Super size it
Addendum to my Fall TV recommendations. Purchase a TIVO, open it up, and stick in a humongous hard drive. Not hard to find instructions and kits for sale on the web. Or pay someone else to do it for you. Never miss another television show in your life. I have several full seasons of TV shows on my TIVO, and no idea when I'll ever watch any of it. But it feels good, like a chipmunk hoarding walnuts months before winter hits. The only thing the TIVO needs is the ability to tape AC-3 signals off of a satellite feed, or a DVD. Besides that, I can't complain.
I could configure Outlook to pull my personal e-mail into a separate account at work, but I like to keep my two worlds separate. You get home, thinking you'll get an hour to eat dinner, read the day's mail, and then sit on my sofa and drool for an hour before passing out. Then you open your e-mail and find, much to your dismay, ten work e-mail messages, some with the dreaded red exclamation point! Worlds are colliding!
Every now and then one of them gets a night off from their other half, so they look you up for something, and you spend the whole time listening to them discuss their fairly uninteresting relationship.
I give up on asking anyone in a relationship to do anything other than bring their mate out to other events with other couples. It's a lousy investment of time--they rarely come through. It's like giving the ball to Chris Webber with the clock running down and your team down by one. He'll either call a timeout or toss the ball to someone else. Sorry, too many sports references. Mmm, how about: it's like asking Winona Ryder not to date malnourished male lead singers.
I need an editor.
I'm offending many readers, and I'll receive a few well-written pleas of innocence, but the rest of you know who you are. This is one of those generalizations that you laugh off with your friends in the early twenties, and then suddenly you realize you're the last one laughing and everyone else is sitting there stone silent or looking off sheepishly (a scene which only happens in TV sitcoms, yes, but you get the point). Then they look at their watch, mutter something under their breath, and slink off to look at carpet or see My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
P.S.: Yes, some single people are dull, too, but that's because they're dull to begin with. The tragedy of the 1+1=0 couple is that usually they were actually charismatic before they hooked up. We need a name for this syndrome, and it should be the name of some dull couple.
P.P.S: Sorry, I take it all back, I love all my friends who are in relationships, or married, or have kids. It must be the long hours at the office talking. Sometimes I read some of my old entries and think, "What a santimonious ass." I need a mood indicator on my website, and right now it would be red--cantankerous and sarcastic.
Please please tell me about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I haven't seen it yet.
In addition to an editor, I think I need a therapist. A Dr. Melfi. It's like a high school counselor for wealthy people. I can't afford one. Sometimes in conversation I just feel like throwing in, "My therapist thinks I should..." It's just a great line to insert in conversation.
Exchange
We migrated to Microsoft Exchange at work. So Microsoft Outlook now governs my life. The calendaring function works fine enough. But for e-mail, for some strange reason, the program isn't smart enough to ask people which of my e-mail addresses to use when they send me messages. Somehow, probably because I sent someone at work a message from my home e-mail, I now receive all sorts of work e-mail at my home e-mail address.I could configure Outlook to pull my personal e-mail into a separate account at work, but I like to keep my two worlds separate. You get home, thinking you'll get an hour to eat dinner, read the day's mail, and then sit on my sofa and drool for an hour before passing out. Then you open your e-mail and find, much to your dismay, ten work e-mail messages, some with the dreaded red exclamation point! Worlds are colliding!
Calling the raise
Saddam came back with a very smart political counter--he granted U.N. inspectors unconditional access to Iraq. Not much to do except take his word on it and send the inspection crews back in. Any grumbling from Washington, and there's been some, will undermine the multilateral support the Bush administration has just managed to muster in the past week. Bush and his team have to think on the fly.Safety, and boredom, in numbers
I'm at the age where some truths become quite evident. At the top of that list right now, or at least at the top of my mind, is how boring your friends become when they enter a relationship. Infinitely interesting to each other, mind-numbingly dull to the rest of us.Every now and then one of them gets a night off from their other half, so they look you up for something, and you spend the whole time listening to them discuss their fairly uninteresting relationship.
I give up on asking anyone in a relationship to do anything other than bring their mate out to other events with other couples. It's a lousy investment of time--they rarely come through. It's like giving the ball to Chris Webber with the clock running down and your team down by one. He'll either call a timeout or toss the ball to someone else. Sorry, too many sports references. Mmm, how about: it's like asking Winona Ryder not to date malnourished male lead singers.
I need an editor.
I'm offending many readers, and I'll receive a few well-written pleas of innocence, but the rest of you know who you are. This is one of those generalizations that you laugh off with your friends in the early twenties, and then suddenly you realize you're the last one laughing and everyone else is sitting there stone silent or looking off sheepishly (a scene which only happens in TV sitcoms, yes, but you get the point). Then they look at their watch, mutter something under their breath, and slink off to look at carpet or see My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
P.S.: Yes, some single people are dull, too, but that's because they're dull to begin with. The tragedy of the 1+1=0 couple is that usually they were actually charismatic before they hooked up. We need a name for this syndrome, and it should be the name of some dull couple.
P.P.S: Sorry, I take it all back, I love all my friends who are in relationships, or married, or have kids. It must be the long hours at the office talking. Sometimes I read some of my old entries and think, "What a santimonious ass." I need a mood indicator on my website, and right now it would be red--cantankerous and sarcastic.
Please please tell me about My Big Fat Greek Wedding, because I haven't seen it yet.
In addition to an editor, I think I need a therapist. A Dr. Melfi. It's like a high school counselor for wealthy people. I can't afford one. Sometimes in conversation I just feel like throwing in, "My therapist thinks I should..." It's just a great line to insert in conversation.