Planes, trains and automobiles

Back from Chicago. An interesting trip.

Good to spend time with the SOOTTAD. If you're interested, you can read about a few of our misadventures here. (At least the culinary ones -- everything else went pretty well except that we were both completely exhausted after the last few weeks of craziness. There was a lot of sitting around and napping going on.)

So anyway, I may have mentioned that we were going to drive out to Chicago. I had actually planned to just fly out and visit for the weekend, but it turned out that I had more time off from school than expected which coincided nicely with a sudden need for the SOOTTAD to have her car sooner rather than later. So we drove.

All good intentions aside, we ended up getting on the road after 3pm Thursday afternoon and made it as far as Barkeyville, PA before retiring at a Comfort Inn with free wireless internet from the TA TravelCenter across the street, surprisingly soft sheets and mattress and free waffles for breakfast freshly made from a self-serve waffle iron in the morning. We were pleasantly surprised. (Sadly, the waffle didn't agree with me so much and we had to make a longer-than-planned stop at a rest area in Ohio.)

A few notes on the drive:

• Medium soft serve at DQ off the highway in Pennsylvania: $1.69
  Medium soft serve at DQ off the Indiana Toll Road: $2.49
  (granted, the Indiana wafer cone was actually larger)
• I expect people to slow down around construction areas (especially when there's a lane drop, the speed limit is posted at 40MPH and there are signs making threats about doubled fines every 50 feet). However. Pennsylvania is the only place that I can remember where the average speed of the traffic was 20MPH BELOW the posted construction area speed limit.
• We saw cops practically every 10 miles once we hit the Ohio border. I don't think we saw one after reaching Indiana.
• this is the first time I've ever crossed a time zone in a car.

We got into Chicago around 3pm, local time. Not including the overnight stop, I think we were on the road a total of 17 hours including meal stops and potty breaks, which is pretty close to the google estimate. Not too shabby.

The trip back had it's own share of amusements. Up at 6:30am to grab breakfast and get to the airport via bus and train. Didn't want to risk being late because I feared long delays at security because of my one-way ticket. Surprisingly, no problems. Not sure if it was because they hadn't found anything the last time they went through all on my luggage, piece by piece, after taking a one-way flight on Southwest a mere 5 months ago, or simply because I didn't have any carry-on luggage on this trip. I guess the SOOTTAD will find out when she meets me in Ithaca in a few weeks -- she's flying one-way on another airline.

A brief note of irony before I continue: I may have mentioned that we had a few misadventures in Chicago. We didn't really have a plan of things to see or places to visit. It was fine just hanging out at the apartment and walking around the neighborhood, but whatever. I get on the plane, leaf through this months in-flight magazine and what do I spy with my little eye? An article on cool vintage places to visit in Chicago. An article I would have read if I hadn't changed my original travel plan to fly out. Oh well.

Anyway, uneventful flight... to Providence. More residue from the original itinerary -- my car would have been at the airport because I was originally going to drive down to Providence to fly out to Chicago. (Lower fares with parking cheaper than what it would cost to catch a cab into OR out of Boston.) But that wasn't really a problem because I figured I could just catch the Bonanza bus back to Boston.

Except that they no longer run busses out of the airport. Bah.

Of course, we had figured this out in Chicago, so my actual plan was to catch a RIPTA bus to the Kennedy Plaza (as recommended by the Bonanza rep I got on the phone) and then catch a Bonanzer from there.

So I get into the Providence airport and go to the information booth to figure out where to find the bus, and they end up steering me to a shuttle to the train station. Train? Cool -- trains are cool. Completely forgot about the RIPTA plan. Minor snafu: the info people tell me the shuttle leaves at 1pm and will get me to the train station around 20 minutes before the 1:42pm commuter rail up to Boston. And if I miss that, there's a (more expensive) Amtrak train that leaves at 2:20pm. I go to the shuttle folks and the first thing they do is warn me that it'll take 35 minutes, at best, to get to the train station. 1:35. 1:42 train. Well, I've got a backup so I try my luck.

