Spent most of the late morning/early afternoon picking up books and a self-study Korean course at the library, tooling around Alexandria, eating lunch at Marino's, and deciding that Potomac Yards was way too crowded for me to be shopping there today. Maybe I'll go out later, but I don't really need anything...on the other hand, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, and carrying stuff back to the Sportage through the rain is seldom fun.

Among the books I picked up was Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan, which was recommended to me last fall by both edwarddain and nickiq. It's actually been getting most of my attention since I've been home, and is pretty awesome. Thanks, guys. Wish I'd picked it up sooner - it's that good!

Tags: books, domestic stuff
Current Mood: content
Now playing:: Blue Öyster Cult - Don't Turn Your Back

Up early to the alarm clock's ranting about traffic, since I went to bed a little after 1800 last night...pretty badly wiped after being up until all hours on Thursday, even though the boss let me head home a little early on Friday. Spent some of that time doing grocery shopping at Harris Teeter, managed to avoid the bakery, but did indulge in ~$6 of fried okra and steamed green beans to go with my club sub. The rest of the afternoon went by in a blur until I finally fell over.

Today's going to be moderately busy - heading for the bank, the rental office (they deposited the June rent check early, with unfortunate results) and the library. Not sure what I'll do with the rest of the day, which looks to be very nice, but I think I'll call around and see what friends are up to.

Tags: domestic stuff
Current Mood: awake
Now playing:: Lou Reed - Walk on the Wild Side

Three hundred years of women from the Saatchi Gallery. I found the morphing occasionally disturbing, but overall it is definitely cool. (Protein Wisdom)

Tags: linkagery
Current Mood: calm
Now playing:: John Mellencamp - Minutes to Memories

The presentation was not actually about time-share condos but about long-term vacation investments, a strange concept that basically allows you to take out a mortgage on vacation options. These options can be used to stay at 5-star condo/hotel facilities all over the US and the world. Alternatively you can use them to buy airline tickets, elite passes for Disney World, or any of the other things people buy and use on vacations. It's unique and very attractive, but at a time when my personal finances are still very much at sixes and sevens, it's not something I wanted to sink half a grand into as a down payment, much less committing to years of monthly payments.

Anyway...the main presentation was pretty informative and funny as hell (the salesman who did it needs to get a second job doing standup, because he has the licks) and the properties are indeed splendiferous in their incredible luxury. I must have trained Salesman Resistance to 5, because I hung tough in the face of some deals that seemed too good to be true even though I was up well past my bedtime. I got the freebies, though, and free parking to boot. If it hadn't been raining when I left, it would have been a near-perfect score.

Speaking of bedtime, it's time and past time to crash. Tomorrow -ha, today!- is going to be hard. ;_;

Tags: domestic stuff
Current Mood: tired
Now playing:: Paul Whiteman - Three O'Clock in the Morning

Spent most of the day wrestling with the truck company's payroll, paying withholding taxes, and other related excitement. Wound up staying until almost 5 because of some questions about child support payments (not mine) and a late-arriving Verizon rep who saved us about $25/month on the paint & body shop's lines and more than that on long distance. w00tles. Still not switching my service. Also, the boss wants to hire me but is balking at the 35% fee the agency wants; since their parent company has been doing his audits forever, he wants a break on that and may well get it. Guess we'll be talking about specifics when that gets settled, and in the meantime I'm okay with drawing my pay through the agency.

I'll be sitting around for a couple of hours at a resort time-share presentation tonight in return for some discount travel packages, gas rebate coupons, and similar delights; guess I'll drop off library books tomorrow.

Tags: domestic stuff, work
Current Mood: okay
Now playing:: Adam Ant - Desperate But Not Serious

Goonfleet unveiled two more Titans (the lethal butt plugs of space!) today and revealed that all the money we made by selling the drone regions (which we didn't actually hold, but w/e) had gone into buying a Titan blueprint, so now I guess we'll be building a fleet of those bad boys. Booyah. Countdown to CCP getting serious about a second Titan nerf in 3...2....1...

