The Lesser of Two Weasels
Wow, it's been a while since I've skipped a whole weekend in my journal!
I didn't write on Saturday, however, because nothing much happened. I slept in, I did a bunch of reading (the Batman Archives hardcover which reprinted his stories from Detective Comics #27-50, for instance; pretty good stuff, for such a primordial example of the art form), and did some shopping. I managed to score a copy of the second hardcover X-Men Masterworks volume for 40% off at a used book store - quite nice, since the book is probably actually worth more than cover price now. It does have a small chunk missing at the bottom of the front dust jacket, but otherwise it's fine. Since I'm not in this for the money, that's okay with me.
See? Nothing much happened.
After sleeping in and taking care of some projects around the house (er, apartment) I went over to my friend David's place for his house-warming party.
I don't think I've mentioned David much before. I met him six years ago when he was starting grad school (my second year; he's a year younger than me), and we each spent some time as TAs (instructors, really). He's from Missouri, so he's a St. Louis Cardinals fan, so we go to some games occasionally and char about Mark McGwire. He started working at Epic a year after I did, and he's an R&D team leader on his product. I think he's better suited for it than I am though. He does a lot of testing and management and planning, whereas as I've said before I prefer to be programming, programming, programming.
David's also an SF fan, and we typically go to Windycon and room together each year. We also went to Worldcon in San Antonio together last year. David's also an aspiring writer, has taken a class on writing SF from a local writer, and has been part of a writer's group here in town for a while. He's offered to get me into the group, but I've said that first I need to prove to myself that I can get actual writing done, which I haven't yet succeeded at. So.
David moved to a new place only two blocks from me. He's on the third floor of an old house, the first two floors of which hold a law firm. The place has clearly been heavily remodeled fairly recently, since his place is very nice: Hardwood floors, a very nice kitchen and bathroom set-up, and fairly modern fixtures. It's also quite large (he could put a couple of bookcases in the bathroom and not even blink). On the other hand, he doesn't have air conditioning, and remember, I said it was pretty hot yesterday. It was bearable, but not too far from being unbearable.
We watched the Packers game (boy, the Buccaneers' offense sure did everything they could to make sure the Packers won), and then turned into the Cubs game just in time to see Sammy Sosa hit his second home run of the game, and 62nd of the year, passing Roger Maris' old record and catching Mark McGwire. Unlike McGwire's historic shot, Sosa's was an authoritative blast that left Wrigley Field and bounced around on Waveland Avenue outside. (It guess there was quite a fight over it in the street, and there may be a court battle over the ball eventually.) It was nice to see, and with Sosa on a tear and his team in a playoff race, he could hit a bunch more this week.
Most of the people who showed up were either from Epic or from David's writer's group. (No real shame there; most of my friends in town are either from Epic or from SF3). There was one woman there from the latter whom I actually found rather attractive, but it was difficult to tell whether she was interested in me. (Let's put it this way: Unless I get hit over the head, I'm terrible at reading such things, even when I'm trying to.) And, of course, I'm pretty befuddled as to what to do next, as every time I've tried to find out by talking to an intermediary (e.g., David, in this case), I always end up feeling like a first class jackass, for one reason or another. So, who knows. Besides, it sounds like she's going away on vacation for a couple of weeks anyway.
Sigh. My cats are going to keep seeing a lot of me on weekends at this rate.
Oh, yeah, and we watched the Emmy Awards last night, which was kind of amusing, mainly because we were all making catty comments about the people. It's also amusing to me to see programs that I've never even heard of win Emmys. (The Practice, in this case. That's right, I've never heard of it. Shows how much TV I watch.)
Oh, yeah, and it rained all day - pretty hard - so no biking in today either.
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