On the shuttle, I meet a few other people who are going through the same issues that I am. When did the Bonanza bus stop leaving from the airport? What do you mean it doesn't take 15 minutes to get to the train station? I get to talking to the woman next to me and it turns out she's catching the 2:20pm train. Cool. "So what are you doing up in Boston?" I ask. Actually, she's heading back down to New York. Hmm. Interesting. A 2:20 train to New York... I find it hard to believe that there are two trains leaving Providence at *exactly* the same time, going in opposite directions, on the same track. (just checked the schedules, there's no 2:20 train to Boston)

So. We get to the station at 1:41pm. I briefly consider waiting in line and then decide to bust a move to the track. Thankfully, I make it and don't have to find out what else the T. F. Green people didn't know. Quiet ride into South Station, T over to Kenmore to catch a ride back to the house from my friend 'Bar.

Closing note: the shuttle cost me nine bucks to get me from the Providence airport to the Providence train station. It only cost me seven to get from Providence to South Station in Boston on the commuter rail; another buck and a quarter for the T ride. Cheaper to go the 50 miles from Providence to Boston than the 9 miles between the airport and the train station within Providence. Typical.

Total travel time Chicago to Boston, door to door: 9 hours.

Oy, tired.

coming and going

The SOOTTAD is in town. Yay.

She's packing up some stuff today and then we're driving her car out to Chicago tomorrow morning.

Things are feeling a little crazy and hectic right now. Her flight got in late last night, and we're trying to squeeze some quality time between packing and her trying to get some work done. But we did get to sleep in this morning (I'm really glad I hadn't planned on going into work today) and we're going to catch Episode III tonight. We're still thinking we'll get on the road early tomorrow, but I haven't even packed yet. Did I mentioned crazy and hectic?

Hopefully, once we get to Chicago, we'll have some time to chill out -- I'm planning on staying over the long weekend and then flying back early next week.

Regardless, it's good to be, and feel, together again.

Judicial nominees -- we lose

"Stakes still high after Senate makes deal"

MoveOn was claiming a victory in the judicial nominee showdown in the Senate today. But it didn't look much like a victory from where I was sitting. A victory would have been Frist putting the "nuclear option" to a vote, and having it fail, because enough Republican senators had the backbone to stand up for the right thing.

I keep hearing that "we saved the right to filibuster," but did we really? And exactly how useful was that if the Republicans still got what they wanted -- their nominees put on the bench? Seems to me they just bullied the minority and got their way. And now that they know that they can get away with it, what's to stop them from doing it again?

We won, but we lost.

It's like a teacher who gets the bully to stop beating up the other kids for their lunch money by making them give the bully their lunch money. Great, so you didn't get beat up, but you're still not going to have anything to eat.

The radical court nominees are still going to get confirmed. And if push comes to shove the next time around, say for a nominee to the Supreme Court, what's to stop them from voting to make the changes then?

We are so fucked.

Attack of the...

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

A few weeks ago, I noticed a small bulge in the asphalt of the driveway. I didn't think anything of it and promptly forgot about it. Some time later I noticed it again, except that it looked like it had risen several inches and was almost a foot across in diameter.

Eventually I got around to peeling some of the cracking asphalt away to reveal... GIANT MUSHROOMS attacking from below.

Scary stuff.

waxing philosophic

the Skills and Dynamics curriculum, despite being a touchy-feely subject, has proven to be pretty challenging. Today it was really "storming," with some of the discussion really putting my sympathetic nervous system into overdrive -- starting innocently enough on the topic of diversity and finding ourselves (or maybe just me, at least) deep in the mire of conflicting belief systems and world views. That's diversity for you, I guess.

But I didn't really want to talk about class. It was just the starting point for a conversation which fed into some web surfing that sparked a semi-random thought process which brings me back here. Thinking. And wanting to write some of it down.

