May 2002 Archives
We finally saw StarWars II (we just couldn't allow to do Memorial Weekend without contributing to the Hollywood business). It was just as the reviews said. The special effects and animation was very cool. Yoda kicked ass, figuratively and literarily. No comments on Jar-Jar. Anakin was a punk and watching him groping young Padmé was embarrassingly and awkwardly amusing. It's too bad, some of these actors/actresses have done great work in other movies. I guess they couldn't (or weren't allowed to) transcend the mediocre script/directing.
Then again, I'm sure I'll see the next one, so I guess George Lucas doesn't have to try very hard, after all.
I'm sore and sunburned and only slowly recovering from the weekend. Jennifer and I were invited, along with a bunch of other people, to Doug's aunt's Big Tree Ranch in Concan, TX. The place is named for Texas' biggest Bold Cypress Tree which stands on their property (it is big). We had a blast. We got there on Saturday afternoon (Jfer had her Danskin workout in the morning), in time for a nice swim in the crystal clear Frio River that flows through the property. It's called "Frio" for a reason, but it's warmer than Barton Springs or the Guadalupe in Gruene. We then had a nice dinner of hamburgers and hot dogs cooked outside.
We spend the night in the bunk bed house (used during hunting season by visiting hunters) and I felt like I was at camp. Saturday was gorgeous weather so when I remembered that I had left my camera outside, I wasn't worried about it when going to bed. Around 1:30 AM, Jennifer woke me up to rain and thunder and we had to drive back to where my camera was, over dirt roads and without contacts. I saved a couple of cameras and other stuff left out and by the time we woke up it was gorgeous again (that's the type of weather pattern I like).
After a rich outdoor breakfast, 14 of us went up the river to go tubing. Thanks to the rain over night, the watter was high enough so that we didn't have to walk but in one or two places. The Frio is very nice and relaxing - there are a few rapids, but milder than on the Guadalupe. There were also fewer people, which was nice.
When we got back to the ranch, all the dinner was already cooked - a goat and a couple of javelinas and the usual that goes with barbeque. It was very, very good. Since I had volunteered, I also got to make a peach cobbler on the camp fire coals (I had never even seen a dutch oven before) which turned out pretty good.
Unfortunately we had to get back home to take care of Homer - he was happy to see us and didn't seem to mind spending the night on his own. Today Jfer is at work while I'm making it up to him. We also have a photographer appointment (the first of four this week) and a cookout at Kat's in the evening.
The trip was incredibly nice and relaxing, despite all the stuff we did. We got to meet more of Doug and Luciana's families and several more of Doug's friends - one of which I happened to know from doing Madrigal with some ten years ago. I hope we get invited back to the ranch again. We didn't have the time for a ride through most of the (500 acre) property and have yet to see the famous arrow head collection that Doug's uncle has.
I've often wondered about the strong pro-Israel support by the Christian far-right and today I've read an interesting article on Salon about it. It talks about dispensationalism, the fundamentalists' belief that history is divided into periods described in the Bible (this is not to be confused with the Catholic dispensation, which is a sort of free-out-of-jail card).
The Dispensationalist fascination with Armageddon and the second coming is apparently quite prevalent. A lot of current fiction based on Revelations (be it the crappy Omega Code movies or the successful Left Behind book series) is quite popular and wide spread. Many people take all of the bible quite literally, even the funky parts like Revelations.
Some fundamentalist groups, such as Christian Friends of Israeli Communities are raising millions of dollars to support settler movements to help them to "[fulfill] prophecy". They believe that
- God promised to Abraham the land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan river (which includes the Gaza strip and the West Bank).
- Jews must return to Israel and reclaim the Temple mount in order for the Rapture to happen
So how come the Christian Right, who is or has generally been perceived a anti Semitic is suddenly so concerned for the welfare of Israel? I don't think it's the love of Judaism that is driving it. It just that Jews have to return to "Judea and Samaria" as Tom Delay calls it, before the divine plot can continue. And, hey, someone's gotta provides those millions who get slaughtered at the battle of Armageddon, right?
