....I recently saw a Gainesville codes enforcement car pulling out of my subdivision, no doubt investigating the complaint of some vindictive, snitching neighbor against another for excessive grass height and weeds. Meanwhile, the city refuses to keep grass cut on its own land, encouraging snakes and creating worse eyesores to the area than any individual property owner could cause.
....I successfully ran my first cross-country “jog” in a very long time, a 2-mile circuit very close to my home; only drawback was a long stretch of overgrown grass and weeds that my dearly beloved city refuses to properly maintain.
....After years of benign neglect, my Alachua County library system has decided to begin using a collection agency to try to collect overdue material. Good, I think that they need to do something besides just sending people overdue notices. I’ve been known to have overdue books, and this will help me be more responsible and return them on time.
....My workplace permits, under certain conditions, workers to listen to the radio using headsets. But lately, I’ve found the quality of radio programming here to be so poor that, except for 89.1-WUFT (Public Radio), I just keep it off.
....I really should be more proficient when it comes to availing myself of all I see on my computer. For example, I want to be able to write articles in Chinese and Russian on my blog (in order to give fluent readers of those languages something to laugh at), but don’t know how to get the necessary fonts for their distinctive scripts (with the keyboard templates). Blogger has a language-choice option, but it doesn’t enable me to compose anything in another script. I did find two different virtual-script sites that will allow me to compose text in Russian and Chinese, but I don't have the flexibility to edit my writing that I want. The ultimate aim is to write freely on my own. For the time being I'll painstakingly use the virtual script sites, along with my dictionaries and grammars.
....Monday night is now my fun-TV-watching time; it is my “weeknight” night off, so I can watch MSNBC’s Hardball and Countdown--also, the Sci-Fi Channel has been showing 3 hours of Star Trek: The Next Generation. And I dig other shows, like SpongeBob SquarePants, the Science Channel shows, WNBA games, and occasional good movies; it’s a time when I like to settle down in my comfy recliner and soak it all in!.
....The current Atlantic hurricane season has already seen four named storms, pretty high for three weeks into July, but they’ve all been “behaving” so far (veering away from Florida).
....My wife and kids went and saw the blockbuster movie sensation The Dark Knight and all liked it (my son thinks it’s the best movie ever). I’ll wait for the dvd release, but I did see Batman Begins and thought that movie was exceptionally well done (especially Michael Caine’s hilarious butler portrayal).
....School’s approaching, my daughter is entering eighth grade, & I am planning to keep up with things enough to help her with her homework, especially with Logic, Algebra and Latin.
....We’re planning to make another stab at going to the beach in a couple of weeks, this time to Ormond Beach. Hurricanes, take notice and veer!
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Library: Our libraries allow renewals online, which almost always saves me from fines for overdue materials.
ReplyDeleteRadio: Ah, no iPod, eh? (For me, my BlackBerry doubles as an MP3 player, though without as much storage capacity.) Alternatively, you could pick up an XM radio (and, ah, pay the monthly subscription fee).
Batman: I saw The Dark Knight over the weekend (yes, I contributed to its record-breaking opening weekens). Apart from Heath Ledger's fabulous performance, I was enchanted by Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine... as I always am.
The Alachua County library system has online renewals, too. But they never levied fines for overdue books, so that removed any incentive for people to bring them back.
ReplyDeleteI have a couple of MP3s, one of which has more than 200 songs on it and some webcasts in foreign languages that I can practice listening to. The other is a "work in progress".
As much as I liked watching Batman Begins and Iron Man, I wish the movie industry would come out with some really fresh products....But wait, maybe they have and all the public wants to see are sequels, recycled series, and book (and TV) adaptations!
...and remakes. Especially annoying to me are American remakes of foreign films. Examples: Fathers’ Day remade the absolutely delightful Les Compères, with Gérard Depardieu. There was the inferior American version of the Japanese Shall We Dance. And, most recently, Catherine Zeta-Jones, in No Reservations, plays the character originated by Martina Gedeck in the German Bella Martha (why they had to call her character “Kate” instead of “Martha” in the American version, I have no idea).
ReplyDeleteIf you haven’t seen some of the originals in that list... put ’em on your Netflix queue.