Movies galore

I've been watching an awful lot of films lately. Rather than post everything over there in my template to the right,
I'll just catch you all up here and post the recommendations over there from now on.

Nine Lives
(one of the best films of 2005)

Gates of Heaven
Whisper of the Heart
Bubble
Corpse Bride
Match Point
Dear Frankie
Just Like Heaven
Internal Affairs
Flight Plan
Porco Rosso
Assault on Precint 13
Lord of War
Saw II
Mirrormask
Henry and June

Survived the snow... now just have to survive Friday.

Good news! I made it out of the snowstorm alive. It really wasn't too bad. I think the university closing was just a vicious rumor. Public schools were closed, though. I bet that was because it was rough out there in the morning.

Today the temperature range is -10°F to +10°F. Yowch. And me with lost gloves.

I took off Monday and Tuesday, and had a grand plan to work 12 hours on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Two days down, but this third one is proving tough. I'm not sure I will make it much beyond 8 hours. I have to remind myself of the money at stake here. Maybe I can fall asleep without anyone noticing.

Everyone here at work is treating this like a serious work day. Normally fridays are dead but since half the people were gone yesterday and the other half kind of lazed about wondering if the apocalypse approacheted, now everyone is working hard. So I'm not sure if my sleeping without being noticed plan will work.

University closed due to snow!

Well, I've been here in madison for about 12 years, and this is the first time I've heard of the University closing due to winter weather. I suppose it may have happened before without me knowing. It looks relatively calm right now, though it did hail and snow heavily earlier.

It was nice knowing all of you.

Steve spends 4 days on brokeback mountain

This has been quite an eventful week. The worldwide media is abuzz over the breakup of Liphen (or Stesa), but the most exciting news is that I am on the injury reserve list. Friday night, being only about 16 hours after the incident mentioned below where I spent 1.5 hours cleaning, I spent a few hours assembling some racks for my bathroom. The bathroom looks nice, organized now and what not, with all my various shaving creams and such.

But the real problem is a visit to brokeback mountain. Starting saturday and continuing on through tuesday, I had some serious back pains. Today it is somewhat better although I am definitely getting some leg pains.

The only logical conclusion is that the doctors need to sever my spine below the waist so that I no longer feel any pain there. I am going to mention this possibility to my doctors and see what they say.

4 days of back pain can be rather boring. Thankfully the olympics were on. Tuesday morning I convinced myself to head to blockbuster and get some new movies, because I had just seen Red Eye (** 1/2)) and Dirty Love (**). I picked up some OK choices - Just Like Heaven (***) and Two For The Money (* 1/2). The latter was really boring. I think it might have made the pain worse.

My cats are good at taking advantage of my illnesses. Chopper was meowing and clawing at cardboard boxes to peek inside all day and night, and Audrey wandered around the house eating every piece of paper in sight. No manners...

The long drive home

Such a long drive home tonight.
The LeSabre was gone.

I remember when I first saw it.
My iPod was blaring,
and I was oblivious.
The LeSabre pulled up next to me,
Wisconsin plates,
the driver waving arms,
honking the horn.

It was a kind of signal,
the driver's arms,
because there was a Fire.
I saw then the puffs of smoke
and I could almost feel
the crackle of red heat.

I waved back,
pulled into the other lane.

After the Fire,
we saw each other often.
The commute seemed short,
we would weave
in and out of traffic
together.

I would time it,
eat breakfast at 7:09am;
into the car at 7:23.
Meet up with the Buick
at East Washington and Fair Oaks.

We would drive together,
make the drive seem shorter.
Once I snuck a peak
in the rear view mirror,
but my windows were tinted black
and it was too dark to see out.

I remember when I knew it must end.
That was earlier today.
Leslie Anne Levine was playing,
and I felt a calmn void.

In the backseat,
there were large boxes.
The driver had a forlorn look.
I knew then. I honked a final farewell.
I saw the glint of a tear
in the driver's eye.

Again I was to drive alone.
Learning how to drive again.
When will the learning be complete?

I skipped to the next track,
and saluted the LeSabre.
Its license plate said Minnesota
Knot Comes Loose began playing,
but that song belonged
to my ears only now.

No traffic on the road.
Such a long drive home.

Am I *it*?