While I'm not sure how the situation in the Middle East should be resolved, I do think that Israel needs to pull out of the occupied lands (which is what many in Israel agree with, though no one seems to know how or if this can be achieved) and that the international community should come down hard on the Palestinians if they continue their campaign of terror. But how is the US going to help getting this accomplished if significant portion of the Republican leadership (Armey, DeLay, Ashcroft and their ilk) think that that's against the Will of God?
I've installed a bulleting board on my site at forums.nonplus.net, although it currently only has forums for hosting (yeah, I need to create a hosting page).
I've looked at several boards. Some, such as Ikonboard, are not allowed by my provider (to resource intensive). I ended up going with phpBB2 and like it a lot. The installation and configuration was incredibly easy and the board seems to be pretty snappy. If I find the time, I'll modify the skin a little.
So far I've done two cake tastings (Jfer's done more with here family). I didn't care for the first place, but today's was tastier and the people were friendlier. Jennifer says she has liked one of her places better, so no I'm going to go to at least two more tastings.
I think I would enjoy being in the cake business. Both the baking as well as the decorating parts. Of course, I wouldn't last very long - I'd probably either explode or get a heart attack from "quality control" sampling all the time.
On Saturday, Benny and Diana joined us in Austin - bearing kolaches from West. It was good for Meredith to see her dad while she was in town and for everyone to get to get exposed to how much work and money is involved in a wedding ;-)
We had a very nice dinner at North by Northwest - we're looking at it as a possible place for rehearsal dinner. We were going to go to hear Guy Forsyth later, but luckily everyone was too pooped. So we just hung at home.
Next morning Meredith flew back to NY and we went to a 2(!) hour mass at Holly Cross, so that Jennifer's family could meet Fr. Cletus and see the church. They liked the place and the choir (I wonder if we could book them for the wedding) but the service was just too, er, darn long. We then did breakfast at Cafe Java before everyone headed back north.
I'm glad and appreciative that Jfer's families are being so good about getting together to help us with the wedding. I imagine it is awkward at times, but everyone has been nothing but gracious and mature. Hopefully by the time we're all stuck for a week in Arkansas, everyone is can have a good and relaxing fun time.
I think I have recovered from the weekend, now, so here's how it went.
Rita and Meredith arrived on Thursday and they, along with Jfer, did much needed wedding stuff. I'm so glad that Meredith is involved in this - she has the determination and focus of a drill sergeant and gets things done (of course, anyone has more determination and focus than either Jennifer or me).
Jennifer and I had planned a dinner for friends several weeks ago, and I was a bit afraid we wouldn't be able to do all our hosting duties. As it turned out, only Kat and Steve were able to make it, so we had a nice party of six for dinner. I almost was late for dinner, since the deli counter at Central Market took way longer than it needed to (no, there was no line at all, but I managed to get a very, very slow deli person). However, for the first time, I think, I managed to get the right amount of potatoes and cheese! For future reference, if you're making Raclette, count on 1/2 lb of potatoes and 1/3 lb of cheese a person. And make sure you have enough pickled things.
I think everyone enjoyed the dinner. And it was so great to see Kat and Steve again - just as Cecily told me, "they glow" :-)
As a President, Jimmy Carter got a pretty bad rap, but as an ex-President, the man has been nothing but amazing. His involvement in the domestic and international community is something that others could only aspire to emulate (see the Carter Center).
His current trip to Cuba is just the latest example. His attitude and outspokenness gave a breath of fresh air to the people there and got the Cuban media to report something other than the hard-core Castro line (which is pretty much unheard of) and our media to report something other than the hard-core Bush line.
The contrast between Carter's take on Cuban relations and the current policy are striking. The whole debate about Cuba supplying bio-weapons technology to rogue countries (yes they are, quoth Bush, and no they ain't, quoth Carter) is bizarre. I wonder if the "bio-weapons" connection is today's version of Reagan's "drug smuggling" connection. Just a smoke screen to justify our irrational policy towards Cuba. Because, hey, it's not like the government would be sanctioning Cuba just to get the votes of the right-wing Cubans in Miami, would they?
