Just a couple of quick notes since it's been a few days.
1. It's been a few days because I've been trying to get my TRASHionals category put to bed. I did, just now. YAY! I need TRASH in my life to get that twice annual adrenalin rush that comes from taking 1-3 days to do something that you should've done over the course of 4-6 months. I've missed that since leaving grad school.
2. Work is still great. Being downtown has been incredibly invigorating. I ran errands above ground today that I could've taken the subway for, despite blustery 30-degree weather, because I like walking around the city more than I dislike freezing my ears (and other parts) off.
3. I read Annie Proulx's Close Range. It's a book of short stories, all set in Wyoming, most of them contemporary (it's a 1999 book). Short stories are manageable for my rail commute, so that was nice. The stories were generally of a high quality, with a couple of fun brief interludes of gallows-type humor. I felt that Proulx successfully portrayed the subjectivity of an amazingly wide array of characters, linked mostly by a connection to a physical place that most people would gladly leave, but where her characters cannot help but stay for a variety of psychological reasons. I don't read many short stories or short story collections, so it's hard for me to put it to any qualitative standard. But it worked for me.
4. I listened to part of a CD today that "Bob Frankowitz" (I've got to remember to ask him about the alias) made when we took a trip out to see a tiny piece of the L.A. River that is not embedded in exposed concrete, followed by a trip into the heart of the River downtown where a homeless man gave us a guided tour. It made me openly long to be headed back across the country. Soon enough.
5. Saturday night DEK, Bill, Terri, Tom and I watched The Bourne Identity, finding particularly funny the numerous times in the film someone removes a jacket for no good reason. We laughed our way through the key bridge scene with Chris Cooper as a result, and probably missed key plot points. Afterward we played a game called Burn Rate. The idea is that each player is running a dot.com, and you try to run yours into the ground at a slower rate than everybody else. The last one not bankrupt wins. It's a bit confusing at first, (the rules are somewhat convoluted) but since everybody in the room has worked for a high-tech company, is married to someone who worked for a high-tech company, or has temped, we all related and a very good time was had by all. There's your mention, Tom...