Saturday, September 12, 2009
recent activity
This week I helped my housemates transplant a bed of flowers and helped a friend paint some rooms of a house. Otherwise, things are about the same as usual.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
moved house
I helped my former housemates move to their new apartment last weekend, and finished moving myself out shortly afterward. I am still pleased with my new living situation. I am already spending less time on the bus, which has both good and bad features. I do not need to wake up as early as I had, but I am also getting much less reading done.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
trip over
After about a week in New York, I have finished a satisfying vacation. I recommend avoiding the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta whenever possible. High-pressure credit card salespeople were set up along the concourse I flew from, and every seating area was subject to inane, unavoidable television news shows.
Time spent in New York, of course, was more relaxed and enjoyable. I got to see a few people that I hadn’t seen in a long time, and met one or two people that I hope to see again. I took advantage of the subway and bus systems quite a lot, and the 7-day transit pass that I bought turned out to be well worth the price for me.
As usual, I’m not very excited about going back to work.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
four square
I flew into New York yesterday. This afternoon I wandered around Prospect Park. I happened to find a pick-up game of four square going on, and spent an hour or two playing. A small barbeque followed.
Monday, May 4, 2009
garden
I planted vegetables a few weeks ago. I don’t think I watered them enough, and they took longer to sprout than I expected. I was trying to use a pair of empty juice bottles (each 32 ounces) in place of a watering can, but even two trips from the sink to the garden with both bottles was clearly not enough water, and even just making two trips was more tedious than I liked. Fortunately, it rained for about five days in a row last week, and after that I discovered that we had a garden hose. The outdoor faucet is just exactly close enough to the garden that a strong spray from the hose will cover the entire garden.
When planting, I tried to choose vegetables that we could probably harvest before our lease ends this summer. With the late sprouting, I am not optimistic that we will be able to get everything, but even a partial harvest would satisfy me.
Monday, April 6, 2009
weekend vacation
I was out of town with several friends this weekend. We stayed in a cabin a couple hours outside of the city, playing board games and so on. I enjoyed it quite a bit, and, unsurprisingly, was not excited to go back to work. I would like to start making plans to take more time off, but the decisions are difficult. There are several people that I’d like to visit, but I don’t have enough vacation time to do all the traveling that I would like.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
new glasses
I got a new pair of glasses today. The pair that I replaced have had broken frames for nearly eleven months.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
changes to the internet
I installed a different blog software this afternoon. It supports categories, and many other features (most of them internal). Its file storage system is based on that of the previous blog software that I was using, so all of the earlier posts were easily retained (although time-stamps seem to be inaccurate now). I’m sorry to say that I spent more time than I would have liked on changing the new theme to resemble my old theme.
This process occupied most of my day.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
a haircut
I cut my hair this weekend. Usually I just trim it all to the same length, but I tried trimming the sides shorter than the top this time. It turned out fine. I was concerned that there would be an obvious, maybe irregular edge where the lengths changed, but I couldn’t tell at all. The longer guard was 7/8” and the shorter guard was 3/8”.
I went to a bit of effort to pin back the top of my hair (it hadn’t been cut since early fall), trim the sides, then unpin the remaining hair and trim it with a longer guard. Part way through I decided that I was making it more difficult than it needed to be, and I think I probably could have just used my hand as a guide and done as well.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
back to basics
I decided to wear ties again for a while.
I have eleven shirts, six pairs of pants and four jackets. In the absence of a fifth jacket, I wear the same jacket two days in a row during the weekend. These quantities (11, 6, 5) share no denominators. If I fix the order of my clothes and, each day, wear the next of each item, I can wear a unique outfit every day (excluding the duplicate jackets on weekends) for 330 days.
I have about seventeen ties.