When we were in Arlington over Mother's Day weekend, Rita and Jerry lend me a DVD of Close Encounter of the Third Kind, which had never seen and "just had too see". Since Rita has to take the DVD back this weekend, I decided to watch it while they were carousing at Elisabeth's last night.
So first off, I guess I'm glad I saw (most of) it, so I know I've not been missing anything. Sure, it's supposed to be a classic, but what the heck is it about Sci-Fi flicks from the '70s? Just like with 2001 (OK, that was released in '68, but it's really the same thing), I had to fight hard to stay awake. It's not like I watch fast action Hollywood schlock all the time, but these movies just did not do it for me. Yawn, is all I have to say.
Maybe I napped through some part that made the movie truly worthwhile, if so, please let me know.
What glorious weather we have. It's sunny and cool - I could actually see Homer's breath when I took him for his morning walk! The bike ride to work today and yesterday was great (Jfer, although looking quite hot in he Chile Jersey was actually cold) wearing my fleece vest.
Anyway, it's amazing how quickly I'm getting used to being back on the bike. It took me less than 30 minutes to get to work today and I'm now comfortable staying in my basic heart rate zone almost all the time. I'll crank it up next week - I'm curious to see how long it'll take me to get back down to the 25-26 minute rides I had last fall.
Thanks to my ability to not-quite-always having my shit together, we almost missed another opera. I was reading the paper this morning and noticed a review of last Saturday's performance of Rigoletto. I did not find an entry on my calendar (despite the fact that Jennifer has been harping for weeks to let her know what date the tickets are for) and went home over lunch to check.
The envelope in which my season tickets came had a note saying that Rigoletto tickets would be sent in another envelope. So I had to go hunting through the house through our stashes of unopened mail and eventually struck gold - only to find out that it's tonight. I called Jfer and she's going to manage to change her plans (sorry Meredith). It's at the City Coliseum again (where they did Carmen so well) and according to the article in the paper, this production is even better.
I like the Rigoletto pictures ALO has on their site. Especially the one in front of the SRV statue.
I just found out that the spammer who's been bringing down my site (along with others hosted on the same server) to its knees in the last couple of days did it through an old formmail script that I had installed in the MadrigalDinner site a while back. The script has a security hole that spammers can exploit.
I feel really bad, since I've been pretty pissed at my provider for the server outages and it turns out I was partly responsible. Damn those spammers. If you haven't done so, go and contribute to SpamCop.net and narc on all the spams you get (I already do).
I've been planning to start biking to work again, but it's taking me forever to overcome the inertia. May 1st was definitely going to be it, but it came and went and my fat ass was still in my Maxima. I decided that this week was going to be it (again), but I had taken my laptop home over the weekend so Monday was out. Today, however, I finally made it.
I was going to leave at 7:30 to make to to work by 8, but that didn't happen. For one, Homer's walk took longer than anticipated (doesn't it always?) Then I had to get my bike out, put air into the tires. Then I couldn't find my Walkman and fanny pack (I eventually gave up on those). Eventually I had everything ready and was about to take off, and realized I had to go back inside and find my bike lock. I didn't leave the house until almost 8.
I made it here OK, but I realize I'm totally out of shape (no big surprise, but still). It took me almost 10 minutes longer than last fall and I couldn't keep my heart rate down to where I wanted it to be. Still, it felt good and I'm going to try to do it at least three times a week again.
And it was neat leaving the house with both our cars parked in the garage. Jennifer on a bus and me on a bike. Take that, W!
I got a notice from my car loan provider telling me that my very last payment is due. I had set up direct withdrawal so car payments for me have just been a quiet hemorrhaging of my checking account without any direct involvement by me. Well for some reason, the last payment has to be done by hand so they sent me a bill for it. I printed out the check and signed it with gusto. I must say it's a glorious feeling to be finishing a loan.
I've made great strides in my SpellCheck. You can see it in action on this page (feel free to enter some other misspelled text).
So far I have only tested it on IE 5 on Windows and Macintosh, so it's probably not yet working on Netscape et al, since there seems to be nothing standard about JavaScript or the browsers' DOMs.
Also, I have hooked it up into my blogger comments, so feel free to test it there.