There's an undercurrent of national politics that I've been trying to hide from since November, but I'm feeling like I'm being slowly dragged back into it again, awareness creeping in around the corners. You can't avoid hearing about radical activist legislators trying to brute-force their judicial nominees; I take a peek at the Downing Street Memo after seeing a reference on WWdN. There's always more if you really want to look for it. I don't, but I poke into the Huffington Post anyway; I read something about Warren Beatty versus the Governator, find myself drawn to the headline: "Darwin's theory evolves into culture war." Memories of the PBS series that had one show dedicated to discussing the relationship between religion and the theory of evolution.

And I think to myself: I may not believe in the idea of an omniscient, omnipotent (and let's not forget jealous and demanding) Judeo-Christian God (or His apparently intolerant and megalomaniacal contemporary American counterpart), but I do feel like you can see something of the divine in all the things in the world around us, in the simplest processes of basic life.

We may be able to build machines that can manipulate individual atoms, but even if we could configure the carbon and hydrogen atoms perfectly, the amino acids, all the necessary pieces parts, we still couldn't truly create life -- create the systems that make a leaf grow with all it's beautifully complex structures or even simply make a cell divide. You can call it God and I can just leave it as the mystery of Nature and we can call it even.

I'd be cool with that. Just sayin'.

Ok, bedtime.

check in

Gonna try to keep this short due to both time pressures and fears that Blogger is just going to eat the post again.

Feeling... like something just wasn't right today, but couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe I was just tired, but it didn't really feel like, well, being tired. (Even if I was a little tired.) More out of sync, or something off kilter, like on a metaphysical level or something.

I've noticed that I'm not feeling quite as emotionally raw as I did a few weeks ago, but I'm pretty sure it's still there, just barely skinned over, ever so slightly outside of my perception.

Little things seem to take me down. I'm feeling hypersensitive. Feeling overly needy and then isolating myself because I don't want to bleed my neediness all over my friends and acquaintances.

Thank god the SOOTTAD will be back in town in less than a week.

Unproductive

Not the dreaded ZPD (zero-productivity day), but this morning was the first time at the new job where I've felt listless and wholly unproductive. Managed to get back into the swing of things, relatively speaking, by early afternoon, but it wasn't one of my better days.

I'm going to chalk this one up to missing the SOOTTAD (didn't get a chance to talk to her last night, and didn't get any email from her until after lunch), insufficient sleep, and not taking my vitamins.

Disc makes it better, sometimes

Disc is my therapy.

I've been trying to write about this for a couple of weeks but life has not only been getting in the way, it's been body-slamming me to the mat and leaving me for dead. I tried to take some time to write over the weekend but Blogger ate my post multiple times so I finally gave up, hours and sleep lost. But here I go again -- hopefully it doesn't prove to be yet another exercise that I'm going to regret I didn't spend studying or trying to get some more sleep.

Things have been pretty rough the last few weeks, but I think I'm finally acclimating to things. Either that or it's just a calm between storms. The race is done, as are this past week's quizzes in physiology and anatomy and papers for school. And work. Which is, well, work. Going to have to get mentally prepared for going into the office tomorrow, but things still seem to be operating within normal-ish parameters.

I don't want to get too sidetracked, so I'll just say that work was weird on a couple of levels. There's the usual stuff I suspect about reentering the working world after a five month layoff, but it's also the first time I'm working as an independent contractor and some stuff specific to this job in particular that makes it not really like contracting which just makes the whole thing much more complicated in my head than it should be, and much more complicated than something that I'd be able to write about here.

And I wanted to talk about disc.

So things have been a bit rough the past few weeks, not just because I've suddenly found myself busier than I can ever really remember, but also because of the whole thing with the SOOTTAD moving to Chicago (still sucks, BTW), and well, yeah, actually I think it does have a lot to do with being busy. But let me get to the disc stuff, before this thing gets too long and Blogger eats my post again.

Anyway, as I was saying: I've been using disc as therapy. It hadn't been a conscious thing until a few weeks ago when I was having a particularly bad week. It was the first Monday after the SOOTTAD, and the




FUCK!

blogger just ate my post. Again. This has to be the fifth or sixth time now.

