How I'm Going to go to Vegas and Blow Four Grand

So I'm reading this article about how Stephen Hawking took a to ride on the zero-gravity simulator commonly known as The Vomit Comet. It was partly a benefit for an ALS charity.

But it's also partly a publicity stunt for the Las Vegas-based company Zero G, which organizes these trips in which passengers get to experience 15 periods of weightlessness.

The price?

For $3,500.

Just $3,500.

Yes, I know $3,500 is a lot of money. Especially for a four-hour vacation. After taxes, air fare to Vegas, and a night or two at a hotel, I would expect the bill to reach $4,000.

But compared to the $200,000 Virgin Galactic is talking about for a sub-orbital flight, it's quite a bargain.

I will do this.

Sooner, rather than later.

Work

Sorry for the lack of blogging, but work is has suddenly become very busy and stressful. I'm finding it very hard to think about any sort of writing (except after having a couple of glasses of wine (ahem)).

Squirrel Update II

Here's an update on the out-of-control squirrels here in Mountain View that I wrote about in October and again in February.

All of the squirrels have now been trapped and euthanized, thanks to the use of, I kid you not, a decoy baby stroller.

However, the parents of the child who was attacked last year are now suing the City. Apparently the child has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. They are asking for $150,000 to cover the cost of medical and therapy bills. Just for fun, I googled and discovered that the price of a rabies immunoglobulin series is about $2,500. The remaining $147,500 would cover (at one $200 session per week, every week), over fourteen years of therapy.

As I've said before, we've got some vicious squirrels here in Mountain View.

Validation

I got a phone call this afternoon from City Lights Theatre Company in downtown San Jose. They want to do a reading of the first full-length play I wrote. Called The Offsite, it's an office comedy: four people are sent to the world's worst team building workshop.

The reading is August 7 in downtown San Jose. And you all are, of course, invited.

What makes this reading really special is that it's the first time a piece of my writing has been accepted for any sort of performance, reading, award, etc. outside of Foothill College, or my circle of friends. This is not to say that the short plays of mine that Foothill has produced, or the reading they did last year were done just because I'm a student there. Plenty of other students have not gotten their works produced. Nevertheless, it really feels good to have had my work judged and found worthy by someone whom I've never met.

Chair

I had one of my all-too-rare fits of housecleaning recently. To be more specific, it was the eternal mess of my garage that I felt the need to tackle. When I was done, I had ten large garbage bags full of junk, along with other stuff (a broken cooler, a couple of old broken plastic buckets, etc.). This doesn't include the enormous mound of broken-down boxes (damn you, Amazon!) that will go into the recycling next week.

But for the garbage, I had to schedule a special "spring cleaning" garbage pickup, where one can put out much more trash than usual. And in addition to a big pile of garbage bags, I also had the option of putting out some "bulky items".

So it was time for the chair to go.

This chair was one I inherited from one of my favorite aunts when she died back in 1993. It's one of those high-backed single-person chairs, a style that isn't made these days. It served me well when I was in grad school, and when I got my first apartment. But when I bought my house, it didn't really fit in. It had also become faded and worn. Eventually, one of my cats decided to start using it as a scratching post, and before I realized what was happening, it was pretty much torn up.

But, it was my favorite aunt's chair.

Nevertheless, I put it out this morning, and watched as it got tossed in the back of the garbage truck and driven away.

It's good to clear old stuff out of one's life from time to time.

I suppose.

There's Something Rotten in the State of California

A couple of months ago, I discovered what I thought was a termite nest on the outside of my townhouse. So I called in a termite company to do an inspection. Fortunately, it wasn't a termite nest. But the company did discover quite a bit of dry rot.

One thing that makes it worse is that in several areas of my home, various parts of the siding have been covered by plywood for what appears to be aesthetic reasons. Unfortunately, this also creates a perfect breeding ground for dry rot fungus, like the example above.

