Eventually I’ll learn not to go to Europe in the winter. The hotels have no concept of what a heater is. Heaters here blow air that’s only slightly warmer than the external temp. I’m wearing three layers of sweaters in my hotel room and I’m still cold. Yes, it’s back to London which after Russia, seems the easiest city to navigate in the world. The tubes, busses, and Hotel Hoppa are all accessible and people can give directions. Hungry? Food is easy to obtain and you get what you want. I decided to do something new and took the double-decker tour bus around the city to escape from the major must see sights. It would have been far more fun in the summer! Lunch was the yummy Pret-a-Manger for a sandwich and dinner is wine, cheese and crackers in my room. And it’s Halloween so I’m continuing a completely unintended tradition of spending Halloween in a hotel room somewhere.
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LAX is oddly quiet today. The gates are empty and so are the restaurants. It's nice to be able to find a chair and blog withoug trying to bypass hoards of fellow travelers. For a vacation, today started off with last minute school work followed by 3 hours of work - work. At least I'll be on an airplane soon and hopefully the movies will be good.
Another weekend of homework. I am looking forward to a school break in three weeks. I can't believe that it took a trip to Peru to force me to relax a bit from school. This was a homework intense weekend but still far easier than alegbra or statistics and I'm taking two classes at the same time. I had to set myself up for the coming week though because I'm off and traveling again, this time for fun!
Another Friday night and another paper done. Two more to go before the weekend ends. I really dislike the learning team requirement for school. No matter how much I strategize to get on a great team there is always one person who refuses to do the work but gain the benefit of someone elses work. My aunt asked me earlier this year something to the effect of "what's it like to be a multi-tasked, able to handle a double workload type of person?" My answer was "annoying." I stand by that answer. I am annoyed all the time by people who think a 4 slide PowerPoint is too tough of a homework schedule, and even though they have 14 days to do the slides, there is no time until 11:50 pm when the project is due at midnignt. Hey! Us multi-taskers go to bed early! Just do the work! At least this time the team loser told the rest of us flat out that he wasn't going to meet our work pace. That's better than the people that never even check in. To top it off, he said tha...
Blogger Beta notes - that last photo post took 7 or 8 attempts to get the photos and words to align. Once you switch to Beta there's no going back. Google is still working out some of the upgrade features. There really aren't all that many new templates to choose from. I still have to play with the fonts since they don't really contrast well with the background.
For those of you who watched The Amazing Race last night, Kuwait was the featured country. I'm sure that there was nothing in that episode that will ever convince someone to go to Kuwait because as you saw, there's nothing to do there. The water towers are the symbol of Kuwait but did you see any tourists there? No, it's 105F and they're in the middle of a bunch of sand. It would never occur to me to go up to the top. Yes, the water was beautiful but you can't smell it from the television set. Notice that no one was swimming in the ocean. I am glad that TAR went there though. It showed Kuwait in a fair enough light but due to religious considerations there focus was almost exclusively on the contestants and not the people who live there.
What a great weekend! Minimal homework, beautiful sunny weather (except the pesky pollen) and kick back time at last! I even made it to the beach, the grocery store, and the mall. (All those stores, nothing to buy) The only thing that would have made the weekend a complete California sterotype would have been to wash my car but even I have limits.
The Tax Collector always wins. There's no use fighting and even if you think you came out the winner, wait a couple of months. For the past year, the San Diego County Tax Collector decided to go after me for unpaid taxes on our father's property. We had filed, notified, resolved, and thought that the issue was resolved. Then I would get a new notice from the tax office about unpaid taxes. This went on and on to final notice when finally, at the put a lien on my property taxes point, the Tax Collector finally said "Okay, resolved." I retrieved my mail this week and saw two dreaded envelopes. The first was the normal property tax statement. The second was different. This one stated that since there was a difference in the value at the time of the sale to me and the sale to the previous owners, I would have to pay an additional increase in the taxes, above and beyond the newly assessed taxes. Isn't that what the taxes are supposed to take into account in the first pl...
The Illusionist
Yes, it's true! After having a 6 month gap in my movie viewing habit, I finally have made it back to the theater! It took a Yuma trip to do but this season's review is on The Illusionist. This was the mystery movie since I hadn't even heard of it before and luckily it was an enjoyable if slow paced movie. The story centers around Edward Norton's magician/illusionist character and his love of the Princess Sophie. You could say it has elements of The Princess Bride without the humor or wit. This is a love story/mystery/slightly social commentary sort of a movie. Luckily the story mostly works and Edward Norton is believable as the illusionist and Jessica Biel does what she needs to do as the princess. Paul Giamatti plays the Chief Inspector who as an amateur magician, admires the illusionist but as an aspiring to power, right hand of the bad Crown Prince, the inspector is forced to disrupt life for the people he admires. Does true love win? Are the right choices made? I...
As it always it when I get home from a big trip, I fall behind on blogging. The weekend was spent writing papers with the brief exception of dinner and beer at Oggi's. And as always happens after a Ramadan trip, my ablility to finish a beer goes way down. Homer was completly shocked at how long my one beer lasted. (The whole dinner) We didn't even take pictures of our beers. But I am sure that I will be ready for the Firkin this Friday! The gopher has seemed to move on to someone else's yard or the cat finally got it. There was no new digging while I was gone. Work awaits and it looks to be a busy day. My exciting life is back to mundane for now. I did think it was cool that CNBC did a spot on the Las Vegas Star Trek convention though. Too bad they only interviewed the ones in costume but at least the true freaks didn't get on air. Yes, even ST fans know that there are different layers of craziness in fandom.