I swear I've been trying to write this fucking post for the better part of 3 weeks.

I could have been studying. Or sleeping.

FUCK.

Ok, I give up. The nutshell: this is about my Monday night BUDA games in JP.

Disc has been been good for me. It's been helping a lot. It makes me feel better.

Life has been sucking. I've been busy. I've been stressed about school. I've been stressed about starting a new job. I've been tired. I've been overtired. I've missed the SOOTTAD terribly.

I've felt depressed, it made me feel better. I had heartburn. It made me feel better. I was exhausted. I still felt exhausted, but it gave me some indications that I WAS exhausted and should try to get more rest. I was depressed and really looking forward to disc and my game got cut short and my emotions went beserk and I felt really stupid about it. It seemed a lot like addiction. I question my overreliance and dependency on any external THING that I use to make things better. THE END.

Fucking Blogger.

Ass Warming

Car equipped with ass-warmers (heated seats): GOOD.

Needing to engage ass-warmers in May: BAD.

Stupid weather.

Big Lake

Just finished the Big Lake half-marathon in Alton, New Hamster, by Lake Winnipesauke.

Run observations:

• After being in the low 60s and at least partly sunny for most of the past week, on race day it's in the low 40s, rainy and windy. F'ing wet and cold. At the end of the race, I couldn't untie my shoelace to remove the timing chip because my fingers had gone completely numb.

• I found it amusing to see the stream of runners (slowly working up the first of the big inclines) passing the "SPEED LIMIT 50" sign. I realize that this is probably only amusing to me.

• The race sponsors a "Big Lake Battle" where there's a competition between the Water stations for the group that is the most spirited. Rain kept most of the fiddlers, banjo and acoustic guitar players playing out of the back of their trucks, which sadly made them hard to hear until you were just passing them.
  Most memorable: scary clown woman juggling to the macarena (and earlier, that weird techno version of Cotton-Eye Joe).
  Most enjoyable: barbershop quartet, around mile 8, singing in the light rain on a quiet stretch of road.

• Speaking of music, for practically the entire race, I had the "horns" from the Ben Folds' song Army going through my head:
  

  Baaaaaahhhh---- ba ba bah-baaah---- ba ba bah-baaah---- bah-ba BAH
  Ba ba baaaaahhhh---- bah-bah ba ba ba bah-- ba da bah-bah ba ba ba-da-dah
  (in concert, the entire crowd will sing the two parts)

  The whole race. Much less annoying than you might expect.
  Actually, kinda cool. Certainly, better than the macarena.
  Although I did try to do the macarena as I passed the scary clown woman.

• Thankful that I bought new shoes before this race. There were a few nasty downhills that would have totally wrecked my knees, I think.

• Despite the hilly course, and the crappy weather, and being stressed with school and the new job, I still finished with a better time than the Boston race. (although I was getting sick at the time.) Chip time: 1:40:33

Ok, now I have to go and write a stupid paper for class.

Bleeding Heart

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

busy, tired

hopefully i'll finally have some time to write within the next week or so.

but right now, sleep is the first priority.

i hope there's time for it soon.

sleep, that is.

Deep in the Darkness

By all rights, I should be in bed. I called the SOOTTAD and left a message maybe twothree hours ago and now it's getting on towards 1am2am. I studied a little, looked at some pictures, and then started surfing around the 'net maybe an hourtwo hours ago, the music of the mix that I'm putting together for her playing in the background.

It's a reunion year -- college reunion, 15-year. I started surfing because I remembered that the notice I got in the mail yesterday seemed to suggest that there would be a list of the people attending this year. No such luck though; maybe it hasn't been set up yet, a whole two months away. Two months. It doesn't seem all that far off.

