Month: January 2007

Salad and pizza last night, and steak and martini night (stole that from Stuart) along with asparagus topped with hollandaise sauce tonight. Both very tasty. Been watching Rome this week in HD, I’m enjoying it though I’m not sure how accurate it is.

Illa was doing fine, very playful, then he threw up. We think it was something he ate, but we’re watching him. I’m uploading some more emmet swimming vids and helping Jill mail some packages, then I need to finish the paper and put out the recycling.

Friday was the most recent installment of what’s become an annual tradition – emmet swimming’s January show at the 9:30. A couple things were different this year – first, the 9:30 was now non smoking, along with every other club and restaurant in DC. Second, this was the first show with Tamer on drums since he left in 1999. Third, this show was driven by an online survey of which songs to play. All good things, and I showed up even though I’d been flat on my back earlier in the week due to the flu. We missed opener Trustfall do to us swinging by Barnes and Noble for a book for work for me and going to the Lost Dog Cafe to eat some of their fabulous pizza, but we made it in plenty of time to catch emmet’s set.

Tamer didn’t seem like he’d lost a step – either he’s been playing all along, or worked out some practice time when not showing houses. The set didn’t seem too different than normal – I guess they play a lot of what people want (and no, I didn’t vote 20 times for their cover of “Lisa Says”, just once for “Bohemian Rhapsody”, mostly ’cause I wasn’t thinking of “Lisa Says” at the time). It was nice to hear some songs off “Dark When The Snow Falls” they haven’t played in a while, like “Angst II” and “This Is My Life” (ok, that last one was the only one I voted for that got played). The song that garnered the most votes was “Broken Oar”, as certified by the firm of Brotemarkle and Brotemarkle. Tamer played a nice solo during “Hey Jesse”, and Derrick joined him for it. I think my favorite moment was “Listen To The River”, as Tamer played a set of bongos to accompany the band. It was also an early show, so nice to get home before midnight.

Saturday we didn’t do too much. I made eggs benedict shortly after we woke up, then took Illa for a long walk and read the paper on the deck enjoying the insanely warm weather. Eventually the sun started going down and it cooled off enough to drive me inside and read comics. A neighbor and coworker Denise was having a party, so we went over around 8 and didn’t leave until 2:30 – we had a mighty fine time consuming mass quantities, chatting, and watching a little football (poor, poor Cowboys).

Today we also didn’t do much. Jill went out for a bagel while I made an omelette. She went out to a friend’s and I watched football and read the paper. Now I’m busy converting the emmet swimming to upload it to archive.org and surfing. I still need to read for work, and maybe start on the “Rome” marathon (HBO is airing the entire first season in HD this week, and I decided I wanted to catch it) as I prepare some leftovers for dinner.

sucks.

I thought that I was done, but the past two mornings I’ve felt absolutely miserable. I’m feeling better now, hopefully that will continue tomorrow. We’ve had lotsa soup and leftovers – I think the Costco lobster bisque with a couple drops of habanero sauce may be my new favorite sickness soup, over the old classic tomato. I haven’t had energy to do much, but at least I’ve made great strides at emptying the DVR. I had a Superman marathon yesterday – I had the first one on the DVR, had the new cut of Superman II on DVD (both decent, but I’ll never understand how that’s some people’s Holy Grail of superhero movies. What I really enjoyed was the Lost Room miniseries from Sci Fi – good mix of mystery and sci fi. I’ve caught up on nearly all my reading in periodicals, and actually read two books today – Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall (the usual high standards Fables story, with outstanding art) and Alias Omnibus (man, do I like Bendis, makes me want to pick up the Pulse as well).

Thursday morning I was rudely awakened at 7:30, by someone at the door who turned out to be our taxi driver who’d taken us home from the airport the night before. He had Jill’s wallet, which she’d somehow left in the cab. He didn’t seem happy by my behavior, but since he charged me $16 for the trrip to return the wallet, I wasn’t giving him a tip on top of that. I called work to see if they needed me – they didn’t, so I went back to bed. Couldn’t get back to sleep, but it was nice to try. I got up and got ready, Jill not too far behind me. We went by Club Pet to pick up Illa at 10, but they thought we’d said 1 and he was soaking wet from his bath. So we went over to the Costco on 50 to kill time, picked up some blank CDs and random food (including some very tasty lobster bisque). We went back at 11 and got ourselves one damp, happy dog. We brought him home, I took him out, then he explored around the house. Jill ran errands, I read newspapers and watched TV. Jill made ham and cheese sandwiches to go with some french onion soup we picked up at Costco, as we were both in the mood for soup. I tried to start a fire later, but the downdraft was just too strong. We read, then went to bed.

Friday Jill took me in to work, I had the airplane food I wasn’t feeling well enough to eat on the plane (sandwich and snack bar) for lunch. She picked me up later and we went over to my mom’s house. My sister and Forest and Dad were already there, ready to celebrate our family Christmas, something we couldn’t do before we left as Sharon was just getting back from South Africa. Mom made appetizers for dinner, including a very odd treatment of asparagus, green bean casserole, very good dim sum (also from Costco) and a tasty frozen fruit salad. We also had problems with a downdraft with a fire there, had to open the windows for a while. The gift exchange was odd – Mom wanted to play Santa, and made sure only one gift was handed out at a time. That took a while, as you can imagine – an hour and a half just to go through gifts for six people. We had a good time, though – lotsa Christmas cookies. I scored the Absolute Dark Knight and some nice DVDs, including The Second Coming – Russell T. Davies, first series with Christopher Eccleston. We got home around 11, went to bed after playing with Illa.

I was feeling better during Friday, but Saturday morning had me falling out of bed like I’d been smacked by a sledgehammer. As near as I can tell, we both got the flu, and I got the worst of it. I didn’t feel like doing much of anything, just reading (paper), TV (Dr. Who), and web surfing. It was the surfing which proved to be frustrating, as my site was down. It was the last straw, as email had been sporadic for the past month, and I was done. Chris recommended Dreamhost, and though I was sorry to see the $3/month plan go, $8/month is a great deal these days (I explained to Jill my theory that my old host was trying to drive away customers grandfathered in at the old rate because you can’t sign up for it anymore). Jill made marinara sauce to go with some whole wheat ravioli (that again we picked up at Costco), then I watched the Redskins lose their last game.

Sunday we had planned to go to a New Year’s party down in Richmond, but I still felt like crap (and she asked the logical question – would I go to work like this?). So we cancelled, and I sat and watched TV (Lost Room) and read (papers and comics). Jill went out, brought back spring rolls from Wegmans and pho from Pho 2000 in Worldgate. Both were very tasty. I successfully started a fire, and we watched “Clear And Present Danger” (we started working through the Clancy films a while back and had stopped here), pausing to watch the ball drop.

Today I’m feeling better, hope to go to work tomorrow. I’ve spent most of my time on my website. Most important was moving my blog over – and I saved it as SQL, not what Movable Type or WordPress use to import, so I had to install Movable Type just to be able to export the data (since WordPress installs automatically with Dreamhost – did I mention this place is pretty good?), then mess around to get everything imported again, then add email and all my other files. Jill made pasta for dinner, then I watched “The Virgin Suicides” before heading to bed.