now, right?
Finals
Both of them were done by Tuesday night. Each of them contained elements I did not like (in terms of clearly evaluating what we had done during the semester), but they're over, and now I can do things I haven't been able to do in the summer, like clean and try to enjoy an evening here and there. We'll see how well that works out.
Other
I actually missed The 4400 on Sunday as I was out after studying all day for New York Practice. I hope to catch up on that episode somehow, since the previous episode seemed to be a set-up to making the story grow. Eureka created/remembered a problem for the main character, but I don't think it was executed very well, and previews for the next episode suggest that nothing really came of it.
I should clarify what I meant by out above - I went to go see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I thought it was pretty good, though due to tired eyes did not enjoy the newspaper-transition segments. It can only get better as the series gets more adult, right? That's what I keep hearing - but I've been kind of disappointed, not with lack of attention to the plot - but rather, with how much has to keep getting cut from each subsequent film. It's not that you have to read the books to get the movies - but sometimes it feels like important things are just chopped off. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter, I suppose. Kids will get to watch a 14-16 hour story of the growth of a boy into a man once this series is done, and who's really going to want to sit through that? Barely anyone wants to sit through a Lord of the Rings 'marathon' of 9.5 hours, and that had a coherent cast, one director, and one style the whole way through. Eh, rant over.
Also... we have a dollar-per-night rental machine at the grocery store nearby, so we thought we would give it a shot (on Wednesday, when we had no plans but to rest) since nothing has been on TV lately. We got Zodiac and Alpha Dog. The former was a relatively good movie, just really long and about having an obsession drive a person without a great explanation. The latter, on the other hand, we picked up for comedy relief - we figured it would be pretty funny to see Justin Timberlake trying to act like a drug-dealing gang-banger. We were wrong. While friends of mine who saw The Black Dahlia claim that it is the worst movie they have ever scene, I must protest - Alpha Dog is just atrocious, vulgar, and has no characters that appeal at all. Strong recommendation to avoid.
Conclusion
Thus begins a lighter, two-week period of studying for the multiple choice NY State Ethics exam, August 10. There should be another update in the meantime August 3. Hope everyone is doing well - haven't heard from too many recently.
-Mike