Anyway, from there, I started poking around the alumni directory and began recognizing names. A roommate from my grad year apparently lives here in Waltham, and it looks like he got his PhD. The guy who lived down the hall freshman year who had the same birthday as me looks to have relocated to Pennsylvania, although it still looks like he's managing the dive resort down in Honduras. There's the friend and neighbor from junior year with the PhD and law degree still living down in New York. On and on the names go. Then I start googling other names I can remember.

I have mixed feelings about going to reunion. I was hoping use it as an opportunity to share some of my memories with the SOOTTAD -- the campus, the town, the diner, Hot Truck. And there are a bunch of people that I'd like to see, but just don't get the chance, despite living just a short drive down to New York, or even in the next town. It shouldn't be so hard, but time creates barriers: calendars get filled, priorities and situations change. We are not the same, and as we change so do are connections. They change, weaken, fail.

It's a chance to try pulling the threads back together... but a part of me doesn't want to look back. I've been a bad friend for not keeping in touch. I want to just cut my losses and move on. It feels like it's already too late.

And then there's me. Compared to them.

PhDs, lawyers, published authors. Families, contributors to society, managers, big shots. People who have their shit together.

And then me in transition. (Hey, at least I have a job now.) Looking for a change, maybe. Just playing. And I know I'm being stupid. That these things are unimportant. It's the life that's lived -- I've traveled, I try to enjoy life. But, it seems so... inconsequential.

So I continue to debate: to go, or not to go? The logistics are already a little tricky with the SOOTTAD in Chicago and having to get back for school on Sunday. I'll put the decision off, see how a feel about it in a few days.

And I keep surfing.

And then, the descent into the bad place. Not this past Sunday's bad place -- different, but in some ways just as bad.

I surf over to the Ex's blog.

It's never a good thing. I still have some baggage from that period, but it's mostly water under the bridge. It's not like we parted on bad terms, but they weren't exactly the best of terms. Civil. We weren't right for each other, and we went our separate ways.

We live on opposite coasts now.

And so I spy, and there's this judge that sits in my head that's constantly making comparisons, evaluating.

Wow, they bought a house IN the city over there. That must have cost a freaking fortune!
Check it: looks like she's a senior manager or director in her company now.
Look, fancy new car!

She seems to be doing ok, I guess. Looks like they go out drinking. A lot. Damn, how many cats do they have?

I have to admit that I'm not always sad when I read about her occasional troubles and frustrations. I have been reassured on occasion that this doesn't necessarily make me a bad person, but I try not to dwell on it too much. But what I usually find the most interesting is discovering the things we have in common -- activities, music, opinions, blogs. (although somewhat troubling.) This shouldn't be that much of a surprise, there were reasons we got together in the first place. But some things you forget, and some you may never know. It's interesting that a blog might give you more insights into a person than actually living and spending time with them for 4-7 years.

Beyond such philosophical meanderings, I don't get much from these covert visits. Usually just yet-another-thing for which to be annoyed with myself. Tonight, a creepy parallel (besides the blogs): she apparently has the same phone that the SOOTTAD just got.

Stupid brain, just cut it out.

Must. Go. To. Bed.

more transitions

Strange things are afoot at the circle K.

Well, not necessarily strange, but change is definitely in the air, and it's not just the pollen.

Things have improved somewhat since Sunday -- there have been no cascading outbursts, no spontaneous breakdowns; the perturbance that had been clinging to the edge of my perception, that edginess, has settled down. It still sucks mightily that the SOOTTAD is almost a 1000 miles away, but it feels like things are under control, an equilibrium of sorts, be it unstable or otherwise. We've been talking a lot on the phone (thank god for free night and weekend minutes) and there's generally been stuff keeping me busy (and distracted).

For one thing, disc has started. My summer club team started its practices last week and I played in my first hat game in JP on Monday. The weeknight JP league has a much different feel than the weekend games in Waltham -- the level of competition is slightly higher, but more importantly, it has a more social culture, due in large part to the presence of Doyle's right across the street. I didn't fully understand how integral the bar was to the frisbee scene until I walked in after the game and the woman at the counter immediately told me that my team was in the middle room... and then noticed that almost every other team was in the bar, too; segregated by color (I'm on a green team), but at least present and accounted for. The running helped, it always does. But it was good to grab a beer with some friends I hadn't seen in a while.

