Now that the numbness has worn off

Yesterday I completed the second skirmish in my war against periodontitis, getting the other half of my teeth scaled to get rid of all the nasties in there. Fortunately, it wasn’t a bad experience at all; I had the Crowded House turned up on my music player and the novocaine did its thang. Thanks to everybody who reassured me about what the whole thing was going to be like—it really wasn’t bad at all.

But despite all this happiness and sunshine, it’s time for me to pitch a bitch. In this most timely article, we learn that oral health is being shown by more and more studies to play a significant role in overall physical health. That’s interesting news, and let me tell you that I’d happily have that scaling done many times over my lifetime if I meant I was less likely to have a heart attack or develop diabetes, osteoporosis, or whatever other diseases are lurking out there that might be linked to gum disease.

That’s not the bitch part. Here’s the bitch part. I just spent $450 getting this procedure done, and because I’ve exceeded my paltry maximum coverage for the year on preventive dental care, I’ll have to pay entirely out of pocket for my next required cleaning and exam in November. Does this make a damn bit of sense to anyone? I could go to a doctor for a bruised elbow or a freaking hangnail and pay one lousy $15 copay. Meanwhile, I take what are obviously considerably more crucial steps to preserve my health, and it costs me something around $600? Why exactly is dental care separate from medical care anyway, in the tiny minds of the healthcare and insurance industries? (Yeah, the cynic in all of us knows the answer to that, but let’s ask the question anyway.) Diseases like diabetes and heart disease are long-term, expensive illnesses to treat. They kill people all the time, for pity’s sake. Doesn’t it make sense to throw me $600 to head all that shit off, rather than hold on to the money now and risk having to spend a million trying to treat me down the road?

And here’s where I thank fate and fortune that I have the money to pay for this stuff. It pisses me off to think how many people are not so lucky. Why the hell can’t we fix the healthcare system in this damn country.

This rant has been brought to you by early stage periodontitis. Make sure you know how to floss properly, people! It sucks but it beats the alternatives. And no one else is going to help your ass out when it comes to it, either.

Data pwns Klingon

Yeah, I’m a total sucker for TNG. This scene is one of about ten thousand reasons why.

Goodbye Sandy Allen

Everybody, please break out your Time and Tide albums, Sandy Allen has died today. She was 6'3" at age 10; I didn’t break the 5-foot mark until I was 12!

Some geek talk

I should be hitting the sack, but I gots some free association geekery to drop. First off, must link to this interesting interview with Alan Moore. Weirdest, coolest dude.

Next, wanted to link to the Watchmen trailer. I hope Moore is wrong and that the movie does justice to the book. Hope hope.

Finally, been thinking about getting one of these. For when my Palm finally dies. And to go with the MacBook I’ve been thinking about. (I think there’s a longer post in me about my Computers I Have Loved, so I won’t go into detail about the MacBook plan here.) But someday I think my affair with Palm is going to have to end, since my Tungsten E has lasted far longer and been far more trusty than most people have experienced with theirs. It seems crazy, but what I really need is a personal organizer, not a music player or kewl web surfing device. But why not have all three? Yeah, I sound like Steve Jobs’ bitch, don’t I. It pains me, but to some extent it is true.

On that note, time to put the computer and myself to sleep!

Vermont kicked my ass

Well, I’m back from my not-quite-a-week in Vermont! Just to start the bragging up front, I cycled for five days in a row for a total of 162 miles, completed in 13 hours and 38 minutes. That adds up to a whole lotta riding. And you dear readers might not know this, but it’s kind of hilly in Vermont.

The tour started in Stowe on Sunday evening, where we met the two tour leaders and the other people crazy enough to vacation in this manner. It was absolutely pouring rain down in buckets, which is good because we didn’t ride the first day. So the recap is as follows: Monday morning we rolled out ridiculously early to head to Montpelier, which was about 38 miles of back roads away. Monday and Tuesday night we stayed at the Inn at Montpelier, which was really nice (and the rooms had TVs that got the Tour de France coverage, yay). Tuesday we did a 36-mile loop from Montpelier through a few minuscule towns and lots of fabulous countryside, hills and bucolic settings galore. Here’s a shot of a friendly goat—no moose spottings, though.


