About to head out to mom’s house for the second time this week. This time because FRU (filthy rich uncle), J3 (cousin — seriously, my family needs to be more creative with letters), J3’s pregnant wife, more cousins, both J1 and J2 and possibly an aunt are visiting for one night only.
Excitement abounds.
But today, J1 will pay me back for his half of mom’s Christmas present. Grr.
The faucet in the downstairs bathroom has been disassembled for quite a while now; at least 2 months, since I know I took it apart before Michelle’s visit, and I believe it was even before the semester ended.
When I first took it apart, I thought it would be a simple matter to put it back together again: go to the store, buy a replacement for the part inside the handle that was broken, then screw the handles back on. But of course, as with anything related to home improvement, it was not that simple. The store did not have a suitable part, and after going on a quest with my mother to a number of stores in the area, we became fairly certain that the part was no longer manufactured.
The choice then became more difficult: should we get a new faucet, or try to buy some parts that looked like they might fit, on the off chance that one of them would be sufficient. The latter has a danger of ending up costing us more money in the long run, if we had to buy a lot of parts before we found one that would work. The former has its own problems — for some reason when I turned the water off to the faucet back in May, water continued to bubble up out of the faucet for quite some time. Not mere hours, but for weeks and weeks afterwards. Now it has stopped, which confuses me a good deal — was there a leak? If so, where has it now gone? It can’t have fixed itself. Added to this concern is the difficulty of reaching the faucet underneat the sink; the bowl of the sink is very much in the way, and our vanity has two doors rather than one, meaning that a person cannot easily slide into it to reach.
But in spite of that, now that the water has dried up, I’ve been intending to buy a new faucet and install it. I was going to do that Thursday, then put it off to today, and now I’ve put it off until Monday. Hopefully I won’t break anything.
So very silly. But you should watch it anyway.
I went to get the car inspected today, and afterwards paid a visit to mom’s house, since I was over there anyway. (Why? Because the dealership where we bought the car will give a free inspection every year.)
While I was there, I got a look at J2’s “Suggested Summer Reading List”. It did much to confirm my opinion of the school as completely lacking in any intelligence.
A dramatisation of my thoughts as I looked at the thing
Paper> Pride and Prejudice: Austin
K> So they misspelled Austen.
Paper> Emma: Austin
K> …twice.
Paper> Tess of the D’Urbeervilles
K> and D’Urbervilles…
Paper> dumas
K> and did not capitalize Dumas…
Paper> X-Day
K> And included… wait, no, that can’t be.
Paper> X-Day: Mizushiro
K>: Holy crap.
On Saturday, I went into the B&N at the Pru while I was waiting for my shift at the DNC to begin. I looked, as usual, to see if the July releases were out yet, and, as usual, they were not, even though it is now the end of July.
What I did find is that similar to Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins are being republished. The back of the book made some claim about ‘enjoying these classic versions again’, so I picked up 1, 3-5 — I already have #2 from when I was a child.
I brought them home, however, only to find that they were edited! And stupidly so. Dinah, the Bobbseys’ servant, is black, but all references to her color have been carefully removed from the books — except for the illustrations. Additionally, all references to the 6 year old twins being fat have been excised. We must fight childhood obesity!!
Needless to say, I returned the books on Tuesday for a complete refund.
Today I had a DNC shift from 6am – 10am. This was so early that I could easily have zipped into the city, but today being a weekday, the parking rates are insane — and so I needed to find a better method of entry. E and I were looking at bus routes on Monday morning, but I’m not very familiar with the T bus system, so taking them tends to make me wary.
The first red line trains from Alewife didn’t leave until about 5:30, which was too late, but I discovered that the green line from Riverside left just before 5, which I figured would be plenty of time. So I drove down to Woodland and parked there, catching the first train in.
When I got to the Hynes stop, it wasn’t quite 5:30am. The sun was up to a point where it felt like the very beginnings of sunset, but the streets were so empty and quiet. It was a very weird feeling, especially since I had been up since the evening before. I almost wished I’d brought my camera with me; I may have to try and go out at that hour during AB and get some pictures.
Because I have a 6am shift for the convention tomorrow, I slept most of the day today, so I’d just stay up. It’s made this day seem very short.
I think what I’m going to do is drive down to the T and go in from there. It should hopefully go relatively fast at that time of day, assuming there aren’t any bloody bag searches.
We shall see, though.
Last night was my first shift for the convention. I wasn’t sure what to expect, in terms of work, in terms of getting there, in terms of leaving.
The day did not get off to an auspicious start: I’d forgotten that the Red Sox were playing the Yankees at Fenway this weekend, and yesterday we had the added bonus of a brawl on the field during the early portion of the game. Fortunately for Boston, the Sox managed to pull the win out of their butts, and the mood in town was good when I arrived.
After allowing the random policeman to examine my trunk, I went down into the parking garage at the Pru. I was very early, due to concerns about traffic, so I hung around inside the mall for a bit, stopping at the Krispy Kreme (verdict: their raspberry drink is good, but nothing special) and then wandering over to Barnes and Noble, where, according to a multitude of posters, Bill Clinton was expected today.
Then it was time for me to head over, so I made my way to the Hynes and found the IT room, where I discovered that they’d just about decided there was nothing left to do for the day. So I got my T-Shirt and sat around for a bit. I answered a few phone calls, helped them with some data entry, guarded a table, and then got to leave around 11:30.
Managed to escape from Boston without getting lost on the one way streets, and then lost a half hour just 10 miles from home due to the freaking road construction on route 3.
Tonight, CBS is rerunning their horrific 2001 TV movie of “Murder on the Orient Express”. For some insane reason they decided to uproot the story from its original setting in the 1920s and bring it in to the present day, complete with cell phones, faxes and all the modern conveniences. Then, they decided to trap the train via a landslide rather than a snowstorm, with exterior assistance arriving almost immediately. I’m afraid this puts the story on far more shaky footing than it was originally.
Ugh. This is about as wretched as that travesty of a Sherlock Holmes movie from a couple years ago. But I guess you can’t look away from a train wreck (ha ha), so I’ll watch it until the end.
The first episode dramatises the short story “The Jewel Robbery at the Grand Metropolitan”. And, as far as the essentials go, it does an excellent job of sticking to the script Christie has provided. Both Hastings and Poirot behave ICly, though given the time constraints, not as much is made of Poirot’s mania for order and cleanliness as it is in the story (it explains why he notices a vital clue which Hastings, of course, does not realize the significance of.) Much of the extraneous dialogue and action is cut, leaving the mystery a bit adrift from Poirot’s world and causing the secondary characters to be even more flat than they are in the original story. But, given that the Poirot series with David Suchet (the standard from which all other Poirot dramatisations should really be judged, IMHO) took an hour with a short story, this is not surprising and understandable.
There have been some additions and minor changes even in this first episode, the merit of which I’m yet undecided upon. A (nosy, rebellious, angsty) schoolgirl, Mabel West (which the subtitlers decided to spell as ‘Maybelle’, a choice I think very stupid) has been introduced. Her ties with the canon are through her father, novelist Raymond West, who is a real Christie character — Jane Marple’s nephew. There was no sign of Joyce/Joan, so possibly she is dead, or was simply off camera for this episode. Raymond, instead of being the edgy modern novelist of the canon, is now a mystery writer. And for some unknown reason, the city girl Mabel wanders about with a duck in a basket. Her father understandably disapproves.
So far I give it an 8/10.