So disc. And school. This week is effectively finals week -- we got our first final back in Physiology last night, and we have finals/assessments in Anatomy, Technique and Skills & Dynamics this coming Sunday.

Busy.

And then there's the new job.

Yeah, a new job.

When I was telling a friend of mine about how I got hooked up with this gig, she thought it was the weirdest thing -- no job posting, no applications, no cover letters, just a short email exchange, a phone call and then a fairly casual affair meeting people at their office. (I did send them a resume before I went in.)

It seemed a little weird to me, too, but not totally out of the ordinary. (This was also before I went back for a second meeting and a meatier grilling of my experience that actually felt like a job interview.) There had been a slightly more formal structure to the interview process for my previous job, but the discussions were still pretty casual and I got hooked into the position by a cold call from a recruiter. The only difference this time around was that the initial contact was an email from an ex-coworker. And if it doesn't seem that weird to you, maybe it's because I'm not conveying the vibe of the initial phone conversation I had with them, which I unfortunately don't feel I can adequately express here.

So anyway, I start Tuesday. We'll see if it works out. It's a contract gig, my first. So in addition to familiarizing myself with a new design and getting used to a new environment, (not to mention the return to a commuting routine) I get to figure out self-employment taxes (Social Security, Medicare), estimated taxes, IRAs and probably lots of other crap I don't even know about yet.

Between work and school and studying and disc and running, I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to have time to sleep or eat.

As an aside, it's interesting to notice that as I'm being pulled back into the step of working life again, all that political stuff that I've been ignoring and/or hiding from has started creeping back into my awareness. When I lost my job, it was pretty easy to just ignore it because it felt like it was outside of my circle of concern. It felt like I was no longer part of the system. My focus was on budgeting my savings, minimizing spending. Keeping active, distracted. There was no connection outside of that, perhaps by choice. (I don't know if I could deal, either financially or emotionally.) Simply being unemployed made me feel like I was outside, disenfranchised.

So I guess I'm, uh, franchised now?
Could I get some fries with that?

Anyway, here are two links that I've stumbled across over the last few days, one that discusses the falling value of the dollar (and how it's tied to our ballooning deficit) and the other about what's broken with the Bush Administration's education policy.

• In Yuan We Trust (via BoingBoing)
• Built to fail (via Miniver Cheevy via mkb)

Sprung

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

First tulip bloom of the season.

processing

Perception has slowly been creeping into consciousness all day. After class this afternoon, things finally slowed down enough for the details to begin coming into focus.

And it looks like one giant barrel of suck. (Yeah, supersize me, baby.)

i am a fucking wreck.

Ouch

Originally uploaded by tallasiandude.

Took a digger on my long run today.

Looks like it's gloves and finger cots this week in technique class.

Bah.

not there yet

So, V wanted to know if I wanted to get together tonight -- hang out, commiserate over our respective suckitudes -- and I just realized that my head's in that place where I don't really want to spend the evening alone, and yet, I don't really want to spend time with other people.

I guess I'm not really doing as well as I thought.

holding pattern; slow transition

It was nice to sleep in this morning after having to get up early that past two days. And yet, in some ways, it would have been better to have something to kick me out of bed and get me moving.

Early Wednesday morning I took the SOOTTAD to the airport. We had eaten dinner at Tuscan Grill on Moody Street the previous night and then stayed up much later than we should have, but we managed to get up early enough to hit Wilson's diner, together for the last time (at least until she comes back in June to pack up the rest of her stuff), before driving to Logan. We love both of these restaurants; I keep hoping she'll write about them, since I couldn't do them justice.

