Category: Uncategorized

Okay, so, I realize it’s Valentine’s Day, and that people doing google searches for “anti-valentine’s day” have increased site traffic to levels higher than we’ve ever seen before at Modern Evil*, but I’ve personally been ‘officially’ single since before Valentine’s Day, 1998, and have no intention of celebrating Valentine’s Day more than I already have today. Oh, and it is Arizona Statehood Day, by the way. That’s right, back in… 1912, I guess, on February the 14th, Arizona became the 48th state of the United States. The last contiguous state so far. So hooray for that!

Oh, but something more relevent to my life also happens today; Daredevil opens. Now, I’m not that big of a comic book guy, I don’t think Ben Affleck was the best choice for the role, and there are some other movies coming out soon that I’m actually really, really looking forward to (ie: Matrix sequels, and increasingly the Hulk, plus I’m looking forward to Love Liza more than Daredevil, if that speaks to you), but I am a movie kind of guy, and will certainly enjoy Daredevil when I see it later today. SO, I’m inviting you to join me.

Which is quirky, because I don’t know when or where I’ll be seeing it, or with whom yet. I believe my younger brother and sister may be interested in going to go see it, and maybe Art and Callie as well. I know Zoe and Amy will be seeing it as part of a date, probably on their side of town, and I respect their celebration of the holiday (and more importantly of their relationship). Who else may be interested in seeing it, I do not know, but this is the sort of fun movie that most everyone can have a good time seeing, and may be more fun in a larger group. Since no one has let me know what my plans are yet (that’s the way most of my social activities go – if someone wants to do something with me, they just have to tell me when and where), I beleive it may end up being first-come, first-served. That is, whoever contacts me first with the most reasonable plan will probably dictate the plan that I try to get everyone who calls me later to conform to.

Now a little on my sleep: (totally optional reading)

Continue reading Happy Daredevil Day!

So, errr.. Among the things I was supposed to at least get started on yesterday, Thursday, is cleaning this house in Tempe to the best of my ability so it can be rented out ASAP, and maybe I’ll even get part of my deposit back. There’s more to the story, since the cleaning was actually supposed to start Wednesday, except that the moving didn’t get done until late Wednesday night and … well, at this rate I may never do a proper post about the ordeal, but… suffice it to say, I was supposed to do some cleaning yesterday. I was also extremely physically exhausted and sore from four continuous days of packing and lifting and carrying and lifting and sometimes dropping on my toes just about everything I own, so slept in and spent many hours relaxing. Then around 8PM last night I was getting ready to get started working on the kitchen, and I was going through the programs on my laptop and quitting them or telling them I would be away from the PC for a while, when I noticed that at some point I had started up Fool’s Errand. You may remember I mentioned it was an early game by the same guy who developed the contest puzzles for David Blaine’s book, which I never solved before, despite years of access to it in High School. You may also remember that I downloaded it with the intention of going through it and 3 in Three to get my mind back in the mindset of the creator… you know, so I can solve the ones that could be worth $100k easier. So as long as it was running and I hadn’t even taken one minute to look at it since downloading it, I figured I could take a look, maybe solve one or two puzzles, and go start on the kitchen in a few minutes. Keep in mind that this is a game that I spent months playing when I first discovered it and which I know Zoe has been playing off and on since I linked to it and as of three days ago was only about half-way through the thing. Keep that in mind, I mean, when I say that I just completed it moments ago.

Not that I just realized I’d been sitting here playing a Mac Classic game all night and should quit and go to bed. I just totally finished the game. In one sitting. Literally. I didn’t get up once, to eat or drink or pee or anything. I just started playing and played and played and played until I won. I didn’t even look online for help until I literally had all the puzzle clues deciphered and onto the last screen and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t triggering the ‘finale’ after I’d double-checked my solutions twice, and after carefully reading through all the explanations for the final set of clues and their solutions, I found that I had mis-spelled the very last word. I had put ‘Amythyst’ instead of ‘Amethyst’. Probably because it was 6AM and I’d been playing the game all night and am very tired. So that’s it, huh? That wasn’t so bad. The only puzzle I seemed to really have trouble with was Death’s puzzle, and only until I realized you had to cheat to beat death. Man O Man.

