January 2003 Archives

Well, my vacation is just about over. One more day to go. It'll be rough getting back into the habit of waking up to go to work. But I think I'll manage. Hopefully things start out slowly, though. I don't think I could handle a crisis on a Monday morning after two weeks of vacation.

Sarah and I went to see Grey Eye Glances last night at the Rams Head Tavern in Annapolis. Good show, though the food there's kinda overpriced. The opening act was pretty good, too.

Posted on January 5, 2003 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If it's true, this kind of thing makes me almost physically ill.

Posted on January 13, 2003 2:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Tonight is Sarah's first class in her grad school program. She's thrilled. Of course, she's also fighting a losing battle against a cold, so she's not quite as thrilled as she could be, but she's doing her best. It's really a good thing we work at the same place, since we probably won't be seeing each other too often while she's taking classes. She has class Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday nights and then Saturday morning. When my Japanese class starts up again, that'll be on Monday. It'll be rough, but this is definitely a good thing for her to do and a perfect time to do it.

By the way... it's really tough to get out of debt when there's so much stuff you want.

Posted on January 14, 2003 9:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well. I promised a li'l review on my blog when I listened to it, so I'm giving it. Keep in mind that this is my opinion only slightly biased by knowing the man and that my musical tastes are rather different from his. But anyhow... :)

On January 1st, Urban Ambiance re-released the Lyrical Prophets' 1997 release Flipyawig, this time on CD. It also includes two bonus tracks. Woo! I happened to be the first person who ordered it. Woo! Anyhow... I got the chance to listen to this on the way to and from work today. Here's my impression.

For me... the album is like a rather attractively curvaceous woman. It starts off good, blossoms at track 4, thins out a smidge at track 6, expands around track 7, then tapers off a bit to a nice pair of legs starting with track 9. The album is solidly built. Definitely the stand-out tracks for me are the title track, Supa Man, and Nitty Gritty. I'm definitely not saying that the others are poor, but I really enjoyed these. The CD's lyrically clever, musically rich, and just oodles of fun. And, honestly, I've never heard Ryan cuss more in my life than on the bonus track Stuck. Yikes.

So, ladies and gents, go buy it. And, while you're at it, buy some stuff. Listen to the album and quiver in ecstatic anticipation as you wait for the forthcoming follow-up, Prophecy Manifested.

Posted on January 14, 2003 8:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Well, Sarah just got back from her first class. It was definitely an eye-opener.

Sarah had signed up for 4 classes worth 12 credits total. This was a cakewalk during her undergrad years when she wasn't working and the classes were... well... undergradish. This was different.

She has to get an A or B or she's dropped from the program. The readings for this class for the week are made up of almost 200 pages of articles and about 150 pages of book reading. This is apparently normal for these kinds of classes. This is also insane.

A grad student in her last semester told Sarah that she'd go nuts if she tried to do this while working. The student had done 12 credits without working and just about tore her hair all out.

So... Sarah's going to be dropping a couple classes. She's going to go to all of them to see which ones to drop. She's disappointed, since she wanted to do this fairly quickly, but this is just way too much. She's taking it fairly well, though, and I think she expected this to happen. But it was good of her to take on more than she could chew just to see what it was like. Grad school's a completely new experience. This'll definitely be better for her. Only one of us is allowed to be nuts.

Posted on January 14, 2003 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've finally taken my financial future into my own hands. Sorta. I was offered a fairly low interest personal loan, so I took it. The rate was only slightly better than my lowest interest rate credit card, it's probably the best rate I'll get without being a homeowner. But it's the psychological aspect of it that'll help in the long run.

Using credit cards only in the most dire of emergencies and knowing exactly when I'll be out of debt finally will be a good thing. Credit card debt is the most evil thing in the universe and it's been haunting me for over 10 years now. Having to wait another 5 years is a pain, but... at least now I know it'll be over soon.

Posted on January 23, 2003 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We went downtown this weekend to spend some time in the cold. Well, that wasn't the real reason we went, but anyhow... While we were on the campus of Sarah's grad school, we saw this huge bird fly across our view and land in a tree. We think it was a hawk. It was pretty nifty seeing one that close.

We also went to two exhibits at the National Gallery of Art that I highly recommend going to see before they disappear in early March. The first was Deceptions and Illusions: Five Centuries of Trompe l'Oeil Painting. This was pretty incredible. Though most of them didn't really fool me (since you knew that you were going to be looking at a bunch of stuff that was meant to fool you, the effect was sort of lost), there were many pieces that looked real from a relatively short distance. It was truly amazing how realistic a lot of it was. I can't even imagine having enough talent to faithfully reproduce real life like that. The highlight of the show for me, I think, was the grandfather clock draped with a cloth. Except it wasn't a cloth. The whole thing was cut from one block of mahogany, so the cloth was just bleached wood. Even close up, it looked a lot like cloth.

The other exhibit we saw was Drawing on America's Past: Folk Art, Modernism, and the Index of American Design. This was a very interesting look at a New Deal program that I'd never even heard of before. Artists were hired to do watercolor paintings of various folk art objects including quilts, plates, pottery, store front figures, and various other pieces. In some cases, the original art has been lost and only the watercolor rendering remains. But in others, both still survive and it was fascinating to see not only how realistic the paintings were but also how time has affected the original art. I'd never seen watercolors so detailed and rich in texture. Some of them looked like photographs.

So... if you've got the time, I'd definitely suggest going to the National Gallery and checking these out. If you live anywhere near DC, that is. :P

Posted on January 28, 2003 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hrmmm... I hope this isn't a sign of bad things to come with Smallville. I'm hoping that it's just a little dip and things will get back to the usual goodness soon. But last night's episode was pretty horrible and next week's doesn't look much better.

Last week's episode was great. Lots of character development and "big picture" plot development. Some great dialogue, too. So maybe I was expecting too much. The plot in this week's episode was pretty thin. Even I figured out who probably shot Lionel right away. And the dialogue was pretty lousy. Not that Smallville's dialogue is always wonderful, but this was often predictable and even cornier than the corniest it's ever been. The only really high points of this episode were seeing Lex and Clark go at it and seeing losing his temper, something he'll eventually need to learn to control.

As for next week's episode... well... it'll be nice for Pete and Chloe to get some serious screen time again, since they've been pretty absent lately. But the original red kryptonite episode JUST happened. And they're going to reuse it already? Is this because Lana and Clark were getting along together TOO well and they needed to shake things up again? They could've thought of something a bit better than a retread. Jeez.

What little I've heard of the following week's episode sounds promising, at least, with Lex searching for Lionel's illegitimate son and all that.

Posted on January 29, 2003 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Man... I'd forgotten just how much I really love the original cast recording of Jesus Christ Superstar. Thanks, CD Cellar!

Posted on January 29, 2003 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I knew it!

Which Rainbow Brite kid are you? By Growing.

Posted on January 29, 2003 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)