January 18, 2005 Busy Day Lately, when I'm writing here, I've been putting something on TV that won't distract me, but is enough so that it's not completely silent in the living room. Tonight, I put on Joy Ride, figuring it would be an utterly silly horror film that I could catch snippets of between writing. Damnit if it hasn't sucked me in. I read really bad reviews of it, and maybe it turns out badly, but so far (about an hour and a half into it), it's pretty okay. Suspenseful, not beyond the scope of possibility (for the most part), and the acting is fairly decent. I've liked Leelee Sobieski for a long time, as well as Steve Zahn. Paul Walker really isn't too bad, considering it's not that demanding a role. Aha! I just looked it up on imdb.com. It's co-written by JJ Abrams, from Lost and Alias and Felicity fame. So it's a little far-fetched, but still compelling. Could still be ruined by a bad ending, but a lot of suspense movies are like that. This long "weekend" is turning out to be a really busy one for me. Today, I decided I'd go to Wrentham to pick up the Corelle that Mom wanted. I asked Laurie if she wanted to accompany me on the drive out there (it's about an hour away from where I live), and she said yes, but only after she helped her mom move a TV. I told her I'd help out with that, then she could come with me to have Trooper's stitches taken out at 1pm, and then we'd head to Wrentham. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. In the morning, I went to the grocery store to pick up a few things for dinner (beef stew), and a couple of bottles of wine for Mom's birthday party. On the way up to the back door, the bag's bottom fell out, and a bottle of merlot SMASHED to the ground. Shatter! Splat! It looked like someone had been beaten to death on our back walkway. Interruption to say that the movie's over, and the ending totally doesn't make any sense. I was willing to suspend my disbelief for awhile there, but the last two minutes didn't make a lick of sense. Oh, well. It's hard to end these things well. Anyway, after losing my grip on my alcohol, I cleaned up the glass, put together the stew fixins in the crock pot and sat down to write sympathy cards for Heahter's family. While I was doing that, the phone rang. It was the optometrist's office, telling me my new glasses were in, and I could pick them up. Since the optometrist is just across the street from the post office, I killed two birds with one stone, mailing the cards directly at the post office and then heading across the street to pick up my glasses. I like the way my new glasses look. They're rectangular, rather than the oval shapes I generally pick, and smaller than my old glasses. What I didn't like about them was the fact that my astigmatism had gotten much worse, and I felt woozy all day from wearing them. Right now, I'm okay, and things are definitely much clearer, but for awhile there, I couldn't judge distances, and everything seemed to skew to the left. I got home and took apart my computer, because Mom is taking the computer desk in my room downstairs for her home office. I wondered where I could put all the equipment, since the basement is pretty full already, when I remembered that I had plenty of room in the attic. So that's where all my computer stuff is living at the moment. I then had some lunch and chatted with a couple of people from work, until I realized that it was one o'clock already, and Trooper was supposed to be at the vet at one, so I frantically called the vet's office, told them that I'd be there in ten minutes. They said no problem, so I whisked the dog into the car (he actually ran to my car! This is a 14-year-old dog with cancer, folks...) and got to the vet's office in record time. They removed his stitches, took some blood (to check on his liver status, he's on Rimadyl), and sent us on our way. I called Laurie afterwards to tell her that I didn't think we'd make it to Wrentham, because the commute would be too long for me to come back home in time for dinner, and besides, it was damned cold outside (the Wrentham outlet center is an outdoor mall). I asked if Laurie wanted to come over for dinner anyway, but she said she wasn't feeling "social" (how having a free dinner with me and my mother is "social," I don't know, but Laurie has always been weird about coming over to my family's house), so I was left with a little bit of time on my hands. I decided to bake some brownies and unplug all the equipment in the downstairs den, to get ready for Chris to come over and move furniture with me. After that, I re-read and critiqued my friend Eric's play, probably in more detail than was necessary, and then it was time for dinner. Once we sat down at the table, Chris and the kids showed up, so we put everything back into the crock pot and moved furniture. The original plan was to move the entertainment unit to the basement, to get it out of the way, but I realized that my larger TV would fit well up in my room, so Chris and I moved that up into my room (I can now have my stereo upstairs! Music in my room!) and moved the desk downstairs. I'll move Mom's computer downstairs tomorrow (I don't want to move it until the broadband is installed downstairs...can't lose my wireless!), and hopefully the cable guy will come by between eight and eleven. Speaking of that schedule, I have to get up early to wait for the cable guy. Then it's off to Wrentham to pick up the dishes (and buy a couple of pairs of pants and a tie for the funeral Thursday), cook a ham and Delmonico potatoes for dinner, and go visit Laurie for the night. So it's time for me to head to bed.