Home, New Home

We're in the new apartment now and the internet and cable just got hooked up. Lots of things I've been meaning to talk about lately, but I'm really hungry so I'm just gonna go with a list and explain a couple things in more detail later. Maybe.

• This is first of my two weeks off between internship and full hire position, and it's been good. Allowed me to do a million things I've had to get done, and I've been reasonably effective at unpacking stuff while Nina is at work.
  
• Went with the more diesel channel lineup this time, so I actually get YES and SNY. Just checking now we have a bunch of movie channels and things like College Sports TV as well, so that's cool. I plan on adding MLB Extra Innings after the All-Star Break; I think the price drops at that point.
• The new place is a serious upgrade in a lot of departments. Feels like more space (probably pretty close to the old one but better layout), hardwood floors, actually finished tiles in the bathroom (which is twice as big), lots more windows (and nicer ones at that). Oh and it has an actual dining room.
• The only two gripes I have about the new place are that they could use some more cabinet space in the kitchen and that they have an interesting lighting situation. By that I mean that there isn't overhead lighting in either bedroom or the living room. Instead they all have a switched outlet. Really the only reason this is a gripe is that the optimal living room layout makes it so the TV and A/V stuff is plugged into the switched outlet, which is pretty much not gonna work. We seem to have found an acceptable alternate layout, but I was mildly annoyed that we had to do so. Oh well.
• Zipper is loving all the windows and all the other people walking around and stuff. She's just having a hard time picking a favorite window.
  
• Driving home the other day Nina and I passed T&A, the local crappy strip joint, and there was a Lamborghini parked outside. Didn't make a whole lot of sense to me.
• Today I tried a Soy/Rice milk blend with some Honey Bunches of Oats, and it actually tasted pretty good. This is huge news, because I am so freakin' sick of oatmeal, and I absolutely love cereal. If I can eat cereal again in the morning I will be a much happier person.
• Don't tell Mom but Nina and I ordered a bedroom set yesterday. We looked at a local place here but they were a little too expensive so we went to Bob's in Brookfield (45 minutes away) and ended up ordering the Louis set. It was a thousand bucks and has a sleigh bed, a night stand, a chest, a dresser, and a mirror. It's not solid cherry but it is solid hardwood with a cherry finish so it's a nice balance of quality and price, and it's just the right amount of furniture for our bedroom. Now I have to somehow keep this information from Mom until she gets her bedroom finished.
  

Okay time for hot dogs on the Foreman.

You're Only Paranoid If You're Wrong

So Nina and I are moving Saturday morning. I reserved the truck with U-Haul many weeks ago just to make sure I didn't run into a "Sorry we only have 32' trucks available" situation when I only need a 14-footer. That process was somewhat odd, because the confirmation process was them sending me a text message (and a few minutes later an email) with the details and the local number to call and confirm. I did so, and it was handled in an incredibly gruff manner by a very tired sounding employee. I was told everything was fine and hung up on. Whatever, I had the truck.

Then Tuesday Susan suggested I call and confirm this week just to make sure, because being paranoid is better than not moving. As I'm sure you guessed, there was a problem, but I can't emphasize enough that both the people I talked to this time were incredibly helpful. The local office had no record of anything, but he didn't go into Don't Believe The Crazy Customer mode at all. I'm sure it helped that I had two emails and a text message to read off to him verbatim and I never got bent out of shape, but he still had every right to not believe me since he had absolutely nothing to confirm my story. After a few minutes he had me call the traffic office, since they had more resources to search with and could help me get one of the few remaining trucks if there was a problem. The girl I talked to there was also very good about trusting me, and sounded genuinely concerned that nothing was coming up. I believe the phrase "really really really weird" was used. So she took down all the relevant information and put me on hold for a minute or two. Fortunately, she did some quick thinking and found the problem: the jackass who dealt with me way back when I had reserved the truck had punched in April 26th, not May, and that had come and gone so the entry was automatically purged from the local office's system. She fixed the date and pushed the change, I called the local office and confirmed, and nobody was home to tell about it so I told the internet.

