phik

You know what I hate? Thin pillow casings, filled with really pointy feathers.

I shouldn’t have to double-bag my pillows to avoid being stabbed in the night, repeatedly, by dozens of really tiny knives.

I borrowed the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm from Jacob, and watched both discs straight through in one sitting. I’d seen bits and pieces before, almost by accident, but once I was forced to sit through an entire episode I quickly grasped the magic. Run, do not walk.

I woke up to drink some more water, went immediately back to sleep, and almost missed my flight because I accidentally turned my alarm clock off while I was busy making sure that it had the AM/PM set correctly.

Hung over, I appreciate even more the magic of not having to fly coach anymore.

Today was a sleepy, nauseated blur. With any luck, I’ll forget about it entirely.

A relatively successful all-day meeting — at least in comparison to other meetings which might be described as slug-fests — and then escape back to Boston. In many ways, this was the perfect trip to Albuquerque: arrived just in time for dinner and sleep, didn’t rent a car, and straight to the airport immediately after the meeting. Elapsed time: 21 hours.

[root@innova phil]# hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda

/dev/hda:
setting using_dma to 1 (on)
HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
using_dma = 0 (off)

That explains why it takes forever to boot. I hope the new 87k kernel fixes that.

I wonder if one of these lovely Denver-based flight attendants would like to be my wife.

This morning I met three burly men from Gentle Movers at the Boston freight yard, to pick up my furniture. It is packed into 8 large wooden crates, and totals 12.5 cubic meters. I thought they were insane to bring two trucks, but they weren’t sure, and it turns out that we would have been well screwed if they’d only had one.

The foreman is an absolute mirror image of James Caan, and the forklift driver was an absolute master of his craft; weaving and lifting and pushing and levering, showing off, using pallets in creative ways, spinning out as he drove away. I was impressed, no doubt.

I tell you, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with those fucking crates, so I exchanged some money for their continued service.

Anyway, long story short, my two mostly empty rooms are now very full rooms, and I have a Japanese warehouse problem on my hands.

I’m having my wisdom teeth removed today, at very long last, and people alternate between trying to scare me into taking a week off work (which I don’t believe to be necessary for even a second), and telling me that I’ll be eating steaks and raw carrots tonight for dinner (of which I am equally disbelieving).

Most people thought I was insane, but being awake was totally the way to go. The novocaine prevents you from feeling it, the valium and nitrous oxide prevent you from caring about it, and the percocet and ibuprofen prevent you from regretting it. I’ll skip the general anesthetic with its loss of control, freaky tingling sensations, and post-recovery nausea any day, thanks-very-much.

My youthful healing powers are unstoppable, which I attribute to my excellent diet, consistent and abundant sleep, low-stress lifestyle, and regular exercise. I didn’t need any pain medication at all today, until some ibuprofen right before bed. There is no detectable swelling. Jacob thinks they just drugged me up and cleaned my teeth for an hour.

I broke down and bought a used car a few days ago, and picked it up today. I’m just far enough away from downtown to make it outrageously convenient, until it starts to misbehave and I’m plunged into car ownership hell.

I think this will improve our chances of regularly playing hockey this summer, too. We need to convince Joey to come out of retirement after that possibly-career-ending injury at the end of last season.

Jacob and I bought Crystal Chronicals today, having read the outlandish praise of the P-A crew, and despite the disastrous outcome of trusting them about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I can accept the feeling that CC is not by itself compelling reason enough to purchase a GBA, but I can’t even fathom Joey’s belief that the GBA holds little enough inherent value as a whole to continue his misguided boycott.

I attacked the last major non-shelf furniture project, my dining room table, but it’s way, way too heavy for me to lift off its side by myself.

I came up with a clever idea to use gravity to my advantage, but about halfway through that little plan I discovered that it really wasn’t designed to take force along one of those axes, and I started to pull the anchors out of the side. This is a table which, if the top fell, would probably amputate my dinner guests, so I think I’ll sink some bigger anchors and get some help turning it over.

With most of the furniture assembled, I’m cleaning up much of the packing material from its 7,000 mile journey. That photograph makes those bags look deceptively small; each one is, in fact, almost 5,000 gallons of styrofoam.

Some of you may already know this, but my previous furniture was actually made out of cardboard, which is why I got so bent out of shape about spills. I cut it up into more-easily-recycled pieces today, and Cardboard Mountain now stands at about the height of an average human female.

For my final trick, I have to put together a couple shelves, and it is a very good thing that I left these for last. Almost everything else required zero or nearly zero assembly. If I had encountered these first, I would have immediately donated the entire lot to goodwill and just gone without furniture for a few more years.