Wednesday we packed up again and headed from Montpelier to the Highland Lodge in Greensboro, about 33 miles away. There was a damn serious hill we had to slog up to get to Greensboro, let me tell you. Actually, the day started with a miserable hill but I took the van for the first three miles. Hey, the van is there, why not take advantage! Swami took the macho route and sweated up the hill. Thursday was a loop from Greensboro that included a visit to a little town called Marshfield, where there is hidden a totally awesome pastry shop and cafe called Rainbow Sweets (see photo below). Best damn spanakopita I have ever had. I cut that day’s riding a little short at 23.4 miles, and Swami did about 33 just to show off. That gave us a little time to check out Caspian Lake, a beautiful blue lake just across the road from the Lodge. (Somehow I neglected to photograph the lake, whoops! But here’s one by someone else, and here’s a site with a lot of cool aerial photos.)


On the last day, even before I got out of bed I could hear some ominous rumbling outside. And a peek out the window revealed some seriously black clouds. But hey, there’s breakfast to get before we have to worry about the weather. During breakfast we got to experience a pretty spectacular mountainside storm: first we noticed that we couldn’t see the lake anymore, then we noticed that we couldn’t see the road just outside the lodge. In a final dramatic flourish, the power went out. Fortunately the breakfast food had already been cooked—at that point I was guarding my potential calories pretty intently! Although as time went on, it was looking unclear whether we’d even get a final day’s ride at all—riding in the rain is doable, but not in a ridiculous thunderstorm. But either by van or by bike we were heading back to Stowe, because it was checkout time.

Finally after breakfast the sky cleared, and we started to get our stuff together. Everybody’s luggage got loaded in the van, and a couple of people who were fed up with cycling got in as well and started back to Stowe. Then, as Swami and I were headed to the shed to get our bikes, another storm blew up and stranded us in the shed for about 20 minutes. Were we going to end up riding or not? Weirdly, after four straight days in the saddle I was feeling like I needed another!

Fortunately the storm did blow through and for some reason the tour leaders thought it would be okay if we got on the bikes. So ride we did, kicking up spray and generally getting wet and gritty. And the rain did stay off in the distance, for the whole 32.6 miles back to Stowe.


Back in Stowe it was time for a quick shower and packing up. A huge storm squall even washed the bikes clean on top of the car on the drive back (although it was actually a damn scary trip—at one point we even had to get off the interstate because there were tree branches coming down around us and it was decidedly Not Safe). But overall it was a great week and I’m proud that I survived. I didn’t even take any painkillers and I still have full use of my legs! On the other hand, sitting at my desk at work doesn’t seem like such a bad thing at this point. Anyone up for a ride next weekend?

Ups and downs

Down: Periodontitis diagnosed today
Up: It’s early-stage and can be reversed!
Down: Requires anxiety-causing procedures over a couple of weeks next month

Up: New tennis racket still awesome!
Down: Four cancelled doubles matches thanks to the crappy weather

Up: Tour de France!
Down: Lingering cynicism about the Tour thanks to doping scandals

Up: Obama!
Down: Obama’s stance on FISA

Big Up: going to Vermont for a cycling vacation next week!
Down: Ain’t no downside to that.

Angst trifecta

Got beat again playing doubles yesterday (new racket notwithstanding), George Carlin died, and Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” is stuck in my head. If that don’t just mean it’s Monday.

Congratulations KG

I’m not a huge fan of the Celtics, but I do loves the Kevin Garnett. So glad he finally got a ring! And it’s just too much to embed the Youtube vid, but I can’t help linking to it: his postgame interview with Michele Tafoya was beyond description. As I was watching it live, I feared for my safety even though the dude was a couple of zip codes away.

Whoa where am I

Due to the heat wave we just suffered through, I haven’t gotten around to posting in a while. Here are some ruminations on a few topics.

Obama! Wooot!

A tale of three tennis rackets: Finally, finally, I got around to demoing a few new tennis rackets to try and replace the craptacular no-name brand I’ve been playing with for the last seven-eight years. (Raoul, you will be especially happy to learn of this development!) So today I’ve got to decide between this Prince model and the RQS 9 (scroll down a bit) by Yonex (a brand I hadn’t heard of until this week, because I am a Not Cool Person). And I’m irrationally worried that a new racket will somehow screw up my game. Maybe I should lighten up about this stuff, huh?

More tennis: Man, did Nadal crush Federer at the French, or what? That was just harsh.