Tags: eve
Current Mood: amused
Now playing:: UFO - Pack It Up (And Go)

So, yeah, finished the apazine* and got it copied at Staples, where I got talked into signing up for their Rewards program and also wound up buying a bunch of stuff (mechanical pencils, envelopes, scissors...) including a 250GB external drive that's going to replace the one I have hooked up to Cowzilla right now. BTW, Staples' "Metrix" brand mechanical pencils are a dead ringer for the Pentel Quicker Clicker, so much so that I grabbed some 0.7mm by accident, thinking they were 0.5mm. I'll just use 'em for now and keep my eyes open for the right size next time I'm there. Totally forgot to return a bunch of library books today, but I'll deal with that tomorrow.

I'll also find out WTF is up with Kaiser. I figured since PCM was billing me for the last two months' KP premiums that they had been paying them, but apparently this is not the case since my Kaiser account is still suspended. This pisses me off no end. What are they going to do, extend my coverage an extra two months or something? Refinish my floors? In the meantime, I'll probably have to get my prescriptions refilled at Walmart. :argh:

Work is what it is. I've been spending a lot of time over the last couple of days filling out ledgers by hand, and my hand is getting damn tired of it. First chance I get, everything that can be done in Lotus is going to get done in Lotus. I can handle that a lot better than the constant switching between 10-key flogging and scratching away with pencils in the various ledgers, even if I am doing a lot of the 10-keying left handed. Yes, just as with eating, I can run a 10-key calculator/keypad with either hand. ph33r my 1337 acc0un71ng sk1llz! Fortunately, the old half-retired controller will be out of the office for a few days, and I can handle most of the routine stuff without him spastically jumping from one task to the other in no particular order or wasting my time by showing me how to do forms that I could figure out 30 years ago when I was learning the joy of the 1040 long form. It's not like sales tax forms are created by professors at the Harvard Business School to torture MBA candidates, after all; they're created by bureaucrats to extract money from businessmen without causing endless tsuris over unclear instructions and difficult procedures. I know he's trying to be helpful, but God damn, can he give me credit for having some fucking brains to go with the experience on the resume?

Haven't logged onto EVE in a couple of days; one of my alts is training for assault frigates as a stepping-stone for assault cruisers, and that's going to take a couple of weeks. It seems like I have a lot of stuff to take care of in the afternoons, and I don't want to be playing it before I go to bed because it gets me too wired.

Tags: domestic stuff, eve, work
Current Mood: tired
Now playing:: Front 242 - Crushed

I'd like to pay off my debts to Wells (as much as I can, at any rate) but they're not making it easier by keeping me on hold for 8-10 minutes at a time. At least I got the rest of current utilities &c. done.
No APA writing tonight on account of dinner date and subsequent shopping; going to try and whip something out tomorrow afternoon after work.

Oh, yeah: this xkcd strip reminds me of my senior prom, which fell on the Friday night that Disclave started. Unlike the kids in the strip, my date and I managed both. Kids these days. They fail at social scheduling. ;)

Tags: domestic stuff
Current Mood: annoyed
Now playing:: Judas Priest - Blood Red Skies

Managed to crank out four pages of comments on the last three StippleAPAs. I should be able to get two pages of natter done tomorrow night and then do the copying and mailing tomorrow so that my zine will arrive at Judie & David's on Saturday in time for the collation. Right now, though, it's time for bed.

Tags: the bush of fandom
Current Mood: accomplished
Now playing:: Alice Cooper - Lost in America

David Warren compares "Red Ken" Livingstone to Robert Mugabe, and provides an entertaining preview of what Boris Johnson's tenure as Lord Mayor of London could be like. (Kathy Shaidle)

Also, P.J. O'Rourke offers advice to this year's graduates in "Fairness, Idealism and Other Atrocities". (Kathy again)

Finally, Rachel Lucas trashes some dim woman's article in Men's Health about what guys do to screw up relationships. RTWT, especially the comments. (Kate)

Was supposed to go out to some resort presentation tonight but felt too tired and ooky to sit through two hours of PowerPoint slides and other sales tactics. Managed to get it rescheduled for Thursday. Doing the other half of my laundry tonight after running out of quarters last night. Going to bed early, but going to hammer out some comments for Stipple first.

Tags: domestic stuff, linkagery
Current Mood: tired
Now playing:: UFO - Cherry