here’s a half-assed update.
happy belated birthday to dennis p, whose birthday was on saturday. hope you had a good one!
happy belated birthday to ed t, whose birthday was sunday. i must remember to give him a call this week. *ties string around finger*
playing a lot of ‘the sims.’ it is unbelieveably addicting. have one character who is on the politics track, one character on the science track, and one on the medicine track. sims have thus far burned down three kitchen stoves, one fire having also claimed the life of one of the aforementioed sims (however she was ressurrected by the glory of reverting to a previously saved game). one sim has also experienced an alien abduction, but returned alive and seemingly normal. one of the friends of the sims doesn’t have a bathroom in his house (jer forgot to build one for him), so he always uses the bathroom of the couple’s house and inevitably clogs it every time. maid service is really handy. one household is now worth about 40k, with each of the two people in the household taking home about 500 each day. and we’re working on getting them their next promotions. so this game is really strange in that it’s a weird version of real life — suddenly even the most mundane aspects of life are important, like making sure your sims wash their hands after they use the bathroom. or clean up after themselves after a meal. or get to sleep on time. but somehow, messing with all those mundane little things is really really fun. heh. it’s almost like as hard as it is to control things in real life, you can at least sort of control them in the sims lives. or maybe it makes you feel the opposite is possible. cute little sims.
also played a bit of tennis recently. am in jer’s office tennis tournament, in both singles and doubles. jer and i lost our doubles match saturday morning (which wasn’t so bad, since it was the first time we ever played doubles together) and i lost my match tonight. note to self: since it takes you 40 minutes to get warmed up anyway, you should really play a match BEFORE you play a real match, so you don’t drop a set at love cuz you’re really not completely there. second note to self: more match play is required, cuz you are really really bad.
eating too much meat etc with jer as he is on atkins diet. *worry worry*
my longtime good friend n.c. is leaving for china for a year sometime this next week for an activity with which he is involved. i’m so proud of him for doing this trip, and i’m honored to be able to continue to count him as one of my good friends, despite how much time has passed. i wish him well.
i will be deprived of jer for about a month, so i will soon have more free time than i will know what to do with. please let me know if you would like to hang out, so i can plan accordingly (norcal and socal folks, i’m talking to both of you!)
pizza hut buffalo wings have only a gram of carbohydrates per wing.
‘the sims’-inspired thought: we could really use a maid around our apartment. =P
i’m going to *hella* miss jer. i don’t even know what i’m going to do.
xanga is so totally down.
(late update) gray davis got recalled. arnold schwarzenegger is running for CA gov. quoth a friend of a friend: “he would be the governator!!” i still think the recall is stupid. am considering voting for arianna huffington cuz i think she’s a cool person, but it’s one thing to talk and one thing to govern, and i have serious doubts as to whether she can govern. same for arnold. and cruz bustamante kinda blows, so i don’t really want to vote for him either.
more on election ballot: racial privacy initiative, written by our favorite UC regent Ward Connerly, is the little-noticed but uber-important proposition on the october ballot that needs to be voted down. here’s a site for your information. i would write more, but i’ve said enough on this sort of issue.
pres election 2004: howard dean is on the cover of newsweek this week. he’s good at galvanizing the public. definitely a plus. still kind of sad gary hart isn’t running, but i’m over it. democrats need to come up with a hard hitting unified attack if they want to take out Bush. the man needs to go.
a few more reasons why he needs to go: cutting benefits for America’s veterans in spite of his public opining of the importance of honoring America’s soldiers. and giving a free-for-all pass to oil companies to do whatever they want in Iraq.
another link off kottke.org: digitally retouching a bikini model’s photo. don’t believe everything you see in the magazines folks. it’s amazing what people can do with photoshop these days.
looking at new cell phone plans… again. any suggestions? we have t-mobile now. having the family plan is cool because jer and i talk all the time. it is not cool in that we don’t have nighttime minutes. grrr. there must be a better way! thinking of switching to verizon because sooo many people are on verizon, but i don’t like the lack of clarity, and the m2m minutes seem kind of limited. plus i really like the phones sprint offers. mm… samsung… LG… samsung…
btw, the motorola t720 is a CRAPPY phone. my friend went through 2 in about 5 months and is now done with them. the first one broke in about a month, the second one died a few months after that. the color screen is nice, but the battery life is wretched. plus, his phone reception was awful, since he was on AT&T’s GSM service, which at this writing continues to be practically nonexistent. he has now switched to a less snazzy phone (one of the motos, i think), and he is much happier.
oh, and i saw phone booth last week. saw the actress i was talking about in a few entries back, Arian Ash. really depressing to see her in her skivvies as a hooker for this movie. still hope her career is what takes off, rather than her clothes.
and that’s all i can think of for now. good night!