Jesus Christ, again with the tennis? We’re back in a doubles league and play our second match tomorrow. First match we got completely pwned by these two dudes that were probably 4.0 or maybe even 4.5. I don’t think I successfully returned a serve by one of the guys the whole match. Hopefully there will be somebody else a little closer to our level to play, or else this is going to be a real slog!

Hey, something that’s not tennis: Speaking of getting pwned, the Celtics put in an amazing performance on Thursday night. Down by 24? No problemo. What a game that was—good thing I didn’t give up watching at halftime. But can someone explain this game schedule to me? No games on Friday or Saturday nights? Total crap.

Bong hits for Comcast

Man, the further I read in this article, the more I could have sworn I was reading the Onion. Rock on, hacker dudes. Aren’t we all tired of Comcast’s shitty service?

Fifty miles

Yesterday I did what was probably the most challenging physical thing I’ve ever done: I cycled a half century (that’s fifty miles to you non-cylist types). It was a crazy day, pretty emotional and not just in the expected ways.

I was really questioning my sanity in the morning when the alarm went off at 7 a.m. That’s an hour earlier than I get up on weekdays, for chrissakes. (I know, I know, I get up super late on weekdays, but that’s just how I roll.) One thing that will forever keep me from being a true cycling geek is my absolute hatred for getting up early, especially on weekends. But this was a special occasion, the Spring Century for the Charles River Wheelmen. And the scheduled start was at 9:30, which meant an early rise.

Now, besides the whole physical challenge, I was pretty concerned about the weather. All week they had been predicting showers, which makes for a pretty miserable bike ride of any distance. But despite the earlier threats, the weather was absolutely perfect. It was totally clear and sunny for most of the ride, and just started clouding up at the end. Thank you, weather gods.

As for the ride itself, it went well except for a some unexpected drama. We were riding along a fairly rural neighborhood road (I don’t even know in which town) when we spotted one of the more dangerous things you can encounter: an unleashed dog. He was running along behind a little kid on a bike. Swami got past the hazard without any trouble, but as I came by I saw the dog start coming right out into the road. I slowed down, but that unfortunately got the dog’s attention and he decided I was something to chase after. And bark at. And growl at. I heard him right behind my back wheel and remembered that it wouldn’t take much to get brought down at that point. Fortunately I had received some good instruction on loose dogs in Vermont last summer: stop and get off the bike, and yell at the dog. Then slowly walk away.

It took a lot of yelling. And I almost forgot the walk away part—my instinct was to just stand there shouting hostile things at the dog, apparently. Fortunately Swami reminded me about the walking. And just as fortunately, I got less interesting to the dog as I walked away. I was shaking pretty hard by the time we thought it was safe for me to get on the bike and keep riding.

The kid, of course, being young and small, was absolutely no help in calling off the dog, and didn’t see any reason to go get an adult to take care of the situation. And that’s who I’m really angry at: the parents who let this young kid go out in the street with an unleashed dog. Yes, even your sweet golden Lab might find a strange person worth snarling and barking at.

But I can’t let that detract from the overall ride. Hey, I survived! And the first 40 miles felt good, too. It was only the last ten that started to seem like a slog. I can actually say that I was sick of being on the bike by the time we finished, which is not something I’m familiar with. And today I don’t feel particularly sore, either.

Now for a bit of time off, including a trip to SF this weekend. And maybe in the fall, we can try for a metric century. Always good to have a goal, right?

Review: Crowded House at the Somerville Theatre

Rather than attempt to be coherent, I’m going to do this in a more stream-of-consciousness style, because I’m still buzzed and not interested in making sense. First, I want to thank the Swami for indulging my need to go to both shows, even though they were on a Monday and Tuesday, because I really couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d missed one.

First night (setlist, although see below for more details): We were up in the front part of the balcony, but I wasn’t about to complain because I damn near missed out on getting any tickets at all. (Foolishly gave up a pair of orch seats right at 10:04 on sale day and then couldn’t get anything for an agonizing fifteen minutes.) It’s not like the venue is huge, either, so you’re never that far from the action.

Funny thing is that I thought the show started out kind of low on energy, although we got some songs I really enjoy (“Everything Is Good for You” and “Say That Again,” for example). And they’re workshopping new songs, which is something special that I’ve never seen with the Crowdies before. But then things really took off. We got absolutely scorching versions of “When You Come” (which Neil had to interrupt because he thought he was going to sneeze, heh!) and “It’s Only Natural,” with Nick at one point cheerfully abusing a tambourine like a madman. And the encores kept the energy level high, with a great version of “Fingers of Love” featuring one of Mark’s magisterial solos.

