Monk Moment

We spent a frustrating 2 hours tonight searching several stores for a 32oz insulated water bottle with a big enough opening on top to except ice cubes. They are in every store, on numerous aisles as long as it isn’t Christmas time and Donna had the misfortune of dropping her water bottle and breaking it this morning December 27th.

To ease our suffering we dined on Carnitas at Marias. We were seated at a booth by the window with a lovely view of the laundromat next building over. As I looked through the faux wood blinds, it came to my attention that several of the slats were tilted different from the majority. Reflexively, I nudged the offending slats into line with the rest.

Adrian would have been so proud.

Started up, still up.
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Merry Christmas

Please accept — with no obligation, implied or implicit — my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable tradition of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your preference. In addition, please enjoy a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008.

Started up, still up.
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He Say You Brade Runner

BladerunnerI’m sorry Ridley, I think I like the 1982 theatrical release better. The voice over narration gives it a real noir feeling. Plus, after watching all that dark and rain and smoke its nice to get a happy ending, no matter how contrived.

I’m re-watching the theatrical release version now. Afterwards I’m going to give the Final Cut version a look, who knows, after watching all the “making of” stuff I might get all the symbolism and think that the final cut is better. But don’t hold your breath.

Started down, went up, still up.
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Didn’t See That Coming

Trans-Siberian Orchestra LiveProud Mary? But then again if I knew to read that Wikipedia entry before going. This afternoon’s Trans-Siberian Orchestra started a little late for one of two reasons, the band arrived late or the basketball floor wasn’t taken up in a timely manner, both of which we heard while waiting to get into the arena, but there wasn’t any official word.

Photo by JerseyJJ

They made up for it by playing for about 2-1/2 hours. The first half was an enhanced version of Christmas Eve & Other Stories. Then they introduced the band and used Proud Mary to segue into non Christmas TSO music for the second half.

A few things have changed in the 3 decades since I went to a live music concert. First, the only smoke in the stadium was generated by the band’s special effects crew and didn’t have that familiar sweet smell. Secondly, to show appreciation people used to hold up their lit butane lighters, now you have the glow of thousands of cell phone cameras. The trouble is, the glow only shows to the crowd, but the band is obliviously aware they were missing out, because towards the end they asked everyone in the crowd to hold up their cell phones towards them for a whole song.

Good show. Loud, kind of made listening to one of their CDs seem too quiet no matter how far to the right you twisted the volume knob.

Started up, went down, still down.
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