I was going to rush down to the doctors office next week to get my Hepatitis-A booster shot. I got the original shot in January, and you're supposed to get the booster 6 months later. It's been more than 7 months now and Dave got me all worried. But according to this page, you just need to get the booster between 6 and 12 months later. I can totally wait on this.

I should file my dc tax return though. I'm not sure how long the extension I filed will put that off.

(about Dave and his wife, who came out to a movie with us)
Kate: I was totally impressed that they jumped onto the idea with so little convincing and that I got my way without having to compromise: definition of good friends.

Just watched a Reno 911 episode that had a cameo by Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory and Charlie and the Waitress from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Wolowitz played a teenager soliciting a prostitute under his mother's supervision. The cops were going to arrest him but then decided to drive him to a Jewish brothel instead. Charlie and the Waitress played two white trash siblings who cause a domestic disturbance over a doll. (The cops thought it was a real baby at first.) The police tell the siblings to "make up" and they turn around and start making out. The police then arrest them for being disgusting. Charlie and the Waitress did a good job.

Yesterday I went to dinner at Founding Farmers with Dave and like 4 or 5 other foreign service people. Listened to a lot of talk about the foreign service, surprisingly. But it was fun. Tomorrow morning Noelle is driving up and we're getting brunch at Founding Farmers. I'm big on supporting those organic weirdos lately.

Sarah asked me whether there was anyone at the reunion who was ugly and unpopular in high school but was a knockout at the reunion. Not as far as I noticed. I think that only happens in the movies. A fair number of people have gained weight, something that's hard to avoid as you get older. But as far as I remember no girls came back to the reunion being significantly hotter than they once were. Though the girls were generally more friendly and down to earth, which in a way made them more attractive.

Now I'm watching Dead Man on Campus and feeling dumber for it. Not keeping this movie.

"Shut the hell up, you once-fat bitch!"

I went to my high school reunion last weekend. It was actually a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I couldn't convince Dan to go because he apparently still sees everyone from high school that he has any interest in seeing, which I guess would be just me and David. But I think that might have been for the best because Dan might have dragged me into his labels and us-verses-them mentality, which would have just made the reunion like high school all over again.

I wasn't super social in high school. Anti-social would have been a better description. But I decided, going into this thing, that I would put past biases and bad memories aside and give everyone a second chance. And it totally paid off. People were more friendly than I'd ever seen them. I got hugs from a bunch of girls that I was never friendly with and I talked to (and got along well with) all kinds of people that I never really spoke to in high school. It was almost a redeeming experience. Instead of thinking I went to a small town high school full of hicks and preps, I now know it was a small town high school full of normal kids who were maturing and coping with adolescence.

By far the most unusual story I heard was from my old friend Goose who spent about 20 minutes telling me a story of how he developed Schizophrenia and started hearing voices a few months before the reunion. He bought a GPS which randomly brought up a location in the desert that the voices told him to drive to, but he ran out of gas and sorta went crazy on the way. He started giving away money and acting crazy, and he was arrested and spent 2 weeks in an insane asylum in Las Vegas before his mother could get him out. Now he wants to go off his pills because he has a higher calling and he needs the voices to tell him what it is.

It was like talking to the crazy kid in SLC Punk who thought his mom was the devil. I hope Goose pulls through. He was always a good kid. I bought him a beer, I hope it doesn't conflict with his meds.

(talking about my driver's license. The bouncer had hesitated before letting me into the bar.)
Dan: No wonder he didn't believe it. Is that your photo from when you first got your license?
me: Yeah, that's me at 16. What are you talking about, I still look like that.
Dan: You sure loved those bangs.

I got a 2TB hard drive from newegg yesterday and spent a good 3 hours trying to figure out how to format the thing. Neither Windows nor PartitionMagic want to do it, and people in forums were no help (as usual). People blamed it on everything from file system cluster sizes to northbridge drivers to windows xp being 32-bit. I finally got linux to start formatting the drive, which took a whole lot of finicking as linux always does (gparted refused to format it, but fdisk seemed to be working), when my computer overheated and shutdown 10% into the zeroing process. It does that occasionally because instead of having a case fan I just leave the case open. I probably should have ordered a fan from newegg at the same time. I'll have to get back to this next week.