And then—chaos! Neil actually agreed to attempt someone’s impossible request of “Mary of the South Seas,” which he has obviously forgotten almost entirely. He sang the chorus a couple of times while the rest of the band looked quizzical (Mark did his soldierly best to accompany on harmonica). Then Neil started thinking about all the songs he’s written that mention names. So he played “Lester,” “I Love You Dawn,” and “Hello Sandy Allen” while calling chord changes out to Nick. Then somebody yelled for “Log Cabin Fever,” which Neil again did his best at. (Unlike Neil, I remember the second verse, dammit, but I was too far away to yell it to him.) At this point I was thoroughly falling out of my chair. During the rockout end of the song, Neil was playing alone, then said “You know it’s all in E, boys,” and the rest of the band finally joined in—though of course it did not resemble the actual song. Then we got the insanely obscure “Evelyn” and a bit of “Iris,” and finally the whole awesome detour was capped off by a full and gorgeous version of “Catherine Wheels.” What else can I say!

Actually, I should mention the night’s theme of Sharks, which is a kids’ game where you try to make it across a room without touching the floor. I’ve been informed that it’s nuts that I hadn’t heard of this game, but apparently the Kiwis have come up with something entirely original. And it led to a fair amount of silliness, which is another reason to love seeing these guys live.

Second night (see discussion thread here): I figured it would be hard to live up to that first night, but they still put on a great show. I also had the best seats I’ve ever bought for a show in my entire life, second row center section. The ticketing gods smiled upon me that day, and I am grateful.

They stuck to the set list this time, but the best thing about CH is that they can do a second show with hardly any overlap. I’m a huge fan of the unpredictable set list. As for songs, there’s never any reason to regret hearing “Private Universe,” and they did a kickass version of “Chocolate Cake.” But the highlight for me was “Whispers and Moans,” which I truly thought I would never hear in person. Ohhhh yeah.

It feels very, very weird to not be at a Crowded House concert tonight. And what a treat it was to have two shows in a row. Considering that I went from 1994 to 2007 without any live CH, but have seen four shows in the last ten months, this is just what a fan needs. Whoop!

(Postscript added on edit: I should also mention that Mark, in his suit and tie, looks more and more like an English teacher rocking out on stage. I also spotted Nick and Mark on the sidewalk shortly before show two, but managed to keep my cool [i.e., chickened out] and didn’t bug them. Another opportunity to look like a crazed fan avoided.)

Overhyped

I feel obligated to respond to the suggestion that LeBron James is not overhyped, as I claimed over here.

A short discussion of semantics is called for as a preliminary. Labeling James overhyped has nothing to do with whether he’s a good basketball player; it would be downright idiotic to claim that he has no skill or talent. Let’s just get that out of the way. It’s about the hype. In the immortal words of Public Enemy, don’t believe it.

First, he hasn’t actually achieved anything. And no, I don’t believe for a second that a player has to win a championship to be considered an excellent player. But consider the attention James gets, the adulation, the seemingly unconditional love and attention. And consider what he has delivered in return.

Second, he receives insane levels of preferential treatment from the refs and the league. He travels to the basket all the time. Players who foul him receive harsh punishments; when he metes out similarly flagrant fouls on other players, he is protected from the consequences.

Third, he’s just a lousy representative of the NBA. Do I have to bring up the Darfur thing again? He’s a manufactured superstar who has done very little to earn respect for what he does, but rather seems to just sit back and let the league crown him as king because they need individuals to feed their hype machine.

Really, how can he not be seen as overhyped at this point? It will be very interesting to watch the Cleveland-Boston matchup in round 2. I hope KG goes easy on the poor guy; he has such a tough time getting fouled while he’s traveling his ass towards the basket.

Wiiiiizzzzzzz

They won! They won! A close one, too. Agghh, I am prematurely aging watching these guys play. LeBron is overhyped, big time.

Glad I could track down this clip of Soulja Boy doing the DeShawn Stevenson’s “I can’t feel my face” thing from Game 3 in DC. Heh!

Vinyl Elvis

Hm, I need to stop thinking about how badly the Wizards are playing in the playoffs. Because they are playing very, very, very BADLY. It’s killing me. But I can’t blog about that, it’s really too painful.