Logan. Frustrations in Central Parking were a good distraction from the emotions of the imminent departure, but really, it just replaced stress with stress. Poor signage, exit arrows leading to dead-ends and aisles blocked by cones -- the Logan nightmare that used to be the Pike-to-93-to-tunnel commute transferred to the newly centralized, overcrowded and partially under construction clusterfuck that we'd normally avoid by doing curbside drop-off, but which wasn't going to be an option on this particular morning.

I'll spare youmyself the details, and just point out that since only ticketed passengers can go to the gate, I can only watch her go through security and up the escalator until she's out of sight. I wait a few moments before walking slowly back to the car. I feel... heavy. I look at the planes or rather, their tails, peaking up behind the terminal building, keeping an eye out for the green and red of the AirTran logo.

I'm pretty much on auto-pilot. And when I catch myself drifting into the bad place, I force myself to keep busy. Activity -- keep moving, keep to the routine. Run, study, go to class.

Thursday morning, I'm up early again -- for an interview*. Then study, run, play disc.

I talk to the SOOTTAD in the evenings.

Friends check up on me. When they ask me how I'm doing, how things are going, I don't really know how to answer. I'm ok -- been worse, been better. We're ok. But I'm ever so slightly on edge. Off kilter. I'm keeping myself distracted, but I'm not really processing things. I can't. At least, not right now. People want to be there for me if I need to talk it out, but I'm not really ready for that right now. And trying to force the processing before my brain is ready for it leads to the dark places, the bad places.

I stay up late for no reason.

This morning, with nothing pressing for the day, I lie in bed, listless.

Nope, still not ready.

Try to appreciate Spring. Disc season. Starting to poke around in the garden -- I email with the SOOTTAD about planning, weed/perennial identification. It's no longer freezing after dark -- I was ok in just shorts and a shirt when I came home last night. Days warming, lengthening.

Close. Almost there.

I think we'll make it through this. It's feeling more normal. I'm already planning my flight out at the end of May.

Now, if I could just get to bed.

* I effectively had a first round of interviews last week but have avoided talking about it because I didn't want to jinx it. That, and I've really just been too busy. Mixed feeling on how it went -- at times, I can tell myself that it went alright, but generally, I do a pretty good job of convincing myself I totally screwed it up. In any case, it's done and I figure I'll hear one way or another sometime early next week.

681 minutes

That would be 11 hours and 21 minutes of special-extendo, Platinum-edition Lord of the Rings goodness.

I bought the Director's cut of the Fellowship of the Ring when it was first released, but realized that I didn't want to watch it until I could watch all three films in all their extended glory. So it sat, unopened, until they finally released the extended edition of the Return of the King last December.

But then it became an issue of finding time to watch them all, because somewhere down the line, I decided that I needed to watch them all consecutively on the same day. Weekends are always busy, and while I didn't have silly things like work getting in the way for me during the week, I still had to make time for my training workouts, not to mention studying and going to class. And the SOOTTAD was still working and had suddenly become significantly (and rather inconveniently) busier, not even counting the hate-my-job-looking-to-escape activity going on around the same time. So we kept putting it off until this week, with her finally done with the old job, and her imminent departure just a few days away.

Our friend V (who is also currently employment-deficient) came over around noon, Doritos and vanilla frappaccinos and the Two Towers* in hand, and we got rolling soon after. We took a brief break at every disc change (each film was split onto two DVDs), ordering pizza at the halfway mark of disc 2 of the Two Towers and ended up finishing a little before 1am this morning.

I'll make no attempt at writing an actual review and just say that I thought the platinum series rocked. I really liked the way it fleshed out a lot of the backstory that was missing from the theatrical releases -- I thought it allowed the story to flow much better. It was also interesting to see how an extra few seconds in a scene could drive home a point about industrialization or war that hadn't been present in the theatrical release, without feeling out of place.

Highly recommended if you've got a free half-day in your calendar.

No foolin'.

* A minor glitch in our nefarious plan -- our copy of the Two Towers was nowhere to be found. Our only guess is that we loaned it to somebody, but at this point, we haven't a clue as to who we lent it to. Fortunately, V had his own copy, so we were good to go.