Usually dry rot just causes wood to fall apart. I think a lump of fuzzy mold is actually rare. Here's a wider shot of that same area:



I'm glad my homeowners' association is paying for this, because the sprinklers ensure that the rot continues all along the edge of the unit:



Actually, the worst part is the noise. I've been listening to banging for the past couple of days and I'm really ready for it to end.

Grindhouse Mini-Review

Part 1 (Planet of Terror): If terms of gore and basic biological "squishiness", this rates about a 25 on a scale of 1-10. The gun as artificial leg was cool (though not necessarily worth waiting for.

Part 2 (Death Proof): Boring. Boring! I don't know how a Quentin Tarantino movie can be boring, but he managed it.

My burger at Tied House after the movie: very tasty.

Live Blogging of Gone with the Wind

Once I finished using Netflix to get caught up on Lost, I started renting regular movies. One category I've been renting is something I can classify as "movies I should have seen, but have never gotten around to", such as Rocky and Jaws.

One movie that falls into this category is Gone with the Wind. I almost watched it on TV a few years ago, but when I discovered it's four hours long, I decided not to. Well, Netflix sent it to me a couple of weeks ago, so I've finally watched it (spread out over two nights). And after I watched the first five minutes, I realized that I had to live-blog my viewing.

So I give you Gone with the Wind:

Disk 1:

0:00 -- Overture (?)
0:01 -- Hit button to skip to next section
0:03 -- Credits!
0:06 -- Credits over. But now an introductory text.
0:07 -- The first spoken line! No wonder this movie is four hours long.
0:13 -- Mammy. Wow. Stereotypicus maximus.
0:17 -- Scarlet definitely needs a bigger hat.
0:22 -- Clark Gable!
0:27 -- Don't any of the Southerners in this movie speak with a Southern accent?
0:30 -- 1/8th of the way through.
0:36 -- The war has started at last!
0:39 -- Dr. Meade looks exactly like Waldorf.
0:48 -- "You should be kissed. And often. And by someone who knows how." You go, Clark!
1:02 -- Only 25% of the way through the movie and Sherman has arrived already. No sign of Peabody.
1:04 -- That's leg's got to go. Ugh.
1:11 -- 35 days of "Siege" and not a single building is damaged.
1:18 -- Prissy. Even worse than Mammy.
1:25 -- Fire!
1:39 -- Don't any of the slaves in this film have the urge to, you know, run away?
1:44 -- They built in an intermission! This is where disk 1 ends.


Disk 2:

0:00 -- "Entr'acte"
0:02 -- Start of disk 2: "And the wind swept through Georgia...Sherman!" Still no sign of Peabody.
0:03 -- White Southerners picking cotton. Heh.
0:06 -- Scarlet 1, North 0
0:10 -- The war is over.
0:11 -- Someone should tell Mammy that slavery has been abolished.
0:20 -- Again with accents: it's hard watching the Ashley/Scarlet scene with Ashley sounding like FDR.
0:26 -- Clark Gable: he's been held barn doubling as a jail for days (weeks?) and he still has perfect hair.
0:38 -- This is the point where I stopped for the night.
0:39 -- "Darkies"?
0:52 -- Men just don't last long married to Scarlet, do they?
1:05 -- Rhett is now married to Scarlet. Uh oh.
1:09 -- They have a baby!
1:12 -- Scarlet has a 20 inch waist? Wow.
1:16 -- That was a nice door. Why did Rhett have to kick in down?
1:22 -- Uh oh.
1:33 -- "A good lashing with a buggy whip"?
1:36 -- A kitten! Yay!
1:38 -- Oops!
1:44 -- Oh crap.
1:48 -- They're dropping like flies!
1:58 -- "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."
2:00 -- The end

Whew!

Oops, not quite:
2:01 -- "Exit Music"
2:05 -- And we're done. For real.

Next in my Netflix queue: Poster Boy.

Good News/Bad News

Good news: I'm going to Gay Day at Disney World in late May/early June.

Bad news: American Airlines rescheduled my return flight. I now will have an extra hour to enjoy the Dallas/Ft. Worth airport.