So yesterday Elvis Costello released his latest album as vinyl only (though there is a promise of a CD version to come out later). It’s interesting to watch the reaction of the fans, because two things become clear: (1) both he and many of his fans possess a huge, I might even say irrational, love for vinyl LPs; and (2) I don’t.

I suppose there’s a reason one refers to the formative years as being, well, formative. During mine, there was one record player in the house, and it was smack in the living room. And the floor in there was incredibly susceptible to vibrations, so if you wanted to listen to a record you had to announce your intention so that everybody could sneak around and not make the record skip. The implication of this is that playing music in record form was not in any way a private activity, even with headphones. So if it hadn’t been for the cassette tape, I wouldn’t have had any freedom to listen to whatever I wanted, or to give the music the kind of undivided attention that music sometimes demands. (Or to get emotional when the music demanded that you got emotional.) This set of circumstances also means I never had the magic moment of putting a needle down on a record to hear it the first time, and so I don’t have a desire to recapture this with Elvis’s new one. (I also don’t have an audiophilic passion for the topic of fidelity, but that might be worth a whole post of its own.) But I can’t fault Elvis for engineering that experience anew for a lot of people who find that important, so that’s cool. Although he’d better put the damn album out on CD too, dammit.

Through a strange coincidence I also watched the movie High Fidelity for the first time last weekend, and of course it’s awash in record-store geekery and nostalgia for the vinyl. God, how I wanted a summer job in a record store when I was younger. It’s probably for the best that I was never granted such a platform where I could feel cooler than the rest of the world, heh. But as a mini-review I’ll say that I wasn’t super impressed with the book, and the movie didn’t work any better. For a John Cusack plus Tim Robbins flick, I would definitely watch Tapeheads a few more times rather than see this one again. (Heh, according to the IMDB rating I am in the minority opinion there!) And for John Cusack directed by Stephen Frears, for the love of Pete you should totally go with The Grifters—much better.

Think there’s any chance the Wizards won’t get swept? Aaaaargh.

Alternative minimum schmack

It’s that most momentous of days today, tax day. Funny how income tax in the US reveals so much about us, both in general and individually. Let’s start with the former and move to the latter, in an orderly, linear fashion that upholds the spirit of the tax forms themselves.

First, I noticed that it was a complete mob scene at the post office yesterday, which suggests that a lot of my fellow Americans are just as procrastinatory as I am. Although my rationalization for sending my taxes in at the last moment is that I’m putting off giving up my money as long as possible, so that I can earn a little more interest. However, that was probably more than offset by the extra stamps I randomly put on the envelopes to avoid waiting in the huge line to buy the exact postage. So that again shows a collective lack of planning by me and my fellow countrymen—another valuable insight.

I also thought about the common wisdom about a few tax-related topics, and by common wisdom here I of course mean stubborn ignorance. The best example of this is the deduction for interest paid on a home mortgage. People often like to blather about the wonderous shower of money that rains down upon you when you own a home, because hey, you can deduct the mortgage interest off your taxes! But hello, if you think about this for two seconds, you realize that you aren’t making any money. You’re just not paying tax on top of the interest that you already paid. In other words, you’re getting kicked in the head, but not stomped on the foot. I suppose that could be seen as a net gain in the optimist’s world. Speaking of optimism, viewing a tax refund as a good thing is a bit wack in my mind. Congratulations, you’ve been giving the government a free loan of your money rather than saving it yourself. This in the same country where people shriek about being trapped in a nanny state when it comes to things like wearing a seatbelt, or being allowed to blow cigarette smoke in other people’s faces.

Now to some specifics. I learned (once again) that I am exercising a smart career choice by not being an accountant or tax professional. I made two giant, honking errors in my first draft of the tax forms, which would have cost us some $1100. That ain’t too cool. I also am finally coming to grips with the reality that I should really get some damn tax software to figure all this stuff out, rather than doing it by hand. There’s just some persistent, crazy corner of my brain that doesn’t trust that the software is any better at this than I am; or rather, that a roomful of programmers, all equally or perhaps slightly less smart than I am, could actually achieve a better result than I with my pencil and my calculator. Hell, Danielle cheerfully reported to me that in New Zealand the government figures your tax for you, and then sends you a check or a bill. Can you imagine this working in the US? People here are suspicious of the freaking census, for chrissakes.

