Looking Backwards
bethje and I were supposed to go to the doctor and get our IDs and voter registration switched over to New York, but I got a call a few hours ago saying that the doctor wasn't going to be in today. Since the doctor's office is near the motor vehicle department, we're just going to do them both on Wednesday. It's kind of a shame, as I'd wanted to get them over with, and besides I can't check things out from the library without a New York ID. Speaking of which, I made a brief trip to Secaucus last week to return a book I still had checked out, and it wasn't quite as weird as I thought it would be. I have a thing about places I can no longer go back to, or that if I do they'll be totally different. I have so many dreams about the first house I lived in, the house in Virginia where my grandparents lived for most of my life, and my old college dorm. Seeing as how they're dreams, they're never exactly like they were in real life, but they still awaken melancholy nostalgia in me.
We did finish our taxes, but we still don't have jobs. I talked to a temp agency last week about a records management job at an architectural firm that sounded like something I could do, but the firm filled it without the agency, or at least that's what they told me. It's strange how, when I have a job, I never seem to have enough time to do anything. Then, when I'm unemployed, I spend a lot of time staving off boredom. It's not that there aren't things I COULD be doing, just that I'm not really in the mood. And of course there's always the money issue. I want to try more restaurants in the area, you know? I've been replaying Dragon Quest III a little bit, and have made it to Baharata. I remember the upcoming battle with Kandar being a real challenge for me before. Playing through a game I've already finished, especially a turn-based role-playing one, is sort of like seeing an old friend, the difference being that games don't change like people do. Okay, it's on a different platform (Game Boy instead of NES), so it's a little different. For instance, you can look inside pots and dressers. Still, it's mostly the same, and it's not like there are any significant story points to uncover. In other game news, my Sims 3 has refused to load twice when trying to get my Sims back home from an adventure, and I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that. Since The Sims 4 is out now, I doubt there will be any more Sims 3 patches. Any suggestions for how to fix that problem?
Last night's Simpsons was a little uncomfortable for me in that I've really become sympathetic to the cause of preventing prejudice against overweight people, and I feel that the show just reinforced the idea that being fat is unhealthy. There isn't always a direct correlation there, and even when there is losing the weight isn't necessarily as simple as eating fewer doughnuts and going on a walk occasionally. Not to mention how often I come across people claiming that they're only putting down heavy people because they're worried about their health, which I believe is now known as Concern Trolling. That said, it did seem a little more sympathetic to Homer than some past episodes have been in that respect, and I really liked the first act with Bart and Lisa writing a new town song. So I guess if Hans Moleman was mayor thirty years previously, he isn't really only thirty-one years old?
I also watched the first disc of the first season of Veronica Mars, a recommendation from SamuraiFrog, who has similar tastes to mine and is a major Kristen Bell fan. I like it so far, although I have to wonder if it goes a little too far over the top in terms of how intelligent and competent Veronica is and how much trauma she'd been through. But hey, a lot of really successful characters have been the tragic genius type. It's also interesting how detective stories pretty much always have a bit of the ends justifying the means built in. I have to wonder how much of that is true for real-life private detectives, as you'd think following somebody around and taking pictures of them in compromising situations would pretty much always be immoral, but some degree of this sort of thing might be necessary at times. Sort of like drone strikes, I guess; I don't like the idea that they could be used against innocent people, but it's probably better that Khaddafi was taken out quickly without a land war in Libya. On a lighter note, this disc was next on my queue after John Carter, and I guess if they'd had the same director, the show would have just been called Veronica.
We did finish our taxes, but we still don't have jobs. I talked to a temp agency last week about a records management job at an architectural firm that sounded like something I could do, but the firm filled it without the agency, or at least that's what they told me. It's strange how, when I have a job, I never seem to have enough time to do anything. Then, when I'm unemployed, I spend a lot of time staving off boredom. It's not that there aren't things I COULD be doing, just that I'm not really in the mood. And of course there's always the money issue. I want to try more restaurants in the area, you know? I've been replaying Dragon Quest III a little bit, and have made it to Baharata. I remember the upcoming battle with Kandar being a real challenge for me before. Playing through a game I've already finished, especially a turn-based role-playing one, is sort of like seeing an old friend, the difference being that games don't change like people do. Okay, it's on a different platform (Game Boy instead of NES), so it's a little different. For instance, you can look inside pots and dressers. Still, it's mostly the same, and it's not like there are any significant story points to uncover. In other game news, my Sims 3 has refused to load twice when trying to get my Sims back home from an adventure, and I'm not sure there's anything I can do about that. Since The Sims 4 is out now, I doubt there will be any more Sims 3 patches. Any suggestions for how to fix that problem?
Last night's Simpsons was a little uncomfortable for me in that I've really become sympathetic to the cause of preventing prejudice against overweight people, and I feel that the show just reinforced the idea that being fat is unhealthy. There isn't always a direct correlation there, and even when there is losing the weight isn't necessarily as simple as eating fewer doughnuts and going on a walk occasionally. Not to mention how often I come across people claiming that they're only putting down heavy people because they're worried about their health, which I believe is now known as Concern Trolling. That said, it did seem a little more sympathetic to Homer than some past episodes have been in that respect, and I really liked the first act with Bart and Lisa writing a new town song. So I guess if Hans Moleman was mayor thirty years previously, he isn't really only thirty-one years old?
I also watched the first disc of the first season of Veronica Mars, a recommendation from SamuraiFrog, who has similar tastes to mine and is a major Kristen Bell fan. I like it so far, although I have to wonder if it goes a little too far over the top in terms of how intelligent and competent Veronica is and how much trauma she'd been through. But hey, a lot of really successful characters have been the tragic genius type. It's also interesting how detective stories pretty much always have a bit of the ends justifying the means built in. I have to wonder how much of that is true for real-life private detectives, as you'd think following somebody around and taking pictures of them in compromising situations would pretty much always be immoral, but some degree of this sort of thing might be necessary at times. Sort of like drone strikes, I guess; I don't like the idea that they could be used against innocent people, but it's probably better that Khaddafi was taken out quickly without a land war in Libya. On a lighter note, this disc was next on my queue after John Carter, and I guess if they'd had the same director, the show would have just been called Veronica.