Without going into the countless small design flaws, I will say that these shelves take the poor Ikea directions and elevate them to an art form. As an example, there is one piece which is almost, but not perfectly, symmetric. The line drawing which is supposed to pass for instructions never, of course, indicates that this piece goes in a certain direction, and you only find out four hours later when you’ve made it through the gauntlet of other subtle omissions and misdirections and try to stack the layers. Like the “ghost holes” drilled in the side pieces which aren’t actually used for anything, just to throw you off the scent.

How many shelves do you think this much hardware builds? If you guessed a million, you’re close, the correct answer is three.

In the latest example of overcompensating for a lacklustre social life through material acquisition, I bought a new camera. More to the point, I hated my old one, because it was way way too slow to take pictures, and I wanted one with interchangeable lenses. Anybody want to buy a camera?

It’s also Taylor-day (observed), for which we gathered at an excellent MIT watering hole. What makes it excellent? It is quiet. It has ample seating, which our party nonetheless almost entirely occupied. It is not loud. The beer is delicious. They don’t turn the music up every 20 minutes. The prices are outrageously low. Also, you do not have to shout to be heard.

I fixed my table good, brother. Some drilling, some anchoring, some screwdriver-ing… this table won’t even consider wobbling now.

I don’t think Chris believed me when I told him that I needed help to get it off its side. I think it’s probably 250 or 300 pounds, and he pulled something when he helped me turn it over.

After dinner we enjoyed Jon Stewart presents an Evening with Jon Stewart of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, featuring Jon Stewart. He worked something like 50% of last year’s routine into this year’s, some of it substantially refined. If you have a time machine, it is not to be missed.

What, precisely, is the difference between Ore-Ida Crispy Crowns and Ore-Ida Tater Tots?

We took in some very enjoyable hockey this evening — which is to say that the hockey was excellent, even if the general ambiance left something to be desired. I like parents as much as the next guy, I’m just saying there should be a law that you have to sit with your kids and keep those little fuckers in line. If you purchase seats for your five kids, and then purchase separate seats for yourselves in a different zip code, your entire extended family should be barred from the facility for a minimum of one year.

Otherwise, let’s be honest: if you leave a bunch of pre-teens alone at a hockey game, they’re going to yell “fuck shit damn bitch hell” every 15 seconds for the entire game, when they’re not busy screaming like unanesthetized amputees whenever anything mildly uninteresting happens.

And it’s Thursday, so you know what that means — fight club, I mean student night! I think there were 4 or 5 brawls which we may not have seen directly, but saw the effects of, including the platoon of police officers charging up the stairs as we walked down.

Afterwards we went shopping for snacks and sundries, during which Jacob told me that he was accused of playing for the other team on account of the fact that he uses a soap which is 1/4 moisturizing cream. Frankly, I don’t know how any of the other soap companies remain in business. I require a substantial moisturization factor in my cleaning products, if I’m going to maintain my silky smooth youthful skin.

Seriously, I need a businesscat. Simon tries his best, but he doesn’t dress the part.

Jacob and I went to the Leafs-at-Bruins game tonight, which started out disastrously all around. The first ten minutes were some of the sloppiest hockey possible, which is really a 180-degree turnaround from the performance we saw on Tuesday. Fortunately Toronto snapped out of it and started experimenting with previously-unproven hockey techniques such as completing passes, and taking shots. Eddie never really mastered staying in the god damned net, but there were only a couple of truly terrifying moments.

Only in fucking Boston can I get in a traffic jam at 02h30.

I learned on Sunday that my step-grandmother died, so I’m dashing back to Ohio for the funeral and a truly whirlwind day of visiting all of the family in the area who would be insulted if I came 600 miles without saying hello. Rightfully so, I suppose.

I didn’t know my step-grandmother very well, but this seems like one of those times where I should play the good son and participate in the family. It’s not a surprise, but losing a parent seems like a really big deal, surprising or not, and I imagine Janet will appreciate having everyone around.

It doesn’t prevent me, however, from being staggeringly busy. I have 46 items on my radar that I’m trying in vain to keep an eye on. I think today will be one devoted largely to delegation.

It has been raining non-stop for 2 days.

I forget now why Jacob and I were driving around north of the river, but we were on the roundabout which connects Mem Drive to the BU bridge, and we almost got stuck in a lake. There were easily six inches of standing water in the road, and already one disabled vehicle in the lake waiting for a tow truck. We were going fast enough that we made it through without incident, but holy shit.