I just read lisa's "I've been tagged" blog entry and realized I might have been tagged. I don't know what it means to be tagged. Do I have to answer questions in fours now? I don't really know. I might as well, though.

Four...

Jobs I've had
Application Architect for the state
Programmer for evil republican corporation (D&T)
Programmer for not-quite-so-evil corporation (Kimberly Clark)
Network Admin & Part-time programmer for teeny tiny agri-consulting company

Movies I can watch over and over
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Thin Red Line
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
Gattaca

Places I've Lived
Carbondale, IL
Madison, WI
Appleton, WI
TBD (or Bay area, if I don't have to remember it)

TV Shows I Love
The Wire
Deadwood
Veronica Mars
The Shield

Places I've vacationed
Hawaii (twice)
St. Martin
New York City
Egypt

Of my favorite dishes
Chevre Queso Fundido at The Dining Room
Eggplant Casserole at Coquette Cafe
Pork Bun (dim sum dish) at Oriental Garden in Chinatown / Manhattan
Yogurt with fresh fruit, nuts, and honey at Marigold Kitchen

Sites I Visit Daily
BBC News
Cat Forum
The Daily Page (Isthmus Website)
Wikipedia

Placed I would rather be right now
At home, in my bed, draped with two warm cats.
In London, because I've never been there and it's on my mind a lot lately
In the heart of nature, with my camera in hand.
On the tennis court in a warm place

Bloggers I'm tagging
What?

Things that delighted me today
Being able to laugh at my own misfortune
Taylor of Old Bond Street "Luxury Hawthorn & Aloe Vera Hand Cream"
Fondly remembering the artistic merit and psychological intensity of this week's Lost - and seeing myself in one of its characters.
Watching the time fly by

Universal Insights
Four quotes by Martin Luther King Jr:

• "In order to love your enemies, you must begin by analyzing self"
  
• "I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him."
  
• "Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive."
  
• "We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation, for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers."

Books which have made me gasp
Catcher in the Rye
Winnie the Pooh books by A. A. Milne
Rendezvous With Rama
The Defense by Nabokov

Ways I Have Chosen to... (Barf) love me:
Working out at Capital Fitness
Laughing at my own mistakes (see below)
Going to movies alone
Forgiveness of others

Follow-up

If you haven't read my post below about the litter disaster, do so now, then read below. It's important for continuity of story.










OK, now that you are back...

Fools! Did you actually think I wouldn't clean it up? I wish I could see the picture on all of your faces.

I spent an hour and a half cleaning this up. It took me a minute to figure out a strategy. I decided to use the vacuum cleaner, and then continuously empty out the contents of the vacuum cleaner into multiple garbage bags. Of course, a few times the vacuum container got a little overfilled and I had to clean the vacuum. Fortunately I had a dustbuster handy. What was once in one bag was now in about ten bags.

After vacuuming it all up, I was still paranoid about litter being elsewhere and I began vacuuming shadows on the carpet vigorously.

I can sense all of you becoming anxious and wondering what became of the bombay store box that had been separating the kitchen from the living room for years. Unfortunately I had to discard it. I can hear you all rejoicing at this, but now we may go back to the toy chaos that happened before the box. I expect hundreds of little mice and wool balls to be under the refridgerator and stove by the time I get back.

And an unfortunate aftermath of this whole mess is that I now need a new hepa filter for my vacuum cleaner. And some trash bags.

Major litter disaster

Some of you are probably thinking the new litter has been disastrous. Not so. My normal procedure for changing litter is as follows:

1. Empty out the entire litter box into the garbage
   
2. Thoroughly rinse and scrub the litterbox in the shower
   
3. Thoroughly dry the litterbox with an old towel
   
4. Thoroughly clean the shower
   
5. Apply Draino to the shower
   
6. Vacuum the area around the litterbox
   
7. Put in the new litter
   
8. Take out the garbage the next day, with lots of male grunting noises due to it being heavy
   

It's that last step that was the problem. I have done this maybe 10 times before, but never with "force-flex" bags. Can you see where this is going? I was lifting the trash bag over my bombay store obstacle box (most of you have seen this and know what I'm talking about). As I was lifting it, the trasn bag was stretching more and more, until it finally ruptured (another picture). We had a bit of a snow last night, and if I stayed to clean it up I was going to be late for work.