Flying to CA this evening. Back on Tuesday. My mom called me last night to warn me that it's been cold in Occidental and she had finally gotten tired of it and turned on the heat. Which means the house is going to be kept at a constant like 63 or 64 degrees. Prepare to be uncomfortable. Awesome.

me: It's the same with one of my sisters.
Rachel: Is it Lauren?
me: No, my oldest sister.
Rachel: Is it weird that I know your sisters' names?
(Yes. Creepster.)
(Actually I once knew Rachel's sister's name, but I can't remember it now. I am the less creepy of us. Or maybe my memory just isn't very good.)

I tried to stop into Sticky Fingers Cafe to see Sarah but when I got there it was a little busy and she was nowhere in sight. There were 2 people ordering infront of me and their order was going sooo slowly. Slow like you can only find in a liberal, vegan cafe these days. Starbucks would never stand for it.

After 5 minutes of no progress I cut out and went to giant where I picked up She's Out of Your League at the redbox. I'm expecting good things.

Today I'm doing work, then I'm going to try to find Dave tonight for a last night of probably-not drinking. Only single guys are good at drinking. Once they're in a relationship they're always taking it easy or cutting out early. I think it happened to me too. It happens to everyone. Except my brother-in-law Doug for some reason. Maybe I should move to Texas.

(Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassee, after seeing Steve Jobs park in the handicapped parking spot at Apple)
"Oh, I never realized that those spaces were for the emotionally handicapped."

I talked to the lady at the front desk of my building and she said that I should be able to go month-to-month after my lease is up. This is really good news. They might still increase my rent (which is already pretty expensive). But at least I won't have to move on the same weekend as the end of the fiscal year at work. Plus there is much less competition for apartments during the winter than the fall. And if I decide to leave DC mid-year I can do it without breaking an expensive lease. We'll see how much the rent actually increases.

Tonight I saw The Other Guys with Dave, Tom, Nick and Nick's wife. Nick only lives a couple blocks north of me. Anyway, the movie was a lot better than the trailer made it look. I'd give it a solid 7.5/10, while the trailer makes it look like a 4/10 at best. Actually the trailer isn't that bad. I guess what I saw was this teaser trailer, which is just stupid and not funny. But the actual trailer gives away some of the jokes, so maybe it's better that I never saw it.

(user comment to a Washington Post article about the $825 Billion stimulus bill)
Tom333: You want to stimulate the economy, Obama? Stop the embargo on UFO technology. We already have the technology for zero point energy and space warp drive. We back-engineered it from crashed UFOs. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton both promised to end the UFO secrecy but they wussed out. Don't be a Demowussy, Obama.

I just did 2 miles on the elliptical in 15.5 minutes. It wasn't super difficult either. Maybe I'm getting stronger? That's unlikely. Maybe the machine is busted and level 7 isn't what it used to be. Or maybe it was because I fell asleep on the couch during Seinfeld shortly before going down to the gym. A nap will do wonders.

I didn't really eat anything energizing. I had some coffee, then a corndog for lunch and a bunch of frozen burritos for dinner. Oh! But then I also had some after-dinner cereal, and it was that Basic 4 cereal, which sounds like it should be healthy. That's probably the secret.

After the elliptical I did 5 minutes on the stair master for my ass. That's not really true, but I thought about using the stair master! That's a good first step. I also thought about doing some pushups or light bench-presses to preempt any man-boobs, and I thought about trying to build up some manly biceps by doing some curls or something. I did lots of thinking tonight.

(Micros wants to practice fielding grounders for his baseball league, so I come up with this great idea where I bat tennis balls at him with a tennis racquet. Micros is nervous about getting injured.)
me: i don't see any problems. you've got the tennis equipment, i've got the skills. we can do this.
me: and you've got the health insurance too.
micros1781: Yeah, we'll try it. I'm just saying I'm nervous about the plan.
me: you can't go into something like this being nervous. it's gonna be great. this plan is foolproof.
micros1781: From your perspective, sure.