So, long story short: jackasses work everywhere but Poughkeepsie U-Haul has some very good customer service. Oh, and freaking confirm everything twice.

El Fin

Last night was graduation, so that was nice. On Thursday they decided to move the ceremony into the gym because all the weather folk were predicting some fairly grim weather. I was a little bummed to not be out on the green but it was definitely for the best, what with it being not so warm, rather cloudy, and occasionally windy. Plus when it's in the gym the families get to be a lot closer to the graduates, and that's always good. Another great thing was that they said it should take about an hour, and by my watch it was 55 minutes from first sit-down to last stand-up.

Afterwards we went to dinner at The Beekman Arms and Delamater Inn, which is a very nice place. It was my graduation, so I got Filet Mignon, and I now understand what the big deal is with Filet Mignon. It was like thirty bucks but it's officially now on the top of my "Today We're Spending Too Much On An Excellent Dinner" list.

The best part was probably the fact that I got to see my family for a while and didn't have to drive two hours home afterwards. They all did, and I feel a little bad about that, but hey, it was my graduation. :-P

28 Sequels Later

So the next few months are awash with sequels, as seems to happen about once a year. I probably don't have them all but tonight off the top of our heads Matt and I came up with: Shrek The Third (looking forward to it), Ocean's 13 (cautiously optimistic), and The Bourne Ultimatum (can't freakin' wait). Then of course there is 28 Weeks Later, the movie we saw tonight. If you plan on seeing this, all I have to say is:

Do.
Not.
Pay.
Money.

Your experience may vary, but I found the suspense too cheap, the gore too excessive, the drama too forced, the writers too lost. It was everything the original managed to avoid. Instead of gritty violence we got overwhelming, shock-value gore. Instead of suspense we got a bunch of cheap "BOO!" scenes. Instead of the occasional hero moment, some self-sacrifice, and a gut-wrenching decision or two we got cheap ploys, ceaseless dumbfounding poor decisions, and far too many uses of Deus Ex Machina to be believable.

I hate when people find one little thing wrong with a movie and use it as an excuse to hate the entire movie, and I am definitely somebody who just tries to sit back and enjoy a movie, but this one was just too bad. It was brutal. You could tell that nobody was into it. Half of the theater was involved in nearly normal volume side conversations at some point or another and I think almost every person in there went to the bathroom. I've never seen such apathy towards a movie in a theater.



P.S. Completely unrelated. Red Sox just swept the Tigers in a double header and the Sportscenter guys just mocked that obnoxious woman from the Yankees' radio broadcasts for her ludicrous overreaction to the Roger Clemens 7th inning stretch announcement. Priceless.

Today's Word: Spectacular

Let's talk about what's been spectacular lately.

• Josh's friend Dan playing one spin of Roulette, betting 30 dollars on 25 red, and winning a thousand dollars.
• My last official class ever at Marist being cancelled because the professor has encephalitis and nobody covered. That class started off weak and has been utterly destroyed. Somebody should have stepped in after the ludicrous midterm and just put a new professor on for the second half. We don't even know what's on the final, or if we're going to have it.
• My best (worst?) pun ever this afternoon. Someone randomly walked a dog around the halls of our building at IBM today. Chris came by to ask what the hell it was all about and I said I didn't know. Then this happened:

  Chris: What if it's like a secret stealing dog?
  Me: Yea, that would be bad.
  Chris: He's snooping around, stealing our secrets.
  Me: Oh man it's a snoop dog.
  

  
  Chris left my office after that.
  
• The brand new Mercedes Benz that went off of Route 9 and went completely over one of those boxes the electric company puts on the side of the road sometimes. Worst day ever for the driver, fun photo op for everybody else, especially since no serious injury appeared to have occurred.