Anyway, I hope the Postal Service enjoys my extra fifty cents or so of postage. I wonder if I can deduct that off my taxes next year. Just think, that’s free money!

Disillusionment of the day

Hmph, I just learned over here that what everybody calls wasabi is not actually real wasabi, but some kind of concoction using regular horseradish. More can be read about this diabolical conspiracy here. I feel cheated!

Although this will in no way prevent me from having huge sushi cravings at least once a week. And there’s a restaurant in Waltham named Ponzu that serves little nuclear bombs called wasabi pork dumplings, which are basically (faux-) wasabi laced pork meatballs wrapped in wonton wrappers. They are evil, they are delicious, they will kick your ass and make you cry for your mommy. Who could refuse food that does all that? If you survive, you feel like the ultimate stud; if you die, well, you died eating a pork meatball. An anecdote for the ages!

Parking enforcement, yo

I made a special trip with the camera to capture this one.

Abandon all hope

I was clearing out old emails at home the other night and came across a good discussion we had on the Elvis Costello mailing list back in 2006. The question was, what books have you abandoned reading? Now, I have at least one good friend of steely resolve who finishes everything she starts, no matter how painful the experience. I, on the other hand, have a lot less resolve—okay, let’s be honest and say hardly any. Unexpectedly, though, my abandoned list is not that long, since I don’t start a lot of books that I’m not sure I’ll be interested in.

The following list is in no particular order.

Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
This one is not surprising in the least, although it’s mildly surprising that I tried to read it in the first place. I first heard of it in grad school, because it’s the subject of a (very dull) scholarly article written by a proponent of the Russian Formalist school of literary analysis (yeah, that sounds just about as dry as it actually is). The book is actually fairly entertaining, especially given that it was written nearly 250 years ago, but is so meandering and plotless that it finally lost my interest. It might have been easier to get through if I took some kind of recreational mood-altering substances.

Idiot, by Fedor Dostoyevsky
Another bad decision motivated by grad school. I was supposed to read it before my comprehensive master’s exams, but never managed it. A later attempt was also foiled when I quickly lost any interest in any of the characters, and couldn’t find a plot to speak of. I was surprised by my abandonment, though, because the other Dostoyevsky I’d read was actually quite good. If you want to give the Russian classics a go, I would recommend you try Crime and Punishment, which was way, way more engaging. Actually, start with Gogol—that cat had a sense of humor, unlike any of his fellow countrymen.

Gulag Archipelago, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The third in my trilogy of grad school-inspired miscalculations. I don’t even remember a single thing about it. Did I get past the first page? I think I did. I would definitely recommend Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich instead, if you feel that you must.

The Bostonians, by Henry James
Whoa, was this one a crashing bore. I don’t think I made it past the first scene where a bunch of tiresome people say dull things in someone’s salon. Considering how much Boston gets your heart pumping, what with the gale-force winds and insane drivers, this book should have a lot more going for it. This was my first and last attempt at Henry James. I will not make a weak Dave Chappelle joke here.

Dune, by Frank Herbert
Admittedly, I pulled this one off my brother’s shelf when I was too young to really have a crack at it, but the first page was all I got through. Heck, even the Bible knows that you put all the dull genealogy a few chapters in so that you give the reader a chance to get interested. For whatever reason, I never went back. Doesn’t stop me from making postmodern, ironic references to the sandworms, so I figure it’s win-win.

Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
I put these on the list even though I have actually finished them, simply because it’s remarkable to note that I made two attempts in my youth to get through all three, but got stuck both times at the end of Two Towers. Frodo and Sam get separated in Shelob’s lair, and then for some reason I failed to pick up volume three. For all I knew, Sauron got the ring and nuked everyone’s ass back to the First Age. Then again, I was too young for these, too; for example, it was only during the recent revival of Tolkien and my first adult read of these books that I realized that Strider and Aragorn were the same dude. Rest assured that I’ve now finished these easily, and got all the way through Silmarillion as well. Boo yah!

Sometimes I wish I was Catholic

Relax, that’s a line from a song. So I’ve turned the big 35 today, and I got this awesome peep cake from the Swami earlier, so I’m totally jacked on sugar right now. I took the day off work, which was schweet—now that’s a constitutional amendment I could get behind, that everyone should get their birthday off of work. Paid, I might add. Who’s with me!