I did end up totally filling a little 4″ square piece of scratch paper. For some reason I had trouble doing a couple of the scrambled word-cipher puzzles in my head, and in others I just made notes until all the data for the puzzle had passed through my head and onto the paper, then didn’t look at the notes as I solved the puzzle. It’s a good way to doublecheck you’ve gone through all the evidence, I think. Three colors of ink in overlapping layers of tiny rows of cryptic symbols and jumbled letters oriented all four directions… I doubt it would be of much use after a year or two when my mind has filed away how to read it so far that it becomes easier to just make new notes.

Anyway, I’m going to sleep now. I’m looking forward to playing 3 in Three (in a week or two, after I get settles in up in Pine) again now. I believe I only played through about 2/3 of that, and I put a lot more hours into it than fool’s errand in HS. Maybe it’ll take two nights.

I should be asleep by now. I am going to go to sleep now.

For the last two days I have worked until I was too sore and tired to move, then set down and read and responded to as much email as I could, read everything new on the site, and gone to sleep. Too tired to make a post.

I’m too tired to make a post right now, actually. So I’ll say that I’m too tired to make a post, but that perhaps in the next couple of days I might find the time/energy to make a proper post about what’s been going on.

Suffice it to say that we got just about everything moved to Pine today and I’m going to try to get this place clean over the next few days before I move definitively to Pine. And I’ve been too busy and tired to post or respond to emails except the most immediate. I will catch up. I assure you.

Two weeks ago I didn’t know where I would be at the end of February. Last week we decided I would move to Pine, starting to move my stuff up there tomorrow, Tuesday, February 11th. Now just about everything I own will be moved up to Pine by the end of the day tomorrow. A fairly large load went up suddenly on Sunday. I don’t know when exactly I did it, presumably while I was moving around heavy boxes and unweildy furniture, but I hurt myself a bit. My left knee, which has been giving me trouble off and on for years, hasn’t stopped giving me trouble since mid-Sunday. Also, I seem to have strained … I don’t know, most of my left leg below the knee.

I’ve had today to try to pack up the rest of everything I own and get it all ready to move tomorrow. Except that even if I’m not carrying a heavy box, my left leg seems to want to collapse underneath me. Which would be fun if I weren’t carrying heavy boxes and looking forward to carrying much heavier furniture tomorrow. Loading and unloading and loading and unloading. We were fairly hurried on Sunday to try to beat the sun and we forgot a few things we were supposed to get done. Like unpacking many of the boxes or at least finding some empty boxes to bring back down for the move tomorrow. Or grabbing the blankets we used Sunday for padding more furniture tomorrow. Or inventing an anti-gravity device for assisting us with everything we’re going to do tomorrow.

I was really hoping to get the blankets back.

So I’m trying not to strain my leg any more, though it seems only too eager to get itself properly twisted. I’m doing my laundry so it’s all clean before the move (and because it isn’t nearly as heavy as boxes full of books.) I’m way behind. I should be done by now. I should be in bed so I can get up early tomorrow and be fresh and full of the energy I’m going to need. I started writing this well before tomorrow became today, but I keep getting up and doing a little bit of the work before finishing the post. I don’t think it’s Pine or the situation I’m moving to which is slowing me down. Perhaps it is the process of moving itself. When I moved into this house about 20 months ago I swore I would go through moving again for at least three or four years if I could avoid it. This is my seventh move to/in/from Tempe, which started in the summer of 1997. That’s quite a bit of packing things up, disassembling furniture, loading things into cars or trucks or U-Haul trucks, driving carefully, unloading things, carrying them up stairs or down stairs or both, reassembling furniture, unpacking things, trying to figure out where they’re supposed to go… I think it’s the physical act of moving I’m sick and tired of.

I’m going to go get back to this. I think the utter lateness may fuel me to get more done, faster. Except that my leg seems to be getting worse. Stupid leg. i should have had my legs replaced by robot legs years ago.

In case he hasn’t wrapped his mind around what TrackBack can do for him, this will help a little: I’m going to link to a post Mo made today.

See, he linked to a couple of things and I really appreaciate the second one, a short piece by Terry Jones, and I know that some of Modern Evil’s readers don’t look at what Mo says. Presumably because they don’t know who he is. Which is fine. I know who he is and like what he has to say enough to add his posts to Modern Evil. And I definitely recommend you check out at least this post.