A Typical Wandering Mishmash

Short post tonight. Hope you don't mind. Both of you, I mean...

So, I played hookie from work again on Thursday, and went to see Super8 in the theater. It's good, mindless popcorn-chomping summer movie fare, I recommend it. Don't think too hard about the script, though, or you could easily get sucked into one of the gaping plot holes...

But before I went to see it, I sat in Panera with my mini-laptop and made an interesting discovery. I was going to fire it up so I could journal for a while, just to get some stuff off my chest, that I can't write about here in this blog. I went to create a new file, but inadvertently hit "open" instead, and the window that popped up had some of my journal files from last year in it. So, I clicked one from last May (2010) and started reading it. I kid you not... everything I was going to unload into a new journal entry was already written in the one from last year...

I'm stuck in the same stuff.

I only started writing in the webbook last year, so I couldn't go back further into the archived journals... but I bet if I pulled up some of my files from my desktop, from two, three, four years ago, I might make a similar discovery. I'm afraid to look. So I didn't write anything at Panera. In a mild fit of anger mixed with disappointment, I shut the thing off and went to a movie. I bought a $6 matinee ticket, then thought I could use some water, so I went up to the concession stand and bought a bottle... for $5.25! Are you kidding me? $5.25 for a bottle of water? I figured for that price, it must make me younger, stronger and better looking, so I took a chance...

I should have bought two...

So, yeah, I'm a bit bummed. As usual, trying to find that balance between being grateful for the wonderful blessings in my life, and deciding how (and if) it's possible to change the things about me and my life that grate on my soul. But I know you've heard this song before, so I shall shift gears...

So, I'm going up Saturday to LA to do the filming for that documentary on competitive eating. No idea how it will play out, but I'll go up with an open mind and try and stoke up my lackluster sense of adventure. I'll try to get a picture or two of the proceedings, and make a post Saturday night. Hopefully, it will be memorable and/or interesting enough to write about here in some detail. Then I'm off to camp with Middle Daughter for a week.

You'll survive without me somehow, I'm sure... both of you...

Check out these cool fold-down bookshelves...

Honestly, I have mixed feelings about them. Aside from the novelty of the idea and the apparently nice execution, not sure, not sure...

I may like this idea better...

A custom-built staircase/bookshelf combo. It's a nice way to make use of normally-unused space, and a good solution for storing all those books that get bought with the best of intentions, but never end up being read.

That reminds me, I was in the tub last night, with iPad on, and wanted to watch something using my NetFlix app while I soaked away my angst. I have 126 titles in my Watch Instantly queue that I could have watched. I swear, I spent ten minutes slowly scrolling through, contemplating, and dismissing every single title on that list, before finally picking a kung-fu flick at random to watch ten minutes of. Every one of those titles I added to the queue at some point, like that bookshelf reference above, with every intention of watching them with great interest. Some of those have been in my queue for YEARS.

I wonder what the dynamics are, behind that? I wonder if it's just me that does that (or if both of you do it also). I do it with games as well. Buy them with every intention of playing them... then promptly file them away and forget about them... then when I see them, I shrug my shoulders and say, "someday... but not now."

Speaking of games...

This is called "Democratic Chess"...

As you capture an enemy piece, you assimilate it, combining it (and it's attributes) with the piece that captured it. So if a rook captures a bishop (for example) it is now a hybrid piece that moves like a rook and a bishop. As you can see, the pieces are stack-able. A pawn-knight combo would be an interesting piece...

Here's a video of a polar bear going ninja on a seal... it's worth the watch, stay with it, it's cool...



I love the moment at 2:13.... classic... that film crew either had camera equipment with ridiculous zoom levels, or they got right up on the action... how they avoided becoming lunch instead of the seal is beyond me...

Ah, well, so much for a short post tonight... guess I just needed to wander. Thanks for reading it, if you got this far.

Dave Meander