So I left it there, and now I have to clean it up this evening.

Cat Litter (yet another neverending search)

I've tried all kinds of cat litter. I started out with arm & hammer, which was ok but a bit coarse and tends to get used up quickly. I then tried swheat scoop, a wheat based litter. I liked this stuff a lot, until months later I discovered a film of dust around all of my furniture. Next I tried feline pine. I couldn't get used to litter that was not clumping, so I discarded that one quickly. I tried everclean per maternal recommendation. It was ok but not as good as arm & hammer at covering odor. Next in line was world's best. This stuff is actually quite good, except for a couple of things: it smells like corn pancakes, and after a while it causes cat footprints. I discovered the former when I ordered the corn pancakes at El Dorado. It was not a fun experience.

I went back to Arm & Hammer. Now keep in mind, a lot of the time it makes no difference at all what littler I use, because Audrey does not really get how to bury things. She will do her stuff in the litter box, and then reach outside the litterbox to bury it. She does this in every shape and size of litterbox every once in a while.

But just recently I discovered that nature's miracle has a litter. For those of you playing catch-up, nature's miracle makes excellent litter treatment and even better pet stain cleaner. Unfortunately I couldn't find it anywhere locally, and it was $8 per bag to ship it. Madcat to the rescue! They ordered 2 bags for me.

I did a full replacement of litter in the living room. This new stuff comes in 10lb bags and costs about $1.50 per lb. This is about 40% more than world's best, 50% more than swheat scoop, and almost 200% more than arm & hammer. Still, it might be worth it. It looks promising, as the grains are really small, the material is all natural, and it includes some odor controlling enzymes. The cats were immediately curious about the new litter. Only a few hours later, audrey managed to not bury her stuff again.

And by the way, this litter smells wonderful. I thought about eating it. It smells kind of like bananas and pine. Intoxicating. The apartment smelled great between that and my new shaving cream, called "Eton College".

Good news

I am happy to report two rare occurrences recently, both involving photographing my cats. The most exciting one is that I seem to have finally gotten a few decent pictures of Audrey:

• My new favorite photo of Audrey
  
• A somewhat creepy one in my continuing obsession with shallow depth of field.
  
• A much better low depth of field shot.
  
• Proof that the camera adds 10 lbs.
  

The next exciting development is that I was finally able to photograph the rare occurrence of Chopper and Audrey sleeping in a bed together. Well, sort of. They woke up, but usually one of them immediately exits the bed when I get the camera. I don't think they want anyone to know.

• A typical photogenic chopper shot,with a bonus free not-so-photogenic audrey.
  
• Audrey becomes fed up and prepares to leave as chopper kicks his cuteness into a higher gear
  
• But don't be fooled, it took chopper a while to wake up initially.
  

By the way, if anyone can explain to me what is so fascinating about the view from my living room window, let me know. My cats seem to think there is excitement at all times, when in fact there rarely is.

I seem to have hit my limit for good music finds. This is unfortunate because I have already played most of the good finds to death and now that I am back on a regular gym schedule, I have nothing new and exciting for the ears. On the up side, Gorillaz are performing at the Grammy awards. This doesn't sound very exciting to most of you, but that may be because you didn't know that they are a "cartoon" or "virtual" band, meaning their performance at the grammy award will involve holographic 3d projections. Oh, and Madonna might be performing with them. I threw that last tidbit in for Todd, who is now really excited I bet.

There is no such thing as a limit on good films. I still need to see Munich, Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Cache, and Nine Lives before my "best of 2005" list is complete.

In Brokeback Mountain, Jake Gyllenhaal uses the exact same razor I just purchased. I find myself getting occasional nicks with it despite using high quality shave cream and a badger shave brush. He manages to avoid nicks despite shaving with no cream at all and using ice water. Not only does he avoid nicks, but the shave is so close and smooth that it makes him stop aging during the 20 year time span of the film. Impressive.

Those of you looking for some exciting comedy will be happy to hear that I am wearing a sweater that looks 30 years old despite being only a couple months old. I have these two sweaters that require me to hang dry after washing them, but I have now managed to put the sweater I'm wearing today into the dryer 5 times. Around the collar, some of the material is eroded, thereby making the sweater transparent in just those few spots.