E.T.'s L.J. U.R.L.

I recently showed sdavido an ad in Car and Driver that I thought was impressive. It's a mostly blank page with a library-card pocket mounted on it, and a typical-looking lender card in the pocket (affixed with a glue dot). When you pull it out, the other side of the card has information about the car being advertised. The caption on the page says something along the lines of "the only other place you can find this kind of peace and quiet." (They're promoting the silence and smoothness of the new car.) I thought it was very clever, and since S. likes to bring odd bits of cultural media into his classes, I thought he'd like to see it. (He may bring it in for sociology.) But he also pointed out that most of his college students wouldn't relate to the ad, since they grew up with the Web and haven't really used card catalogs. It makes sense that the target audience is older, given the car in question, but it's amazing how wide that generational shift is...

(Yes, we can extrapolate cutural trends from almost anything. Never a dull moment around here!)

Time to turn your clocks back an hour!

(I almost forgot, thought someone else might need a reminder...)

I've been needing new shoes for a while, and decided I really have to get some before Rosh haShana. Fortunately one of my cousins married a guy who works in his family's shoe store (relatives can be useful). So I went out there tonight to look for shoes. ( Read more... )

On the way back tonight, I saw two interesting license plates (both from NH) which I thought might amuse people. One read "KTRINA" (I imagine she's feeling self-conscious right now!) and the other read "1017FNX" (which I thought might particularly interest gnomi)... :-)

sdavido killed seven big flies tonight. I told him that he deserves a belt! Of course, we'd prefer not to have the flies in the first place (we don't know where they're coming from), but at least I know that he'll protect me. :-)

He also gave me an early birthday present tonight (prompted by coincidental speculation about the possibility of finding such a thing): a copy of W.O.S.A.T. on DVD. Whee! Have I mentioned that he's really good at finding things?... (I gave him an early present of a cool tie in exchange.)

In other news, Scheherazade went in to have her teeth cleaned today, and still seems a bit glazed from the anesthesia. Hopefully she'll be back to her lucid fuzzy self soon.

Our day was a little random but it was fun anyway. ( Read more... ) Hope you all had a nice day, and got to enjoy the lovely weather!

Apparently people are discovering that nerds are good for business. If I had more free time (and didn't hate the smell of alcohol), I might check some of these out!

I spent a fair chunk of time tonight on the phone with a tech support guy at Comcast, trying to resolve a connection problem. (It's working now, obviously.) At one point in the conversation, after he'd told me to change a computer setting, I said, "Okay, it seems to have reacclimated." He said, "What?" I repeated myself, and he asked me to define "reacclimated." Then he asked me to spell it. Then he got all excited about having learned a new word, and started throwing it into the conversation at random moments. Which was amusing, but... I didn't think that was such an obscure word. What do you think? Was he out of touch, or have I just been spoiled by having intelligent and well-read friends?

For those of you who might be interested, today was the 10,000th episode of Days of Our Lives. My mother and I dug out the little portable TV and plugged it in at the store so we could watch it. (We used to follow it, but have been "out of the loop" for a while.) They had Frances Reid, who plays Alice Horton (one of the few remaining members of the original cast), do an introduction and postscript to the episode, which was rather sweet. It's amazing to realize it's been around that long...

I have jury duty tomorrow. I don't mind in the abstract, I know it's an important part of the justice system and all that... but... (1) I have to be there at the time when I'm usually just getting up; (2) it's in a part of town I really don't know (hope I can find it, and the traffic's not too bad); and (3) I don't like leaving my mom alone in the store, it's hard not having back-up if it gets busy. Oh well. Hopefully I'll get there on time, and won't have to stay there all day. At worst I'll have some time to read.

In other news, I think the Red Sox won their baseball game. (I'm really not into sports, for those of you who don't know.) I say this because for the past half-hour, we've been hearing monkey howls from outside, and car horns honking, and car alarms going off... and police sirens in the distance. I told sdavido that tonight I'm really glad we don't park on the street. I dearly hope that there isn't going to be a repeat of what happened when the Patriots won a big game last year, when people tipped cars over and set fire to them in the streets. I cannot comprehend why happiness equals destruction in some people's minds... can't they just jump up and down and hug each other?

But I should really get to bed (assuming the monkey howls quiet down). If I don't get to finish answering e-mail and posts tonight, I'll try to catch up tomorrow.

I think I'm caught in the middle of an LJ restructuring, things keep moving around...

But that's not the odd coincidence. The odd coincidence is that I called the police twice today. (Not 911, don't worry.) ( Read more... )