Kelly and I went out for a movie this evening instead of finishing our remaining chores. On Wednesdays, AMC prints free small popcorn coupons with tickets ordered through their Movie Watcher program. Having just come from dinner, we pocketed the coupon with our stubs, but before we left the theater we picked up our free food. This particular theater sits in front of a pond, where ducks and Canadian geese stop to drink. Or just harass theater patrons. Feeling 5, I opted to share my popcorn.

Approaching the birds in the dark was a little creepy, as both ducks and geese were mostly sharing space, and those geese are mean. I tossed some popcorn to draw some ducks away, and they knew exactly what I was about. I had about 10 immediately jump for the food and continue towards my feet with many more behind them, and I began to back away. A couple geese started too, but I didn’t release more popcorn until they paused again. I ended up drawing more ducks, continuing to walk backwards so I could make sure I didn’t get swarmed. I didn’t really have a plan of what to do, but it didn’t matter as I pulled them closer to the theater entrance; I was laughing so hard there were tears.

I pulled many of the ducks onto the sidewalk in front of the theater and was considering leading them into the crowd, but now confronted with an audience of people as well, I felt extremely conspicuous. Also because I was still crying from laughing, and it was likely a confusing sight. I passed my half empty bag of popcorn to a group of kids who’s attention my spectacle attracted, and walked away, letting them take any heat for harassing the wildlife.

Next Wednesday I’ll need a plan.

Neal Stephenson touches on the geekdom and attitudes surrounding the Star Wars prequels in on op-ed piece for the New York Times – Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out.

In sum, very little of the new film makes sense, taken as a freestanding narrative. What’s interesting about this is how little it matters. Millions of people are happily spending their money to watch a movie they don’t understand. What gives?

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: “geeking out” and “vegging out.” To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal – and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.

Friday

• Got Sean to hang out for a while
• Ate too much Imo’s
• Went to bed late

Saturday

• Thought about riding, but decided to be lazy instead
• Chevy’s for lunch
• Monster Trucks Monster Jam at the Edward Jones Dome
• Navigating downtown with 60,000 Monster Jam attendees

Sunday

• Sang at church
• Grocery shopping at Trader Joe’s
• Dinner with friends at Blackberry Cafe
• William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice at the Hi-Pointe

Leftover Free-time spent

• Browsed RSS feeds, web
• Caught up on Tivo’s recordings
• Stared at ceiling while brain defragged
• Continued fixing tagging on music collection
• Improved headshot frequency in Counter-Strike
• Not work

The majority of today was difficult to push through.

I partly blame last night, I was up late changing some code for work. From home. An emergency for a client apparently means an emergency for me. Regardless, I finished the requested changes despite an earlier misunderstanding and was able to put it out of my mind before I went to bed. We have a white noise machine that plays for an hour after turned on to aid in falling asleep; I don’t remember being awake for long.

I woke up and still heard the generated sound. Still feeling exhausted, I was happy to realize that hearing the white noise meant I still had a night’s worth of sleep waiting. Except it was actually morning and time to get out of bed; I had accidently set it to play constantly instead of the usual hour timer. Sleeping in later was not an option. Now exhausted and furious, I decided to exercise some on our neglected elliptical to alleviate the rage I didn’t want to release anywhere else.

I need to exercise more anyway. Exhausting myself physically is good for a mental reset. I miss cycling, I should pick up some cold weather gear.

I expected a full day of work, and was fortunately more productive than I anticipated once I started. I’m essentially hacking some ugly old code to enable some new requirements, but since I revisited the codebase recently, I was able to deploy updates sooner than I expected. I’m glad I could, since my other task that was supposed to occupy the second half of the day lasted well into the evening. I think due to my rude awakening, the entire day I felt unable to focus and would get frustrated at the smallest things. I needed a nap. The Mountain Dew I downed during a dinner break kept me going long enough to get most of what I needed done, and actually by the time I left I was feeling pretty accomplished.

It’s at that point I’m most comfortable shelving thoughts of work, and clearing my mind for home; something I’m not typically strong at. It’s a shame I didn’t get to that point earlier.

Maybe it was just the caffeine.

So I’m home now. It’s 10:30. I should sleep, but right now I’m too awake. Guess I can spend some time catching up on what happened today.

Often when I leave for work within a certain half-hour of the morning, the sun shines at a perfect angle so my drive up the hill out of our neighborhood renders me blind from the bright sun diffracting through dew and frost on the windshield. So it was easy to rationalize waiting an extra half-hour at home. In the interest of safety. Not for the extra web browsing minutes.

I left my house with the sun safely higher in the sky and the added benefit of avoiding rush hour, and I began my drive through Suburbia to my office.

Three times this morning during the 10 minute drive I had to take evasive maneuvers to avoid getting plowed into by cars larger than mine. The last was the most fun:

I was driving through an intersection were I don’t have to stop, and a pickup on the cross street approaching on my right got in his right (yield) lane to join my one lane. At this point, I had no trust in any driver and based on both our speeds was expecting him to simply ignore and sideswipe me. I checked the lane to my left for oncoming traffic and began sliding left to avoid getting hit. He then must have changed his mind, because instead of making his right into my lane (with me in the way), he turned on his left signal, looked to his right (not at me approaching now more cautiously from his left), and entered my lane as I was about 3 feet from him. He likely would’ve t-boned my passenger side straight on if laying on my horn didn’t get him to wake up and look directly at me. He was still slow to react as even direct eye contact didn’t get him to stop as soon as I would’ve hoped, and had I not done some major swerving and acceleration (zoom zoom) I’d be dealing with the insurance company and a body shop now.

My car is silver. Maybe I need to get it painted traffic cone orange.

And I will just miss the age cut-off.

What’s that you say? “You don’t have kids.” and “There is no draft.”

Well, no I don’t, and no there isn’t. Yet.

But it’s out there… Are you aware of bills H.R.163 and S.89?

Universal National Service Act of 2003 – Declares that it is the obligation of every U.S. citizen, and every other person residing in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a two-year period of national service, unless exempted, either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense. Requires induction into national service by the President. Sets forth provisions governing: (1) induction deferments, postponements, and exemptions, including exemption of a conscientious objector from military service that includes combatant training; and (2) discharge following national service.

Amends the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the military registration of females.

A lazy post…

I’m currently sprawled sideways across the couch, propped up with my right elbow, with my hands landing on my laptop. For as awkward my position is, one that’s not exactly comfortable, I’m not compelled to move. I have one cat (Dexter) warming my feet, the other (Muka) sleeping against my leg. I’ve jacked the laptop to the receiver to listen for some Internet Radio over the stereo in the back room, which I find funny since I’m now wired to the stereo, but wireless for Internet. The bandwidth is shared with a few downloads trying to acquire the last week’s Angel episode we missed, and we’d like to catch up before we watch tomorrow’s. Up until a few minutes ago, I’ve been pretty productive testing some exception handling I’ve updated in a project for work. With that out of the way, the only things binding me to the couch still are the cats comfort and lack of motivation to do anything the Internet doesn’t offer.

Yesterday, I forgot to eat dinner, and if Kelly hadn’t reminded me to eat earlier, I might still be hungry now, and have a good reason to get up. But I don’t. I could still be here tomorrow when I wake up. And now Dexter has positioned himself across my arm, making typing more difficult, so I’m going to stop this drivel here.