simonator's Journal

Agricola tomorrow?
Last minute, I know, but, anyone interested in playing agricola tomorrow? Buhler?

Scared Mortal
As a response to all the Twilight inspired Vampire wannabes we have the following excerpt from Scared Mortal an anti vamp documentary.

Wannabe: but all the power, and living forever, isn't it just awsome?
Vampire: Well, vampires have a very heiracrhical society
Wannabe:
Vampire: The powerful beat up the less powerful so most vampires spend alot of time being beaten up. It's kind of like being in Junior High. FOREVER. But instead of swirlees, the bullies are fond of disembowelings.

A bit of a misnomer.
CDepot, the used CD store in college park has gotten in a huge load of LPs in Piles and piles of 'em all over the place. Most of them are thus far unsorted and unpriced. Including a Beyond the Fringe LP which, since I still HAVE a turntable, I probably would have bought if there was a price on it.

Cookout Reminder
Cookout is Tomorrow Sunday, from early 'till whenever. Bring yourselves, Bring frineds and come on over. A glorious day to eat kebabs, burgers etc. directions are available in my previous post.

Jim Carroll--
--Is now one of the people who died. I guest is ISN'T to soo to ask for the words he wants carved on his tomb.

SUNDAY SEP 20, from 10:00 ‘till whenever at Simon’s. Kebabs, Burgers, Etc…

Don't worry, I'll have the 'skins game on in the basemen

Directions:

---By car: take U.S. 1 South from 95/495 in Maryland. Take an immediate left onto Edgewood Road. Take Edgewood to the 4-way stop at the bottom of the hill Take a right onto Rhode Island Ave. Pass REI on the left and take a left onto Muskogee and an immediate right onto the parallel section of Rhode Island Ave. Take a left onto Laguna. I’m at 5029, near the bottom of the hill on the right. This is College Park, so you MUST park in the direction of traffic or you will be ticketed. Naraganset street is zoned parking, if you park there you also risk a ticket.

---By metro: Get off at Greenbelt. Walk through the tunnel to your right as you exit the turnstiles. Walk down Lackawanna until you cross a stream, and take a right onto Narraganset. The first left is Laguna, and I’m on the left, a little up the hill.

If you have any questions, feel free to call 301 982-7736

Cookout.
This year I'm holding my cookout SUNDAY September 20th. Details to follow, but that was about the freeist weekend I could find. Hope to see you there.

Busy Day
I had the day off from work, so unlike my normal situation, I actually got out and did stuff with it::

I finally went to the new(er)seum. I'd been to their old location but not the new. Pretty well done. It did suffer from being a bit self-congratulary in places, but OTOH I'm a person who actually DOES get choked up over the first ammendment, so I understand where they're comming from. But they did mention Janet Cooke and "Jimmy's world," so you can't accuse them of ignoring the mistakes and errors that the press makes.

I Went to the exhibit of stuff from the Spanish Royal Armories at the National Gallery of Art. All fancy parade stuff, but the exhibit does a pretty good job of putting stuf in it historical context, so definately worth the time.

I saw the movie Blood: The Last Vampire. A Hong Kong actress playing a half-demon from a Japanese anime, shot in Argentina and China with a mostly American cast in English. There were LOTS of farby mistakes*, but it was an interesting movie.

*Not to many space shuttle t-shirts in 1970, nor Mirage Jets at a USAF base, and certainly no bearded APs. I'll certainly give them a pass on getting the aircraft right, but at least try to get the SIMPLE stuff right.

Agricola

So after playing it a couple of times over at Jeff's I decided to go out and buy a copy of the board game Agricola. You start out as a peasant couple in a two room shack and try to expand your family, your fields, your livestock, and your house without starving. It's a fairly complicated game (think Civilization) that 5 people can play in an evening. I've played it just enough to have the rules down and to be convinced that there's a good amount of strategy that isn't simple or easy to sus out. So who's interested in getting together and when to play?

Every Other Day is Halloween
On the spur of the moment yesterday, I decided to go to the screening of Every Other Day is Haloween a documentary about Dick Dyszel (AKA Count Gore DeVol, AKA Captain 20, AKA Bozo the Clown) at the AFI. Campy and silly, but a direct shot of nostalga nonetheless. To those of us of a certain age who grew up in the Washington Area, he WAS weekday afternoons, late night Saturdays. He was the jack-of-all-trades only on-air personality for channel 20 for 70s and early 80s. Back when there were only three and a half broadcast networks, independant stations did what they could to fill the hours. And there was still room for locally produced intros. But that's back when there were rules limiting how many minutes of advertising could be shown.

