27 May 2003

It's Mark's birthday. Wooo! He already left for work, having opened enough presents to get to one that would entertain him on the bus. That was a total of two presents: he was in a hurry, and I knew of at least one thing that would definitely entertain him on the bus, so I pointed him to it, and off he's gone. I or we will be going to fetch him from work and take him to Gordon Biersch (whether it's I or we depends on how Timprov is feeling), with or without work people (depending on whether Mark is feeling social). I think it'll be a decent birthday, despite the fact that he has to go to work all day.

And, of course, we've been celebrating all weekend. Yesterday afternoon, the two of us went to the new Matrix movie. Mark enjoyed it more than I did. I thought that it was far worse than the first movie. In the first movie, when Neo doesn't use his godlike powers, it's because he doesn't believe in them and/or hasn't had them long enough to have a good sense of them. But in this movie, it was "X2" all over again: superpowers used stupidly.

Oh yeah, there was also purely gratuitous (and obviously purely gratuitous) fighting that wasn't all that cool, sophomoric philosophical speculation, bad dialog, and a man-dress. (It's got all the color, style, and freshness of men's clothing, with all the comfort and functionality of a long dress! It's a man-dress! For heaven's sake, if he wants to wear a dress, let him wear a good dress.) Oh, and people are all on about how it's a "racially"/ethnically diverse city in Zion, but we saw several couples and all of them were "racially" uniform. Stupid.

(I absolutely hate using the word "race" to refer to human groupings. We all belong to the human race, and it reminds me of people declaring "racial" superiority and all that. Bleah.)

Anyway, Will Shetterly's got it all dead on. Yeah. Read him, if you want to hear more about why this movie sucked worse than the first one. (The specific entry link isn't working right now; it's the 11:02 p.m. post from Monday.) I liked very, very few things about this movie and disliked many. Bleh.

Also, I had a moment of, "Hey, she looks like Christopher Walken!" about Carrie-Ann Moss. If you've seen the movie, you know the moment when you would least want to think about Christopher Walken in that role? Yep. That's when I noticed. (It did make the rest of the movie more amusing, though, because whenever I got bored, I just subbed Christopher Walken in for her mentally. Hee.)

I did bits and pieces of things -- some cooking, some work, some chattering, some reading -- but not a lot of any one thing yesterday. Which was fine, I suppose. We got groceries, we relaxed, etc.

I ordered myself two shirts and a new pair of jeans (to replace the pair that got a hole in them after only two months -- those are being returned for a full refund, thanks!). And if the shirts don't fit, I'm going naked. I hate clothing so much. I realized that California has spoiled me in one particular: it has allowed me to coast into not having sufficient clothing for any particular season. It has no particular seasons, so I can wear kind of fallish clothes one day and maybe winter clothes the next and summer clothes in the same week. So, total, enough clothes. Especially if I don't go very far outside the house some days. But at home in December, you can't wear a short-sleeved T-shirt and nothing over it for three days in a row. At home in July, half a week of jeans and sweatshirts will do you no good whatsoever.

So I started poking at my clothes, and I have some wearable shorts, but not really nice shorts any more. Many of my short-sleeved shirts have taken a slow slide from nice into wearable. Ditto for dresses. Which is fine -- I don't get rid of wearable things just for the heck of it. But I should have something reasonably nice to wear when I'm doing something in the "reasonably nice" category. And of course, I made this discovery the same week that the newspaper decided that flat chests are in, reminding me that there will be even less in the stores that will fit or flatter me. Hurrah. So, two shirts ordered online, and we'll go to some other mall when the folks are in town and see if it's better than the local one. And if that doesn't work, nudity is always an option. Just a chilly and not entirely legal one.

We'll have to go to a mall when the folks are in town, because my mom vetoed my shoes. She sent me to pick out brown shoes, and I did. But I couldn't get them in the right color/size combo, so I sent her to get them in Omaha, and she vetoed! She says they look like Grandma shoes. (I'm not yet 25. If I wear Grandma shoes with my paisley dress, I will look like a pseudo-hippie, not a grandma. This is all right with me. Besides, I think they were merely plain, not actively orthopedic.) She hated my last pair of brown shoes (The Ugly Brown Shoes), too. So I don't know what we're going to find. Everything I saw was heeled (nope) or a sandal (nope). So we'll see what magic Mom can work when she's out here. (She said skeptically.)

Oh, one more thing about the Matrix movie: if you have cardboard characters that the authors have put into place specifically to advance the plot, having them blather about their destiny doesn't say anything important about the human condition. It just points out how much the authors have taken the easy way out to advance the plot.

(Matinees here are $6.25/person. Uff da mai. I said, "That's it! That's the last straw! I'm not living here any more -- I'm moving! $6.25 for a matinee. Honestly." I think I'll probably use that line a few more times in the next couple of months, "That's it -- I'm moving." It makes me happy.)

I had some M&Ms yesterday at the movie, bought at the grocery store and brought into the theatre in my purse -- no way am I paying movie theatre prices for more M&Ms than I want. I still couldn't eat the whole of the 3.14 oz bag. Evidently when they put on the package, "Servings per bag: 2," they're talking about me. Which shouldn't surprise me, as I'm the one who eats less than the serving size of Thin Mints while everyone else makes fun of it. Still, I just assumed. But no. Half a bag of M&Ms for me, thanks, and that was more than enough. But it was what I wanted for Memorial Day, for my great-grandmothers.

As usual, there's plenty to do. I'd like to finish an editing read-through of Reprogramming this week and also do a significant chunk more of the Not The Moose, 5Kwords or so. If I don't get that done, I'm the only one who'll be frustrated. Nobody else has asked for this particular work. But I still think it's doable -- I can edit in a comfy chair in various positions, so it shouldn't be too much of one thing for the back. And 5Kwords is not that much computer time total. Right? Of course right. (Curse you, Evan....)