We're buying a car!!!

Pretty, happy CAR!!! YAY!!! On Sunday, DP and I officially went to a dealership, took a test drive,
and put our names on the waitlist for a Toyota Prius in the "Seaside
Pearl" color-- truth be told, I wasn't really keen on *any* of the
colors they offered, but the the "Seaside Pearl," which is a muted
light blue was the least boring/ ugly of the options. It's supposed to take
4-6 weeks for the car we want (color+option package) to be available.
Which is fine, because we need to look into our financing options,
insurance, oh... and get California driver's licenses. In CA, you
actually have to retake the written test, you can't just exchange an
out of state license for a CA license.

You're Screwing Up the Randomness!

So Saturday night, our upstairs neighbors invited us to a "seder-ish"
meal. E (the girl) asked if either of us considered ourselves to be
very religious and I, having grown up in an agnostic, if not down right
cynical, house said no. Later in the evening, when E brought out cards
and asked if we wanted to play-- and suggested "Oh Hell" in particular,
I realized I had been mistaken. My family may not have been religious
in the classic sense, but the playing of card games (and specifically
"Oh Hell") was a most sacred tradition. The title of this post was
something that my mother said, in all seriousness, when someone dared
to deal the cards in a way other than the Hoyle-approved manner to
which we, as little children, had been indoctrinated.

Anyway, it was a lovely meal-- homemade Matzoh ball soup, salad,
deviled eggs, and chicken stuffed with Matzoh stuffing-- and a lovely
game of cards, even though I brought shame upon my family and came in
dead last.

Reason #489 Why The Bear* Rocks

So... last year for Christmas, my DP bought me a really nice North Face
skiing jacket with a matching zip-in fleece. Now that we live in SF and
it is "spring" the jacket + the fleece is too warm, the fleece by it
self is too cold (because it's not windproof) and the jacket is too
"wintery."

Under the guise of not wanting to hear me complain about being cold
anymore, The Bear took me to The North Face store to get a soft-shell,
windproof, fleecy-thing-- this was despite my being pouty and claiming
that they weren't going to have something of that variety in my size
(because all of the soft-shell, windproof, fleecy-things I've seen are
usually really fitted). Well, much to my chagrin, they did have a
soft-shell, windproof, fleecy-thing that fit me-- and The Bear bought
it for me!

I love The Bear!

Oh... the jacket is technically called "The North Face Pamir WindStopper Fleece Jacket" not "soft-shell, windproof, fleecy-thing."

*For those not in-the-know I generally refer to my DP as "The Bear"

He he he.

I want to buy this. I miss having music in my life. I miss singing. And I want to learn how to play the piano. Still, the price is kinda steep.

Let me begin by saying that I HATED "Being John Malkovich." Not the
whole thing, I liked how it began, I liked the quirkyness of it, but at
some point it degenerated from quirky and interesting to gross/ nonsensical craziness
and I walked away feling annoyed and tricked. Adaptation, also written
by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, is better, but again the end spins out
of control (though he does pull it back together better in this film)
to the point that you can't believe it anymore. Does he just like
breaking screenwriting rules? Does he just do it for the sake of doing
it? He seems to answer "no" in this film, that he loathes formulaic
movies because he feels that they are not authentic. BUT his alter ego
in the movie follows formlas and he himself at some point seems to
comes to believe that no only is there some wisdom behind how movies
have traditionally been structured, but more deeply, that  he
himself has been looking at life in the wrong way.

An interesting point from the film is that change is not a choice, that
change happens to us and it is up to us to adapt and our ability to
survive and the quality of our surivival depends on how well we are
able to adapt.  Hmmn.. 3 out of 5 stars.

Came home from work on Sunday and ended up having a nice dinner with
our upstairs neighbors (a couple who is about the same age as DP and
I). We chatted about stuff-- they asked me a lot of questions about my
job... or I talked a lot about my job, I'm not sure which. I'm never
sure how interested people are to hear about what I do. I mean, I think
it's interesting, but....? Anyway, we ended up playing "Karaoke
Revolution." Similar to Dance Dance Revolution, except you have to sing
along with whatever song and you get points for being on pitch-- and
you can do DUETS! It was REALLY fun. And a big step for me, I don't
usually sing, by myself, in front of people I don't know very well, but
our neighbors are really nice and really encouraging people.

DP and I watched Momento the other night. I thought it was a really
interesting, really original movie-- BUT by the last 10% of the film, I
was all set with the novelty and done being "interested," I just wanted
to know what the hell was going on. Then again, patience has never been
my strong suit.

GO PATS!

Random Updates

Netflix: Lesson number one, mix up the types of movies you have on your
queue so that you don't get three, heavy, long movies all at the same
time. Don't get me wrong, I liked Angels in America part I and II and
Sophie's Choice, but it took me a while to get in the mood to watch
them. Also, DP's brother got him a gift subscription to Netflix for his
birthday... so now we have 2-- subscriptions, that is, and 6 movies at
a time. I'm not sure how long the gift subscription lasts, but I've
gone through my queue and taken out the movies that were in DP's queue.
"Rabbit-Proof Fence," for instance, was on my queue, but DP got it in
the mail this past week. It's a true story that takes place in
Australia, where at one time children who were half-Aborigine and
half-White (referred to as "half-caste") and living with thier
Aboriginal parent could be taken away and sent to training schools. I
don't want to say anymore, because I don't want to ruin it for anyone
who might want to watch it.

Aerobed, the Sequel: The 2nd Aerobed developed a hole and started
leaking air, which finally served as the kick in the butt DP and I
needed to go out and buy an actual mattress. I just hate shopping for
things like mattresses where you have to haggle over the price with
sleezy salespeople. We ended up getting our mattress from
1-800-mattress (they have a show room in our area) and they seemed to
have the least inflated prices and made no attempts to get us to spend
outside of our price range, I can't say the same for Sleep Train.

Work: Still rocky. There are good days and not so good days, my first
evaluation was not so good, my most recent evaluation was good, but
then I had a string of rough days. By "rough days" I mean I struggled
to stay organized and get everything done, not that anyone got hurt or
anything.

Bed time.

Dammit. I got so involved in writing my last post that I practically
burned the cookies I was making. Oh, well, DP will eat them.

I finally found some CD holders/shelves that I like, now I have to convince DP that he likes them too.