I had not realized that the horror host genre has seen something of resurgance over the internet, and he's there, hosting from a house-basement studio with a set that actually LARGER than the one in the channel 20 days.

Nature
I went kayaking yesterday after work, since I could easily combine putting in the resevoir at Ednor with a visit to reception night at ednoria. I'm casually paddling along thinking "is that a log?" when Bump "Jesus that a huge turtle" as i hit it with the kayak. About the size of a stack of papers. I guess it was asleep waiting for prey when I hit it before it dove deep.

Competition
I went to see the Charm City Roller girls last night. I was somewhat disappointed to see that two of the best skaters weren't skating. I asked the boyfriend of a different skater what the story was- They're a couple, and apparantly they're SO competetive that they bring that home and it causes strife, so they don't skate against each other. Instead they both bow out so as not to give one team or the other an advantage. It seems strange to me that they can't compartmentalize their lives enough that they can't leave it on the track. OTOH the fact that I"m not that competetive may be WHY I'm not as good at ANYTHING as they are at skating.

She's Breaking Up, She's Breaking Up! or Real Estate Blues.
I took the afternoon off so that I could observe the house two doors down* being sold off at auction. Several neighbors were out observing the process. Somebody across the street had even set up lawn chairs to watch the proceedings.
Here's the price history of that house:

11/18/2004 --$168,000
08/17/2005--$215,000
10/25/2006 --$362,000
05/19/2009 --$155,000

Now THAT'S a painful haircut. Somebody, be it the former owner, their lender, or some pension fund has lost a hunk of change. I don't know why somebody in 2006 was willing to pay twice what the property sold for in 2004 but I hope that they've leaned a valuable lesson, they certainly paid enough for it.

New Boss
Well my new boss said that she was tired today because she went to the Spinal Tap: Unwigged and Unplugged concert last night. I regard this as a pretty good sign.

ZOMG!!! HAMTHRAX!!!
A week ago Monday I got an email at work wanting to know whether I was going to travel to one of the states that had reported a possible case of Swine flu. Predictably, after cases were confirmed on our own state, by Thursday that was revised to "Tell us all your travel plans for the rest of the year." (Gee, I'm planning on visititing the beautiful city of Noneofyourdamnbusiness on the fourth of never) Today we were told that when calling in sick, it's necessary to describe our simptoms to the timekeeper, since "They're not going to disinfect your work area if you've got a broken leg." We were also required to rewatch the online training on pandemic flu that we saw back in December. (Because that whole sneezeing into a kleenex was to complicated to remember) At least my corner of the Army is acting apeshit scared, perhaps because WE never have people shooting at us.

crazytown
When your boss sends you strident and completely irrelevent e-mails at 4:30 in the morning, it's a sign that she's entering one of her manic phases.

WaPo article

File this one under "no science required for Journalism majors" and "likely to amuse

thirdbase "

From a story in the WaPo on how windy it was yesterday"

<i>...and the stronger gusts came when those winds sucked down portions of the Gulf Stream which was blowing at 100 mph to 200 mph at high atltitude.</i> I think they have confused the Gulf Streem which is a warm water ocean current that runs from Florida to Northern Europe and the Jet Streem which is a high altitude wind which affects North American Weather. OTOH they illustrated the story with a picture of people wind-surfing at my alma-mater.

YUkon 2 7736

ednoria just gave me a Model 302 telephone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_302_telephone Man this thing is heavy. I'd forgotten how long it takes to DIAL a telephone. But it's a great period piece since my house was made in '49.

Sadness.

I was saddened to read this morning of the death of one of my favorite bloggers: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/business/01tanta.html?_r=1 Her clear and informative descriptions of the mortgage business fed my need to figure out what kind of crazyness has been driving the real estate market. If you want to know how the sausage is made, I reccomend reading the compleat ubernerd posts. http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2007/07/compleat-ubernerd.html if you want to learn all about securitization, serviceing or other parts of the mortgage business. Her combination of smarts, wit, and grace are a feast that show us what thin gruel the mere snark that the internet abounds with is. Since she's mentioned her debilitating chemo treatments, her passing isn't a complete surprise, but shomehow you imagine that anyone with so much life in them won't be dying anytime soon.

Roller Derby Action
For any who are interested, Saturday is the league championship for the Charm City Roller Girls. Doors at the DuBurns Arena open at 6. If anyone's interested in a ride to see some five on five all girl action.....But seriously, it's a surprisingly interesting sport.

Advertisement