I'm
trying to plan a trip to Hawaii and I don't know what the hell I'm
doing. When have I had to plan a trip in the last five years? Never,
so I'm out of practice. For some reason taking all the date variables
and the hotel variables and the location variables and putting them
together has been harder than an 8x10 page of Sodoku,
which I think means my brain has gone soft. Huh. On the flipside,
rough problem to have, I know.
===
I've
started using Flickr for sharing my personal photos, except I just
found out how public it can be after I uploaded a picture of my
friend's baby shower from over the weekend where she's holding up
a baby shirt that has some writing on it, and within 5 minutes 7
people had viewed it and someone who I don't know had left a random
comment. How did the people find the photo? I'm baffled/amused/vaguely
disturbed.
And
in picture taking news, the Canon 20D has been discontinued and
the 30D (or whatever it'll be called) will probably be announced
next week. My timing is so perfect with buying electronic devices
I just wow myself. For normal people a model upgrade wouldn't be
a problem, but because of my gadget lust it just makes me Martin
Lawrence-sized crazy.
On
the fun side of the electronics spectrum, I'm going to buy this
today. It's the size of a miniDV tape! Here is my justification:
#1, we have a Sony credit card with enough points to cut the cost
in half. #2, it can serve as a second deck for video editing and
thus save the heads on my more expensive camera. #3, I can sneak
it into concerts and illicitly tape my favorite bands. #4, I can
take it to Hawaii and what's $200 in the scheme of things when going
to Hawaii is so fricking expensive? See, I'm learning to live a
little.
On
that note, kind of, it's funny how my cheapness extends to other
people. And I kind of realize I'm not being credible talking about
cheapness and Hawaii and camcorders in the same breath, but you
have to trust me about how I hate letting go of a dollar. Yesterday
my friend called and said her fence had blown down in the Burbank
wind the other day, and that she'd called a guy for an estimate
and that he'd be coming over in an hour. So since Gray and I built
our 100 foot-long fence five years ago for like $300 in materials,
I invited myself over to check out her damage, and it turns out
half of the fence fell down when the support beams snapped. So if
it were my house, I told her, I'd pry off all the perfectly usable
boards, sink new support posts, and hammer it all together. It'd
be maybe a day and half of work and might cost $100 on the outside
in new lumber. So you know what the guy who came wanted to charge?
$2100 for a redwood fence, and $1700 for cedar. My friend was like,
"Not bad!" I said, "But it's all labor!" and
again she said, "That's not so bad!" You would have to
kill me before I would pay $2000 for a 44-foot fence.
===
I
saw "Menopause: The Musical" with my mother the other
day, and it was the rowdiest theater crowd I'd ever been involved
with. If you've seen it you know they invite people to go up on
stage afterwards and do a line-dancing jig, and half the theater
went up to participate. I so do not understand that mentality in
any way, shape or form that it makes me think I'm an alien. I just
sit there thinking, "Why do those women want to be up there
Rockette-kicking in a line? What do they get out of it?" Perhaps
I just don't know how to have a good time.
Tonight
I may go see the new Terrence Malick movie which unfortunately stars
Colin Farrell, and maybe I can convince Gray to go with me if I
intimate that Pocahontas will be topless. Which she's not, I don't
think, because she was 14 when they filmed it. But given that I'm
the only person I know who loved The Thin Red Line with a passion,
I don't think it will be easy to convince anyone, even my husband,
to go along. But boy I could use a good movie... my eyes and head
are too filled up with bad horror lately. Which is inspiring me
to write good horror, but it's all a little much. i.e., Amityville
Horror? Why, and no. Except for Ryan Reynolds with his shirt off.
Which reminds me, what the devil has Alanis Morrissette done to
her hair? Yikes.
